#why do people always hate on shit blindly I think it’s so unfair and opposing of change

[red-ruth]

I like the rebranding I think the old logo needed updating and the new one is more dynamic. And I like that the GP kinda looks like a circuit

[somerandomg33k]

I still don’t know who to vote for?

This election is going to be a weird and frustrating one. It is the first presidential general election where I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist. And this election in the darkest timeline has a Fascist as the incumbent. But the candidate that is opposing Donald Trump is Joe Biden. Almost everyone's last pick in the primary. The only worst candidate during this primary was Michael Bloomberg, who was trying to buy his way into the election. Possible to take votes away from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but that is damning with faint praise that Joe Biden is better than Michael Bloomberg.

The most likely results of this election are either the continued reign of a dictatorial Fascist, causes and continuing chaos and mayhem, or just straight up Neo-Liberalism. We are going back to a normal under Obama, which was terrible as well. Just not as awful as under Fascism. And we won't fix the problems that allowed Trump to rise to power. Since those are core systematic problems that the current Democratic Establishment is not interested in correcting. And the Republican party is just worse as they are OK with Fascism. Some of them want Fascism.

And let's not forget, serval people have very good personal reasons not to vote for Joe Biden. Joe Biden helped co-wrote the 1994 crime bill. In some issues, he was to the right of Regan on drug enforcement of the Drug war. He was always the most conservative Democrat in the Senate during his time there. He voted against busing 19 times. That is why many Leftists say that Joe Biden is Republican-lite. He is just the 'correct' color for Liberals and is the candidate the Democratic party chooses. So yea, there are two Republican tickets this election. The difference is one is not Fascist. Liberals know this. They are just in denial or flat out refuse to believe it. Because boy, don't say that Joe Biden and his running mate are anything but Progressive to them. Because they really hate that. "I think it is unfair to Joe Biden to judge him by International standards. I would prefer that he is judge by American Political standards," one Liberal said. Why can't Liberals admit that America's Political standards are shit?

Liberals have to believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are progressives because they can only think of voting for progressives and progressive causes. They can't accept they are voting for a Conservative on the Democrat ticket, because they would have to admit that the Democratic party has moved towards the right as has American's Overton Window. Joe Biden is against Medicare 4 All. On that issue, he is to the right of Boris Johnson and other conservatives of the UK and Canada. Liberals have to believe they are voting for progressives on the Democrat ticket. Because if they didn't, they would lose faith in the whole Ameican Electoral system as well as Reform. It is almost like Capitalist Realism. People can imagine the end of the World before they can imagine the End of Capitalism. Liberals probably have an easier time visualizing the end of the World before they could imagine a different system than the current governance of Liberal Capitalist Democracy.

Let's not forget, something we already know, that Joe Biden is a bit creepy. He is a Patriarch and treats women differently than men. Whenever he meets families at the White House who have sons and daughters, he would say to the sons, "You have a critical job. You got to protect your sister from all of the boys. That is something my Dad told me." The women must be protected, and it is the men who must do the protecting. Joe Biden has a habit of creepily smelling women and girls' hair and touching their bodies on the waist and shoulders. Serval women have said that Joe made them feel uncomfortable. And this was all before Tara Reade allocations.  #IBelieveTaraReade.

As for Kamala Harris, she did put trans women in men's prison, which resulted in one of them getting killed. "Kamala Harris couldn't do a thing." Is something Liberals need to stop saying. What they really mean is, "Kamala Harris choose to uphold an unjust system by blindly following rules instead of using her power and influence to change them." She attempted to block two Trans women's requests to get gender confirmation surgeries. Which, as far as I know, she hasn't really made amendments for. She wasn't good about slowing down The New Jim Crow. She was fierce to Sex Workers too. One of my comrades said, "As a trans woman and a Sex Worker, how should I feel about voting for Kamala Harris." She increased convictions for things like merely drug procession. She also wanted to jail parents for truancy. She has been called the Democrats Top Cop. Someone who is "Tough on Crime." Just like how Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were in the 90s. And that still has devastating effects on Black and Brown communities.

So many people have many good reasons not to want to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And Liberals want to think that they simply "have their flaws." Again, I think it is just all to make it easier for them to be excited to vote for them. All of those issues, including their voting record on increasing Military spending too, are "merely flaws." And they will also shame people into voting for Biden/Harris with, "It is the lesser of two evils." Which again, is more of an indictment of the system we have. "But we have an election, and we should all vote." So we can't talk about changing the system right now during an election. So when can we talk about change this entire system? And Just like with 2016, "A vote for a third party or a no vote is a vote for Trump."

Further shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris. "Do you want four more years of Trump?" FUCK YOU AND SHOVE THAT DISINGENUOUS QUESTION UP YOUR ASS!!

Merely bringing up all of these complaints are being associated with supporting Trump. Another by-product of the binary way of thinking with the Two-Party system and First Past the Post voting. Liberals have 'accepted' Biden/Harris is the ticket. And they honestly wish we do too. And since we are vocal with our complaints, they hate us for not 'accepting' Biden/Harris is the ticket. They hate us for not 'accepting' the way the system is as it is. "I have accepted all of this. Why haven't you?" This can explain how so many Liberals would go "URG" at the thought of Joe Biden as President back in January during the Primaries to skipping to the polls to vote for Biden for the General Election. "Well, he won the primary." "I get to vote Trump out of Office" is more what it is about and not how great Biden is. They tell themselves how great Biden and Harris will be as a recon.

And with all of the shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris, instead of voting for the Green Party or not voting, it completely ignores the fact we did vote for Hillary in 2016. She 2.8 million more votes. But it is the Electoral College that gave Donald Trump in the win. Plus, in Washington State, my state, four of the Electors didn't vote for Hillary Clinton when they were 'supposed to.' Washington State is likely to go blue again. So I don't know if it is essential for Me to vote for Biden/Harris. The fivethirtyeight poll from Sept. 22 shows Washington voting for Biden at 58% vs Trump at 36%. A 22 point difference. I think I can safely vote for Howard Hawkins and feel like I didn't help Trump win. But that won't be what Liberals think.

Now with all that said, Donald Trump is still a Fascist wannabe Dictator. He is almost the worst. His administration is just letting massive amounts of people died because of Covid-19. He is encouraging people to shoot BLM protestors. He told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," at the first Presidential Debate.  He said there wouldn't be a peaceful transferal of power because there won't be a transferal, but a continuation. Donald Trump has sewn doubts about voting by mail. He will doubt any kind of election results where he doesn't win. So Liberals argue we most vote in such high numbers to show that it is the will of the people they want him out of office. To which he can easily say "Fake News." He did doubt the 2016 popular vote results claiming 3 million "illegals" cast fraudulent votes.

Another convincing argument is we most show that Trump's ideas can't win elections. Because if it continues to win elections, more people will adopt Trump's views and policies. It is sort of convincing. But since a Qanon supporter will win a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming a rising star in the GOP Party. The GOP Party has backed Trump throughout his time in office, Trump's views and policies will continue whether he wins or not. Even if Trump loses, we are not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Trump base will still be here in this White Supremacist CisHetro Patriarchal Ableist country of the United Corporations of Imperialism. Who will always vote for the GOP and are not going away. Many Democrats will even speak highly of them. Nancy Pelosi prays for the Republicans. Liberals believe having an opposition is part of a functioning Democracy. Will the GOP no longer be Fascist? I doubt it.

"We have to get rid of Trump at all costs." I understand that urge. But the system gave us Trump and protected him. So how is voting and participating within the same system supposed to help? I know that Liberals think voting is very powerful because "So many people had to fight for their basic right to vote." And that is all true. The GOP only wins because of dirty tricks like gerrymandering and voter suppression. Hence, Trump is encouraging his base to watch the polling stations for "suspicious people wanting to commit voter fraud" and "rig" the election. It is straight voter intimidation and is happening already in Virginia. Part of the convincing reason to get Trump out of the White House. Biden will not encourage White Supremacist of all types to commit acts of violence against "The Radical Left terrorists" and "Antifa."  Antifa is not an organization; it is an idea. Even Biden got that right.

Knowing how terrible Trump is, brings me back to Biden and how bad he is. Not as bad. Trump and Biden aren't the same. Trump is a Fascist while Biden is a Neo-Liberal, and Neo-Liberalism isn't Fascism. Neo-Liberalism just leads to Fascism, as we have already seen with Trump. I simply see Neo-Liberalism worse than how Liberals see it. Not enough to make a false equivalent, but still. Remember, if Trump loses, he could pull a Grover Cleaveland and run again in 2024. Imagine that.

What bothers me the most about Liberals changing their opinion of Biden, by the mere fact he won the primary, is that Biden is granted votes from Democrats and Leftists. I am sure Democrats do love old Uncle Joe. There were a lot of memes from the Obama years. And many Liberals just love Obama. Even though they fully well know about his War Crimes. It is that acceptance that I don't have in me. "Well, he is the candidate. So I will support him to get rid of Trump." And what makes it worse, Biden isn't really offering anything as well. He is against the Green New Deal. He is against Medicare-4-all, even during a Pandemic. What is Biden/Harris offering? Even Biden, when asking these questions and about his record, says, "If you are questioning whether to vote for me or not, you ain't black."

So Leftists will get nothing and will receive all of the blame for of Trump winning if we don't vote for Biden. "If you are questioning whether to vote for Biden or not, you must want Trump for four more years."

Remember, I live in Washington State. A super blue State. If I live in any battleground state, even within a ten points difference, I would vote for Biden/Harris. But since Biden is ahead by 22 points in my state, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, I am considering voting for a third party. Howard Hawkins of the Green and Socialist party is closer to my position. I would prefer there is no State at all and no President at all. Especially no single person having that much power, especially being the 'leader of the "Free" world' by virtue of being the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism. If the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism is the 'leader' of the 'free world,' then how come the World doesn't get to vote in this election. The UCI, Imperialtopia bombs the hell out of the middle east so much, I think the middle east has a right to have a say in our elections.

I do have to acknowledge those platform holders, people with a Youtube channel, a Podcast, or have a large following on Social Media, feel the need to tell people to "to out and vote. Vote as if your life depends on it because for some, it actually does matter." Although for some people, much won't change materially for their lives, like the impoverished and the disabled. For some, it is life or death. For others, it is a shit show, regardless. But platform holders want Trump out of the White House. They don't know who lives in what state. They don't know if their audience's votes matter or not. Since they are speaking to a vast audience, and they must keep it simple, they have to say, "VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!"

But, I am thinking, if they acknowledge that some votes are more important in some states than others, they will have to admit the whole in the United Corporations of Imperialism is unjust. Votes are weight more heavily in some states than in others. The whole system has to change. But that can't happen in a year. However, folks can vote on Election Day. So, it is easy to encourage people to vote instead of organizing to abolish the Electoral College. It would take too long to do it. It would take a lot of effort. So even bother trying. Liberals would rather pretend that isn't the case and just badger and shame people into voting for a candidate they have 'accepted' won the primary, even though Biden was one of the worse candidates in that field. Everyone's tenth or so pick.

With all that said, vote for whoever you want to or whoever you feel comfortable voting for. I won't vote shame anyone. Except if you vote for Trump and the GOP. Then you are a Fascist because you are voting for a Fascist and the Fascist party. Pure and simple.

[academla]

On call-out culture and judging people

Hey guys! I should be doing schoolwork, but I was talking to a friend and felt so compelled to write about this.

As background: this guy and I have talked on and off, and somewhat recently started talking again. One of his friends famously strongly dislikes me, which I did not have confirmed until a week or so ago, but which I suspected. He told me that the more he gets to know me, the more he regrets how willingly he trusted her opinion.

This is not a problem exclusive to real life. In fact, I think it’s more rampant on the internet. Everybody has their own morals and their own ways of going about life; this is mine.

My general life philosophy is this: I do not pass negative judgment on a person unless I have had a one-on-one negative interaction with them. I only base my opinion of people off of how they directly treat me. I don’t do it based off of observation or what others have said.

There is a sense of “loyalty” amongst friends which is often construed as a “because this person hurt me, you, my friend(s), should dislike them” mentality. After much thought and experience, I don’t adhere to that.

If a friend has a bad relationship with someone, I’m not going to date the guy after they break up. However, neither am I going to shun him, or talk shit about him, or hate him. Unless he has directly wronged me, I don’t think it’s fair to disparage him.

The thing is, people dislike other people quickly and easily. Rational ignorance plays a role; that is to say, it’s much easier to believe what you hear about someone than to go to the effort to talk to someone you wouldn’t otherwise talk to, just to see if they’re as bad as all that. An analogy would be people who might choose “healthy” food based on a singular aspect, like sugar content, rather than doing research into individual food options and gathering a holistic view of what is actually best for their particular health needs.

A lot of people really like me, and a lot of people really don’t. Of those who don’t, the majority dislike me based on rumors/hearsay, secondhand experience (i.e. a friend who had a bad interaction with me), or observation (i.e. seeing me interact in class or post online as opposed to talking to me one-on-one). This is true of many people. Honestly, if you think about all the people you would say you dislike, how many of them do you dislike because of something they did to you?

I can only think of a few people I can truly say I dislike. There are people who rub me the wrong way. There are people I don’t explicitly like. But those sentiments are based on observation, based on how I’ve seen them behave in a group, based on the posts they’ve made to the entire internet. Those sentiments are not based on times they actually did something to hurt me, and as such those sentiments never tip over into dislike, resentment, or hatred of them. I don’t say unfounded bad things about them that would deter others from developing their own positive opinions of them.

Now, this one girl I mentioned talks shit about me, hates me... except she and I have talked maybe once, ever. In fact, I’ve always gone out of my way to try and be courteous and friendly with her. I have nothing against her.

She hates me because of how she saw me act during a tense English class debate. Because of the way she saw me interacting with friends. Because of how dramatic I sound, and how much I overshare, when I talk in class.

She does not hate me because I said something mean or rude to her. She does not hate me because I talked shit about her (because I didn’t). She does not even hate me because I have wronged anyone she cares about (because I haven’t). She hates me purely on observation, purely on one dimension of my personality. Based off of that, she thinks she reserves the right to announce her own poorly-informed analysis of my personality to other people. And those people, because this is how life works, believe her.

That is what happens online.

When you post publicly, no matter how many followers you have, it’s an individual performance. It’s you up on a stage and speaking to the faceless crowd. It’s you standing at the front of the class and giving a presentation. It isn’t you. It isn’t the way you interact on a personal level. It isn’t how caring you might be one-on-one. It isn’t eye contact or personal remarks or direct compliments or insults.

Yet people on social media feel as though it is this intimate connection. As though the blogger who puts things out there, as I am now, is speaking to them. And, accordingly, they judge the poster’s character based on the only side they see.

If this girl was willing to lay aside her judgments based on her indirect experiences with me, she might give me a chance. She might talk to me. She might like me. Or she might dislike me, because of something I said or did to her. That would be acceptable; that would be respectful. What is not respectful, what is not fair, is all of the people in real life and on the internet, who immediately talk shit about others based on biased and limited knowledge. (P.S. She’s a so-called feminist, but told everyone I’m always trying to get male attention because I flirted with some guy once in front of her.)

This is the problem with call-out culture. People believe everything they read online. They’re more likely to believe negative accusations than they are positive comments. They want to believe that they are being “protected” and “warned” against these so-called horrible people.

Some of these people deserve it. Some of them are as nasty one-on-one as they are to the crowds and to others. There have been some people whom I gave the benefit of the doubt, went out of my way to talk to, and decided that yup, everything that was said about them was correct, and I did not like that person. But that was an informed and personal decision based purely on how I experienced them.

Call-out culture is dangerous, bullying, and marginalizing. No matter how much I may want justice, I may want to “expose” someone... I don’t. Because it is innately immoral, in my opinion, to slander somebody to the point where all of my friends dislike them only because I do. I am absolutely empathetic with my friends and if they have a shitty experience with someone, I’m there for them, and in the context of comforting them I might reinforce negative statements about that person, through a lens of validating my friend’s feelings. But I don’t go running anywhere else sullying the person’s name, even if the criticisms might be accurate.

Of course, there are plenty of people that my friends and I dislike. However, that united dislike comes from individual experiences with that person. They aren’t just others blindly jumping on the bandwagon.

I’m not trying to defend myself or tell anybody that hated me to think twice and actually talk to me. I will say that in my experience, I have had multiple people who later became good friends tell me, “Wow, I can’t believe I listened when ___ told me you were ___.” I think this would happen more often if people were not so caught up hating on one another senselessly and instead either 1. didn’t bother to investigate, AND accordingly didn’t pass judgment on the person; or 2. did bother to investigate, and have the opportunity therefore to develop their own opinion of the person.

But of all the people who hate me, who have called me names, who have blocked me online or shunned me in real life... 90% of them, I have never even talked to. I’m definitely not alone there. That, to me, is unfair. And that is why I am careful not to do the same to others.

I implore you, now, to think of the people you have talked shit about. That you have blocked because you believed what another person said about them. That you have rolled your eyes at and ostracized because of something they said publicly or in a group setting. I mean the people who you’ve spread stories about because someone you care about and trust told you bad things about them.

Neither am I telling you all to find out the other side of the story. Sometimes - most of the time - I’m too damn lazy to do that, because usually the person in question isn’t someone I would hang out with one way or another. The difference is that because I don’t choose to engage with them one-on-one, I don’t believe all the bad things I might hear.

And if I don’t like someone because I have a shitty experience with them, I don’t call them out. I don’t expect others to hate and bully them on my behalf. If people ask what happened, I’ll share my side of the story, but with absolutely no expectation or desire for the listener to start hating on the offending party based purely on what I have said. I encourage you to always take things with a grain of salt, to at least remember in the back of your mind that while you may dislike this person immensely for what they’ve done to a friend of yours, you have no reason to be blatantly unkind to them.

It’s true, of course, that people can say and do telling things online. My point is that this is not always the case, and that there is more to a person than one thing they said on one day in one moment to an invisible audience, probably without thinking. I won’t even go into the issue of people having intense knee-jerk reactions to posts they have no context for, but that factors into this as well. Particularly on the internet, it’s incredibly easy to skew things, to pick out screenshots, to build a compelling case without the full proof. Which leaves the other side responsible either for fighting fire with fire by showing the parts of conversation that weren’t publicized or the context that wasn’t provided, or keeping quiet and ending up being slandered on the internet and blocked by a bunch of strangers.

As a last disclaimer, I’m discussing this as it relates to smaller scale dramas. More serious issues related to abuse, for example, are different; I’m not suggesting that if somebody has murdered the family member of a friend you ought to nicely give the murderer the benefit of the doubt. But in our day-to-day internet and real life lives, I invite you all to think before you judge.

In summation, these are my thoughts on call-out culture and judging people. I live my life based on direct experience. I have been the target of gossip and I have been hated by people I have never even talked to in my life. It doesn’t feel good.

The next time that a friend talks shit about someone you may not even know, you don’t need to jump up and declare that you will not judge. What you can do instead is to validate the friend’s feelings, and either give the person in question the benefit of the doubt and chat with them a bit to form your own opinion, or go about your damn life without perpetuating drama that wasn’t yours to begin with.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Our Story

Thank ya kindly, @mibasiamille, for helping me figure out where the heck I was going with this one <3 Read chapters 1-10 here.

December 24th, 2010

The first time Jamie and Claire held their daughter, they knew she would be their last. Not because the delivery was difficult, which it was, or because they opposed larger families, which they didn’t, but because they couldn’t imagine needing anything more than this seven-pound bundle of themselves. Who could contend with the spot on the top of her skull, the feeling of its putty-like softness beneath their fingertips? Or the sprout of lash, red-gold wings taking flight from the left side of her left eye? No. There was no room for a second child, or a third—barely enough to contain Brianna herself. (It was true, they soon realized, that it was possible to feel too much. That the physical ache of loving was not a lie fabricated by romance novelists.)

What shocked them more than their immediate certainty were these minute details, these things that were singularly, extraordinarily her. Despite their initial impressions, Brianna was not just a combination of Jamie and Claire’s genes (an uneven distribution; she favored her father), but was a tiny self with her own hungers and thirsts, which she expressed through Neanderthal grunts or spectacularly vibrant shits. It was a foreign language Jamie and Claire were forced to learn quickly, interpreting their successes and failures in the perceived tone of her gurgles, the way she would yank Claire’s curls in glee or in irritation. The correct translations were scribbled down for future reference, for posterity. (For the simple pleasure of recording something they knew to be finite.)

But Jamie and Claire’s awe has taken other forms in the 15 months since Bree was born. They’ve become the sort of people whose voices rise in the presence of the small, as if their love—so much grander than everything else—has filled them like two helium balloons. Toys of all shapes, sizes, and noises colonize the spaces left untouched by their adulthood chaos. A plush rabbit maintains a stony vigil over Jamie’s desk, where, after a year of writing more blurbs than books, he is finally working on his third novel. Fatherhood has come like a strike of lightning, an electricity that has set fire to his mind. Nowadays, he cannot put thought to paper fast enough. (Unlike its predecessors, A Rare Woman will receive middling praise, though a flaying review from Jack Randall, a Times critic, will cripple Jamie for weeks.)

Right now it is December, and Jamie’s family—Jenny, her husband, and their two children—is visiting for the holidays. They have offered to watch Bree for the evening, and so a Presidential Suite has been rented, Cinemax has been briefly considered, and Scotch has been spilt on Claire’s negligee. It is the first time they’ve been away from their daughter, and what had once seemed an occasion for exotic luxury—No baby! Hours of sleep!—has become a pity-party fueled by separation anxiety and booze. They have spoken of nothing, except Bree.

“Girl Guides,” Claire blurts suddenly, voice slurred and a passionate fist raised.

“I think it’s Girl Scouts here, Sassenach.”

“Girl Scouts, then. She should know how to build a fire! Make things with her hands, like—like building a stove from a Folgers tin!”

“Is that what they teach them?” Jamie asks. “To make household appliances from cheap coffee?”

“I think so. I mean, they should. What else is Folgers coffee good for?”

“What d’ye think about track and field? For endurance. Both mental and physical.”

“You can’t be serious,” Claire laughs. “Track and field? Have you considered the tiny shorts? The spandex shirt? Boys overcompensating for the fact they couldn’t make the soccer team?”

Jamie’s brow furrows at the thought: testosterone-pumped intentions; young bucks chasing a different sort of finish line. 

“Well, when ye put it that way…Perhaps she’s better suited for the chess team.”

They go on like this, sketching the blueprint for a life that will rarely follow the lines they’ve drawn. They do not plan for the extra doors or windows, the secret rooms in which a girl can lock herself away. (Bree will hate running. Hate chess even more. And due to a squabble with one of the Cubs, she will not make it past Brownie graduation.) 

Eventual talk of university brings Jamie and Claire nearly to tears—and then to closer to each other, their bodies a temporary security against the future’s unstoppable approach. They fool around for a bit, though their hearts aren’t in it, already too exhausted by visions of Bree in a cap and gown. They order room service and sniffle over a bucket of oysters.

Motherhood has also given Claire a case of maternal hypochondria, an affliction made worse by the nature of her profession. For example: she is suddenly terrified of germs. She has always known they were there, of course—little microbes squirming over every surface—but it’s the sheer amount of them that hasn’t dawned on her until now. Does Jamie realize there are more germs than humans? That they’re outnumbered? That there could be five diseases, right there, on the spoon he is choo-chooing into their daughter’s mouth?

And there are other dangers as well: the sharpness of the kitchen table’s edge, like a shark’s tooth. How a shoe left lying in the middle of the floor is not only an affront to tidiness but could, to Bree’s imbalanced feet, mean something fatal. Claire has bought so many baby gates that their home resembles an animal pen, the three of them treading around their safe, contained quarters, protected against the risk of possible slaughter.

An essay titled “How My Mother Destroyed My Life” keeps Claire tossing and turning for weeks. Could she be the biggest threat of all? She, who is so flawed, so capable of inflicting pain on this precious, impressionable human? (This human who deserves so much more than Claire’s best?)

“Do you think I’m doing this right?” she often asks, whether it’s changing a diaper or preparing a bath. Like the germs, this is familiar territory—as a teenager, she’d had a steady stream of babysitting gigs—but the stakes have risen now that she isn’t changing or bathing a stranger’s child. Now, an error could cost her something. Now, she has everything to lose. (Claire’s fear will only grow as the years go on, and new dangers present themselves: boys, television after 9PM, a left hand holding a phone while a right hand holds a steering wheel. Fear is, after all, the product of our greatest loves.)

Jamie is patient throughout it all, understanding that this is who she is—Claire, the little killing girl—and that the severity of it will pass. And so when Claire zips Bree’s skin into a Gymboree coat, he lets Claire wail, “Who puts zippers on baby’s clothing, for fuck’s sake?” And when he wakes to find her watching the baby monitor, he says, “Nothing bad will happen, so long as I’m here”—though if fatherhood has taught him anything, it’s that he’s as powerless as the rest of them.

To his credit, Jamie shows none of the apprehension Claire feels. If Claire were a more selfish person—the person she often thinks she is, but is not—she might find this grating, or worse, infuriating. Instead, she only marvels at the way he puts Bree down for a nap, or how he anticipates sudden outbursts of dirty-diapered, snotty-nosed anguish. It’s only in Claire’s darkest moments that she allows herself to wonder if she’s the lesser parent, the weaker link dragged by obligation until someone notices she has always been dispensable.

Late on Christmas Eve, they are sitting by the fire, with the extended Fraser clan already in their rooms. Bree is asleep in the teacup of Claire’s clavicle, whistling a snore through the nose Jamie gave her. It’s a noise that reminds him of the world’s fragility, how they’re all standing on a piece of thread, balanced between the Fates’ open scissors.

“What is it?” Claire frets, noticing his expression. The fact that she whispers it, so as not to wake their daughter, makes Jamie’s heart crack. “Oh God, have I forgotten something?”

“Nothing,” he says, leaning back into his chair. “Just thinking is all.”

It is in moments like these that he cannot understand why Claire doubts herself, how she can be so blind to the way their daughter melts into her skin, grateful by the purest instinct. And it is in moments like these that he has never loved Claire so much. The spit-up crusting her shirt, her brown curls harried. Still the girl he met 21 years before, but something fuller, something more clearly defined.

“Thinking what?”

“That you’re beautiful. That I love you.”

“Oh,” she says, and the fact that she blushes, when she’d done such unmentionable things to him during Bree’s afternoon nap, deepens the fracture in his heart.

“Stay there, Sassenach. Dinna move.”

Claire does not know that Jamie second guesses himself as a father. That when he volunteers to soothe Bree’s late-night tantrums, he does it for the sake of his own confession, which he offers to the cradled child. Jamie confesses to himself, and to the world, apologizing for the ugliness that will inevitably find its way to her—despite the plastic gates and the reassuring shapes of her mother’s body. (She sees his shame but does not judge it. Accepts it blindly for the fact of its existence, as she accepts everything she is given.)

He tells Bree all the things he feels she needs to know: that there is good, and there is bad, that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the two. That presidents have been shot, planes have flown into buildings, and that there are people with only a single grain of rice for dinner. Unimaginable unfairness in this place he has brought her into—and he is sorry; he is so sorry.

“Granted, I dinna mean to frighten ye, a nighean,” he says, tracing the curve of her cheek. “Only to tell you as it is. But it’s no’ all bad.”

And so he tells her other things: about laughter, about the sea. About mountains, a horse named Sorcha, fresh snow. About presents opened on Christmas morning, forbidden fistfuls of Cap’n Crunch. He tells her about light-up sneakers, pizza, peanut butter (improved by chocolate), fuzzy socks, books, thunderstorms, bouncy castles, sparklers, a dog’s tail-wagging hello, buying your first car, having your first beer, having your first kiss, meeting the love of your life.

Meeting her mother. Loving her mother. Her mother.

Her.

And this brings him to the girl who came before, the one who did not breathe, but whom he swears he can feel—sometimes, when looks at Bree, as he is looking at her now (“Like she’s still here, somehow.”) He describes Claire’s holiday sweater: the fit of it in 1989; the stretch of it over her pregnant belly in ‘91. How they had painted the studio with roller brushes, making great swathes of color on the tepid-white walls. Names there, written in shades of—

“Marigold,” he whispers, because he still cannot say “Faith” without stumbling. “Everything—even the wee bedspread—was marigold.” 

He keeps saying it, marigold, because it is all he knows of this other girl: a name shining brightly in the color of the dead. He wonders if it’s foolish to feel this way after two decades; all this grief for someone he never truly met. (Now, it’s the possibilities he mourns; the conversations, like these, that never were.) 

Bree quiets after a time, and so Jamie sets her in the crib. He listens to that snore—the gentleness of it, the innocence—and adjusts the baby monitor for Claire’s 4AM anxiety.

“Tha gaol agam ort,” he says to the daughter before him. 

“Tha gaol agam ort,” he says again, to the daughter above him.

(When Jamie returns to his room, he will sit on the edge of the bed and ask, “D’ye think she understands? Or that she’ll remember?”

And Claire, behind him, will know that he is not referring to the moments preserved in his books, but to the finer, more intimate details of their years together. She will recognize this fear, bringing his shoulders to his ears—how new life can cast mortality into a starker, more terrifying light.

“I’m not sure,” she will whisper. “Maybe.”

“I just want someone to remember, aye? After we’re gone. But what if no one does?” 

“She will,” Claire will reply, reaching out. “We’ll make sure of it.” And having found him in the darkness, she will slowly bring him towards her. “It’s late, Jamie. Lay your head?”

And Jamie, surrendering to the pull of Claire’s hand, will allow her to draw him into the bowl of her lap. He will rest there, unaware that he need not worry, that his daughter’s first word—spoken just a few days later—will be a garbled “mary-goold.” A shred of remembrance, granted.

But for now he is simply calmed by the pulse of his wife, which burns beneath him, and within him, throughout the cold December night. A warm-blooded memory he prays will never fade.)