#who have to live in a household where one of their parents is miserable and effectively coerced by the state to remain there

[shinobicyrus]

Last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform calling for an end to no-fault divorce: “We urge the Legislature to rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws, to support covenant marriage, and to pass legislation extending the period of time in which a divorce may occur to six months after the date of filing for divorce.”

It’s not just Texas: A similar proposal is presently being workshopped by the Republican Party of Louisiana. The Nebraska GOP has affirmed its belief that no-fault divorce should only be accessible to couples without children. At the Republican National Convention in 2016 — the last time the party platform was overhauled — delegates considered adding language declaring, “Children are made to be loved by both natural parents united in marriage. Legal structures such as No Fault Divorce, which divides families and empowers the state, should be replaced by a Fault-based Divorce.” (It’s unclear whether the party’s twice-divorced nominee for president weighed in on the debate at that time.)

[mental-skillness]

fuck fuck fuck i feel worse again

[xenyasplacex]

BABY TRAPPED PART 2

Chris Sturniolo x Fem!OC

Summary: Chris is in a toxic relationship and the only thing keeping him there is his daughter.

warning- Toxic relationship, Miserable Chris, Shouting, Abuse, Physical Abuse, emotional abuse, Talk of isolation, crying

A/N : Soooooo, it’s been a while! see my dumbass thought i posted this a few days ago but turns out i just saved it to drafts 😍😍😍

I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR MY WORK TO BE STOLEN, REPOSTED OR TRANSLATED

Part 1 <—> Part 3

Things had changed in Chris’ household. Chris knew that through his life there were going to be times where he had to sacrifice certain things he thought he couldn't live without if he wanted their marriage to work and so far he had sacrificed a lot. Sometimes he thought about how younger Chris would look at him now. He had let this woman completely take over his life. First he had to sacrifice his friendship with nate who was a ‘bad influence’ on him, then he had to sacrifice his relationship with his parents who were ‘brainwashing’ him, then he had to sacrifice his friendship with Madi, Tara, Quen and Madison Beer because they were all ‘flirting’ with Chris and disrespecting his wife, he had to sacrifice his relationship with his older brother Justin because ‘he took to much of Chris’ time’. So, so, so many sacrifices had been made to make Aaliyah happy and yet here she still was, making his life miserable.

The couple were planning to move. That's what started the whole ordeal. The couple had decided to pack up and move to San Diego about a year ago and they only had 3 more days until they were gone for good. Well, to be completely honest it was more of Aaliyah yelling and Chris being too scared to do anything to stop it. Apparently she wanted to be closer to her dad and step mom which confused Chris because from what he knew, she hasn't spoken to her father since she told him she was pregnant. He still remembered when he told his brothers. Matt started crying on the spot which really did shake Chris to his core. Matt always said he hated Chris and thought he knew it was a joke he still didn’t think that Matt would be so distraught over Chris Leaving. They still planned to do Youtube. They planned to rotate, one week they would be in Los Angeles and the other they would be in San Diego. It would be tough but they had no other option. The whole argument started when Chris had stated he wasn't sure if he liked the dark brown wood for the floor that Aaliyah had chosen in front of their interior designer. He wasn't rude or malicious, he was simply voicing his opinion, but it was enough to have Aaliyah beating him for “embarrassing her.”

“You ought to wrap that wrist up.” Aaliyah said from the doorway of their living room staring at her husband who was hunched over their couch, trying to wipe the remaining blood from his mouth. He looked up at his wife with nothing but pure terror. The tyrant was back.

“Relax, i'm not here to hurt you,” Aaliayh chuckled as she approached him. Laughing, she was laughing. How could she be laughing? 

Aaliyah sat next to Chris examining his face and Chris simply froze. She had done this to him. She was the one to hurt him. She was the one who bruised him, she was the one who caused him to be bleeding out and now here she was, sat next to him like a loving wife. She leaned forward and abruptly brought her hand up to his face. By pure muscle memory Chris jumped back, preparing for the next blow to his already weak body. She laughed. Again. She laughed at his pain. 

“I'm not going to hurt you silly,” She laughed, “I'm just here to clean you up.”

Her smile was so deceiving. With that smile she could light up an entire room, she could have bored you outta your mind listening to her ramble about the most useless things but you would stay there and listen in the hopes of even catching a glimpse of that smile. She is so addictive yet she was poisonous. Like a hard drug, something you can't seem to live without even if its slowly killing you. 

After about half an hour she had fully cleaned Chris’ cuts and bruises and had kissed him so many times her lips were puffy and she was starting to feel slightly light headed. It was late, Adriana had been asleep for hours at this point and Chris was slowly starting to slip into unconsciousness

“I'm so sorry Chris, you know I love you right?” She said as she rolled on top of him in their shared bed.

“I know.” Chris said, not bothering to look at her, instead he stayed fixated on the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the same thoughts as always racing through his mind.

How did he end up here?

How could he let this happen?

Why couldn't he just man up and take his child and leave?

Why couldn't he protect his own child?

Why couldn't he tell his brothers?

Why couldn't he te-

“Chris!” Aaliyah yelled as she sat up, looking at him slightly agitated.

“Huh?”

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“No.”

Alliyah simply rolled her eyes before getting off him, “And im not good enough for you to listen to as usual. Some excuse of a husband you are.” She grumbled angrily.

Chris knew he had to deescalate whatever it was that was brewing or he could end up sleeping in his car tonight, so he sat up, resting against their head rest before picking Aaliyah up slightly and sitting her on his lap. He then kissed all over her face down to her neck until she was giggling uncontrollably.

“Chris stop!” She laughed, not pushing him away though.

“I'm sorry, it's not that I wasn't listening to you, I'm just so tired. Tell me what you were saying again, I promise you've got my full attention”.  Chris said before resting his head on her chest.

It was moments like this when Chris thought maybe things werent os bad. He was here with his wife, in their joint bed, kissing and laughing, enjoying each other presence, basking in joy and lo-

“I think it's about time we cut off your brothers.”

Moment ended.

“What?” He asked, whipping his head up. He was shocked. Him and his brothers were a package deal. It had been all of them or none of them for so long. His brothers were something he could rely on because they were countistant. You can’t exactly stop being a triplet after all, and now here she was. Getting rid of the one piece of consistency he had through tough times.

“Chris, you are far too reliant on them, I mean 3 weeks ago we got into a little argument and you picked up our child and spent the night with them. That's not normal Chris.”

It wasn't a little argument. She hurt their daughter. She hurt his daughter.

“Listen to me Chris,” Aaliyah started again, adjusting herself slightly so she was straddling him, “Chris I love you, I’m doing this because I love you. I mean what type of example would that set for Adriana? You need to learn to be strong on your own. Not with Nick or Matt holding your hand through life.”

Chris was silent, looking down at his lap through the whole speech.

“Chris, I am all you need. You don't need them, the fact that you've cut everyone else off and have been just fine just proves all you need is me, you don't need anyone else Chris i promise you.” She said sweetly before pressing a kiss to his lips which isn't reciprocated.

“I just… I need to think about it.”

“What?” Aaliyah asked, sitting up and starting to get off Chris once again.

“Those are my brothers Ali, I can't just get rid of them.” “Yes you can!” Aaliyah exclaimed. “Chris when we leave in 3 days you are to block their numbers and get rid of them or I promise you, you will never see Adriana again. If me and Adi aren't good enough for you then you don't deserve us at all. You don't need them Chris but you need me and you are a coward and a cheating bitch for even thinking you can have all of us to yourself.”

“I've never cheated on you Ali…” Chris tried to protest but she cut him off.

“What, you really think I'm that stupid? All the times you ‘go to your brother's house to film’ you think i don't know you're out being a whore. You dont think i know your out there fucking any bitch who comes within a 5 foot radius of you. You don't think I know? You're pathetic.”  She screamed at him. Chris couldn't even say anything. The claims were so far-fetched that he didn't even know how to defend himself. “Get the fuck out of this room Chris.” She said finally before turning over.

“Ali I didn't ev-” 

“Chris get the fuck out of this room!” Aaliyah screamed again. When Chris didn't move, frozen in pure astonishment she started punching him in the head.

The first punch was enough to snap him out of this trans, the second punch was enough to kick off a heavy migraine and the ones that followed were enough to add more fuel to this fire. 

“Get out! Get out! Get Out!” she screamed again and again, landing punch after punch. 

Chris quickly scrambled to his feet and ran for their bedroom door, trying to avoid the objects that she was hurling at him. When he finally got out of the room he just stood there for a while taking in what had just happened. He had to get rid of his brothers. His shoulder to cry in, his light at the end of the tunnel. He had to get rid of them. Slowly Chris found himself sitting on the floor, knees to his chest simply sobbing. He had to get rid of his brothers.

He had to get rid of his brothers.

“Nick stop!” Chris laughed as he watched his brother throw Adriana up in the air before catching the giggling girl again.

“I can't stop, i'm not gonna be able to see my niece any time i want anymore, i have to take in every moment i can.” He said before resting Adriana on his hip.

“I still can’t believe you're actually leaving.” Matt said softly, looking at his triplet brother. 

“Chris can you please tell him you'll call him everyday. I keep telling him we're still gonna talk all the time but the kid just won't listen.” Nick laughed, throwing Adriana into the air again. Chris’ smile faltered a little at that.

It had been 2 days since his argument with Aaliyah and she was still set on Chris cutting his brothers off. The only reason he was even allowed to come and see them was because he had promised that today would be the day he cut them off.

“Hey Adi, why don’t you we let Aunty Sunday put Nemo on for you the living room huh?”

Sunday was Matt’s girlfriend who Adriana absolutely adored. He watched as his daughter toddled into the other room before looking at the confused faces of his brothers.

“I need to talk to you two.” Chris stated bluntly before taking a deep breath and just letting out. It’s now or never and though he preferred never, he cared for his daughter too much to let her go without a fight.

“I love you guys. I really do. I love you with everything in me. You’re my best friends and I genuinely don’t know where I would be without the two of you but I just. I just think I need some time. Some time away from being a triplet to just think about my wife and my child. I just, I need time, you know?”

They didn’t know and they didn’t get it.

“Time? Like how long are we talking, like a week, maybe two?” Matt asked, Chris couldn’t bear this, he couldn’t even look at him. “Or like maybe a month?”

“I was thinking more like a few years,” Chris replied softly.

There it is. The bomb was dropped.

It was silent. Nobody said a word. Everyone was too shocked to even comprehend what had just been said. A break? For a few years? How does one simply decide that they need a break from being a triplet and how do they decide that need a break for so long?

Nick especially wasnt having it. Nobody optionally has a break from being brothers. Especially not triplets.

“What did Aaliyah out you on to this?” Nick spat with nothing but anger in his tone.

Chris and Matt were stunned but for different reasons. Matt because he couldn’t believe his brother would actually voice an accusation like that, and Chris because of how accurate it was.

“Wh-, what are you talking about Nick.”

“Don’t play games with me Chris. You don’t think we’ve seen the difference? You suddenly can’t make it to hang out or you suddenly can’t reply to messages after a certain time?” Nick screamed as he stood up off his couch.

“Nick I don’t know wha-” Chris tried again before being interrupted again.

“And I’ve seen the bruises little one!” Nick yelled again.

Caught.

Chris was stunned. They couldn’t know. If they found out they would only see him as week and unfit to be a father.

“What the hell are you talking about Nicolas!” Chris shouted as well, taking a step forward.

Nick rolled his eyes before grabbing Adriana’s baby bag, picking up 2 clean baby wipes and quickly coming at Chris. Chris flinched hard but that didn’t stop Nick from swiping the wipe across Chris’ face, revealing the concealer he was wearing and a purple bruise that had formed on his face.

“Yeah then what’s this?” Nick yelled showing his younger brother the wipe.

“Nick,” Matt interjected, trying to calm everyone down, “let’s all just take a deep breath okay?”

“What the fuck Nick, how dare you accuse my wife of something so evil! I fell down the stairs a few days ago! That’s were the bruise is from you sick fuck.” Chris yelled back.

“Oh spare me!” Nick replied. “So what happens when something happens to that little girl huh? What happens when she won’t let her have friends or go on playdates or go to the park? what happens when she isolates her daughter the same way she’s isolating you!”

“You know what, this is exactly why I can’t be around you. You’re all delusional and this sort of environment is not good for my child.” Chris yelled, picking up Adriana's baby bag and walking out of the room to grab Adriana.

He walked through the room, seeing Adriana and Sunday playing together. Without saying a word he picked his daughter up and started heading toward the door. “Chris? Chris what happened to your face?” Sunday tried to ask before hearing her own boyfriend running through the room.

“Chris! Chris stop!” Matt yelled while chasing after his brother who didn’t even turn around.

Chris walked straight to the car before gently putting Adriana into her car seat while Matt tried to calm him down.

“Please Chris, Nick was just trying to help, he loves you.” Matt tried to reason but Chris simply wasn’t having it.

“Nick he just accused my wife of beating me I can’t just le-”

“Chris!” Matt yelled, starting to get annoyed. “Chris we love you. More than anything and he’s just hurt that you’re leaving us. I mean a break? Come on Chris.”

That did make Chris feel bad. He always had his brothers. He wouldn’t be where he was now if not for them and now he was leaving them. Chris just felt so awful.

“I’m sorry Matt, I just… I just have to.” Chris replied softly looking down.

It was silent for a minute, then Matt spoke up. “Okay, and when this break ends we and Nick will be waiting for you, because we love you.”

With that Matt brought Chris into a hug. A proper hug. That was all Chris needed for the silent tears to come crumbling down. He was sure how long they were in that hug for before he felt another pair of area wrap around him.

“ I love you Chris, you have to know that.” Nick said, voice thick with tears.

“I know and I’m sorry. I love you guys too, both of you, so much” Chris said pulling away from the hug.

Matt then made his way over to the back of the car where Adriana had been buckled in.

“Hey baby, it looks like I won’t be seeing you for a while. You rember your Uncle Matt okay?” Matt told her making her giggle a little, not fully understanding the situation.

“And don’t forget your Uncle Nick either.” Nick interjected.

“Okay I promise I won’t. Pinky promise.” The little girl promised holding out her pinky fingers for both men to intertwine their fingers with.

The two said their goodbyes to their niece before shutting the door and looking back at Chris.

“Look, I don’t know what type of arrangement you and Ali have, but you protect that little girl or I will, you hear me?” Nick warned him.

Chris simply nodded, too emotional to trust himself to let out any sort of words. 

“I’m sorry, and I love you guys,” Chris said one last time.

“We love you too Chris. You take care of yourself okay?” Matt said one last time.

With that Chris got into his car and started to reverse out of his brothers drive way while his two brothers watched. Once he had fully reversed, he caught one last glance at his brothers, noticing the tears streaming down their faces. He wanted to stop the car, run out and tell them everything but he simply couldn’t. Instead he gave them one last smile before driving off. Now he was fully alone. Nobody to talk to, nobody to help him. He had nobody at all.

And with that, one single tear swam down his face.

TAG LIST:

@betasturniolo

@mattsbitchh

@nicksloverrr

BONUS SCENE

Nick just stood there in his drive way, tears running down his face. “Now what do we do.”

With that Matt took his phone out, going to ‘find my’ where a moving air tag was displayed. Nick’s eyes widened slightly, realising exactly what Nick had done.

“Now we go and help our brother.”

A/N: Heheh, Part 3 has already been started 😘

luv ya,

Xenya 🖤

Part 3

[theemporium]

[REQUESTS OPEN]

[2.2k] summer nights, muggle gadgets and lovesick boy who just wants to see his girl again.

based off: “i want you...here...right now” + this request 

.

“How’s summer with the Addams family?” 

You rolled your eyes, even if the action was done out of fondness. “You watched one muggle show and now you’re obsessed.” 

“Your family are a bunch of loonies, sweetheart, sorry to break it to you.”

Once upon a time, summer was a time to longed for. When the winter days were short, cold and miserable and when spring didn’t seem to hit the spark of sunshine and warm days you needed, it was summer where you found happiness and contentment. It was summer where those long days were spent basking in whatever sun the English weather gave you, fingers sticky with the juice of the ice lollies you’d fight your brothers for and hiding in secret nooks of the house when Walburga would stand by the staircase, red faced and angry at the trails of mud staining the expensive carpets. 

But when you enrolled in Hogwarts, you realised that summer held much more than warm weather and grass-stained knees. 

Because Hogwarts was a taste of freedom, a taste of the world beyond the walls of the Black household where everything was simple, quiet and nice. It was so fucking nice and it was easy to get drunk off the independence, to get lost in it before you realised it was quickly being ripped away from you. 

Because that’s what summer had become. It had gone from being your salvation to your prison in mere years, and now summer was a time you despised. 

Summer dragged you away from your friends. Summer threw you under the roof of your overbearing parents. Summer jammed a wedge between you and your brothers as you played the games and politics that came with living in the Black household. 

Summer kept you away from James—the dirty little secret you had been keeping for the world because you were young and selfish and you loved having him to yourself, even when you weren’t really supposed to have him. 

“I can’t disagree with that,” you muttered out, a huff of amusement leaving your lips as you remembered the dinner from the night before. In all honesty, you were surprised the house was still in one piece after the fights and arguments that broke out last night. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise you to find out that wards had been put in place to keep the place standing for as long as Black blood lived under the roof. 

“No one’s giving you too much grief, are they?” 

That was the thing about James Potter, you just weren’t sure he was actually real. Growing up with the Black surname, you had been surrounded by pureblooded wizards and witches from the moment you were born. You had dined with them, you had conversed with them and danced with them over the years. You knew what pureblooded children were brought up to be, what they were brought up to think like. 

And yet, James was the living anomaly of the next generation of purebloods. 

Though he was loud and arrogant and a little too up himself for his own good, he was kind and smart and managed to make you feel like the most important person in the world, regardless of who you were. James Potter cared like he was carrying the world on his shoulders and had to act on their behalf. He cared like nobody else you had ever met, and you didn’t know if that made your heart swoon or your head spin because it was just never something you had ever seen in your life. 

Men like James Potter were one in a million and you had somehow managed to catch the eye of the formidable wizard.

It had been his idea to use the muggle telephones. Just weeks before you had to break for the summer holidays, he had dragged you into a broom closet with a bright smile on his face, almost rolling back on the heels of his feet. He explained everything, from the device to how it worked to how he had convinced Lily to retrieve the items so it wouldn’t be traced back to either of you. 

He scribbled down his number and shoved it into your pocket, kissing you quickly goodbye before he raced off to quidditch practice, leaving you flustered and bamboozled of the man James Potter just kept proving himself to be. 

Because he knew what your family was like. And he knew that you hated going home for the summer. And he knew that with your family watching your every move and magic being a hopeless endeavour because of the Ministry rules for underaged witches and wizards using magic that using muggle telephones might just be the only option you have left to talk to each other. 

And he had taken that step, because he wanted you just as much as you wanted him and it made your heart swell. 

“Nothing new,” you told him, fingers wrapped around the cord of the phone as you laid back on your bed, window open as the summer heat engulfed your room. 

“I don’t like leaving you alone there.” 

“I have Sirius and Reg,” you told him, but a part of you wanted to say you didn’t like him leaving you too. 

“Sirius fucks off to the muggle world and Regulus doesn’t have a backbone yet.” 

“James,” you scolded softly, though you knew he was right. You loved your brothers, loved them in the unconditional way siblings loved each other. But it was an ‘every man for themself’ situation whenever you three returned home for holidays. 

Sirius would run off, not ashamed to dish out the same horrid words back to your parents when they yelled and belittled him. He would sneak off into muggle London, spends days there and would come back with treats as a form of apology for leaving you alone. 

Regulus was a little different. He still held your parents in high regard, he still wanted to make them proud. He tried to be the son they wanted, tried to live up to the expectations they held for a pureblood son from one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. He would never intervene when either you or Sirius were getting scolded. 

It meant a lot of the time you were left on your own during the holidays. It meant that you spent days craving to have the warmth and familiarity of the family and friends you made in Hogwarts. You were left craving the life of freedom and independence you had there. 

“I’m just being honest, sweetheart. You know I mean good. I just wish I could have you here, ya know? With me.” 

You smiled softly at the idea, a warm feeling settling contentedly in the bottom of your stomach. “Yeah, me too, Jaime.” 

“It would be fun, don’t ya think? I could take you riding out back near the lake Mum always yells at me to stay away from. We could take a picnic, maybe steal a bottle of fire whiskey…could even watch the sunset from there.” 

“Sunset, huh?” you mused, entertaining the conversation even if it stung a little, the jealousy of a reality you wish was your own. “And what about when it gets dark, Mr Potter? You gonna protect me from the monsters?” 

“Maybe I have other plans when the sun goes down.” 

And despite yourself, you feel your cheeks flushing at the insinuation. “Like?” 

“You’re really making it difficult to be a gentleman over the phone, sweetheart.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna talk to a gentleman,” you retorted, biting back the grin that was threatening to break out on your face. 

“Fucking hell, baby, you’re killing me.” 

“I miss you, Jaime,” you sighed, hand resting on your stomach whilst the other clutched the phone. 

“Not been taking care of yourself?” 

“It’s not the same.” 

You listened to the boy let out soft curses on the other side of the phone, followed by the sound of shuffling sheets and a soft thud that you could have sworn was followed by an ‘ow’.

“It doesn’t feel as good, James,” you continued as you let out a long sigh. “I miss your hands…the way you touch me…the way your mouth feels on me…the way your dick—” 

“Fuck, baby, please. I want you…here…right now.”

“‘s not possible,” you murmured in response, shuffling a little to sit up against your headboard, your thighs clenched together. It was fun teasing him, getting him all worked up and bothered. But it sucked when you were left sitting there, memories of just how good he could make you feel left playing on repeat in your head.

“Maybe it is,” James countered, something quite like desire and hope lacing his words. “What if you floo’d here?” 

You paused. “James, my parents—”

“—will never know,” he finished for you. “Your mum will be doing her own head in with that dinner she’s planning, and I know Sirius is away somewhere in London for the next few days. Regulus won’t even know you’ve left. You could stay here for a few days, get a break from everyone…stay with me for a bit.”

You pondered his words. “And your parents?” 

“Mum loves you,” he snorted. “And Dad would probably adopt you in the drop of a hat.”

“I knew Monty had a soft spot for me,” you retorted, a small smile growing on your face as something quite like anticipation sent a thrill down your spine. Before you could convince yourself otherwise, you were grabbing a backpack and half-hazardly shoving what you needed for the sudden trip into the bag.

“You’re a weakness for all Potter men, baby. It’s all a part of your charm.”

The buzz in your veins felt like the nights you’d sneak out of your room, James’ invisibility cloak covering you as you snuck through the corridors of the school after curfew to go meet him by the Whomping Willow. The nights where you would sneak around just to spend a few hours with him, and even the nights where you would join your brother and his friends in their marauders shenanigans.

You peeked your head out the door, glancing down the hallways and straining your ears to hear if anybody was wandering the house this late at night. Less than thirty seconds later, you were bustling down the staircase and making your way towards the fireplace before any of the house-elves saw you. 

“Potter Manor!”

The world swirled around you in blues and greens and reds and pinks, pulling and tugging at your limbs in every direction and making your head spin before you felt solid ground beneath your feet. You blinked, a little disoriented and the grip on your bag ironclad as you took a moment to breathe.

But before you could even step out of the fireplace, a pair of arms were wrapped around you and tugging you into a large, warm chest and something inside your heart finally settled for the first time in weeks since the holidays had started. 

“I fucking missed you so much,” James’ muffled voice muttered against the top of your head, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of your head and pressing it against his chest where you could hear his heart thundering away. His other hand was already reaching for your bag, taking it out of your grasp so you could wrap both arms around him. 

“You’re warm,” you murmured, enjoying the sound of your boy’s soft chuckles as he pressed a kiss to the crown of your head. 

“That’s all you gotta say?” 

“Gotta keep you humble where I can, Potter.”

The boy pulled back, enough for you to look up at him and see the grin split across his face before he leaned down, kissing you senseless like you weren’t standing in the middle of his living room where either of his parents could find you. When he pulled away, he looked down at the dazed look on your face and his smile only widened. 

“C’mon,” he murmured and nodded his head towards the staircase. “Need to hide you away before Mum hogs you to herself.” 

“Maybe I came here for her,” you retorted, enjoying the feeling of James taking his hand in yours, intertwining your fingers and squeezing softly as though to reassure himself you were really there.

“Don’t go breaking my heart now, baby, I’ve just planned the perfect weekend for us,” James mused playfully, glancing over his shoulder to flash you a wink before he pulled you into his room, locking his door behind him and dropping your bag on the floor.

“Hey—”

“Yell at me later,” he murmured as his arm wrapped around your waist, practically tugging your body onto the bed until you fell on his chest with a soft oomph.

“I forgot how needy you were,” you joked lightly, shuffling until you were comfortably tucked against his side. 

“Just want my girl,” he grumbled, tilting your head up so he could lean down to peck your lips. “Is that such a crime?” 

“Maybe to my brothers,” you countered and watched him roll his eyes.

“Please don’t bring up your brothers when I’m trying to seduce you, sweetheart,” James groaned, his arm around your body tightening.

You snickered. “I think you are wearing too many clothes to be seducing me, Potter.”

He raised his brows. “Is that a preference?”

“I would say more of a demand.” 

“Well, who am I to deny my pretty girl?” 

.

[maxdibert]

So we’re just going to ignore the emotional abuse Sirius faced at home and reduce him to a privileged ‘rebel without a cause’ acting out solely because of his family’s values? Go off, I guess?

Well, I always say it’s not the same to cry in a Ferrari as it is to cry when you can’t make ends meet, but I’ll choose not to be cynical this time and respond in good faith.

When exactly is Sirius supposed to have been abused? There’s no canonical evidence to suggest he suffered abuse as a child, and his bad relationship with his parents began only after he was sorted into Gryffindor. If we add to that the fact that he spent most of the year away from home and was one of the kings of the school while he was there, what exactly is his tragedy? That his mother was a piece of work? When he talks about his parents in OotP, he implies that his relationship with his father wasn’t particularly bad, as Orion didn’t play a significant role in the family dynamics—Walburga was the one in charge. There’s no indication that he suffered any kind of physical abuse or was deprived of anything beyond scolding and protests from his mother. In fact, they never kicked him out of the house—he chose to leave.

And he left because he had options. He had just inherited a massive fortune from his uncle Alphard and could go live with the Potters, who were loaded. And he did this at 16 years old. So, again, what’s his big tragedy? A bad relationship with his mum for four years? Four years during which he spent around 9–10 months out of 12 away from home in an environment where he was king of the world?

Sirius had Hogwarts as his refuge; he could escape his bad family dynamic. The school wasn’t just his safe space—it was his playground. On top of that, he had friends, was popular, and nobody dared to lay a finger on him. And when he chose to leave home—because he could, because he had money and a wealthy friend’s house to crash at—he went to a place where no one was going to harm him or do anything to him.

Comparing his situation to Severus’s, who was physically and emotionally abused from childhood, whose household was so destitute he didn’t even have proper clothes to wear as a kid, and who didn’t find refuge at Hogwarts but instead found a hell that was just as bad, if not worse—thanks, in large part, to Sirius—is just a complete detachment from reality.

Sirius had a safe space and an escape at Hogwarts. Severus didn’t. Sirius had friends, popularity, and wealth to fall back on. Severus had nothing. Severus couldn’t leave his abusive home because he had no financial means to support himself and no friend with millionaire parents willing to take him in.

Sirius’s issues and personal struggles don’t even amount to a fraction of what Severus endured. And this wouldn’t even be a point of contention if it weren’t for the fact that Sirius actively went out of his way to make Severus’s life miserable. That safe space Sirius had at Hogwarts? That could have been Severus’s safe space too. But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t because of Sirius.

So I’m very sorry the rich boy social justice warrior wannabe had a bad relationship with his momma, but, Kim, there are people dying out there.

[blindseer0]

Jenna During Carl's Route

(Spoilers for Carl’s Route)

(New analysis, now formatted for Tumblr. I swear they won’t all be about Jenna, but I needed to get this one out of my system. If you haven't read my last post about Jenna, I'd recommend it since I'll be referencing it here.)

https://www.tumblr.com/blindseer0/757394083370123264/who-is-jenna-and-what-is-her-route-about?source=share

In my last post I talked about how Jenna is one of the characters people have the hardest time getting a handle on. Part of that is because she mostly features in two routes: 1) her route, which I’ve already talked about, and 2) Carl’s Route, where she’s possessed for most of it; so she’s obviously acting out of character, right? Well, no, I think Jenna is actually still herself in all the ways that matter, and Carl’s Route is both a great look into her and just as much her route as his.

Between the possession by John and the influence of the Hum, how can I say that Jenna is still herself? Well, let’s look at how the possession works. John and James can influence their descendants, Jenna and Carl, and their ability to do so increases as the week goes on, being at its strongest in the dream mansion. James is able to “control” Carl while he sleeps during the early parts of his route, making him ram the wall and hide evidence of what James did to John. Otherwise, we don’t see any other effects until the Hysteria is in full effect and they’re in the dream mansion.

While in the dream mansion, James is able to communicate with Carl in his dreams, and, if not talk to him, “hint” to him what the “correct” course of action is. Carl describes this as making him feel powerful, confident, all the things he’s not normally able to be and feels he lacks. Most importantly though, Carl knows James is separate from him and can choose not to do what he wants. The pivotal route choice is whether Carl should let James take full control or fight his influence. If you choose “Fight it”, James loses all influence over Carl for the rest of the route, and Carl describes it as “easy”.

If Carl, whose defining traits are a lack of confidence in his ability and an overreliance on others to make difficult decisions for him, is able to fight the embodiment of privileged, colonial overconfidence that is James, why is Jenna, who everyone says is the strongest person they know, so easily influenced by John? The answer is she lets him, because, like Carl and James, John gives her something she’s always wanted: the permission to get fucking angry at the injustices in her life.

Jenna doesn’t hate Carl, but her family does. They blame him (and his family) for everything that is wrong in their lives, for why they’re the messes they are, and for why their lives are miserable. But Jenna has defined herself in opposition to her family. In this narrative they’re the victims, and nothing that is wrong is actually their fault, so Jenna refuses to let her family’s past define her and refuses to be a victim (which I talked about in the last post).

AND TO BE CLEAR, western expansion and genocide is a huge fucking factor in her family’s current state (and the lives of real Native Americans). What James did to John even more so. They don’t have to forgive and forget what was done to them, and neither I, nor the game, think Native Americans should do so. Jenna is still defined by her heritage and cares about it, as shown by her grandmother and chiding Flynn for going to the casino, but the anger her family has isn’t something she lets out.

Jenna and Carl are foils in more than just their heritage though. Jenna grew up poor, in an abusive, controlling household that offered her no privacy (in Route 65 her door is literally removed) or autonomy (she doesn’t have a car and doesn’t seem to have a cell phone in Route 65). Her parents seem to be chronically unemployed, she’s watched her brothers literally and metaphorically killing themselves, and she has no future if she stays in Echo.

Carl, on the other hand, grew up the only son of rich and decent, if absentee, parents who don’t go through his stuff, control what he does (we know he played M rated games as a child) and didn’t really care where he went (like the Route 65 party). Unlike Jenna, who is probably the first person in her family to go to college, Carl is expected to go to college as a matter of course and has a guaranteed, successful, career ahead of him.

This isn’t to say that Carl doesn’t have his own problems or that they’re not serious issues, but to point out that, to Jenna, he has everything she has been denied. It’s also important that he’s a man and she’s a woman, and the societal pressures they feel are different. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he’s into Western Comics and wants to be an artist, while Jenna is into Manga/Anime, something she views as a luxury. They both use comics to escape from the real world, but in very different ways.)

Chase and Carl tell us that Jenna yelling at Carl during his birthday party isn’t like her, but I think the stuff she’s saying is perfectly in character. We see her say similar things in her route about Leo and Heather (which Chase says sounds rehearsed) and in Flynn’s route about Flynn. She’s taken her life in her own hands, left Echo against all odds, and is making something of herself. She’s done this all by herself with no support (or so she tells herself). For Jenna, college is a way to leave Echo, and the fact that Carl would just give up and stay there, to rot away like they both know he is, is inconceivable. If she could leave and make it, then he, with all of his privilege, can do the same and it’s completely unfair that he’s choosing to waste it.

No, what I think is actually unusual for Jenna isn’t what she’s saying, but the fact that she’s saying it aloud. Jenna talks about how Socketman usually appeared “when I was sad, or angry, like when dad was having one of his…moments.” People who grow up in abusive households like that learn not to talk back, not to get angry or sad, because it will just make the abuse worse, so Jenna made sure not to let any of that out (I’d love to go into how Socketman plays into this, but that will be its own post). Making herself seem calm and personable to the outside world was also a survival method, because she didn’t want anyone’s pity or scorn. (Again, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity play into all of this).

And despite being her closest friends, because they’re her closest friends, Chase and Carl don’t know about this side of Jenna because she made sure they wouldn’t. She didn’t talk about her home life, she didn’t tell Chase in Route 65 why she had missed school, and she didn’t tell any of them about the situation with Heather, even when Leo directly asked her.

So, when the Hysteria starts effecting her, Jenna lets out everything she’s been holding in. All of the negative emotions, her anger at the injustices she’s faced, her frustrations with her friends and the unfairness of life, she unloads them all on Carl, a symbol of rich, colonial privilege. It’s not fair to him, but she’s not wrong to feel that way either.

She’s grown-up hearing about what the Hendricks did to the Begays, and she pushed it down. She grew up seeing Carl have all these things she was denied, and she pushed it down. She saw Carl wasting his life despite all of that and she (tried to) just push it down.

And when she ends up in the dream mansion and John tells her it’s all Carl/James’ fault, that they can be angry at the injustices that have been done to them together, that they can let it all out, she lets him take control of her, because it’s exactly how she feels.

(This is also why I think Carl's route is a great exploration of colonialism, generational trauma, what the descendants of the colonizers owe the people they genoicded, and the stories they tell themselves about those actions, but this is not the post to go into that and I am arguably not the person to do so.)

To summarize, I think Jenna is perfectly in character during Carl's route, even when she's possessed by John (an action she lets happen) because it is the route where she gets to vent all of her frustrations, personal and generational.

Carl's route gets a lot of flak as skippable or most boring, but I think there is a lot more to it on second read than most people give it credit for. I think the character work for Carl, Jenna, and even Chase are all top notch, and it has some of the most interesting overarching themes in the game. If you haven't played it recently, I recommend going back to it and giving it another try; it's rough and definitely not perfect, but there is a lot of good there as well.

(If you're a certain type of brain rotted, it's the "Stay/Night" to Leo/Jenna's "Unlimited Blade Works" and TJ/Flynn's "Heaven's Feel".)

Remember, all of this is just my read and interpretation of the text; if you disagree, that’s ok. I just wanted to explore some of the nuances I don’t often see talked about and give people another perspective on this game and these characters.

Going to try and work on the post about “Leo, Jenna, and College in Echo” so that I can actually write about “Leo and Conservatism”, but I saw people talking about Carl’s Route and had to get this out of my system. Until then, continue to imagine people, and characters, complexly.

[fudanshidoublevision]

“Nostalgia”.

(A Double Vision x Reader fanfiction for Children's Day.)

⚠️ C. W: Mentions of unhealthy and abusive relationships, abusive households, neglect, implied (but not toooooooo described) bullying and harassment, depressive thoughts, LOTS of reminiscing and reflection, death, dubious living conditions. It's implied Reader has only a PRESENT mother and a family. With who Reader ended up with is left ambiguous on purpose and up to you but I'm letting you have the “sweet good ending” with whoever you end up with. Swearing but not too heavy. Talks about suicide. Emotional dependency and such. If Reader posses an ability isn't discussed or even implied.

It's odd how so much can change in what seems...nothing, out of nowhere. The fact that so many time has passed is scary. Some things in our lives had changed, evolved, stayed the same or just died.

I never thought that I would become an adult, I never had so much expectations in life, honestly.

I never thought I would make this far.

Even if I was only rotting in one place and doing nothing, something my mother said that it couldn't be even considered “living”. I was just trying not to do something I could regret forever instead of digging up too much in my thoughts, I just laid there not thinking or even feeling anything.

I think she never realized that I wasn't living, that we weren't living rather that i— we, were surviving.

But for some reason you always stayed.

Even when I stopped acting like myself. Even when everyone I used to care for just, disappeared from my life because I wasn't putting an effort into taking care of our relationship. Even when I became the worst version of myself. Even when I didn't deserved anything or anyone in my life.

You always stayed, Vernon.

You were my ride or die since the fateful day that I saved you.

Well, I didn't do much really, I didn't really saved you, I just prevented something that any other living being with morals would want to avoid to happen, right? I was going through your same situation after all... Hah, we both had to endure all of that until we finished school together. I know so well how it feels to be hopeless, everyone ignoring what they are doing to you, everyone watching, yet no one doing something about it.

I always thought that you would never had ever wished or even desired to make others feel like that. But, for some reason, you ended up being just like them.

I believe that I'll never understand why you changed so much or if you were always like that, I was aware of your strange behavior and dependency on me but I never thought much of it because that's how you always behaved around me. Heh, I ignored every single red flag and warning that was thrown in my face just for the sake to hold onto you, because you were someone dear to me, someone that always had been there for me.

You were the highlight of my childhood and my teenage years, even if we kinda drifted away in the latest. You were even there when I was the grown, sad and miserable version of the kid you used to know.

Is it bad that i still hold dearly and warmly those moments we had as kids? Like the days were everything in my household...just was horrible and I didn't know where or to who run to, somehow I always ended up in your house, you always opened the door to me, no matter what or why.

Your own home seemed so cold from the outside and on the inside but...when we were together, everything just felt warmer.

...Or the times were you used your abilities to save our asses or just to escape to somewhere, anywhere, when I was locked down in my own room and you were so lonely and bored in your cold and empty house.

Go to anywhere we wanted, as long as no one of our parents got to know that we were running around the streets like not-so-sneaky rats. Hell, even your very-dangerous use of your ability saved us from being late to class. We could have done better things with it but we were young and really, really stupid.

When I used to ride my bicycle, you had to steal my seat and I had uncomfortably sit on the center bar but quickly forgot about that because anything with you just felt right, your presence used to make me so happy and I tended to forget everything, we used to have so much fun with such mundane and stupid things. When we used to drive that crappy bicycle to a concerning speed just to feel like we were flying like those heroes we used to adore and we used to imagine we were.

The times me and my family celebrated your birthday because you were like another member in my family. You were like a brother to me.

Or the times you bought me any silly or meaningless thing that I wanted to me for my birthday because you knew how much that day it used to meant to me. And how much you it meant to me your presence...and your gifts, hehe.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

In times like these, i look fondly at the times that you were there by and with me, even when I was talked down, thrown, dragged and abused to my core when we were “living the best and important part of our lives”.

Even if you were being neglected by the ones who were supposed to be protecting us and left alone by your own devices, money being thrown at you like that could compensate the hole they left behind.

We could only hold each other in silence because talking about it brought so much pain to our little hearts and heads.

I'm glad the two of us made it out, together. I will always be grateful of that but nothing good seemed to last in our lives since we started to became more mature.

You changed or more like, you just became the true version of yourself.

Maybe it's an exaggeration but whoever was talking to me with your voice, while using your clothes, saying things only you could only ever knew... That wasn't you, i refused to believe that was you.

Someone else stripped you down from your humanity. Of what made you, you.

But, no. That was you, with the same stupid face, the same idiotic and cocky attitude of always, your signature dimples and that mole in your face but you insisted, no, forced me to call you “Double Vision”.

For some reason, that silly and simple nickname i used to call you by stopped to came out of my mouth.

“V”.

Vernon.

Now, you were only Double Vision and nothing else, the person I used to know, gone and forgotten to do things I never thought you could be capable of doing. Not like I was innocent or had a squeaky clean historial, we were partners in crime, after all.

I was scared and just wanted to, stop. You were more erratic, territorial, temperamental when it was about me. You didn't wanted me to engage with anyone, even if it seemed that you trusted the other members of the Night Crew.

You didn't, you never did.

When we argued in front of everyone because you wouldn't let me go, that day someone died, because of me, because of my fault.

Seeing you taking the life out of someone that just wanted to be on my side, for you to let me go and being unable of doing something because I...just didn't know what to do, I was scared.

I had to force myself to accept the so-harsh truth.

The person I used to know.

You.

Was long gone and he will never come back.

Or just the the version I used to know, I'm not sure if you were genuine with anything about yourself with me, since we were kids.

Was it everything a lie? Were you just holding back until the day I was completely alone and with no one or nothing but you to drag me down with you, no matter what or who tried to get in between?

Even if you did all of this out of the selfish desire of having me all by yourself, some part of me can't quite forget you or stop thinking about you.

Since the day I could escape from you and stay with someone who felt...love for me, I began to forget little by little of you but for some reason, a part of my me doesn't want to forget you.

It hurts me deeply, to think of you. I feel a heavy pressure in my chest and my heart, when I remember you. That you exist and that you used to mean so much to me.

Things could have gone better, right? Is it wrong for me to think that things could have been different, if something, anything, was slightly different when you weren't trying to cut an arm, a finger or take one of my eyes just to have me by your side?

I wish I could only save and stay with the happy memories we made together but the person in those memories doesn't look like you at all, that's not you.

I miss you my dear bestfriend, sometimes.

But I wish we never had met each other.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・。.・゜

AUTHOR'S NOTE???

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO PUT AN AUTHOR'S NOTE......? Doesn't matter, right?

Thank you so much for reading! And happy children's day! Even if you don't celebrate it today or don't, at all. I hope you enjoyed it! Any type of criticism is welcome...but, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, don't be so hard on me, okay? Be gentle, please.（┬┬＿┬┬)

English isn't my native language and I mostly write only for myself all these years and never shared my writing but I'm trying to learn and get better everyday! Don't think so lowly of me. ᶘಠᴥಠᶅ

I kind of wanted to write something fifty percent wholesome and fifty percent angsty. So, I just had this monster in my head nagging me to write something about childhood, memories and the horror of growing up. And, woah! What a day to post this. Plus, ABOUT DOUBLE???? SIGN ME UP, BELOVED MONSTER IN MY HEAD!

I used my own headcanons to write this thing, that's why Reader calls “V”, referenced to my first post ever. I double (HEHE), triple, quadruple checked if this had any mistakes, so wake me up if there's a mistake I missed, thank you very much.

I have 13 drafts about Double that will stay in that cold and deadly place.....

Anyways, I stayed up all night writing this because of that horrifying monster... I NEED to go to sleep.

Double haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa????? I love you!!!!! ♡ʕ ꈍᴥꈍʔ

[accuratepicuresofanthropologists]

Franz Boas

Franz Boas was not the father of American anthropology. But the fact that so many people think he was shows how thoroughly his relentless energy transformed the discipline as we know it today.

Boas around age four

Boas was born in Germany in 1858. He grew up in the shadow of events that happened a decade earlier: The famous ‘Revolutions of 1848’, when people across Europe demanded an end to imperialism, monarchy, and the poverty caused by the Industrial Revolution. Boas grew up in a household of “forty eighters”, and became deeply committed to the ideals of liberty and progress which drove the revolutions. As a young man, Boas received a rigorous education and spent most of his free time outdoors, exploring the natural world. Like his idol Alexander von Humboldt, Boas combined a romantic wonder at nature's rich diversity with a naturalist's love of science, rigor, and classification.

Boas was Jewish, but not because he wanted to be. His parents were wealthy merchants for whom 'progress' meant shedding the ancient superstitions of the past. He didn't have a choice: Germany had given Jews the right to vote and own property, but remained an antisemitic place. Boas was labeled a Jew by others. So he learned to be fearless: In college when he was insulted he demanded a duel. He and his opponent would don goggles to protect their eyes, and then use their sabers to try to slash open each others’ face. “With the damn Jew baiters this winter one could not survive without quarreling and fighting.” He wrote his worried parents, reassuring them. “I remain unmolested since every student here knows that I would not be shy to defend my affairs with the sword.” He was not exaggerating. "He bears the mark of his German university training literally," the Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa noted, "in a somewhat disfiguring scar across his face". Indeed, one of the first things people noted about Boas were his scars.

Although he was academically gifted, Boas ended up doing a Ph.D. in the unprepossessing university of Kiel. His sister Toni was ill and the Boas family was tight-knit: He went to go live with her. The result was a miserable experience writing a Ph.D. on the color of seawater. His main discovery was that it was incredibly hard to measure the color of sea water. Later on, when he studied how perception is shaped by culture, these insights would come to help him. At the time, he was miserable.

Then love struck: Boas fell head over heels for Marie Krackowizer, a German-American lady whose family of “Forty Eighters” had fled to the US. She loved him too, but they could not be married until he got a job. For that, Boas needed to “habilitate”, a level of education above a Ph.D. He decided on a trip to the arctic, where he would study the influence of geography on Inuit people. He paid for it by writing an account of his travels for a German newspaper, and with a gift of money from the man who would be his principle benefactor in years to come, his uncle Jacobi. His parents insisted that he take along the gardener, Willie, so that he wouldn't be alone.

Boas posing in a German photography studio for an image to share with people demonstrating what his life had been like in Baffinland.

Boas spent a year in Baffinland, an island in the far, far north of Canada. The trip was unbelievably dangerous: Ships had to dock at the edge of the ice and then people would walk across the ice to the island. In the winter it was -40 degrees. Luckily Boas was energetic, focused, and driven by huge energy. He was the sort of person who was disgusted at himself for only working 20 hour days. He did research during the day and read Kant at night. Above all, he came to see Inuit people as people. "The more I see of their customs, the more I realize that we have no right to look down on them," he wrote to Marie in a letter that was spattered with the blood of the raw seal liver he had been eating.

Boas's trip was a success. He habilitated and married his sweetheart Marie. Together they created a loving and warm family. Professional success eluded him, however. Antisemitism made it difficult for him to find a job in Germany, so he moved to the US, where Marie’s family was — there were more opportunities there and Franz was also attracted to America as a land where his political ideals of liberty and freedom were more realized than they were in Germany.

Franz and Marie's wedding portrait.

Unfortunately, Boas found that there were few good jobs for geographers in the US. What people were interested in was Native Americans. Back in 1879 (when Boas was still in school) anthropology as a modern discipline was born in the United States. The goal was to understand the 'natural history of mankind', which in the US meant the origins of Native Americans. Were had they come from and what were they like? Previous answers -- tenuously derived from the Bible -- were clearly inadequate in light of new theories of evolution.

So Boas retooled himself as an anthropologist. He made multiple trips to the Pacific Northwest, a region that he is most closely associated with today. Still, he struggled. He got a dream job as a professor at Clark, a brand new university — only to have the university close down after a few years. He organized anthropological exhibits at the World's Fair at Chicago, hoping it would lead to a permanent position, but it didn’t. It was a dark time for Boas. His third daughter, Hete, was born in Chicago, caught whooping cough, and died in his arms. She was ten months old. Finally, Boas took a job at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and started teaching part time at Columbia. Finally in 1899, at the age of forty, he got a permanent position: He was now a faculty member at Columbia.

"Boas with the George Hunt family. Left to right, standing: David, George, Lalaxs'a, Mary (Ebbetts), Jonathan and Franz Boas. Sitting: Marion and Lucy. From row: Mary and Stanley" from Franz Boas: An Illustrated Biography

At Columbia, Boas was cutting edge. At a time when Harvard and Yale were just beginning to update their medieval curriculums, he had a Ph.D., the new research-focused degree that had made German universities world famous. Boas made history by being the first person in the US to offer a Ph.D. His students included Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, Robert Lowie, Alfred Kroeber, and many others.

Boas was also a tireless organizer, sitting on boards of journals, foundations, and associations. These positions allowed him to control funding and direct it to students. He was also a close friend of the millionaire feminist and activist Elsie Clews Parsons, who herself funded an entire generation of anthropological fieldwork. Boas worked his students very, very hard but also showed them tremendous loyalty. Boas not only lent money to students in times of need, in one case he signed on as a guarantor of a student loan, agreeing to pay it if the student defaulted.

Boas around the time he began working at Columbia.

True to his principles, Boas believed in meritocracy: If you could do the work, that was all that mattered. As a result he trained a generation of female students at a time when many universities didn’t accept female students at all. He also had few illusions about how much a white person could learn spending their summers on a reservation. For him, the best anthropologist was an insider with scientific training. As a result, he mentored scholars like William Jones (a Fox Indian) and Zora Neale Hurston.

 “Elsie [Clews Parsons] and colleagues at. Lounsberry, mid-1920s. On the porch, Elsie (in shadow on left) talks with Pliny Goddard; on the steps are Margaret Mead, Esther Goldfrank, Franz Boas, and Mrs. Nelson”. Via Deacon’s Elsie Clews Parsons. This picture illustrates the close ties Boas had with his students.

In fact, Boas was an uncompromising opponent of racism. Famously, in May 1906, he traveled to Atlanta University at the invitation of W.E.B. Du Bois and gave a speech claiming black people were biologically equal to white people. This was not a small thing in the Jim Crow South. Four months later, 25 black people were killed in Atlanta in a riot against black people that turned into a massacre. Then in 1909 Boas and a team of twenty researchers made 13,000 measurements of the children of immigrants to see whether they inherited their parents’ ’racial’ features. To his own surprise, Boas found that they didn't -- height, weight, and other factors were the result of the environment, not heredity. His students did similar research. Margaret Mead wrote a paper demonstrating the black people in the Midwest (where there was a strong public school system) did better on standardized tests than poor southern whites: schooling, not race, seemed to determine intelligence. Southern politicians repressed the study.

Boas’s relationship with indigenous people was more complicated. He was not a champion for Indigenous rights. He considered Native Americans conquered by the US and on the verge of cultural and biological extinction. His goal was 'salvage': to make a record of a disappearing culture the same way we have a record of Ancient Greece and Rome. He worked with many indigenous informants like George Hunt, who he paid to write letters detailing their customs. This relationship remains an object of scrutiny today: Did Boas exploit Hunt? Was Hunt Boas’s teacher and mentor? How much should someone be paid to write descriptions of salmon fishing in 1900 anyway?

Whatever we think of Boas’s relationship with Indigenous people today, at Columbia no one thought Boas was a friend to white people. He was considered a dangerous radical who had to be canceled. Not only did Boas attack the racial foundations of America, but when the US entered World War I, Boas was became a public enemy for opposing the war. Remember, this was a time when people where lynched for being German in the US. Columbia stopped paying him. They kept him from teaching undergraduates. They took space away from the department, leaving him with just his office. Boas was, essentially, canceled by the right.

What’s more, Boas's life was beset by personal tragedy. In addition to the death of his ten month old daughter in 1894, in 1924 his daughter Trudel died of polio. In 1925 his son Heini was killed in a car accident. Then in 1929 his wide died in a hit and run accident - the driver who hit her was never found. Boas's misery was palpable even before Marie's death. In 1927 he wrote to his son Ernst:

"I have not the light spirit of others and when I do not work, or else am intensely occupied with something else I can think of nothing but Trudel and Heini. They are there when I get up in the morning and when I stop work at night they are there… If I do not work these thoughts would destroy me." [L-Z v2 275]

Franz Boas featured on the cover of the 11 May 1936 cover of Time Magazine. In his old age, Boas's fight against racism became popular in America again as the US prepared to fascism in Europe.

Late in life Boas received the recognition he deserved, becoming a world-renowned scientist. In America, his anti-racist thinking became more and more recognized as America geared up to fight fascism. In Germany, an event was scheduled to give him an honorary degree. The degree was canceled and his books were pulled from the library and burnt by the Nazis. His last great work of activism was to help Jewish and leftist scholars flee the Nazis and get visas to come teach in America.

When Boas retired, he handed Columbia a gift: despite its attempts to derail him, he had created perhaps the greatest department of anthropology in the United States. And yet here failure dogged him. He had hoped his students Alfred Kroeber and Edward Sapir would come to Columbia to continue his work. Instead they stayed at Berkeley and Yale. His successor became Ruth Benedict, but she was then pushed aside by the administration and replaced by first Ralph Linton and then Duncan Strong.

Boas suffered many setbacks in his life, but he also overcame many obstacles. He lived an extraordinary life: Born before the Civil War, he lived to see the Pearl Harbor bombings. He trained the anthropologists who went on to start departments at Yale, Berkeley, Oregon, and many other places. He produced his famous “six foot shelf” — enough books on Kwakwakwakw that is longer than I was tall. After his death, his grandchildren and George Hunt’s grandchildren had a family reunion, and Hunt’s great grandchildren study anthropology in University. Despite his incredible age, Boas did not live to see just how influential he would become. Although he did not know it at the time, he became one of the few people Boas did not quite Although he may not have recognized or admitted it, he had in fact become one of the most important anthropologists in the world, and left an indelible imprint on the discipline for generations to come.

Sources: This was drawn from Rosemary Lévy-Zumwalt's two volume biography of Boas. The quote from . The reference to 1879 as the 'founding' date of anthropology comes from https://www.jstor.org/stable/658142?seq=1 . The Te Rangi Hiroa quote is from Na to Hoa Aroha volume 3. The blood stained letter is from George Stocking's "From physics to ethnology", p. 148

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I don't know if you already answered this so feel free to ignore.

What is your thoughts on Yu Ziyuan? am I the only one that thinks fandon defence of her saying she is just the typical Asian tiger mom is insulting to Asian mothers? You can be strict and not be abusive and guess what? YZ is not it.

Hell the author themselves made an entire chapter to say that she took things too far too often against a single person to be simple discipline towards a disciple. It was personal and she took great pleasure in it, just bc WY decides to stay despite his treatment doesn't make it any less horrible.

Am i the only one that thinks she only accepted WC orders to whip WY because she always took any chance to do so? That if Wang Lingjao hadn't mentioned she would have to be subservient to someone of lower class she would have gleefully cut off WYs hand and not reacted at all to the Wen invasion?

That in her last moments she made sure to remind WY one last time that he would be nothing but a servant to her, to tie him with a last wish so he would have the moral obligation to give up everything to JC like a proper servant should? I wholly believe part of her sudden tenderness to JC in her last goodbye was to also rub in WY face not only what he never had but what JC was losing just to rub salt in the wound.

Just, in what universe does people see a girlboss misunderstood by the world and its sexism? sometimes i think i read the wrong books or saw a different show... am i really the only one that sees this?

Good evening anon, I've been sitting on this a bit as I was weighing how exactly to answer this coherently. So, for the short answer; I do not like her as a character nor is she supposed to be seen as anything deeper than what she is. A terrible mother and person who let resentment rule her.

The Long Answer: She is not misunderstood, she is very easy to break down. She was a jealous youth who actively agreed to a marriage where the fiancé was already lukewarm to her disposition and continued to cast blame on Cangse Sanren stealing something she never had. Note as well, as she was the one to force a marriage and insisted on this even after Cangse Sanren had married Wei Changze. She is selfish and entitled. This carries over to how she treats her children, she is not happy with her own self, so she hyper focused on the flaws she instilled within Jiang Cheng. Instead of actually supporting him as a mother should, she insults him and instead of love she actively despises and insults her own child. This is not a healthy parental figure. She was hardly there enough obviously to even think of offering care and love in a very negligent household. She laughs instead when Wei Wuxian is brought in she is more concerned about being proven right about adding another child into the household will disrupt their already volatile dislike of each other.

Not once does she praise her children she fixates on despising Wei Wuxian and being annoyed he is able to be talented naturally so much she constantly pits her son against him herself and encourages that resentment to grow in him. She does not care about anything other than her own festering hate, and sure as hell never nurtured her own with love. She is miserable, pathetic and no whatever love she may have held for Jiang Cheng was toxic and all the worse to him as she never uplifted him as an actual loving parent should.

Her treatment of Wei Wuxian is certainly just as vile given he wasn't even her own yet she stayed forever jealous all over her own stories that exasperated her own hate for Cangse Sanren and superimposed that to Wei Wuxian. She has no excuse for her treatment of any of the children under her household. Hate is a sad way to live and end life, and it stops being sympathetic when she lived and died garnering the feelings and reactions she earned with it.

[just-a-living-meat-thing]

Oh boy do I

Btw so so sorry for the late response I have been experiencing horrors 😔 one like = one prayer

General hcs:

Light:

- The key to my understanding of Light is that he’s t the most masked individual, just, ever. I don’t even mean this in a sense of Light always being Kira pre-Death Note (although that is a theory of thought I love to entertain) I just mean that from a very young age, Light has been a person no one else knows. I think he was raised in a very strict, traditional household which—despite both parents being very proud and supportive of him—never really allowed him to be an individual outside of his family’s expectations. I also think that, just by way of Light being a Gifted Genius Kid™️ in canon, Light grew up feeling chronically emotionally isolated from his peers. I don’t think he would’ve really connected to anyone around him, except maybe certain adults who were willing to engage in intellectual conversations with him. I’ll expand on this soon, but just for sake of brevity I’ll leave it here

- Light is a complete lightweight (pun intended) when drinking because he hasn’t built up any tolerance to it. I honestly don’t even think he started drinking until after L’s death, and even then, he only drinks enough to get tipsy. I really doubt he’d ever drink enough to actually get drunk (except maybe whenever he has sex with Misa, and that’s only because she’d keep the drinks flowing)

- When he does get tipsy/drunk, he gets quiet and somber. Usually just staring off into space, scowling. He also gets very sleepy and compliant and doesn’t much care what happens to him, just so long as his reputation remains strong

- He and L never really became actual friends during Yotsuba Arc. Actually, they never got along. They’d routinely kick the shit out of each other over petty, catty, stupid little things, and Light truly did his best to make their living situation just as miserable for L as it was for him (in private, at least). That being said, the closer they got to catching Kira and the more time went on as they began to adapt to each others’ habits, Light began to become more indulgent of L in general. They never really regarded each other as friends (Light never did truly get over the mock-execution L staged) but they gradually came to begrudgingly acknowledge each other as equals. And although Light would never admit it out loud, he did enjoy the feeling of being understood, of being able to be as mean as he wanted, of being able to be something other than the perfect student while he was chained to L

- Light would also never openly admit it, he began to miss L after about a year or two after his death. He never allowed himself to dwell on those feelings, but sometimes he’d pause in front of a bakery, surveying the cakes he thinks L would’ve liked best. Or gone briefly quiet at a one-sided inside joke left unresponded to. He never ate strawberries again. Etc

- He has really intense, morbid thoughts revolving around death and gore and retribution. He secretly worries that he’s the one internally rotten, but then mental gymnastics his way around it by being “no everyone’s secretly a horrible sinful creature on the inside; I’m just the one who can control it!” and the hilarity of that goes completely over his head

- I personally hc him being somewhere on the aroace spectrum. I don’t think he’s fully aroace (probably grey or demiromantic, greysexual) but enough to the point where it’s contributed to his chronic feelings of alienation from others

- Internalized anger issues from disillusionment and a lifetime of feeling alone + helpless to change things. That’s partially why getting the Death Note was so cathartic for him, methinks

I’m gonna continue this in another thread with L and Misa hcs + fanfics I want to see written/would highly recommend, bc this is getting too long and I haven’t even scratched the surface of all my hcs :]

[misslavenderlady]

The Lost Boys Former Lives - Paul 💙

Others: David, Marko, Dwayne

TW: Child abuse, Corporal punishment, Homophobia, S*icidal thoughts, Depression, Anxiety, Death, Drug use, Sex

The playful one of our Lost Boys and the fourth of Max's "family".

This is what Paul's life was when he was human.....

In 1940, Paul was born. He was the youngest child of his parents with twin, older brothers. They lived in suburban neighborhood in Florida. Unlike the other Lost Boys, Paul was born into a relatively wealthy family. His great-grandfather had major success in the steel industry, and such riches were passed to each generation. His parents' wealth had only grown with his father’s massive success as a car salesman (a very sneaky one at that). His mother was a housewife and poured all her time and energy into making sure their home was always perfect.

They were the perfect picture of a successful, nuclear family in the 40s and 50s. The kind you’d see on billboards and advertisements. Bright smiles, neat clothing, and all the luxuries one could only dream of having. Neighbors and friends expressed envy of the gadgets and expensive decorations they owned. That was certainly fine by them, as a perfect image was something his parents strived for more than anything. They always worked to keep up appearances and impress others. 

There was just one problem with this; behind closed doors, Paul’s family was downright insufferable. His mother was prone to physical violence due to the nasty temper she had while his father would tear him down with full-volume screaming. There was no proper communication or unity in the household. Anything could set off a fight without any notice. They also hated anything that didn’t fit the traditional W.A.S.P. appearance (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), looking down on anyone who was even slightly different than them. 

Paul was a very odd kid in their mind, and he didn’t always fit the image his parents were trying to keep up. From an early age, Paul displayed signs of ADHD, but it wasn’t really understood or diagnosed in that time period. This unfortunately led to a lot of issues with his parents. They berated him for not staying still, for doing weird things for no reason (which was just stimming), for accidentally interrupting conversations, and for showing certain emotions at “inappropriate” times. Poor Paul didn’t understand what he was doing wrong, and it frustrated him constantly.

It didn’t help that his brothers were golden boys in their parents' eyes. They were perfect at everything. School, sports, music, boy scouts, you name it, they could master it. They worked as a team and it helped them succeed quite a bit. Unfortunately, they would use their duo dynamic for bullying their little brother. They would kick him, throw him in the dirt and mud and lock him in the basement when he was “annoying” them. Paul was miserable, but to them, it was a game. 

School life wasn’t much better either. Paul struggled quite a bit, as it was extremely difficult for him to concentrate. Due to the time period, he was punished by his teachers with rulers slapped on his palms or forced to sit in the corner while the other kids laughed at him. He didn’t make any friends because of this. 

Paul was a punching bag to everyone around him. He was a frightened little boy who had to deal with the terrible ways the people in his life would punish him. All because of him acting a little differently. He didn’t understand why they were so cruel. Why his parents mistreated others, why his teachers thought he was stupid, and why his brothers wished he had never been born. One day when he was 8, Paul tried to run away from home, fed up with the mistreatment.

He didn't think to bring much. He had run away with just an old lunch box full of random toys. Paul was just a little boy that didn’t know where he was going or what he would do. All he knew was that he wanted to be far away from his family. After several hours, he found a set of train tracks. One thing that brought him comfort was trains, as they could take him away from the life he was suffering through. As he played on the rails, he wished a train would come by for him to get on.

To his surprise, a train DID come, but it was heading straight for him. His foot got caught in the tracks, leaving him stuck and in danger. Paul’s screams got the attention of someone, and in a matter of seconds, a motorcycle rode by the train tracks, the driver on top scooping him up moments before he could get run over.

A runaway greaser had saved his life that day. He was a very nice stranger, kneeling down to talk to Paul at eye level, making sure he was okay, and asking where his parents were. Paul was in complete awe of the stranger. He thought he was the coolest person he’d ever laid eyes on. The bike he rode was powerful, he had a cigarette in his mouth and the leather jacket he wore was incredibly stylish. At that moment, Paul was looking at the image of a person he wanted to be someday. 

Thankfully, the stranger was caring enough to take him to a local diner to get him some food and to call his parents. Paul actually preferred the greasy fries and sweet milkshakes over the elaborate, rich dinners his mother made. It was much more appetizing for a kid’s palette. It took quite a while for anyone to show up, so the two of them hung out together. Paul got to dance to the music (which was Good Rockin’ Tonight by Wynonie Harris) and have fun playing games. It was the first time in his life he actually felt like he had a friend, and it brought him immense joy.

Unfortunately, the happiness didn’t last, and soon his parents pulled up outside the diner. Paul did NOT want to leave, clinging onto the stranger who he now called a friend. They were very kind and encouraging, helping him feel a little braver. In order to make it easier, they gave Paul one of their many silver bracelets as a token of friendship. That way, Paul would have something to remember the good times by. He still wears that bracelet to this day.

If Paul thought his parents were mean before, they became MUCH worse after he ran away. They were horrified by the stranger who helped him, and rather than praise them for keeping their child safe, they went on a detailed rant to Paul about how rock & roll was the devil’s music and that anyone who rode a motorcycle was a no-good hoodlum (they also made some rather hateful remarks regarding the stranger’s sexuality). They forbade him from ever indulging in that kind of stuff. In fact, they would make sure of it by harshly punishing him if they even thought he was doing such things. 

Paul’s life became empty, as he could never properly enjoy the things that brought him joy. When the family got their first television set, Paul wasn’t allowed to watch anything on it. Several of his toys were thrown out without notice if his parents felt like doing so. Punishments got more severe, and Paul was often backed into a corner either being screamed at or being struck with a belt. All while this was going on, his brothers were spoiled and allowed to do as they wished. 

As he started to get older, Paul believed there was no hope for him. That life would only get worse and worse and no matter what he would do, there would be nothing but pain. He was very much alone in the world. He never really smiled or laughed, as he had no reason to. If he was ever seen grinning for a family picture, it wasn’t genuine. He was just in survival mode, doing whatever he could to not invoke the wrath of his parents so he wouldn’t have so many bruises. 

The only time Paul would find peace was at night. When everyone else in the house was asleep, he’d sneak into his brothers’ room and take their record player so he could listen to their music. Paul would listen in the basement with as low volume as possible. Music became his savior. In the 50s, he found rock & roll again, and it brought him the only real happiness in his life. It was fun, energetic and made him want to go wild. It helped him realize how much he loved dancing and gave him hope that he could live a fun life one day. 

When he was 16, his brothers (who were still at home for college) turned on the Ed Sullivan show to see Elvis Presley perform. Paul was sneakily trying to watch too, as he really didn’t want to miss out. Of course, he got caught and his brothers snitched to their parents, claiming Paul had a crush on the singer. His parents were LIVID. They decided from then on, Paul’s life was going to be far more strict than it already was. 

They locked him in his room every night, only letting him out for school and chores. It wasn’t like Paul’s room was a safe place anymore, as they searched the room top to bottom and got rid of every book, magazine, toy, poster and decoration. It was just his bed and nightstand that had no drawer. If Paul wanted to read something, he’d either get the bible or a school book. Chores were worse, as they berated even the most perfect job done. If they found so much as a speck of dust, he’d get beaten. 

(WARNING: The next paragraph has mentions of s*icidal thoughts. Proceed with caution or skip if you need to)

Every single part of Paul’s life was miserable. He was a prisoner in his home and overwhelmed in school. It actually got to a point where Paul was held back a year for his struggling, which didn’t help the situation with his parents. With nothing to keep him happy, Paul considered multiple times taking his own life just to make the suffering stop. 

One day, Paul got detention for falling asleep in class, meaning he didn’t get to go home until after dark. He was walking alone when he accidentally bumped into someone while turning a corner. He was face to face with three handsome, rocker-style boys around his age. Paul was absolutely mystified by them. They reminded him of the stranger who saved his life as a child. The thing that brought him true happiness. 

Amused by him, they introduced themselves as David, Marko and Dwayne. They offered to take him to the local diner for some food and a dance or two. Paul was scared of the consequences with his parents, but the boys assured him it would be okay. He ended up having a really nice time, the weight of the world off his shoulders as they showed him a fun time. When he had to go, they gave him a ride home (it was Dwayne’s bike he rode on the back on). Paul was incredibly sad to say goodbye, but David promised they would come by to help sneak him out for more fun in the future.

So that’s what happened. The night became safe for Paul again, as the boys would come to his bedroom window and sneak him out to play. They gifted him jewelry and helped teach him how to use eye makeup. Whether they went on wild motorcycle rides, went out dancing or just listened to some music while having a smoke, Paul was incredibly happy. To him, life was worth living again, and the boys were the guardian angels that saved him. 

They also helped Paul get more comfortable with his sexuality. He had developed feelings for Marko first (who also became his first kiss), but ultimately found all three of them attractive. It was confusing to him, as his parents were very strict about the idea of relationships being between one man and one woman, but his friends weren’t judgmental or restrained with their beliefs. 

Finally ready to leave the torment of his parents forever, Paul asked to run away with the boys, as they would be traveling again soon. Having fallen in love with the adorable blond, they all agreed, ready to help him sneak out with what little he had. They were at a picnic spot in the woods and enjoying the celebration of Paul leaving his awful family…..when all of a sudden, said family pulled up in their car. 

His parents and brothers were there, ready to take him back home away from the “sinful” lifestyle. His father in particular wanted to send Paul to military school to finally break him down and prevent more rebellious behavior. Paul was struggling with a panic attack, terrified and barely able to breathe. David pulled him aside and covered his ears while Marko and Dwayne completely mauled the awful family. Paul was confused when he saw vampire faces and yellow eyes on his friends, but he never felt anything less than safe. David made sure his eyes were closed while they got back on their bikes and left the scene. 

Paul was free of that life, but he still wanted to complete his transition into the next one. He truly loved his friends and wanted to be with them forever, even after learning they were vampires. In his eyes, they weren’t monsters. He’d seen what real ones were. So the three of them agreed to turn him. Paul got to drink David’s blood from the bottle while the others cheered him on. When they asked where Paul wanted to go for his first hunt, he chose a familiar place from his childhood; the train tracks. 

Several emotions were going through his mind when he spotted his first target. He had some doubts if he could really take another life, but David assured him he could do it. The world was full of so many cruel, heartless people who wanted to keep them down. It was one less monster to poison the lives of others. So when Paul’s vampire instincts kicked in, he went for the kill. 

The first kill permanently changed Paul. After slaughtering and drinking from his target, something wonderful happened. A smile spread across his face. A real one. The most joyful smile he’d ever experienced. He was free. He was safe. Finally, he was ready to enjoy the night as a creature that would never know pain and sorrow again. 

To celebrate, Paul went absolutely WILD that night. He flew into the sky and went straight into the window of a fancy hotel, ultimately committing his first break-in with his friends. He smoked weed for the first time, loving how light and dreamy it made him feel. They all drank heavily, not holding back with the bottles of wine, beer and champagne they had. He danced naked and sang at the top of his lungs. Paul even had sex with both Marko and Dwayne for his first time, feeling overwhelmed with love for them. David in particular was very proud of him, loving the wild child that Paul had finally become. 

From then on, Paul was an entirely new person. To him, his previous life was nothing. All the bad memories and fears would be lost to time and he could be his true, authentic self. He would never be alone again and he would show his gratitude to his friends by helping keep the party going. Becoming a vampire was truly the best moment of his life, and he would never look back.

Additional Facts:

Paul hated the fact that his hair was cut short as a kid. He wanted it super long, but couldn’t have it that way because it wasn’t “appropriate” for boys. The moment he became a vampire, he vowed to grow it out and never go back to his short style.

If Paul had stayed human and had children, he would have had twins as his parents did. He carries the twin gene (@auntvamp)

He doesn’t just smoke weed for the sake of fun. He also finds that it helps calm any lingering anxieties he has from his human life. 

In 1950, Paul saw the movie Cinderella while his parents were away on a trip. He was absolutely enchanted by it, feeling a deep connection to the story and the idea of leaving an abusive family and finding someone who would truly love him. He loves stories with happy endings. To this day, he still hums “So This is Love” when he’s in an especially good mood. 

On that note, one of his pet names for the boys is “my prince”

As a human, he was allergic to dogs. The family never had pets anyway, as his parents thought they were dirty and too much work to care for. The only reason Paul knows he’s allergic was that he had a bad reaction to his cousin’s dog during a visit one Christmas. The reason he froze around Nanook wasn’t fear of the dog, but rather fear of another reaction.

The way he treats Laddie is just like how the stranger he met treated him (the stranger called him “bud” too). He wanted to be a super cool and caring older brother for Laddie, and nothing like the ones he had.

Paul never again saw the stranger who helped him as a child. In 1979 he swore he saw a familiar face from a middle-aged man he passed on the street but wasn’t entirely sure. 

He has fully embraced the passage of time and the changes that have come with each decade he’s been alive. He loved the free love of the 60s, the disco era of the 70s, and the punk movement of the 80s. In his mind, life has gotten better and better with each decade, and he’s thankful to be still young and energetic as he experiences each one.

Paul never put a label on his identity, but he finds people attractive regardless of gender. When he became a vampire, his confidence was boosted and became quite a flirt. He loves making others feel good, whether it be with sweet nothings or sexual embraces. 

He absolutely hates fights. Paul often tries to back out of fights or break them up because it brings back the fear of getting hit by his parents. He believes it’s embarrassing because he thinks he’s supposed to be tough like his friends, but they don’t mind it. In fact, they consider Paul to be their voice of reason if a fight gets too bad.

When Star joined their pack, he felt an immediate connection to her. He remembered how hard it was to be lonely, so he would always try his best to get her to smile or keep her company when she needed a friend. He’s not sure if his feelings toward her are more platonic or romantic, but he’s fine with just being her friend so she’s not alone. (their interactions are inspired by events in the novel)

Paul hates being reminded of the 40s and 50s due to bad memories, but one thing he still loves is going to old-fashioned diners. They’re a safe place for him, and the food is still very comforting. If he’s ever having a bad day, one of the boys will take him on a date to one. 

He’s still a little in the dark about his ADHD, but he’s much more open with stimming due to the support of his friends. 

Paul is the best singer out of all the Lost Boys. He found a love for karaoke when he became a vampire. 

He was rather clumsy as a human, which led to a lot of problems with his parents. He broke a lot of nice China plates due to a bad case of butter fingers. Thankfully, the boys don’t mind it.

The idea of going to the train tracks with Michael was Paul’s. He had quite the adrenaline rush the first time they all hung down from the edge. 

Despite all that he’s been through in life, Paul is incredibly kind. He won’t hunt people that are polite, he is friendly with kids, holds open doors for strangers, and leaves good tips (stolen from Max, of course) for servers. If he ever spots someone with signs of self-harm marks, he’ll go out of his way to help them with something or say something sweet to brighten their day. He personally knows how much that can mean to someone who’s struggling (him being the kindest Lost Boy is also from the novel) 

[reccyls]

Sueharu's backstory (childhood, friendship with Morinaga and falling out, what happened to his eye, how he became a merchant)

Sueharu is an orphan. He has always been alone from his earliest memories. People around him said that his parents had gotten caught up in some conflict or another and died, and he doesn't remember otherwise, so probably that's what happened. Regardless, Sueharu had nobody.

Being a kid with no family to help him, the only thing he could do to survive was to steal. If he was caught, he'd be beaten. And being small as a child, he was often also bullied by other kids. One time, he had gotten in a fight with an older boy, but Morinaga jumped in to help Sueharu in the fight. Morinaga said that he wanted to be friends with Sueharu because he thought Sueharu was smart and strong and interesting. Sueharu had no idea what to make of Morinaga, especially not his reasoning. Sueharu was just some good-for-nothing orphan runt, Morinaga was obviously stronger than him. But an insistent Morinaga is hard to refuse, and so they eventually became friends.

Morinaga's betrayal happens some time later. Morinaga didn't like that Sueharu had to resort to stealing in order to make it to each next day, so he had asked his parents if they could accept Sueharu into their household as a servant. This enraged and infuriated Sueharu, who felt as though Morinaga was looking down on him. He had always harbored some kind of hope that one day he'd become stronger, better than he was now, so that he and Morinaga could stand as equals. And then everything comes crashing down: Morinaga sees him as someone pitiable and inferior, looking down on everything Sueharu had to do to survive and thinking him weak.

So they fight, Sueharu says he never wants to see Morinaga again and that they're not friends anymore, and he leaves town. Again, still as a child, still with nobody supporting him and nothing to his name. Thus, he fell in with a group of bandits who were planning to rob some rich person's cart and sell off the goods. It does not go according to plan, however. The rich man's bodyguards slaughter all the bandits. Sueharu, being a child, was instead captured and taken as a slave.

Specifically, Sueharu was brought to a group of other frightened children, where their captor revealed their fate: some rich people have really twisted interests, you see. And they like to see people fight to the death for their own amusement. Kind of like cockfighting, but with people. There are a bunch of adults who are fighting one another for the sake of the rich people spectating, and every now and then, they shake things up by adding some children into the mix.

Upon hearing this, most of the kids get driven to despair, crying out in fear. As for Sueharu... He's the weakest and scrawniest of all the captured kids, but instead of shutting his eyes and hoping to be anywhere except for here, Sueharu forces himself to watch the bloody fights all the way through. He's studying the way the adults move, how they fight. Because he wants to live. Despite how miserable his life has been before this, he doesn't want to die.

So anyway, Sueharu is picked first and handed a knife, sent to fight against one of the adults. And he promptly puts his 'study' to good use, outmaneuvering the man and in the end, managing to kill him. But during the course of the fight, Sueharu had to let the man get an attack in so that he could launch his own counterattack; this was how he lost his eye. There's a price he needed to pay for victory.

One of the people observing the fight then took an interest in Sueharu, and took him from that place. The man was a merchant, and trained Sueharu to be a spy, assassin, someone who could do any kind of dirty work that needed to be done. That merchant, as you might expect from someone who watches people kill each other for entertainment and buys child slaves, was not a pleasant master. He did not tolerate failure and there were some nights where Sueharu couldn't sleep since he was being punished the entire night long for some mistake or another. But Sueharu grew, and learned, and waited for the right opportunity. And when Sueharu turned 15, that opportunity presented itself, and he was able to seize everything the merchant had, taking the merchant's place and all the power that he had for himself.

[against-forms-recognizable]

Shower thoughts on the family structure

Despite its current dominance, the single-income household has never been viable on a mass scale, outside of a few decades in the West, due largely to imperialism extracting massive amounts of wealth from the rest of the world combined with technological monopolies which have since lapsed.

Historically, in households where there was one 'breadwinner' and one 'homemaker,' it was because child labor allowed it to be so, because the industry of the household (the breadwinning) was linked into the domesticity: if you were a freeholder farmer, growing your food, farming, what we would now think of as a job, was in the same class of labor as cooking and cleaning, it was all part of the same system, we did not think of one as a job and the other as not. So, as children are often expected to help out around the house today, children back then would be expected to help out in the other productive endeavors of the household, like farming, or other forms of work. And children didn't typically go to school. They started working with their parents from a very young age.

So you hear a lot of complaints about how difficult it is to maintain a single income household, it's because when children are present, they are being freeloaders, generally; all of the labor they would have done to contribute to the household is offloaded solely onto the parents. And when they are not present, well, that was never very achievable in the first place with one person not earning bread, right?

We switched to a system where children do not work but we did not accomodate the switch to that system by altering the family structure to include a higher amount of laborers per household, which would necessitate a higher amount of adults living together for the family unit than just one man one woman. And we got away with it for a long time because of competitive advantages provided by imperialism, the industrial revolution, and so on.

That is coming to an end, and people are finding out that having kids is now a miserable experience that often makes your life worse, because of the financial and time burdens now associated with shepherding someone through the legal and social structures constraining and defining 'childhood.'

It doesn't have to be, though. We can envision alternative household and family structures that make that burden much less intensive. For instance, instead of marriage, some alternative structure in which a group of best friends bind themselves together and agree to live with each other in a shared household, which future spouses and children are incorporated into. (repping Terra Ignota here)

Such a structure could have one homemaker and three breadwinners because the duties typically assigned to homemakers have been made much easier than previous by technology. After spouses are incorporated in, you could even have a division between homemaker and educator, with one person whose sole job in the household of ~8 adults + however many kids is cleaning, and one person who is solely dedicated to day to day parenting and schooling. And in this structure it doesn't really matter how many people in society are gay or trans or in relationships that will otherwise not produce children because every household will probably have at least one straight couple and they can have as many kids as the household can bear if they want, which is the same amount of kids as a household with 4 straight couples.

Also a necessary comment here about how abusive the pre-industrialization family unit often was, being a child often meant being forced to work on the threat of extreme physical abuse or starvation if you did not. That was not good. Returning to that would not be good. We need something new.

[penofwildfire]

You wake up in a world where every ninja but one is happy and had a happy childhood and has no parental issued and all family members are alive and healthy snd good people

That one ninja is so miserable that miserable is an understatement because they got everyone else's trauma thrown at them

Who's the one ninja?

Well I have an AU where all the Ninja's parents are alive and well and present in their lives, meaning everyone is in a better situation except Jay who's stuck in a miserable household and his parents' terrible marriage (fuck Cliff Gordon🖕) so uhhh I guess Jay. That sounds fun (I like torturing Jay he's just fun to throw angst at).

[the-kittylorian-writes]

"In Dreams, We Wake" (2/?)

Fandom: Star Wars - The Mandalorian

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Type: Multi-chapter Status: Ongoing Warnings: Season 3 spoilers, graphic depictions of violence (some chapters), ptsd, subjects on grief & mourning Story Summary: Two years have passed since Ragnar lived the creed without his father. The boy keeps a facade, hiding his true nature as he leads a double life.

Between his roles as Mandalorian apprentice and heir to an ancient House, Ragnar is willing to weave through a complex path that haunts him and the Vizsla name—if only his father were there to see him again. Perhaps, Paz Vizsla will.

The question remains for Ragnar: What would he do and how far would he go for the father he loves?

Read on AO3 (w/ author's notes) or here:

Chapter Summary: Ragnar remembers his life before Paz Vizsla came to his rescue, and the time after Mandalore’s reclamation. Axe and Ragnar make their way to a final stop before returning to Mandalore.

Chapter Warning: Child endangerment; child fatality (only mentioned) ~Chapter 2: Of Agony and Joy~

Ragnar never trusted strangers. He had been raised from infancy to be wary of the world outside of the family in which he had been born. There would always be people watching, his birth mother kept reminding him. Those people wished their family ill and wanted them to neither succeed nor prosper. 

He had always been a self-sufficient and self-possessed child. He led the typical life of a youngster whose parents were high profile on his home planet; they were often dreadfully busy, and a few relatives would pay visits to watch over him, but with a detached manner Ragnar understood. It was hard to keep emotional attachments with someone whose life precariously hung on a proverbial string. 

They said he had an older brother, kidnapped for ransom but was killed as he tried his best to escape. Ragnar had never met his older brother, who was but eight standard years when he perished. Two months after the tragedy, Ragnar was born.

Ragnar was the only child ever since. There was father and mother: doting, then absent, then doting again, in a maddening cycle which Ragnar eventually grew accustomed to. He decided not to begrudge his parents. He knew about their lifetsyle; he’d read about it in holobooks, sometimes articles so well-hidden in the archives—fatal harm placed on families such as his, mostly politically motivated, oftentimes—and to Ragnar’s own horror—with successful attempts. His older brother unfortunately was testament to that.

The world for Ragnar consisted of his tutors, sports on the HoloNet where he remotely played with other politicians’ children, and rare, heavily guarded trips with either of his parents but never both of them at once. He was always under supervision. He had never any real time by himself. There was always security detail with him, and they had refused to play with him despite some of them being surprisingly young, barely into their twenties.

So Ragnar played alone or with the kids through the HoloNet projector. 

He had learned to only trust himself. He couldn’t even bring himself to trust his own parents. Everyone else in their household all had a job to do. They were paid well and did their work as they should, eyes glazed and almost unseeing, faces faintly smiling at a young boy who ran through the vast halls with no reprimand. Ragnar was ignored for the most part.

One day, Ragnar just developed a sensing.

He was six years old when he first felt it—a fleeting touch like a brush of a finger on one’s shoulder to get their attention. He knew how people felt somehow; he knew how sincere they were or how contrived, how happy they were or miserable or just plain nonchalant. They never had to speak to him or even glance at him. Sometimes, they don’t even have to be in the same room as him. 

His seventh and eighth year of life passed by rather uneventfully, which gave the household a temporary yet false sense of peace. Perhaps they were no longer terribly important political targets. His parents adopted a lower profile afterwards, convinced that that was the solution, and their presences were only felt by the masses through their philanthropies. 

The ninth and tenth year resumed with tumult. They had to move districts, and finally, they were as good as isolated—a mansion hidden in the mountains, accessible only by small hovercraft. Ragnar’s sensing returned again, and he knew very well that being far off from civilization made little difference. In fact, they were more vulnerable here, hidden away from the main city where all manner of help were situated should they direly need it.

Mother and father were properly convinced once more that this was how they would lead their lives until at least Ragnar’s sixteenth birthday. If the boy wanted, he could take on their line of work, or think of another one—but it had to be prestigious. 

Ragnar didn’t know much about the Galactic War which ended a few years after he was born. He knew little of the outside world, so to speak, and he’d rather remain ignorant of it. At the back of his mind, whether his parents conceded to it or not, he would never choose their line of work. He wanted to form a different worldview for himself when he grew older. How his parents conducted themselves—none of that appealed to Ragnar. He had been left alone for most of his life and he did what he wanted despite dozens of watchful eyes upon him. He wished to do away with those overly vigilant and hard gazes. Perhaps he can be a pilot. He’d fly away from there, take all manner of hyperspace lanes and just disappear. 

He had only trusted himself—and he wondered if he would ever learn to trust another. The servant droids didn’t count.

Until another, much larger inexplicable tragedy one day, a large warrior covered in armor from head to toe rushed into Ragnar’s horizon. 

A sensing overcame Ragnar then. It was as if he knew of the warrior before, coming from another place and time—warm and whole like a blanket of light; yet everything else about the warrior was unfamiliar. 

The sensing had told him that he could trust that armor-clad warrior. 

Ragnar hadn’t known about the Force. He had also never known of Mandalorians until then. While he knew of the latter far sooner than he’d ever guessed, knowledge of the former came much later, and in quite unexpected ways. *

It was sometime on 10 ABY when Paz Vizsla needed to depart the Glavis ringworld to find others of their scattered Covert.

It had been a year since many among their Tribe had lost their lives in the desolate sewers of Nevarro, swarmed by overwhelming numbers of Imperial troops—uncanny for a mere Remnant. The Tribe were skilled warriors who had grown rusty, drowning in a routine which dulled their senses into complacency when they should have been eternally vigilant. The darkness of Nevarro’s subterranean tunnels wore them all down, save for Din Djarin who had become their sole provider. Only Din fully saw the light of day, and he had been gone many cycles at a time.

Paz was among those tasked to protect and evacuate the Covert should disaster strike. Fellow Mandalorians who had fallen in that siege were adamant that Paz should be their last resort. Let him conserve his strength and munitions for when the time came to unequivocally defend their little foundlings. Let Paz be the white-hot fire raining upon the enemy with his ruthless blaster canon as the foundlings found more avenues of escape and areas of safety.

In the end, things didn’t go as planned. Half the Covert was decimated, and their numbers were already piteously small to begin with. The surviving half needed to split into tinier groups to drift across the galaxy, hide on other worlds and wait for word. The Armorer had only been Paz’s constant companion during those prolonged days of grief which numbed him completely for a moment. No prayer or incantation stifled the pain in his soul, and he spent those long months tracking down the rest of the Covert and keeping tabs on them once they were found. 

All he needed to do was go to them, and they would relocate to a new home together and re-establish everything they had lost and more.

This is the Way.

Paz had received a tenuous signal from one of the Mid Rim planets, a signal closely known only in the Covert, uniquely belonging to them and understood by fellow Tribe members. It was a more ancient mode of disseminating a signal, a response to when Paz himself carefully issued out a call—all is clear; we can recoup.

The signal was weak and it came and went; Paz nearly dismissed it as a trap, but no one among the Remnant could have known of their Tribe’s mode of communication—unless the worst happened and they were compromised all over again.

That was Paz’s job—to determine the weight of such situations, and how pursuing them was worth the already limited resources he had left.

He had been hardwired from a young age not to doubt himself or quail at times when his judgment was needed the most. You are a Vizsla, you are a Vizsla—those voices wouldn’t go away. He was indeed a Vizsla, one of the bloodline sent to the Tribe and hidden away as a small child by the Armorer’s own clan. Paz made a clear pact to himself that he would be among the better Vizslas.

The Vizsla bloodline carried with it a plethora of curses as well as blessings. There had only been the bad Vizslas, and the worse Vizslas. If one heard of a good Vizsla centuries after the passing of Tarre Vizsla, that was because they had found themselves disavowed or forgotten in the thick of the Mandalorian Civil Wars. A better Vizsla was even rarer… and since Paz realized he was possibly the only Vizsla left, now was a great time as any to be and remain the better of his bloodline.

Three times Paz needed to switch ships to leave a cold trail faster, and to mislead anyone who’d attempted to follow him. He was painstakingly discreet, and his bulk and disposition presented him with measurable challenge. Sometimes he pretended that he was a simpleton and a mute, and communicated with broken Basic typed on a datapad to strangers who can sell him clues. He walked around like a cripple or a hunchback to further cement his pretense. 

Anyone who’d undermined the hulking Mandalorian with attempts on his welfare for the beskar on his back would otherwise lose limb or life. On that note, Paz made sure as much as possible that he did not expose himself as Mandalorian. Din was still out there, supposedly the last among their people who walked the galaxy. He was always hunched and hooded when out in the open, a mountain bathed in quiet shadow.

Paz sacrificed much of his dignity to track the last of the scattered groups down. When this was over, he thought, he would need a long conversation with the Armorer for guidance, for help in restoring much of his self-respect. He would give all for the Creed, and if his own self-esteem was the price, so be it. But he should never throw it completely away.

You are a Vizsla, rang the incessant voices within him. You are a Vizsla.

Paz had stopped to camp in a more isolated section of the planet before resuming his search. Technically, he had found the signal’s source, which was a distance from where he’d decided to land, away from a densely populated space port and prying eyes. He was down to a single cloaking mechanism. If he were to squeeze it dry, he would do so wisely.

The hulk of a man was spent, exhausted, lonely… he endured it all. He wondered for a moment how Din could have handled his own circumstances, and empathy hit Paz like a slap. Din returned to Glavis without his foundling. Din had been banished as an apostate. The silver-clad Mandalorian left without protest, lost and alone in spirit. Paz fought a pang of guilt, but Din had broken the Creed, after all.

On the other hand, Paz had lost his claim over an ancestral weapon through ritual combat—the Darksaber, and it remained in Din’s possession. Bitterness, shame, self-pity, a speck of rage and silent weeping—and it was over. Paz moved on from that defeat, and he took his mind to more pressing matters.

That night on this Mid Rim planet, the Mandalorian lit a low, companionable fire. He warmed some canned rations and ate quietly, lifting his helmet as he shoved spoonfuls of shredded meat and sauce into his belly. He couldn’t even take the buy’ce off entirely. Much of him had turned into hyper-alertness and nerves.

He was at the outskirts of a thick forest, populated by various non-sentient wildlife and an endless canopy of trees. Paz leaned upon a trunk of an old tree and he tilted his visor up; the fog had veiled everything over and he lost sight of the treetops from where he sat.

His cloak doubled as a sleeping bag; Paz had stomped out the fire, and in full darkness save for the myriad of stars peeking through the fog, the large Mandalorian found himself drifting to half-sleep. His breathing slowed down, his heart beat at a comfortable pace… for a precious instant, he was relaxed.

However, just as he had finally closed his eyes—he soon opened them with a start as his world was rocked by a huge explosion west of his position.

Pulling himself together, fueled by muscle memory and survival instincts, Paz had readied his blaster canon, primed it as he lay low, studying the air and the chaos which loomed closer and closer. He was sure now that while it was an ambush attack, it was not towards him.

Paz could hardly believe his eyes. 

He saw three more explosions hit the same area; flocks of slumbering wild birds took flight and soon the forest was filled with the panicked screeching of fauna. The commotion was enough to give Paz the confidence to stand to his full height and behold the sight before him.

The earth rumbled from shockwaves and the sky rippled with angry flames licking upwards; it seemed to Paz that the dark clouds overhead had also been set ablaze. 

The resulting fire from four detonations was huge, without a doubt. Paz was nowhere too close to the flames and yet he felt the heat seep through his thick layers. He trembled and bit back a moment’s profound agony; he recalled Nevarro, and he recalled the many years before that, where fires had become a catalyst to suffering.

Paz had spotted a mansion there, oddly so, earlier that day. He had thought it abandoned, but one couldn’t be too sure. With his rangefinder, he scanned what he could of the vicinity from afar. There were no signs of life, it seemed. The mansion was weathered and on the verge of collapsing. Something had tugged at Paz like a finger brushing over his shoulder; Paz mentally swatted it away like an insect and he never felt that sensation again for the rest of the day.

…except, now that Paz was staring, dumbfounded, at what he knew was the mansion ceasing to exist under the weight of an inferno—was that he had felt it again. It was that light touch over his shoulder, trailing almost desperately up and down his back. 

Paz thought he could be losing his mind, if he had not already lost it long ago. There was urgency to that strange sensation—as if it were tugging at him like a call for help.

The hulking Mandalorian hesitated. He swung at the balls of his heels like a child uncertain of where to go and what to do. He observed the flames and then the sensation had struck at him again—Paz held his ground. Whatever it was on that mansion up the hill was not his fight.

It was not his business. He had his own, and he must remain faithful to that mission.

Settling a conversation with himself, Paz shook his head and was about to turn around and leave this disaster behind…

But the sensation was now practically pulling at him, and something like an image of small hands tugging at his entire being flashed at the back of his mind: a blink of an eye and nothing more.

Paz consequently found himself clambering to the top of the hill in bounding strides. 

The mansion was no longer there, and on its stead were tendrils of flames like fingers clawing furiously at the sky. The black smoke trailed at him and he began to cough; he sealed his helmet and turned on his oxygen reserves.

He didn’t know why—what had gotten over him? THIS WAS NOT HIS MISSION, and yet he dove headfirst into the flames, letting the image of a child’s small hands pull him to where he thought he was being led to…

What he didn’t expect at all was to be fired upon by a hail of blaster bolts just as he had entered the threshold of the blaze. 

It was no use, certainly, to detect heat signatures of culprits anywhere in the midst of a hellish place. He managed to resort to enhance the feedback of his HUD to detect the smallest movements other than the spiraling flames and debris threatening to fall all around him.

For the nth time that night, Paz wondered why the hell he brought himself upon this fray—

Soon, he realized that he had already been surrounded.

He had learned to estimate numbers in his Fighting Corps training, and a sweeping glance informed him that he was being targeted at and encircled by thirty armed men at least. He didn’t know of what species, but most could indeed be human. 

Paz felt his heart clench. If he needed to get out of this scrape alive, he’d need to slaughter them all, even the humans. It hadn’t posed much concern before, as Imperial Stormtroopers were human and Paz had remorselessly gunned down multitudes in the past… but after a period of dormancy, this act felt as murderous as it was an act of self-defense.

That would partly be a lie. 

Paz hadn’t clarified the nature of the presence and skillset of practically a private army set to attack him, but he instantly knew that he would outrun and outgun them should it come to that. They were no match for him.

Another volley of bolts pelted his beskar; the pressure threw Paz back and away from the flames, and out into the open. He grunted in irritation, yet gathered enough self-mastery to keep himself from priming his canon in clear view of unknown and unexpected enemies. Paz had relied on the element of surprise before, and he was hoping he could do so again.

Out of nowhere echoed a booming and demanding shout: “WHO SENT YOU?!”

In the wide glade surrounding the mansion burning down to nothing, Paz was quickly encroached by a small army of thugs. They didn’t bother to conceal their numbers as they all poured out of hiding, all of their blaster pistols aimed at him. A few carried rifles. 

Paz thought twice about indulging them with a reply. He remained a silent statue, but his whole body was conceivably taut.

“I SAID—WHO SENT YOU?! You’re an expensive hire, and that family’s owed our boss a fortune and could no longer afford the likes of you—MANDALORIAN.”

This ticked Paz off in the best way possible. Now that they knew what he was—they all simply needed to disappear.

He seemed to have been caught in a crossfire between two warring families. Underworld business? Intense political rivalry to the point of wiping out entire families? Something twisted within Paz. He remembered that House Vizsla in its vicious past were no different…

The goons’ faces were masked, and this somehow made it easier for Paz. These masks distorted any semblance of humanity in their features. He remained quiet, unmoved, stoic. Another step, and he would wipe them all out, and whoever sent these thugs would only find out that their men had been decimated by ghosts. Paz knew how to bury his tracks.

The hulking Mandalorian was about to reach behind him and untether his blaster canon from its jetpack clip when the situation turned on him in an instant.

The head goon—or whoever he was, as he was the one who spoke on everyone’s behalf—had produced before him the slack form of a small, dazed, and quivering child.

“I know where you reach, Mandalorian,” hissed the masked thug above the roar of flames and crumbling walls. “Set that weapon of yours upon us, one false move… and this kid gets it, hear?”

The man had flung the child to the ground, and before Paz could even register what happened—the goon had issued upon the helpless small boy a swift and powerful kick. A thin, pained cry filled the air.

The brushing touches over his shoulder turned into frantic grappling.

Osik! Paz thought… and he knew that he had snapped as his vision turned into sharp and vivid greys. Everything happened so quickly, so fluidly, like a wave had shot out of nowhere to smother everything in its wake.

In a matter of seconds, he had come upon the crumpled form of the boy protectively. He hoisted the little boy over his shoulder in a thoughtful position where the child would not be hurt by the canon’s recoil… and before the next heartbeat, he’d unslung his weapon and it spat out a volley of bolts in the rhythm of drumbeats, and not a bolt was wasted as each found its mark on every single one of these thirty thugs. 

An unquestionably intense couple of minutes broke as the two sides exchanged firepower, and with Paz, it could have well been one-sided. The hulking Mandalorian hunched his body forward, like a shell coiling around its softer innards—and the child was that softness; blaster bolts ricocheted off Paz’s armor, leaving the little one cocooned and secure. Two brief minutes, and it was over. The blue-clad warrior held his breath, then panted in relief. He stopped firing seconds after he realized that shots no longer fell upon him.

Paz let his blaster canon cool and the adrenaline rush subside. He blinked at the destruction he had caused. He was stricken by his own brutality, and realized how easy it had become to provoke him when the life of a child was at stake.

He wasn’t even sure how he did it. He usually needed both hands to steady the blaster canon, but this time, he managed to do it single-handedly as his other hand was preoccupied in keeping the boy safely cradled close to his body. The child squirmed a little. His chin felt like a welcome albeit justifiably frightened weight over his pauldron.

“Hold on, little one, hold on,” were Paz’s next words, whispered gently as he braced himself to fly out of the scene via jetpack. He had done so in time, for whereupon he stood not a minute ago, the mansion had toppled over completely in massive clouds of black smoke and fine dust. The fires had done their job. The mansion—and surely, the boy’s family—was no more. He could try to confirm it soon after his own derailed mission… 

The boy kept eerily quiet, but Paz saw that the child was very lucid and had witnessed everything he had done to rescue him. 

“It’s all right…” Paz attempted to soothe the little one. To his rewarding surprise, the boy only held on to him tighter, and obstinately clung to him until daybreak. 

Paz had only heard the child sob once before the little one had fallen asleep in his arms.

It was only then did it dawn on Paz that the only place the child would feel safe from now on—and would be fundamental to the recovery of his body, mind, and soul—was in his embrace. 

Paz knew he was in trouble, but more so, he felt many times blessed. 

This child was his foundling… as this child had already chosen him from the very beginning.

By the time he had returned to the Armorer with the last group of the Covert and his foundling in tow, Paz felt all the nightmares of his tribulations melt away. ***

The Kom’rk starfighter which Axe had been piloting alone was still traveling through hyperspace when Ragnar woke up to a strangely precise pressure digging at his chest.

The boy sat up, realizing that he had slept on his stomach again. He sighed in annoyance. This sleeping position had always been one his body would subconsciously turn to when he felt greatly threatened, mistrustful, and needed a huge deal of comforting. He commonly adopted it in his early childhood, which he suspected had begun when his parents warned him of trust and danger.

Ragnar groaned through his vocoder. To think that sleeping without taking his helmet off would bother him more, but after two years of only slipping out of the buy’ce to bathe and when he was ill as he was ushered into brief care by medical droids, he had faithfully sealed his face in. That had transformed into his comfort zone. On the other hand, the cause of the digging sensation was relatively newer.

The youth reached under his flight suit and drew out a mythosaur pendant strung on a fine leather cord. 

He stared at it for long moments as the shiny beskar kry’bes stared back at him with its hollow eyes. 

“Dad,” Ragnar whispered, unbidden. 

The necklace was Paz Vizsla’s, presented to him when he had completed his apprenticeship under the Armorer’s older brother. Her brother did not follow in the footsteps of a goran as she had done. Rather, he had been one of the Tribe’s great providers during the days when they still basked under the sun, never in hiding. He took in the responsibility of being Paz’s mentor just as Axe did for Ragnar.

Paz’s stories of his own apprenticeship, Ragnar noted, weren’t relayed in much detail. His father did tell a few, but in an unexpectedly impersonal way, as if Paz were seeing things through the eyes of a bystander rather than his own. Ragnar was still new to the ways of Mandalorians then, and all he did was listen and be quiet; he drank information in huge gulps and didn’t offer any queries or opinions unless he was offered the opportunity. The boy then wondered what kind of relationship his father may have had with his own mentor. Sometimes, he would detect warmth in the large Mandalorian’s robust baritone. More often, however, was the neutrality in his voice.

Then, Ragnar accounted for the fact that the man who mentored Paz Vizsla had neither been his buir nor a family member. The relationship could have been, at least, very didactic rather than familial. It was more or less the same arrangement he had with Axe Woves—someone of no clan relation taking an orphaned foundling under their wing.

The boy set his mouth into a hard, stubborn line.

Only that he was not an orphan. Not yet—and he never plans to be one. 

His father was still alive. He’s just… drifting far away, but not far enough where the living could no longer follow or the ones who had passed on could carry him off to their realm among the Oversoul.

Folding his still-growing hand over the pendant and letting it rest on his palm, Ragnar let the thoughts flow to him. He regulated his shaky breaths.

In his mind’s eye, he vividly recounted how six grown Mandalorians had to carry the unconscious form of his father on a makeshift stretcher into the med bay. There had been no supply of hover-gurneys at the time, along with the scarcity of medical supplies. There was upheaval and panic barely breaking through the surface; trained warriors could only master enough self-control. 

Some had perished and a few survived. Paz was among those who had survived—but the hushed whispers he’d gleaned revealed that his father surely should have been among the fatalities. High-powered energy weapons had torn through his insides, which could have caused immediate organ failure. Blaster burns covered his body, and despite the cauterizing effects of energy weapons, there had been a great amount of blood loss.

The youngster had blocked all sound and emotion out. They wouldn’t let him see his father until he was somehow patched up. Ragnar bolted far and hid in one of the docked Mandalorian ships, and he sat there, verily shocked and unheedful of everything around him. They all had looked for him, and when they finally found him he had been fast asleep for hours. 

Ragnar remembered how the Armorer came to him, soothed him with no trace of condescension or coddling, much to Ragnar’s gratitude. But the boy had become inconsolable for days. While he never threw a fit or bawled and made a fuss like how some children did, he had locked all the anguish within himself and refused to be touched or spoken to unless it was someone from his father’s close circle. 

Ragnar didn’t expect Grogu to be that source of much-needed support, as well as the green child’s father, whose name Ragnar knew was Din Djarin. 

The youngster was crouched among the company of storage crates and didn’t budge or react much. He sported an empty stare under the helmet as he knotted his fingers over and over. Grogu, dear Grogu, had tenderly placed a three-fingered hand over his. 

Din had cautiously knelt before him and never forced him to respond in a manner most adults demanded of a child when addressed to. 

“Grogu found your father first,” the silver-clad Mandalorian told him, ever so gently, in a voice Ragnar decided was nearly as cherished as Paz’s. “You know, Ragnar—Grogu… he has powers. He can heal.”

That was when Ragnar’s gaze had shot up; he was suddenly paying attention. Through his visor, he searched through Din’s own for any indication of further hope.

However, the only hope Din could offer had fallen a whole parsec short.

“Grogu did what he could. Your father is out of danger now, but…”

Ragnar found the impulse to speak, and it came out sharp. “But what?!” 

He withdrew into himself again, disturbed by his own impudence.

Din had tried his best to explain. The medical term was comatose—being in a prolonged state of unconsciousness, a deep sleep with the uncertainty of whether the patient would wake or finally succumb. 

He’ll wake, was all Ragnar could think of and it played like a mantra in his head and heart. He’ll wake. My father will wake up. You’ll see. You’ll all see.

Grogu and Din had patiently sat with him, and Ragnar wished for that moment to go on and on until he was irrevocably reassured that Paz would indeed wake up sooner than later.

“Take me with you,” was all Ragnar could mutter, much to Din’s surprise. The man hadn’t a clue of Ragnar’s keen perception, that the boy knew of the time Din had to go off-world with Grogu for important business. “Please.”

The child’s psyche was sundered in two: a part of him wished to stay with his slumbering father, and the other part of him was too exhausted from the cruel burdens of reality and wished to be far away, even for a little while.

“That’s not for me to decide,” Din had sincerely replied, palpable regret in his tone. That was indeed true, Ragnar discovered afterwards.

Din had made Grogu’s adoption official. The man was then duty-bound to take his son with him on apprenticeship training. Ragnar could still afford an ounce of genuine joy for Grogu, who only dealt him with kindness. 

“You better make your dad proud,” Ragnar had told Grogu, bleeding himself dry of any goodwill left in him. Grogu’s huge-eyed stare of compassion and scrutiny held Ragnar fast, and the boy felt suddenly bare.

I will, came a will-o’-the-wisp voice straight into Ragnar’s mind. It was a very young voice, yet inexplicably ageless and timeless.

That encounter had left a mark on Ragnar over the much longer days he went through the motions. All foundlings who had sworn the Creed were to re-take the oath in the Living Waters as it was a far more sacred spring in all the galaxy, at least in Mandalorian culture. Ultimately, Ragnar had disassociated through the lighting of the Great Forge, through the celebrations that came after, all through the night that followed and then the morning after.

“Young Ragnar, you may now see your father,” was the Armorer’s unceremonious summons of him after the first meal.

The matriarch had tipped her visored head to Ragnar in an expression of concern. Somehow she knew that Ragnar was not eating as well as he should; the boy’s appetite had all but disappeared. Ragnar knew that the Armorer had been diligently overseeing Paz’s initial treatment, and she’d now found more courage in herself to let Ragnar witness in person all the whispers the child had been enduring over the plight of his father.

Ragnar responded with an imperceptible nod and followed her.

The trek to the station which became a more permanent medical facility was an arduous one. Perhaps that was why Ragnar just wanted to go away for a while and leave his dearest father in the hands of capable physicians. He didn’t want to see a man he had deemed so powerful, so strong, so sure in himself and filled with conviction and zest towards the Way become akin to a cold lamp where the light had been put out—a dim little star where there was once a blazing sun.

But Ragnar decided that this was a test. He would take this all in. He would know what to do after, if he knew that this would be too much for him…

The Armorer had halted before a great metal door. 

The boy realized that the light cruiser crash had not destroyed everything in its vicinity; there were chambers that were meticulously made to withstand the very heat of a Mandalorian Forge, which rose to temperatures higher than the hottest, unlivable planets. This was one such chamber, retrofitted by the Remnant and seized back by Mandalorian engineers.

Ragnar swallowed the lump in his throat as the Armorer punched in a code. The doors presently swished open.

His HUD registered darkness at first, and then adjusted to the ambient lighting within.

He felt frozen to the spot but the Armorer had anticipated this. She lent him strength with a gentle nudge over the small of his back. 

The boy felt like a wraith, floating into the heart of the chamber with limbs and steps that weren’t his. He felt disembodied… he was disassociating again, letting the world happen to him, rather than him facing the world.

He stopped at the foot of a three large bacta tanks, huge transparisteel pillars towering over the boy and the matriarch.

Ragnar stiffened; his heart began to hurt so much and yet he held his ground. He clenched his fists as he beheld Paz Vizsla, suspended upright within the vat of bacta liquid with a tubes and circuits circling around the form of a once mighty warrior.

His father’s face was still respectfully concealed by a special helmet which aided his breathing and cycled sustenance periodically into his system. 

Ragnar had seen his father stripped of his armor only a handful of times, simply in his under suit when he would make time to tuck Ragnar to bed. 

Who would tuck him to bed now? 

Ragnar felt fury swell towards himself when he remembered the day he told Paz that he was too old to be tucked in. That was soon after he swore the Creed. Oh, such was the arrogance a child possessed from undergoing an important rite of passage which ushered them to adulthood.

Without both armor and under suit, covered simply in compression shorts and dark compression bandages over his burned and damaged skin, Paz looked so different, so small, so achingly vulnerable.

This was the sight Ragnar had refused to acknowledge. He stood there, paying little attention to the other two patients who occupied the tanks which flanked his father’s on either side. They were parents of foundlings as well… how were those kids faring in relation to his own void of pain? Will those Mandalorians in their own recuperative slumber wake up, be well, and join their families again?

Borne out of duty, the first words which Ragnar inquired of the Armorer were, “Where is my father’s armor?”

The Armorer laid her gaze upon him awhile before leading him to the back of Paz’s tank, where a cleverly camouflaged storage closet had been installed vertically, made for the patients’ personal belongings while undergoing treatment.

The closet hissed open, and inside, much to Ragnar’s cascading thankfulness, was Paz’s full set of armor fastidiously arranged. The boy would like to think that it had been readied to be worn immediately upon his father’s waking. A small smile crept over Ragnar’s lips. His father would do that, all right. He would loudly demand for his armor as soon as he opened his eyes.

“Everything’s in order, ad’ika,” the Armorer said with moving, uncharacteristic gentleness. After a pause, she continued, “I would have to leave you now as I have duties to attend to. You may stay for as long as you like. Should you need the assistance of a baar’ur, do so with the comms attached to this storage closet. They should come to you immediately.”

Ragnar nodded weakly to the Armorer. “Th-thank you.”

The child spent the next few hours curled at the foot of his father’s tank, his back towards the transparisteel. He couldn’t bear another second seeing Paz so helpless like that, but he wanted to be close to him… perhaps, he could lend him strength with his presence alone, even when the man wasn’t conscious to see it. 

He sobbed for most of his stay, a haunted weeping of a small boy suddenly wrenched from a true hearth and home. It sent Ragnar to impassioned self-abhorrence when he did know that there would be slim chances of Paz emerging out of a major battle unscathed. For the few years under this noble Mandalorian’s care, he knew his father to be wholly selfless to the point of martyrdom. Ragnar didn’t exactly expect it to happen earlier on, when he himself still needed a father to thrive in his own journey of becoming a full-fledged warrior.

The days that came after were harrowing, to say the least. Ragnar drifted in and out of alertness and awareness as a council consisting of Lady Kryze, the Armorer, and a handful of leaders from either side decided upon the fate of the child.

Ragnar didn’t pay much attention, anyway. He was the subject of hot debate. They kept saying, the last heir of Clan Vizsla, the one to lead House Vizsla one day, and all that babble. 

Was he only significant due to the clan name he carried? These leaders didn’t show much interest over the fate of the other children whose parents were in the bacta tank, too.

The meeting over his future surprisingly lasted for more than an afternoon. It would take multiple sessions before arrangements could be finalized. 

During those interludes, Ragnar was allowed to leave the council room. A child his age was restless and needed to burn some energy so they can settle properly again when it was required.

Ragnar explored the halls which were slowly being repaired from extensive damage caused by the light cruiser crash. The boy had learned of Commander Axe Woves and the man’s derring-do. He faintly recalled Axe standing next to him as he led the cry: “FOR MANDALORE!” and the Great Forge was alive with the wild cheers of their people. Ragnar had felt nothing, then. He had numbed himself, shut himself in. He was only there because the Armorer said he should.

The boy kept to his explorations. There would be sentries here and there, and they would nod to him, and he would nod back. Ragnar made another turn to a station definitely more damaged than the rest, but before he could take a step further—

His boot had hit something, and it reacted with a metallic clanking which drifted a bit across the hall before sliding to a full stop.

A rush of the sensing suddenly latched itself onto Ragnar’s mind. The youngster felt a pull towards that object he had accidentally kicked some paces away.

The child searched for it in the half-darkness; he picked it up.

The object was surprisingly warm to the touch. Had someone else handled it before he did? Metal left alone for so long would keep cold. There seemed to be life beating within this… thing… 

A hilt?

It was partly crushed, the top split apart like a steel flower in bloom. 

Ragnar wrangled in his racing thoughts and pounding heart. He had seen this before, and he knew what it was.

It was what remained of the Darksaber.

*

“Ragnar, are you there?”

Ragnar was transported back to the present; his eyes flew open upon the sound of Axe’s voice buzzing through the comms of his sleeping quarters. 

“Yeah, I’m here,” the boy responded immediately lest his teacher worry… again.

“Good, good,” came the man’s relieved remarks. “Proceed to the cockpit soon and buckle up. We’ll be hitting Nevarro’s atmosphere in T-minus fifteen.”

“Copy that, sir.”

There was prolonged static on the other end, as though Axe held the transmission button for longer, yearning to say something more. Ragnar waited; the static cut off. The youth had felt that Axe wished to impart more caring, concerned words towards his charge. The man had thought better of it. 

Ragnar knew what it was: the hesitancy of someone who was a parental figure and yet could not fully be a parent. The boy had respected it, but now he felt bereft. This was Axe’s way of compromise. He was not the boy’s father, and he was in no way replacing Paz Vizsla. 

How different things would have been if it were Paz himself who’d take Ragnar to apprenticeship missions?

Ragnar choked back a cry.

Vastly different. A million parsecs different.

Before tucking Paz’s mythosaur pendant back under his flight suit collar, Ragnar partly lifted his helmet to give it a tiny kiss. His frame trembled; his muscles throbbed and his head spun for a moment.

I love you, Dad, Ragnar whispered in his mind to a sleeping man in a bacta tank a world away. He can never say it many times enough.

The mythosaur pendant had been handed to him for safekeeping by the Armorer herself when Ragnar had turned fifteen, his current age. Axe Woves had already then been his mentor for half a year, and he was about to embark in more crucial stages of his apprenticeship. He wouldn’t be strung along for the ride not only to examine and observe. He would start to actively participate in all the dealings Axe would take him to—exercises of the mind and body, and the spirit, most of all.

Mandokar.

(Paz had reminded Ragnar time and again of how much mandokar he discerned in his son. The child had the resilience of beskar itself. Perhaps his father was right on target about that, Ragnar thought sadly, bitterly. He could have been orphaned twice. What average child could live through that sort of trauma? What was he, then? A damned orphan and a half? How long will this continue?)

Can’t Dad wake up? Please… can’t he wake up now?

The only great comfort he found as compensation during this dubious time was that he would be seeing Grogu again. Grogu and his father… Din Djarin himself had a streak which was very warm and welcoming to Ragnar, so much like Paz, and yet the two men were unique of each other.

Oftentimes Nevarro would be the final pit stop after every apprenticeship mission before heading back to Mandalore. Ragnar counted six missions so far, but this one had been the least eventful as much as Axe Woves knew.

As Ragnar fell upon the seat next to Axe and strapped himself in for the jump out of hyperspace, he deftly clutched the Darksaber cocooned within its hidden belt pouch and his heart hammered. 

“T-minus two minutes until we hit atmosphere,” informed Axe. He had his helmet on and the visor slightly turned to the boy. “Ready to see our friends again, Ragnar?”

“Yeah,” replied the boy in his usual succinct manner. 

Yes, Ragnar continued further in his mind. More than Axe will ever know. 

When the boy felt Grogu’s mind reaching out to him through the Force, sort of like an astral handshake the children forged for themselves as soon as Grogu started teaching him about what he knew of the sensing, Ragnar smiled.

It was the widest smile he’d done in a very long time.

*****

Mando'a chapter glossary:

*osik - an impolite Mandalorian word; expletive *buy’ce - helmet *kry’bes - the Mythosaur skull *goran - blacksmith *buir - father, mother, parent *ad’ika - “little one,” a term of endearment for a child age 3-13 years *baar’ur - medic *mandokar - the ‘right stuff,’ the epitome of Mando virtue: a blend of aggression, tenacity, loyalty and a lust for life

(for more extra author's notes on this chapter, please read on AO3 ^_^)

Link to "A Child of the Watch" series/collection - AO3

Link to Previous Chapter - AO3 || Tumblr

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel M. Cohen at Vox:

Abortion was always slated to be a top issue in the 2024 presidential election. But virtually no one predicted that politicians would be openly blasting those ambivalent about having children. “We are effectively run in this country … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too,” J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said in a now-famous statement in 2021. “It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.” That wasn’t all on the subject from Vance. He also argued in 2021 that parents should get additional votes on their children’s behalf. People without kids “should face the consequences and the reality,” he said. Other conservative voices have joined in. Speaking in Vance’s defense last week, Blake Masters, the former Arizona Senate candidate, said bluntly that people without children shouldn’t lead in politics: “If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations?” he asked.

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO, weighed in to call Harris an “extinctionist” because she noted some young people cite climate anxiety as a reason not to have kids. “The natural extension of her philosophy would be a de facto holocaust for all of humanity!” Musk concluded. One starting place to understand where all this is coming from is pronatalism: a broad ideological movement driven by concern that the world is not producing enough children and that society should work to change that. Not all pronatalists are politically conservative, and not all conservatives are particularly pronatalist. People with different backgrounds and ideologies are concerned about what a shrinking population will mean for future generations, though the movement does include anti-abortion advocates like Vance and Masters who have been more vocal. Still other card-carrying pronatalists staunchly oppose coercing women into having children they don’t want.

Those worried about declining birth rates paint a scary picture of the future. As the number of babies dwindles, the number of workers will shrink, too. There will be fewer people paying taxes to support welfare systems, which will still be supporting large elderly populations. The result, they warn, will be economic stagnation and political strife: higher unemployment, more acute labor shortages, diminished investment, fewer innovations, and greater poverty. There is some reason to be wary of these grim predictions. Past population panics have fueled some of the world’s most horrific chapters. Back when leaders thought the world was producing too many humans, governments around the globe pushed mass sterilization campaigns, forced abortions, and gruesome eugenic regimes.

Others see the increased focus on birth rates as a way to scapegoat individuals — primarily women — for societal issues that politicians could otherwise address, such as improving care for the elderly or taxing the rich more aggressively. That there’s a “proximate economic problem … doesn’t necessarily mean increasing birth rates is the solution,” said Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The concerns about fertility aren’t taking place in a political vacuum, in the US or anywhere else. Around the world, far-right leaders have campaigned on platforms to roll back abortion rights, restrict immigration, and boost the number of native-born children. In China, government officials recently scrapped gender equality as a priority and advised women “to establish a correct outlook on marriage and love, childbirth, and family.” In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has promoted a policy of “procreation not immigration.”

Even talking about population decline as an issue can feel risky. Though not all pronatalists are against reproductive rights, a louder conversation that frames falling birth rates as a major problem inevitably boosts the issue’s salience, creating space for potentially more reactionary ideas.

[...]

The darker corners of the pronatalism movement

Not everyone concerned about falling birth rates is interested in gender equity or voluntary solutions. Last December, a relatively fringe group gathered in Austin for the first-ever Natal Conference to discuss boosting babies, with some guest speakers decrying the liberal cultural forces they see as responsible for the world’s decline. Peachy Keenan, a pseudonym for one conservative speaker, argued her fellow pronatalists need to make motherhood and large families a more hotly desired status symbol, but to avoid “market[ing] natalism” to progressive feminists. Other speakers included right-wing blogger Charles Haywood, who lamented that “the actual meaning of masculinity has been destroyed by vampire feminists,” and Malcolm and Simone Collins, who were subjects of a viral Guardian profile earlier this year that revealed they smack their children. This corner of “pronatalism” is composed mostly of tech enthusiasts and hyper-rationalist types, religious fundamentalists and some far-right activists worried about immigration and demographic change. One of the most prominent members of this coalition is billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who claimed the falling fertility rate is “the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.” Musk recently led the push to get Vance nominated as Donald Trump’s vice president.

See Also:

MMFA: Right-wing media falsely claim that Kamala Harris is telling Americans not to have kids because of climate change