#which i think is part of why this an important shift happening in scholarship specifically right now

[undaughtered]

i think this is controversial but i do legitimately think (and this trend is starting to emerge, very slowly but very surely, in religious and theological studies, especially among scholars of comparative religion) that judaism can wrestle christianity back from christians on some level. not practically, obviously, but it is really is about time christianity was reappropriated by the people it has been used to oppress including and perhaps most especially jewish people. not in a messianic way, obviously, but in the sense that jesus as a historical figure was a jew, a jew who loved his religion and culture passionately, and the jesus movement was, long before it was christian, a jewish movement.

[mornyavie]

Glossary of references in The Bifrost Incident

 It’s Very Long and yet also not really complete. If there are any questions / clarifications I can add, or I’ve messed anything up and need to fix it, let me know!

The tl;dr is that nearly every word in the album draws from either Norse mythology or the Lovecraft / Cthulhu mythos, directly or indirectly.

@moony221b here’s that glossary that I promised forever and a day ago.

Edit: I decided to create this document of annotations (x). Lyrics taken from Genius; I’m not totally sure how accurate they are, but hopefully they help get the point across! Again, questions and complaints both welcome.

Arcomba

I can’t find anything on this, would be interested if someone knows.

Asgard

One of the Nine Worlds, specifically the one where most of the Æsir (the subset of gods most associated with humans, including the well-known ones like Thor and Odin) live.

Thus Asgard is the planet on which the most powerful inhabitants of the Yggdrasil system, and those named after the gods, are found (though the subjugation / colonization relationship does not exist in myth).

Azathoth

This one’s from Lovecraft; Azathoth is the greatest of the Outer Gods, often served and worshiped by other gods themselves. Often described as mad, a demon, a sultan, or putting it all together as the Mad Demon Sultan. Resides at “the center of the universe,” where he appears as some sort of vast, amorphous, bubbling, roiling mass of “nuclear chaos.” (Nuclear probably refers to center, not nuclear power, which didn’t really exist when this was written). Servants about him play drums and flutes.

Mentioned briefly as the train travels through the Bifrost and into his realm, and a lot of the narration in those few verses draws directly from Lovecraft’s descriptions.

Baldur

The god of light and beloved by all, Baldr was killed by Loki in his final betrayal of the gods. After the murder Loki was tracked down and imprisoned, and will escape at the start of Ragnarok. In particular, Loki used a spear made of mistletoe... or, in the album, missile two. And tricked another god into throwing it, which I think is mimicked in the distance and impersonality of the crime. Look up more of his story if you want, it’s interesting and important, but that’s the relevant info here.

Bifrost

The rainbow bridge that the gods use to travel between worlds. 

Which is, of course, directly analogous to the wormhole-ish extradimensional-ish space of “shifting, undulating hues” through which the train travels.

Edda

The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are the names given to two pieces of literature that are most people’s main source for Norse mythology. The Prose Edda was written by Snorri Sturluson around 1200 to teach his (mostly Christian) contemporaries about the mythology and mythological references that made up a big chunk of Norse literature. The Poetic Edda is a set of poems that serve as a major source for Norse tales.

This is partially just a way to connect our hero Lyfrassir Edda to the Norse traditions, but also definitely a reference to their (presumed) role as the main “recorder” and source of information to get out of the Yggdrasil system.

Fate

Honestly the way the Mechanisms deal with fate in general is very interesting and arguably sometimes quite Nordic... but in particular, Bifrost Incident references fate or destiny a number of times and features a number of situations where the outcome is fixed and can’t be changed, but you have to fight anyways: “Killing me won’t save your world” “I don’t care” or how Loki and Sigyn can’t stop the train, but can only delay it. A lot of Norse tragedy revolves around people heading into battle knowing that they’re doomed and fighting anyways, or around the cycle of conflict that marked the cultural requirements for avenging insults. And the myth cycle is notable for the fact that the gods know, explicitly, exactly what Ragnarok is, what’s going to happen, and how they’re going to die, but will fight in it anyways. 

Inevitability and helplessness in the face of what you can’t possibly understand, let alone fight, which is a depiction slightly sideways of the Nordic version, are very Lovecraftian themes.

Fenrir

A wolf, child of Loki and father of Skoll and Hati, who was chained by the gods (particularly by Tyr, who placed his hand in the wolf’s mouth as “hostage” to assure him they would unchain him later, and lost the hand). He will break free at Ragnarok to join the battle against them and kill Odin.

With his association with monsters and with Loki, it’s fairly clear why he was aligned with the resistance movement. He’s serving “five life sentences” as a reference to his being chained, and the whole motif of the train’s journey being hijacked for a prison break certainly references the various characters who will be freed or break free as Ragnarok begins.

Frey

The brief reference of Frey being killed by the raging fire of the sun, with “no weapon, no defense,” is a direct translation of the god’s role in Ragnarok, when he will be killed by Surtr. Frey gave away his sword for the opportunity to woo his eventual wife, and so will be armed only with a stag’s antlers in his final combat. Also called Freyr.

Freya (“weeps tears of red-gold”)

Like her brother Frey (and yeah, these names get confusing), Freya is associated with harvest and fertility, though unlike him she also gets battle. In the song she weeps red-gold tears at the death of her husband Odr, which in myth she is said to do when her husband is absent. Also called Freyja.

Garm

Garm is another wolf, who guards Hel’s gates. He also breaks free at Ragnarok, and his howling heralds its coming. As in the album, he will fight and kill Tyr. Also called Garmr.

Hati

There’s a lot of wolves in Norse mythology. This one is a child of Fenrir. He chases the moon across the sky, and will swallow it when Ragnarok comes.

Mentioned briefly only as one of the resistance members on the train.

Heimdall

Heimdall is the watchman of the gods, with keen eyes and foresight, and guards the Bifrost as the entrance to Asgard. He will blow his horn to summon the gods to the final battle during Ragnarok, and he and Loki will kill one another. Also called Heimdallr; you’re probably noticing a pattern. It’s a grammar thing.

Mentioned as guarding the train and “doing his part.” His dying screams initiate the train’s destruction and echo throughout it, which presumably recalls the horn thing.

Hel

Another daughter of Loki, and, as the name will imply to English speakers, a guardian of the dead. She refuses to give Baldur back to the world of the living after Loki kills him. Also the name of the realm in which she resides, and to which go those who die of disease or old age. Doesn’t necessarily have the same bad-punishment connotation as modern Hell. I don’t know whether there’s any indication of what she herself is doing in Ragnarok, but many of her people and associates are certainly fighting against the gods, and I’m fairly certain the ship Naglfar, which carries Loki and his allies to Ragnarok, sets sail from Hel.

Hel as a prison colony clearly references the various characters the gods have chained or otherwise imprisoned (though, in myth, not all within Hel) as well as her alignment with “other side” during Ragnarok, and the jailbreak the resistance members are planning recalls the breaking of all these bonds as Ragnarok begins.

Hoddmimis

The woods in which Líf and Lífþrasir (see Lyfrassir) will shelter to survive Ragnarok and the various disasters accompanying it. 

So, good news! We can be marginally assured of Lyfrassir’s survival after taking shelter at the mining-colony of Hoddmimis.

Jormungandr

The world serpent, which lives in the seas and encircles the earth. Will arise during Ragnarok, causing great floods, and fight Thor; Thor will slay the serpent, but in turn the serpent’s poison will cause his death, after he staggers “nine steps back.”

Thor’s fight with Odin-turned-serpent is pretty clearly analogous to this, especially the taking nine steps to the window before destroying it with his hammer, resulting in both their deaths. I don’t think there’s any mythological basis to Odin turning into the serpent, though

Kvasir (“blood drained out”)

Kvasir was a very wise man/god and the originator of poetry. I’m leaving out a fair amount of his birth and life; the important information here is that two dwarves who were jealous of his knowledge tricked him, killed him, drained his blood, and mixed it with honey to make mead. Any who drank of the mead gained the gift of poetry / scholarship; eventually the gods stole it.

I’m not sure if there’s a reason they decided to specifically describe him as a resistance member, but there’s a clear parallel in Kvasir’s blood being drained and used to power the train, especially with the language of glyphs and sigils providing power.

Loki

Ah, Loki. Male in the general canon, though not without genderbending (he turns into a mare and gives birth to Fenrir, Hel, and Jormungandr, for instance). Inasmuch as the Norse myths we have can be organized into a “chronology,” you could do it (in my opinion) along Loki’s path from a mostly benevolent trickster god whose antics occasionally cause trouble to a genuinely malevolent figure. Associated with wit, magic, and trickery. Despite how modern lore (I suspect influenced by Marvel) often portrays Thor and Loki as brothers and children of Odin, in the myth Loki and Odin are bonded as blood-brothers. But Loki also often appears alongside Thor. As mentioned, parent of three of the main figures of Ragnarok. In the “final” myth, he jealously arranges the death of the god Baldr, who was loved by all; then he appears at a feast, where he exchanges insults with the other gods. This is the last straw; they capture him and chain him to a stone, over which they tie a serpent. Venom drips from the serpent’s fangs, causing him great agony. His wife Sigyn stays by his side, catching the venom in a bowl, but when she is forced to leave for a moment to dump it out his thrashing causes earthquakes. He will break free at the start of Ragnarok and sail to Asgard, where he and Heimdall will kill each other.

Hopefully that’s enough to give you a good background for Loki’s role in the album... it’s pretty clear why she’s framed as the opposition to the gods and the “leader” of the resistance movement, as a call to her role in Ragnarok. Her association with magic and trickery make sense for her being the “expert” in the twisted Lovecraftian “science” that produces the train. It also parallels her role in myth; her actions often get the gods into trouble, but they just as often need her wit and knowledge to get them out of it, as Odin needs her knowledge despite her taking action to destroy the train. And the setup at the end - drip, drip, drip, her face twisted in pain, her wife beside her, her “release” heralding the end of the world - precisely echoes the language of her bondage in myth; though her mind-destroying imprisonment by Odin also invokes this.

Lovecraft(ian)

A highly influential horror writer from the early 20th century. He’s largely credited with the creation of the creation of the “cosmic horror” genre, a type of horror which emphasises a vast, unknowable, uncaring universe against which we cannot hope to even begin to fight. His ideas and the gods / demons / creatures he created form the basis of the “Cthulhu mythos” or even “Lovecraft mythos,” which today is a sort of standard set of assumptions on which writers can build. Lovecraftian themes of apocalypse, inevitability, and powerlessness are highly prevalent in the album. Several of the gods in this mythos are used; in particular, Yog-Sothoth (see below). Also, a lot of the general description (madness, roiling chaos, undulating colors) draws from his distinctive vocabulary that remains staple of the genre. It’s worth noting that Lovecraft was a horrible and very racist person, but the genre today is widely used by people who are not terrible.

Lyfrassir

Líf and Lífþrasir in Norse mythology are the two humans who will survive Ragnarok and rebuild humanity; a hopeful sign for our album’s protagonist!

Midgard

In Norse mythology, the “middle” world where humans live. Earth.

Nagthrod

I don’t know this one.

@acorn-mushroom pointed out that it may be a mis-transcription of Naglfar, the name of the (ocean) ship which will carry Loki and his followers from the shores of Hel to the battlefield at Ragnarok. It’s made of dead men’s nails.

Odin

The king of the gods in Norse mythology. As the god of both wisdom and madness, Odin’s role in the album as a researcher and technological ruler whose discoveries drive her slowly mad is both very Lovecraftian and a reasonable leap. I could say a lot about the figure of Odin, but I think this character is one of the most divergent from the myth, in detail if not in role.

Odr

Óðr is Freya’s husband.

Outer gods

A Lovecraft thing referring to several of the most horrible and powerful gods, including Yog-Sothoth.

Ragnarok

The apocalypse, basically, in Norse mythology. Proceeded by various catastrophes, especially a very long winter, mentioned in the album, culminating in a great battle between the gods and their enemies, and resulting in the death of the majority of gods and other creatures of the world.

Ratatosk

A squirrel who runs up and down Yggdrasil, carrying messages between some of the tree’s other inhabitants and sowing discord. The Ratatosk Express links the worlds of the Yggdrasil System, and causes “discord” in the resistance’s opposition to it.

Sigyn

Loki’s wife. See Loki for her role in his imprisonment.

Skoll

Sköll in Norse mythology is the wolf that chases and will someday eat the sun. Association with Fenrir (another wolf) and other monsters motivates his inclusion in the list of resistance members.

Thor

A Norse god, associated with war, lightning/thunder, strength, and in general sort of... common people, as opposed to Odin’s association with kings and royalty. Prone to anger, which makes sense with his depiction as a volatile military leader in the album. He is heavily associated with his hammer mjölnir, hence jokes about “throwing a hammer in the works” and whatnot. Often associates with Loki, both as friends and as enemies as Loki progresses from a mostly-harmless trickster to actively opposing the other gods; thus how in the album he and Loki were once friends. See above for his death fighting Jormungandr.

Tyr

Another Norse god associated with war. He sacrificed a hand to bind Fenrir, and will be killed by Garmr during Ragnarok, both events referenced in the album.

Yggdrasil

The world-tree of Norse mythology, which supports the nine worlds of the cosmology. 

Yog-Sothoth

An Outer God of Lovecraftian mythos; also called the Gate and Key. It is associated as sort of the substance of time and space, binding together the cosmos. A lot of the description during the Ragnarok sequences draws directly from the “canonical” descriptions of this deity, and the invocation spoken by Lyfrassir in Red Signal draws from a story about this creature, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

[peterparkrr]

Father & Son

By @peterparkrr for @ephemeralstark (I loved all of your prompts! I tried to combine them! I really hope you enjoy <3)

@friendly-neighborhood-exchange

Rating: Teen

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, James Rhodes & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: James Rhodes, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, other Avengers briefly

Summary: Rhodey’s certain about two things. The kid is definitely Tony’s son. The kid is also Spider-Man OR Rhodey meets Peter and tries to become the best uncle that he can be.

ao3 link

There’s a boy standing in front of Tony’s couch.

Rhodey stares at him, narrowing his eyes a little. The kid’s frozen in an almost comical position, legs spread wide, one hand swung in front of his body like he knew that someone was coming and tried to make an unsuccessful quick escape.

“Who are you?” Rhodey asks.

The boy blinks once and then lowers his arms slowly until they are hanging limp at his sides. He turns and cranes his neck to try to look down the hallway. When he faces Rhodey again, there’s an uneasy smile on his face—not unkind or shifty, just unsure.

“Er, hi, Colonel Rhodes.” He taps his foot a few times, then glances over his shoulder again. “How are you?”

Rhodey tilts his head to the side. The boy’s voice is familiar. He’s definitely heard it before, but can’t quite place it.

“I’m doing well.” He leaves a pause between each word as he takes a few equally slow steps across the room. “Who—”

“That’s good. Really good. I’m good, too, but actually—” The kid starts shoving the assortment of notebooks, pencils, and loose paper scattered on the table in front of the couch into his backpack and then points toward the hallway. “I should go. So you can, you know, use the room.”

He’s from New York, that much Rhodey can tell. The accent isn’t obnoxious, but it’s definitely clear. Tony probably bumped into him at a scholarship event, or even just on the street outside, and decided to recruit him into his little collection.

It wouldn’t be the first time. There’s one in Tennessee that gets a ridiculous amount of presents on Christmas and some time in the Spring (when Rhodey assumes is his birthday). Then there’s the kid-genius at MIT that Tony waved through a bit of legal trouble after she got caught in an Iron Man-type suit of her own design. Rhodey’s met her a few times, when visiting the campus with Tony. There’s also the spandex-clad wonder who helped out at the airport last year. And that was definitely a kid, no matter how many times Tony dances around Spider-Man’s age. Rhodey knows the difference between a child’s and a man’s voice. It was far too high, almost squeaky at times, enthusiastic and—Rhodey glances at the kid in front of him now—an unmistakable New York accent.

A hand comes down on the kid’s shoulder and he jumps, just a little bit too high.

“Woah there, just me,” Tony says, squeezing once before looking across the room at Rhodey and quirking an eyebrow. “Well, well, well, look who finally decided to drop in.”

“I have to work, Tones. I have a real job. Not everyone has a multi-billion dollar company to pawn off on their girlfriend.”

“That’s—not exactly accurate. Pepper likes responsibilities. It’s a gift.” Tony looks Rhodey up and down, analytical, like he always does these days. He stops at his legs and clicks his tongue. “Braces. Any adjustments? I’ve got a new set downstairs. Should be even more intuitive.”

The kid’s staring at them, too. There’s a very specific combination of interest and guilt etched into his features that Rhodey usually finds on Tony’s face. In fact, it’s also there now, albeit a little more concealed.

“You don’t have to keep doing this. They’ve been perfect for months.”

“Functional, yes. Awesome, maybe. Nowhere near perfect yet. But they will be soon. I’ve got an assistant now.”

Tony sticks his hand in the boy’s hair and smooshes it down, almost absentmindedly, before shoving his whole head to the side. The kid’s reaction is delayed, as if he forces his head to move rather than naturally rocking with the impact of Tony’s hand.

“Well, part-time assistant. Glorified coffee-fetcher.” Tony waves a hand at the kid, who only seems mildly affronted by the ‘coffee-fetcher’ thing. “This is Peter, by the way. I’m glad you’re here, Rhodes. Been meaning to introduce you two.”

Rhodey’s eyes linger on Tony’s hand. It settles on Peter’s shoulder and stays there. The whole thing is natural, like that’s a typical place for it to be. As if this boy—Peter—is comfortable with it there. But it’s more than comfortable, because Peter’s looking at Tony like he’s maybe the most important person in the world. It’s not the usual idolization that Tony tends to get either. This is deeper, like they know each other, really know each other. They’ve both got matching lop-sided grins and if Rhodey squints, that’s not where the similarities end.

Every person Rhodey knows has a story—or fifty—of when Tony has said or done something that has rendered a whole room silent. He has a knack for it. Just like he has a knack for getting on people’s nerves and creating some, admittedly, cool gadgets.

It doesn’t happen to Rhodey as often these days. You know a guy for thirty plus years and it becomes hard for them to shock you.

But now, all Rhodey can do is gape, eyes shifting back and forth between the pair in front of him.

Tony’s smile fades into something more concerned, a by-product of whatever he must be reading from the surprise on Rhodey’s face.

Then the elevator door opens. This time, Peter isn’t the only one to jump, they all startle and turn towards it at once, like they'd been caught at the scene of a crime rather than merely standing in Tony's living room.

Sam and Steve walk out of the elevator, engrossed in conversation. It stops short when they realize that the room isn’t empty.

“Tony, James.” Steve nods, then his eyes widen when they reach Peter. “Oh, hello.”

Sam squints at them. “Who’s the child?”

From the look on his face, Peter takes more offense to that than anything Tony said about his role in the lab.

Tony sniffs and shrugs, shifting his body an almost imperceptible amount so that he’s a half a step in front of Peter. His stance is pseudo-relaxed, something clearly defensive in the tension in his shoulders. Rhodey takes it as a cue and also moves, just a little bit, to try to obscure Peter as much as possible.

Things are better now than they were last year. The team’s back together—no hard feelings, for the most parts, but trust is hard to regain.

“This is Peter. Intern.” Tony elbows him. “Look, it’s Captain America and the Falcon. Aren’t you starstruck?”

“Oh! Yeah—so cool.” Peter starts to salute then winces and crosses his arms. “Mr. Falcon, Mr. America. It’s an honor.”

Steve’s eyebrows are furrowed in that particular way—’constipated puppy’, Tony likes to call it. Rhodey has to agree. Although, he thinks Tony finds it sort of charming, which is where Rhodey draws the line. It would be cute on a toddler, not so much on a grown man. “Why is an intern in your penthouse, Tony?”

“I missed the part where that was any of your business.”

“That’s not—I was just curious—”

“Well, don’t be.”

Peter starts to squirm uncomfortably. When Rhodey makes eye contact with him, he averts his gaze to the ground.

“Oh, okay. I get it,” Sam says, rubbing a hand over his chin. “He’s not really an intern, huh?”

Both Tony and Peter tense even further. Rhodey finds himself doing the same.

“Jesus, Stark, how old is he? Sixteen? Did you just meet him?”

“W-what?” Tony splutters.

“He’s your kid, right?”

Tony looks lost for a moment, then one of his bright, press smiles drifts onto his face. It always shows up when he's about to tell a lie, and suddenly the pieces all click into place in Rhodey's head.

Before Tony can speak, he steps forward, shoving Sam good-naturedly and shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous and you know it. No one would wait sixteen years to slap Tony Stark with a custody case.”

Peter peaks out from around Tony. "I'm seventeen!"

"Strengthens my argument," Rhodey says.

Sam snorts. “Then how do you explain Stark hanging out with a small child?”

“Small child,” Peter repeats in a murmur, lines creasing his forehead.

“He hangs out with quite a few small children,” Rhodey says.

Steve starts to look at Rhodey like he’s wandered into an alternate dimension, which isn’t too far of a leap given their particular line of work.

Sam just shrugs. “Somehow, that’s worse. Very strange.”

Tony frowns. “No—it’s—I’m a good mentor, right Pete?”

Peter beams up at him, smile so wide that Rhodey’s sure it must hurt. “Right.”

Rhodey’s certain about two things. The kid is definitely Tony’s son. The kid is also Spider-Man. How Tony managed to get himself a souped up child is beyond him (and he prays that it’s not Tony's own doing, a lab-experiment gone awry or even more terrifyingly gone right), but he hopes that he’ll learn the story one day. He’s an uncle now, after all.

~~~

Rhodey’s phone starts to ring, a picture of Tony flashing on the screen. Or, it’s a picture of a picture, really—an old one from college that’s framed at his mom’s house.

He grabs his phone from the nightstand and admires the image for a few seconds, reminiscing about simpler times, before picking up.

“H—”

“Rhodey! You haven’t heard from Happy recently, have you?”

He rolls his eyes. “Hello, Tony.”

“That’s my name. Heard from Happy? I can’t get a hold of him.”

Rhodey leans back in his bed, crossing one leg over the other. “Nope. You’re the mutual friend in this situation, you know. Happy and I don’t really hang out without you.”

Tony hums. There are muffled footsteps and Rhodey envisions him pacing.

“Why do you need Happy?”

“He’s supposed to drive Peter home.”

“What, are you—afraid of his mom or something?”

“Aunt,” Tony corrects.

“Aunt,” Rhodey echoes.

That’s something he didn’t see coming. He wonders if the poor kid lost his mom before knowing that his dad was Tony Stark. He wonders how Tony even found out about him. He almost asks, but bites his tongue. It seems like something that Tony should bring up when he’s ready.

“Aunt,” Tony confirms again.

“Alright, so just drive him to the aunt’s place. It can’t be that bad.”

There’s a long pause. “That’s not really what we do.”

“Oh come on, how scary can she—”

“And besides, the kid’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”

“Okay.” Rhodey tries to keep his voice calm and void of annoyance, because his Tony may be a genius, but he’s also the biggest idiot on the planet. And sometimes idiots need patience. It's his duty, both as a best friend, and a newly realized uncle, to provide that patience. “Then tell his aunt that he fell asleep and that he’s staying over for the night.”

The pause that follows is even longer than the last. There are more scuffling footsteps and then he whispers, “but he’s asleep in the lab. Laying on the desk.”

It shouldn’t be this difficult. Rhodey holds the phone away from him so that Tony won’t hear him sigh. “Then wake him up and tell him to head up to his room. Or put a suit on and carry him if you’re that worried about waking him up.”

“What?”

Rhodey counts to three. “Then wake him up and tell him to head up to his room. Or—”

“Room—he doesn’t have a room,” Tony interjects.

It’s Rhodey’s turn to hesitate. “Peter doesn’t have a room at the tower?”

“No,” Tony replies slowly. “Do you—you think he should have a room at the tower?”

Rhodey tries to come up with any possible reason that Tony would think that his son shouldn’t have a room at his place of residence. The only thing that comes to mind is daddy issues. He’s not even sure if that covers it.

“I’m going to take your silence as a yes?” Tony asks

If he needs logic and numbers, Rhodey will give him logic and numbers. Whatever it takes to spell it out to him.

“How many days does Peter spend at the tower?”

“Two—sometimes three. It depends.”

“Okay. Does he stay late often?”

“Yes. I told you, Happy drives him home.”

Rhodey rests his head in his free hand. The kid can’t have been in Tony’s life for much more than a year��either that or Rhodey’s severely lacking in the observation department—and somehow Tony’s managed to twist their relationship into something that defies any sense. Peter clearly adores him based on what Rhodey saw at the tower, and yet Happy’s carting him between his houses and he doesn’t even have a room at his dad’s place.

“I bet this isn’t the first time he’s fallen asleep while over at yours, right?”

Tony hums in agreement.

“So don’t you think it would be easier to have a room for him to crash in? And then it won’t be so much travel back and forth for the kid. It’s probably weird enough without all of that. He has a lot going on.”

“Yeah,” Tony murmurs. “You’re absolutely right. Okay. Room. FRIDAY? Jot that down. What would I do without you, Rhodey? You’re the light of my life. Have I told you that recently? Best thing to ever happen to me. I love you.”

Rhodey jabs at the end call button.

A text pops up a moment later. Rude of you to hang up when I’m being sentimental.

Rhodey pulls up the contact picture of the dorky little boy he used to share a dorm room with before typing back. I love you, idiot.

He receives a string of hearts a minute later.

~~~

Tony’s voice filters into Rhodey’s earpiece. “It’s not moving.”

Steve’s follows. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Tony answers. “I’m going closer.”

Rhodey watches him approach the metal orb. He looks like nothing more than a red dash from here, shooting across the New York skyline.

He glances to his left, where Spider-Man is standing, hands alternating between fiddling in front of his stomach and swinging at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He hasn’t been his usual chatterbox-self since Tony flew off to scout the sphere from up close.

Rhodey shakes his head. “Be careful. You’re making Spidey nervous.”

The red mask turns to him, eyes on it even wider than usual. “I’m not nervous!”

“Don’t get too close to it, Tony. We don’t know what it can do,” Steve adds.

The words are barely through the comms before the sphere shifts, a flash of green light shooting off its surface. Tony dives and rolls out of the way.

“Oops,” he says. “Made it angry.”

“It’s hostile,” Steve says.

“It’s impressive.” The red blur twists around and then flies closer to the orb again. “Unknown metal, FRIDAY can’t find a match. Dense, too. Shouldn’t be able to float like this with no propulsion. And smooth, laser came right off the surface, no—shit.”

Rhodey takes a step closer, even though it doesn’t do much to shorten the distance between him and Tony. “Shit?”

“It’s a diversion. You guys have to get to Manhattan. Something’s landed. Accounts say it appeared out of nowhere.”

A video pops up on Rhodey’s HUD. There’s a giant metal ship, the outside smooth like the orb, but it’s not spherical. There’s pavement torn up around either side of it and at least one car crushed beneath it, headlights sticking out from the debris. There are civilians running on the outskirts of the disturbance.

“We’re on it,” Steve says. “Tony, stay with the orb. Send for help if it tries anything funny.”

“Fine,” Tony replies after a few seconds. “Leave Underoos here, too.”

“Done. Everyone else, let’s go.”

“What? You guys wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t told you about the sphere!” Peter protests.

“Exactly,” Tony replies. “The sphere’s yours, so stay here and help me watch it. From the ground.”

“But Mr. Stark, that’s basically telling me to do nothing!”

“Bingo. Keeping you out of trouble.”

Peter crosses his arms over his chest, huffing in indignation.

Rhodey shoots Peter a sympathetic look. Then the full extent of the opportunity to gain Peter's favor dawns on him. “Sorry, kid. If it were up to me, I would let you come with us. Remember that, okay?”

"What," Peter says.

"Just, remember that." Rhodey turns to take off. "See you."

By the time they get to Manhattan, the scene has changed drastically from the footage. The ship has opened up, revealing countless robots in different shapes and sizes, all with the same smooth surfaces as the orb and the ship.

They get to work. It’s harder than it should be. Most of the guns on Rhodey's suit do nothing to the metal—only the strongest blasters inflict any damage. It’s nearly indestructible.

“Er—guys?” Peter’s voice breaks through the chaos. “Something’s—oh my god. Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark?”

Rhodey looks up. The orb is alight, a green haze surrounding it. Tony’s suit is nowhere near it. Rhodey scans the rest of the sky, catching a glimpse of it just before it disappears below the tops of buildings.

“Tony?” Rhodey tries.

There’s no response.

Someone curses over the airwaves.

“Spider-Man?” Steves says. “Do you have eyes on him?”

“It happened so fast,” Peter mumbles. “I saw where he fell. I’ll—I’ll get to him.”

Rhodey exchanges a glance with Steve. He bites his lip and glances back up at the sky, doing a double take when he realizes that the orb has disappeared.

“Hey, Steve.” Rhodey points. “It’s gone.”

“Spider-Man,” Steve says. “Where’d the orb go?”

When Peter's feed crackles into Rhodey’s ears, it’s filled with the staticky sounds of fast movement and heavy impacts.

“What’s up? Did someone say my name?” The kid asks, slightly out of breath. “Sorry, I’m a little busy.”

Steve looks at Rhodey, eyes wide through his mask. “What does that mean?”

There’s a sharp thwip over the comm’s and more scuffling, then silence. Rhodey can’t see Steve’s eyebrows under the mask, but he’s pretty sure if he could, they would be up to his hairline.

“I’m on it.” Before waiting for a response, Rhodey takes off. There’s no angry Steve voice on the comms, so he assumes that it’s the right move.

It takes him less than five minutes to find Peter. He’s tipped off by a trail of webs, hanging from buildings, leading him to an alley.

He lands a few feet away from it, peering inside. There are about a dozen orbs, like the giant one in the sky had split into pieces. Each is varying degrees of shattered or plastered to the wall by web lines that stretch across the alleyway like streamers. Rhodey swivels his head back and forth a few times before forcing himself to tear his eyes away.

Tony’s down—suit collapsed in an unceremonious pile. Peter’s pacing in front of him, clearly agitated, leaning over every few steps and murmuring something that Rhodey can’t quite make out.

He takes a step forward, ducking under one of the webs. “Hey. Alright over there?”

Peter’s head jerks to the side. His shoulders rise in a shrug and he looks back at Tony. “He isn’t moving. I hear his heartbeat though.”

Rhodey’s own heart clenches. He makes the rest of the way into the alley and crouches down next to Tony. He mutters a call for medical as quietly as he can, in an effort to keep Peter calm. It’s probably useless seeing as the kid just told him he can hear heartbeats.

Peter settles down next to him, brushing one hand over Tony’s suit.

“I also meant you,” Rhodey clarifies. “Are you alright? Looks like you had a handful here.”

Peter looks up at him, brow furrowed, until the state of the alley seems to sink in. He shrugs again. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m—er—pretty strong.”

Rhodey laughs. “Yeah. I got that.”

“I’m more worried about Mr. Stark.” Peter looks back down at him.

Rhodey double-checks that his comm’s are off and then brings his faceplate down. “You don’t have to do that, kid, I know.”

He freezes. “You—know—?”

“All of it,” Rhodey says carefully, before adding, “Peter.”

The kid flinches and scoots away. “Did Mr. Stark tell you?”

“Not exactly. It was just sort of—” ‘Obvious’ isn’t the right thing to say judging by the way Peter’s eyes are blinking rapidly, like a skittish, caged animal. “I figured it out. Look, I won’t tell anyone. But you can drop the whole ‘Mr. Stark’ thing in front of me.”

The nerves seep out of Peter, replaced by confusion. “What? I always call him ‘Mr. Stark’.”

Really, nothing about Tony’s handling of this situation should surprise Rhodey at this point. Somehow it still does. Tony always seems to defy expectations.

“He makes you call him ‘Mr. Stark?’” Rhodey tries to keep his voice as even and nonjudgemental as possible in case Tony decides to wake up, or Peter tells him about it later.

“Oh, no. He always tries to get me to call him something else. It just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

“Ah,” Rhodey says. It’s a relief. One less piece of sense that he’ll have to talk Tony into. “Yeah, I understand that. I bet it’s an adjustment—all of this.”

“A lot has changed in the last year and a half, Colonel Rhodes, let me tell you. Sometimes I think it’s a dream but—” Peter gestures up at the pattern of webs and then down at Tony.

“I bet.” Rhodey bites his lip, trying to decide whether to say more. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s made some mistakes. And he’ll probably make a couple more, but he’s a good guy. You can trust him.”

“I know that.” Peter’s response is automatic and sure. Rhodey can’t help but smile.

It’s possible that Tony’s doing just fine at the parenting thing. Even if he didn’t think to give his kid a room in his building.

~~~

“Look at this footage, seriously, do you see that?” Tony has FRIDAY pause it and then rewind a few seconds. “Watch.”

The video plays for the third time—Peter swinging around the alley, webs flying in every direction so fast that Rhodey can barely track where his hands are. He watches him grab one of the orbs and smash it between his fists.

“Do you know how durable those things are? I’ve been running tests. They’re stronger than any metal on earth. Make my suit look like aluminum fucking foil.”

Rhodey turns to Pepper. “How many times have you had to watch this?”

“Lost count around thirty.”

Tony scoffs, and then proceeds to replay the video once again

“Proud dad,” Rhodey says, smirking when Tony throws one of his middle fingers over his shoulder.

“It’s not a bad look.” Pepper leans over to wind her arms around Tony’s neck.

“Both of you, quiet. Maybe if I get the impression that you’re paying attention, I won’t have to play it again.”

Rhodey chuckles and tilts his head so he can get a clear view of the screen.

~~~

“Upgrades.” Tony moves his arms in a certain way and the wall slides aside to reveal a new version of the War Machine armor. “More fire-power, since I know you’re into that sort of thing. Also implemented a stealth mode. Peter helped me out.”

Rhodey smiles over at the kid. He’s met with a forced grimace. Peter'll warm up to him eventually. Rhodey will make sure of it. If Tony can manage to shape himself into a dad on such short notice, then Rhodey can definitely get a handle on being an uncle—ideally a cool uncle.

“He helped me with a new set of braces, too,” Tony continues. “Speaking of, those are—”

“I told you to quit with the braces.”

“And I believe I told you that I wouldn’t—doesn't matter, we’ll get to those later. Pete, do you want to do the honors, show him what we’ve done?”

“It’s okay, Mr. Stark.” Peter doesn’t move from his position—sort of slumped against the wall adjacent to the case that the new armor is in. “You can show him.”

Tony glances at Peter and then shrugs, turning back to the display. “If you say so.”

He launches into an explanation, gesturing wildly as the suit fires an impressive sequence of advanced weaponry. Despite the demonstration, Rhodey finds his attention divided, focusing on Peter more often than not. The kid closed his eyes as soon as Tony turned away from him, leaned his head back against the wall. He looks pale, but somehow flushed at the same time—his skin is a deep red high on his cheeks, but almost gray everywhere else. It could be the lighting, but—

Rhodey grabs Tony’s shoulder and yanks him closer, cutting him off mid-sentence. He points at Peter, who doesn’t seem to have noticed the lull in conversation.

Is he okay? Rhodey mouths, because even though Peter seems out of it, he still has freaky super hearing.

Why wouldn’t he be? Tony mouths back.

His eyes are closed.  

Well maybe he’s— Tony makes a pillow with his hands and mimes sleeping on it. Tired.

Why would he be so tired?

Tony’s lips form a string of words too long for Rhodey to decipher. What?

He tries again. No difference, except Rhodey thinks he sees the word 'spider'. He shakes his head.

Tony huffs and starts over. Rhodey grabs his shoulders and shakes them. Slow down. Less words.

He rolls his eyes and starts moving his mouth in exaggerated slow motions.

Nope.

He wipes his hand over his face and tries again.

Not getting it.

“Oh, come on,” he hisses. “He’s a vigilante at night, a student during the day, and his metabolism matches, if not exceeds Rogers’!”

“Hey.” Peter cracks his eyes open and lifts his head off the wall, voice croaky and rough. “Are you guys talking about me?”

“Nah, some other super-kid,” Tony says.

Peter chuckles, and lets his head fall back. “Don’t let ‘em replace me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, would we, Rhodes?”

“Nope,” Rhodey says quickly. “Never.”

“Good,” Peter whispers, eyes drifting shut.

Tony glances at Rhodey, as if looking for an answer. He doesn’t have one, tries to convey that with a pointed look.

“You look kind of tired, bud,” Tony ventures, throwing up a confused hand in Rhodey’s direction. “You hungry?”

“No,” Peter mumbles. “M’good.”

“You, Peter Parker, are not hungry?”

“Nope.”

Tony’s face fades into something akin to horror. “You were right, Rhodey. He’s broken.”

“Oh my god. He’s not ‘broken’, you big drama queen.” Rhodey hits Tony lightly on the back of the head. “Just, go over there and do something.”

“Do something,” Tony repeats. “Helpful. What exactly should I do?”

“I don’t know? Feel his forehead?”

The state of horror increases. “I’m calling his aunt.”

Tony tries to dart past Rhodey, but he catches his arm on the way. “You can’t always call the aunt when things get tough!”

Tony yanks his arm away. “Why not!?”

Rhodey hesitates. “I mean, you can. Actually, you probably should—”

“Exactly!”

“But you also need to—” He moves his head in Peter’s direction. “You know.”

“I do not know!” Tony runs his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up at all angles. It matches the wild glint of uncertainty in his eyes.

“Actually, Mr. Stark,” Peter says. “Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? Sorry.”

He sinks down the wall, hugging his legs to his chest and resting his forehead on his kneecaps.

“Oh—what? What's happening right now?" Tony walks over and hovers above the kid. “Did you get hit by anything on patrol last night?”

Peter’s head shakes ever so slightly.

“Tones, I think he’s just sick,” Rhodey says.

“He heals broken bones overnight, he doesn’t get sick.” Tony kneels next to him, gingerly placing a hand on his shoulder and then taking it right off. “Right?”

“Don’t get sick,” Peter agrees. “At least, I don’t think so. Haven’t since I got bit.”

“It's been less than two years, hasn’t it?”

Tony nods. Peter’s head gives a pathetic little lurch.

“This is probably just the first bug that’s gotten to him since it happened,” Rhodey says. “I think you’re just sick, Peter. What’s bothering you?”

The kid raises his head. He looks worse than he had when he’d been standing—beads of sweat on his hair-line dampening the strands into messy curls stuck to his skin.

“Not sick,” he says. “I just have a headache. It’s not that bad.”

Tony brings his hand up to Peter’s forehead with more confidence than he exhibited at the prospect a few minutes ago. A surge of pride goes through Rhodey—it’s simple, but it’s good. More proof that his best friend will be great at this eventually. “You feel hot, kiddo. At least by your standards. FRIDAY, check him over. Look for anything funky.”

The scan completes a few minutes later, coming back with nothing but a fever.

“Well,” Tony says after he reads the results aloud. “Working theory is that you are a little bit sick, Pete.”

Peter shakes his hanging head. “Not sick.”

Tony smiles. “Sure thing. Like I said, only a theory. We can always improve it later.”

That seems to mollify the kid. He nods a little and sighs, resting his head back on his knees.

“Why don’t we get you up to your room? Bed’s gotta be better than the floor. And a pillow’s gotta be a whole lot better than those bony knees.”

A grin tugs at Rhodey’s lips as he watches Tony help Peter to his feet. He follows them into the elevator and then down a few hallways.

He stays at the edge of the room, leaning on the door frame, content to watch. Tony walks with Peter over to the bed and waits there as he settles into it.

“Are you sure you don’t want any food? Water?” he asks.

Peter’s head shakes, barely visible to Rhodey over the sheets that are pulled up above his chin.

“Rest up, then. Get better soon. I’ve gotten used to having a lab assistant, so don’t ruin that for me.”

“I won’t. I’m not even sick!”

“Uh huh. Yup. Definitely. Go to sleep anyway.”

Tony shakes his head, fondly, and walks back out of the room past Rhodey.

“You’re good with him,” he says as he eases the door shut.

Tony twitches a little, a slight stutter in his stride, before he goes back to walking. “Well, I do try to be a decent human being occasionally.”

He’s pleased by the compliment, Rhodey can tell. But, he’s never been good at accepting that sort of thing. Sometimes it’s better to let it be, but others times, Rhodey likes to press it.

“I’m proud of you, man.”

“Alright. Weird, but alright.”

“I’m serious, look at you! Even got him the room. It looked nice.”

Tony stops in his tracks, spins around slowly, and then looks up at the ceiling and over at each wall. “What’s going on? Is this a prank?”

“This would be a pretty awful prank,” Rhodey points out. “Listen, I’m just saying that I know this can’t have been easy—finding out about the kid, making the decision to meet him, taking up an active role in his life. I’m impressed. You’ve changed a lot since college, Tones. For the better.”

“You lost me. I’m just teaching a high schooler some lab stuff, some superhero stuff. It’s not a big deal.”

Rhodey throws his hands up. “It is a big deal! He’s your son, that’s a big deal!”

Tony’s mouth falls open. He closes it as his eyebrows knit together, and then it drops open once again. “I don’t get it. You don’t sound like you’re joking.”

“Joking? I’m just trying to pay you a compliment, man. Take it so we can move on.”

Tony starts massaging his temples. “I’m sorry, you think Peter’s my biological son?”

“What? He—he is. He is your son.”

A grin rises slowly on Tony’s face and then he’s laughing, full body, doubled over, one of his arms strewn across his stomach as if he’s trying to contain it.

Rhodey crosses his arms over his chest. It’s not hard to infer why Tony’s laughing. It is hard to rationalize how he read the situation so horribly wrong. He runs through the last couple months, scrambling to put the memories in a new perspective. It's hard to separate anything about Tony and Peter from father and son.

“I don’t understand,” Rhodey says. “I called you a ‘Proud Dad’ a few weeks ago.”

“I thought it was a joke! The whole team jokes about Spider-Man being my kid.”

“But, I told Peter I knew everything!”

“He thought you meant his identity.”

Rhodey rubs his hands over his head. “I asked him why he calls you ‘Mr. Stark’”.

Tony frowns. “He didn’t mention that part.”

“I—you got him his own room! In your tower!”

“You told me to! Pepper thought it was weird when I told her how much you pressed about it—should I take away the room? Is it too much?”

“Take away the room—“ Rhodey mumbles. “No, dumbass. He’s sleeping in it right now."

“This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous.” Tony points at him. “Hilarious, but ridiculous.”

“It’s not just me! Those ‘jokes’ the team has been making—” Rhodey puts air quotes around the word and shakes his head. “Not jokes. Do you know how much work I’ve put in trying to get them to dial it down because I didn’t think you and Peter were ready for everyone to know?”

“They think—wait, Peter or Spider-Man?”

“Both? Mostly Spider-Man.”

“Oh my god.” Tony stares off to the side, as if he can’t quite comprehend the conversation. “Why?”

“Well it’s an easy mistake to make! You’re really protective—“

“Because he’s a child!” Tony interrupts.

“And the way he looks at you. It’s obvious, even through the mask. It’s like—“ Rhodey trails off, unsure if it’s what Tony wants to hear.

He narrows his eyes. “Like what?”

“I don’t know—“

“You clearly do. Just say it.”

“Like he looks up to you, man.” Rhodey shrugs. “Like you mean a lot to him.”

Tony’s silent for a moment, goes back to staring at the spot just to Rhodey’s right. He sniffs once and then wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Right. That’s—nice. A little sappy for my taste.” There is the smallest trace of a smile, but he sniffs again and it disappears. “Well I’m going to go call his aunt, then call Bruce and see if we can whip up some kind of painkiller for him. Do you mind hanging out by his room, in case he needs anything?”

Rhodey looks at him, deadpan. “You hear that, right? You hear what you sound like.”

“Shut up!” Tony calls without looking back.

Rhodey laughs and walks back down the hallway. As soon as he gets close to the the room, he starts to hear Peter’s voice from inside.

He pulls the door open a crack.

The mound of sheets shifts slightly on the bed. “Mr. Stark?”

“Nope,” Rhodey says. “It’s me.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t miss the disappointment in Peter’s voice. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Rhodey walks in until he can see some of Peter’s head sticking out from under the sheets—he’s curled up on his side, face tense and twisted in pain. “Anything I can get for you?”

“I don’t know.” He burrows a little deeper. “Do you think Mr. Stark is going to come back soon?”

“Yeah, he’s just trying to make something to help with the pain. And call your aunt. She’ll be here soon, too.”

“Good. I, uh, I can’t sleep. Everything hurts,” Peter confesses. “I think I might be sick.”

Rhodey sits on the edge of the bed, chuckling a little. “Oh, really?”

“Don’t tell Tony or May, okay?”

Rhodey perks up. “Your secret’s safe with me, Spidey. I’m cool, you can trust me.”

Peter blinks a few times. He meets Rhodey’s eyes and then nods. “You are pretty cool, Colonel Rhodes.”

Rhodey bites the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from smiling. He waits until Peter's eyes are closed before breaking into an all-out grin and pumping a fist.

Peter might not be Tony’s biological son, but Tony’s not Rhodey’s biological brother either. That's never stopped them before.  He can still be Peter’s uncle. In fact, he thinks he might have just cinched the coveted cool uncle position he was trying to get.

[universe-n-3276]

Carrying the Moon.

Summary: Something happens at the beginning of their last year at the university. Sander takes a life-changing decision.

Note: This fic follows what happened in my last social media au, it features the same characters but you can easily read it without knowing the whole story. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Chapter 1

Sander never liked summer at all. It is always too hot, sweaty, and sticky. It also ruined his aesthetics, because his favorite clothes were more suited for the colder season. Shorts and flip flops did not exactly match his slightly edgy-artist style. And then, as if all of that wasn’t torture already, he had to store his precious Dr. Martens in the closet, together with his beloved leather jacket. Whenever it was time to leave it on the hanger and abandon it in the dark, for at least two months, his heart wept as if he were punishing his dearest friend.

However, June and July were usually bearable. He kept repeating to himself that, if the summer lasted only two months, it wouldn't be so bad. Instead, August always came by eventually, as if it was the Sunday of the year. August was just too much to deal with. Too hot, boring, and extremely long.

Not even the prospect of spending days with Robbe cheered him up anymore, because at some point they both agreed that the temperature was too hot to even try to cuddle, and all that sweat was worth only for some very specific occasions. Furthermore, their poor fan was close to his final act, becoming slower and slower every day.

That whole year had been extremely stressful for everyone.

It was their second last year of university, and all the members of the gang worked hard to catch up on the exams they had neglected, in order to graduate together, the following summer.

That had been the plan from the start, if it wasn’t for the fact that, nine months before, Charlotte got pregnant. Her boyfriend, Max, had pushed her to carry on with the pregnancy, but when she reached the seventh month, he simply disappeared. Everyone had feared for the physical and mental health of Charlotte and the baby. She cried for two weeks in a row, but then she was back on schedule, studying, and seeing her therapist.

On the 12th of August, Charlotte had given birth to a baby boy, and from that moment, everything went down quickly, because not even 24 hours later, she announced to everyone that she wanted to give her son up for adoption, but at last, her parents convinced her to take home the, still unnamed, newborn.

A month passed since that day, and nothing had changed. Her family and friends helped Charlotte to look after the child, but she refused to see and touch him in any way.

On a Wednesday morning, Sander walked into the apartment, where his mother had been living alone with Charlotte since their parents had divorced. It had been a fairly peaceful decision. They simply parted ways but decided to stay friends.

However, that day took a strange turn, when his mother greeted him with a sad look, rather than her cheerful smile, which both of the twins had inherited. She cradled Charlotte's baby in her arms, feeding him with a bottle of formula.

"I'm going to see how Charlotte is doing."

Sander said after greeting his mother with a kiss and gently stroking the baby's head. He felt a strange feeling growing in his stomach, as he headed to his sister's room.

"Charlotte’s not home. She left something on your bed though. You should read it. "

After his mother had uttered those words, all the happiness, with which he had left his home that morning, definitely disappeared. He walked briskly to his room, and on the bed, he found a letter with his name handwritten on the envelope. He quickly opened it.

His hands were shaking already.

Sander,

Your heart is probably pounding in your chest right now, so, listen to me for once in your life and sit down, close your eyes and breathe the way you should, when a panic attack is about to hit you. 

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

You didn’t listen, right? You’re reading this fourth line, but your mind is so clouded with worry, that you haven't understood half of what I wrote. So go back, re-read everything, breathe and keep in mind that I'm fine.

Done?

Good.

You may be wondering where I am, and why I wrote you a letter, but I couldn't do what I'm about to do, looking you in the eyes. I don't often show it with my gestures and even less with words, but my bond with you is the most important of my life. You're the person I care the most about, and just one negative word from you would hurt me more than a thousand insults from someone else. This is why I am writing this because I know you wouldn't agree with my decision.

I have to go away, Sander. I worked too hard to build the life I wanted to live, and you know it. I struggled to keep up with my colleagues, and I tortured myself to do better than them, and eventually, I succeeded. 

I haven’t mentioned it to you, because, until last week, I hadn’t the gut to take this step, and in the last few months, my life has changed its direction so many times, that I didn't really know what to do with my dreams anymore.

I got the scholarship I applied for. The University of Sydney. Yes, Sydney in Australia. At this very moment, I am already at the airport. Don't try to stop me, please.

I assure you, it was a deliberate decision. This isn’t coming from a hormonal shift or my illness. You can ask my therapist, she knows everything, and I gave her permission to talk to you about me if you need to be reassured by her.

Over the past few years, I've seen you create a beautiful life for yourself. When we moved to Lucas' school, you had nothing, you started from scratch, and look how far you've come! You became a fantastic, loving, talented man. Whenever you walk into a room, everyone stops to look at you, because you are bright and dazzling, just like the sun. We are just mere planets, waiting for you to shine on us, even for the briefest moment. I know you will never believe it because, in that beautiful head of yours, you see yourself not as a star, not even as the moon. You see yourself as Pluto, a bigger asteroid that has been mistaken for a planet by some heedless scientist.

I have the strength to leave, only because I know that Robbe will always be next to you. You couldn't choose a better man to share your existence with. I know that, even if you’d break into a thousand pieces, he would be able to put you back together. 

I can't wait to see your whole life together, your engagement, marriage, and your five children, which I will love madly. I'll be there for all of these things, it's a promise, so don't be sad.

Regarding the other matter, which I know you are thinking about, I also took care of him. Ever since Max left, I knew, I couldn't do it alone, and that he would probably be better with someone else. Unfortunately, mom and dad are no longer together and don't want to take care of him alone. 

I just asked them to deal with the papers. I hope, he will be adopted soon by someone who can love him even if he carries the moon inside of him like me. 

I'm not fit to be a mother. I would be a burden to him, and I know this is the right choice.

I already miss you, Sander. 

Hug Robbe for me.

I love you.

Charlotte

Sander didn’t know when he had started to cry. He reread his sister's letter at least twenty times, to be able to understand it in its entirety.

Charlotte was gone.

She had taken the decision to give her baby up for adoption.

His head was spinning, he could still feel his heart running in his chest, but while he was reading that letter again for the fourteenth time, a thought had bravely made its way into his head. 

Sander couldn't fall apart, he had to be strong.

His new life was about to begin.

[next]

[caseyhxndrix-blog]

character development task #1

They had known, when they signed the contract, that this was a mandatory part of it, but they had been worried enough about everything else, too focused on ending up here instead of any of the dozens of other teams they had begged for a spot on, to really concretely think about what it would be like to have to talk to someone about things. The first week of practices had gone mediocre at best in their mind, and so being told the first visit with the team’s psychiatrist was also approaching wasn’t the most thrilling thing they had ever heard.

It was hard to know how to feel about it, which was probably telling enough in and of itself. They were well aware that as soon as they had gotten out of the hospital and been slapped with the year-long suspension, they should’ve gotten some kind of professional help. They should’ve been carted off to some shitty rehab to actually learn how to cope without all of the pills they’d come to depend on to even function towards the end, or at the very least, recommended some kind of therapist or group to meet with. But instead, they had been put on a plane back to Oklahoma, not being able to afford to keep up with school even in the face of a suspension from Class I Exy, thanks to their scholarship also being suspended, without any promise of help. And then they’d spent a year trying to figure out how to cope by themself.

There was something about stepping into a therapist’s office that set off every fight or flight instinct they had, the combination of their mother’s distrust for this sort of help, and their own anxieties even thinking about talking about things taking a toll. And it felt a lot like walking into a scene from a movie, really, even down to the too gentle smile she offered them as they came in, and tentatively chose a spot on the edge of the couch, almost like they were ready to leave at a moment’s notice. 

Or it would’ve been like walking into a scene from a movie if she hadn’t been at a desk with nothing but a kettle and a hot plate, two mugs sitting ready.

“Hi, Casey, I’m glad you’re here. Hot cocoa?”

Of all the questions they had been expecting her to lead with, the one she choose was so jarring they hardly knew what to say. “It’s kind of hot outside...” which was an understatement. It was sweltering to the point where even the tank top and shorts they’d opted for felt like too much.

The reply they received was a slight laugh, as if she had some hidden knowledge about hot chocolate that they didn’t. “Okay, sure, why not?” they said, which felt like the right thing to do, even if the last thing they wanted was hot chocolate at the moment. And maybe it was the right answer, given the smile she gave them as she brought the two mugs over to the sitting area, putting one on the coffee table in front of them, and keeping the other for herself as she settled into the chair across from them.

“I’ve never really done anything like this before,” Casey admitted, a little out of nowhere, like the act of Betsy sitting down forced the words from their lips. They bounced their foot, full of nervous energy, as they glanced around the room, actually trying to take things in suddenly, as if they didn’t want to look at her in the eye now that they had admitted that, all of their fears and worries wrapped up in that one sentence. 

“That’s alright. Today, I just want to get to know you. We can talk about anything you want, it doesn’t have to be anything specific,” she explained, pausing to take a sip of her cocoa.

“Anything at all?” they asked, a little skeptically. It was hard for them to tell if that was a trick or not, to make it feel like it was their choice to start talking about everything that had happened, when they really had no choice.

“Yes, anything at all. We can talk about how you’re feeling about being at Palmetto, or if you have any concerns from the change. Or we could talk about how your break from school was, or even just what you like to do for fun when you’re not playing Exy. It’s up to you.”

There it was again, what did they do for fun? Everyone wanted to know what they did besides Exy, and they didn’t have an answer. It should’ve been the easiest thing to talk about in that list of options, but it just felt like a whole other mountain to climb

“It wasn’t the best year of my life, that’s for sure, but you could probably guess that,” they said with a half-laugh, devoid of humor. They didn’t touch on the first two suggestions, mostly because both questions felt too large to get into, especially with someone they had just met, even if she was meant for this exact sort of thing. “I don’t really know what I like to do for fun, it was mostly just Exy before, and I went out with friends, but I don’t know anyone well enough here yet. And I’m still figuring out the whole going out without drinking or anything deal, anyway.”

That was something at least; maybe not the real issue, not any of the problems that they should’ve been getting into with her, but it felt a little easier to bring up casually instead of the multiple elephants in the room.

“Well, maybe we can figure that out this year together. Being able to relax in a healthy way is important,” she nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” they muttered. They shifted a little on the couch, tempted to move some of the pillows away, but they felt a lot like every little move was being analyzed, and that felt like too meaningful of a gesture. Probably something about how they were uncomfortable in their own skin, which might’ve been a fair assessment.

“It’s also important to be able to work in a healthy way. We can figure that out together this year, too, if you want.”

There it was, hitting the nail on the head, the real thing they should’ve been talking about. In the back of their mind, every instinct was telling them not to get into it, not to talk about all of that now, to shut down and keep it quiet. But the thing was, no matter what their feelings were on being here, on having to talk to someone, on all of this, they wanted to know how to do that. They wanted to do well, to be able to play without worrying about what the pressure might do to them, even the pressure they put on themself. They wanted to be healthy. 

And here they had someone finally offering them that chance, someone offering that support to actually do it, like maybe they didn’t actually have to do it alone, like maybe this could be the second chance they needed.

“That would be nice. Really nice,” Casey said after a long moment of silence. 

They picked up their mug of hot cocoa, and took a sip.

[southeastasianists]

In the last few weeks, over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a bloody pogrom in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, crossing into Bangladesh. Among the horrified and largely moralistic reactions in the West, some have pointed to economic factors supposedly behind these events. They are right to highlight the importance of political economy drivers of conflict, but their analysis is disappointingly superficial and crude. This post critiques their approaches and briefly outlines a better one.

Vulgar Marxism 101: land grabs and the Rohingya crisis

The most prominent commentator suggesting economic drivers behind the Rohingya crisis is the renowned geographer Saskia Sassen—whose published work I generally admire greatly. Sassen penned an extremely speculative piecefor The Guardian in January 2017, and another for the Huffington Post in September 2017, linking the conflict to land grabs. In her lengthy January essay, Sassen suggests that the conflict is “generated by military-economic interests, rather than by mostly religious/ethnic issues”. However, she offered no evidence for this proposition except that the government had designated 1.27m hectares of land in Rakhine for agricultural development. “Expelling them from their land is a way of freeing up land and water”, she asserted. Many Myanmar scholars reacted with some scorn on social media.

Undeterred, she rehearses these claims in her latest article, again with precious little evidence supplied—though now she also cites the Chinese port and special economic zone (SEZ) being constructed at Kyaukphyu. She speculates: “the land freed by the radical expulsion of the Rohingya might have become of interest to the military… Religion may be functioning as a veil that military leaders can use to minimize attention on the land-grabbing aspect of this economic development part of their agenda.” Some other scholars penned a similar piece for The Conversation, again offering little concrete evidence but pointing to the oil and gas pipeline connecting Kyaukphyu (though they mistakenly suggest it runs from Sittwe) to western China, and an Indian port development in Sittwe. They conclude: “The government of Myanmar therefore has vested interests in clearing land to prepare for further development”.

One does not need to be a particularly brilliant political economist to recognise that these claims are extraordinarily sloppy. One can simply look at a few maps. Firstly, note the map of Rakhine below, showing the Rohingya population concentrated heavily in a few townships bordering Bangladesh. Then note the second map, showing the latest forced displacement and burning of Rohingya villages, which have been concentrated entirely in these townships. Almost all of the far north of Rakhine has been depopulated of Rohingya, but the centre and south have been relatively unaffected this time around.

Now consider the location of the developments that are supposedly driving this forced displacement. Kyaukphyu is in central Rakhine state, about 120km south of the present crisis. How can a desire to clear land in Kyaukphyu possibly explain the ethnic cleansing of townships located so far away? Sittwe is also about 40km from the nearest violence.

It would be far more plausible to link the present crisis to the shocking announcement, just days into the pogrom, of the state’s intention to establish an SEZ in Maungdaw, at the centre of the recent violence. This certainly deserves investigation, though it is missed entirely in these recent commentaries.

However, this is not just a question of shifting the explanatory weight from one land grab to another. Ultimately, the vulgar Marxism of these accounts does a disservice to political economy analysis more broadly. Attributing complex events like this to “business interests” is crude and reductionist, and can actually explain relatively little. Yes, land grabs have happened across Myanmar to facilitate megaprojects like mines, dams, SEZs, ports and agribusiness plantations, and this has certainly fuelled ethnic conflict. This is well documented by the indefatigable Kevin Woods, whose years of painstaking fieldwork and brilliant scholarship nonetheless goes unacknowledged by these authors. And land grabs, including for the projects cited in these articles, have undoubtedly produced forced displacement in Rakhine state, causing resentment among both Rohingyas and the Buddhist Rakhine, the state’s dominant ethnic group.

But development-induced land grabs simply do not require vast ethnic cleansing displacing 40% of a given population. Nor, crucially, can “business interests” explain why this ethnic cleansing is greeted with indifference or even enthusiasm by the vast majority of Myanmar’s population—even by groups, like the Rakhine, that have themselves been victims of previous land grabs. Nor, crucially, can it explain very similar pogroms in 1977 and 1992, both of which occurred decades before any megaprojects and their associated land grabs.

Towards a better political economy analysis

The only benefit of such crude accounts is that they do prompt us to think about the relationship of sociopolitical conflict to economic factors. This is better than simplistically attributing conflict to “communalism” or “religious intolerance”, as if the problem were solely ideological, lacking any material underpinning—which is never true in reality. But rather than suggesting that the “real” cause is land-grabbing and religion is only a “veil”, it is important to situate sociopolitical conflict within a historically evolving political economy context, in a way that takes social and ideological formations seriously. I can only gesture here at the main lines of analysis one might undertake, but this is still an improvement over the commentary just described.

Buddhist–Muslim conflict over land and resources in what is now Rakhine state is not new. From the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries there were struggles between Muslim empires expanding from the west and the Buddhist Arakan kingdom of Mrauk U, ending only when the area was conquered by the kingdom of Burma in 1785. However, it was British colonialism (1824–1948) that arguably sowed the most important seeds for the contemporary crisis.

Burma was ruled as part of the British Raj, enabling vast inward migration from the Indian subcontinent. The British particularly encouraged Bengalis to migrate to address labour shortages on agricultural plantations. In Akyab district, for instance (present-day Sittwe), from 1871–1911, the Muslim population more than tripled, while the Rakhine population grew by barely a fifth. Understandably, then, the Rakhine have long cultural memories of being “swamped” by “Muslim immigrants”. More broadly, immigration to Burma peaked at 480,000 in 1927, out of a total population of 13 million. By then, ethnic Indians had acquired prominent positions across the Burmese economy, not just as agrarian coolies but also as skilled professionals, merchants and financiers. In the 1930s economic crisis, many farmers indebted to Indian moneylenders defaulted, leading Indians also to become major landlords.

The reaction to this rapid influx was a racially inflected form of economic nationalism which still persists today. This is not entirely dissimilar to the xenophobic nationalism that has sometimes accompanied mass immigration in straitened economic circumstances in many Western countries. There wereanti-Indian riots in 1930–31 and specifically anti-Muslim riots in 1926 and 1938. These were led by the majority ethnic Bamar and did not spread into Rakhine itself. It was not until Britain’s defeat by invading Japanese forces in 1942 that communal violence erupted there, with Rakhine militias exploiting the war to wreak bloody vengeance on their Muslim rivals, prompting tens of thousands to flee into India.

To make matters worse, the British then armed Rohingya volunteer forces, ostensibly to attack the occupying Japanese, but instead these groups often raided Rakhine settlements and Buddhist monasteries and pagodas. These forces also accompanied Britain’s reconquest of Rakhine, after which armed Rakhine groups were forcibly suppressed. Understandably, some of the returning Muslims feared being incorporated into the postcolonial Burmese state, launching a “Mujahit” rebellion to press for the incorporation of northern Rakhine into East Pakistan, prompting counterinsurgency operations by the Burmese army through the 1950s.

An important legacy of this WWII-induced displacement, and the subsequent unrest, is that Muslims gradually returning to Rakhine were thereafter often depicted as “illegal Bengali immigrants”. This complex, unhappy history is what lies behind the subsequent rejection of the Rohingyas—a term used commonly only after Burma’s independence—as one of Myanmar’s 135 official “national races”, and their designation instead as “Bengalis”.

Given the experiences under British colonialism, it is not surprising that, from the outset, popular Burmese nationalism has had a strongly racist flavour, directed in part against those branded kalar—dark-skinned “interlopers” from the Indian subcontinent. The central objective of Burma’s post-independence government was the Burmanisation of the foreign-dominated economy. Recalling the trauma of the 1930s, land was nationalised in 1953, and private lending to farmers banned (a situation that largely persists today), eviscerating the remaining Indian landlord class. Burmanisation culminated in the nationalisation of 15,000 businesses after the 1962 military coup, prompting 125,000 to 300,000 ethnic Indians to flee the country. They followed the more than 400,000 Indians, British and Anglo-Burmese who had already left following decolonization. The post-2011 “969” movement, which encouraged Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses, is arguably just the latest instantiation of this form of xenophobic economic nationalism.

Colonisation also left a legacy of deep religious trauma. On top of the loss of indigenous sovereignty and the influx of Muslims, the British refused to perform the usual duties of Buddhist kingship, such as appointing abbots, and permitted growing Christian missionary activity, provoking a deep sense of cultural crisis among Buddhists. The restoration of Buddhism became central to Bamar nationalism, and steadily this religion, and Bamar culture, became hegemonic elements of postcolonial nation building efforts, with ethnic and religious minorities being increasingly “othered”.

Today, many ordinary Myanmar Buddhists genuinely believe that—like in colonial times—their religion and culture is under threat from a Muslim demographic “tidal wave”. They often point to countries like Indonesia, formerly home to Buddhist and Hindu empires, as examples of what Myanmar will become without vigorous countermeasures. This has virtually no objective basis: only about 3% of Myanmar’s population is Muslim, while around 89% are Buddhist.

But this fact is irrelevant, since most people nevertheless believe it, following decades of government propaganda, atrocious educational provision, and widespread deference to Buddhist monks, some—though far from all—of whom have promoted virulent Islamophobia. Nor is this fear of being culturally overwhelmed new, or somehow a product of the post-2010 “democratic” transition. Anti-Muslim riots occurred under the previous military regime, in 1997 and 2001, and the notorious Buddhist nationalist monk, Ashin Wirathu, the figurehead of MaBaTha, the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, was jailed for incitement in 2003.

This history explains why there is widespread support today for MaBaTha, for the Protection of Race and Religion Laws (which discriminate against Muslims) and for the ethnic cleansing currently being perpetrated by the Myanmar military. It also explains why, politically, Aung San Suu Kyi has such limited room for manoeuvre—though it must be stressed that she has done virtually nothing to challenge these dangerous myths or to foster intercommunal harmony. Indeed, her own office’s use of the term “Bengali”, her past remarks about “global Muslim power”, and her purging of Muslims from the ranks of NLD parliamentary candidates in 2015, all suggest that she may even personally share anti-Muslim prejudices.

It is the intersection of these material and ideological dynamics that explain the recurrent persecution of the Rohingya and anti-Muslim attacks more generally, rather than a simplistic, short term land-grabbing agenda. Many Muslims were viewed with inherent suspicion due to their association with colonialism and the Mujahit rebellion. After decolonisation, although the term “Rohingya” was used in official circles, they were never formally accepted as one of Burma’s official ethnic groups. Initially, they were allowed to vote, and several were elected to parliament, with one even serving as a junior minister. However, as Bamar Buddhist nationalism intensified, and struggles by ethnic minorities resisting forced homogenisation mounted—prompting the onset of the world’s longest running civil wars—the state became increasingly hostile towards its Muslim population.

In 1962, the army expelled Muslims from its ranks. In 1977, the belief that many “Bengalis” had exploited the state’s weak border controls to cross from East Pakistan/ Bangladesh into Rakhine led the military-backed regime to launch clearance operations ahead of a national census, displacing 200,000 Muslims into Bangladesh. Thereafter, under the new 1982 Citizenship Act, the Rohingyas were gradually stripped of their rights, often finding themselves unable to prove their families’ long-term residency in Burma—thanks in part to the destruction of records in previous rounds of conflict and forced displacement. When, after 1988, the Rohingyas participated prominently in the pro-democracy movement, hoping to recover their rights, they again faced violent suppression, prompting another exodus in 1992, with 250,000 fleeing to Bangladesh.

The position of the Buddhist Rakhine needs special mention here. From their perspective, they have been doubly “victimised”, by a growing “illegal Bengali immigrant” population (even if the Rakhine still outnumber them two to one), and by the Bamar-dominated central government. Rakhine state is Myanmar’s second poorest, and what little development has occurred there has involved either a tiny handful of megaprojects—which create virtually no local employment and whose benefits are monopolised by the regime and foreign investors—or the development of a highly exploitative fisheries industry, with Thai trawlers using quasi-slave labour.

Conditions in Rakhine villages are sometimes scarcely better than those in Rohingya internally-displaced person camps. In conditions of extreme scarcity and economic competition, they profoundly resent the Western focus on the Rohingya, seeing donors as deeply “biased”, which explains violent attacks on aid convoys and protests against donor offices perceived to have slighted Buddhism. The Rakhines have seized the opportunity offered by the post-2010 transition to organise politically, dominating the state assembly. Many have also supported heavy handed military and police action as a long awaited form of redress against their local rivals, and have exploited periods of unrest to seize land used by Rohingyas. However, some have even joined the Rohingyas in exile, reflecting a shared sense of desperation and impoverishment.

It is hardly surprising that these extraordinarily grim conditions have spawned violence among both communities. Rakhine militias organised to attack Muslims during the 1940s, and today three are active, all of which promote “self-determination” in Rakhine but reject the Rohingyas as “Bengalis”. The Rohingyas have also taken up arms periodically, and the only mystery is why the latest armed group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), has taken quite so long to form in the face of such harsh persecution and misery. ARSA’s attacks on police and army outposts—the most recent of which, in late August, triggered the army offensive behind the present refugee crisis—smack heavily of desperation, as men often armed only with catapults and wooden “guns” launch themselves at the security forces.

In short, while simple pecuniary motives can never be entirely discounted, particularly in Myanmar’s borderlands, the political economy underpinning the current Rohingya crisis is far more complicated than is suggested in articles making a few sloppy references to megaprojects and land grabs. Ultimately, like Myanmar’s other ethnic conflicts, it reflects the crisis-ridden nature of the Burmese state since its inception.

Burma was founded with no real meaningful consensus among its population groups over the nature of the state or nation, or the extent of power and resource sharing. Bamar-Buddhist chauvinists, unprepared to make the concessions needed to secure others’ consensual participation in nation-building, have instead sought to impose their vision by force, leading to brutality across the borderlands. However, the Rohingya have suffered particularly harshly because their claim to ethnic-minority status is not even recognised. While the Bamar state seeks to coercively incorporate recognised ethnic minority groups into the Union, it seeks to coercively exclude the unrecognised Rohingya. That is, ultimately, traceable to British colonialism and its legacy.

…………………………

Lee Jones is Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Politics and International Relations. He has written extensively on Myanmar’s political economy, regime transition, experience under sanctions, and relations with China. You can follow him on Twitter at @DrLeeJones.

[asexualresearch]

Notes for the “Asexuality & Academia” Carnival of Aces from an (autistic) asexual academic

Submitted by CJ DeLuzio Chasin

Some Carnival of Aces readers will probably already be familiar with my name 1. I've published several academic papers about asexuality 2. And for a while, I was one of only 2 asexual people writing academically about asexuality (the other being Andrew Hinderliter). There are many more of us now—mostly students. Some are out about their aceness, some are not (so I won't name anyone). My participation in academic writing about asexuality is intrinsically linked with my own asexuality.

This post addresses 2 topics:

why I have written about asexuality academically, specifically as an “out” ace person (and more recently an autistic aromantic asexual)

what's involved in the peer-review process (for people who aren't already familiar with this) and why it isn't (yet) working “properly” for asexuality scholarship

Why / how I somehow ended up being one of the first out “ace” asexuality scholars:

I didn't start out wanting to write academically about asexuality. I actually tried to avoid it and have been studying other things in grad school—asexuality is not the focus of my research. In the first few years of my grad school experience, anything about asexuality beyond the basics (e.g., info that might be found within AVEN's FAQ's) would have been incomprehensible to an academic audience (and therefore unpublishable). Things were so basic that “this research finding has implications for asexual people and by the way, asexuality is a thing” was a viable academic paper/poster/presentation on its own 3. I wasn't really interested in committing myself to a career of doing ace 101 for academics— I was already doing enough of that in my community and everyday life.

But apparently, I can't help myself. Fumbling along hap-hazardly in my life, reacting to various things as the ace I am, there have been a number of times when I've been inspired to throw my thoughts at academic audiences. (Afterall, I am one of the aces with the capacity to produce academic-speak relevant to the specific disciplines primarily generating asexuality scholarship, and I was apparently one of the first to endeavour to do so.) At this point, I've published more about asexuality than anything else, so I've had to admit to myself that, despite my intentions, I'm something of an asexuality scholar. Part of that, though, is that I've been largely out of the “academic game” for the past few years for medical reasons— hopefully temporarily. The type of theoretical work involved in my writing about asexuality fits better within the context of my current limitations than, say, the type of intensive data-driven qualitative work involved in my ongoing (non-asexuality-focused) research. (The same applies to clinical-audiological applications of probability theory—my second-place topic, entirely unrelated to my main research area.)

The academic asexuality writing that I've done has been in my capacity as a member of a community that other academics and clinicians were studying (or treating), albeit as an academically inclined one— certainly not as “the voice of that community”, but nevertheless as “a voice from that community”. This writing is grounded in who I am as an ace person, saying things I have to say because I'm ace (largely either implicitly or explicitly in response to various misunderstandings surrounding asexuality in academic and popular spaces). For this reason, I have engaged in this writing as an “out” asexual person. The asexual part of my experience and identity matters to my academic writing about asexuality.

For similar reasons, I've also named some other aspects of my experience in this writing—specifically situating myself also as aromantic and autistic 4 in contexts where those things were specifically relevant. Naming myself publicly as autistic is something I thought long and hard about, especially because I can't take it back and don't know what the long-term professional consequences might be. However, academics have now started discussing “autism” when considering whether asexuality might “represent a symptom of a mental disorder (or a mental disorder itself,)” 5 even if some endorse a paradigm of neurodiversity or “neuro-atypicality”6. Because of this, I felt it was important for me to declare my presence as an autistic asexual within the academic conversation. Especially as someone whose name would already be recognisable to many asexuality scholars, situating myself as autistic partly functioned as an assertion that at least one of us autistic aces has been part of asexuality scholarship from early on (and therefore that others may already be present too).

At the same time, I am mindful that my (autistic) asexual positionality limits the kinds of arguments people would be willing to accept from me. Who I am, and the space I occupy in society, really matters to the academic writing I do about asexuality. My asexuality doesn't matter because I think it will make non-ace academics take me more seriously— I think my own asexuality actually makes some people less inclined to take me seriously when writing about asexuality. (In contrast, my whiteness does not make people less likely to take me seriously writing about asexuality, even if perhaps it should— my whiteness means that my asexual experience is very specifically a white asexual experience.) The reason my asexuality matters to my academic asexuality writing is because it's part of why I'm doing that writing in the first place... even if it limits what kinds of arguments I can make “work”. That kind of limitation is also part of why it's not always safe for people (especially students) to be “out” about various aspects of their identities, why I am cautious about which parts of my experience I share, and why I have chosen to keep certain things off the academic/public record. My interest in asexuality scholarship isn't “academic” really: it's personal and political. This isn't my career— it's my life.

And in deference to Chrysocolla Town's comment about scholars “who insist in presenting asexuality as an messianic ideology that will not only end cisheteronormativity, but also the patriarchy, traditional politics and capitalism”... I should note that I do believe that an ace-friendly social context would be radically different than the ones we have today. I believe that in order to re-shape societies in such a way that they would become genuinely hospitable to ace folks, some fundamental social changes would have to happen, including ending both cisheteronormativity and patriarchy. I don't believe that asexuality will create those changes, just by existing. But gosh darn it, I will work toward the revolution. (As I said, this is my life.)

Demystifying the Peer Review Process (as it applies to asexuality scholarship):

Anyone in academia will already be familiar with the peer review process, but there are a lot of ace community members who read the asexuality literature who've never been through grad school or the scholarly peer review process. I strongly believe that asexuality scholarship should be accessible to (non-academic) ace community members. Part of understanding the academic literature, though, is understanding its context. Academic publications need to go through the lengthy, complicated peer review process. Since ace discourse and community have developed so quickly, the landscape of asexuality has time to shift between when articles are first written and when they are finally published. Also, while the peer review process generally functions to improve the quality of scholarship by making it more of a collaborative project, that isn't really working yet when it comes to articles about asexuality, for various reasons.

So here's some info:

what happens during the peer review process?

making required changes while keeping the integrity of the text

post-acceptance: copy-editing, copyright transfer agreements and “open access”

quality of peer review and “relevant expertise” to review asexuality-related works

Logistics: what happens during the peer review process?

When an author submits something to an academic journal, the editor has a quick look at it. As long as the article seems like it reasonably fits the scope of the journal and the submission guidelines (e.g., it's the appropriate length), then the editor passes it along for peer review. The editor invites reviewers who have “relevant expertise” (based on their publication record or recommendations from colleagues with “relevant expertise”). For most scholarly publications, reviewers are not paid to review articles— it's considered a type of “academic service” that people participate in voluntarily because it's necessary to the project of having peer reviewed journals. In psych and social sciences, there are often around 3 reviewers. Things might be different in other fields of study.

The process is supposed to be “blind” (the reviewers aren't supposed to know who wrote the article, and the authors aren't supposed to know who is reviewing it). Invited reviewers who agree are sent an anonymous version of the manuscript and have a set amount of time to write up comments on the paper. (Reviewers who decline are often asked for recommendations of colleagues to serve as reviewers for the paper.)

Reviewers are tasked with giving (ideally constructive) feedback to authors and recommendations to the editor— for example, about whether the article should be accepted for publication, accepted conditional on some revisions, rejected but invited to resubmit when changes are made, or rejected outright (and not invited to resubmit the piece). Different journals have different options. In my discipline, reviewers have about a month to submit their reviews (although some journals have longer or shorter time frames). Reviewer time frames might be different in other disciplines. Depending on the journal and the editor's workload, sometimes the editor makes a decision quickly, while at other times, it takes months after the reviews are in.

The editor looks at the reviews and makes a decision, informed by the reviews but not necessarily limited by them—editors have a lot of discretion. The editor sends a decision letter to the corresponding author which includes their own feedback, saying which changes are mandatory and which are more discretionary. The letter includes the anonymous reviews in their entirety. Sometimes the editor interjects comments into reviews if the editor has a reason to disagree (or to tell the author that they either must follow or alternatively don't need to follow the reviewer's particular recommendation about something).

Typically, the author revises the piece and resubmits it along with a letter explaining how they incorporated the reviewer feedback, and if they didn't follow a particular reviewer recommendation, justifying why they didn't. Depending on the editor's original decision, that might be the end of things and the paper gets accepted, or it goes back to the same reviewers (or occasionally to a new set of reviewers if the original reviewers don't agree to re-review the paper).

Sometimes (but not always) reviewers get to see the other reviewers' reviews (also anonymous to each other)— typically though only after they've submitted their own review and/or after the decision letter goes out. Sometimes (but not always) reviewers get to see the decision letter send by the editor to the corresponding author. As the decision letter is typically addressed to the corresponding author, this can lead to anonymous reviewers finding out the authorship of the paper (meaning that reviewers might know whose work they are reviewing when they re-review manuscripts).

The pragmatic balancing act of revisions: making required changes while keeping the integrity of the text

There are often changes that are required in order for the piece to be published. If the anonymous reviewers want you to explain basic stuff, you need to include that explanation. (Often this is helpful because if they don't understand what you're talking about, chances are that your readers won't either. But it also means that a lot of the content will be redundant for ace community folks reading the research.) But the flip side of that, since journals have pretty strict word-limits (or page limits) is that you can only do so much in a particular paper. If the area of study (like asexuality) is still relatively new, it might not be possible to get to the more advanced analyses in a paper until at least someone publishes the basic introductory overview in an academic space. (Even if that info is published in many non-academic places already, academia requires the very basic things to be established in academic journals before authors writing about more complex ideas can take any of that content for granted.)

If your editor wants you to talk about a particular area in the literature, then you need to talk about it—you don't necessarily need to take the position the editor takes toward that literature, but you do need to address is. (For example, the only reason I discussed research measuring physiological genital arousal in my 2011 paper was because this was one of the editor's requirements. My discussion was a fairly harsh critique of that line of research, but I had to include something about it even though I would have preferred to avoid it entirely for various reasons.)

Different journals have different politics and particular topics that are considered important to address or even sacrosanct. While any decent editor will allow pieces from various different perspectives, including ones with which they personally disagree. Nevertheless, not everything will be acceptable in any given journal. The review process can sometimes be a balancing act trying to preserve the integrity of the piece while making it acceptable to the journal. This isn't always possible (but in theory authors will pick journals where their work will “fit”). Ideally, the final article will communicate something the author believe in, even if it's not the same thing the author set out to communicate in the first place.

Understandably, the peer review process often takes a long time. Depending on how many rounds of reviews happen, how long they take, the editorial queue, and how much time passes between the piece being accepted and actually being published, it's possible that a couple years will have passed between when you first submitted the piece and when it comes out. The discursive landscape can change so radically in that time, especially in the context of asexuality. Journal often list the “submitted on” and “accepted on” dates (along with other dates for revisions, etc.) when the articles are finally published. And many articles are published rather quickly “online first” these days (even if they aren't assigned to a journal for a significant period of time).

There's a lot that goes into shaping academic papers beyond what the people writing them have to say that's worth considering when you pick up an academic paper. Even academic papers are artifacts that are necessarily embedded within particular contexts and are best understood in that context. Why was a piece written the way it was? Why did an author make a particular argument— what other arguments were they explicitly or implicitly responding to? Some part of the “why” should ideally be because it's what the author wanted to say. But some of the answer will always have to do with what went on behind the scenes. Academic articles are strategic texts, created in particular contexts for particular purposes and with definite limits and limitations (like length)—just like other texts, except that the academic part of the context isn't necessarily obvious or accessible to readers.

After a paper is accepted: copy-editing and copyright transfer agreements and limits of “open-access”

When a paper is accepted (and any needed revisions submitted), it needs to be typeset. Depending on the timeline of the journal—whether they wait to typeset it until the issue of the journal comes along where it will finally appear, or whether they typeset it right away and post an “online first” version online, before it actually appears in an issue—the wait-times vary. But once it reaches typesetting, there's usually a quick turnaround time.

Authors might have a week or so to look over and provide corrections to the galley proofs. (This is important because sometimes they accidentally chop off a chunk of text, or maybe the editor re-words something to streamline the writing style that ends up completely changing its meaning. Or maybe they spell your name wrong repeatedly, or completely forget to include the names of co-authors...) Usually changes at this stage are supposed to be very small, and literally correcting errors that they make, but this is also the last opportunity to correct any content-errors (or to add any last minute details, especially if they are really small in terms of wording changes).

Typically, it will also be necessary for authors to sign over the copyright of the work to the publisher. Different journals have different copyright transfer agreements. This is a complicated issue. (It is extremely rare for journals to allow authors the possibility of keeping the copyright themselves, and Feminist Studies is the only journal I know of that does this.) Sometimes the copyright transfer agreements go as far as to prevent the authors from re-using their own work (or requiring that they pay the journal for the privilege of using it, just like anyone else)! They almost always disallow authors from posting the final version of their text online, either ever or for an initial period of time (e.g., 1-2 years after publication).

Often journals allow authors to go with the “open access” option where their work will be “open access” (i.e., not behind a paywall and therefore freely available online) forever. The catch, unfortunately, is that authors typically have to pay a fee of several thousand dollars 7 for this option, though there are some universities (especially in various countries in Europe) which pay the fees for their people. Basically, (if you're not from one of those universities), if you have a fancy research grant that will pay the fee, you can have your work be freely available, but otherwise, the paywall is unavoidable.

While there are a handful of “open access journals” (where all content is freely available), the quality of the peer review and standard for publication is (at this early stage) suspect in many of them which are legitimate scholarly publications; and many other “open access journals” are predatory journals (that charge authors fees to have their work published, and often forgo the peer review process entirely). Fortunately, legitimate scholarly open access publications are increasingly establishing themselves, particularly in the humanities— often as “online only” journals. Many academics in fields where there are viable open access journal options are choosing only to publish in those journals. (Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of “open access” journals in psychology—where much of the asexuality scholarship is coming from— are predatory journals.)

The journals themselves are directly making money from the publications, but they're alone in that benefit. Authors don't get paid for their publications in academic journals. In contrast, for example, if a fiction periodical or a newspaper include a piece in their publication, the authors—the fiction writer or journalist—will typically get paid for their work. Academic journals don't work that way. 8

Instead, this is in a system where academic publications are supposed to be written by professors—professors being paid to do academic activities including writing, and the publications themselves are “products” proving their productivity. Other people who write academic papers aren't being paid to do it. Any personal benefits of publishing are indirect. For example, grad students' publications help their careers insofar as they might ultimately lead to jobs (or at least are necessary preconditions for employment). And tenure-track faculty need to publish a certain number of papers in order to get tenure (i.e., ��publish or perish”).

If academics aren't sharing their work publicly, it's generally because doing so would be breaking the law and risking significant fines and/or being banned from future publishing in scholarly journals... not because they'll loose money.

Quality of peer review and “relevant expertise” to review asexuality-related works

Until a couple years ago, it was almost guaranteed that most or all the people serving as anonymous peer reviewers for papers on asexuality were themselves only vaguely familiar with asexuality and existing asexuality scholarship. Now, from what I can tell, it's kind of hit and miss.

I have certainly had feedback from reviewers on my own work, and seen feedback on other people's work from co-reviewers, that revealed that those reviewers either did not know what they were talking about or didn't have the background to give meaningful feedback. This is slowly changing, as more and more people get involved in asexuality scholarship and therefore find themselves in the pool of people being asked to review potential publications.

However, with a few notable exception, most of the people working on asexuality-related topics are students (and early career professors). That's not a bad thing, but it does mean the the people publishing about asexuality generally have less experience with the peer review process than people publishing in many other areas 9. And that will impact the learning curve of new reviewers. People aren't typically ever formally “taught” how to give peer reviews. Reviewing is a skill people develop as they go, and model after the reviews of others on their own work, sometimes under the guidance of an academic supervisor. Students generally have had fewer reviews of their work to learn from. Also, students studying asexuality will generally be less likely to have invitations for peer review passed along by their supervisors than students studying other things (because their supervisors generally aren't reviewing asexuality-related manuscripts).

Typically (in my field at least) it is unusual for someone who is not at least a senior PhD student to be asked to review an article, and even then, they are often invited by referral from a supervisor. (Even if a senior student hasn't yet “proven” their expertise to their colleagues through their publications, their supervisor would know if they are ready for the tasks and can appropriately refer them.) This means that students studying asexuality will have to have garnered the attention of people who don't work directly with them (i.e., via their publications) in order to get invited to serve as peer reviewers. Fortunately, the number of people publishing about asexuality has massively increased over the past 5 years.

I am hopeful that within the next few years, most of the people serving as peer reviewers for manuscripts about asexuality will actually have “expertise” in asexuality / asexuality scholarship (and not just tangentially relevant “expertise”). And I believe that will significantly improve the quality of the peer review process.

Endnotes:

People are constantly misspelling my name, mistaking the two-letter “CJ” first-name for initials. My actual initials (“ “C. D. C.”), by sheer unfortunate happenstance, coincide with a major US body focused on disease (i.e., the CDC). ↩︎

Despite my somewhat technophobic sensibilities, I have a very rudimentary website for the sole purpose of making my asexuality-related work available to people in the community. Links to some of my papers are available there. However, because of how copyright transfer agreements work, what I'm legally allowed to post online is limited. But I am allowed to e-mail articles that are only available behind a paywall to people who specifically ask me for them (so please do!). My brother set up my website for me (in about 15 minutes) in a format I'd be able to update myself. As might be obvious to more technically inclined folks, it's a subdomain of his professional composer website—which is significantly snazzier than my simple list and which hosts some of his music for people to check out. ↩︎

For instance, this is a poster I presented in 2009 at the Canadian Psychological Association conference. In order to present it, I needed to give some asexuality 101 just so that people could follow what I was saying. Eventually, I'll get around to writing up it up as a paper now that I wouldn't have to spend a significant chunk of the paper explaining asexuality and justifying its existence. ↩︎

Chasin, C. D. (2017). Considering Asexuality as a Sexual Orientation and Implications for Acquired Female Sexual Arousal/Interest Disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46 (3), 631-635. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-016-0893-1. [currently available without a paywall] ↩︎

Brotto, L. A., & Yule, M. (2017). Asexuality: Sexual orientation, paraphilia, sexual dysfunction, or none of the above? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46 (3), 619-627. DOI:10.1007/s10508-016-0802-7. [currently available without a paywall] ↩︎

Scherrer, K. S., & Pfeffer, C. A. (2017). None of the above: Toward identity and community-based understandings of (a)sexualities. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46 (3), 643–646. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-016-0900-6. [currently available without a paywall] ↩︎

As much as peer-reviewed academic journals rely on unpaid service from academics to keep them functioning, the journals themselves are for-profit enterprises and not social services, for better or worse. Journals make money from the work of authors. The justification for charging very large fees for “open access” seems to be for the journal to get money upfront to offset the “lost future revenues” from article-sales that will no longer happen. ↩︎

Book-writing is the only forum where academics might directly benefit financially from their writing, and even then, that's usually limited to earning a small portion of the profits from writing/editing a book that sells many copies (i.e., the editors of popular first-year textbooks make significant money from them). Even then, contributors to edited books—e.g., books with pieces with a number of different authors— typically don't get any financial compensation at all, just like for journal articles. And books about more specific topics or “upper-level” textbooks (often written by a single author) typically sell few copies, so authors' royalties from them are typically also minimal. ↩︎

It also means that students researching asexuality don't benefit from the expertise of their supervisors as much as students doing other research, which can impact the ultimate quality of the work. Even single-author papers are typically informed by collective scholarship— and this is especially true for student-led publications. The networks of people able to add meaningful contributions to asexuality-related work are still underdeveloped: supervisors and peer reviewers have themselves mostly been topic-novices. So this work is going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to looking a the overall calibre of the scholarship. Hopefully this will change as these former students move into more senior positions and start supervising students of their own. ↩︎

[thinkingagain]

“My aunt’s farm had some animals, some of whom lived a long time. The first real friend I remember was a cow.”

Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest (A Novel of the Revolution) Book Two: Empire Chapter 5

A few days after thwarting the wolf assault, Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest walked with the Madam outside the translucent Demesne walls. The morning was sunny and cool. They strolled through woods and fields, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the hills.

To the Sir, the Madam exuded radiance. The air around her responded with a gauzy shimmer to the changing tones of her skin color which were the outwards signs of her magic and which she could control when needed. Today she had no such need.

The Sir always found her clothing well-suited for every occasion. This morning only emphasized his feeling: the shade of her blue dress created a thrillingly moody counterpoint to the fading leaves of late fall. “Ah, Madam,” the Sir used his most graceful tones, “it is a pleasure to have you join me, this fine day. I find your conversation ennobling and refined.”

“It’s nice to have some free time, isn’t it?” The Madam smiled. “The Demesne keeps us very busy.”

“It does,” the Sir agreed. “There is little time to rest when one has a crucial cause to work for. Yet at moments like this, I can imagine living differently. Perhaps one day, you and I shall take a trip and see many far-flung locales of this world—a world that is still beautiful, despite Beastly excess.” He looked up at her shyly, wrinkling his bunny nose.

“That would be wonderful, Sir.” The Madam’s eyes turned down. “But you would never be happy away too long from the business of the Demesne.”

Even on this casual stroll, the Sir’s sword was ready at his side. There was no great danger in the regular world immediately surrounding the Demesne. Yet life there, as anywhere, required a rabbit to remain on guard.

The Sir looked dapper among the tall grass on the edge of the trail, his gold suit with blue stars shiny in the morning light. Thomas, that silently attentive little grizzly, sat prominently in the folds of his shirt. “Perhaps with you by my side I would be happy far from here, even if only for a time,” the Sir said. “The idea seems dreamlike. You enjoyed your travels with Lucky, I know.

“Please don’t misunderstand. My life on the Demesne is one I asked for but did not know was possible. Now, I find it both more rewarding and challenging than I had imagined. But though I must continue fighting, there is much in me that longs for peace and beauty. I know I cannot have too much peace in a world which Beasts have corrupted. Perhaps it is too simple a longing to ever become real. That doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot of good, Sir, in any dream you might be dreaming.” The Madam smiled at the Sir in a way that thrilled him in his spine. “I did enjoy my time traveling with Lucky. But Sir.” The Madam’s voice trailed away into the heavy stand of trees they were passing, and her mouth narrowed with pain. “I’m different now. I was still running then, still determined not to live in the way that I saw people around me living, not to believe the things they had accepted in order to have to live that way. In the years since, I’ve learned many things and made many mistakes.”

“I know only a few details of your story,” the Sir said, “from things you have mentioned and that Lucky has recounted—and of course from the obvious devotion that you and your totem animals have for each other. I would gladly hear more, if you would be kind enough to tell me.” They were passing a large low rock with a smooth top. “We could sit here, if you like.” He looked around and saw no immediate threat of Beasts, although forgotten scraps of Beast junk could be found all over the hills and fields. He hopped on the rock.

The Madam sat beside him. “It’s not a special story. Everybody struggles.”

“I do not believe,” the Sir bowed, “that any animal could have a more special story, although I find your modesty becoming.”

The Madam laughed and sat on the rock beside him. “You’re pulling out all the charm, I see. Okay, I’ll tell you.”

The Sir nodded a small pleased bunny nod.

“I was orphaned early,” she began.

The Sir startled. “Then you too do not remember your parents?”

The Madam startled too. “Oh, poor Sir. I didn’t know.” She scratched one of his ears, and he snuggled down more firmly on the rock. “No, I remember them, although not well, and I know the stories that others told about them. My father worked in the circus when he was younger, with animals. That’s part of where my love for animals must have come from, although I’m sure you know that life is often unhappy for animals in a circus.”

The Sir didn’t know of circuses. The Madam explained while he listened, not even interjecting with his opinions about Beasts.

“My father found it hard,” she continued. “He was concerned about animals, and he wasn’t happy with how the circus treated them. That maybe had something to do with his leaving the circus, although I’m not sure. By the time I was born, he was working the fair circuit. In the off season he did various odd jobs for people in the little town where he had been born, not too far from here really, maybe thirty miles north and another forty west. Sometimes my mother traveled with him.

“After I was born, they were apart more often. But she had gone with him for a trip, leaving me with my aunt, when they both died in a car crash. Car crashes around here are common, as you know, especially for those who live by traveling. Not that long ago, many roads were more dangerous than they are now. Narrow and poorly lit.”

“I do not approve of Beast roads,” the Sir waved a paw at the air angrily, “and am very sorry to learn what they did to you parents.”

“That’s kind of you.” The Madam smoothed a wrinkle in her dress and looked across the fields. “I lived for a few years with my aunt, my great aunt really. She wasn’t young, and though she was nice to me, in a tough-minded, hill country way, I spent a lot of time by myself. She owned a small farm. There were still people working it even when she was old, laborers who would be there awhile and move on when the seasons changed. I guess I’ve always been surrounded by wanderers.

“My aunt’s farm had some animals, some of whom lived a long time. The first real friend I had there was a cow. I used to take her for walks. She had a bell around her neck, with a deep sound that would clang as we walked. It wasn’t a time or place where people named their farm animals, so I gave her my own secret name: Joan, after Joan of Arc, who I had learned about in school. It was an important name for me, the name of someone who had fought and died for what she believed. I didn’t tell anyone I had named her. They would have laughed at me.

“I loved my aunt, I mean I was grateful enough, but growing up I never felt any huge affinity with people. They seemed oblivious and remote, and when not remote, hot and harsh and cruel. The other thing you have to understand is that I came from a mixed race background. Many people could see it.”

“Mixed race?” The Sir looked at her questioningly.

“My family background was made up of people with different skin colors. My father was dark-skinned, my mother not.”

“Ah.” The Sir nodded. “I am acquainted with this most ludicrous of Beastly ideas, that the skin color of a Beast is relevant to its character.”

“A lot of country people in this part of the world are mixed race,” the Madam said. “Their ancestors came from different parts of the British isles, or Germany or Africa, and in some cases from various Indian tribes like the Shawnee and the Cherokee. Many know little about what specific background they are. Often, people might not notice, or notice a little but not think anything of it. Nothing particularly bad ever happened to me. But now and then, people would say things, and I knew what was behind it.”

“Such Beastly behavior.” The Sir, agitated, shifted on the rock. “Those who do it should be chastised.”

The Madam patted him on a spot just above the nose, running her fingers up to his forehead and scratching him. “I dreamed often of going away, but I had no idea how. I was a hard worker in school, and I went to the library a lot and read. Many afternoons when I was walking with Joan, I brought a book along. There was a spot by a stream where I would sit. Sometimes I would read aloud to her. She seemed to like it.”

“Indeed,” the Sir said. “Why would she not?”

The Madam smiled, agreeing. “I worked hard and was smart, and I got enough tutoring and preparing for the normal world of people that eventually I was able to get a scholarship to Fallons.

“Most girls who went to Fallons were rich, but some were on scholarship like me. The scholarship girls weren’t accepted into the social world of the well-off girls, whose rounds of formal events and parties prepared them to be married to men of similar backgrounds. Still there were enough modern possibilities for girls that we could get preparation to enter the modern world of work.

“In my last two years at Fallons, I worked in offices on the campus to supplement my scholarship. I even stayed on in a full-time job for a year after I graduated and tried to figure out what to do. I didn’t like working in offices, but I wasn’t sure what else to try. Jobs that involved working with animals weren’t easy to come by, although I’d done volunteer work with animals here and there when I had time. So when I got a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and moved to Washington, I thought maybe I had found a solution.”

“What is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?” The Sir frowned. “It does not sound trustworthy.”

“It’s a government organization that tries to put effective controls on how people can and cannot treat animals.” The Sir scanned her face skeptically. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. It was often hopeless.”

“I have seen no evidence,” the Sir said, “that Beasts can resist the worst excesses of other Beasts, even if a given Beast does not share that particular excess.” He shifted again on the rock, blushing at the implications of what he had said. “Of course, I understand that you yourself—and some others I suppose, although I have not met them—try hard to treat all animals properly.”

“We do. But sadly, Sir, I’m afraid your doubts are justified.”

“Which is why we animals must take up the cause ourselves, and have.” He looked at the Madam sadly. “Yet there is only so much one can do.” His mind drifted off, sensing a problem he couldn’t quite grasp. Then he came back to the present. “Please proceed with your story.”

 “The problems were those you’ve already mentioned,” the Madam said. “There were many good people in the organization, but just as many were there to further questionable personal desires. All of them were always up against much larger, more powerful groups who fought back against the organization’s goals.

“With a government organization, one of the problems is that whoever leads the government chooses who leads the organization. That means that sometimes, the head of a government organization that supposedly supports animals actually agrees with, and works for, people who don’t support animals. Some people do what they can and have good intentions. Others don’t.” Her face tightened, as if annoyed at the memory.

 “I can imagine how unpleasant that must have been.”

“It would have been enough of a problem,” the Madam shook her head, “even if it was the only problem I had. It was hard to live around so much grasping and scheming. I liked some people, but they weren’t enough to counterbalance the ones I didn’t like.

“I was young. It was hard to accept the existence of others who didn’t think like I did and who did terrible things. It was bad enough that people harmed animals without thinking, but that others harmed them even after thinking... well, I couldn’t stand it. I wanted out.

“I knew there were more radical organizations, ones in which people fought back against those who attacked animals, but those organizations also had problems: the people could be rigid, and the things they did, extreme or not, often didn’t have good outcomes. I didn’t know what to do. It was right around then, in my worst days of doubt, that for the first time I was introduced to the world of Animal Magic and shown that it was real.

“Did Mr. Puffy and The Magic Rabbit visit you too?” The Sir looked at her eagerly.

“Oh Sir,” the Madam cried out, pained, “No.”

The Sir, startled at her reaction, leaned towards her. “I hope I have not upset you?”

The Madam grew quieter again. “You have never upset me. It’s the rest of the world that does. I wish it had been Mr. Puffy. But it was a Beast who introduced me to the world of Animal Magic. And if anyone ever deserved the name of Beast—and believe me, many do—he does.”

[ellynefics]

Visions of You | Part One

parts;; One (you are here) | Two | Three (coming soon)

genre;; Realistic, business college!AU

pairing;; Hyungwon x Reader [also a little bit of OT7 in coming chapters]

plot;; 

After discovering that you’re going to go to the same college for business, you and Chae Hyungwon strike up a steady and strong friendship. But at some point... it becomes more than that.

title;; Visions by Cheat Codes

warnings;; lots of angst!! fluff, smut in coming chapters

revised;; 08/04/2017

words;; 6,637 (6.7k)

Technically, you could say that you first met Chae Hyungwon in high school. You were in the same graduating class, after all, and also happened to be in the same program at the same time. And yet, then, you were complete strangers, your paths never crossing. Well, why would have they? With 500, plus kids set to walk alongside you at graduation, and the school building being larger, too, it wasn't a huge wonder. Not to mention that though you were both heavily involved in business, there was a learning gap. He had always known what he wanted to go for. You were a different story, though, dabbling in various things--education, biology, chemistry--before finally finding your love and settling on it. Because of your past indecisiveness, you had to play catch up on classes, and so were never in the same room as him.

The tall, handsome man was well known to you, though, and you could pick out what he looked like. After all, the teachers touted him as one of the top students in the program. Your business teacher kept articles of him from the the school and local newspapers on the walls of his room. Also, there was a full color photo in the awards display cases next door. So, when you thought of Chae Hyungwon then, you always had a specific vision in your head. No doubt he was a relaxed young man, his plump lips always turned up in a smile and suit pressed impeccably. One of his favorite things to do was go to fancy events. They would give him awards trophies, and he would eat up the attention. He especially loved to have his photo taken and shake the hands of influential people.

You didn’t dwell on him much, however, as you were too engrossed in your own life. After deciding what you wanted for a career, you quickly found that you had gotten yourself into a lot. Often you would be up all night doing a project or assignment, and the next day feel like a dead woman walking. Still, you'd be at school, against the odds. It was hard; the course load you chose to take on might have broken some other people. The only thing keeping you sane was that you had finally found the thing you wanted to do.

After three semesters of grueling work, it seemed that your struggle was almost over. Senior year was drawing to a close; graduation was right around the corner. It made your chest swell with pride when they told you that you would be able to stand as an honors student. More than all that, though, another chapter of your life was going to start. After the hell that was High school was over, you would be able to move out into the big wide world. Like all graduates, you had a choice: to work, or continue your education. Deciding on which one to pursue wasn’t hard at all. When college was as much as mentioned to you, excitement bubbled up within.

Still, fear remained, even going into the meeting with your academic advisor. What if she didn’t agree with that path? Much to your surprise, though, a huge stack of college application materials waited for you on her desk. She said that despite the fact that you started uncertainly, you had finished strong. That alone was far more valuable than a straight 4.0 average. You had all the qualifications and prerequisites, and knew the path you were going to take. Thus, post-secondary school was a perfect option.

So, you (or rather, you and your parents) started to look at what institution would be the best fit. From the beginning, standards were extremely high. Your mother wanted campus to be a safe place, and dormitory life not too wild or toxic. Dad could only settle for the best school, the most knowledgeable teachers, the best method and curriculum. Despite their worry and input, ultimately, they had no say in the final choice. You were the one going off to college, becoming more independent, after all.

Many college tours filled your days to the end of the year. Out of all, one in particular stood out: Pierce College. It came highly recommended and you fell in love instantly. A small school and relatively inexpensive, Pierce was clean and well-kept. The staff and faculty were so friendly, intelligent, and well-learned in their respective fields. Also, they were genuinely interested in your success. You walked away from that visit bound and determined to call Pierce your school. The only worry in your mind was the tough application, but that would work itself out.

You had never worked for something so hard in your life. Every last detail of your application was perfectly formatted and filled out. On the entrance exams, your intensive studying must have helped something. You made higher scores than most of the boys in your class, landing yourself in the top five percent in fact.

The day your acceptance letter came in the mail--complete with scholarship awards--was unlike any other. Stop talking about it? What was that? You couldn’t have been more excited. Now all there was to do was finish out the year. The last day of class was palpably close, within sight and mind. Then you could spend the summer working your job as a cashier at the local grocery store. Saving up a little was high on your priority list. Maybe between shifts, you could get some good hangout time with your friends, too. Then it would be off, and you'd have to move a little more than five hours away.

One afternoon, you were suddenly and inexplicably called to the office. Your English teacher handed over the hall pass, and you stared at it a minute, almost in disbelief. Not like you had reason to worry; there was no way this was a disciplinary issue. Finishing up a worksheet you were in the middle of, you excused yourself, taking your things along. You didn't fool around or stop anywhere else, just headed right to the main office. The well-oiled door swung open with a whoosh of air. Sitting at her desk, working on some paperwork, the secretary only needed to look up and see who it was. She promptly pointed you to an adjoining conference room.

There, a familiar face was waiting--Dr. Osbourne. She was one of Pierce College's business faculty, and one of the reasons you were so determined to apply. She had a pervasive, optimistic attitude, and seemed very passionate about her job.

“Miss (Y/N)!” She smiled as you turned to close the door behind you and approached the table. “How are you?”

“I’m great! You?” There was no way you could resist grinning back.

“Awesome, thanks. Put down your books, and take a seat. I’m here to get to know you a little better, and find out what you’re thinking of doing in our program. We’ll get started in a minute, we're waiting on another student.”

You sat down in a plush rolling chair, sliding your stack of binders and textbooks away from yourself. Dr. Osbourne's last statement almost didn't register, though it was important. It was just that--you suddenly felt out of place in this huge, spotless room. It didn't help that you were with a formally-dressed teacher. You, by total contrast, were in a pair of comfy jeans and an Aeropostale tee shirt. She didn't seem to care, though, and momentarily you realized what she had said. Your eyes widened. “There’s someone else from my graduating class who’s coming to Pierce?”

“Yes. I guess you don’t know, then? This is a pretty big school I suppose. Anyway, his name is--”

Footsteps outside the door interrupted her; then there was the sound of a turning door handle. A head popped into the room, then a tall body.

It was Hyungwon. At the time your thought was ‘oh, ok’. You weren’t like the girls who giggled his name in the hallway. Some of them even told stories of bumping into him with a smitten look on their face. There was even one who had stolen an article from the business teacher’s wall, cut out his picture, and taped it to the inside of her binder, with little hearts drawn all around it. This was the ‘Chae Hyungwon shrine’. Some called it that legitimately, others jokingly. As for you, it wasn’t that you thought he was ugly; it was just that you were too worried about yourself to dwell on how cute or handsome he was.

“Dr. Osbourne,” he said with a hint of surprise in his tone. For such a tall, slender person, his voice was surprisingly low and melodic. “It’s good to see you.”

“You as well, Hyungwon.” She flashed her signature smile at him. “Sit down, I was just explaining to (Y/N) that I’m here to get an idea of what you two plan on accomplishing at Pierce.”

He took the chair right next to yours, his left hand coming to rest on the table casually. He was wearing nice slacks and a dress shirt, which didn’t make you feel any better about your casual clothing. His gaze flickered to you, and when he noticed that you were looking at him too, smiled and stuck out a hand. “Uh--I’m Chae Hyungwon. You’re (Y/FL/N), correct? I don’t think we’ve met before, but know who you are--I often help grade business projects and things.”

For some reason, just by smiling in your direction and making himself friendly, he put you at ease. True, he was a bit awkward still, but he worked through it wonderfully. If he had this effect on everyone, no wonder he was so popular. You shook his hand. “Pleased, Hyungwon. I’ve seen your picture and heard of you, of course, but yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

You spent the next hour or so deep in conversation with Dr. Osbourne and Hyungwon. Ironically, in that time, you came to know him better than anyone else in the school probably did. It was pretty much strangers to friends in minutes. He was a gifted student. Though many had been trying to push him into a larger sector, his real dream was entrepreneurship. He wanted to start a small business and be his own boss. He hadn’t quite decided on what the focus of this business would be, but figured it wasn’t a pressing matter now. 

When he had finished, and the conversation turned in your direction, you were up front and honest. Like Hyungwon, you didn’t know what you wanted out of a degree. You loved the idea of a small business though, too. The science of economics was fascinating to you, and the logistics of everything. You wanted to do more with the passion you had found in the past few years.

By the time the three of you finished, the bell was about to ring. With the seconds ticking down, Dr. Osbourne wrapped up. “It was nice visiting with you two. We really look forward to having you at the college. I’ll do my best to get you started the right way, I promise.”

“Thank you,” Hyungwon and you replied, almost in tandem. As you stood and reached forward to shake the professor’s hand, you dipped your head in thanks. Hyungwon followed in short order. A few strands of dark brown hair fell out of line with the rest of his carefully-combed style. His famous wide, white smile pushed up his cheeks. In that moment, you came to understand his nickname of “Prince Hyungwon”. Maybe those giggling girls weren't so crazy after all.

The familiar sharp ringing that marked the start of the lunch hour came through the PA. You grabbed your things and headed for the door, the tall boy right behind. If you would have realized what he was going to do, you would have said something, insisted that he didn’t need to bother. However, Hyungwon quickly hopped in front and pulled the door open for you. “Ladies first.”

“Yeah, but--uh--hey, actually, would you like to, um, go out to lunch somewhere together?”

You stopped and turned around, brows furrowed; this kid was full of surprises. His question had certainly caught you off-guard. “Like, on a date, or...?”

It was Hyungwon’s turn to be a little flustered. Though he was pretty good at hiding it, you could tell that it was what you had just unintentionally done. “Wha--what? Yah, we only met like, forty-five minutes ago. You seem pretty cool, and I want to get to know you, I mean since we’ll probably be seeing each other a lot. We’ll have the same classes next year.”

“That’s true. Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It was just the first thing that flashed through my head,” you admitted. “I’d love to go to lunch. Can we stop by my locker first though? I don’t want to have to carry these...” The arm holding your things had gotten tired already, and you hefted everything onto your other.

“Yeah, of course. Lead the way.”

You sat together in his car, duking it out over where to go for almost ten minutes solid. In the end, you both decided on going to McDonalds, driving through, and taking it back to the school. When it came down to it, your personalities were very different. Still, you found that you had a lot of common ground, and to an extent chemistry as well. A lively conversation over your one McDouble and his five was the beginning of your unlikely friendship. Though you might have not guessed that day, the both of you would come to cherish it through the next few years.

That summer, you saw him occasionally at the store, and traded texts every once in a while. Most of your chatter was business things. Your lives were still too different, and so you didn’t really get another chance to hang out.

Then, suddenly, you were moving away from home and into the dorms. You had your schedule, and sitting down in an entry-level business class, clean and primped. No more denim and Aeropostale tee; this was your chance to get ready for the big leagues. You were sparing nothing in looking professional. Not too long after you had a seat, Hyungwon took one next to you, looking equally sharp in a blazer. Like old friends, you fell into conversation. Things flowed easily from one topic to another, until the teacher started class. You traded questions about how the summer went, what you did, your jobs; the weather, your pets, your cars even. You were both on the second floor of the Freshman dorms, though in different hallways, of course.

After that day, the two of you were inseparable. You saw each other all the time, since pretty much all your classes were the same. Before long hanging out during class bled into hanging out outside of it. You ate in the cafeteria together. Studied for tests together. On quite a few projects, you were even paired together. Last but not least you joined all the business clubs together. College would have been lonely at first if you didn’t have each other. Certainly, that was why you stuck to him like glue.

Eventually, a close group of mutual friends and acquaintances started forming around you. In particular, there was a group of six boys. They all had dramatically different interests, and were special in their own ways, but felt a connection to each other. There was Shownu, a math education major and a member of the football team; Kihyun, another business major and lead in the Vocal Jazz ensemble; Jooheon, a talented poet and English major; Hoseok, whom everyone called Wonho, campus hunk and 100% certain that he didn’t know what to do with his life; Minhyuk, elementary education major and definitely the light and sweetheart of the group; and finally, Changkyun, the youngest, Jooheon’s best friend, and also an English major.

Excursions with all or a few of these guys were always bound to be a good time. There were many, many late night drives, on pavement or up to the Ridge. It was a wayside path that led to a spot high above campus, and had a beautiful view. If you took Shownu’s suburban, which you often did, the eight of you would play musical chairs at every stoplight. It was loud, constantly, but you wouldn’t trade it for the world. You felt that you belonged.

As three semesters passed, other people came and went. Always, however, your constant and rock was Hyungwon. He was solid in mind and emotion, yet empathetic (even when PMS turned you into a demon, thank God). Never did he fail to be ready at a moment's notice, willing to listen or dispense advice. Even, do something as simple as smile when you most needed it. He made it explicitly clear that if there ever was anything you wanted to talk about, vent about, or just tell him about, he was there. You never could figure out how he was able to answer texts within five minutes. Like clockwork, your phone would ping, no matter where he was, what he was doing, or what time it was.

Reciprocating this was a top priority for you. Perhaps you weren’t as good at it as he was, but you never got tired of hearing him complain. Oh, he had a lot to complain about: endless, boring assignments, mostly. Then there was the issue of his mom, who kept nagging her handsome son to find someone to be his wife.

You knew some people whispered about how there must be something more in your friendship with the tall, handsome boy. Some of the single (and not-so-single) girls on campus discreetly stared when he was by your side. It reminded you of the little cliques in the hallways in high school. (Well, some things hadn’t changed.) The assumptions and unwarranted attention weren’t too hard to ignore. You didn’t really care; they could gossip all they wanted. Yes, you certainly loved Hyungwon, but as a best friend, and it was never a secret that he felt the exact same way. Nothing romantic or sexual ever happened between you. 

Though, sometimes, you had... moments. It would be the tiniest of triggers, like seeing his picture somewhere. Perhaps even, a good long reminisce about the time you had spent with him that day. In seconds, you would find yourself thoroughly soaked, mind wandering in directions you hadn’t anticipated. Mainly, down. Each time, you channeled the desire somewhere else, rode it out, chalked it up to your hormones, and moved on.

Besides, he had a love life of his own. He wasn’t one of those boys who was easy to woo; in fact, he almost never paid attention to girls who batted their eyes at him. Every once in a while, however, he would find someone and develop a romantic interest. For the most part, he chose well.

That was, except for this one girl who was very coy, catty, and controlling. Everyone agreed that she was a total bitch. She'd talk behind everyone's back, excepting her ‘Hyungie’. Worse than that though was that she was trying to isolate him from everyone else in his life except her. Hyungwon's love for her blinded him to this. Oh, you and the other six guys tried to get him to see the light of what she was doing, but he wouldn’t take it seriously. The fact that he dodged your advice, made excuses, and defended her hurt only a little less than knowing what she was doing.

It wasn’t until she tried to cut his ties with you that he realized her true character. They got into a big fight over the whole thing, and it was a gigantic mess. The kicker for him was that she accused him of seeing you on the side. That got Hyungwon thinking that maybe you were right. If she didn't know the difference between a strong friendship and an affair, she was either clueless or malicious.  After that, it was only a matter of days before he was single again. 

You had a couple of boyfriends too, but none of these relationships lasted very long. Most of the reason for this was life, and unavoidable life at that. Dating and boys still wasn’t a high priority on your list of life focuses, so you never took any of it very hard. Plus, you had your tall, slender best friend if you needed comfort.

Junior year started like any other. Three weeks into classes, everything was pretty smooth sailing. The coursework wasn't as hard as you had expected; it certainly wasn't the worst. There were challenges, of course, but Kihyun and Hyungwon were always eager to help if you needed it. Likewise, you were there for them. You had just come off of a summer of spending lots of time with the boys between working a full-time job, so you were happy. There was money in savings and food in the pantry of the house you were newly renting. Hyungwon, of course, never went far. His place was a little ways down the street. So you two often stayed over until the wee hours of the morning, watching movies, studying, and talking.

Then, one night, during one of these peaceful, content times, you got a sudden call from your mother. What you heard when you answered and said your hello was completely unintelligible. However, your stomach still dropped like a stone. “Mom--mom, calm down. Say that slower. Please,” you pleaded. Momentarily, your glance flickered up to Hyungwon. He was sitting cross-legged next to you, working on his laptop--well, not really, anymore. Instead he had abandoned his work to gaze at you intently.

For a minute, your mother was sobbing too hard for anything to make sense, despite your efforts to calm her down. Finally, though, she was able to control it enough to deliver the heartbreaking news. Your beloved grandmother had taken a turn for the worse that morning. It was sudden, but definitely not unexpected. She had been sick with cancer for the past half-year, and your parents had taken her in for hospice not too long ago. No one knew how much longer she would last.

You knew that Hyungwon couldn’t hear anything, but picked up that something was wrong. All the blood drained out of your face, and you sounded like a broken record, repeating ‘oh God’ and ‘no, no’. Quietly, he put aside the computer and leaned forward, folding his hands together. His eyes followed your every movement as you pushed yourself up from the couch and paced a trail in the middle of the living room.

"Sweetie, I love you. If you’re so involved in work and classes that you can’t leave, I understand, but your family really needs you right now.”

There was no need for a push; you were already making a beeline to the bedroom. Grabbing a duffel bag, you started to pack, pulling clothes out of your dresser and stuffing them haphazardly in. “Oh God mom, I never thought it’d be so soon.”

“None of us did.” Her breathing became ragged; she choked and nearly broke down again. “Please hurry. I love you so much.” Your phone beeped and the call ended. As you stood there next to the bed, an overwhelming dread and despair washed over you. Why? repeated in your head. Why does it have to be now?

There was a noise to your left. Hyungwon was most certainly there, leaning against the whitewashed doorframe. Though he didn’t say a word, the worry and concern in his eyes asked everything he wanted to know. “It’s--It’s Gramma.” a sigh escaped your lips and the tears rolled down your cheeks as you covered your face with your hands. “She was doing great, well this morning mom came in and she was unresponsive...”

“Oh my God. (Y/N). I’m so sorry.” He was almost immediately at your side, one hand on your shoulder. Practically tackling him, you clung to your best friend’s torso, helpless. There was nothing you could do to stop your tears or hiccuped sobs. In an attempt to muffle the noise, you buried your face in his chest. The weight of his slender arms on your shoulders comforted you a lot. More than that, though, was his steady breathing and knowing that he was with you through this.

When he must have noticed that your emotions leveled out a little, he cleared his throat. “You’re not driving all that way tonight, are you?”

“I--I don’t have a choice.” You answered, and loosened your death grip on him. Lifting your head and wiping the wetness from your cheeks, you turned back to the duffel bag. You had to take stock of what you had placed there in the heat of the moment. “I want to be home tonight, just in case...”

“We’ll take my car.”

The decisive tone in his voice put you beyond words. You were so shocked that your cheeks heated up, and you felt a fresh batch of tears start to form again. “Hyung--Hyungwonnie, no. I can’t let you disrupt your life for me.”

“It’s just a couple of days. I want to make sure you’re safe on the way. Also, it’s probably time that I go visit my mom and dad.”

Again your brain screamed to not let him. You would have protested more, but suddenly you felt stressed. Everything that was about to happen flashed across your mind. There was whether you’d make it back to see her in her last hours; a funeral and dinner; lots of tears; many friends; meeting many strangers. Everyone in the family would be heartbroken. You felt five times heavier, physically, from the thought alone, and so you simply nodded at him.

Half an hour later, you were on the road, a bag of McDonalds sitting in the center console. He had half a McDouble in his mouth at once; you could only nibble on yours. Sitting there, staring out the window, watching the road go by, you were acutely aware of how tired you were. Maybe it was for the best that it was him in the driver’s seat. Normally, he drove within the laws. That night, though, he was doing ten to fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. Still, he was quiet, calm, and loving Hyungwon. Every once in a while he’d look to check whether you were asleep, or working away on your burger and fries. The two of you didn’t talk the entire way, and, really, didn��t need to.

You made it home in record time, a little under four hours and fifteen minutes. Hyungwon dropped you off in the driveway of your house, putting the car in park and hopping out to grab your duffel bag out of the trunk. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” He said as he handed it to you. “But do you want me to stay nearby tonight? Sleep on the couch? I came down for you, (Y/N).”

Looking up to meet his tender eyes, you shook your head and the corners of your mouth tipped up in a little smile. “No, that’s ok. Thank you so much.” Reaching forward, you wrapped him in a close, tight hug again, like earlier. Maybe you savored his scent a little more, too. Patient as ever, he let you stay there for as long as you wanted. To be quite honest, you wanted it to be forever. That was impossible, though. So after a long time, you finally pulled away and turned to go, trying not to think of him or turn back for another look.

At the door, your father was waiting, and he engulfed you in another bear hug. “Welcome home, sweetie. Who was that young man? Did he drive you here?”

You nodded. “That’s Hyungwon.” He often came up in phone and text conversations with your parents; how could he not? He was your best friend. “He wanted to see his family, too. And he was worrying about me being on the road at this hour.”

Just then your mother appeared, her eyes red and puffy. Her sad countenance brightened when she saw you and she immediately rushed forward to give you a hug, too. “Oh sweetie, I’m so glad you’re safe. I didn’t want you to put yourself in danger by hurrying. If you would have waited until tomorrow, though, it would have been too late.”

“Is she resting now?” You asked, quietly.

“Yes, in a sense. She’s too weak to move, talk, or open her eyes.” It took a huge effort for your mother to struggle through the next couple of sentences. “The nurses eased her pain with Morphine... she can respond to your presence, though.”

“Can I see her?”

“Of course.”

She led you back into the spare bedroom, the one that served as a hospice room. As you took your grandmother’s hand and seated yourself in an armchair next to the bed, you did your best not to cry or plead. Instead, you chose to focus on your favorite memories and how much she meant to you. There was immense comfort in that you had spent time with her when the opportunity had been there.

After an hour, you couldn’t take any more, mentally, emotionally, or physically. Your vision was getting foggy and you caught yourself nodding off a couple times. Also, it was nearly two AM. So, you said your last goodbyes, gave your grandmother a kiss on the forehead, and retired to a nice soft bed. Climbing sleepily into pajamas, you hit the pillow and let the sandman work his magic.

The last person you thought of before you fell asleep was Hyungwon. Maybe you should have told him to stay, because all you wanted at that moment was him there lying next to you, his soothing voice and hands...

Around 5AM, your mother came in and gently shook you awake. “Sweetie, she passed away twenty minutes ago. I just wanted to let you know,” she whispered in your ear, and slipped out again. Drowsiness still had a good hold, but you knew the gravity of the news. You groaned a little and rolled over, somehow managing to find your phone. Within a few seconds, you had sent one crucial text, albeit with an error. At this hour, you figured that he wouldn’t blame you, though.

(Y/N): Shes gone.

Again, you wished for his arms, his voice, anything. But you drifted back into the clutches of slumberland before he could reply.

“(Y/N)... (Y/N), sweetie. It’s almost noon, and Hyungwon is here.” Your mother’s gentle voice and light touch once again brought you back to wakefulness.

“Ok, I’ll be up and around in a second.” You groaned, and craned your neck to watch her nod and leave again promptly.

Rolling over, you noticed your phone’s notification flasher blinking like crazy. Picking it up, you clumsily fought to find the on button, and unlocked it to find a few missed texts. 

5:23 AM

Hyungwonie😜😎😊: So sorry (Y/N). Chin up. I’m here for you.

10 Minutes Ago

Hyungwonie😜😎😊: On my way over.

Hyungwonie😜😎😊: Oh, you might not be awake yet.

Hyungwonie😜😎😊: I’m sure you’ll be hungry though. Want to get some lunch?

The idea of food didn’t quite sit well with your stomach, but even so, Hyungwon’s offer sounded great. You needed something to get your mind off of this entire thing. Also, knowing your mother, she’d probably be bawling in front of whatever family was here. You really didn’t want to be in that environment at the moment.

(Y/N): I’d love to. Dunno if I could eat though.

(Y/N): My room’s down the left hallway. Name’s on the door, can’t miss it. I’m still decent, you can come in.

(Y/N): If mom asks, tell her that you’ve seen me in more compromising positions.

You only had seconds to wait before the doorknob turned. None other than Chae Hyungwon entered, a small smile on his face. Just the sight of him made you feel calmer. He sat on the edge of the bed and put one converse-clad foot up on the mattress. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess. I just want to get out of the house. It’s probably really depressing out there.” You pushed yourself up to a sitting position, yawned, and stretched.

“Your mother’s having a rough time at it, but it’s not too bad. She cornered me to chat a little bit, even. Get to know me.” This didn’t surprise you at all. Your mother was always wanting to meet your friends. Especially, the ones you talked about constantly. No doubt, to finally meet him in the flesh had made her happier. “And ok. As long as you let me bring you back. You’re needed.”

You sighed. “I know. Thanks for being such a good friend, Hyungwon.”

That sly smile grew on his face, and you knew what he was going to say almost before he did. “You’re the other half of it.”

Your mouth dropped open in mock shock. “Hyungwonnie! Stop trying to play down the compliment!” You punched him on the arm, hard but not hard enough to do any damage.

“Owww,” He complained sarcastically. 

“Poor baby. Now go away. I need to shower.” All the snarkiness you could muster came out in your retort. He found himself bombarded playfully with pillows as he tried to get to the door. The cheerful laughter was exactly what you needed to brighten your spirits.

After you were clean and judged yourself to be proper enough, you both hopped in the car. Hyungwon knew where he wanted to go, so it was only a quick five minute drive across town. The two of you pulled into a little cafe that had opened recently. He had teased that you would probably become hungrier than you thought upon walking in. Though you wanted very much to prove him wrong...dammit, he was right. As always. The smell was too much for your empty belly to resist, and you ordered a dinner meal. When it finally came, you found that it was bigger than you expected, but you still managed to eat it all. Even Hyungwon’s portion wasn’t as big. He watched you almost proudly as you wolfed it down. That big cutie, he was so used to you eating like a bird.

Once your plates were empty, he paid (despite the fact that you insisted taking up your own check). The two of you left, going to a nearby park. Neither of you meant it, but the next time you looked at the time, you had spent three hours sitting on a bench, deep in conversation. Of course, a lot of it was simply enjoying each other’s presence. Contentedly, you leaned on his shoulder.

It was the same at the funeral the next day, too. He wasn’t only your mental and emotional support, but also in a way your physical support. As you expected, there was a lot of crying, old family friends (literally, some old family friends), and having to meet strangers. Through it all, Hyungwon was right there. Never was he unwilling to hold your hand comfortingly, or be a tall, huggable teddy bear that hugged back. By keeping him close, you managed to snag him a place next to you in the family seating area. (Of course, your skinship might have also unwittingly fooled people into thinking that he was your boyfriend.)

The hours seemed to pass so slowly, it was unbearable. The service dragged on; even when that was over, there was still the internment and dinner. By the time night rolled around, you were so exhausted and wished you could go to bed, but alas. You had to make the trip home that night, as you had only gotten three days off work.

You offered to drive at least part of the way. He would hear none of it, though, and dug a pillow and blanket out of his duffel bag for you to use. As determined as you were to stay awake, his scent in the car and the rain pattering on the window lulled you to sleep. Within half an hour you were snoring contentedly in the passenger’s seat.

When you next awoke, you realized with a start that you were back in your own bed. Early morning daylight shone through the window. You rolled over and looked at the digital clock, which read 8:30 AM. The alarm light was on; drowsily you reached out and hit the button, and the screen flashed 10:30 AM. You never turned it on, so Hyungwon must have done it. He knew you all too well, and your schedule. It was Friday, you didn’t have any classes, but you faced a four-hour shift later. 10:30 would get you up in time to get your ass to work by noon.

You sighed and flopped back on your belly, staring at the woodgrain of your headboard. Hyungwon must have done it. Chae Hyungwon... At least the past couple of days were a little brighter because of your best friend’s presence. And last night...

Little snippets came back to you slowly. You remembered being gently shaken awake. Rain still pattered on the cold glass, making everything sort of surreal. “(Y/N), we’re back.” Hyungwon pulled an umbrella from the backseat and used it to keep you and your duffel bag dry. Unfortunately, by doing so, he got drenched. At any other time you would have insisted that you were fine, but then you had been too tired to care. It was a miracle you were even able to get inside, really. The moment you were next to the couch, you collapsed onto it and was almost asleep again. A strong, gentle pair of hands helped you back to your feet. “Come on, let’s put you to bed properly, hm?” All you could offer was a sleepy nod.

Hyungwon let you lean on him as you made your way to the bedroom. He helped pick your pajamas up off the floor and ease you out of your clothes, too. (Considering that he had accidentally seen you naked before and had grabbed things for you when you were in the shower, this was no big deal.)

Finally, you were under the sheets, laying on your side, all snuggly and warm. Though you were once again on the verge of slumber, you could feel another weight on the bed and a thumb rubbing circles on your brow. Your eyes fluttered open. There was Hyungwon, with that same caring look on his face as what he had the other night in the car. You didn’t know what possessed you at that moment, but you found yourself murmuring, “Hyungwon...could you stay?”

Much to your surprise, he nodded curtly, and ruffling your hair, got up. He walked around to the other side of the bed. There was a bit of rustling, and then you felt him slide under the covers beside you, pressing up against your back. A content hum bubbled up from your throat, and sleepily you rolled over to snuggle into his now-bare chest.

[someoneandnoone-blog-blog]

So, things that I do while at work and at home is listen to books, documentaries, Ted talks, and self help seminars. Yeah I’m an old person we don’t have to talk about that.

Anyways, I was 2/3’s of my way through my degree in microbiology and I’m a ho for for all things biology so a lot of what I listen to is biology based. I love listening to people talk about microbreweries and baking because microbes working to help our food taste better is super cool and I’m honestly fascinated by glycolysis and at some point had all the products/enzymes of that and the citric acid cycle memorized and was in the process of learning the entire periodic table for another class. So a lot of stuff like that, but also parasites are fricken dope and plants domescated humans and wolves domescated themselves because we had food scraps of food, and alien life does exist, but in my opinion it’s microbial. Change my mind I dare you.

But today I picked up an audio recording of a very well done essay by Anne Helen Petersen called ‘Burn Out Generation’ and it was just talking about a generational burnout of millennials. It got me thinking. Now my friend group is what is known as ‘young millennials’ and honestly I’m pretty sure me and my friends older than me are the only ones actually classified as millennials. The oldest in our group is 27? And the youngest is 19. Anyways, I categorized us into three different groups and its crazy, but makes sense.

There’s a group of us that realized our bachelors degrees were not good enough for the job market and turned around and went to grad school. There are four of them. One of them is in their last year of gradschool and hate themselves because they haven’t taken a single break from school even when they were going through chemotherapy. Two aren’t working in their field of study becasue the companies they were looking at stopped hiring because of COVID and the decrease in projects hence no reason for entry level architects with masters degrees. I haven’t checked in on them in a while actually. And one of them is making hella good money working in their field and bought a house with their signing bonus and their company is paying their student loans for them as part of their contract. They hate themselves becasue they work in the health care field and are working crazy hours and just took a week off for their wedding and are so exhausted they wish they had a second week off work.

You have the group I belong in. There are five of us currently. All of us are college drop outs. My mom had a stroke and I moved back to help out and now all I have to show for it is crippling debt and way too much knowledge on microbes and why first hand knowledge in the indirect ELISA method (seriously I can do one in my sleep because that was the main test we ran in my research lab), but seriously the thought of going back scares me, because then I would be in group 1.

Anyways, that’s wildly off topic. For the rest of group two: One of us went to a Christian college and got bullied so bad because he is an openly gay man and dropped out. He literally went to the first school that accepted him offered him the most scholarship money and didn’t think about campus culture. Expensive life lesson learned. One of us dropped out and moved home because of COVID. One us went to school for a year and realized they didn’t want to and the fourth couldn’t afford it after two years and was forced to drop out. Every single one of is in a very specific spot where we are all working between 1-2 jobs at any given time, 50-80 hour work weeks most weeks, most of us making double minimage wage at at least one of our jobs (which to be clear is 7.25 in my state. Its a pretty easy to do when your working for tips depending on where you work), and we can’t touch the rent market without 2-3 roommates, let alone think about paying back our student loans, getting married or having kids or sometimes buying more than one iced coffee a week.

The third group of us are those 19 year-olds I was talking about that want to go to college, but didn’t go becasue of COVID and are now watching the rest of us struggle with our student loan debt and realized just how deep we are and now they are not sure they even want to go after Covid is over. Sorry babies, we will try to keep it to ourselves more.

But the one thing that all of us have in common is when we are working those crazy work weeks we hate ourselves because we never have time for anything (not a covid but shitpost, but I didn’t play video games or read fanfiction for 3 weeks straight because I worked literally every hour I was awake: 18 on 6 off 18 on 5 hours off followed by an open to close is so that for 3 weeks before I had a nervous break down) Or we have all this time because the schedule got messed up or we got called off becasue two people were scheduled (happens at my main job all the time. We finally found the solution after 3 weeks of switching whos being called off that week) and then we hate ourselves because losing an 8 hour shift can be the difference in eating real food or scrapping by on ramen.

I’m not saying my life is harder than anyone else. Let me be clear every single one of us that is in group two that’s doing that shit, it’s because we want to. We live in a society as millennials that being working poor is better than being below the proverty line (in our opinions and I’m sure many others). I can’t even imagine what its like for people that work minamum wage jobs (which happens at my main job I am very lucky to be in my overnight position) and try to make ends meet. I know a girl that’s in high school at my second job that applied because when covid started her family couldn’t afford to pay for high speed internet and a laptop. If she didn’t work she would not be able to graduate on time. That’s more fucked than what’s going in my friend group. We do it because we like money and living on our own not because we actually have to.

But like my question after the essay is, WHO THE HELL CAN AFFORD BURN OUT IN THIS ECONOMY. YOU DIAGNOSED ME AND CALLED ME OUT LIKE THE LITTLE BITCH I AN, BUT THAT DOESN’T PAY MY BILLS. But seriously, I can confirm that group 2 is living off of redbull and spite at this point.

But seriously, if you made it through this post this far, does anyone have any burnout tips? I sit in restaurants alone late at night between jobs with my phone on silent and watch anime until I have to go to my other job.

But seriously, a lot of us feel guilty for the little free time we have. I heard of one of us starting to do door dash to get a little bit of extra cash on the side when he gets a dip in hours and that just doesn’t sound fun. And while I don’t think that’s okay, I think that is a temporary solution for a right now problem and right now for most of us money is more important than our physical/mental health and that’s what is causing the burn out.

But seriously. If you read this, leave your burnout tips. I would love to hear them. Because your girl cried in the bathroom at work tonight because something outside of my control happened and I had to say 2 extra hours.

I personally just wanna go back to the days of playing Pokémon on my gameboy color...

[caplofan]

The Unreasonable Importance of Data Preparation in 2020

The Unreasonable Importance of Data Preparation in 2020

In a world focused on buzzword-driven models and algorithms, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about the unreasonable importance of data preparation and quality: your models are only as good as the data you feed them.

This is the garbage in, garbage out principle: flawed data going in leads to flawed results, algorithms, and business decisions. If a self-driving car’s decision-making algorithm is trained on data of traffic collected during the day, you wouldn’t put it on the roads at night.

To take it a step further, if such an algorithm is trained in an environment with cars driven by humans, how can you expect it to perform well on roads with other self-driving cars?

Beyond the autonomous driving example described, the “garbage in” side of the equation can take many forms—for example, incorrectly entered data, poorly packaged data, and data collected incorrectly, more of which we’ll address below.

When executives ask me how to approach an AI transformation, I show them Monica Rogati’s AI Hierarchy of Needs, which has AI at the top, and everything is built upon the foundation of data (Rogati is a data science and AI advisor, former VP of data at Jawbone, and former LinkedIn data scientist):

AI Hierarchy of Needs 2020

Image courtesy of Monica Rogati, used with permission.

Why is high-quality and accessible data foundational?

If you’re basing business decisions on dashboards or the results of online experiments, you need to have the right data.

On the machine learning side, we are entering what Andrei Karpathy, director of AI at Tesla, dubs the Software 2.0 era, a new paradigm for software where machine learning and AI require less focus on writing code and more on configuring, selecting inputs, and iterating through data to create higher level models that learn from the data we give them.

In this new world, data has become a first-class citizen, where computation becomes increasingly probabilistic and programs no longer do the same thing each time they run.

The model and the data specification become more important than the code.

Collecting the right data requires a principled approach that is a function of your business question.

Data collected for one purpose can have limited use for other questions.

The assumed value of data is a myth leading to inflated valuations of start-ups capturing said data. John Myles White, data scientist and engineering manager at Facebook, wrote:

The biggest risk I see with data science projects is that analyzing data per se is generally a bad thing.

Generating data with a pre-specified analysis plan and running that analysis is good. Re-analyzing existing data is often very bad.”

John is drawing attention to thinking carefully about what you hope to get out of the data, what question you hope to answer, what biases may exist, and what you need to correct before jumping in with an analysis[1].

With the right mindset, you can get a lot out of analyzing existing data—for example, descriptive data is often quite useful for early-stage companies[2].

Not too long ago, “save everything” was a common maxim in tech; you never knew if you might need the data. However, attempting to repurpose pre-existing data can muddy the water by shifting the semantics from why the data was collected to the question you hope to answer. In particular, determining causation from correlation can be difficult.

For example, a pre-existing correlation pulled from an organization’s database should be tested in a new experiment and not assumed to imply causation[3], instead of this commonly encountered pattern in tech:

A large fraction of users that do X do Z Z is good Let’s get everybody to do X

Correlation in existing data is evidence for causation that then needs to be verified by collecting more data.

The same challenge plagues scientific research. Take the case of Brian Wansink, former head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, who stepped down after a Cornell faculty review reported he “committed academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data, problematic statistical techniques [and] failure to properly document and preserve research results.” One of his more egregious errors was to continually test already collected data for new hypotheses until one stuck, after his initial hypothesis failed[4]. NPR put it well: “the gold standard of scientific studies is to make a single hypothesis, gather data to test it, and analyze the results to see if it holds up. By Wansink’s own admission in the blog post, that’s not what happened in his lab.” He continually tried to fit new hypotheses unrelated to why he collected the data until he got a null hypothesis with an acceptable p-value—a perversion of the scientific method.

Data professionals spend an inordinate amount on time cleaning, repairing, and preparing data

Before you even think about sophisticated modeling, state-of-the-art machine learning, and AI, you need to make sure your data is ready for analysis—this is the realm of data preparation. You may picture data scientists building machine learning models all day, but the common trope that they spend 80% of their time on data preparation is closer to the truth.

common trope that data scientists spend 80% of their time on data preparation 2020

This is old news in many ways, but it’s old news that still plagues us: a recent O’Reilly survey found that lack of data or data quality issues was one of the main bottlenecks for further AI adoption for companies at the AI evaluation stage and was the main bottleneck for companies with mature AI practices.

Good quality datasets are all alike, but every low-quality dataset is low-quality in its own way[5]. Data can be low-quality if:

It doesn’t fit your question or its collection wasn’t carefully considered; It’s erroneous (it may say “cicago” for a location), inconsistent (it may say “cicago” in one place and “Chicago” in another), or missing; It’s good data but packaged in an atrocious way—e.g., it’s stored across a range of siloed databases in an organization; It requires human labeling to be useful (such as manually labeling emails as “spam” or “not” for a spam detection algorithm).

This definition of low-quality data defines quality as a function of how much work is required to get the data into an analysis-ready form. Look at the responses to my tweet for data quality nightmares that modern data professionals grapple with.

The importance of automating data preparation

Most of the conversation around AI automation involves automating machine learning models, a field known as AutoML.

This is important: consider how many modern models need to operate at scale and in real time (such as Google’s search engine and the relevant tweets that Twitter surfaces in your feed). We also need to be talking about automation of all steps in the data science workflow/pipeline, including those at the start. Why is it important to automate data preparation?

It occupies an inordinate amount of time for data professionals. Data drudgery automation in the era of data smog will free data scientists up for doing more interesting, creative work (such as modeling or interfacing with business questions and insights). “76% of data scientists view data preparation as the least enjoyable part of their work,” according to a CrowdFlower survey.

A series of subjective data preparation micro-decisions can bias your analysis. For example, one analyst may throw out data with missing values, another may infer the missing values. For more on how micro-decisions in analysis can impact results, I recommend Many Analysts, One Data Set: Making Transparent How Variations in Analytic Choices Affect Results[6] (note that the analytical micro-decisions in this study are not only data preparation decisions).

Automating data preparation won’t necessarily remove such bias, but it will make it systematic, discoverable, auditable, unit-testable, and correctable. Model results will then be less reliant on individuals making hundreds of micro-decisions.

An added benefit is that the work will be reproducible and robust, in the sense that somebody else (say, in another department) can reproduce the analysis and get the same results[7];

For the increasing number of real-time algorithms in production, humans need to be taken out of the loop at runtime as much as possible (and perhaps be kept in the loop more as algorithmic managers): when you use Siri to make a reservation on OpenTable by asking for a table for four at a nearby Italian restaurant tonight, there’s a speech-to-text model, a geographic search model, and a restaurant-matching model, all working together in real time.

No data analysts/scientists work on this data pipeline as everything must happen in real time, requiring an automated data preparation and data quality workflow (e.g., to resolve if I say “eye-talian” instead of “it-atian”).

The third point above speaks more generally to the need for automation around all parts of the data science workflow. This need will grow as smart devices, IoT, voice assistants, drones, and augmented and virtual reality become more prevalent.

Automation represents a specific case of democratization, making data skills easily accessible for the broader population. Democratization involves both education (which I focus on in my work at DataCamp) and developing tools that many people can use.

Understanding the importance of general automation and democratization of all parts of the DS/ML/AI workflow, it’s important to recognize that we’ve done pretty well at democratizing data collection and gathering, modeling[8], and data reporting[9], but what remains stubbornly difficult is the whole process of preparing the data.

Modern tools for automating data cleaning and data preparation

We’re seeing the emergence of modern tools for automated data cleaning and preparation, such as HoloClean and Snorkel coming from Christopher Ré’s group at Stanford.

HoloClean decouples the task of data cleaning into error detection (such as recognizing that the location “cicago” is erroneous) and repairing erroneous data (such as changing “cicago” to “Chicago”), and formalizes the fact that “data cleaning is a statistical learning and inference problem.”

All data analysis and data science work is a combination of data, assumptions, and prior knowledge. So when you’re missing data or have “low-quality data,” you use assumptions, statistics, and inference to repair your data.

HoloClean performs this automatically in a principled, statistical manner. All the user needs to do is “to specify high-level assertions that capture their domain expertise with respect to invariants that the input data needs to satisfy. No other supervision is required!”

The HoloClean team also has a system for automating the “building and managing [of] training datasets without manual labeling” called Snorkel. Having correctly labeled data is a key part of preparing data to build machine learning models[10].

As more and more data is generated, manually labeling it is unfeasible.

Snorkel provides a way to automate labeling, using a modern paradigm called data programming, in which users are able to “inject domain information [or heuristics] into machine learning models in higher level, higher bandwidth ways than manually labeling thousands or millions of individual data points.”

Researchers at Google AI have adapted Snorkel to label data at industrial/web scale and demonstrated its utility in three scenarios: topic classification, product classification, and real-time event classification.

Snorkel doesn’t stop at data labeling. It also allows you to automate two other key aspects of data preparation:

Data augmentation—that is, creating more labeled data. Consider an image recognition problem in which you are trying to detect cars in photos for your self-driving car algorithm.

Classically, you’ll need at least several thousand labeled photos for your training dataset. If you don’t have enough training data and it’s too expensive to manually collect and label more data, you can create more by rotating and reflecting your images.

Discovery of critical data subsets—for example, figuring out which subsets of your data really help to distinguish spam from non-spam.

These are two of many current examples of the augmented data preparation revolution, which includes products from IBM and DataRobot.

The future of data tooling and data preparation as a cultural challenge

So what does the future hold? In a world with an increasing number of models and algorithms in production, learning from large amounts of real-time streaming data, we need both education and tooling/products for domain experts to build, interact with, and audit the relevant data pipelines.

We’ve seen a lot of headway made in democratizing and automating data collection and building models. Just look at the emergence of drag-and-drop tools for machine learning workflows coming out of Google and Microsoft.

As we saw from the recent O’Reilly survey, data preparation and cleaning still take up a lot of time that data professionals don’t enjoy. For this reason, it’s exciting that we’re now starting to see headway in automated tooling for data cleaning and preparation. It will be interesting to see how this space grows and how the tools are adopted.

A bright future would see data preparation and data quality as first-class citizens in the data workflow, alongside machine learning, deep learning, and AI. Dealing with incorrect or missing data is unglamorous but necessary work.

It’s easy to justify working with data that’s obviously wrong; the only real surprise is the amount of time it takes. Understanding how to manage more subtle problems with data, such as data that reflects and perpetuates historical biases (for example, real estate redlining) is a more difficult organizational challenge.

This will require honest, open conversations in any organization around what data workflows actually look like.

The fact that business leaders are focused on predictive models and deep learning while data workers spend most of their time on data preparation is a cultural challenge, not a technical one. If this part of the data flow pipeline is going to be solved in the future, everybody needs to acknowledge and understand the challenge.

Original Source: The unreasonable importance of data preparation

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SEO 2019 Has The Answer To Everything

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Siteimprove SEO incorporates sixty six unique SEO checks, including tests for missing meta descriptions, transliteration mistakes, broken links, outdated documents, poor readability, and links in order to unsafe domains. But in case we're looking for a larger trend it's that SEO plus what we call real marketing” will continue to blur the particular lines between them as the particular job of the SEO will become that of a traditional marketing expert - having to understand the particular user, the competitors, the market and also the implementation aspect. Thanks for going to the world of Search Motor Optimization (SEO). For example, we regularly make content on the topic associated with "SEO, " but it's nevertheless very hard to rank nicely on Google for such the popular topic on this acronym alone. What can modern-day industry shifts show about the particular future of SEO and content material marketing? Search engine search engine optimization (SEO) is on a move. Whether a person are an SEO Professional, Electronic Marketing Agency, SMB or Brand name, looking to increase your visitors or to monitor your web site's evolution, this SEO software will certainly provide you with best within class digital marketing strategy evaluation and insights for your company. Their expertise is usually incredibly valuable because there will be lots of science to SEO, plus it is constantly changing since search engines like Google keep on to update their algorithms. From a content viewpoint, I'd say one of the particular best ways to get SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value out of video is usually to focus your efforts upon addressing your customer's pain factors. BrightLocal provides been helping local businesses, multi-location businesses and SEO professionals realize and enhance their positions in the particular local search market since this year. Gowns where search engine optimization, or even SEO, is available in. Right here are the best conferences in order to learn more about SEO (and digital marketing) in 2018 plus 2019. Every little or multi-location company can develop their business and attract even more customers using Local SEO methods In this article we describe what local search optimization is usually, and why using a regional SEO company can help enhance your online visibility. It provides an introduction in order to the basics of search motors and SEO, and then grows into more advanced topics. Black hat SEO is the group of unethical practices in order to improve rankings of the web site in the search engine outcomes page. SEO Wise Links provides automatic SEO advantages for your site in inclusion to custom keyword lists, from it and much more. Detailed with this Bruce Clay SEO tutorial are reliable strategies that aim to enhance both internal and external aspects that influence search ranking. To demonstrate, if you we're trying to become found locally when users appear for SEO services in your own area, and you're based within Wales, one such search phrase you might look to optimize for may be "SEO wales". Search Engine Optimizers (SEO's) are people who optimize internet sites to make them show upward higher on search engines plus gain more website visitors.

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[jason-schmitt-writing]

Asia Advances Open Access Research

(Appeared in the March 30, 2017 edition of The Huffington Post)

Over 75% of Taiwanese universities have officially boycotted Elsevier’s prestigious research journals. This signals either Taiwan’s disinterested stance toward funding prominent research journal access or a new method of obtaining access to scholarship.  Whatever the rationale is behind the subscription lapse, the scientific world has taken notice and is waiting to see what happens next.

Taiwan’s shift away from a reliance on Elsevier research journals is important by itself and more poignant as other countries like Peru and Germany have also rallied behind similar actions.  Couple these scholarly revolts with the Netherlands’ 2016 Elsevier boycott and it appears that the future direction of scholarship is tilting in favor of lower cost opportunities to research represented through the growing open access movement.

Yet, recent financial statistics might tell another story.  

In contrast to the last several years of increasing open access conversations and corresponding publisher boycotts Elsevier’s 2016 financials look far from impacted.  In fact, Elsevier’s own June 2016 calculations posted a 35.4% profit.  Perhaps even more noteworthy than just a profit margin is the fact that Elsevier’s operating revenue is up 2% while their operating profit is up 4%. This suggests that when the publisher fine-tunes more efficient digital delivery methods, it has elected to increase profits rather than decrease costs of delivery for customers.  

Although Elsevier’s financial health is strong—and the company is acting in a manner consistent with most corporations that want to realize a strong profit margin—some of the ramifications of a profit motive associated with the act of publishing scholarship takes a toll. The very regions that are already underprivileged on the world stage are the least likely to gain access to costly research journals which further sets them apart.  

Roshan Kumar, a medical doctor from Nepal, told me recently, “People residing in this part of the world still cannot access a lot of material that they require. Open access levels the playing field with Western countries that have more prominent access and helps to increase our competency to the same level as Western physicians.”  

Talking more about disparities with Western countries, Kumar continues. “We have very limited access.  Our libraries don’t have the ability to afford the subscriptions to such highly priced journals so they just give us a minimum of accessibility and we need to somehow satisfy ourselves with what they have. That is the reason we need accessibility to all journals—because it is really important for us to thrive in a global world.”

From Kumar’s beliefs in equalizing his Nepal-based medical peers within the global community he has taken on a secondary career in addition to his medical position: promoting the need for broad access to research within Asia.  “We try to put in the ears of the big publishers you have two options: Either you need to make it so cheap that anybody can access it or you need to go open access. These publishers have no intention of providing access to resources in our subcontinent and that is very disturbing to me.”

Kumar also acknowledges this current lopsided scenario is not exclusively made by publishers with for-profit motives, but also—and perhaps more importantly—senior researchers and scholars who still prioritize the publication in historically prominent and costly research journals.

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“There is a feeling I see amongst established researchers and professors that they will still somehow go out to publish in conventional publications despite the fact that we won’t be able to read any of it. There is a taboo that you need to publish in high impact factor journals or you need to be cited in the high impact factor journals and that is the only way to increase credibility.  I find that disturbing,” says Kumar.

While research access is clearly a sought after commodity, the need for open access within Asia is far from a one size fits all solution.  “There are so many differences in the economic situations, budgets of universities, and funding that is available from governments,” says Kostas Repanas, head of the Office of Science Communications & Open Archives at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. “I can’t imagine anyone in Singapore saying, ‘I want to access this journal and my university doesn’t subscribe.’ But if you go to a different level: Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, the situation is really completely different.”

Repanas details that there is a decisive effort from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to try to collaborate for broad reaching open accessand adds that BioMed Central drove efforts for an Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) conference in Thailand in 2014.  Working with colleagues from Japan, Repanas and others worked to create the Asia Open Access Summit to serve that region with its first conference in November 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which resulted in an increased awareness and desire for more open scholarship resources.

Although Repanas and Kumar are clearly pulling their respective weights to further promote a conversation of open access toward research, Repanas believes that other nations are doing a better job at circumventing some of the reasons for high price research journals in the first place.  

“Australia has been doing a much better job lowering the reliance on journal impact factors,” says Repanas. “They have a range of metrics where they don’t just focus on the impact factor alone.  In Asia, it is overall pretty much focused on impact factors of specific journals. I think, for example, some of the universities in Singapore have been in this race to be the top universities in Asia and they are actually pushing it quite hard.”  Repanas alludes to a rumor from colleagues in China who say that their country will pay scholars to publish in high prestige journals.  Clearly, these attributes prioritizing high impact factor journals for additional credibility undermine the plea from less developed nations to do away with high prestige, high exclusivity, and high price journals.  

If there has been one creation that has been a worldwide equalizer to the access of research, it has been the online search engine Sci-Hub, which bypasses publisher paywalls for its 58 million journal articles.  Sci-Hub and its creator Alexandra Elbakyan are currently engaged in a lawsuit with Elsevier that alleges copyright infringement from the search engine.

“Sci-Hub is a tricky thing.  Some people choose to ignore it.  I don’t like that. Because, in my opinion, Sci-Hub is there for a reason. If there was not a need, it would not exist,” says Repanas. Yet, Repanas is aware of the complexities that surround Sci-Hub as being a solution to the open access dilemma.  “There is no easy answer.  That is why you won’t hear many open access advocates telling others, ‘Why don’t you just use Sci-Hub? What if Sci-Hub stops existing in six months?  You cannot treat it as proper infrastructure.”

As Asia continues to refine its stance on the appropriate funding for research journal access, ultimately, its decision will have powerful consequences on all regions within Asia, including under represented areas. The irony is, of course, that the regions with the strongest economies, library budgets and voices in the conversation are the exact places that are least burdened by current accessibility to research.  Although that scenario could be skewed toward those with power, the current boycott in Taiwan and open access conversations throughout Asia highlight a cognizance toward the full equation and equally powerful ramifications.  And because of that,  medical researchers in Nepal like Kumar remain optimistic for the future.

[speedilystupendousengineer-blog]

Wiley Burch & Shea Hillishiem Review

Wiley Burch-

Anime is trash, now don’t get me wrong i love anime watch it all the the (extra the) time but it’s trash. Now i know what you’re thinking how can you like anime and think it’s trash, well there are a few reasons why.   (Combined two sentences) First weeaboos are disgusting, anime is perverted and disgusting. (Added period)The japanese are brainwashing our youth. My goal is to explain/rant to you why anime was a mistake.

 First off let me explain what a weeaboo is, (unnecessary capitalization) They are non-Japanese people who think Japan and Japanese culture is superior to all other cultures. (captilization) they are sad depraved people who worship anime and the japanese. Having gone to anime conventions myself I can tell you first hand how repulsive these people are. They shut themselves inside and almost never bath so they always smell like literal shit, they don’t know how to communicate with normal people. (capitalize) they try and use the four japanese words they learned from anime as much as possible. They are barely capable of dressing themselves and like to herd together like sheep. Weeaboos are unproductive members of society and disappointments to their parents.

Anime is way to sexual, and (Capitalize) i’m not talking about hentai (which is anime porn). Too many anime have excessive female nudity. in fact some shows practically revolve around nudity like it’s a plot point, it’s an ongoing joke in the anime community that “plot” is slang for boobs. But the problem is deeper than this there are shows that explore taboo subjects that not even culture differences can justify. One such show is called “kissxsis” which is about high school boy Keita who has two twin step-sisters. They have been siblings for most of their life, the whole show is about Keita’s sisters trying to have sex with him and he does just about everything short of intercosure (spelling error) with them. The best part too is that Keita is dating his teacher, and that actually is illegal.

Now here's what they don’t want you to know, anime is a secret plot by the Japanese government to brainwash america’s youth. Japan is still secretly super pissed about WWII and they hate america. The Japanese government is  being run actually being run by a race of shape-shifting lizard people from the andromeda galaxy who are using anime to broadcast their mind control hypnosis. Their plan is to brainwash the american youth and raise an army to topple the evil American (capitalize countries) government, then take over the world and steal all the planets natural resources. They will then enslave the human race and make us farm cabbages on their home world.

This is all you need to know about the toxicity of anime and how it is truly trash. Weeaboos are sub-human scum, all anime is basically porn, and the Japanese government is run by lizard people. I hope this has opened your eyes to the evils that your kids, friends, and family members might be exposed to. With this you can know to avoid anime at all costs. Stay ever vigilant.  

I’ll admit your paper was an interesting read, was not expecting to see it go the way it didi. A few suggestions for improvement, spellcheck is a tool that you can use, specific country names are proper nouns so they should be capitalized. Some things could use some more explaining, you don’t have much credibility since you included near zero sources.- Quentin Gitzlaff

Shea-

It is no secret that sports are a multibillion dollar a year industry, that being said, college athletes won’t see a cent of that money for themselves. This raises the question whether or not they should be paid. On one side are people who support the payment of college athletes saying how rigorous their schedules are and how (fair they are untreated) unfair they’re treated because of the use of their name and likeness benefits the school in major ways. On the other side are the people who don’t support it, an example of this argument is, numerous scholarships that most of these athletes earn to get a free education along with saying how it will ruin the tradition of the game. I happen to be against the payment of college athletes because most of these athletes are already receiving huge athletic scholarships that cover most of the cost of going to college itself, they are being given the opportunity to train in fantastic facilities not to mention traveling to new places all the time and auditioning themselves for an opportunity to go professional and make a lot of money, and lastly because college is about education first and they should be treated just like normal students. (really long sentence, separate into two)

The average athletic scholarship given out is worth around $10,400; keeping in mind that this is only an average and it doesn’t sound like a lot of money, especially at big time expensive schools (Give examples of these schools), it is important to remember that there are some athletes who receive full ride scholarships and some who don’t receive any scholarships and walk-on (I don’t understand what you mean by walk on). In most of the research I found in favor of paying college athletes, the athletes whose name and likeness is used most and how big of a star they are (delete one of highlighted portions) would be receiving most of the income if they were to be paid. This creates a problem because most of the star college athletes we see today were once big time recruits who earned huge scholarships or maybe even full ride scholarships while the other lower end recruits. They most likely didn’t receive big scholarships, or maybe none at all, might not get any playing time or recognition and will be paid substantially less. It was also pointed out, by Andrew Zimbalist a professor of economics at Smith College, that fewer than two dozen of the 350 Division I athletic departments actually make a (provide a numerical figure of what a significant amount of money is in this context) significant amount money. This means that only a handful amount of schools would be able to pay their athletes a reasonable amount of money while other schools would have to cut other programs just be able to pay their athletes their fair share.

Most big-name colleges offer their athletes better meal plans(examples, which colleges), that are completely paid for most of the time, just for being on the team per NCAA rules. This gives athletes an advantage over most normal (not-athlete) college students that must pay for their meal plans and don’t have access to free food like the athletes do. Athletes also get the luxury of completely paid for travel to games where most of them stay in nice hotel rooms and the ability to experience different cities around the nation. Most of these athletes are competing for chances to go professional, while only about 3.5% of them do, where they hope to make millions of dollars. The average salary for NFL, NHL, and NBA athletes are as follows: $1.9million, $2.4million, and $5.15million. Not to mention most of these athletes get to train in top-notch facilities to help their professional dreams come true.

Finally, most colleges, even if they are more sports oriented, still strive to preach about the importance of education. Most of them succeed in doing this and have strict academic policies that each athlete must follow in order to be eligible to play. They are called student athletes for a reason and that is because they must be a student first and an athlete second. This is no different from normal (non athelete) students who may have other responsibilities outside of schoolwork that they need to attend. According to Amy Perko, an executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics (what is this?), “paying players would mean schools were essentially operating professional teams under the banner of an institution of higher learning.” Many athletes are already being paid under the table so to speak and are being given unfair academic advantages. An example of this is former Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant, now a member of the Dallas Cowboys. He was named second team academic All-Big 12 in 2008, although through several reports by a few players and even fewer coaches that he barely went to class unless he was forced and student tutors did most of his assignments for him. This lead to him being accused of academic fraud and it was later discovered that he and several of his teammates were also receiving money from sponsors and boosters that they are not allowed to receive per NCAA rules.

“College sports are becoming incredibly profitable, but the athletes who perform the dazzling dribbles, slam-dunks and deep threes that leave us enamored see none of that money.” That is a direct quote from Raman Mama of USA Today College stating one of his opinions on why college athletes should be paid. He later goes on to say “paying athletes in college would eliminate the rush to chase these immense contracts (at the professional level), allowing players to finish their education and have other job prospects if they do not play professionally” also in the defense of college athletes receiving payment. While both of his opinions are valid there is still a side of not paying these athletes including how many advantages these student athletes receive opposed to normal students, being offered lucrative scholarships, and the chance to play professionally.

In conclusion, college athletes should not be paid for three simple reasons: it is more important to focus on education rather than making money because the chances of going professional are very low, the advantages of being an athlete are already extremely high and the athletes are given several opportunities to excel in life.

Very strong paper overall, I think there are a few organizations that need more description, few grammatical errors but overall good job. -Quentin Gitzlaff

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