#we shouldn’t have to pay for anything non disabled people don’t have to

[aloeverawrites]

Part of making a vegan world is making a world with enough social systems in place to support all humans. It’s just not going to happen without it and a world that doesn’t support its human community, especially its disabled communities, isn’t a just one either.

There are people with food intolerances who would like to have a plant based diet but would need an elaborate food preparation routine in order to do that safely. I know people who are spending that time and money everyday which is extremely impressive but it really shouldn’t be necessary. Ideally there should be government funding towards restaurants, programs or government paid at home chef’s to cater to these needs.

Same with pollution, it would be nice to reduce the amount of plastic people use but the person who has chronic fatigue or chronic pain might need to be able to buy a pack of microwaveable food and have dinner done in two minutes rather then twenty. Or have a chef on call to prepare them what they would want at no cost. Or maybe they could prepare it themselves if insurance had bought them the wheelchair and treatment they needed, giving them more low pain days.

I’m just saying people are all different so we’re going to need a lot of different ways to achieve that goal. Veganism that includes ableism is less than worthless and it’s not going to be effective. What’s practical and possible for one person isn’t for another person and we have to put time and resources into giving everyone as many options as possible.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dishwashers have become Iphones

Apple is a true business innovator: For more than a decade, they have been steadily perfecting an obscure anticompetitive tactic, turning a petty grift invented by console games companies into a global, cross-industry mechanism for extracting rents and centralizing control.

I'm speaking of App Stores, of course, and not just any app store, but one that's illegal to compete with or switch away from. This started with console companies, who used technical tricks to ensure that they could skim a rake from every program you bought for your system.

Consoles used proprietary hardware or media formats to ensure that software vendors couldn't sell directly to you, that every sale would be forced through their storefronts or licensing systems.

These tactics acquired the force of law in 1998 after Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), whose Section 1201 made it a felony to traffick in "circumvention devices" that bypassed "access controls" for copyrighted works.

Broadly, that meant that you could go to prison (for five years!) for making anti-DRM tools. What's more, DMCA 1201's drafters rejected tying the law to acts of copyright infringement, making it illegal to remove DRM, even if you did so for a perfectly legal reason.

For example, if your games console had some code that ensured that the software you were running had been taxed by the manufacturer, then removing that code could become a criminal act - even though that has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

To make that concrete: copyright is supposed to help creators and audiences transact with one another. If you own a console and I wrote some software for it, then copyright should facilitate you paying me money for it and then running it on your console.

But if the console's manufacturer had designed its product so that it got to impose a tax on transactions like this, then I can't sell you my copyrighted work anymore unless I pay the tax. Doing so is a felony, but not because it infringes copyright.

No, it's a felony because it's bad for the manufacturer's shareholders. It's what Jay Freeman calls "Felony Contempt of Business Model."

Now, the defenders of this practice say it's not anticompetitive because I can invent and manufacture a different, competing console, sell it to you, and then sell you my code without paying tax.

But this isn't how competition works. Companies don't get to say, "You can compete with me, but only on the terms I set, and in the domains where I think I have an advantage." Excluding competition in "complimentary goods" (like apps) is 100% anticompetitive.

For several years after the passage of the DMCA, the abuse of Sec 1201 to create "Felony Contempt of Business Model" stuck mostly within the realm of games consoles, with the exception of mixed results in the printer ink market.

Then along came the App Store for Apple's Ios devices: these were designed to be locked to a single app store, so that people who made copyrighted works (apps) and people who wanted to buy them (Ipod/pad/phone owners) couldn't transact without going through Apple.

Apple's paternalistic pitch was that it would only use this power to benefit its customers. The press *loved* this story, because Steve Jobs posed himself as a daddy-figure who would use apps to get us all to pay for media again.

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The consensus that Apple should be able to decide how other companies could compete with it was advanced by its most loyal customers, who'd long considered themselves to be a kind of oppressed religious minority.

They insisted that there was no reason to allow a third-party app store because everyone who owned an Ios device loved using Apple's App Store.

But when anyone pointed out that if this was true, then there would be no reason to ban third-party stores (because they'd fail), they'd switch tactics, saying that any Ios user who switched stores was Doing It Wrong.

This is the Apple fanboy No True Scotsman argument: "Everyone loves the limitations of Apple's walled gardens, and if they don't, they're not really Apple customers. If they didn't want to be locked into the walled garden, they should have bought a different device."

To understand how weird this is, consider the inverse: we live in a market society based on property rights. Once I buy an Ios device, I get to decide which programs I run on it and who I buy them from. If Apple didn't like that deal, it shouldn't have sold me an Ios device.

This belief-system is intrinsically conservative, in the sense articulated by Frank Wilhoit: "There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

How else to explain the indifference of Apple trufans for the company's decision to reverse-engineer all of Microsoft Office's file formats and make compatible players for them, and their defense of Apple's strict prohibition on doing this to Ios?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

But even if you think Apple will never abuse the power to decide who can compete with it to make complimentary products that interoperate with its own devices, the norms, laws and precedents backstopping Apple's business-model innovations can by used by anyone.

In 2015, I wrote a Guardian microfiction that exposed the perils of allowing companies to choose their competitors. It was called "If Dishwashers Were Iphones."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/if-dishwashers-were-iphones

It was a letter from the CEO of an "innovative" dishwasher company explaining why his customers were wrong to try to wash third-party dishes in his products.

The comments swiftly filled up with Apple defenders who decried it as an absurd, over-the-top analogy.

To those people, I say, behold, the Bob Dishwasher! It's a cute, countertop dishwasher aimed at single-person households, and it uses a proprietary cartridge for detergent dispensing, at about $0.67/wash - about $242/year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVup5ya0WVQ

The company makes a lot of familiar, paternalistic claims to justify selling a non-refillable, single-use electronics package that becomes immortal e-waste once you've used it up and replaced it: the precision electronics and proprietary detergent ensure optimal performance.

dekuNukem bought a Bob and decided that he - and not the manufacturer - should decide whether the "advantages" of throwing out the cassette and buying a new one were worth it. He reverse-engineered it and made a defeat device he calls a "rewinder."

https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder

The tale of how he did this makes for a fascinating read, especially the analog sleuthing he did using product safety labels to reverse-engineer the "proprietary" composition of the detergent and rinse-aid, which turn out to be commodity products marked up by 7700%!

Extraordinarily, he's actually selling the Rewinder, for $30. This shouldn't be extraordinary, but it is, thanks to the penalties under DMCA 1201 (and the UK equivalent law, derived from Article 6 of 2001's EU Copyright Directive).

https://www.tindie.com/products/dekuNukem/bob-rewinder-renew-your-bob-dishwasher-cassette/

It's not just dishwashers, either. Would-be digital rentiers have figured out that they can turn their shareholders' preferences into legal obligations to their customers by engineering their products so they have to be used in specific ways...or else.

For example, KLIM makes a motorcyclist's airbag vest that deactivates itself if you stop making subscription payments (of course, this means that anyone who exploits a defect in KLIM's IT can shut off all its airbag vests, everywhere).

https://twitter.com/TrashGoat00/status/1387301889356689410/photo/1

If that sounds extreme to you, it's really not. Tesla has many safety features that are marketed as downloadable content, which it remotely deactivates when a car changes hands through a private sale:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

If you find yourself scrambling for reasons that it's OK for Tesla to do this with its cars, but not for KLIM to do it with its airbag vests, allow me to gently remind you that Tesla owners are not an oppressed religious minority, either.

This kind of rent-seeking is just getting started. As I tried to illustrate in my novella UNAUTHORIZED BREAD (part of my 2019 book RADICALIZED), there are limitless ways for Apple's pioneering business innovation to destroy our lives:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

And as I wrote in my story "Sole and Despotic Dominion," this is a frontal assault on the idea of personal property - it creates a world where property is the exclusive purview of remorseless, transhuman colony organisms (AKA corporations).

https://reason.com/2018/11/17/sole-and-despotic-dominion/

However, that future is anything but assured. Apple is being sued by Epic for antitrust violations over its Felony Contempt of Business-Model system:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/technology/apple-epic-lawsuit-app-fees.html

And European competition regulators have opened an enforcement action against the company on the same basis:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/eu-says-apples-app-store-breaches-competition-rules.html

Meanwhile, copycats who created their own Felony Contempt of Business Model walled gardens, like Valve did with Steam, are facing their own lawsuits, courtesy of Wolfire:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/04/humble-bundle-creator-brings-antitrust-lawsuit-against-valve-over-steam/

We've come a long way in a decade, and the No True Scotsman defense of the right of a dominant corporation to interpose itself between buyers and sellers, to control its customers' choices after a sale, is finally facing a real challenge.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

[dailyniallnews]

How Niall Horan And Modest! Golf Are Changing The Game

Niall Horan has quickly become one of the most influential people in golf.

His company, Modest! Golf, manages a diverse group of players, runs tournaments and has recently joined forces with The R&A to inspire more young people to play the game.

His vision and passion is going to help shape an exciting and buoyant future for our sport.

How it all began

Horan has been a keen golfer his whole life.

Through his friendships with tour players, including Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose, and while spending time at European Tour events, he realised there was an opportunity to help younger pros at the start of their careers.

He teamed up with good friend Mark McDonnell, who has over 16 years of experience in the sports industry, and that dream became a reality in the form of Modest! Golf in May 2016.

You might think Horan’s profile and wealth – his 41 million Twitter followers is comfortably more than the world’s top ten golfers combined and he has an estimated net worth of around $70m – would make it easy for him, but the golf industry can be a tough nut to crack.

“It was hard to gain credibility at the start,” Horan admits.

“The nos and bumps in the road were a bit harsh. Trying to gain credibility with the players and within the industry itself was tough.

“But a couple of decisions we made early doors were important – we wanted to be involved with events and wanted young, up-and-coming players before taking on a top-50 player. The roots of the company were good.”

From those strong roots, Modest! Golf has flourished.

Just five years after launching, it’s now in a position to significantly influence the present and future of the sport. It’s a great place to be, but Horan’s aspirations from the outset were – excuse the pun – more modest.

“Niall never came to me and said, ‘I can change the face of the game’,” says McDonnell.

“Niall always recognised he had a part he could play, but clearly to change the face of the game takes a number of different people and stakeholders. But we’re trying to do our bit.

“We are a management company that manages players, but we also recognise that through great talent, some initiatives, the network we’ve built and Niall’s following, we can have a positive impact.”

The importance of inclusivity

Modest! has men, women and disability golfers on its books.

“Inclusivity is what our business is about and it’s what our business stands for,” says McDonnell.

“One of my standout moments was announcing Brendan Lawlor (in September 2019). For us, the ladies’ category and disability golf are two of the biggest growth areas.

“If we can help elevate them and put some people who we represent on a bigger platform to talk about them more, we feel it’s something we want to do.”

That became a reality this summer with the ISPS Handa World Invitational taking place at Galgorm Castle in Northern Ireland from July 29-August 1, and Lawlor hosting (and winning) the World Invitational Disability Tournament.

The men’s and women’s event was sanctioned by the European Tour, LPGA Tour and Ladies European Tour and featured 144 men and 144 women playing alongside each other for an equal share of the $2.35million purse.

“Things like equal pay in the tournament are what we can do to get things off the ground,” says the former One Direction man.

“Then that gets headlines, and we start getting calls from big organisations and we’re working together all of a sudden. Having the support of ISPS and Dr Handa has been huge for us. We can have all these ideas, but we do need help to get it over the line.

“Anything that we’ve asked of ISPS Handa, they’ve been brilliant. We’ve been so lucky that they’ve seen the little bit we may be able to give to the game, and the tours as well.

“It’s very important to have the European Tour, the LET and the LPGA all on the same page.”

Shaping the future

Perhaps the most significant call Modest! has received came from The R&A, which resulted in it being asked to help design and develop a series of grassroots programmes aimed at inspiring more people into golf and retaining them within the sport.

In true form, Horan was playing golf when McDonnell told him The R&A had reached out.

“I nearly fell over because I thought ‘this is amazing, this is what we’ve been waiting for’.

“Straight away we got on calls with Martin Slumbers (chief executive of The R&A) and Phil Anderton (chief development officer at The R&A) and they were brilliant. They’re really forward-thinking. Not what I thought The R&A would be like, as mad as that sounds.”

So what happens now, and when can we expect to see some concrete plans coming from Modest! and The R&A?

“It’s not a quick process and they aren’t going to throw money at anything just to see if it sticks,” McDonnell explains.

“We’re taking our time to speak to as many different groups as we can to start putting together some really meaningful programmes. Hopefully they will resonate with a lot of people who don’t play or play rarely.”

Horan and McDonnell believe the August 2020 appointment of Anderton, who has worked at Coca-Cola, as chief executive of Scottish Rugby Union and Hearts FC and chief marketing officer of the ATP in tennis, is extremely significant.

“Phil Anderton is a great guy and has a really interesting background of disrupting sports in a credible way,” says McDonnell.

“For example, he was behind the tennis at the O2 Arena. We don’t want to take golf in a completely different area, down the tacky or publicity route. Niall and I are quite traditional. We like golf how it is – it just needs a few tweaks to make it more appealing.”

The recognition that golf is a brilliant game that just requires the odd tweak and a bit of work to improve its reputation and communication to non-golfers is absolutely integral.

Horan and McDonnell recognise many of the barriers that exist, but they’re also aware there’s a huge opportunity to grow the game.

“The barriers are quite obvious,” says McDonnell.

“The speed has always been heavily criticised, the cost, the fashion. Our role is to work with The R&A to see how we can bring those barriers down to allow more people to experience golf.

“We know it’s a game you can get the bug for really quickly. We’re not reinventing the wheel, but it’s about working with a massive organisation to create more opportunities for people to be introduced to the game, and then how we retain them.

“This isn’t a problem where we’ve got no one to sell the game to, because there are so many people who don’t play. For us, it’s a massive opportunity and a really exciting challenge to try and tap into those non-golfers. There’s a massive market of young people who want to take up sports, and we’ve seen there’s been a huge increase in cycling, so golf has a massive opportunity.

“We feel we can do it without saying ripped jeans are allowed on the course. You’ve got to maintain a level of tradition, but we shouldn’t be having a hoo-ha if somebody wears a hoody on a golf course.”

Horan adds: “It’s the people at the top now who need to move the needle. Augusta National with the Drive, Chip and Putt and the Women’s Amateur; The R&A doing this.

“It’s all going to start to move the needle. It’s those at the top who are going to make it happen, and we’re going to help them.”

[concerningwolves]

ableism really is so insidious. we’ve all been raised in a society that encourages ableism and we all have to learn to do better. a massive part of that includes being patient when people make honest mistakes; we as disabled/deaf/neurodivergent people etc have a responsibility to be willing to engage with others on these issues, because compassion and sensitivity go both ways. i do believe this wholeheartedly.

but. sometimes i just get so angry, you know? and worse – i get tired. i don’t want to be an abled person’s moral compass, and nor should i be. i guess coming from a sensitivity reader this must sound awful but like... there is a Difference between:

a) “entering a dialogue with a client who pays me for my time and actually wants to learn / offering to sensitivity read for free because a project interests me and the person wants to make a good faith attempt at fair, sensitive and non-harmful representation.” 

and

b) “the crushing feeling of responsibility to educate others that i get when i see ableism bandied about, which is heightened by many abled people coming to me terrified of being ableist ‘by accident’ in their creative work”.

i mean, stars alive! if i spoke up every time i saw something ableist it would never end. i’d talk and talk until i had no voice left, and very few of those people would actually listen. but it’s even worse when someone comes to me seeking representation advice, (usually) not because they have a genuine desire to include representation in their work and want to have a genuine conversation about ableism, but because they’re scared; because they don’t want to make a mistake in one area and get called out on it.

i want to take these people by the face and say: “I am so, so sorry that someone made you frightened of making a mistake, but please, ask yourself, what do you want me to do? do you want me to tell you that you’re not ableist so you can absolve yourself with a pat on the back? because if so, leave. i’m not here to guide you by the hand.” and I also want to ask, “are you here to learn what makes ableism so pervasive and harmful, or do you just want me to tell you how to fix one plot point or issue in a fictional work so you can then move on and forget about it?”

basically what i’m saying is.... when you write your stories that include representation then come to me (or other disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people) for advice, do you do it because you genuinely care about the issues faced by disabled/neurodivergent/deaf people? or do you do it because you want me to give you a quick fix so that you can write this character and say you have created A Good Representation? and, no – don’t answer me here. if you’re reading this and feeling defensive and want to tell me that “yes, I care! of course I do! I’m a good person!”, maybe go away and think about that. ask yourself why you feel the need to say you care, if not for performative reasons. (and remind yourself that even good people are ableist. disabled people are ableist. everyone is).

fictional representation is an extremely powerful tool in the ongoing battle against ableism, but your role in the battle shouldn’t end there. you should do work under your own steam, without demanding the time, energy and resources of disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people. build a good moral compass and sensitivity framework for yourself! do your own research! listen to more than one person! we’ve always been here protesting ableism, and I guarantee you that someone will have already made a video or an article or an essay or a piece or art or something, anything, from which you can learn. and if they haven’t then, yes, ask people like me who are happy to help you learn – but remember that it is learning and you are responsible for it, too.

[holidaywishes]

I Can’t Always Be Perfect

  Summary: Having a sibling with a mental disability isn’t easy and can often be taxing, especially when things start to pile up at home and at work. So when things fall apart when (Y/N) tries their best to make things as close to perfect as they can, she has a bit of a breakdown.

  Warning: angst, mild language, trigger warning for mention of anxiety and emotionally abusive parents

  Author’s Note: So, I’m going through something right now. I don’t really know why I chose Willy for this, to be honest, but I felt like he might be a good one to make you feel better after you’ve had a rough time with things. He seems like the type to be able to make you laugh when you need it. This was a fic that came about because of things that have been building up for a while now and I’m lucky enough to have a few close people in my life that I can talk about these things with but sometimes, you just don’t want to burden anyone with your shit, so I wanted to put some of my personal drama and angst into a short little fic. I also want everyone and anyone to know that if there is anything they need to talk about regarding mental illness, anxiety, stressful home situations, anything, I’m here to be an ear and a metaphorical shoulder to lean on. Always. Also, I tried to keep this non-gendered so I used they so it would feel more inclusive. I’ll try to do this more in the future or use (Y/P/P) for Your Preferred Preference as I know that, even though it’s a small thing, it’s important. I love you all and I hope you enjoy this thing I wrote. Stay golden <3

  masterlist

  the other masterlist

xx

  You considered yourself a good person. Not perfect, not even exceptional, just good. You took care of things at home when your parents were at work, you cleaned up after your brother when he made a mess out of the entire house. You tried to do the right thing and tried to give back when you could, especially to causes that hit close to home, but that didn’t mean you were exempt from sometimes missing the mark and sometimes it meant taking a lot more than you had the capacity to take.

  “(Y/N)!” your mom yelled from the kitchen and you ran to see what was wrong, “What is this?!” she asked, pointing to the mess on your carpet from your brother spilling his cereal on the carpet earlier in the day

  “Carter must have.. I forgot to clean it up, I’m sorry” you whimpered

  “I’m sick and tired of coming home to a dirty house!” she shouted

  “I’m sorry” you repeated

  “We’re at work all day, me and your father, the least you could do is make sure these things are done”

  “This is just one time..” you said before squeezing your eyes shut, knowing that the words probably wouldn’t sit right with your mom

  “ONE TIME IS ENOUGH!” she yelled, “You’re not working and you’re staying here, RENT FREE, so what the hell do you have going on that you can’t clean up a mess when it’s made?!”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” you tried, speaking softly to not upset your mom anymore than she already was, “I just meant that the house is usually clean and tidy and supper is usually made when everyone gets here. Today was... a mistake and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say”

  “DO BETTER!” she continued, snapping at you as you quickly tried to clean up the mess under her feet, “and stop being such a god damn brat!”

  “HEY!” your dad shouted as he walked in the door, “what the fuck is going on?! I can hear you all from down the street!”

  “I didn’t clean up after Carter today”

  “And she’s been home all day, just moping around because she can’t find a job I’m sure”

  “She lost her job because of the pandemic, Susan,” your dad argued, “it’s different for us. We’re both on the front lines. We can’t lose our jobs”

  “I know!” she snapped, “and she should know how lucky she is that we’re letting her stay here without paying for anything”

  “Stop it” your dad said, trying to get your mom to calm down but it didn’t work

  “Don’t you start with me” she urged

  “Can I just vacuum this? And then I’ll make supper, okay?” you tried, wanting to get away from everything

  “Fine,” your mom yelled before stepping out of the room, “but that’s not the point! This should’ve been done before we got home!”

  “She’s trying to do it now!” your dad yelled back, “let her do it!”

  “YOU KNOW WHAT?!” your mom countered, grabbing the vacuum and pushing you aside, “I’LL DO IT MYSELF!”

  “SUSAN!” your dad yelled

  “MOM! STOP!” you shouted but she didn’t listen, tuning everyone out with the buzzing of the vacuum. You looked at your dad who only shrugged and you were forced to scoff at the reaction, walking away to your room because there was nothing more you could do, only to find your brother sitting on the couch listening to everything; you rolled your eyes at his complete lack of accountability and scoffed before shaking your head and walking to your room. Your hands were shaking and your body was buzzing, you didn’t know what to do. This had been a long time coming. The fighting, the arguing, the yelling. Everyone was stressed out and stretched thin and you were doing your best to keep yourself together so no one around you would feel like they had to take care of you on top of everything else but when a text came in, you couldn’t help but start to feel the stress build up in your chest

  “Hey!” William’s text read

  “Hey” you sent back, trying to be as casual as possible

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.. My mom’s just a little stressed out. Can I text you later?”

  “Of course but are you sure you’re alright? I can come over, help out?”

  “No!” you sent back quickly, noticing the ellipses pop up and you knew you had to back track, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to come over, I just need to sort somethings out and then I’ll text you, we’ll talk. Just... later okay?”

  “Okay.” You sighed as you pushed your phone to the side, dropping your head in your hands to rub your temples; it wasn’t long before your mom barged into your room

  “Why?” was the way she chose to start. No apology, no greeting, just straight into the same argument you had before, “why didn’t you clean it up as soon as you saw it?”

  “I thought he would do it himself” you admitted

  “You saw that he tried, you couldn’t have finished?”

  “He vacuums his mess all the time,” you argued, “I thought that he’d say something or realize... I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think”

  “You know his brain doesn’t work like ours” she said, glaring at you as she stood in the doorway

  “I know,” you sighed, “I just had some errands to run this afternoon and when I saw that he spilled something, I thought that he was embarrassed to tell me and he needed a minute before he could clean it up. So I did the dishes and left the room, forgetting about the mess. Then you came home and found it”

  “That’s not an excuse”

  “I’m not trying to make up an excuse, mom!” you yelled, just once, before you settled down and composed yourself, “I’m just trying to explain what happened.”

  “You know that your brother is different and that you need to do more to help him but you’re so concerned with yourself that you can’t manage to clean up one tiny mess!”

  “Concerned with my--” you scoffed, “I do take care of this place when you’re gone. There have been so many other messes that I’ve been forced to clean up that you have no idea about -- including the many times he’s missed the toilet and peed around the toilet -- so one day, one mess not being cleaned up, does not mean that I’m so concerned with myself. This isn’t a gigantic mess that he can’t clean up, he vacuums all the time so excuse me for thinking that he would have the ability to clean up some dry cereal on the carpet!”

  “He’s your brother!” she countered, “and he’s got mental delays so you have to be able to take care of him”

  “AND WHAT HAPPENS TO ME?!” you finally snapped, “I do my best to take care of him and you and dad and make sure no one is stressed out more than they already are but I’m not a caretaker. I’m not the older sibling. He’s 10 years older than me, Mom, and sometimes I need to be able to walk away and do things that don’t require me to act like his mother!” The tears began to fall down your heated cheeks and you looked at your moms face which only seemed to shift slightly at your words, “I’m sorry that I didn’t spend every second of my day today cleaning every inch of the house to make it look that no one lives here. I’m sorry that I took a little bit of time for myself. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  “You just have to do better” she said quietly and you shook your head, trying to hold back your tears

  “I can’t always be perfect. I can’t always do everything. I missed something today and I’m sorry that it screwed up your day. But I shouldn’t be expected to do everything!” You finally got up, grabbing your phone, and pushed passed your mom so you could escape everything

  “Don’t you dare walk away right now” she growled and you pulled your arm from her grasp, making your way to the door before finally meeting your dads stare

  “Don’t leave, (Y/N),” he pleaded, “talk to us. Talk to me.” Part of you wanted to say something, to make him feel better, but you didn’t want him to see you cry anymore than you already were, so you ignored his attempt to make you stay; grabbing your keys and jumping in the car.

xx

Willy’s P.O.V

  “Can we meet somewhere?” (Y/N) finally texted you after nearly two hours and you were quick to suggest the rink. When you got there, you found (Y/N) huddled up, head against their knees as they waited for you

  “(Y/N)?” you whispered, seeing the tears on their face when they raised their head

  “Hi...” they replied

  “What’s wrong?” you asked, rushing to their side

  “I’m just feeling like I can’t do anything right today. Like, I’m supposed to never make mistakes and I failed today”

  “Everyone makes mistakes...”

  “You don’t...” they scoffed

  “Have you kept up with my career at all?” you teased

  “Sure but,” (Y/N) faltered, “I don’t know, Willy, I just hate having this pressure on me to be perfect. Feeling like I have to be a parent to my older sibling. I know that he’s gone through a lot and that his life is hard and that it will always be harder than mine. I know that and I try, I try so hard to make his life easier and my parents lives easier. But I have given up so many opportunities to make that possible. I deferred University for two years because my parents needed me to stay home. I didn’t apply to NYU because it was too far away. I didn’t take that amazing job at Massey Hall because the hours were too flexible. I gave up my personal life, my romantic life because it was too hard to make time for my brother with all of it. I sacrificed both my High School Graduation and my University Graduation so he could feel included. I got offered an internship in London that I had to pass on because it was too far away and my family needed me here. I love him, he’s my brother and I would die before I let anything happen to him but I just get exhausted sometimes, always having to worry about him and take care of him and make things easy for everyone but me. Then, I feel bad for getting exhausted and I overcompensate and exhaust myself even further.”

  “You’re burnt out”

  “Yeah,” they sighed, “I don’t wanna be. But I can’t ask for help or get my parents to understand why, if I don’t have a job, I am so burnt out”

  “Want me to tell ‘em?” you joked

  “No.” You noticed their eyes begin to tear and you tried to be there for them as best you could, letting them rest their head on your shoulder, rubbing their hand softly, “I just... I don’t know what to do anymore. Some days everything is fine and then other days, the smallest thing sets my mom off and I feel like she hates me and that she doesn’t think I do anything or that I haven’t given up anything. Like I should always be doing more...”

  “I want to make you feel better,” you finally said, “tell me what I can do.” You waited in silence for a minute so (Y/N) could get their composure

  “This.” (Y/N) said softly, “Just be here, with me. All this stuff, it’s my problem and I have to learn how to solve it. But you being here with me right now, letting me lean on you, helps.”

  “So I have strong shoulders?” you joked and they laughed, “Is this me being your superhero?”

  “Can you not?” they said, smacking your arm before looking up at you with a smile

  “I’ll always be here to save the day” you smiled

  “Yeah, you will won’t you?” they smiled back and you kissed their forehead, staying still in the cold ice rink until both of you were ready to leave.

[nonbinarychaoticstupid]

I'll Never forgive twitter who spread like wildfire that Noelle, a trans person who feels connection to shapeshifters, of being "nbphobic" because "DT is the only nb character and is morally gray and non human shapeshifter".

Oh and that them being a chameleon isn't because salamanders and chameleons are known for blending with their environment by deceiving predators, it's because Noelle wanted to make a lizard person because he hates Jews?? Sooo many goyim kept telling me this shit.

KJSHBNSKJJIDBNSJKHBNDDHBSHJSBH YEAH goyim need to shut up and let us speak for ourselves! like. we’re all entitled to our own opinions. but i REALLY don’t need someone who knows next to nothing about jews or what it’s like to be trans telling me how to feel about a character.

it’s the same thing as neurotypicals deciding they’re suddenly The Expert On Autism and writing whole threads on why s5 ep 2 is ableist and at the same time managing to imply that autistic people are stupid and can’t think for themselves and speaking directly over autistic people and treating us like we’re stupid and can’t think for ourselves and ‘don’t understand when we’re being oppressed’... hhh

twitter is a MESS tbh kjHGjHJnh like i can definitely understand why a nby person might have issues w dt (and you’re so valid btw) but i am not going to criticise or demonise a transgender person for making a character they feel is an accurate representation of their gender, or making a character something they identify with (and ngl double trouble is a pretty accurate representation of my gender, too). 

this is why i do my best to stay neutral in most fandom issues, mostly because 99% of them are fuelled by people who don’t GET to have a say in them (like the whole livestream thing being blown out of proportion specifically by white people exaggerating the issue to the point where suddenly noelle was ableist towards physically disabled people please lmk if i phrased that incorrectly /gen and nbyphobic AGAIN).

we also need to talk about the whole passive vs active thing - noelle is perfectly capable of making genuine mistakes, but they aren’t a racist, antisemitic, nbyphobic, or otherwise prejudiced person.

note: i say all of this with full understanding that people are capable having internalised prejudices towards their community (eg its fully possible to be butch and perpetuate butchphobic stereotypes, etc). but i also want to point out that in some (NOT ALL) cases, it becomes a matter of perspective. people have different viewpoints/opinions and those are all valid, unless they come from refusing to accept other people’s views/a place of prejudice. personally, i don’t have an issue with dt, but i can understand why other jews + nby people do, and i am willing to listen and give support to them, and i think their opinions are valid. 

you probably shouldn’t be having an opinion on what is nbyphobic and.or antisemitic if you aren’t trans or jewish, unless it comes from being genuinely informed on the subject and you’ve actually listened to the opinions of trans and jewish people on the topic itself. otherwise, you’re at risk of coming off as antisemitic/nbyphobic yourself. you start to prove that you prioritise being critical of the media you consume over the opinions and perspectives of real people. you also need to remember that not everyone is going to have the same opinion, and you should listen to as many different (INFORMED) takes on the topic as you can before making an informed decision on what to believe, and even then do NOT speak over the communities directly involved

this is very rambly but. tl;dr it is not your business to tell people what is/isn’t prejudiced against their community when you are not part of their community and doing so in fandom spaces can spread misinformation, which leads to people often stopping paying attention to said community and then treating them like they’re stupid and,,, h. 

it’s okay to be supportive of and help out communities but PLEASE i’m BEGGING YOU learn to let us speak for ourselves. PLEASE learn to at least wait for an actual consensus from members of the community before you start to discuss this. we’re grateful for your allyship, but you have to learn that that includes LISTENING TO US. we are not some endangered species, we aren’t stupid, we are real people who know how to recognise our own oppression.  

i have a LOT more thoughts on this but uhhh if you want to add to this/correct anything i’ve said/provide a different take/summarise this mess, go ahead!!!

[aster-aspera]

Forget-me-nots

CW: major character death, character with little regard for their own life, mentions of injury, explosions, minor original characters

Relationship: romantic DLAMP

Song is Elsa's song by The Amazing Devil. I highly recommend you go listen to it, not only because it's an amazing song but also because it plays a big part in this chapter.

Masterpost for the rest of my superhero AU (this chapter isn’t part of the main story)

Patton felt his chest squeeze tight when the message came in.

“Suspected bomb in the university, time to ignition unknown.” Aisha’s voice reported.

“Who’s closest?” Virgil asked.

“Pathos, but he’ll need assistance, the unseen have blocked all the ways out and there’s loads of civilians trapped there.” He heard the tapping of keys and assumed Aisha was coming up with a battle plan.

“Okay, Prince, Storm, you guys head over there, engage the unseen. Deceit and Vortex, you head over once you’re done and help get the civilians out. Pat, I need you to get into the uni and disable the bomb.”

Patton swallowed nervously. “Me? Wouldn’t Logos be better?”

“Ideally, yes. But he’s engaged at the other end of the city, the unseen are literally everywhere.” Aisha groaned in frustration.

Patton felt like echoing that groan. He really wasn’t qualified for this, he wasn’t very good at technology, that was Logan and Aisha’s area and he didn’t have the nerves of steel required to calmly defuse a bomb. He was really just the sniper of the group. He hoped he wouldn’t mess up this job too badly.

I can hear the cannons calling  

As though across a dream

He stared at university, where members of the unseen were walking around, herding students into the central building.

“What is their plan?” He asked aloud, mostly just to get the question off his chest. With the unseen, it was almost always impossible to know what their plan was, sometimes it wasn’t even clear after the fact.

“I have no clue.” Aisha confirmed his musings.

“Okay, there’s a sky light you can use to get in undetected. I think the bomb is in the library, so you’ll have to get there without being discovered.”

Patton looked at the map Aisha had sent him. The skylight was two floors above the library.

“Is there no way directly into the library?”

“There’s three doors, one of which is unguarded and accessible through the only other unguarded point, the sky light.” Aisha explained impatiently “So, no. There’s no other way in.”

“Alright, I was just asking.” Patton tried to defuse. He wasn’t hurt by Aisha snapping at him. The situation over the whole city was tense, with the unseen somehow managing to hold three different areas at once. The whole team had been working non stop to take back control of the city, and everyone was tired.

And I can smell the smoke of hell      

In every stitch and seam

He hesitated a moment.

“Pathos?” Aisha prompted.

“Yeah, sorry, just nervous about the bomb thing.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that, I’ll be here to guide you.”

Patton felt a bit foolish being comforted by a teen who was about ten years younger than him. He shouldn’t be placing that burden on her, he was the experienced one, he was the mentor, he shouldn’t be relying on her for comfort. Regardless, he felt steadied by the knowledge Aisha would tell him what to do and quietly headed in.

And like flowers, the bodies tumble    

Around this muddied lot      

He stared in horror at the device in front of him. He had seen and defused bombs before, but this didn’t even look remotely close to anything he was used to.

“Um, A?” He asked, sending a scan to her.

“Oh, wow.” She gasped “Okay, well uhm… That’s not ideal.”

“Not ideal? I think this is a little more than just not ideal.”

“Yeah, hold on, I’m working on it.”

“What do I do? We need to get the civilians out.”

“Prince and Storm are nearby, they’ll start evacuating, I need you to stay here and be my hands.”

“Okay.”

He heard Aisha frantically tapping at the keyboard and occasionally she would ask him to send pictures or scans of a specific area.

“Sure you can’t find a countdown anywhere?” She asked for the fifth time.

“No.” Patton sighed.

The lack of a countdown was unnerving him. While a clock slowly ticking towards your doom wasn’t exactly reassuring, it was better than sitting next to an explosive with no idea when it could go off.

Noise echoed from somewhere on the campus: gunshots and screaming.

“A? What’s going on?” He asked, shooting upright.

“We’re here.” Roman’s voice declared triumphantly, then cut off with a yell.

“Prince, you alright there, kiddo?” Patton asked, vaguely worried.

“He’s fine, just needs to pay attention more.” Virgil sighed.

“Pat, look at that red wire for me please.” Aisha cut in.

“Will you be okay?” Virgil asked.

No, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m nervous, I’m really not qualified for this Patton thought. But he just brushed Virgil off, they’d been doing this for years, he could handle this. He had to handle this, the others were counting on him.

I cannot hear them scream    

‘Forget me not.’

What felt like hours later, but in reality was probably closer to half an hour, they still hadn’t gotten it. Aisha was groaning in frustration and cursing her wheelchair.

“If I could be there in person, I would have solved it already.” She griped.

Patton tried not to flinch at the reminder of his uselessness, she probably wished it was Logan in this room, not him.

Janus and Kiara had arrived by now and the evacuation was in full swing. The fighting had stopped abruptly a few minutes ago, when all members of the unseen had mysteriously fled. That really wasn’t helping Patton’s confidence.

Your voice it carries over

The hubbub and the hum

“Are you guys getting anywhere?” Janus asked.

“No, I can’t figure it out, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Aisha answered.

“Well, you better hurry, the evacuation isn’t going as smoothly as we would like, it might take a while longer.”

“You guys be careful, be ready to get out of there if we can’t disable it.” Patton said.

“We’ll be safe, love, but what about you?” Janus asked.

Patton ignored that question, clicking his comms off and focusing on the bomb again. There were too many civilians still in the building, he couldn’t leave till he knew the bomb wasn’t a danger anymore or everyone was a safe distance away.

And it paints the sky and circles high  

Like the beating of a drum

“Pat, you might have to consider leaving. We have no idea when it can go off and we might not figure it out in time.” Aisha said.

“There’s still too many people here, we have to keep trying.”

He wasn’t leaving yet, he had to help these people. If he stopped now, how many lives would that cost? It was his job as a hero to save them, even if it cost him his life. It wasn’t like he mattered that much anyways. He had no special skills, the team wouldn’t even have to find a replacement.

“Pat, please, it’s been almost an hour. It isn’t safe anymore, you have to come out.” Virgil pleaded.

Patton stubbornly ignored their comments, snapping at Aisha to stop worrying and stay focused. They were nearly there, they had to be.

You will scream ‘I won’t forget you’  

But I’ll cover my cold ears

“Patton, how many times have I told you it’s okay to put yourself first. You’re not going to save anyone by letting yourself get blown up. Please just listen to us and get out of there.” Janus pleaded.

Patton groaned in frustration. “This wouldn’t have happened if it was anyone else. I just can’t figure it out, I’m useless.”

“Nonsense.” Logan snapped, presumably following the conversation from where he was making his way over to them. “From the description A gave, I doubt even I would have been able to figure it out. It’s not your fault.” He finished gently.

Patton got up, feeling miserable and useless. How many people was he leaving here to die? But they were right, he wasn’t doing anyone any good staying here.

“I’m coming out.” He announced.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“I thought you did that years ago.” Roman joked. “I mean, you are dating four guys.”

Patton chuckled, then whirled around in horror as the bomb started beeping behind him.

“Aisha?” He asked, panicked.

“Shit! Run!” She yelled and in that moment, Patton knew he was done for.

“I love you guys.” He breathed and could hear various yells in the earpiece before the world exploded in fire and pain.

It cannot be a lie  

If no-one hears.

~

Patton watched miserably as Roman gently cut away Logan’s sleeve. Janus sat perched on the counter, watching them intently. Logan followed Roman’s movements, his eyes blurry with pain. Patton felt his chest squeeze when Logan bit back a groan at Roman jostling his arm.

“Sorry.” He muttered “Painkillers haven’t kicked in yet?”

Logan just shook his head.

Patton curled his fingers around the chair in guilt. It was his fault. He should have paid attention, should have been faster.

A roar from the entrance snapped him out of his thoughts. Virgil kicked the bike stand down and strode over to them, his hair mussed from the helmet.

“What happened?” He asked, focused and direct as always.

“Acid, Logan got burns all over his arm.” Janus explained.

“It was my fault, I should have paid attention, I should have stopped it.” Patton said miserably, then curled in on himself when all eyes turned to him. Now he was just being whiny. They all knew it was his fault, pointing it out like that just sounded self pitying.

Of course, Janus immediately started to refute it. They always made an effort to make him feel better, it was sweet. He just wished he was worthy of their praise.

“Patton, you know it’s not your fault, right?” He started gently.

Logan hissed suddenly.

“Can you watch out with that?” He snapped at Roman.

“Well, sorry I’m trying to save your arm, microsoft nerd. I can also just leave it like that!”

Janus sighed as Roman waved him over to help. Patton breathed a sigh of relief at that topic of conversation being over. Only Virgil hadn’t let it go yet.

He sat down on the armrest of Patton’s chair.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He brushed off.

Cos although you say good day to me  

I know I don’t belong

Virgil clearly didn’t believe him and took his hand. “It’s not your fault, Pat. We can’t always see everything coming.”

“Right, because if it had been you or Janus then you definitely wouldn’t have seen such an obvious trap coming.” Patton laughed bitterly.

“There’s no guarantee we would have. Even we fuck up occasionally.”

“Language.” Virgil rolled his eyes.

“And we have years more training, it's not fair to put yourself down like that.”

Right, because even after years of being a hero, they were still making excuses for him. He still wasn’t good enough, fast enough, smart enough. Everyone in the team had their specialty, Virgil was their best fighter, Logan was smart, Roman was their medical expert and Janus was their former crime boss. They were all good at something, and where did that leave him?

He could shoot, yeah. But who needed that when Virgil could just kick all their asses by hand, when Janus and Logan could set up elaborate schemes that didn’t even require any kicking of ass to get the criminals in jail?

And although you hold my hand and say  

‘I love you’, you are wrong.    

Patton was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He should go downstairs, join the others. He could hear their chatter all the way up in the bedroom.

The mood had lifted a bit after Roman had declared the burns on Logan’s arm weren’t that serious and they were having their customary ‘someone got hurt comfort dinner’.

Patton didn’t really feel motivated to join.

Because love does not exist here    

In this garden there’s no feeling

The door opened and Logan popped his head around the corner.

“Oh, hey Lo.” Patton tried cheerfully, but it came out sounding a bit shaky.

Logan smiled gently. “May I come in?”

“Course, it’s your bedroom too.”

“Are you alright?” He asked.

Patton felt like sighing at those familiar words. He’d heard them so many times tonight and the nights before that. Always that concern for him, their weakest member. Even though he didn’t really deserve it, even though most of the time it was his fault.

And you say the words so often    

That I barely know the meaning

“I’m fine.” He groaned “Why do you guys keep asking?”

“Because we’re worried about you.”

“Me? You’re the one who’s hurt.”

“Roman said I would be fine, the physical wounds will heal. I’m just worried about the mental ones.”

“What? Mental wounds, I’m fine Logan. It really isn’t that serious.” Patton laughed.

“It’s not the first time you’ve blamed yourself without any cause for it. I just want to make sure you’re aware it wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m aware.” Patton said. Did he really believe himself though? It always felt like empty reassurances when they told him he wasn’t at fault.

He wanted to believe his lovers wouldn’t lie to him, but they were all just so kind. They wouldn’t want him to feel guilty, even if that meant they had to lie. He wondered why they still let him come along. He just got in the way.

And when all the flowers are rotten    

And all the cannons shot  

“Will you come downstairs and join us?” Logan asked.

“Yeah, give me a minute, I’m coming.”

I’ll scream, but you won’t hear    

‘Forget me not’

~

In the end, ten people still died. Figures, even in death Patton had failed. Even then he hadn’t been able to save them. Maybe it was better, at least now, he wouldn’t be able to mess things up anymore.

His family didn’t take it well, of course they didn’t. They always cared too much, even about him.

And in years to come you’ll wander

To the place up on our hill

He wished he could hold them, just one last time. Tell them ‘it’s alright, don’t mourn, you’ll be alright’.

He watched as the Rewind team, the teens they mentored, fought with more vigour than ever before. They took the job of the grieving heroes, of him, and carried them out with a sense of honour. He felt proud, looking at them. They were so much more than he had ever been, they would lead this city towards a better future.

Aisha visited his grave, drove her car all the way up country and rolled her wheelchair along the muddy path to the spot they had buried him. It was near his family home, where his mothers could visit frequently, where he was surrounded by the familiar forests.

She cried for a while, apologized, said she should have figured it out faster. He wished he could tell her it wasn’t her fault. She had tried so hard, she was just a child, she couldn’t always save everyone.

And then you’ll cry to our painted sky

‘I loved her then, I love her still’.

The others visited too, Logan quiet, reserved, emotionless. Patton ached for him. He had lost so much in his life. It wasn’t fair that Patton had taken this away from him too.

And you’ll strew some sage and lilies ,

Roman, his tears and anger burning as hot as his love once had. He still went out to the streets, despite Janus’s urging not to. His anger needed a way out. Patton was scared for him. He would let his rage burn him up over this grief.

And roses where I rot

And Janus, sweet, caring Janus. He kept the family together, somehow. Bottled his grief up somewhere deep and drew his lovers into his arms. He only dropped the mask at Patton’s grave, surrounded only by the evergreens and spring meadows. Let the grief consume him for just a moment, cried till the pain that had curled itself up in his bones drowned him in her violent throes. And then he got up, gathered himself and walked back to the car. Now that Patton wasn’t there anymore, someone had to keep the team alive. Patton was grateful to him.

Of all the flowers you picked,

Virgil came last, after months of the others coming and going. He barely glanced at the grave. Just sat down a few meters away and stared out at the trees.

“Why did you do that?” He asked the empty air, his voice filled with tears.

“Why did you leave us like that? It’s not fair. We were supposed to grow old together, get married.” His voice picked up in speed and volume, his breaths coming quicker.

“You said you were fine! You told me it was alright to place myself first, place our family first. Why couldn’t you do that? Why couldn’t you listen to your own damn advice and think of us for once?”

‘I wanted to, god, I wanted to’ Patton wanted to tell him. He wished he had left the building sooner, wished his death hadn’t been so meaningless. He saw the pain he put his family through. Maybe he didn’t fully see his own worth, but he saw how much he meant to them. He wished he hadn’t taken so much from them.

I knew you would forget

Forget-me-nots.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Statement of ideology re: abortion (for what it’s worth):

Hard core pro-choice here.

Abortions should be legal, free, and unstigmatized, and they should happen however often they happen. Minors should not need parental permission of any sort. (Like…it’s generally a good idea for teens to talk to their parents, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to force teens to tell their parents.) No waiting periods, no late term abortion bans, no mandatory vaginal ultrasounds, none of that.

Contraception should be free, and available without a prescription. A wide variety of forms of contraception should be available, including specifically more penis-haver focused contraception. Information about contraception should be widely available and easy to understand. (And taught in schools ffs.)

Talking about sex should be normalized. Differences in sexual preferences should be normalized — in particular the idea that a woman who’s interested in any sexual contact with a man is interested in PIV sex with him needs to die in a fire.

Something something consent culture environment supportive of sexual assault/abuse survivors something something.

And, on the flip side, women and girls who want to keep the pregnancy — or who want to get pregnant on purpose — should be able to and should get all the support they need for that to be a viable option, period. (Yeah, not exactly where we are now.) And no stigma against those who become mothers really young. (Hang on, that was really gender essentialist, I also mean trans folks with uteruses. People with uteruses. Parents.) Sometimes people want to be a parent at disconcertingly young ages, or would rather do that than get an abortion, and that’s a bodily autonomy issue too. And “shit, me and my baby will be homeless if I don’t get an abortion” is just as much coercion as not being allowed to get an abortion. “Teenage pregnancy” is only a problem to the extent the teenager sees it as a problem.

(Abortion is usually not “an option” so much as “the only viable option, in practice”, which means most of the time “pro choice” is pro abortion — true reproductive freedom means abortion is a viable choice and having a child is a viable choice.)

(Sure, adoption is an option, it’s also a stunningly unpopular option. There’s something about going through pregnancy and childbirth and not having a child afterwards to mitigate the unpleasantness, that is just phenomenally unappealing to most people. Shocking, I know.) (But yeah, sure, that should be an option too, and open adoption on the birth parent’s terms should be an option for all those that want that.)

(And…I’m generally not very sympathetic to the MRA “financial abortion” (men shouldn’t have to pay child support if rye don’t wanna) concept just because, like objections to tipping, not doing that while keeping everything else the same means someone’s going to get screwed over badly. But ideally? Yeah, biological parentage should not automatically mean financial responsibility for a child, ideally; ideally this is a community support situation not an “each family for themselves” one.)

Likewise: trans people need to get their gender recognized without having to get sterilized; disabled people who want to be parents have as much a right as non-disabled people; and this thing where some women can’t get a hysterectomy that they want while others get sterilized against their will is …there aren’t words.

Anyways, we’re not going to be there any time soon, but in the meantime: an egg isn’t a chicken, an acorn isn’t an oak tree, and a fetus isn’t a child. Abortion is fine. There is morally nothing wrong with it. It’s just miscarriage on purpose. That’s all.

The moral issue comes with denying people the right of what to do with their own bodies and lives. (And since most people who get pregnant are women, and since there’s a fuckton of ways an unwanted pregnancy can fuck your life up, this is hella a feminist issue.)

And that’s not at all incompatible with understanding that when a person with a wanted pregnancy loses the pregnancy, that can be an unspeakable tragedy. Pregnancy has different meanings in different contexts; sometimes it’s a heart’s true desire and sometimes it’s a worst nightmare.

There is a thing about the issue of abortion that brings out the liar in so many people. Some truths: there doesn’t have to be a clear line at either conception or birth, the change between not-person and person can be a gradual thing with no unambiguous “this is a heap” point. Truth: a lot (maybe most? Don’t have the numbers offhand) of abortions are sought by women who are already mothers. It’s not some “irresponsible” young woman only thing. Truth: you can get pregnant from rape. Truth: late term abortion is fundamentally not the same thing as first trimester abortion; first trimester (normal) abortion is usually about not wanting a full pregnancy/child; late term abortion is usually when the pregnancy was wanted but something went horribly wrong and there is not going to be a living child at the end of the process no matter what. (Also: “partial birth abortion” isn’t a medical term and the ban didn’t stop abortions it just changed how they happened and interfered with parents’ ability to mourn a wanted but dead child. Sorry. But I think it’s important to point this out.) Truth: most pregnancies aren’t viable and miscarriage due to severe health shit happens all the time. (This might not seem like it is related to abortion, but to my way of thinking abortion can only be “murder” if miscarriage is the loss of a child, and realistically most miscarriages are not responded to that way, and many aren’t even noticed.)

Truth: laws are a sledgehammer and many people who think abortion should be illegal in general do actually get abortions themselves or help a loved one get abortion for the exact same reasons as everyone else, like “I’m too young and it would derail my life plans.” Not everyone who’s against abortion I’m sure. But also, not everyone who’s personally against abortion thinks it should be illegal. Truth: thinking something is bad and thinking it should be illegal are different things. I don’t really expect that to be compelling to someone who thinks abortion is bad, since I’ve already said I don’t think it is. But it’s an internally consistent position many people have.

Truth: abortion sometimes saves lives. Truth: abortion sometimes saves lives when determining there was a threat to life would have been incredibly difficult or unlikely. Truth: you can get pregnant from rape, and an abortion ban with a rape exception is either going to get a ton of people lying about being raped when they weren’t, or a ton of people who were raped but can’t get an abortion because they can’t prove it, or both. Truth: there are people who go to an abortion clinic who haven’t been to a doctor for any other reason in years and won’t go again for years.

Truth: some people who get an abortion regret it, and many others feel mostly relief or not much of anything.

Truth: from a health perspective, carrying a child to term even under the best of circumstances is far more risky than getting an abortion.

Truth: you can be a moral person and also get an abortion.

(Opinion: for people with uteruses who date people who could get them pregnant, especially who date cishet guys: you have to be on the same page about abortion on a personal level. If you’re not sure which way you’d go that means you need to only be (in a relationship with) people who think it’s your call and they will back you no matter what. Guys who have the capacity to get someone pregnant and who don’t believe in abortion ethically need to wait for sex until they and their partner are ready to have a child. That’s the only ethically consistent stance. A dude who says he’s against abortion but wants sex right away is the worst kind of shitbag and completely unfuckable.)

Anyways. Be well.

If I could talk to my teenage self, I would say: you will think about it, you will decide abortion is morally neutral, and you will be really pissed off that you were surrounded by “pro-choice” people who never just sat down and told you how they came to the conclusion that abortion was morally OK. I would say: most adults don’t actually care that much about what children are told, they think they’re too busy to worry about that, so there are vitally important things about the world that no one has told you for political reasons, because there are vicious hateful people who will fight like vipers to keep you from being told those things and the adults who would have told you weren’t willing to have that fight. This is not fair or right. But it doesn’t mean there was nothing to say. It just means there are vipers.

And yeah, you’ll still be pissed at the idea that if you’d gotten pregnant as a teen or young adult, you wouldn’t have actually gotten a choice. Fucking hypocrites.

There’s more than one way to deny people their reproductive rights.

[stillness-in-green]

MLA Week, Day 2: Judge/Shackles/Freedom

A threefer!  Spinner and his brand new lieutenants.  (Look, until Horikoshi starts deigning to give these guys names, they are free real estate.)

I was originally going to use this day to write about one of the more thuggy or delinquent-looking lieutenants, spin out an ex-con not being able to get his feet back under him and so sliding into the MLA’s sphere, but then I remembered this three foot tall goblin in a drugstore Halloween costume and decided to go with him instead.

Also included is Spinner’s number 1, this gal: 

Content Notes: Discussions of disability, portrayal of the marginalized having become the radicalized.  The Liberation Army’s really fascinating, y’all. 

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

«I think you’ll like this one,» Nimble announces, the rainbow-colored letters of her quirk dancing in the air.  

“You thought I’d like the first two, too,” Spinner replies skeptically, looking away from the floating words to focus on his brand new number one, a woman with a face like a doll whose sculptor had gotten as far as the eyes—huge and green—before giving up on the rest, little things like a nose and a mouth.  She breathes by absorbing air through her skin like a frog, apparently, which is why she dresses the way she does, a distractingly low-cut tank top and a sweater jacket that he has never once seen covering her shoulders.  

She shrugs, expressive eyes briefly fluttering closed, and movement in the air draws Spinner’s attention back over to where her quirk—Sky Write—has spelled out her response.  

«I thought you’d like them too.  Can I call him in?»

“Yeah, go ahead.”  Just as long as he’s not a not surly bastard like the last two.  They’d had good quirks, the last two, but damned if Spinner’s going to work with people who can’t even manage to keep resentment out of their eyes for the length of a job interview, or whatever this process of picking subordinates out of an army full of people that were trying to kill him less than two weeks ago is called.  

Nimble’s letters dissolve into a shapeless blur as she looks over to the door, eyebrows briefly lowering in concentration.  A few seconds later, the door to Spinner’s makeshift office opens. Spinner’s eyes drop almost half-a-person’s length in height and he tries to keep the surprise off his face.  

“A kid?”

«He’s twenty-one, actually.»  

“What she said.”  The voice comes out a bit muffled through the black hood covering the kid’s—okay, the twenty-one-year old’s face.  But if he’s the same age as Spinner, he sure as hell doesn’t look it.  He can’t be over a meter tall, with the skinniest legs Spinner’s ever seen sticking out from under the hem of the black robe he wears like a kid running around the house beneath a sheet.  A big feathery ruff sits around his neck like a dried-out wreath.  

“Scarecrow, reporting in.” The weird little gremlin settles into a military rest in front of the desk, far enough back that it’s not too obvious that he has to tilt his head to look over it.  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”  

Spinner stares at him, trying to suppress a grimace.  Scarecrow stares back through little eyeholes cut in the hood, but without being able to see more of his face, it’s impossible to tell if he’s glaring or just has really piercing eyes.  

“Right.”  Spinner glances over at Nimble, who nods.  Her response scrawls itself in the air between them, facing first him, then angling to face the gremlin.  

«Show him your meta-ability, Scarecrow.  Catch!»  

She pulls out a 100 yen coin and deftly balances it on her thumb before flicking it out into the air over the desk.

Spinner bites back a yelp as bug legs unfold from beneath Scarecrow’s ruff, long, segmented things that narrow down to sharp points at the tips.  Two thin lines of silk jet out from the knobby second joints, catching on the spinning coin, and the legs reel it back in, bouncing it in the air, spinning it like a weight on a string, then cocooning it up with quick efficiency.  It falls neatly into his hand—not a normal human hand, Spinner notices belatedly, but a prosthetic, hard plastic and super articulated, with cables visible beneath the individual parts.

“I can fully cocoon up to twelve adult men a day,” Scarecrow rattles out.  “I can also pull myself up the sides of walls and move between buildings, if they’re close enough together.  I was inducted into the Meta Liberation Army on my sixteenth birthday; my parents have been members for ten years.  I know we’re a relatively new family, but—”

“I don’t—”  Spinner stops himself from finishing that sentence with care about that stuff, amending to, “I’m not worried about your—generation or whatever.”  Is that better?  Neither Scarecrow or Nimble react to it with narrowed eyes or a snarl, anyway. Promising?  “Why’d you join up?”  

Jumping on a bandwagon is one thing, but at least that takes a running start and a leap.  Not like joining a cult because it’s just the family business, Spinner thinks viciously at his memory of that greasy asshole Trumpet’s plated mask.

Scarecrow stares at him for a long second.  Spinner does his best to look serious, like he’s actually got a whole prepared list of questions or whatever.  Like he knows what he’s doing.  

Finally, Scarecrow holds up his hands, both spread wide, both obvious prosthetics.  His bug legs twitch and probe at the air.  

“I was born with no arms,” he says.  “Just my forelegs.  It’s not the same as having opposable thumbs, obviously, but it’s better than you’d think. But my teachers used to scold me for raising a foreleg instead of a hand to answer a question or carry things.  The kind of stuff a kid who didn’t have a birth defect could use their quirk to do and no one would look twice.  If I go out in public and so much as open doors for myself with them, people look at me funny.  Because I look funny.”

Don’t use your quirk at school outside of training lessons, Shuuichi-kun.  Spinner remembers that kind of bias, yeah.  All the non-heteromorphic kids could run around the schoolyard playing tag with snowballs in July, but heaven forbid he use his quirk to climb a tree so he can get away from bullies for the length of a lunchbreak.  

He pushes the memory away and nods at Scarecrow to keep him talking.  Not that the guy needs much pushing—he talks like someone who’s told the story before, hard-edged, voice intense despite a mid-ranged pitch.  He’s got just a hint of a—a hiss or a lisp, something that muddles the edges of his hard consonants.  The hood doesn’t move like he’s hiding mandibles under there, but…

“I’ve been wearing prosthetics for longer than I can remember.  The government pays for most of it, since I was born this way, but there’re a lot of limitations on it.  How often they’ll replace them, what my folks got charged for them.  It was always tight, and the kinds of prosthetics government money buys definitely weren’t as nice as these.”  He flexes his false fingers demonstratively.

“My folks and I met Re-Destro—” and there’s that note of reverence, the same tone Re-Destro himself’s using about Shigaraki these days “—when I was nine.  A family friend recommended Detnerat’s products to us, and he took an interest. That’s how we found out about the Army.”

“Yeah?”  Spinner crosses his arms over his chest.  

“My parents joined up because of me.  But I joined up for myself.  Because people think that because I have prosthetics, I shouldn’t need to use my forelegs in public.” Scarecrow’s voice sharpens.  “Like I don’t have the right to use the limbs I was born with.  I should have that right.  We all should.”

“We’re not out to reform society, you know,” Spinner cautions him.  He’s had to tell Re-Destro that too many times already, and that’s just having grasped it himself there in the ruins of Deika.  “That’s not what Shigaraki’s after.”  

Scarecrow gives him another long, quiet look, unreadable behind his hood.  Finally—slower, less practiced—he nods and answers, “Destro’s teaching was that oppression will always lead to revolution.  The Grand Commander of the Liberation Army is the one who’ll throw off those chains.  Whatever he makes of the world, I want to be there to help, not sitting in my shackles waiting for someone to hand me an answer.”

Spinner breathes out hard. He scratches at his hair.  

“…Right,” he manages. Don’t admit he said it better than you could.  “Well put.” He turns to Nimble and adds, “Well, he didn’t offend me.”

«I know you’d like him.»  Her words practically shimmy in the air, flickering green and yellow and pink.  «Then do we have our number 2?»

Spinner glances back over at Scarecrow, who’s staring determinedly out the window behind the desk, his back toy soldier straight.  He still looks more like a kid in a costume than anything else, but…  

Well, I like him better than people like the politician.  And we need to keep things moving, anyway.  Don’t stop running or someone might catch up.  

“Yeah, I think so” he says aloud, then takes a breath and leans over the desk, offering a hand.  Scarecrow takes it without a second’s pause, plastic clicking against Spinner’s scales.  “Welcome to the Support Regiment.”  

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

I’ll have some links up about things here when I post this to AO3, but in the meantime, Scarecrow--whose condition at birth was called amelia--wears a hood not because he’s embarrassed of a bug face, but rather because he’s embarrassed of the way various surgeries to repair cleft palate and cleft lip have left his face looking.  He’s much more confident in showing off his meta-ability than what he thinks of as his disability.  

Scarecrow is also vaguely modeled on an insect called a webspinner, a tiny little bug that lives in big communal web “galleries” and has the unusual feature of its silk production apparatus being located on its front legs rather than the base of its abdomen like spiders.  The choice felt appropriate for an unusually tiny cult member with top-mounted spider legs.   

[beautifulsnake2162020]

Personal Opinion: In defense of Yennefer

First of a few points before reading:

1.) You don't have to read or agree with this. Its totally fine. This is my opinion of things based on my personal interpretation.

2.) I'm okay with people shipping any non-canon ships, with the netflix series its Geraskier and with the video games its Geralt and Triss. Everyone is free to ship their own ship.

Without giving too much away for those who are only watching the netflix series. Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer form a family that were created by destiny (a mix of fate and personal choices). Because they are formed by destiny itself its a bond that is stronher than blood.

All three of them are products of blood relatives who either abused, abandoned, or who seeks to only use them for other (political) means or simply don't see them for who they really are. Geralt's mother, Visenna, gave up her chance to raise him to continue serving as a sorceress/healer. Ciri's family kept her sheltered but in doing so, they don't see her as having her own dreams and goals that has nothing to do with politics. But because of her position as a princess she can't really be herself. And Yennefer has suffered from domestic abuse which is rooted from her disability as a hunchback. Whether we want to admit it or not we all seek to have some sort of family who would accept us for who we are. That type of family is not restricted to those we are related to by blood. Its why we seek out communities in various platforms because even we as people (even us introverts) need to feel we belong to a community of any sort. This is one of the reasons why I love the books, its about a family formed outside of blood relatives with people that may make us better versions of ourselves that nobody can't.

My guess as to why Yennefer was given a leading role in the series is because she is a part of the trio that forms the family by destiny. When I read the books I was upset that Yennefer didn't have as much book time as Geralt and Ciri. I understand that maybe in the time of writing it she was just supposed to be a vehicle to complement Geralt and Ciri's adventures but she is also clearly her own person. She, like many other characters, is human. She makes decisions that I don't always agree with, but she's not a bad person per se. But this may not come across clearly to an audience who only watches the series. So they gave her a leading role and gave her the main heroic moment in the Battle of Sodden to overtly show how a more rounded person. If she wasn't shown her backstory the mainstream audience would only think of her as a manipulative and ambitious bitch without seeing her as human. With the way the netflix series was written, I can understand why it is difficult to show subtle layers of complexity since things might be boring if there is no action or drama going on. Also since they are pushing for the witcher family to be the main trio, it would be unfair for Geralt and Ciri to have more screen time than Yennefer who is also part of the trio (just to be clear I'm not saying she should have more screen time but at least an equal amount).

On the issue of why she chose to have her spine corrected, Zach from the try guys worded it best. "Its something I care about and so I've decided to do something about it." Insecurities may mean nothing to everyone else but it can be personally self destructive. As someone who is studying in a difficult program with some professors who terrorize your self-worth and question if you have what it takes to even graduate, sometimes not caring about your insecurities makes it worse. For Yennefer she knows that being a mage and attractive will give her agency and control over her life which she hasn't had aside from her trysts with Istredd.

For those who don't understand why she wants to have a baby when she signed up for being sterile; I ask the question of why she shouldn't want to have a baby? How many of us ask our past selves not to do anything that we now regret? I wish I paid more attention to my diet when I was younger but I'm now paying the price because of my PCOS. Why shouldn't she regret impulsively transforming herself and becoming powerful. Being a successful person is not mutually exclusive to not being a parent.

The netflix series isn't perfect, but I understand the changes are made due to the medium and the mainstream audience I want to wait till they adapt the last scene in the books before my final judgment.

[nerdy-bits]

XCOM: Chimera Squad Review

XCOM Chimera Squad is my definition of a pleasant surprise. Just soldiering through quarantine on a lazy April Tuesday afternoon, across my news feed comes the improbable: a new XCOM game getting shadow dropped. Just a short ten days away, Chimera Squad would be releasing. What’s more? If you preordered, or purchased before May first, the game was only ten dollars.

 Now I fully recognize, it may be the trying times we’re enduring, but that lazy tuesday suddenly felt like Christmas.

 I’ve been a huge fan of XCOM since the reboot, Enemy Unknown, was released in 2012. I remember doing my research and discovering XCOM had first launched in 1994, but I never had the chance to play those games. Regardless, ten minutes into Enemy Unknown I knew I was sold.

Where Chimera Squad differs from its predecessors is, well, in a lot of places. Where XCOM 1 and 2 finds you operating as the Commander of XCOM, at first an international force assembled to fight back alien invasion, then as a resistance seeking to overthrow alien overlords, Chimera Squad is the result of an XCOM initiative called the Reclamation Project. With the war against the occupying aliens won, XCOM tasks an interspecies team of operatives to support the police of City 31. The former hub of Advent control, City 31 has become the world’s model city for human and alien integration. 

As Chimera Squad, as directed by the Reclamation Project, you are tasked with seeking out and pacifying rogue groups in the city hoping to hamper its lofty goals, and simultaneously track down and reclaim scattered wartime technologies. But, of course, things don’t go specifically to plan. In the first moments of the game you are tasked with saving the life of Mayor Nightingale. Taken hostage by dissidents, 31PD is at a standstill and calls in the cavalry. With Chimera Squad so newly formed, Verge, your Sectoid Psionic teammate has to take a cab and catch up with the team on site. 

That is the other way that Chimera Squad breaks the mold. Where other XCOM games give you a force of editable, backstory-less characters, this title has twelve operatives with names, backstories, voice actors, and personality. I wasn’t sure how I would like this change at first. Part of my love of the series is the stories that I can attach to the characters as I grow familiar with each of their abilities. And losing those soldiers becomes so much more personal when they fall in battle. 

In Chimera Squad there is no such thing as losing a character. In fact, character death results in a game over screen and a “Load Checkpoint” prompt. Gravely wounded soldiers have an increased chance at earning a scar, a semipermanent debuff that can only be cleared by sending them to rehabilitative training. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about these changes. I have moments from previous games that have stuck with me for years, based on the deaths or retrieval of lost characters. Chimera Squad axes that in the interest of telling a story with its characters, and for such a radical change, it really pays off.

Dialogue in-mission feels largely the same. Conversations back at base however, really lend to the depth of the characters. I found myself constantly bemused by the tidbits of information I could glean from these operatives interacting with each other. It only takes a couple of lines to understand where Godmother gets her callsign. In one instance, Cherub - the affectionate mascot of the squad - asks Godmother to sign off on paperwork allowing the soldier and scientist who found him to adopt him. See Cherub is a clone soldier. Created by Advent for war, but woken after the Ethereal mind control had been lifted. He explains that the two people who found him, set him free, had gotten married a few years later and now they wanted to adopt him.

I truly had no expectation that I would be charmed this much by an XCOM title. But it didn’t end there.

Later in the game, given the opportunity to recruit another unit to Chimera’s ranks, I chose Zephyr, a Hybrid bruiser whose only wield-able weapons were her fists. I rarely choose melee characters, but because Chimera Squad is so unique, I figured I would try something new. In her first mission she was a blast to use. Her attack rooted enemies, meaning they can’t move on their next turn, and after her attack she is granted an additional action point so that she can distance herself from enemies that would take advantage of her close range to shoot her. I was convinced. Then we went back to base.

In her one and only base-dialogue I heard, she asked Cherub to be her training dummy. Except, she didn’t call him by his name, she called him Knock-Off. When confronted by Terminal (another agent) that he has a name Zephyr waved them away and called for Knock-Off to come along. Always the team morale agent, he complied, telling his defender that it was ok. 

I never used Zephyr again. She literally developed workshop projects for the next 20 hours of my campaign.

Again, I never expected that an XCOM game would make me feel like this about my soldiers. And quite frankly, I absolutely fell in love with this game because of it. 

Chimera Squad is clearly built on the XCOM 2 engine. As one would assume, with that fact comes the realization that a lot of the combat mechanics for this iteration of the game are immediately familiar. This lends to Chimera Squad feeling like an expansion in a way that few stand-alones achieve. After learning the non-complex intricacies of the Breach phase, a shock and awe stage that starts every encounter, combat falls into a rhythm that fans of the series will be comfortable with. With one major adjustment.

Rather than the “I go, you go” turn-based nature of games previous, this title takes an approach that feels far more like an initiative roll in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The devs at Firaxis re-appropriate the term “Interleaved” here. Traditionally meaning to place blank pages between printed pages of a book, here it simply means that your enemy will take turns with you, within a timeline displayed on the right side of the screen. 

This forces players, otherwise familiar with the privilege of running through all of their characters before the enemy gets a chance to act, to plan more carefully. You may only have one agent in line at the start of a fight before hostiles get to retaliate. This leads to an increase in the importance of finding the most synergistic combination of agent abilities. Who can manipulate that timeline? Who can debuff, incapacitate, or eliminate targets the fastest and with the most cascading effect?

I found myself, at the halfway point of my playthrough (about 15 hours), settling into my squad. Godmother, a mobile, agile, hard hitting, shotgun wielding enforcer. Verge, a Sectoid psionic, with the ability to disable, berserk, and mind control assailants. Patchwork, a techie drone pilot whose drone shock can arc between enemies with a chance of debuffing every target zapped. And Finally, Blueblood a gunslinger with two pistols, one that ignores cover, and the ability to fire multiple times per turn. 

In any situation, I could finagle my way into disabling or dispatching two targets fully or up to eight targets partially within my first four actions. Add to this the few odds and ends you can nab from the Scavenger Market, a transient market that visits every week, or side mission rewards, and you can find yourself with a few epic weapons, specialized buff grenades like the Motile Inducer. Two free actions, immediately, to whomever you throw it at. 

Finding these synergies and supplements, is at the core of Chimera Squad, and while the process isn’t entirely unique to this title, it certainly feels more important when the turns are interleaved, the quarters are close, and your innate advantage lasts a single, Rainbow Six-esque, breaching action. 

Over the course of your game you will investigate three factions in City 31: The Progeny, Grey Phoenix, and Sacred Coil. Each faction has different units, abilities, and motivations, and as you take out each faction, the surviving factions will scale up in response. It is your job to root out their goals, foil their plans, and neutralize the threatening potential they hold. As illustrated by the comic book-styled cutscenes, Chimera Squad is against the wall and the clock, as unrest in the city rises you have to manage threats based on their cost to your levels of unrest in the nine districts of the city. You will forgo missions that have good rewards to manage the unrest in an unruly district. Spend your investigation points to deploy Security, Technology, or Financial teams in each district to access buffs that give you the ability to stave off increased unrest, decrease unrest in specific districts, or in the city overall. 

At its core Chimera Squad is truly an XCOM game, forcing its players to train their soldiers, research projects in the workshop, manage unrest across a map, and manage resources, all while fielding an active combat team in harrowing and varied encounters. Is it XCOM 3? No, not at all, but one shouldn’t conflate the two. Chimera squad is a $20 exploration into the ways that XCOM can, and I believe will, evolve. Expect to see hero characters in the future, with backstories and voice acting. Expect to see multiple paths in the campaign, with escalative properties as the game progresses. But more than anything, expect to feel right at home with Chimera Squad, despite the ways it alters the formula. You’ve simply moved on from Sazerac to Vieux Carre. Your rye whiskey is still there, just this time you have some sweet vermouth. Enjoy.

[sullustangin]

A Code of Conduct for a Smuggler Ship

This is a world-building piece I'm using in my own fan fic.  Our smugglers, pirates, rogues, and other non-aligned/independent ships do have rules and codes of conduct.  They wouldn't live by Imperial/Republic/Federation/Klingon/Fleet rules.  Whether in space or on the sea, they still have to co-exist with their crewmates and captain.  This is mostly compiled from historical pirate codes, Gibbs from NCIS (it works), and other real-life incidents.

This is crossposted to AO3. 

Code of Conduct for Virtue’s Thief, under the command of

Captain Eva Corolastor

1.       The Captain’s responsibility is to the ship.  The ship is the crew, and the crew is the ship.  The Captain is to save the ship at any cost, including her own.

2.      The Captain is the first and final authority on Virtue’s Thief.

3.      Never screw over your Captain or your crewmates.

4.      All profit is disbursed evenly after the ship receives its share for maintenance. Private gambling, inheritance, and profits do not apply here.

5.      If someone is permanently injured, maimed or disabled in the service of Virtue’s Thief or her captain, they are to be pensioned off for the duration of their lives.

6.      The crew is entitled to a discount for services at the Captain’s discretion.

7.      Police your brass and cover your ass.  

8.      Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

9.      Always announce your entrance into the cockpit or the Captain’s quarters; she is armed.

10.  Always carry a knife.

11.  Never drink the last of anything.

12.  No pets.

13.  No children.

14.  Nobody talks about VATs [Very Awful Thing(s)].

15.  Blood stays in the cargo bay; do not track it around the ship.  Remove your boots as needed.

16.  No fighting on the ship; settle your differences planetside.

17.  No sleeping naked.

18.  No shagging in the ship (exceptions to be granted by the Captain).

19.  All crew members will carry spare clean underwear in a waterproof bag at all times.

20.  Birthdays are to be celebrated.  Get over it.

 1.  This rule is included since my captain is a Good Gal.  She's a Chaotic Neutral Leaning Good.  If your Captain is not so inclined, you may wish to alter this to better suit how your Captain sees his or her crew and ship:  are the crewmen and crew-women expendable?  Is the ship itself a tool to be used and broken, or is it the Captain's beloved home?

2.  Many pirate codes have votes and other democratic devices so each man had their say, especially if their Captain sees them as tools or as useful rather than friends and family.   Because my captain is GG in Rule #1, Rule #2 is not democratic, but rather, an assertion of authority because of GG status; your Captain has to be a leader, not a doormat.  If your Captain is more ruthless, then you may want to counter-balance with a rule that gives the crew some veto power.

 3.  This is self-explanatory.   Ships have limited quarters, and it's in everyone's best interest not to hate each other.  Gibbs' Rule.

 4.  This is a pragmatic rule, as the ship does have to be maintained as the home for everyone, even if she is own by the Captain.  This could also go toward the upkeep of ship's droids, if you're operating in the Star Wars universe.  This is based in actual rules from historical pirate codes.

 5.  Another historical pirate code rule.  This one is very generous (Good Gal Captain).  Often, there would be a limit set or a delineation of what body parts are worth how much -- arms, eyes, and legs all have different value, and how much of you lost also matters.  In the modern world, we have this when claiming disability benefits, particularly for veterans.  This is an opportunity for you to discuss how your characters are valued by the Captain/ship.

 6.  Depending on how you set up your ship and crew rules and who decides what jobs to take, this rule can be very relevant or not relevant.  I use it as an opportunity to prove Captain's benevolence, but this can be used to build tension -- is this job worth it?  Are you actually going to pay us for this gig?

 7.   Gibbs' Rule(s), but highly pertinent.  Most non-aligned ships are non-aligned for a reason -- shady activities? troubled past?  "Police your brass" is a term for cleaning up one's spent casings so that you don't leave a trace or evidence you were there.  Covering your ass is a catch-all for making sure there are no loose ends.  This is the "don't bring trouble home" rule -- don't bring unwanted attention to the ship. 

 8. Gibbs' Rule.  Even if you follow #7 to the hilt, this is still possible -- stay alert. 

 9.  The Captain often has the most to lose.  This is typically their ship, and all troubles land on their desk.  They're the ones trying to lead people of questionable character -- there's a reason they're out on their own.  Depending on what the job is, they may be carrying strangers on their ship or there may be concerns of a boarding party.  This can be used to depict Captain's trust, but also Captain competence -- do you want someone who trusts everyone responsible for your safety?

10.  Gibbs' Rule, but interesting to utilize in space settings.  In modern/historical settings and military settings, you always carry a personal sidearm or two as a hold-out; knife and a single-shot pistol (especially 3-D printed) are useful.  In space, there's all this fancy tech, like blasters, lasers, phasers, vibroknives, and so on. A knife can cut air supply hoses, slice electronics, puncture life support suits, and all sorts of chaotic things that a "highly evolved society" wouldn't think of.

11.  My own creation -- I have a hard-drinking crew, and if you want to break Rule #3 in the worst way possible, this is it.  One thing I have headcanonned is that there were originally just 10 rules on the Thief.  The second 10 come as a result of people breaking the first 10 -- more specific rules for more idiotic behavior that the writer didn't anticipate.  In the words of my captain, "Can I preface that by saying the rules exist for reasons?  As in, someone screwed up, and after we all didn’t die, I made the rule?”

12.  and 13.  These are flexible, but you have to consider what type of operation your ship is running.  Is it derring-do and swashbuckling and a business venture?  Or is something else more akin to a family group?  Within the SWTOR universe, I've seen people keep their ships very businesslike, but the same crews in another fan fic are raising kids and have pets.  Totally fine.

14.   VATs are a sideline business that my Captain operates alongside her two female crewmates; the boys find what they do so distasteful, they try to ignore it as best they can.  In my universe, VATs are wetwork, assassinations, torture, extortion, espionage, information-brokering, and other morally questionable items that don't fall under the main purview of business on the ship.  Does your ship have anyone with a sideline?  It doesn't have to be as violent or dark as this.  Is it officially recognized?  To what extent?  Is it a secret?  Is there a rule against doing this sort of thing? 

15.  Generally cleanliness reminder, but if you have this sort of a rule, you better show off why it's necessary.

16.  Historical pirate rule -- if you have beef, go settle on the shore.  Some codes get the quartermaster directly involved in fairly outfitting both parties and determining whether the matter is settled or if someone should get left behind at port for the good of the ship.

17.  This is for red alerts and making sure nobody wastes too much time trying to throw clothes on while trying to deal with a disaster.  It also ties into #18.

18.  Historically, pirates were not supposed to bring wenches on the ship.  First, there was a risk of someone being accidentally kidnapped if the ship left before critical personnel woke up after a night on the tiles.  Secondly, rape was a serious crime to pirates; the penalty was death.  I've seen in multiple pirate codes that boys and ladies were not to be brought aboard.  Some do allow for a guardian for these people so that they can remain on board until the next port, but those were special conditions in special circumstances.  Since I have a smuggler ship, it's egalitarian -- no sexy times for anyone onboard the ship.  Also, if you're busy getting busy, if there's an attack, well, it takes more time to untangle yourself than if you're by yourself. 

19a.   This is a personal rule (IRL and in fan fic).  As I've been writing, I find that people's clothes getting trashed or messed up is a pretty regular thing.  However, it's made exponentially more tolerable by having a spare set of something dry.  If you plan on having characters get messy and want to move the plot along without dealing with the "uh oh, naked" thing (especially if there's a romantic/sexual tension), this isn't a bad rule to have around.  Granted, if you're writing PWP, make sure nobody has any spare anything.  Also, spare clean undies aren't just useful for the obvious; think of bandages, messages that could be sent while everyone else is "hurr durr"ing over panties, underwires that can be used for other purposes.  Basically, this is where you can put in your MacGuyver plot device -- make people carry some seemingly useless item around and then it's the Most Critical Thing to making some ad hoc plan work.  

b.  Caveat:  Chekhov's Gun.  This the literary principle that you shouldn't put anything into your story unless it adds to the bigger plot: don't put a gun on stage unless it's going to fire.  So you can have a lot of funny business with your #19 (or any of these rules) but don't spend too much time on them.  Some of it might remain headcanon forever, which is fine. Remember that codes/rules are meant to help your ship function, not to bog it down unnecessarily. 

20.  Personal rule. See 19b. Feel free to use these rules or variants thereof; just give me a mention @sullustangin or via AO3 (top of the page).

[beautifulletdownfics]

‘someday, someday’ :: tumblr edition, #27

In hindsight, given what was happening, I shouldn’t have answered my phone to the unknown number.

The week after we returned from New York was a whirlwind. Harry and I spent our first day back holed up together at his house, snoozing through jet lag and doing our laundry from the trip. I went straight back to rehearsals the day after that, fighting off a tickle in my throat I was adamant wasn’t going to turn into any kind of seasonal head-cold. Harry spent two days in his UK management office, sorting out all the paperwork and legal aspects of him working on his March EP in London with Rodger’s studio before he was straight to work writing and recording.

At some point, I would be joining him in the studio because, as Rod from his management company had alluded to in New York, Harry was hoping to include the song that I helped him with his new releases. He wanted to give me full writer's credit which I was instantly opposed to, but Harry was adamant that without being able to credit my contribution he wouldn't release the song. It was a beautiful song and as much as I was uncomfortable being included, it felt like daylight robbery to have it die because of me.

Alongside that, my dad arrived in town, and in-between my own rehearsals I managed to sneak into his and sit in on him working with the London Symphony. I spent most nights having dinner with him near his hotel and then getting the tube back to my own house because Harry was either out or had already crashed for the night and I didn’t have the heart to disturb his sleep patterns.

Between all this, it was increasingly becoming harder to ignore the chatter that seemed to be following me. I was more and more finding myself ignoring message notification on my phone, avoiding surfing any news sites, and I’d disabled what felt like every possible setting on my social media accounts. Friends from Blackpool and Cambridge were reaching out about Gavin and what he was saying, and more than a few of them were asking questions about Harry. I felt like I was the gatekeeper to some ridiculous secret everyone wanted details on, and what was making me feel sick about it was that, at this stage, the assumption in the gossip mill was simply that I knew Harry. Nobody had run far enough with the whole idea to predict I might be anything other than friends with the famous pop star.

I spent the whole week looking forward to the weekend. Friday night and Saturday were booked doing nothing in particular with Harry. Saturday evening would be spent with Harry, Rodger, Max, Gemma and Ned watching my Dad conduct the London Symphony Orchestra. And Sunday was reserved for spending at Harry’s dealing with whatever hangover resulted from the night before.

So really, answering an unknown caller on Friday just as I was about to text Harry I was on my way and walk into the tube was a stupid move.  It was almost certainly going to be someone that I definitely did not want to talk to; still, there was some part of my brain who thought perhaps it was someone from the orchestra whose number I hadn’t saved yet or a call about an appointment I forgot I made.

“Nina, as I live and breathe,” Gavin’s voice was smooth and precise in my ear, “You really did block me number, huh.”

I stopped walking and turned on my heel, trying to escape but having nowhere to go. I briefly considered hanging up out of sheer panic, but I didn’t like the precedence that set. Before I could figure out what the hell to do, he continued speaking. Holding my trumpet case in one hand and the phone in the other, I ducked into a shop alcove and stared blankly at the passing people in disbelief.

“You’re a tricky woman to get a hold of these days,” He crooned, “Shacking up with a pop star has changed you.”

"Gavin," I said, my voice shaking in a way I couldn't control, "What can I help you with?"

"Straight into assuming I need something from you," Gavin said with a tut, "I was calling to congratulate you. I underestimated you, which isn't something I care to admit."

I tried to give my voice a chipper edge, "That's big of you."

"What I can't figure out though is what he gets out of it," Gavin asked, sounding pleased with himself, "Styles doesn't strike me as needing numbers in the symphonic community."

"You don't know the first thing about Harry," I snapped quickly, immediately regretting it.

"Clearly," Gavin agreed eerily quickly, I'd played right into his hands, "Although no, that's probably not entirely fair to say. On paper, you're a catch. He'd have to have an ego on him, lesser men have fallen into the same trap."

"Gavin," I breathed out, losing my patience with his bating me. My heart was racing, and I turned back into the tube just so I could find somewhere to sit. "Why are you calling?"

"Just checking in," He said defensively, "Been getting loads of questions about you and wanted to speak to the legend herself. Couldn't believe Leon when he saw you at New Years, I was sorry to miss it."

"You're getting questions because you practically begged for the attention," I whispered quickly, suddenly surrounded by other people waiting for the train to pull up.

"Hey," He sneered down the phone, "I can share whatever the fuck I want online, hear me? It's not like Harry fucking Styles is going to sacrifice his perfect little media identity to correct the record for your sorry arse. Not that I technically said anything he needs to get his knickers in a twist about."

"What do you want from me?"

"Nothing," Gavin all but spat, "What on earth could you possibly have that I would want? It's pathetic to see really, you sucking off The Man to land that interview. Seems I was right, classical music can only get you so far ... You've had to get yourself a famous boyfriend to get anywhere."

"I was in the orchestra before Harry—"

"—Keep telling yourself that, love," He laughed.

"Gavin, just leave me alone, okay? Just ... Don't say shit online about Harry or me. You got the career you wanted, just back off mine, okay?"

"You owe me," He barked, "What on earth makes you think you can tell me how this is going to go?"

Dozens of other conversations with the same tone started layering over in my head, memories from years ago that had taken a long time to write over suddenly crashed through my mind and seized me up inside. He was just the same as always, and having been away from Gavin for so long supplied the harsh reality it—of what he had always been like—that much more jarring. I stopped speaking, which always resulted in Gavin's poison gaining momentum. I found a seat on the tube and pushed myself as far against the glass as I could, adrenalin was making my legs weak, and my eyes star.

"Do you know how embarrassing it was to have my girlfriend go fucking crazy and fall off the deep end?" He continued.

"I'm not crazy," I said weakly, feeling my eyes heat and my throat constrict.

He laughed sarcastically, "Love, you went full One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we all know it. Jesus Christ, the questions I got when you fucked off. Humiliating is an understatement, I—."

With shaking hands, I held my phone out in front of my face, hearing him continuing to speak but not understanding the words correctly. I pressed the hang-up button and hurrying to go into my call log and block the number. After my phone was safely on aeroplane mode, I slipped it under my thigh and looked out the window at the black tunnel passing by, my own reflection staring back at me.

I looked crazy.

+++

I loved the London underground.

On weekend nights everyone is dressed up and smells terrific, the carriages are dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lights, and there’s an air of something intrinsically seductive and winsome. Business people coming home have the relieved look of people who have earned their weekend breaks, and people on their way out have a joyous look of the pending release.

It can be so relaxing, and it's the only place in the world I have ever enjoyed the company of strangers. Because they're non-threatening, and I know they’re not expecting anything from me. I can be invisible, hiding behind anonymity and the simple fact that everyone has somewhere to be, people to meet and life to live.

I distracted myself with these thoughts as I sat on the train, swinging between digesting the call with Gavin and pretending it didn't happen by watching the people of London around me. I hadn't been paying attention to the train I got on and ended up heading in the opposite direction I usually did. I stumbled out of the carriage at some point and changed direction back into the city.

But when the Baker St underground came, I didn’t get off like I should have.

I needed to get on the Hammersmith and City line, but when Baker St came and disappeared again, and I was still firmly planted in my spot in the carriage. I did a quick calculation in my head and figured I could get off at Edgeware Rd, the next stop, and then go back.

But I didn’t.

I completely froze.

The station spun by, and the train breathed with passengers going off and new ones getting on.

Four stops came and went that way. I sat clasping my phone in my lap and trying everything I could to calm my thudding heart enough to allow me to get out at the next stop. I had to get off, I had to call Harry.

Or Max. Or Rodger. My dad. Anyone.

But I was sat on a train on the other side of London to them all. I told Harry I would let him know when my rehearsals finished for the day to see if he was still working with Rodger or if he was already heading home. If he was still with Rodger, we had plans to get dinner nearby before heading to North London where his home was. If Harry was already on his way home, I was going to get the tube to him.

An announcement came over the carriage speakers saying that the next stop, Shepherd’s Bush Market, was the last of the line and all passengers needed to disembark.

Ten minutes later, I found myself standing outside the station, trying to create an idea in my head of what was around this area. It was nearing seven o’clock by this stage, and the only thing I knew would be open was London Westfield, just a short walk away.

I put my phone into my blazer pocket, trying to forget I owned it at all, and followed the crowd into the shopping centre, my instrument case heavy at my side.

Most of the shops were shut, or closing, but the centre stayed open late for the cinema and restaurants dotted throughout.

I walked through numbly, my eyes flitting around all the different exhibits and stores. Most of them were familiar, but there was a level of comfort in the fact there were only a handful of other people I was sharing the space with. I liked being able to hear my heels click on the shiny floors, and the way the music playing through the speakers could be easily deciphered.

I recognised the Ed Sheeran song currently playing, but it was hearing another melody cut over it that halted me in my spot, and I wondered how it had been able to sneak up on me.

‘Romanza’ by Chopin.

A song more familiar to me than any pop song, one that had been familiar for years in a style that was as easy as breathing for me to inhabit.

My steps automatically quickened, and I found myself darting my gaze around, trying to follow the sound. I turned a final corner and hit what Rodger liked to refer to as the ‘Paris End’ of Westfield, where all the high end and designer stores were. The lighting up here was softer, the stores were guarded and underneath an impressive crystal chandelier was a black Bösendorfer grand piano.

There were armchairs arranged in a circle to the side of the piano, and I slowly slipped myself into one, putting my case down and not taking my eyes of the young man playing exquisitely for the whole shopping centre to hear. The acoustics were amazing.

With a small nod and a smile, he acknowledged my arrival but went back to his former state; eyes

closed, back swaying back and forward, and a blissfully serene look on his face. I was jealous of him.

The calmness of the piece eventually overtook me as well, and I rested my head back comfortably and shut my eyes to really hear what was being played. My heartbeat slowed, and the noise in my head disappeared. The scratchiness of my trousers and the damage my simple, black boots had done my feet disintegrated with it.

All that existed was a beautiful piano concerto being played, and my witnessing it.

Halfway through Debussy’s ‘Reflects Dan L’eau’ when I snapped back into the present by the bungle of three completely wrong notes, all in quick succession to each other. My eyes fluttered open and the way the shiny, reflective roof of the shopping centre took several moments to clear from my blurry eyes told me they had been shut for quite a while.

“Thought you’d drifted off, Miss,” he called out through a smile, slowing his playing and speaking over the piano. Something in the glint in his eye told me he knew messing up the notes would be the fastest way of catching my attention. His eyes fell on the instrument case at my feet.

“No,” I mumbled, sitting up straighter and watching as he nodded politely and then went back to concentrate on his playing, “I was just listening ...” I added quietly to myself.

The fact that he didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in why I was there, or why I didn’t appear to be making any move to leave pleased me. He simply went back to his playing, and I didn’t see him look my way again.

7:48pm, my phone screen read and when I turned aeroplane mode off the screen lit up with two missed calls from Harry and a string of texts, along with a missed call from Max.

5:12 Hiya, we're wrapping up now, I can swing by Southbank and pick you up for half-past? x

5:25 Sorry, make that 6. Traffic is shocking.

5:38 You're usually finished by now, everything okay?

6:10 Have I completely forgotten something I shouldn't have? Were you going to see your dad?

6:38 Babe, you're worrying me. Call me back x

He was worried, and I felt sick for it. Watching Harry's regular interactions with me and how he was going about a typical Friday night barely felt real. I didn’t know what I felt about what Gavin had said to me, but I knew that as soon as I pinpointed one emotion, the avalanche of all the rest would ensue. And following that would be an overriding sense of panic.

Panic was coming already though, seeping through the gaps and crevasses, damaging the wall blocking out what I was feeling. Because worrying about fear only brought it on faster, making it stronger. It was that double-edged sword of knowing something was coming but then inadvertently making it occur sooner.

I leant forward with my elbows on my knees and my head resting in my hands, putting all my attention on placing my feet in their black heels as close together and perfectly aligned as I could. My phone screen lit up on my lap, and my eyes were drawn to it before I could make myself ignore it.

Everything in me was screaming to call him but because I didn’t know what I would say to him I hesitated. All my mind could make my body focus on was the music swirling around me. It felt like a small miracle to have found it immediately after my conversation with Gavin, to have ended up on this armchair, under a crystal chandelier in the great hall of London Westfield listening to the greats; to Chopin, and Rachmaninoff, and Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. They were being played by a stranger I had never seen before and would never see again but for the last hour everything he had been telling me—everything he was saying through the notes his fingers were commanding—made sense to me. For the last hour, this had been my language, and he was the only other person in the world speaking it.

I looked back down to my phone on my lap. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t want to. My chest hollowed, blood rushed to my feet, but my thumb was swiping across the glass surface despite the pooling dread.

Harry answered immediately.

“Hey, I've been worried, what's going on?” He urged in a hushed but desperate tone.

“I’m sorry, I'm okay,” I traced the line of my trousers with my thumbnail nervously. I wondered if Harry was at home or not.

I heard him take a deep breath, “You’re okay?” There were a few beats of silence, “Where are you,

Nina?”

“London Westfield,” I said softly.

“London ...” He paused, his voice almost sounding received for a moment like he could conjure a reason why I might have gone there, “Why are you out there?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered pathetically, but it was true. The line was silent for a few painful minutes.

"I'm confused."

"Can I come over?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"Of course," he said quickly, "What's wrong, though? Has something happened?"

"I'm not crazy," I told Harry.

"You're not," Harry said carefully, I clamped my eyes shut knowing I was putting him in a shitty position, "What's happened? I'll come and pick you up."

“Harry, you don't need to—”

“—I'm already in the car," He told me, "Now, tell me what's wrong."

I let out a frustrated sigh and tears slip out despite my telling myself not to, "It's stupid."

"Not if you're this upset by it."

"I spoke to Gavin."

"You spoke to ... What? How? Where was he?"

"Not in person," I corrected Harry, I could hear the sound of his car in the background, "He called on an unknown number, and I was stupid enough to answer. I know I shouldn't have—

“—Nina, what did he say?” Harry said evenly, but the directness of the question hit me square in the chest.

"I don't want to think about it."

"I'm fifteen minutes away. Please tell me, I don't want this fucker getting between us."

Slowly, I recounted the phone conversation to Harry, who quietly listened without interrupting. It was more upsetting the second time around, I found myself unable to believe it happened. To think I had let myself be treated that way at any point was shameful and by the time I finished telling Harry, I very much wished I hadn't started.

"I'm sorry," Harry said through a sigh, "You're not crazy, and you don't owe him a thing. Did he threaten you at all?"

I thought back over it all, "No, but I don't think hanging upon him was a good idea. He'll say more online now."

"And he'll only look like a bigger dickhead," Harry grumbled, "Hanging up was the right thing to do, you don't have to listen to his shit anymore, Nina. I've just parked, where are you?"

I told Harry my location as best I could, not having to wait very long for him to appear in my line of vision behind the piano player. He spotted me almost immediately as well, his face pulled into a frowned, worried one that I felt guilty for creating. Still, there was a lifting inside my chest at seeing him. His hair was slightly damp from a shower, and he was in comfortable clothes. I stayed seated until he was a few steps away, and my name fell from his lips, then I was up on my feet and pressed against his chest within moments.

Harry's arms wound around my back, and he rested his chin on the top of my head, "You are amazing and beautiful and talented and so loved, Nina. What he says doesn't count anymore. We're going to get you a new phone number, and if he starts spurting any more shit online, we'll take things further."

"I feel so stupid," I said quietly. "How did I let Gavin into my life in the first place?"

Harry cupped my face in his hands and bent down to be at my eye level, "We're not torturing ourselves with those kinds of thoughts, Nina. We're going back to celebrating that article because I won't have you shrinking yourself because of anyone else, myself included."

I looked at him for a few moments, seeing nothing but sincerity and belief there.

"I should have called you earlier." A smile teased his lips, "Yeah, but you called me, so that's a win."

"I'm sorry."

Harry placed a soft kiss against my lips, "Not necessary. You hungry? I'll buy you chicken nuggets on the way home."

+++

Royal Festival Hall was completely sold out.

My dad organised incredible floor seats for the six of us. Harry and I met Rodger, Max, Gemma and Ned at a restaurant nearby for dinner beforehand, so by the time, we arrived for the performance we were all well into enjoying each other's company.

As we followed an usher down the aisle to be shown our seats, Harry shuffled up behind me and took my hand in his, "Did I say yet how stunning you are?"

"Yes," I kept my eyes ahead but tilted my mouth his way so I could say it quietly, "You did."

"Phew," He said dramatically, squeezing my fingers. "Just checking."

By some incredible force of nature, Harry managed to pull me from the rut I was sure I was destined for before it happened. We spent the night before, at his house, I had a bath, and we watched 101 Dalmatians afterwards, Harry gently prodding me every so often to measure where I was at. I cried a few more times, Gavin's harsh words ringing in my ears even when I woke up the next morning.

Harry dragged me out of the house early, he went for a run while I walked through the Heath loosely following him. He ran literal laps around me and despite all his best attempts, he wasn't able to convince me to join him for anything more rigorous.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, and it was time to start getting ready for dinner with my flatmates and Gemma and Ned, I felt reassured and nearly entirely back to normal. The ugliness still existed somewhere, but Harry managed to drag me into the present and firmly plant me there. Nothing Gavin had said to me changed Harry or me.

I took a quick photo of the stage from our seats and sent it through to my family group chat. Harry leaned over from his seat next to me and briefly dropped his head on my shoulder. He watched my screen as I sent my brother a rude emoji and then sent my dad a good luck text. I was beside myself with excitement at the prospect of watching him lead this calibre of an orchestra.

"Open your girls chat," Harry rumbled right by my ear. Without thinking I did as I was told, fingers hovering over the screen, waiting to see what Harry would say to me to type. "Tell them to keep the first weekend of February free, I'd like them to come down for my birthday if they'd like to."

"Harry," I turned my head to look at him, "Really?"

"Yeah," He nodded earnestly, "I haven't really planned anything yet, but I'll do something. I'd like them there."

"Not just for my sake?"

"Not just for your sake," Harry reassured, "They're your people, and so they mean a lot to me as well."

Ladies, Harry's birthday is in a few weeks, and he'd love it if you could make it?

"Tell them there'll be free accommodation, food and alcohol," He nudged me, nodding at the iMessage I just sent. "I'll pay for them to fly down if that's easier. They can stay at mine."

"You don't have to do that, Harry, they'll come down on the train."

Harry dropped his palm onto my thigh, "I don't want to put them out. And it's not cheap getting down here, I know."

All expenses covered, so he says. The first weekend in Feb. He's offering tours of his linen cupboard as well. x

Harry laughed as he read over my shoulder, "Good one."

"Thanks," I replied brightly, locking the phone after checking it was on silent and dropping it into Harry's suit pocket between us. "And thank you for inviting them ... You and them getting on is a big deal to me."

"I know."

"I've had to unpack a lot of shame after Gavin, and I've always been wary of what they might think of me seeing someone else, whether they’d trust me again," I told him.

Harry squeezed my thigh, "I'm happy you have them. They're mad about you."

"Mad is right," I rolled my eyes, "You may come to regret inviting them. Once there's an open bar, not a lot can stop Bel and Georgie."

He wriggled his eyebrows at me, "Sounds brilliant."

Just as I was about to reply the house lights dropped and a hush came over the concert hall. Before the announcements started I curled my hand around to the other side of Harry's face and directed it towards me, he had just enough time to blink down at me in the dark before I pulled him closer for a kiss.

"Thank you," I said, pressing my lips against his again, "You're magic."

He gave me a dopey smile and then took my hand in his, resting it on his thigh gently. I stole it back from him briefly a few moments later to join the applause for my dad walking out onto the stage. The suite was Haydn’s ‘An Imaginary Orchestra Journey’ by Sir Simon Rattle, and I knew it was one of his favourites. That was the benefit of being the level my father was, he could walk into the London Symphony Orchestra and tell them what to play.

The orchestra was led through a warm-up, bubbling my chest and had me wriggling in my seat in excitement. Then, my dad turned to face the audience and stepped up to the microphone.

“Good evening,” He said, “My name is Richard Lawrence, and I’m so delighted to be here on holiday with you from my home at the Chamber Orchestra of Europe,” He smiled as the room swelled into applause again, “Thank you. We have a fun one for you tonight, I know! An orchestra having fun what a scandal!” The players chuckled behind him, “We’re bringing you a selection from Franz Joseph Haydn’s best movements, compiled by my good friend Sir Simon Rattle. This is ‘An Imaginary Orchestra Journey’.”

He turned back to his orchestra and raised his arms, waiting for the applause to come to a close before he dramatically dropped his hands and picked them up again, bringing the opening notes of the suite with him.

It wasn’t a suite that I didn’t have committed to memory, so sitting and listening on almost new ears was transformative. The players were fantastic, which I already had insight into having sat in on a few rehearsals throughout the work. Soloists propped the whole body up, and I shivered my way through parts. My dad was right, though, it was a fun suite.

“This is so cool,” Harry whispered into my ear halfway through. I turned to face him, and in the dim light, he watched the tears streaming down my face, Harry’s lips curved up and he scrunched his nose at me. He took my hand in his and turned back to keep watching.

By the end of the performance, I was on my feet applauding dad with hands in the air, and my makeup all cried off. I got a wink and a wave from my dad who searched us out in the audience at final bows. Arrangements were already made about where we needed to go afterwards to meet him, given that there were so many musicians in the greenrooms going backstage was tricky, I was given instructions as to how to get into the conductor's studio.

After giving my name at a fire exit, an assistant led us through greenrooms to a back suite that sat under the stage.

"This is incredible," Harry said, stepping in behind me and taking in the room, "This is definitely one of the best green rooms I've ever been in."

"It's pretty swish," My dad said happily from the other side of the room, his suit jacket draped over the small sofa, "I suppose if I pretended it might feel quite rock and roll."

"You were amazing, dad," I told him, rushing over for a hug, "Your players were incredible, and you kept them together, magnificently."

"Thank you, my sweet," He smiled, graciously accepting repeated congratulations from everyone else. I introduced him to Gemma and Ned, who both thanked him profusely for their tickets. "Now, what are you all up to now?" Dad asked us all, "I'm getting taken out by a few of the board, and I'm sure I could bring a posse such as yourselves?"

"We need to head off, unfortunately," Gemma spoke up first, "Ned is on night shift tomorrow."

Similarly, Rodger and Max both had either early work commitments or a big day ahead of them so didn't want a late night.

"We'll come," Harry offered readily, looking down at me, "Right?"

"If it's really not an issue?" I asked.

"It's absolutely not, my dear," My dad said, "And I dare say taking you both along will impress them enough to have me easily in work for the next decade. If you can just give me fifteen minutes to change and go see my players, I'll meet you in the Foyer."

The group said their farewells and Harry, and I joined them, we stood in the foyer for a while chatting. Gemma gave me a hug with the promise of catching up during the week without the boys. Then, it was just Harry, and I left waiting in a near-empty foyer.

"I stand by my comments months ago about loving seeing you cry over music," Harry told me once we were alone, resting his elbows on the cocktail table we were sitting at, "It's magic. I adore it."

I grinned, "My crying my way through our first date does make for a good story."

"I'm disappointed not to have made you cry myself with my Christmas gig," Harry smirked at me, "I have a right mind to be offended."

"Get an orchestra behind you and I just might," I returned quickly.

+++

Four days later, Harry was standing at the front desk chatting to a receptionist when I arrived at the recording studio. She spotted me immediately, and Harry followed where her attention left him for, an instant smile appearing on his face.

“Hello!” He called out to me, pushing off where he had been comfortably leaning against the desk to take a couple of steps towards me.

“Hi,” I gushed, trumpet case under my arm and a heavy backpack from rehearsals slipping off my arm.

“Let me take that,” Harry took the bag from my shoulder and pulled me in for a hug with his other arm, “Hi,” He kissed my head, and the leant back to look at me, “You get here okay?” I’d been here before to see Rodger, but instead of pointing that out, I smiled and nodded.

“I’ve got your pass,” Harry said, whipping a lanyard out of his pocket and adorning my neck with it before he took my hand and started walking, “Thanks, Jen!” He called back over his shoulder as we left the entrance.

Harry was bringing me in to work on the song that I contributed to all those months ago. I really didn’t know what more I was expected to do, from what Harry told me about his last week or so writing it was the lyrics of the song that he was working on the most. Numerous times I’d told him I didn’t need credit, but he was adamant.

“In here,” Harry directed me to a door, and he dropped my hand to prop it open for me, “After you.”

I walked in and immediately froze, there had to be at least ten or twelve people in the room. Harry nudged me in gently, making a quip about not lurking in doorways. He walked into the left where there was a large sitting area, the studio directly in front.

“Babes,” Rodger was to the right in front of the sound desk, I recognised the tech working with him who also gave me a nod.

“Hey,” I said, siding up to Rodger but throwing a tentative look back over my shoulder where Harry was in the middle of the bulk of the people in the room. “I’m—

A warm hand slipping into mine from behind, “Neens, I want you to meet some people.”

“We’ll start soon,” Rodger told me kindly, watching as I was pulled away.

Three people were working on laptops at a small free-standing table, another two on phones sat on one of the sofas, and then three men standing. They were wearing remnants of business suits they had obviously unassembled as the day went on; cuffs were folded up, ties and jackets had been shed, and collars were undone. I wondered if Harry could feel my hands shaking from the one he was holding onto, but if he did, he didn’t let on. I tried to wear a pleasant smile, but there was a sinking feeling that I was about to find myself well out of my depth.

Harry introduced me to his manager, the head of his record label and his business manager.

I felt sick.

Harry happily went on about how excited he was for today, and how this song was probably his favourite of the bunch they were working on for release. He interrupted to add more detail to my deliberately modest answer about what my schedule was like working in a professional orchestra. I hadn’t wanted to seem like I was showing off about myself in front of these arguably more impressive people, but Harry seemed giddy on the whole exchange happening. They were all lovely to me, I expected nothing less from people had chosen to work so closely with, but still, I was intimidated beyond belief and blind-sighted by them all being there at all.

“Excuse me,” I eventually managed to be courageous enough to say, “I’m just going to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll—

—I know where it is, Harry,” I squeezed his arm, “I’ll be right back.”

I hurried out the room, and a little way down the hall before stopping at a small bench pushed up against the wall. I sat down slowly and rested my head back against the wall. I completely missed the sound of someone following me until I felt the cushion of the seat expand as Rodger sat down too.

“Really had your skates on getting out there,” He said evenly, “Everything okay?”

I pointed back to the studio a few metres away, “The head of his fucking label is in that room.”

Rodger’s expression softened, “He’s not here to intimidate you, Nina. They’re checking in on how recording is going and Harry wanted them to meet you.”

“Who the hell even has a business manager, Rodger?” I added quickly.

Rodger smiled, “Someone who’s in Harry’s position who cares about his career and the careers of the people who work for him.”

“I really don’t know why I’m here,” I hissed at Rodger. “All I did was change the key and alter a melody, and now I’m supposed to what? Pull a pop song out of my arse in front of a room full of people?”

“You fixed a dying song, Nina,” Rodger didn’t blink at my freak out, “The song is yours as far as Harry is concerned, it would be locked on a hard drive somewhere without you. Just because it feels like breathing to you doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous to the rest of us. I could never have done what you did, and neither could Harry. The song wasn’t going to exist and so if it’s going to it’s only right that you oversee it.”

“I don’t even remember what I did.”

“Liar,” Rodger shot back, “You could play it perfectly with your eyes closed, even if you haven’t thought of it since that day. Don’t bullshit me about forgetting a song, you couldn’t if you tried.”

“I’m just a trumpet player from Blackpool,” I said softly, “What am I doing here?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” He replied, “I understand Harry’s team being here is daunting, but we’re gonna go back in there, you’re going to sit in front of the piano and look super cute in the headphones, and it’ll just be you and me at the desk, got it?”

I shut my eyes and nodded, “Don’t let me look bad.”

“That would be impossible,” Rodger stood up, and when I opened my eyes, he was holding a hand down for me. "C'mon."

I let him pull me to my feet and accepted the hug he held his arms out for, "I need to do a nervous wee."

"Off you go then," Rodger chuckled, "I'll get started setting things up in there."

After using the bathroom, I spent a few moments inspecting myself in the bathroom mirror, and I decided I didn’t look half as frazzled as I felt. An excited but sickening churning in my stomach was somehow disconnected from the thoughts in my head telling me making music with Harry was going to be a good thing, probably even a great thing.

So, taking stumbled steps and breathing in almost too deeply, I fisted my hands and placed one leg in front of the other. By the time I was down the corridor and at the door to the studio, I was breathing evenly, and my stomach felt more settled than it had all day.

I walked straight in, and as I passed Rodger at the sound desk I pointed in at the piano, he nodded without removing his headphones and waved me to go in.

The studio air was fresh, but the unmistakable smell of instruments filled my lungs. I stretched my fingers out as I approached the grand piano over to one side and sat down at the stool, pushing it in further so I could reach the peddles comfortably.

"Hear me?" Rodger asked through the set when I put the headphones over my head.

I held up a thumb his way.

"Brill," He said, "Take a few to get settled, and I'll corral the troops out here."

I stared at the keys for a brief moment before placing my fingers across them, fanning through a quiet set of scales and experimenting with how sensitive the keys were when I built the volume. The sound was beautiful, almost as beautiful as the baby grand at my parent's house. I closed my eyes and played around with a few melodies, humming where I thought a voice might sit above them.

"Rodger," I said, waiting for him to look up through the glass window, "Can I open the cover?"

He nodded, "Yeah, I'll come help, it's heavy."

He shuffled into the room a moment later, flipping a few clasps around the piano and then counting down so we could lift it in time.

"Thanks," I sat back down and played a series of major seventh chords to test out how the sound changed.

"What are you thinking? We going to get into piano bashing?" Rodger asked, crossing his arms over his chest and watching my hands.

"Not quite that extreme," I frowned and leaned forward to reach for the treble strings in front of me, "I think harmonic upper partials would give a raspy, ghosty sound that fits though, right? Like having violins without having to deal with violin players."

Rodger laughed at my dig, and I grinned at him, playing the melody from Harry's song while gently touching the overtone positions on the strings of the corresponding keys. A completely different sound filled the studio.

"That sounds sick," Harry appeared next to Rodger and peered into the piano cavity to see what my hands were doing. "Are you allowed to do that?"

"You are if you're Nina," Rodger hit Harry affectionately on the shoulder and then walked away citing a need to finish setting something up.

I stopped my experimenting and sat back on the piano seat, watching Harry watch me.

"Songs about pianos," He signalled softly.

I smiled at him and quickly found the opening chords of the first song that came into my head, "The piano is not firewood yet, they try to remember but still they forget that the heart beats in threes, just like a waltz and nothing can stop you from dancing."

When I paused and raised an eyebrow at him in a challenge, Harry arched his back to belt out his offering, "It's nine o'clock on a Saturday!"

"Stop! Wait," I laughed, ghosting the piano keys to find where I needed to start, "Let me play you an intro."

I played the intro to the iconic Billy Joel song once through and nodded Harry in when he needed to sing, he was smiling the whole time and miming having a harmonica up to his mouth. I stopped after the chorus and pulled my hands away from the key, wondering if this was how his time with Rodger usually went. I didn't like the thought I could be inserting myself as a silly distraction.

"Nerves flushed out?" Harry asked, showing more astuteness to where my head was at than I had given him credit for.

"Tell me where you're at with the song," I prompted him quietly, shuffling to one side of my seat and opening a space for him to join me.

"Well," Harry started, his thigh nestling warmly against mine, "I've completely rewritten the second verse and bridge—

—Tell me about it in terms of the music," I nudged my elbow into his side, "I don't do lyrics."

"Oh," He parroted, and then laughed at himself, "Right. Of course, well ... I'd like it to sound ... Hopeful?"

"So, we'll do a build," I suggested. "You're a guitar man, so I guess you'd—

—I think I want to just have the piano?"

"Just piano?" I questioned.

"Maybe not just piano," Harry swallowed slowly, "But just not be guitar-heavy. I'd like to include some ... Other instruments, I think."

"Other instruments?" I asked, amused by how hesitant he was with the term, his cheeks reddened when he realised I was mildly teasing him for his apprehension. "You don't have to do that because I'm here."

"Play it where we left it last time," Harry nodded at my hands, he cleared his throat and hummed for half a second before singing along with what I had started playing.

He sang in his chest voice, low and sweet with chilling resonance. It was truly beautiful, and I smiled at the way each line of the lyrics played perfectly into the next. Harry closed his eyes as I played into a pre-chorus of sorts, barely reaching to effortlessly switch up to his head voice for the end of each line. I watched him, so I knew when to extend the phrase or move to match his pitch, but Harry kept his eyes closed while he sang.

It wasn't until he fumbled over two lines in a row that he stopped and gave me a bashful smile, "I don't think what I rewrote fits. Let me go get my notebook and—Hey!"

I looked up toward the window to see who had earned Harry's light whine. There was a line of people at the window watching Harry and me at the piano. His manager gave Harry two thumbs up, but Harry flipped them all the bird as he joined them in the room to collect what he needed to continue.

"That sounded great," Rodger walked over to me and then launched into a whole bunch of the technical aspects of what we were about to start doing. A lot of it made sense, and I had been exposed to before, but I had questions about specific parts that he was patient in answering.

When Harry came back, he settled himself off to my left, where the recording mic was set up. He left the room again and returned with a pitcher of water and two glasses, placing it on the floor between us without saying a word. I watched him take a sip and then stepped up to the mic and slip on his own set of headphones.

"Okay, Nina," Rodger said to us through the glass again, "I've got the automatic transcription program on you, so we'll be getting the melodies down in real-time. I know," He assured me before I could protest, "You'll be able to manually edit things after. On the dark side, we're more about the recording than having a perfect transcription, yeah?"

"I didn't say a thing," I mumbled, embarrassed.

"Harry, mate," Rodger addressed him, "Let's go right through once, doesn't matter if we miss bits. Just give Nina the chance to play it out, and by the second take she'll be set."

"That's annoyingly impressive," Harry told him, adjusting where his headphones sat, "Is there a support group you can recommend?"

"I can hear you both."

"I'll get Max to put you on the mailing list," Rodger promised Harry, setting up a click track to guide our timing but then turning it right down so I could only just hear it.

Harry continued to banter with Rodger as the sound was tested, "Good, I'm going to need maximum support," he spoke into the microphone. "Test, this is a test. I am testing the microphone."

Rodger gave Harry a thumbs up and told me to play something on the piano so he could alter the levels on the boom mics positioned over the open cover. To spite them both, I started tapping out the basic tune of Ode to Joy, not looking at either of them as I did so.

I heard Rodger laugh through the headset, and Harry clapped beside me, "Genius at work."

While they both still were laughing, I switched to Mozart's Sonata No. 17, which shut them up very quickly. I looked over at Harry and gave him a smug smile as I played without hesitation or missing a note. He tried to hold my gaze, but his eyes zeroed in on my hands and were transfixed by their movements. I stopped playing abruptly, and he playfully narrowed his eyes at me.

"Yes?" I asked him sweetly.

"Put him in his place, he's a shit, Nina," Another voice spoke up.

Harry and I looked up to find his manager at the glass with a headset on, "You've never spoken wearing that before!"

"I've never felt the need to," was the reply to Harry's exclamation. "You usually behave yourself."

+++

Two and a half hours later, we had a song.

"It's beautiful," I wound my arms around Harry's waist where he had me tucked under his arm. My fingers played with the cords of our headphones where we stood together, listening to a rough cut of just Harry's isolated vocals.

"Give me a second," Rodger said, distracted by trying to layer the piano and backing vocals over Harry's track."Everyone ready?"

Most of Harry's team left throughout the afternoon, the people on phones and laptops had gone as well as the label head. Harry's manager, business manager and a videographer remained. His manager stood and came over to the desk, but the other two stayed seated on the sofa.

"Okay," Rodger decided he was sorted, clicking on his screen back to the start and pressing play.

Harry tugged the ends of my hair, ghosting his fingers up and down my neck as the opening notes filled our ears. We stood together behind Rodger sitting at the sound desk, the song playing out where we had grown used to hearing sections cut up and altered what felt like a hundred times over.

In the end, Harry hadn't entirely stayed true to his 'piano only' idea, I had managed to convince him to add in some strings which were computerised for now but would be live recorded down the track. We also ended up with bass drums to help with the build to the bridge. Throughout the afternoon, the piano part had been stripped back because I refused to let Harry's gorgeous lyrics drown in a sea of complicated notes and melodies.

The end result was a haunting but euphoric song that took Harry out of his comfort zone and showcased the raspiness and dimension of his voice. It was hopeful like he hoped earlier it would be, but it also gave voice to a vulnerable side of him. It wasn't a song with a strong personal narrative, he had written on the universal truth of life and love and the simplicity behind humanity that we rarely pay mind to.

The song ended, and Rodger slowly turned back to us, his face immediately lit up, "Look at you both!"

"What?" I sniffed, bringing the sleeve of my jumper up to my face, I craned my neck to look at Harry who had his hand covering his mouth.

When he looked down at me, Harry's eyes were wet, and he took a deep breath to steady himself. We both took in each other's faces and then started laughing. I hadn't seen Harry have such an emotional reaction to music, but I knew exactly what he was thinking about mine.

"I see tears, I've done it!" Harry did a little fist punch with his free arm.

"Excuse me," I cried out, "I cry all the damn time if anything I'm the one who's 'done it'. Look at you, you're a mess!"

"It's catching," Harry replied simply, leaning down to press one kiss on my cheek, "Thank you," he said to just me.

"The song is gorgeous," I told him.

"It sure is," He confirmed with an edge of wonder in his voice.

FEEDBACK MAKES ME NOT REGRET WRITING 8K WORDS FOR YOU

[daddyd0nt]

Classrooms Should Not Be A “Safe Space”

There should be no classroom where a student feels unwelcome for trying to learn and better themselves.  Especially in areas like racial/cultural/gender studies, these should be places of LEARNING not just regurgitating what you all already agree with.  Let people ask questions.  Let people get it wrong and correct them.  

Sophomore year, I joined a sociology class that required no prerequisites or major (aka a beginner class open to everybody) and was really excited and open to the fact that it was run by the Black Studies department because I thought “wow, something other than the white upper class sociology professor, cool.”  When I got there, I was the only white person, and one of three non-black people.  All the students appeared to know the professor already from other classes, who gave off that “cool guy” vibe by opening his classes with music videos and saying ‘fuck’ a lot.  I mentioned him to a friend who had taken a class with him before and knew him as a person (she was black) and she advised I drop the class right away.  I thought she was saying this because the class itself was hard, but when I asked her, shed taken a different class and still advised me to drop it.  We were reading “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave” which is an amazing book and I was really into the class so I didn’t.  

I sensed some hostility from the professor building until one day I got up to go to the bathroom and he started yelling “You have no respect, you think you can just come and go you don’t respect the class or me” and I profusely apologized and explained that the Disability Resource Center should have sent him a letter that I was on medication and would likely need to use the restroom once or more per class.  I went to the restroom and took all my stuff and left crying (Im REALLY bad about being yelled at by authority figures) and one of the boys followed me out and was another person who told me, concerned, “Drop the class”.  I had to keep the class to have a full-time schedule or I couldnt live on campus so I had no other option by that point in the semester.

A few weeks later, I was reading along on my laptop (which id brought to every previous class, as my disability accommodations allowed it) and he thought i wasnt paying attention so he came by me and slammed a textbook to the ground next to me as hard as he could.  Im autistic, and the loud noise startled me and I started sniffling and he grabbed my laptop really roughly by the screen so the bottom part was hanging, saw that i was reading along, and then dropped it back on my desk with no apology.  I had a panic attack and left the class and, according to somebody who stayed, changed the topic of the day to my “white fragility” and that I was a “crying white woman” (which like technically yea but i wasnt crying because white guilt or being called racist I was crying because I was autistic and startled with a sudden loud noise which is a major trigger).

There were other smaller incidents (he had a major problem with my absences and took them personally even though i have a chronic illness and was absent from every class just the same, I even went out of my way to try to get to his because I was so afraid of him by then).  There was a time where we were talking about drugs and he asked a question about “what drug can get you a life sentence in jail” and I answered “LSD” because there had recently been a case in the news of exactly that happening and so of course I thought he was referring to that and was looking forward to finally getting something right.  How he corrected me: “This girl, again.  Black people don’t DO acid”.  Then he went on to talk about the crack epidemic and i was like oh that makes sense but what I said wasnt wrong?  

He was yelling at me “Do you ever pay any attention?  You barely even show up.  You probably expect me to hand you an A just for taking this class”.  This was at the end of class, and I said to him (crying, again, because i cant talk to ‘real adults’ without melting down) that I had autism and ADHD, that they were both on file with the DRC, and he said my learning disorder and disability were excuses that white people used “to give a head start to their lazy children” and that it was “entitled” of me to ask that my accommodations be respected because my disability was really just white laziness and he made a really good point about how black kids are less likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and are treated as behavioral cases which yeah 100% correct but he used it as a way to say “these disabilities dont really exist” not “these disabilities are under-diagnosed in certain communities”.

The final straw was my midterm paper.  I wrote on the book I mentioned above, a really good paper that I worked really hard on that met all the requirements of the rubric.  It came back to me marked C- without any notes or corrections on it, while everybody else had red writing all over their pages.  I mentioned it to my friend who had taken his class before and she said “Oh, he wont give the white kids higher than a C-, its the lowest grade he can give without having to cite a reason.  Hes bragged about it” (she knew him on a personal level, like been-to-his-house-for-dinner personal).  So I ripped the paper up and never went back to his class and just let him fail me for attendance.  It was the first class I ever failed.

The entire time I was trying to learn, I was treated like an outsider.  This was not the BSU or the African Heritage Society or any place where I should have been treated any different than any other student (those places would have been well right to reject me as those are not my spaces).  This was an entry-level classroom, but to the professor I did not belong there even though I paid the same tuition as my classmates.  Every question was treated as hostile.  Every mistake was a personal insult. Ive seen the same thing happen in my women’s lit classes or feminist-related sociology classes done to male students, although I can only speak to my own experiences, its distressing for EVERYBODY in the room, not just the person the professor targets.  

If you are in a classroom in good faith willing to learn, you belong in that classroom.  Professors who act otherwise do nothing but scare people who want to learn away from knowledge (I was afraid to take any classes that overlapped with the Black Studies department after that until my senior year when I took a literature class that overlapped, which was lovely and I learned a lot because the professor was interested in teaching).  There are clubs, student unions, etc that are wonderful to serve as a safe space and a space that excludes those outside of the community but the classroom, where we all pay the same to be, can NOT be a “safe space”.  Classrooms, if anything, should be a DANGEROUS space full of ideas and feedback that threaten the world view you walked in with.

IDK mostly this is just venting about a shitty professor because Im tweaking but yeah him and this lady I took a “women in drama” class with were two of the worst professors in existence and you shouldn’t take pride in making somebody afraid to learn.  IDK.  I feel like these kind of classes can really bring out abusive personality types because it is somehow implicit that there are some students you are allowed to abuse and take the high road if you get called on it (a MAN complaining about his FEMALE teacher in a class on WOMEN automatically looks bad).  IDK.  Abusive teachers are real and do real damage.

[crystalelemental]

Earlier this week, I had a post about getting annoyed whenever all of ABA is listed as inherently bad.  Apparently in the brief discussion to follow, there was some level at which it seemed like people may only be acquainted with the reasons to dislike, or the reasons to approve.  I talked about doing this, and finally I’m gonna do it.  I wanted to give a (hopefully) detailed explanation of ABA, what it is, what its benefits can be, and yes, why there are people who hate it so much.  Because the concerns and hate are legitimate.

So, what is ABA, for those who don’t know?  ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is, at its core, just a technology to enact behavioral change.  It’s a collection of tools and strategies that can be used to adapt the behavior of organisms, as well as theories about how behaviors are learned or unlearned in the first place.  Common things you may already be familiar with, such as all the talk about positive reinforcement in schools these days, stems from ABA.

The problems with ABA Perhaps counter to my point, let’s start with the downsides.  Those being...we’re talking about a technology that can adapt behaviors.  Almost any behaviors, of almost anything.  You can probably already guess that one major concern is that someone familiar with these skills would have a very easy time with getting what they want out of others, no matter what.

The toughest thing about behavior modification is that the strategies often work regardless of whether the individual is aware of what’s going on or not.  You don’t necessarily need to know or understand that you’re specifically giving more attention for doing what you want them to do.  That’s where it gets dangerous.  For those who play them, think about a gacha game.  You’re drawn in by pretty rapid reinforcement, and as they lower the available rewards over time, you start to need to pay to keep up.  If you’re invested, you’ve probably spent money.  This leads to a rapid increase in payments as you get more comfortable with the behavior, and the demands of keeping pace increase.  I’m aware of all of this, and yet I still pay in.  Knowing the strategies and how they operate does not inherently stop them from working.  Which leads to the worst part.  Strategies can work with or without the consent of the person whose behavior is being targeted.

This is why ethics is so important in ABA, and why I think knowing only behavioral strategies can be so dangerous.  ABA is marketed strongly as something useful especially for developmental disabilities and autism.  But sometimes you’ll get people all too eager to say yes, we can change any kind of behavior, and think that it’s in any way a good idea to try to make strategies to stop all forms of stimming.  What it essentially comes down to is taking a technology that works unfettered by what a person believes or wants, and combine that with society’s general dismissiveness of neurodivergence.  If you’re unfamiliar with controversies around the field, if you ever want to know about how bad it can get, go ahead and look up some stuff about the Judge Rottenburg Center.  Everyone I’ve ever met in the field will use this as a primary example of why our code of ethics exist, and why it’s damn important to follow it.  Because you’re using something that can get out of hand really fast, and can quickly shift from behavior change in the interests of the individual, to behavior change of the individual to benefit others.  And that is absolutely not what you’re supposed to be doing.

So are there actually positives? How many of you here have, like me, looked at your sedentary lifestyle and decided hey, maybe I don’t want to die of cardiac arrest before 40, I should probably work out more!  But you hate working out.  So, you set something up, like if you go to the gym three times in a week, you can get yourself something nice, like a nice meal out or a day where all chores are put on hold.  Congratulations, you’re using ABA.

How many of you are parents, or have had parents, who have said things like “You can eat cookies after you finish dinner” or “You can go outside to play after you finish your homework?”  All of us, because that’s considered a facet of good parenting?  That’s using ABA (Premack Principle).

ABA thrives off of these positive changes as well.  Any time you’ve wanted to change your own behavior, I would argue that there has been at least an element of behavior techniques in play.  Just willing yourself to do things that are awful often isn’t enough.  That’s the limitation of cognitive approaches; not everything is accomplished just by talking things over, thinking about it really strongly, or wanting it.  Sometimes, behavioral inertia gets in the way, and ABA principles help overcome those.

In general, we always want to focus on reinforcement.  Behavior doesn’t occur in a vacuum; it’s the direct result of the environment we’re in and previous learning history.  If a behavior exists, somewhere along the line, it was getting a need met.  Maybe that’s happening now, maybe it happened in the past but the history is so salient that it carries over when it’s no longer needed.  Whatever the case, reinforcement has to take priority, because punishment doesn’t work independently.  Punishment can only suppress a behavior, but suppose you suppress the only behavior getting a need met.  Hypothetically, let’s say a child shouts obscenities to gain adult attention.  Obviously, you don’t want the kid swearing in front of their peers in elementary school, so you want to get that to stop.  Punishment may - and I do emphasize may - get the behavior to stop.  But even if it does work, there’s nothing to replace it.  Adults that just want a kid to be quiet and punish to silence wind up with kids who are quiet around them, but completely open all the time in other settings.  It only works when the person doing the punishing is present, and there’s nothing to replace that behavior in all other settings.  Reinforcement teaches an alternative, and so the best strategy is to provide another way to meet that need, make sure it’s constantly provided for the behavior, and prevent the target behavior from occurring.  So in this scenario, teaching a way to start a conversation with someone and providing as much attention as possible for following through, while simultaneously removing attention for the screaming obscenities, will yield way better results than punishment.

That said, any strategy used requires the consent and permission of the individual.  When it’s someone working on themselves, it’s always allowed, and even highly beneficial, though I personally find it’s helpful to have someone else in charge of the reinforcement delivery.  When I do it myself, I often pull a Frog and Toad, and remember I can just do whatever I want and who can stop me?

When it’s an adult working with a child, it’s trickier.  Often, consent comes from the parent or guardian, who makes the determination of whether something’s worth doing or not.  Sometimes, as it turns out, parents or guardians are not the best judges.  They may not know much about disabilities or what can and cannot be appropriately modified.  In these cases, you really need to weigh the benefits to the child.  In particular, I often find with my job as a school psych, that behavior plans are more about reframing how the teacher considers the student.  I can’t fix autism and ADHD, nor would I want to.  But often, the behaviors they want to stop are just...a part of the disability.  I can’t get a student with ADHD to just sit quietly and listen for hours, and even if I could, there’s a good chance they’re going out of their minds and not actually picking up anything you’re saying.  It’s far more beneficial here to work on reframing the teacher’s mindset.  You need to provide fidget toys to keep them occupied instead of running around the room.  You need to make peace with the idea that, if they’re showing you they can complete the work, then they’re attending whether perfect eye contact is provided or not.  Sometimes the problem in a dynamic isn’t the behavior of the individual you’re asked to work on.  Sometimes, the problem is with the one asking for the change, who doesn’t want to make needed concessions, and it’s part of our job to acknowledge that and convince the adult in control what they need.  When we’re able to accept that some behaviors are just...completely harmless and not that big a deal, and teach people how to accommodate those different needs while making the needed behaviors more reinforcing, we can help to build a more positive-focused society.

Gray Areas That’s not to say it’s always so easy, though.  Sometimes, consent is impossible to obtain directly from the individual we’re asked to work with.  Sometimes, consent may need to be overridden.  Here’s what I mean:

Suppose you have a non-verbal child who is self-injurious.  For whatever reason, they’ll just start slamming their head against the floor as hard as they can.  This is recurring, happens multiple times per day, and aside from the stress it causes caretakers, it’s actively dangerous for the individual.  Should you employ techniques to stop it?  On the one hand, the individual is getting a need met this way, has no shown desire to change, and cannot communicate one way or the other.

This one’s a bit easier.  I feel like everyone’s able to acknowledge that this is a dangerous situation, and the individual needs to stop to avoid life-long injury, or possibly death.  It’s in their best interests regardless, and for such dangerous situations, you have to take into account what’s really benefiting the individual.

Now let’s talk about a much harder one.  Eye contact for people with autism is a big one that ABA pushes.  The ability to establish and maintain eye contact is a pretty big thing in western society, even in ways it shouldn’t be.  We use it to determine if someone is listening, as a means to show you care about the other person, as a metric of honesty (despite it not being directly tied to honesty).  Lack of eye contact can impact relationships, potentially job prospects, and given the honesty portion, can set someone up to get into a lot more trouble than they should be solely because of how authority figures can be.  But, eye contact is uncomfortable for most people with autism.  Moreover, they may hate the idea of establishing eye contact, while at the same time being upset that adults are always getting them in trouble for things they didn’t do because they assume dishonesty.  Although they dislike it, is it right to adjust their behavior for long-term benefits?

Personally, I say no.  At least, not with the information that’s been delivered.  I think it’s a good skill to teach, but I also feel like, in most scenarios, this is where cognitive-behavioral therapy is a better approach, because you can make those connections of “Eye contact means you’re being honest to people” and they may come around to the idea that, although uncomfortable, it’s necessary to meet what they want: staying out of trouble.

It’s an unfortunate reality that we live in a society, and society means certain rules are established that may not be entirely fair.  It is also an unfortunate aspect of reality that, while changing people to be more accepting is always the ideal, that change is very slow and does little to help those in the here and now.  Is it then acceptable to only push for society to adjust expectations and potentially let some individuals slip through the cracks now because everyone should just be accepting?  Is it acceptable to only change each individual’s behavior to be more aligned with “typical” behavior, while not addressing the underlying concerns?  Of course not.  Both, I feel, need to be addressed.  We absolutely must push for a more understanding society that benefits everyone, but we also need to recognize this isn’t a change that happens overnight, and the more we can do to help people meet their needs, the better.  But it must always come down to whether we are helping the individual meet their needs, never simply trying to remove what others consider a problem.

I honestly do think this is an area that causes a lot of contention.  Because people, as a whole, never want to believe that their behavior needs to change.  It’s always preferable to have things around us change.  Sometimes it needs to, but won’t.  I think it’s well-intentioned to teach those skills that are needed to thrive, but I also think it’s necessary to ensure that, whenever possible, the individual is aware of why that skill is important and has an invested interest in changing.

Conclusions I hope I’ve articulated all of this well enough.  I am admittedly really sick, and probably should hold off until I’m a little more lucid, but with my car being essentially dead and having a lot going on, this is about the only time I’ll get in the next few weeks to do this.  So, here you go.

If anyone has questions, feel free to reach out.  I can answer quick questions a lot faster than I can write up major responses.  If you disagree with everyone and want to send hatemail, I accept that too!  Won’t always respond, but it’s really the thought that counts.  Hopefully this has at least helped those unfamiliar with the field form their own opinions, those opposed to the field understand where we’re coming from with its benefits, and those who appreciate the field come to better recognize the importance of ethical practice and keeping our actions focused on the individual.

[soulvomit]

The female face of technological job loss. Nobody fucking cares!

NOBODY talks about how so much national productivity loss is specifically female productivity, how much social mobility loss is specifically female, and nobody talks about how the living wage jobs left to women require college education. (Just as we only barely talk about the racial and cultural politics and cissexist politics of industrial and trades work.) Just as we don’t talk about the fact that we also refuse to provide the conditions that would grow a labor force of trained STEM workers, which I suspect would take about 25 years because it would require growing them from the ground up! We would have to have massive overhauls to our social support system to produce the STEM labor force that other countries produce.  EVEN FEMINISTS ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS. I’m not even sure *intersectional feminists* talk about it. I suspect that we just don’t care and that it’s another area where American culture hates a particular group of people so much that it’s willing to fuck over everyone else just to keep that one group from ever having anything. Our system didn’t just turn working class white men against everyone else, it also turned them against women. I suspect that white American culture hates women and POC and immigrants so much that we’re willing to completely yank away our educational system just to keep these people out of the workforce. Pressuring women to go into traditionally male jobs (which are the only non-professional-class jobs left that pay a living wage) seems logical and practical, but to limit the analysis to that, misses the point. The whole system is broken. Even nursing, which has long been seen as the female parallel of skilled trade, suffers this given that you have to go to college. You don’t apprentice your way into being an RN. The requirements for entering the field have gotten higher and higher and the competition more and more fierce for entering those schools. So basically, what most women are actually left with, in the end, is service and domestic work. Which has a role in keeping us dependent on traditionalist men. Probably by design, when you consider that the same culture doesn’t want to provide child care. The culture wants to keep a handful of “ideal breeding stock” women barefoot and pregnant, and to starve the rest of us out. Part of the propaganda that a greater majority of white middle class people seem to swallow, is that middle class women didn’t work before the 1970s, and working class women and WOC just weren’t even worth talking about, I suppose. Working class white men are prioritized in these analyses, as if the only jobs and activities that are worthwhile are ones that are traditionally held by either upper middle class white men or working class white men. The reality is that in creating a feeding frenzy for trade and STEM jobs, we’re being pushed into the last economically viable jobs left, to compete with men, and eventually those sectors will die out, too. And women in general, and POC, will be blamed for killing those professions. Oh and for that matter, disabled people are losing a lot of workforce access too. All of this focus on jobs that only able bodied, neurotypical people can do, is really short sighted. My polio survivor, wheelchair using grandmother worked in office and clerk jobs for most of her adult life. It wasn’t easy, and she was an activist on behalf of what became the ADA. But in today’s job market, could she have competed with able-bodied, much more formally educated people *AT ALL* for the few paid office jobs left?  When I say “few,” you’re going to point out that you know xyz person who is an administrative worker. But I want to point out that it was a whole sector, in the 1980s and before. When was the last time that you actually saw a typing pool?  I’m not saying that women shouldn’t go into trade and STEM fields. They should - if they want to. And get equal pay. AND you should also be able to support yourself doing other things! Nobody ever got rich being a teacher or secretary, but in the 1980s most teachers *could* at least afford their own apartment, and administrative jobs were actually much more common and much lower competition than they are now.   But let’s talk about history. We can’t imagine what life was like before the industrial age labor force, before the job market.  We talk about the male jobs lost to the invention of mass production and the computer. (And the many jobs gained, as well - for middle and upper class men.) But we don’t talk about the independent businesswomen put out of business by the factory, whose work was replaced with sweatshop labor. We don’t talk about the female involvement in agriculture (and you will see this if you’re in a region that actually has family or independent farms) - being a farm wife, didn’t just mean that you had married a farmer. We don’t talk about the office jobs that were lost to computer and software innovations. When was the last time that you saw a typing pool? I bet you’ve never seen one. I bet you know very few professional clerical workers.  We don’t talk about how the health industry is being impacted by the loss of virtually every traditionally female profession, since it’s really the one thing left for so many of us and now there is intense competition and there are increasing levels of privilege required to enter what were formerly “working class” status jobs. And looking back even deeper into time, we don’t talk about the lost productivity of women craftspeople and healers and midwives or how massive religious institutions and centralized imperial governments were the original disruptors, the original big box stores. We don’t talk about traditional female crafts no longer even being economically sustainable. “Kids moving to the city to get jobs, away from the traditional business” is always framed as a lifestyle choice and not an economic necessity. Of course I feel like women should be able to do trades and STEM work, and get equal pay for it. But we should be do practically anything else, too, and society needs all of those other professions to exist.  Every technological and social disruption that impacted men, impacted women first. And we never talk about it. I’m not saying we should go back to the Stone Age, ffs. This is not a luddite analysis. I direct a lot of this specifically at the Anglophone world, let alone the US. But we really need to talk about this, going forward. We have been among the canaries in this coal mine the entire time. The same things that happen to us, eventually happen to male dominated industries as well. We only talk about these things when they happen to white men, so there has been a lot of talk about the jobs that are being lost to white men. All of this has been happening to women, throughout history. Nobody paid attention. Nobody fucking cared.