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gffa · 4 years

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ALL RIGHT THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG, BUT BEAR WITH ME. I rewatched all of The Clone Wars recently and it was a great way to look at both the details of each episode and get a sense for the bigger arc, because I was watching them all at once, both The Wrong Jedi arc and the Protocol 66 arc, the latter of which I think is super important to the context of the former, especially because they are right next to each other in the course of the series. Here’s the thing that surprised me the most about this arc: Ahsoka immediately didn’t trust anyone when she was framed. She instantly went on the run instead, she never tried to contact any of the other Jedi, not the Council, not even her own Master. She immediately ran and never put her trust in anyone else. I don’t know that this was the narrative intention, I would almost put money on that it’s probably not, but sometimes in writing characters when you’re true to them and how they would react, unintentional themes will rear their heads and be just as important. Now, she’s not necessarily wrong to have done this, because we’ll see Fives does trust in the system and he’s murdered for it anyway. Would Ahsoka have turned out the same? Possibly, she’s definitely not wrong about the system being stacked against her. But ultimately its not her own efforts that save her, but Anakin’s investigating as her Master. Possibly not, she doesn’t have a chip in her head that leads straight to Order 66 and Darth Sidious himself making sure she absolutely has to die. Oh, he wouldn’t have minded, but it wasn’t his direct goal. Ahsoka has a right to feel wary, because Anakin didn’t go visit her while she was in jail. Anakin’s right, they absolutely would have used it against her, it would have made her look even more guilty, and he was trying to give her the absolute best shot possible. This is almost assuredly the same exact reason the Jedi don’t go visit her after she’s expelled, because they do protest the entire way and a huge point is made about how she needs to get a fair trial, that the Senate is forcing them to expel her so that the Jedi won’t be accused of not taking this seriously, because they’re in a war and sedition/treason is an incredibly huge deal. And that’s also the thing--it’s easy to say that they should have stuck by Ahsoka (and I don’t disagree, they don’t disagree, they directly apologize to her for all of this!) but it’s still true that the Jedi were absolutely railroaded here. They worked to keep this a Jedi matter, but Tarkin and the Senate said that it involved the deaths of clones and Republic citizens, so she had to face a Republic trial. This is brought up like four separate times over the course of the arc, that the Jedi do not really have jurisdiction here. (And, yes, they did try to keep her there--that’s the whole point of showing Tarkin forcibly strong-arming them and saying what they believe doesn’t matter. That’s the whole point of Mace saying, “Let’s hope we can keep her here.”) This is also why the Protocol 66 arc is so important--Shaak Ti practically breaks her back trying to get Tup and Fives to the Jedi and she is roadblocked at almost every single turn or else plotted against behind her back to literally kidnap them away from her. She argues that they have jurisdiction here as Generals in the war, but the Kaminoans argue right back that the clones belong to them, and then the Chancellor’s office gets involved and there’s even less chance to get them to the Jedi, because the Senate’s involved now and what they say goes more than anything. Further, these two arcs are important as bookends to each other in two really important ways: 1. Each of them has a moment where the fugitive is finally caught. Ahsoka dives down into the lower levels of Coruscant to evade capture. Fives makes his case to Shaak Ti, who says she’ll take this seriously. They both ask a Jedi to trust them, but one turns himself over and one goes on the run. Again, who’s to say if Ahsoka made the better choice, because she is the one who lives, but Fives was basically dead the moment he started looking into this, no matter what. The point isn’t the outcome, but more that the Jedi don’t just throw him to the wolves, they fight to take this seriously and fight to find out the truth.

2. The cases against Fives and Ahsoka have some really fascinating parallels in that they’re both accused of a murder they didn’t commit (against Letta, against the Supreme Chancellor) and there’s footage of them running/seemingly attacking others along the way. This is important because, if you strip away the context of what we, the audience knows, Ahsoka looks incredibly guilty. There’s footage of her apparently choking Letta to death.

She runs away from the Jedi from the moment she’s set-up, even not trusting her own Master. She refuses to turn herself in or even contact them to tell them her side of things. There are dead clones in the path she takes out of the detention center, which appear to have been killed by a Force-wielder. She’s seen working and escaping with a known Separatist terrorist--because they have no way of knowing that Ventress has broken with the Separatists. Ahsoka herself says, in this arc, that she never saw her and Ventress working together, showing that it’s pretty hard to believe even when you’re in the middle of it, much less from the outside!

Eventually, she’s found and captured, while in possession of the very nano-droids that were used to blow up Jackar Bowmani in the Jedi Temple. If you take out the context of us seeing Ahsoka’s reactions and how she put these pieces together (which no one else in universe would know), it isn’t just the frame job that makes her look guilty, but that her own actions contribute to the way this looks from a distance. The evidence that piles up is really damning, that it’s not just one or two coincidental things, but an entire case against her! But they know Ahsoka, they have to know she couldn’t have gone to the dark side like that! And that’s why the beginning of this arc has a line that’s so easy to miss but it’s so important:

“There are many political idealists among us.” “But a traitor?” “I’m afraid one can eventually become the other. Remember Count Dooku and General Krell. That’s how they started too.” This has already happened before, that someone they thought they could trust turned out to be capable of terrible things. This entire arc cannot exist without the context of knowing that there is a Jedi in the Temple right now who is betraying them, that if Barriss had been in Ahsoka’s position for all of this, it would be entirely possible that she would have acted the same way from an outsider point of view. And how easy is it for us, even knowing that she absolutely is guilty, before we watched the end of this arc, to go, “But Barriss would never do that! I cannot believe she would have fallen so far!” It also cannot exist without the context of another important thing--and this was a deliberate detail put into the episode, as Dave Filoni comments on in one of the featurettes for this arc, how they deliberately had Anakin chasing her, because it was a moment of foreshadowing for Darth Vader to be chasing a Jedi down. Darth Vader looms over this arc in a way that deepens the context. Darth Vader, who is right there and the Jedi are trusting him, too. Trusting him to be impartial when looking into whether a Jedi was behind the bombing. Trusting him to be impartial when chasing after Ahsoka: Mace: “I think it would be best if Skywalker stayed here. Having you involved may actually make things worse.” Anakin: “Master Windu, with all due respect, she is my Padawan.” Mace: “The reason for you not to go.” Obi-Wan: “I think we're being foolish if we take Anakin off this mission. Who knows her better?” Mace: “He's emotionally tied to her. Probably too emotional to do what needs to be done.” Anakin: “I'd rather capture Ahsoka and find out the truth then let her run because of a lie.” Yoda: “You must prove to us that you will stay focused. Can you?” Anakin: “I've already alerted security on the lower levels to be on the lookout for Ahsoka.” Yoda: “Go swiftly then, Skywalker, and bring back this lost child before it is too late.” The point is that it’s incredibly hard to know who to trust, it’s easy to say with an omniscient point of view of the entire story and 20/20 hindsight, but they have concrete examples of people who have betrayed their trust before, so it’s entirely reasonable for them to recognize that someone else may betray them, too. That talking to them and showing that you’re willing to extend trust, that you’re willing to do this with a clear focus, is what gains their trust. And, yeah, for all that the context of Darth Vader is hanging over this arc, it’s also true that they’re right to trust Anakin in this moment. It’s his actions that save Ahsoka and bring the truth to light. As a fun bonus, this is all while the Force is so clouded with the dark side that Mace already said way back in Attack of the Clones, at the start of the war, that their ability to use the Force is diminished. The psychic stress that must put on them (as people who can feel the entire weight of a planet on their minds), that the normal non-psychic stress of being in a war that there are too few of them and they’re dying in it is already pushing them to their limits, including that the dark side is hampering their ability to cut through the fog, it’s reasonable not to blindly trust people. Baby Darth Vader being right there is a giant neon flashing light pointing to this. They want to treat Ahsoka fairly, but she isn’t giving them anything to work with, because she doesn’t trust them, either. Which is why I keep coming back to that line she says when she leaves Anakin and the Jedi, her reason for doing it: “Why are you doing this?” “The Council didn't trust me, so how can I trust myself?”

Earlier, she says, “I don’t know who to trust!” Then she begs Anakin to trust her. And ultimately she doesn’t know if even she can do that. Because trust is at the heart of this entire storyline. The opening quotes reflect this very nicely, too: 5.19 – Sometimes even the smallest doubt can shake the greatest belief. 5.18 – Courage begins by trusting oneself. 5.19 – Never become desperate enough to trust the untrustworthy. 5.20 – Never give up hope, no matter how dark things seem. An interesting note from one of the featurettes as well is that, originally, Ahsoka was going to rejoin the Jedi Order and that was going to be that. They changed their minds because the opportunity to do something else with Ahsoka was more tempting. Which says to me that this wasn’t an arc about exposing a fundamental eventuality, but instead about a far more complicated situation. Again, Ahsoka’s not entirely wrong or right in the way she goes about this. We can’t say for certain what would have happened if she’d trusted other people, all we can say is that she didn’t trust any one when she ran, that ultimately that she doesn’t feel she can trust herself by the end of it and Anakin was the one who finally cleared her name, not her own efforts. That she shows incredible fortitude for not giving in to the dark side, even when she was isolated. By the same token, the Jedi aren’t entirely right or wrong in the way they go about this. I do think they should have visited her, even though Tarkin would almost assuredly have used it against Ahsoka to make her look guilty, but to say that they just abandoned her and never tried to help her, that they totally betrayed her when she was clearly so innocent, that they never even said sorry--that’s incorrect, too. Both sides were right and wrong. It’s easy for us to feel for Ahsoka because we love her and her goodbye is incredibly heartbreaking, it’s so easy to trust her when we’re shown all the scenes of how this connects together and we see her reactions, that the story trusts us to let us in on her side of the events that happen. It’s so easy because she feels very vulnerable and she was a victim of a really shitty situation. It’s so easy because this is an incredibly harrowing experience for her and she stayed true to the light through it, through her own resilience. But stepping back from those feelings, hard as it was for me to do, let me see that Ahsoka failed in some important ways as well as that the Council failed in some important ways and that's why she herself decides that she needs to go figure herself out on her own, away from the Council and even away from Anakin, who was the one that always believed she was innocent and trusted her. Because it wasn’t just about other people, it was about her and her own actions. I had all of this put together just from watching these two arcs, but then I started watching the story reels, including, “In Search of the Crystal” where Obi-Wan and Anakin have a conversation about Ahsoka leaving and Obi-Wan says, “I will grant you mistakes we made but she chose to leave. Part of the Jedi way is not letting emotion cloud your better judgement. And that's precisely what Ahsoka did. Even in her most critical moment.”

Not too long ago I was watching the featurette for “The Lawless” where Dave talked about Obi-Wan (more in the context of how he cannot embrace the dark side) and how the events were written to show that he’s a true Jedi, that he sticks to the bigger themes of Star Wars, which that’s how Dave sees Obi-Wan. I was reminded of that, in that Obi-Wan is, for all that we give him shit about the “from a certain point of view” line, actually a really reliable narrator when it comes to emotion and how it can cloud a Force-sensitive person’s mind. Obi-Wan’s right, especially because it’s pretty easy to make the inference that he’s one of the Council who voted in favor of Ahsoka, that he believed in her, even as he recognizes that her emotions clouded her judgement. Even in her most critical moment. And when I went back to do my rewatch of The Clone Wars and these arcs, that became a lot clearer when I stepped back from my own emotional reactions to how much I love her and think she’s an incredible, good-hearted, kind, and compassionate person. Because even the best of people can be both wrong and right at the same time.

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #mace windu #jedi order #meta #long post #really long post

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keltonwrites · 3 years

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I'm not sure if that's a good thing

“Well you’re definitely the first.” This past week, we screened-in the eastern facing porch on the side of the cabin. The porch slopes to the South, with the brick-on-dirt floor crumbling in that direction as well until it reaches uneven slabs of stone acting as steps down to the “yard” below. A mixed material retaining wall wraps beneath the steps to the south facing garage, holding up one corner of the narrow deck on the front of the house. The deck, in the heat of a high altitude summer, droops off the house like it’s daydreaming about the winter snow’s embrace. It’s safe to sit on, though I would not recommend leaning on the railing.

The side porch takes the brunt of the wind. Our wooden rocking chairs have been rocked some 20 feet into the yard more than once in the two months we lived here. In the myriad of threats we heard about the weather, most people included the wind. We all know how I feel about this ongoing weather intimidation tactic. I asked, “what speed are the gusts?” “Oh, they get up to 70 miles per hour on some days.” This was the first quantifiable piece of weather information someone had offered — an actual number we could react to with data and our historical personal experiences of various weather events. And our reaction was: uhhhh…. OK???? Look, I get it. No one’s preaching the skin benefits of -20 degree wind gusts at 70 mph, building snow drifts against your house in the span of minutes that Cooper could die in. I am not going to pretend that’s pleasant. But 70 mph? Any wind I’ve driven faster than does not intimidate me. I used to rally the horses at 12 years old in winds over 70mph to get them in the barn before the latest tornado whipped through. I helped shutter the resort in the BVI as the Category 5 hurricane rolled in. Even in Topanga, 70 mile per hour gusts were not uncommon in Santa Ana events. We had our single pane windows shatter more than once from debris in the wind. We taped cardboard up and went to sleep. That “70 mph” was all I needed to hear to confirm our next project: we were going to build a catio for these cats, and we were going to do it on the pre-existing porch structure to save time and money. We spent a week framing out the structure. We had to carve into the logs of the house to embed the wood supports for the framing.

And from there, every piece of wood was custom carved and cut to fit around the existing timber supports. The existing porch was so wildly uneven that there are gaps between each piece of old wood and the new framing. Our plan is to mix all the wood chips from the project with mortar/chinking and stuff the gaps — a good solution for the log cabin look. We built a plywood pony wall up to 28 inches from the interior of the porch, which gives a height of ~4-5ft from the exterior ground below. It’s capped with a 2x6” railing for even the fluffiest of cats to find a perch. The exterior will be wrapped with corrugated metal that we’ll quick-age to match the metal that wraps the bottom of the cabin. On the interior of the porch, we’ll use shiplap to hide the framing.

The screens themselves can withstand winds up to 120 mph, but to-be-determined if they can hold the weight of a growing maniac cat who has already tried to climb them. In the event the screens succumb to cat (or wind or snow or neighbor judgment) we’ll reinforce with metal mesh. We’re going to maintain this screen porch regardless of what the screen is. We had the pleasure of running into one of our more industrious neighbors the other day, and Ben asked him, “hey we’re building a screen porch. Is this a terrible idea?” He laughed. “Well you’re definitely the first.” But he liked it. Great way to diminish wind into the house. Simple way to regulate the temperature with massive south-facing windows. And indeed a practical outdoor safe haven for cats in predator territory. Just because you’re the first doesn’t mean you’re foolish — just foolhardy. There’s plenty of that here. This town has the typical mountain town’s truncated version of a colonizers’ history: “established 1881.” But it was plenty established prior to that by the Uncompahgre Band of the Ute Nation, removed by the U.S. Army on September 7, 1881, nearly 140 years ago. The government relocated the Uncompahgre Ute People to Utah, and one year after the Ute were forcibly removed from their ancestral land, San Miguel County split off from Ouray County and was made its own political subdivision in the newly-formed State of Colorado. In 1879, the ore-laden valley already had 50 people living in it, with a new narrow gauge railway only 2 miles away. By 1885, it was a town of 200 people. There was a hotel, a couple saloons, a pool hall. Winters were treacherous; the valley was and is prone to avalanches. But where there’s gold, there’s gumption. The power needed to run the stamp mill to process ore drove innovation. Timber was scarce at such high elevations, so a wood powered steam mill wouldn’t cut it. But the San Miguel River just a few miles down from the mine looked promising. Thus began the development and construction of the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant. It was a hit. In fact, it was so successful that the Ames Plant led to the adoption of alternating currents at Niagara Falls and eventually to being adopted worldwide as a viable power solution. The plant remains, but the gold rush obviously didn’t. By 1940, the U.S. Census declared this little town I call home as tied for the lowest population in the country: 2 people. By 1960, it was one of four incorporated towns in the U.S. with no residents. But the joke was on the Census — the town’s single resident was just out of town the day the census came through. 1960 population: 1. By 1980 the population grew to 38, 69 in 1990, and about 180 now. (Plus 51 dogs according to the town’s website.) With modern amenities, it’s easier to be here. Studded snow tires, satellite internet, solar panels, instant coffee. No matter the hardships, there’s the reality of the present. In the 1880s, as the town boomed, the Ouray Times declared, “it will be at no distant day a far more pretentious town than it is now.” That day hasn’t exactly arrived, but I guess it depends on what you consider pretentious. I don’t think the town claims any airs of excellence beyond what’s true. In fact, the town hardly claims anything at all. There’s no sign indicating it’s even here. There’s just the old side and the new side. The new side, the Eastern half, was drawn out in the early 1990s, some 100 years later, and is separated from the Old Town by an avalanche zone—preserved open space for hiking in the summer, preserved open space for surviving in the winter. The town forbids short-term rentals, no one has a fence, dogs roam free, and all the houses have that cabin look to them. A boulder nests in a grove near a trailhead in the center of town with a plaque paying respect to the Utes who called this valley home. There’s no industry here. No businesses allowed. If you want a $7 latte, you can drive the 14 miles required to get it, assuming there’s not an avalanche blocking your path. You can, however, buy a pink lemonade in a

solo cup at the permanent lemonade stand run by the local feral child mafia. Crystals (rocks) can be purchased for an additional cost. We bought one, hoping to buy favor at the same time. The town plan has a few guiding principles, and it’s all in the name of preservation. We must preserve: 1 - the quiet atmosphere 2 - the rustic character 3 - the natural setting

And finally: 4 - protect the health and wellbeing of the people here No snowmobiles, no ATVs, no drones. In fact, the only sign of the outside world here are the passers-through. When you take the dirt road through town to the end, you enter National Forest, and you can hike over the pass saddle at nearly 12,000 feet before descending down the other side into Silverton. The pass road climbs rutted through an aspen forest before scaling across a scree field and then lurching over to the other side. Every day, it seems like 30 or so Texans and Arizonans in lifted and loud Jeeps with unused mods climb over this mountain in the comfort of their air conditioning, simply to drive down the other side. You could hike it, ride it, run it, and ski it, but they don’t. They rev their engines, kicking up dust in a town of feral children and roaming dogs, staring at us instead of waving. I’ve lived here for two months and look how salty I am. I’ll fit in yet. But today, there is a temperature that whispers of perfect trails and the dwindling of ogglers driving 35 in a 15. It’s already snowed in the mountains we see from our kitchen. Today, like a dedication to the Septembers of our youth, you can feel a chill in the air. A temperature akin to pencils and sweaters and reinventing yourself. A temperature that doesn’t exactly sing “screen porch” but could if you had the right slippers on. That’s what I did this morning: put my slippers on and sat there in the cool mountain morning air, thinking about the cemetery behind our house, about the Ute tribe, about the miners, about the mailman who died on Christmas in 1875 on the pass, about the 5 people who died in avalanches here just last year, about the people in their cars on their phones driving through, and all the people who’s very first question to us was, “so are you gonna live here part-time or full-time?” Maybe it will be a hard place to live. But at least we’ll have a screen porch.

Every week I'm writing about moving to log cabin in a small town at 10,000 feet. Subscribe here for free: tinyletter.com/keltonwrites

#colorado #small town life #home renovation #amwriting #creative writing #newsletter #a little bit better

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linkspooky · 4 years

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Like some kind of “Man-Child”

Shigaraki is constantly compared to a child by the other characters around him. Whether it’s the staff at UA calling him a manchild, Ujiko saying he’s a twenty year old brat who has accomplished nothing with his life, or Spinner saying he chases his dreams like a child, Shigaraki’s immaturity and underdeveloped psyche is something constantly commented upon others.

There are two questions to ask now. One, why did Shigaraki turn out this way, and two what does it mean for his character and future growth?

1. An Immature Manchild, A Worthless Twenty-Something, The Trash of Society.

Shigaraki is constantly described by others as acting like a child. In most cases it’s used to insult and demean him, and also to point out his lack of any real tangible goal.

However, Shigaraki’s childish tendencies, his egocentrism, his lack of ability to see the consequences for his actions, and his emotional instability are not a reflection of whether he is a good or bad person, it’s a reflection of his upbringing. This is an important point I want to make before we continu, the hero system uses all of the signs that Shigaraki shows up legitimate mental illness to dehumanize him and make him out to be a “dangerous psycho” rather than to show him any real sympathy.

All Might’s analyses him at length and comes to the conclusion not that this is an unstable person who shows clear signs of mental illness, but rather that the signs of mental illness he shows makes him a bad person. All of these traits that Shigaraki shows are used constantly by his enemies, heroes and villains alike to unperson him.

Once again, Shigaraki acting like a child is not a reflection of whether or not he’s a good or bad person. It’s a product of trauma and his upbringing. Heroes seem to be under the impression that a good person would simply not suffer or react negatively to any trauma. Shigaraki doesn’t grow up not because he doesn’t want to grow up and wants to remain an immature manchild forever, it’s because he was raised deliberately.

Developmental psychology is a scientific approach which aims to explain growth, change and consistency though the lifespan. ... Developmental psychologists study a wide range of theoretical areas, such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes.

Shigaraki was raised in an environment where he could not healthily develop into an adult.

A child’s behaviour is an outward manifestation of inner stability and security. It is a lens through which the family physician can observe the development of the child throughout his or her life. All types of abuse are damaging to children—physically, emotionally, and psychologically—and can cause long-term difficulties with behaviour and mental health development.

Seeing the world from other people’s points of view. Thinking about the consequences of your actions. Processing your emotions and stress in healthy ways. These are all things children learn in the process of growing into adults. However, it’s a learned behavior not a natural one. The idea that people, children, are either born good or bad and will develop based on some internal qualities of goodness or badness is patently false. Children who receive no adult supervision growing up just turn feral and have no ego at all. The ego, or rather identity is something both heavily influenced by the interactions with the adults that raise them and interactions with members of the same peer group.

Shigaraki, raised in a basement with entirely selective and controlled interactions with others that were always underneath AFO’s direct supervision and his thumb, who probably did not even get that much freedom until the UA attack is just barely one step above a feral child who has no adult supervision at all.

These three behaviors:

Lack of Empathy.

Cannot View the Consequences of his Actions

Cannot handle emotions, setbacks and stress

They’re all explainable by specific manipulations that AFO introduced to him as a child. “Shigaraki feels no guilt for what he does” said by almost every hero who interacts with him, but this is completely incorrect. The truth is Shigaraki is constantly made to feel guilty.

He hates himself, and constantly holds back his quirk because he still feels guilt for what happened to his family due to the accidental activation of his quirk.

He accepts the entirety of the blame for what happened for his family, and therefore views himself as a monster. This is what Shigaraki unconsciously believes and accepts, that he deserves to constantly be punished and tormented without relief for what he did for his family and that he can’t be saved.

These are not the actions of a person who feels no guilt. However, at the same time Shigaraki is seeking some relief from his suffering, he wants to be saved even though he believes he doesn’t deserve it. Therefore, AFO manipulates him into believing he doesn’t have to feel guilty for destroying the people he wants to destroy. This is literally the exact tactic that Chisaki used on Eri.

Tenko is constantly made to feel guilty for what he did to his family, and because of that he’s dependent on what AFO told him would make him feel better. Just like Chisaki convincing Eri that it was her fault that people who tried to save her died made her return to Chisaki.

Shigaraki doesn’t show any emotional maturity because he can’t. Being surrounded by your peers, being in a healthy environment, being taught lessons by the adults around you these are all things you learn growing up. We are shown constant signs that Shigaraki’s childhood was constantly barren. He was raised in a room that was entirely blank.

AFO controlled everything about his life. He didn’t even give him toys or books until he started murdering people, and we see that same room several years later almost completely unchanged from the way it was when he was a kid.

Shigaraki’s entire world was that one room. It’s even remarked that he wasn’t allowed to attend any kind of school.

Shigaraki was raised to have his entire world revolve around AFO’s desires for him. Shigaraki even acknowledges that he doesn’t even really want to accomplish AFO’s dream and knows it won’t satisfy him. It’s something that’s forced down his throat, but also what Shigaraki views as his only path forward. Shigaraki as a person doesn’t exist outside of AFO’s goals for him because he wasn’t raised or nurtured to be a person just a thing that wants destruction.

And, the reason Shigaraki continues to follow down the path set by him by All for One is a rather childish one too. This is once again where Shigaraki’s foiling with Chisaki is illustrative of his character.

This is how Shigaraki reacts when forcibly separated from AFO. Crying and begging like a child ripped away from their parent, completely helpless without him. AFO doesn’t act like a parent at all, but for Shigaraki he’s the closest possible thing. Shigaraki still believes that he owes AFO for saving him all those years back.

Shigaraki and Chisaki are the core of their beings are propelled by this idea that they need to repay their father figures for taking them in. They have this childish desire to make their father figures happy and please them, that’s just as true to their nature as their destructive impulses. So, they act like they were shaped to be. Chisaki acts like the perfect Yakuza member, and Shigaraki as the perfect symbol of destruction. They are both desperately trying to be what their parents want them to be.

Shigaraki can’t handle any setbacks or stress, because he is constantly stressed. He was raised to feel nauseatingly sick of himself all of the time.

Eri can’t act like a normal child because even after removed from Chisaki’s influence, the emotoinal wounds Chisaki left on her don’t magically go away. It’s not about being a good or bad child, it’s about being trapped in a certain unhealthy way of thinking.

Shigaraki’s not entitled and emotionally immature. He’s emotionally stunted, and deliberately raised that way. If you could say he was raised at all. His captor had no interest in him as a person. He exists to be a pet revenge project against All Might, to turn Shimura Nana’s descendant into an unstable little bomb that explodes and takes out All Might with him.

The person who raised him constantly threw him into danger with no regard for his well being. He expected Stain to try to kill Tomura when they met and stopped Kurogiri for interfereing for his safety. He expected All Might to beat the shit out of him and for the UA attack to fail. This goes back all the way to the beginning.

He exposed Shigaraki to dangerous people who would beat him up, insult him, and belittle him. People that deliberately reminded Shigaraki of his abuser.

So he would be constantly made to feel unsafe and unstable. Shigaraki has no emotional stability because he was constantly raised in an unstable environment, it’s not hard to remain sane in that environment, it’s downright impossible.

2. Children can Grow Up

This is a theme we’ve seen repeat itself three times. A child is murdered and has their name taken away by their paternal abusers, and they make it into adulthood (despite symbolically dying as a child) with entirely different names and identities. Takami Keigo grows up into Hawks, Touya grows up into Dabi, Shimura becomes Shigaraki. However, all three of them as adults are malformed and still clinging onto the hurt feelings that they held as a child. Shigaraki and Dabi literally both look like corpses, and Hawks has literally no personality or name outside of being a hero.

It’s not a reflection of who they are as people, it’s a reflection that they were not raised to be people. However, Shigaraki is constantly remarked on as a child capable of growing up.

Spinner, Shigaraki’s friend sees the good side of his childishness. He is someone who late in life, is still learning and developing empathy. We see him change over the course of the story. Shigaraki who claims that he doesn’t care about anything besides destruction, also specifically states that he won’t destroy his companions hopes and dreams.

Shigaraki who is presented as a person who is entirely devoid of empathy, is shown being able to deal with somebody like Twice perfectly. Not only does he listen to Twice’s demands that they rescue Giran.

He also knows how to make Twice listen, and then carefully places his mask back on again to calm him down afterwards. He deals with him like a person and is accomodating of his quirks.

Shigaraki makes it deliberately a point that he’s not okay with someone else playing around with Twice’s feelings.

He also tells Twice to make saving Giran and protecting him a priority when he plans on finishing Rikiya himself.

All of this consideration for the feelings of an individual. Shigaraki’s empathy has grown and developed to the point where he can imagine the feelings of other people outside himself. Now compare this to the way Hawks deals with Twice. Shigaraki finds trampling all over the feelings of Twice as unforgivable, whereas Hawks brags to Twice’s face how easy it was to deceive him. He belittles him and rubs salt in the wound.

Hawks can only accept Twice as a good person. It’s Shigaraki who gives a home to those who have no other home, the outcasts, the bad people that heroes would never save.

Shigaraki who understood how important Twice’s feelings for his friends are, built his entire plan against the MLA around saving Giran, and Twice’s own desires to want to help his friend Giran and pay him back for giving him a place to belong. Hawks literally goes out of his way to single out Twice as the only one he can save and not extend the same helping hand to his friends. Shigaraki recognizes Twice’s feelings for his friends, Hawks goes out of his way to trample on the friends that Twice finds so precious.

Hawks wants to save Twice but doesn’t understand him as a person. Shigaraki has created a place where people like Spinner, Toga, Compress, Twice, Dabi are all accepted and valued as people. Shigaraki’s childishness is both a good and bad thing. It shows that even after all of this trauma, the core of who Shigaraki is has not changed.

He is still the kid who deliberately plays with the kids on the playground who get left out. Who states that he specifically wants to be a hero because there were kids who were left out of being played. And who wanted to be a hero even when he knew his father would severely disapprove of it and kept that dream in his heart.

Shigaraki is still Shimura Tenko. He’s not the child who wanted to be a hero, or the child who wanted to destroy to make the pain go away, he’s both at the same time and that’s where his complexity comes from. Shigaraki like anybody else is capable of good and bad, but what’s especially important about his arc is that we’ve been shown that when removed from underneath the thumb of his abusers, and surroudned by his found family in the league Shigaraki gets better and is able to begin seeing the emotions and feelings of other people outside of him, and becomes a more empathic person. He is a child yes, but also a child capable of growing up.

It’s also important to remember his arc. When Shigaraki is fighting for the league he always succeeds (against the Yakuza, against MLA). He only ever fails, and relapses (such as his current failure in the hero war arc raid) when he believes that he has to follow the dream laid out for him by AFO. It’s almost as if Shigaraki was intended from the start to shake off AFO’s influence of him and eventually grow into his own person. Shigaraki is a child waiting to grow up, he’s still Shimura Tenko, and he should be allowed that chance to grow past his abuse. He might never become a hero but by the end of the story he deserves to be his own person, not AFO’s thing.

#shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #afo #all for one #lov meta #league of villain meta #shigaraki meta #my hero academia meta #my hero acaemia theory #mha meta #my hero academia #league of villains

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larathia · 3 years

Text

theorypost the first: Amane’s bruises.

Hokay. So. This is gonna be long, possibly triggery for abuse survivors, I’m just going to start with a cut so everyone has the option of ignoring it up front, before things get squishy.

There. Now.

Firstly - that abuse happened is not in question. Tsuchigomori is about as close as a disinterested third party as you can get, and the damage was extensive enough to make him take notice and try to intervene, even though he didn’t really care because he was sure Amane would pull through it and grow up to be a science teacher.

He uses rubbing alcohol and bandages. He comments on bruises, but you don’t use rubbing alcohol and bandages on bruises. You use them on scrapes, cuts, and burns.

We know that Amane dies after killing Tsukasa. Shortly afterward, too; the Red House arc mentions that a family of four dies all in one night. That it was ‘suicide’, or at least looked like it. We know that the twins’ mother, shortly after Tsukasa’s return, was damn sure that what came back was not her son. We know that Amane was being abused by someone he loved greatly. (And we know that because he forgives them, unconditionally. If it were just a school bully, he might keep quiet but I strongly doubt he’d forgive.)

Now. On to the options.

What people seem to forget, a lot, are two not-insignificant facts here. One is that eight years passed between Tsukasa’s return from the red house, and the death of the Yugi family.

The second fact is that it was the whole family that died - not just Tsukasa and Amane.

I mean. That’s kind of important. Yes, we have hints from Nene’s time travels that Tsukasa was sometimes violent. But we also have, from the priests, that Tsukasa’s mother was reacting badly to Tsukasa’s presence fairly soon after his return...yet she did nothing for eight years? While, apparently, Tsukasa got more dangerous?

Take a moment to consider what she knew. She knew that, prior to Tsukasa’s disappearance, Amane was sickly. Like, near-death sickly. Not-gonna-live-to-see-four sickly. And then...boom. He’s better. It’s a miracle. Nobody knows how but suddenly bam. Healthy child. And RIGHT AFTER THAT - Tsukasa disappears. He’s gone for six damn months. There isn’t a parent alive who wouldn’t be out of their mind with worry.

(One of the things I really, really want to know is how Amane’s parents treated him during that six month period. Did they cling harder to the son they still had, or did they ever think Amane’s sudden health and Tsukasa’s disappearance were linked somehow?)

And then - Tsukasa comes back. But he comes back different. He comes back able to grant wishes, for one thing. The boy we see in the Red House couldn’t stop offering wishes if he tried, but that’s the entity in the seat of its power. Let’s figure that maybe it took time for the entity to grow strong again, in Tsukasa’s body. Maybe.

You know what else we know? That right around this time - right around when Tsukasa disappeared and returned - a rock fell from the sky that Amane truly believes was a moon rock. That Tsuchigomori also believes was a moon rock.

And we know that Tsukasa thought, at this time, that Amane would go to the moon and bring back pieces.

I wonder how much power it took to pull that one off?

We know that Amane loves Tsukasa. Loves him so much that even when Tsukasa gets violent, he’d rather do anything than lift a finger against him. Yet there’s all these bruises. And Amane wants to be an astronaut - which is pretty much peak 60s escapist fantasy, let’s be real. It’s the ultimate fly-away fantasy.

What if the abuse was coming from the parents. What if - and I’m saying ‘what if’ because we DO NOT KNOW, okay. We have no evidence. Zeeero. Pure speculation. But so is saying the abuse came from Tsukasa, so bear with me a minute here.

What if - the parents knew that Tsukasa came back wrong, and they feared him, but Amane was just really glad to have his brother back? The parents can see shit going wrong - Tsukasa doing things, or things happening around him, that are straight up impossible. But Amane’s a child. And Tsukasa loves him. He’s not going to have the same perspective. Even if Tsukasa is occasionally Violent and/or Weird in ways that don’t benefit Amane (like leaving him alone at a festival) if overall Tsukasa defended him and was loving, Amane would probably forgive a lot.

The parents, though. The adults in the room know something’s wrong. Tsukasa’s at the heart of it, but we’re talking identical twins here and Amane’s encouraging it. What if - the parents tried to forcibly separate the twins? What if - they were hurting Amane in an attempt to prevent whatever was corrupting Tsukasa from spreading? Hell - what if it WAS spreading and the parents were panicking about it, coming down harder on Amane in an attempt to stop it?

Before y’all rip my throat out on this - bear in mind that Hanako is capable of being just as much of a trickster as Tsukasa. He’s less mean about it, most of the time, but that reputation for being a deceiver did not come out of nowhere. And that boy can fight. That, too, doesn’t come from nowhere.

What if the abuse was coming from the parents, and Tsukasa killed them for it? And then Amane, forced to accept that this is a bad line that’s been crossed, kills Tsukasa and then himself? What, then, is the breaking point?

The breaking point is Amane.

The thing about being bullied, about being abused, is that sooner or later fight or flight kicks in. You snap and fight back, or you snap and run away...or you just snap, all the adrenaline and fear turning inward.

I think it’s a very real possibility that while the bruises came from Amane’s abuser, the cuts were self-inflicted. That when Amane said he ‘wasn’t going anywhere’...he’d snapped. He gave his precious moon rock away (which is one of those things people do right before killing themselves) and he resolved to die. (Remember his snarling at Teru that exorcism would only be a release.)

I really doubt Tsukasa would have taken that idea well. And we do know that whatever Amane intended, it apparently blew up bigtime.

I do not present this as Definite Fact - only a theory that I think is a reasonable interpretation of the evidence. Trust me, I have others. I’ll get to them.

#toilet bound hanako kun

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prettywordsyouleft · 5 years

Text

Past And Present (Choose What I Write Story)

Summary: you believed that you had met your soulmate as a child but you had been wrong.

Pairing: Park Jinyoung x reader (ft Im Jaebum)

Genre: soulmate au / university au

Trope: enemies to lovers

Warnings: none

A/N: Well, he’s done it again. This time it was intentional though! For the longest moment during the voting period, it was a battle royale between the JJP boys and Jinyoung just cinched it in the last day. So I decided to add in Jaebum to help bring an obstacle to this storyline. Originally, like most of my Jinyoung stories, the plan was much simpler than this. Of course, you throw in a supercharged Park Jinyoung who hasn’t had a story written for him in over a month and a soulmate au on top and well, this is a bit of a lengthy piece than what I had hoped for!

I also was a little concerned about writing another soulmate au with Jinyoung after Destined, but this world is far different than the one in my first soulmate attempt, so hopefully it won’t feel like something you’ve read before.

Word count: 5869

You were certain you had known who your soulmate was for your entire life.

Im Jaebum had been your first friend as a child and when you touched for the first time, the gasp that left you both had your parents rejoicing.

Just like that, you had met your destined partner.

With that title between you and Jaebum established, you continued your childhood at each other’s sides and moved easily into teenage years where exploration further enhanced your connection. It was an effortless relationship, with every touch, kiss or stare, you each felt cherished, overwhelmed, connected.

And that was why when you both got into different universities as young adults, neither of you were phased about the separation.

Of course, you voiced how hard it would be living so far apart when you were used to being only five minutes away from each other. But you had prepared for the lack of physical stimulation from Jaebum, with scheduled video chats and using other technological advances to make the distance work.

On a deeper level though, you trusted your connection.

Nothing had disturbed it yet. And you had believed nothing ever could. Your life was set. After university, you would marry Jaebum, move in together, have a couple of kids and live out your predestined lives together. The guesswork had been completely taken out of your hands.

So why was your life in chaos ever since you met Park Jinyoung?

At first, you were hopeful that seeing him in all your classes would help you settle into tertiary life with a common link. Perhaps, that was your first mistake. It wasn’t as if Jinyoung was unfriendly either, he had a similar thought process as you, taking a seat next to you in all your shared classes for the first week of your semester.

And that was when it all began. You hadn’t ever experienced being irked by someone as much as you were by him. Jinyoung was just as smart as you, rivalling you in answers and provoking endless debate. You could have dealt with this if he wasn’t so egotistical in his approach whenever he beat you, his smug smile causing you to seethe instantly. You were no longer comrades taking the same papers, yet he refused to let up about sitting next to you.

Jinyoung had figured out your buttons early on, purposely winding you up at any chance he got. And when he wasn’t focused on annoying you, it gave you too much time to sit and anticipate his next move. Some days, he would leave you alone entirely, aware that he still had your full attention. It was those days where you realised that every little action he made could bother you. His breathing, the way his hand would run through his hair, his laughter, everything was capable of spiralling you into a state.

You tried to separate from him, of course. Once you established that he was a major distraction to your degree, you took active steps to avoid him. It wasn’t easy, given every day was full of hours spent in the same lecture halls, tutorial classes and library spaces, but you made a solid effort to ignore his existence as best as you could.

Yet, this bothered him greatly.

“Why aren’t we sitting in our normal row today, Y/N?” he asked as he sat down beside you, blinking all too innocently for someone who could read your emotions well. The ghost of a smirk was tugging at the corners of his lips and you rolled your eyes, reaching to pick up your supplies to move seats. Jinyoung’s hand came down on yours to stop you and you gaped at him incredulously. He merely pouted. “I’m offended.”

“I sat here to actually get some work done.”

Jinyoung nodded. “What’s holding you back from doing so?”

A thousand curse words and snappy statements flooded your mind in response; instead, you smiled forcibly at him. “Surely, you could befriend someone else.”

“I have friends,” he agreed casually, shrugging a little as if having a vast amount of friendships was normal for everyone. Jinyoung then stared at you, eyes alive with amusement. “But none of them react as well as you do to me.”

“Honestly!” you breathed and a couple of groups around you both glanced in your direction. Feeling your cheeks redden as Jinyoung positively glowed from your outburst, you slumped back down into your chair, resolute on ignoring him for the next fifty minutes.

Jinyoung was having none of that.

He bounced his leg consistently until you shot him a warning look and then he started with his little sighs, each one sounding louder in your ears than the last. You reached to pinch his arm in protest and he gaped at your assault, acting as if you had gravely injured him. He decided instead of moving away from you that he would shift even closer on his seat, pressing right into your side.

You threw your pen down in defeat. It was impossible to get anything done with him playing dirty like this.

When class ended, you spun to face him, Jinyoung now smiling triumphantly at you. “Yes, Y/N?”

“I’m done with you.”

“Are you really?”

You nodded firmly. “Why can’t you leave me alone?!”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” he asked, standing up and slinging his bag over his shoulder before leaning down into your face. “It’s not my fault you’re incredibly easy to make this flustered.”

“Flustered?!” you repeated an octave higher, shaking your head. “I am not flustered!”

“Really? Then how come your cheeks are so pink, hm?” Jinyoung reached out to poke one before a soft chuckle left him. “The colour suits you.”

“Park Jinyoung, you are positively the most annoying human to ever exist!”

He grinned, stepping away from you into the aisle of the emptying lecture hall. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Over the next few weeks, you suffered at the hands of his insistent behaviour. You grew increasingly frustrated, wondering why he was being like this with you.

You regretted the day you had openly reached out to befriend him.

“And so today, he overheard me telling my friend Nora that I planned on having sushi for lunch and when I went to the cafeteria and fell in line behind him, he purposely took the last tray of sushi when he never eats it. He always has one of the sandwich packs so he can study at the same time as he eats!”

“Maybe he was feeling like sushi today?” Jaebum offered over your video chat but you shook your head immediately.

“No, he did it to spite me.”

“I’m sure you’re reading into this too much, Y/N. The guy probably doesn’t have anything to bother himself over you about. Maybe he’s just messing around with you because you are easy to rile up.”

“You too?!” you cried and Jaebum chuckled. “No, I’m not easy game! And even if I were, I’ve asked him to leave me alone, so shouldn’t he?”

“Well, what have you exactly said to him?” Jaebum became thoughtful for a moment. “You have told him you’ve met your soulmate already, right?”

“No,” you answered, wondering why it was needed to do so. You didn’t view Jinyoung in a romantic light in the slightest. Even considering it for a mere second made you shudder. “I don’t share my personal life with him.”

“Maybe he likes you.”

You smirked, readjusting your laptop. “Just because to you I’m irresistible, doesn’t mean everyone thinks the same way. Jinyoung is just annoying me because he is an asshole.”

“Don’t you remember when Jackson wouldn’t leave Glynnis alone in middle school? He annoyed her until she screamed at him in front of everyone in class.”

You thought back to the time, smiling lightly. “He blurted out he was in love with her and made her cry from embarrassment.”

“Jinyoung could be doing the same thing.”

Trying to compare your situation with the juvenile one of your past, you shook your head. “He’s an adult now Jae, surely he would know there are better ways to approach someone if he felt that way.”

“You never know. If you state it to him that I exist, he might stop.”

“Maybe,” you replied, still in thought. And then you glanced back at the video representation of your boyfriend and pouted. “Doesn’t any of this bother you?”

“No, why should it? You’re capable of solving this issue yourself and I’m not threatened if he does like you. I know you only have eyes for me.”

You grinned, nodding happily. “Of course, you’re my forever.”

Deciding to put Jaebum’s advice into action, you attempted to throw it out that you were in a relationship with your soulmate more than once but it never quite eventuated. Either Jinyoung would steer the conversation away or you would be disrupted by something around you. At night, you would consider new options on how to tell him, chiding yourself for holding back from doing so when you could have just pushed forth. Once he knew you were in a relationship, hopefully, he would step back and give you some space.

It was three weeks later when you both had hired a study room to escape the noise of the main library floor to get some actual work done that you finally announced it. You were both silent for most of the first hour, and for once, Jinyoung was more involved in preparing for your upcoming exams instead of harassing you. It was a perfect opportunity and yet you stalled for twenty minutes, trying to word it right within your head.

Jinyoung sighed heavily. “What is it?”

“Do you believe in soulmates?” you wondered and he didn’t look up from his laptop, his tapping on the keys persistent.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Have you met yours?” you continued and finally his hands slowed down, now hovering over the keys without any direction to keep moving. Jinyoung blinked slowly and you leaned over the table unconsciously. “Whether through dreams or in person?”

Whilst you hadn’t dreamt of Jaebum, you had always believed you never needed to since you met him at an early age. Most other people dreamed of who they were destined to before they met them and suddenly you were curious if Jinyoung had or not. Maybe you could help him find his soulmate so he could leave you alone.

When he looked up at you, his eyes were darker, swirling with several emotions. You were taken aback, jumping and hitting into the back of your seat in the process. “What if I have?”

“You have?!” you asked, eyes widening. “Really?!”

“Does it matter if I have or not?” He went back to typing, albeit at a slower rate.

“Well, not to me it doesn’t I guess.” You weren’t sure why his vague answer troubled you so much. You almost didn’t say the next part in your thought process, and when you did, it came out weaker than you intended. “I have.”

Jinyoung tilted his head but didn’t otherwise respond. It irked you. “Did you hear me?”

“You have what?”

“I know who my soulmate is,” you told him and Jinyoung glanced back up you, his eyes now hesitant. You searched his vulnerable expression for a moment, blinking rapidly when you felt your heart thumping in your chest harder. “I uh, I’ve known my soulmate since I was a child. We don’t go to school together but we’re very much a couple.”

No response.

You watched Jinyoung until your cheeks were burning with embarrassment, wondering why you had even listened to Jaebum in the first place. Jinyoung hadn’t reacted how you expected him to and you felt increasingly uncomfortable.

Just when you thought he was going to ignore you entirely, his head snapped up, a smile that you had never seen before now greeting you. You didn’t have enough time to examine it as his next words distracted you. “I didn’t know we were that close to share personal details like that, Y/N.”

“Oh, well uh-”

Jinyoung scraped back his chair, still smiling yet the force of shutting his laptop conflicted the cheerful gesture exhibiting on his lips. “I’m done studying today, you can have the rest of the time to yourself.”

You watched him leave and it hit you then, the fakeness of his response. His eyes had said otherwise.

He very much so cared.

Jinyoung was bitter from your announcement. And instead of giving you immediate relief, his reaction only troubled you further.

Why did you feel like you had broken him?

You snapped up with a jolt, breathing heavily as you attempted to shake away the dream. You had found yourself standing outside the same unfamiliar home you always dreamed of, seeing the back profile of a man who you had never been able to distinguish. Desperation overwhelmed you still; just as much as you wished to reach out for him in your dreams, now back within reality, you craved to know who this man was. For some time, you had been convinced it was Jaebum with how much you felt a need to be around the mysterious person. You did eventually realise his figure was different than your boyfriend’s and it puzzled you that you wouldn’t ever dream of anything but this one person.

Everyone believed dreams were the gateway to your past life’s connection to your soulmate, so it always bothered you when Jaebum wouldn’t turn around and face you within this alternate reality.

Reaching out for your bottle of water on your nightstand, you unscrewed the lid and gulped down a couple of mouthfuls, your eyes still searching the darkness surrounding you for clues. You knew the dream world wouldn’t be waiting behind your eyelids again, no matter how much you would try to force yourself back to that house, to that view; it was never in your control.

You were comfortable with knowing your destiny wasn’t fully within your hands, but you also required clarity in your life. Whenever the path looked unclear, you would dream of this other lifetime, never finding out anything further than what was shown to you.

And ever since you had told Jinyoung about Jaebum, the dream had reoccurred every night for the past twelve days.

Which was the same amount of time that Jinyoung had disappeared from your world.

You had rejoiced initially. The one thing you had always hoped for was just this, freedom from his teasing, space from his close proximity and yet you didn’t appreciate this feeling at all. Your eyes sought him out across the room longingly some days, watching his back view often. It felt too familiar to you, something you had seen so often within another world.

Tonight you were slowly starting to entertain something conflicting.

Why would it be Jinyoung in your dreams? He had no place in there and you laughed incredulously, as if the sound could dislodge your disillusioned thought process. What would your past self have to do with Jinyoung? Jaebum was your soulmate. You had the feelings, the connection, everything you were meant to. With Jinyoung, you had merely frustration. You had touched him before and there had been no sudden revelation of feelings to overwhelm you with.

Before you placed too much weight in it, you picked up your phone, letting it ring until a sleep-filled voice mumbled in answer. “Hello?”

“You dream of me, right?” you pleaded, chewing on your lip in anxious anticipation.

“Y/N it’s four in the morning, why are you calling me about dreams?”

“Just answer it. I’m in your dreams right?”

Jaebum paused, evidently wiping the sleep away from his face with the sigh that sounded into the receiver. He didn’t answer right away, and you blinked back your emotions. Why was it so hard to respond? If you weren’t dreaming of Jaebum, you would feel at ease knowing he dreamt of you instead. His silence was confirming suspicions that had been growing underneath your relationship for some time.

“You don’t?” you whispered and Jaebum groaned.

“Y/N, why are you getting hung up on dreams?” he wondered but even Jaebum knew that dreams meant something to one’s soul. The lifeline of your past had brought you to this point.

You existed and so did your past. It was an intertwining bond of past and present that shaped your destiny. Being ‘hung up’ over dreams was kind of expected.

“You really don’t?”

Jaebum sighed again. “I’ve never dreamt. Not once.”

The very next day, you walked across the lecture hall to where Jinyoung sat, his gaze widening when it connected with yours before he looked away to his textbook. When you didn’t move on, he let out a heavy breath, glancing back at you. “Can I help you with anything?”

Was he always this cold towards you? It made you blink rapidly whilst your chest panged with heartache, as if he had just attacked you physically. Breathing felt difficult and you placed your hands down on the top of the desk for support and to hopefully break free from the pain.

“I dream of you.”

Such a simple sentence to blurt out but the reaction from Jinyoung was instant. He looked as if all the air had been sucked out of him, his dark eyes unblinking as they bored back at you. At first, you saw fear. The hope that swirled within his panic. The multitude of emotions reached out for you one after the other, overwhelming you until you could no longer take it and you turned away, departing the class before it began.

For the rest of the day, you avoided the world. You hid in your dorm room, trying to decipher all that had happened in that moment. You connected it to the conversation you held with Jinyoung in the study room that day, linking the reactions as one and the same. You had been right; it bothered him greatly when you mentioned having a soulmate already. Your proclamation this morning only convinced you further that Jinyoung’s attention on you had more reason than that of a fellow student.

Did he dream of you as well? Of that quaint house you had never entered? Was it a home he had once lived in? You were riddled with questions, yet you ignored every message you received on your phone as well. You knew it was him. The incessant buzzing reminded you of his constant appearance at your side this year and eventually, you silenced your phone, throwing it down on your nightstand and yanked your covers over your head.

At some point, you fell asleep.

The house stood before you yet again, though this time, you saw him. Not within the house, no, you were there instead. Why had the angle changed? It was you who had the home, the fence behind you keeping Jinyoung out. He seemed so far away yet you could make out that gaze all too well. He was hurting and you couldn’t fathom why.

And then you heard someone calling for you, or at least, it felt as if it were a name you once went by. You turned to see Jaebum standing before you, pulling you within the home and shutting Jinyoung out behind the door.

When you sat up from this dream, you were breathing heavily, the tears streaming from your eyes effortlessly. You should have rejoiced, you had finally dreamed of Jaebum. Yet you felt a loss like no other. Even when your grandmother had passed away when you were a teenager, it hadn’t hurt this bad. You wanted to close your eyes again, to go back to the door and open it. You needed to see Jinyoung again. The gaze he held before Jaebum pulled you inside was haunting you now that you were awake. His pain felt like your own.

Somehow, you noticed the sudden glow in your room despite your eyes seeing a different world still. Blinking, you turned to pick up your phone, unlocking the device and reading the latest message from Jinyoung with a tremble.

I dream of you too.

Sitting across from Jinyoung the next day felt awkward. You gripped onto the burning hot mug within your hands and yet it was all you could think to do.

That and reach out for him. Strangely, all you had wanted since meeting up with him at the campus coffee house was just that. Part of it was juvenile. You wanted to see if you felt something this time touching him. But more so, you craved a comfort from him that you never expected to desire.

So you held the mug tightly, ignoring the warnings your fingers were sending to your brain about the heat and stared back at the dark haired man before you.

Silence had sat between you both for a good ten minutes before Jinyoung finally spoke up. “Since when?”

“When what?”

“Are you sure it’s me?”

You stared at him then, properly this time. There was no humour, not a playful smile in sight. Instead, he was scared. You knew you were as well, but noticing the emotion in his eyes made you wish to remove it. And that only frightened you further.

Blinking away your thoughts, you mumbled, “For as long as I can remember. And it’s you, I saw your front view for the first time last night.”

That dream continued to repeat over and over until the morning finally arrived, your mind and soul fatigued from such a constant workout. You noted the lack of quality of sleep within Jinyoung’s gaze too and it made you curious.

“When did you start dreaming of me?”

He shared a wistful smile. “When I was eight.”

“You remember a distinct age?”

“Well, of course,” he replied with a grin, easing you somewhat. “When I told my Mum I dreamed of some weird woman, she freaked out and made me tell her every detail. Then she explained to me what the dream meant.”

“What did she say?” you wondered, leaning forward, encouraging him to share more. Jinyoung’s ears flamed pink and you smirked. “What?!”

“She told me one day I would meet you and to record every dream I’ve had because you were my past and eventually would be my present and future.”

You slumped back in your chair immediately, cursing yourself for being eager. You willed your heart to slow down.

Finally, you found the courage to talk. “I have a soulmate, though.”

“Doesn’t everyone,” Jinyoung murmured, taking a sip of his coffee. He sighed softly. “My soulmate is in love with another man. History is repeating, huh?”

You glanced up then, eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

“Have you dreamed of much?” Jinyoung asked, posing himself within the chair, exuding confidence that only confirmed what you had assumed on your way here. Jinyoung had dreamt of you a great deal. And whilst you had as well of him, it had always been the same angle. What had he seen that you hadn’t? You stared at him for a moment, jealous that his connection with his dreams seemed stronger.

He smirked. “Unlike you, I’ve had years to wait for this opportunity. You weren’t even looking for me, so why would you dream in-depth?”

“How do you know what I have and haven’t dreamt of?”

“You face gave you away,” he admitted with a chuckle and you pouted at his teasing. It was nice though, to see him like that again and your childish reactions to it.

It didn’t last long, Jinyoung’s expression faltered, much like his mood. He still couldn’t slip back to before.

Back to when he thought you were his this time around.

You groaned with how confusing this all was. “What am I like in your dreams?”

“Someone who I missed the opportunity with in another life. We didn’t cross paths until it was too late. I chose to let you remain with the man you had married.”

Wait… married? Your mouth fell ajar as you tried to keep up to speed.

“My mother urged me to not let you slip away this time. If soulmates miss their opportunity in one lifetime, it can lead to complications in another. If they miss twice, they may never meet again in the future. At least, that’s what is written whenever I researched it.”

Of course, Park Jinyoung and sought out the knowledge of the phenomena unlike you.

Not that you had believed you had a reason to.

And what made you think you did now? Because you dreamed of him? Just because that happened didn’t mean your life had to change. You had been happy with Jaebum. You had always believed it was him. He was familiar, like a home.

You thought back to how he pulled you within the house in your dreams and you grabbed at your throbbing head. “It’s too much.”

“Is it?”

You glanced up then, the vulnerable way Jinyoung was staring at you catching your breath in your chest. He blinked back his own emotions, trying to smile. “Too much is dreaming of never being the chosen one. Too much is hearing from your own mouth that you’d known your soulmate since a child. I don’t know, Y/N. Was I truly destined to suffer so much over and over?”

Your world blurred then as the tears welled within your eyes. Had he really suffered that much? Since figuring it all out, the last two days had been a whirlwind of emotions you had never anticipated to experience.

Especially not with him.

For the first time, you doubted who Jaebum was to you. You even doubted who you were.

You didn’t want anyone to suffer. And yet, it seemed inevitable.

Exams were done with, and semester break had arrived. Heading home signalled a crossroads within your life. You would leave Jinyoung back in your schooling world and immerse yourself in the one you had once felt confident within.

You were nervous to see Jaebum, however.

Things had been somewhat strained since your phone call that night, with you now knowing that your soul had two men within its past journey and neither was a right or wrong. Jaebum hadn’t pressed the matter either, which upset you more than you had let on to him. You had hoped he could break you out of the funk you were in over Jinyoung. That he could say something to make you forget about all the dreams, the newfound feelings, the continued battle within you to spend more time with someone who wasn’t your boyfriend. At one point, you had considered Jinyoung an enemy! Now you considered too many things about him.

The solace you craved from being home again was short-lived. You met with friends, you laughed with family and you reminisced of the old times.

With Jaebum especially.

Sitting across from him in your family home felt strange now. At first, you had bounded up to his arrival at the door, smiling when you saw him and wrapped your arms around him as he hugged you back. You had hoped that hug would remove any niggling insecurities. It hadn’t, if anything, his embrace felt different. Not cold, because you could never imagine Jaebum to be that way with you. Yet there was no warmth like there once was.

The barrier between you was evident.

After catching up on school stuff, your conversation fell short, neither of you immediately addressing the elephant within the room until the silence became unbearable. Why was it hard to connect with him now?

“Are you still dreaming?” he finally asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Mm.”

“Have you seen who the man is in person at all?” Glancing up, you were surprised that Jaebum had asked the question at all. He was watching you intently, a sad smile crossing his lips. “You have, huh.”

One time, you had told Jaebum about your dream. Hoping that he had seen it himself and could shed light on what it meant. Now and then he would ask you about it, and in the past, you had assured him that you were none the wiser.

Had Jaebum known you weren’t his soulmate all this time?

“Is it him?”

“Who?”

“The guy who bothered you, is it him?” Jaebum continued and you nodded once, only listening to the sigh that left him as you were too ashamed to look up now. Even though you hadn’t done a thing, you felt as if you had cheated with Jinyoung. It was a precarious feeling, and you didn’t know what to do with yourself.

Jaebum didn’t respond for a while. You couldn’t speak of your thoughts either. Nothing made sense, and clarity remained out of reach.

And then he stood up. He smiled down at you, chuckled even. “I always wondered why I didn’t dream of you. Now I know why.”

“I wish it was you.”

“No, you should wish for your real soulmate.”

You shrugged. “I’m kind of over the whole concept, to be honest.”

“And we thought our teenage years were hard, huh?” he mentioned with a grin and you rolled your eyes, a small smile tugging at the corners of your mouth all the same momentarily.

“What do we do, Jaebum?”

He reached out to rub the top of your arms, still smiling down at you. “Are you sure of him?”

“How can I be sure of anything? I’m with you.”

“Maybe you need to step back from me and find out who he is. I’ll always be in your life, perhaps just not as how we originally thought. Who knows, maybe I’ll start dreaming now too.”

And just like that, your first love had given you the sacrifice you would need to figure everything out.

When you returned to your dorm after your break, a package was waiting for you. Once settled in from your journey, you reached to open it, finding a plain notebook inside. There was no note from the sender, and you frowned before placing it down on your desk and taking a shower. When you returned, the puzzle of the book grappled at you until you flipped to the first page.

The handwriting was legible but definitely youthful. What it lacked in style was made up in the content. It felt as if you were reading some fantastical storyline about soulmates for the next several pages. You felt the years go by as the writing style changed, the neatness improving, and losing that story-telling charm. Some pages only had a few words on them. Others were longer, more time spent on the feelings experienced rather than the actual happenings.

By the time you reached the last entry in the journal, you felt as if you had ridden a rollercoaster and as you climbed off, you found you knew more about yourself through the eyes of someone else than you had ever expected to.

It made you leap up from your chair, hurriedly place on some extra clothing, and then head out into the brisk evening. You had an idea of where Jinyoung lived, but not the exact address and yet this didn’t deter you from making your way over there at all. After bumping into a fellow classmate, you found out the information you needed and went into a building, taking a few deep breaths outside of the door before you knocked on it.

When it opened, Jinyoung stared at you quietly, not inviting you in, nor greeting you at all. It made your cheeks flush with embarrassment, unsure now as to why you were standing here. The item you held tightly to your chest reminded you of your rushed emotions and you held it out towards him feebly. “I read your journal.”

Jinyoung still didn’t respond, eyes hard, searching yours for something.

You smiled weakly and rocked on your heels, thrusting it out towards him further. “Thank you for letting me read it.”

“Really? That’s all?” he wondered and you blinked, frowning slightly. “You’re thanking me for showing you the most personal thing in my life?”

“Well, I … I mean… can I come in?”

You glanced both ways down the hallway, feeling exposed. Jinyoung was still for a moment and then scoffed. “Do you really want to?”

You knew the added implication despite his response. That was his way of protecting his feelings, it always had been. Despite this, he was searching your eyes for a sign that he could let some of them show. Hope infiltrated his stare once more. You smiled and that was enough for him to grab a hold of you, pulling you inside his room.

And once the door was shut, he pressed you against it.

The swiftness of this new position winded you, though breathing became all too difficult to comprehend once Jinyoung’s lips met yours. They merely pressed into yours, connecting yet unmoving. Even with just the weight of his mouth on yours, a fire burned within you, unlike anything you had felt before. Every inch of your body felt as if it was alive, the colours around you both now vivid, blinding. His kiss began to build languidly, and within that moment, your eyes fluttered shut, still feeling, seeing and hearing too much. Stars rained down behind your eyes, and the hairs stood up upon your skin. You could hear his equally staggered breath, the hot air blowing out from his nose onto your cheek. The thumping of your own heart rivalled by his own and when you finally pulled away to catch your breath, your hands were now threaded through the ends of his silky hair, anchored there.

Jinyoung slowly smiled. “I can actually do this with you, right?”

“I wouldn’t have come to you if I couldn’t do this with a clear conscience.”

Somehow, his smile grew. And then you were tasting him again.

You didn’t rush. But as the weeks went by, you realised that the past that you had once lived, both in this lifetime and beyond that was definitely not your future.

It eased you when Jaebum messaged you telling you he had dreamed of someone as well. It was as if this whole puzzle had pieces that needed to be put in place before the next one could be discovered and placed down as well.

And there was still a whole lot of pieces to go. After all, you had so much to discover about Jinyoung. You hadn’t grown up with him, and over the months of getting to know him so far, well, you had kind of disliked him.

Perhaps your dislike towards him was because you couldn’t figure out why he bothered you so much. And even though you now had a reason behind his place in your life, he still was the same guy you had sworn was sent to drive you insane. Which Jinyoung had innate skill at doing, whether it was by getting your attention during class, or taking your breath away in endless kisses, he was always there right at your side.

And you knew in this lifetime, he always would be.

_________________

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vulcan-highblood · 4 years

Text

Resistance To Interrogation

Fandom: Supergirl (TV 2015)

Rating: M (torture, needles, drugs)

Pairing: Gen

Summary: Colonel Haley will do whatever it takes to keep her country safe. If that means using torture to force her agents to reveal Supergirl's secret identity, so be it. (Set during S4 Ep10 "Suspicious Minds". What exactly happened during Brainy's interrogation?)

Read it on AO3

Resistance To Interrogation

He should have expected this. He had expected it, in a way, but what Querl had not expected was for Colonel Haley to be so… ruthless, he supposed that was the best way to put it. One minute he had been trying to arrange his schedule to meet with Nia. He thought now was an excellent time to encourage the young woman to give Supergirl more substantial backup, and he felt certain now was the time to being training her to use her own Naltorian abilities. It may not be a comfortable experience, at first, but Querl was certain that Supergirl would need all the help she could get, and soon. No one else seemed to be taking things quite seriously enough, in his opinion - perhaps because they were not as familiar with the way these kinds of social movements worked out. Or perhaps they were more optimistic about human nature. Querl had no such hindrance, he was a realist and always would be.

It was the same reason why Querl had staked out a space online for himself, for all of them, as American Alien. They needed to rally others to champion their cause, to acknowledge injustice, or they would all lose before they had even fully recognized the need to fight. That was why he was so insistent that Supergirl had a strong support network right now - he could see the writing on the wall, so to speak, and he was not willing to see this world descend into violent xenophobia. He had enough experience with xenophobic people from his own time, he had no interest in watching it destroy lives in this time, too.

Speaking of xenophobia, he did not appreciate the way Colonel Haley watched him as he ended the call with Nia, putting away the primitive communication device and turning to fully face the DEO’s new overseer. “Yes, Colonel Haley?”

“I need to speak to you about Supergirl,” she said, her face retaining a mostly neutral, vaguely displeased expression as she addressed him. “Follow me.”

Ah, so it was time. As he followed Colonel Haley to the interrogation rooms, he carefully bundled up all knowledge that tied Kara’s identity to Supergirl, ruthlessly dividing the two into separate identities in his mind. It took rather a long time, and involved taking everything he’d learned about her as a child, all of his historical knowledge, and everything he’d seen in this time. Even if he hadn’t known about Kara’s identity, the fact remained that he had access to facial recognition software, and his own internal systems could have clocked her instantaneously. He had to ruthlessly shut that down too, forcibly rewriting the code in his mind to ensure that no matter what, his mind would be categorically unable to accept the idea that Kara Danvers was Supergirl. He’d already laid most of the groundwork immediately following Alex’s ‘debrief’. It was his own form of RTI training - far less time-consuming, but also probably more invasive than what most people would require. This way, though, it would be absolutely impossible for him to know the identity of Supergirl, and thus he would be unable to betray her confidence. He owed her and Alex that much, at least. After accessing the necessary information, he ruthlessly cut them off from the rest of his mind, only after setting a delayed timer to allow them to be accessed again in two hours, reverting his systems to normal operation. Most of Haley’s interrogations thus far had lasted for approximately thirty minutes, but he felt it was better to err on the side of caution.

Tentatively, Querl probed his mind. He knew that Colonel Haley was taking him in to ask him about Supergirl’s identity, but he needed to be certain that he didn’t know anything before she started asking questions. He scoured his mind for clues, anything that might point to Supergirl’s civilian identity. Fortunately, he was unable to unearth a single hint. For a moment, he amused himself by wondering if she perhaps had no alternate identity to discover, imagining that perhaps she spent all her spare time in the fortress of solitude. That was highly unlikely, and Querl was distantly aware that there was a part of his mind that had been completely cut off from the rest of him. He couldn’t sense what was there at all, only by probing at it could he identify a sort of blank, emptiness that he was certain had not been there thirty seconds ago. He supposed that must be where Supergirl’s secret identity lay. He mentally congratulated himself for thoroughly burying all knowledge of her identity to the point that despite his considerable intellect he was unable to make even an educated guess, and followed Colonel Haley into the interrogation room.

“Agent Dox,” Colonel Haley began, indicating for him to take a seat, “I must express my displeasure with your unwillingness to cooperate so far, especially considering the risk I have taken in vouching for you.”

Querl lifted a single eyebrow in query. “I’m afraid I don’t understand to what you are referring,” he answered, though of course he had a few ideas.

“You must know that after Supergirl’s rebellion, quite a few higher-ups were worried about further dissention in the ranks, especially from other aliens,” she said, levelling her dark gaze at him. “I am disappointed that you did not volunteer your assistance in the hunt for Supergirl’s identity.”

“To be perfectly honest, Colonel Haley, I did not feel it was any of my business, and I have been quite occupied with my assigned work,” Querl answered carefully, not allowing his disgust to show on his features. It would serve no good to lose his cool now.

“Why wouldn’t it be your business?” Colonel Haley leaned forward a little, her eyes glittering with the hint of danger. “She is a threat to our operations.”

“I have run the calculations,” Querl replied, quite honestly, “and it is quite statistically unlikely that Supergirl will impede the efficacy of DEO operations. Wasting my time attempting to learn her identity, however, is more statistically likely to result in impaired operations. Hence, I did not volunteer my services.” He leaned forward as well, meeting her gaze with a hard look of his own. “I am a pragmatist, Colonel Haley. It does the organization more good if I am able to do my job, rather than wasting my time on this political tiff between the President and Supergirl. I have no interest in politics. Allow me to do my job, and leave me out of this.” He considered ending it there, but the look that was crossing her features prompted him to add, “Please.”

“I find it very hard to believe that you don’t know Supergirl’s identity,” Colonel Haley said, leaning back in her seat again, her eyes fixed on his face like she was waiting for a reaction.

“Hard to believe as it may be, I don’t,” Querl replied. It wasn’t even a lie. He didn’t know, wouldn’t know, possibly ever again. He had no idea when that little blank spot at the back of his mind would return to him, if ever.

“If I ordered you to investigate, would you?” Colonel Haley challenged.

Querl sighed heavily. “As I have already said, it would be a tremendous waste of my time and your resources. I don’t know. I don’t know how long it would take for me to find out. She could be anyone, and I am not confident in my ability to learn her civilian identity.”

Eyes narrowed, Colonel Haley didn’t even blink. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“It’s the truth,” Querl replied, shrugging his shoulders briefly.

Sighing, Colonel Haley stood. “Wait here,” she commanded, “I’m not done with you yet.”

Well. That sounded vaguely sinister. Querl nodded, mentally tallying the tasks he still had to perform for his job. This was going to be a colossal waste of time, and he really didn’t have time to spare these days. Also, Nia was still waiting for him to call back and arrange a time and location for their conversation, and he didn’t like to leave her hanging. It felt unprofessional.

Colonel Haley didn’t take long, fortunately, returning with a slim briefcase that she set on the interrogation table. Flicking up the latch, she opened it to reveal some restraints, a few strips of rubber tubing, four vials of varying sizes and shades, three bottles with pills inside, two small bags filled with powder, another bag with a crystalline substance, three syringes, and at least a dozen needles. Interesting.

Querl nodded to the case. “Benzodiazepines? Barbiturates? Amphetamines?” As he examined the vials more closely, he found himself reacting with real surprise. “You even have an extract of Thanagarian Florpelveria, very rare, how did you get that?”

Colonel Haley didn’t answer, instead withdrawing the restraints and glancing at Querl, an icy look in her eye. “Jacket off, and put your wrists on the arms of your chair,” was all she said.

“Since you’ve neglected to ask, I must inform you that I have quite high resistance to most psychoactive substances,” Querl told her as he removed his jacket, laying it over the back of his chair before assuming the position she had requested. He wondered, somewhat absently, whether Colonel Haley had gone to this extreme in all her interviews. He hadn’t taken the time to thoroughly read up on the laws regarding the administration of contraband substances during interrogations, but he had a firm suspicion that it was frowned upon in most circles. “There is a very thin line between drug efficacy and reaching blood toxicity in my particular case - so do be careful. I know Director Danvers is a doctor, but if you yourself are not well versed in treating overdoses, you might wish to have a medical team on standby.”

Colonel Haley said nothing, simply shooting him a disgusted look as she took the first restraint and wrapped it around his wrist, affixing it to the chair. Odd, that she hadn’t gone with the handcuffs, though he supposed perhaps she was trying to avoid obvious marks. The cuffs would definitely leave an impression if he tugged against them. The velcro seemed far less likely to leave any evidence. So perhaps she was hoping to keep this quiet, after all. On the one hand, Querl supposed he could make a fuss. But what good would it do? He had nothing to hide, after all, he genuinely didn’t know Supergirl’s identity, and he was fairly confident that Colonel Haley wouldn’t kill him, if for no other reason than it would be very annoying to try and find another technician in the middle of this crisis.

“I’m not going to use anything that could damage your mind,” she said, still a bit too calm about discussing the myriad of illegal substances in her little black case. “After all, I need your memory intact and your technical skills, as you’ve reminded me, are essential to our operations.”

Querl nodded slowly, quite relieved not to be facing the florpelveria extract, or any of the other mind-altering drugs Colonel Haley had in stock. “I see. What will you be using, then?”

The corner of Colonel Haley’s mouth twitched as she tightened the second restraint, moving back to her side of the interrogation table and withdrawing one of the vials, the label of which had been facing away from him. “I trust you are familiar with Bismollian Tarantula venom?”

It took more effort that Querl was willing to expend to control the look of surprise that flashed across his features. Tarantula was a bit of a misnomer - whichever alien they had acquired this substance from must have chosen to refer to an Earth arachnid in trying to describe the creature. In reality, the comparison was somewhat like comparing a honeybee to an asian giant hornet. Kystryyka, if that is what Colonel Haley meant by “Bismollian Tarantula”, were heavily armored ten-legged monstrosities which could grow to the size of an average Earth golden retriever. Their bite was widely regarded as the most painful way to die, not only on the planet Bismoll, but in their entire quadrant of the galaxy. There were, of course, treatments to reverse the damage done by a kystryyka, but if medical attention was not sought within 12 hours, the prognosis was quite unfavorable. “You have the antivenom?” Querl asked, cautiously.

Colonel Haley nodded once, slowly. “The venom isn’t psychoactive,” she said, almost too casually, rolling the vial in her fingers. “It primarily affects the peripheral nervous system, activating pain receptors. Most people who die do so because of psychological distress, the venom itself is virtually harmless.”

“I am aware,” Querl answered, watching the vial roll across her fingers, noting the way his emotions, particularly fear, were beginning to grow unruly in his mind. Internally, he scooped them up and shoved them into one of his boxes. He didn’t have time to be dealing with it at the moment, and emotions weren’t going to help him. “I don’t know anything about Supergirl's identity,” he said softly, lifting his eyes from the vial to meet Colonel Haley’s dispassionate gaze.

“I think you do,” Colonel Haley replied, “I think you know quite a bit, actually.”

“Colonel Haley,” Querl tried to appeal to her sensibility, “If you use that venom, it would be considered torture. Cruel and unusual punishment. A human rights violation.”

Not a smile but rather a horrible facsimile of a smile crept across Colonel Haley’s features as she stared back at him, still calmly rolling the vial of venom between her fingers. “Why yes, Agent Dox, you are correct. It is a human rights violation.”

For a moment, Querl could almost feel his heart stutter to a stop. Surely she couldn’t mean it like that. The Alien Amnesty Act was still in effect, contested though it may be. He had submitted all the paperwork to ensure his citizenship, his files were completely above board, he was a loyal employee of the DEO, she couldn’t do this!

...could she?

“Now, Agent Dox,” Colonel Haley continued, setting the venom down and plucking a syringe from the briefcase, “You have a choice to make. Are you going to cooperate, or do you need convincing?”

Querl understood, now, why she had used the restraints, as he tugged against them instinctively. “I am a loyal employee!” he protested, “You cannot - I already told you that I don’t know anything!”

Colonel Haley stood now, her voice sharp and angry. “And I told you that I don’t believe you, Agent Dox.” She was practically snarling as she took one of the sterile needles and attached it to the syringe. “Tell me what I want to know.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Querl insisted frantically. His emotions were tumbling back out of the boxes and he was mentally scrambling, shoving his fear, resentment, bitterness, and mistrust wherever he could find space, his mind was scrambled, nothing was organized and he couldn’t seem to stop feeling, even though he needed nothing more than to be calm right now.

With a disappointed look, Colonel Haley carefully inserted the needle into the vial of venom, withdrawing a small amount into the syringe. “I didn’t want to have to do this,” she said, as if she were scolding a child and not about to commit what amounted to a war crime.

He was shaking now, throwing his weight against the chair. It was bolted to the floor, obviously, but he was well and truly working himself into a proper state of panic at this point, and so he continued to struggle. “Colonel Haley, please,” he begged. “Don’t do this, I really don’t know anything!” He was strong, stronger than the average human, and was beginning to suspect that perhaps these restraints had been favored over the handcuffs due to durability, too. He couldn’t get them to budge, no matter how hard he fought.

“I don’t believe you,” Colonel Haley said, looking vaguely irritated by his thrashing. “Convince me,” she intoned, carefully prepping the syringe, ensuring no air bubbles were contained within before turning to face him fully.

“Colonel Haley,” Querl pleaded, “Don’t do this. Please. Don’t.”

“Who is Supergirl?” Colonel Haley replied, calmly moving around the table.

“I don’t know!” Querl shouted.

“Will you help me find her identity?” Colonel Haley asked, voice cold, syringe in hand.

Querl froze. Sprock. “I… won’t.” he said softly. “No.”

“Then it appears you need convincing,” Colonel Haley answered. “Hold still.”

Querl had time to react, but what was the point? There was no escape. He’d made his choice, now he would have to live with the consequence. He sat still as she lifted his sleeve, jabbing the needle into the soft flesh of his upper arm. He could feel the venom as she carefully injected it - it burned a little going in. Then the burn began to spread, shocks like electricity dancing over his shoulder. A moment later, it felt as though his shoulder seized, like the worst muscle cramp he’d ever felt, but it kept getting worse. The pain had gone beyond unbearable and was now edging into incomprehensible. And it was spreading, the agony slowly trailing down his arm, nearing his elbow, easing across his shoulder, radiating into his chest, his back, his neck…

“Who is Supergirl?”

He didn’t know, he had no answer, he couldn’t reply, his jaw was clenched in an effort to hold back a scream.

“What is her identity?”

Querl felt dizzy - was he holding his breath? He must be holding his breath, if he exhaled it might come out as a shriek, did he even know how to breathe? The entire right side of his body was nothing but pain. He couldn’t sense anything beyond it, did he have a right arm? A right leg? It felt as though he was being dissolved in acid, but even then, the acid would deaden the nerves, eventually, this was like being dissolved in acid but regenerating at an equal rate. It hurt, it hurt, he couldn’t think like this, it was still going, his torso was screaming but his left leg was still okay, he could focus on that leg, try to shut out the rest of his body, but no, he could feel the prickle in his leg, soon he would have nowhere to hide from the agony, he couldn’t remember why this was even happening, time seemed to have lost all meaning, he could remember nothing, think nothing, all that existed was pain.

And suddenly, there was nothing. Querl breathed normally. Colonel Haley reached under his chin and lifted his head staring down at him, surprise in her eyes. “Agent Dox?” she said, eyebrows furrowing slightly.

He blinked back at her, trying to determine what had happened. It took him longer than it should have - he’d completely cut off access to his biological systems. His autonomic nervous system was still running, but he’d completely separated from it, cordoned off a small part of his mind that could only access his mechanical systems. It meant he no longer felt the pain, but he was also incapable of anything but the basic body functions that kept him alive. Also, running a system diagnostic, he noted that the pain was still affecting his body negatively. Even if he couldn’t sense it, here, his stress response was still spiking.

“Agent Dox, I have the antivenom,” Colonel Haley said, still holding his head aloft so she could look him in the eye. “But first I need to know Supergirl’s identity.”

I don’t know it, Querl thought. He couldn’t answer, though. He’d cut off access for a reason, if he went back to his body now, there was no guarantee he’d be able to respond anyway, given the pain he was currently experiencing.

“Listen to me, Agent Dox, I don’t like doing this, but she is a liability. I need to control her. You understand that, don’t you? Help me help you. Tell me what you know, and I will administer the antivenom.”

Querl sincerely wished he could throw her own words back in her face. I don’t believe you. If this was what she did to a loyal employee who opposed her, he didn’t want to know to what lengths she would go to control someone she saw as a threat. She could keep hurting him, sprock, she could let the venom kill him, if that’s what it took. He was never going to help her learn Supergirl’s true identity.

Colonel Haley watched him for another minute before dropping his head.

Querl didn’t have any way of controlling his body, so his head lolled against his chest, and all he could see were her boots. About two minutes later, his heart began to experience a concerning arrhythmia, likely due to the stress response the pain was causing. Perhaps Colonel Haley had used too high a dosage - of course, Querl had told her that he was resistant to psychoactive drugs. That didn’t extend to kystryyka venom, though he hadn’t thought to say so, as he’d thought it was obvious that kystryyka venom was not a psychoactive agent - she’d even noted as much herself. One bite’s worth of venom would have been sufficient. Querl hadn’t been able to spy the exact dosage, but he now suspected it was quite a bit more, or perhaps this was a concentrated form of the venom. Either way, he had a feeling that he had far less than twelve hours before his body would begin to suffer a life-threatening response to the venom.

As he thought it, his technical systems lit up frantically, dozens of error messages flooding his system. Grife, his heart had sprocking stopped, hadn’t it? He didn’t really have a choice, then, he had to brave the pain, Haley might not notice in time.

Oh sprock it hurt, his chest was on fire and it felt wrong. The wrongness was probably because the muscular organ was no longer beating, but the pain was definitely from the venom. Without blood flow, it wouldn’t spread any further, but it had already gone far enough to cause serious problems. “Heart,” Querl spat through clenched teeth, lifting his head, “stopped.” Black dots invaded his vision, soon pain would be the least of his worries. If he wasn’t resuscitated soon, he would experience brain damage. Even if it was only the biological part of his brain, it was so connected to his technical mind that the two really couldn’t function independently for any length of time.

That was the last thought he had for some time.

The first thing he noticed upon waking was that the pain had gone. The second thing he noticed was that he was still restrained.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Agent Dox,” Colonel Haley said. She didn’t sound pleased, but she also didn’t sound displeased. Mostly she sounded tired.

“I don’t know Supergirl’s identity,” Querl spat, “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I know,” Colonel Haley said. “You’re free to go, as soon as you can stand.” With that, she removed the restraints, packing them into her black case.

Querl ran a quick system diagnostic. It wasn’t great. He would need time to recover fully. But he was well enough to return to work. He wasn’t sure he could, though. Not for someone like Colonel Haley, who saw no problem with torture, so long as the person wasn’t human. But he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Alex needed him. Supergirl needed him. He’d find a way to keep going.

Rising quickly, Querl snatched up his jacket, still laid over the back of the chair, and stormed out. He’d barely exited before Alex was there, hurrying to walk beside him as he fled the interrogation room.

“Brainy, hey, are you okay?”

Querl wasn’t sure how to respond, how did one go about explaining something like this? He couldn’t talk here, he had to get away from the room with Colonel Haley still inside.

“I was once interrogated for eighteen straight days on the planet Venegar by Ik’Lofrai’iork, the emerald bloodeater,” he began, his voice strained.

Ik'Lofrai'iork was a true sadist, but even he hadn’t resorted to kystryyka venom. Though that was likely in part because he preferred hands-on torture. It had taken a few days for the Legion to realize he and his away team had been waylaid, several more days for them to find him and his teammates, and a few more days to mount a rescue. He and the three Legionnaires who had been captured with him had sampled quite a few torture methods in those eighteen days, and all four of them had required extensive reconstructive surgery afterwards, several months of recovery, and Querl really should still be going to therapy, like the rest of them were, though he’d managed to bribe his way into a clean bill of mental health. Being a Dox - a Brainiac - who appeared to struggle with mental health was seen by all as a liability, and Querl refused to be seen as such.

He turned to look at Alex, whose face was lined with concern, and he paused briefly. “And let me tell you, Colonel Haley,” here Querl pointed demonstratively back at the interrogation room, “would give that ten-eyed beast a run for his money.” With that, he resumed walking, still eager to leave this whole experience behind him.

“But you didn’t tell her anything, right?” Alex asked, concerned.

Querl paused at the junction of the hall, realizing that Alex wasn’t done speaking yet. He scratched his neck awkwardly, trying to scrub off some of the sweat that had soaked his hair during the encounter. “Eh, there was nothing to tell,” he said, slowly walking back down the hall towards Alex. “She just kept asking me about Supergirl’s identity.”

“So you used your brain compartmentalizing thing with Kara,” Alex said.

Querl frowned, not quite sure what she meant by that. “What does Kara have to do with anything?” he asked. They were talking about Supergirl’s identity, what did Alex’s sister have to do with that? Perhaps this was some other Earth custom that he’d managed to screw up.

“Is this permanent?” Alex asked, now sounding concerned. “Or are you going to remember that she’s Supergirl soon?”

Querl stared at her in absolute disbelief. “Kara?” he repeated, almost wondering if he had misheard. “Your sister, with the, the glasses?” he couldn’t suppress the amusement that followed that particular statement. It was absolutely ludicrous, he would have certainly noticed if Kara was Supergirl. “Good one, Director, they don’t even look anything-”

Suddenly, the small blank spot that had remained locked up in his mind resurfaced, all of the information and memories it contained rushing back to him, the code to refuse to recognize Kara and Supergirl’s faces as identical, all of it reverted back to normal and Querl was left feeling slightly dizzy. “Oh.” He frowned. “Yes, my compartmentalization was on a timer.”

“Okay,” Alex nodded, a relieved smile crossing her features before her phone rang. She glanced at it, then answered, “Kara, hey, what’s up?”

Querl pulled his jacket back on while she listened.

“Okay,” Alex hung up, then glanced at Querl. “I have to go,” she began. “Hey, uh, just… maybe sit down,” she suggested, patting him on the shoulder as she left.

Querl squeezed his eyes shut, blinking a few times as he considered the recommendation. He doubted it would do any good, but he really couldn’t think of anything else to do. With a sigh, he headed for the control room. Perhaps he’d be able to locate their missing Navy SEAL. He wasn’t confident, but then, quite a lot had shaken his confidence recently. Still, he had a job to do. Colonel Haley could think what she wanted, but Querl was determined to remain a loyal employee of the DEO. After all, it was how he could best support Supergirl, and he knew now, more than ever, that she was going to need all the help she could get.

#querl dox #brainy #brainiac 5 #alex danvers #DEO #supergirl #fanfic #my fic

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aplusjaybirdie · 5 years

Text

like real people do

read on ao3 here. @genderqueercrowley asked to see it so here you are! I’m done with it finally! Beta’d by @vowsatthewake

“Aziraphale, you bloody genius, I could kiss you!” Crowley exclaims, grin wide and free, and filled with a light that should be impossible for a demon. Life pauses for a moment, as he realizes the implications of what he’d said. Aziraphale pauses, wine-deep eyes lifting briefly up at Crowley, his soft lips barely parted, hair curling like a halo around him, catching the weak London sunlight filtering through the bookstore window and catching it alight with holy fire. Crowley opens his mouth too, though it would hurt like Falling had, did, to apologize, to reign himself back in, like he’s done so many times before, like both of them had done so many times before. Six thousand years of love and some of it had to spill out eventually, like wine out of a cup when the pourer is rather drunk, though usually only after the two of them had consumed a fair amount of alcohol. The two beings had gotten rather good at tactfully dancing around it, or reasoning around it, talking it over to convince the other (themeslves) that it had been nothing, a drunken slip of the tongue.

“Alright,” Aziraphale says, softly, barely a hint of vibration on the air, spoken like anything louder would bring down the wrath of Heaven and Hell.

And once, it might have, Crowley reflects, before the Armageddon’t.

Crowley does not need to breathe, but at this moment, this impossible, incredible, ineffable moment, it is the only thing he can do, mouth hanging open.

In. Out.

Aziraphale is pointedly not looking at Crowley’s eyes, staring determinedly at his chin instead. His back, however, is as firm as can be, and he is settled in his soft armchair like a king, hands lightly lying on the ends of the armrests, his fingers gently braced against the chair. He is assured in this; a general whose armies are merely waiting for the clarion call. There is no movement, no hesitation or regret, and in between breaths Crowley realizes three things.

In. Out.

First, that Aziraphale has finally caught up to Crowley, and in fact, Crowley realizes with a pleasant jolt to his stomach, like reaching the top of a roller coaster, teetering in the space-time between heartbeats before plunging down, knowing that you will survive and yet - that Aziraphale might be going rather faster.

In. Out .

Second, that were Crowley to release the moment like a firefly from a jar, Aziraphale would let him. The days would keep on turning, the earth would keep spinning on its axis, and the Ineffable Plan would keep being, well, ineffable.

In. Out.

Third, if Crowley was to replay the scene-though with the roles reversed- from so many years ago, where, in an old black Bentley that had survived for a century without even a scratch, he had been given something wholly Aziraphale, been trusted with something that could drag them apart forever, wrapped in a reminder, a soft, desperate tartan grasping, a Pandora’s Box that would plead for its life as a fool opened its lid, but with a Hope, a Maybe In the Future Invitation, trailing like smoke from dry ice from a thermos of the most blessed holy water. Where he had offered the closest thing he could give in return, a lift , and if he was to play out his part in the give and take and “temptation accomplished” and “hereditary enemies” and curl Aziraphale’s fingers back around the hope, the possibility in his extended palm and say “I can’t,” there might not be another chance for the rest of their lives.

In. Out.

Aziraphale is still staring resolutely at Crowley’s chin, and Crowley realizes that he had been sitting there long enough that it would be quite nerve-wracking for a being that has just put the friendship of his best friend, his only friend, now that Aziraphale has been forcibly separated from the Host(Crowley’s fault, a small voice in the back of his head whispers, perhaps Aziraphale would never have been pushed away from Heaven like a sticky child peeled off a leg). Though Aziraphale is sitting as steadfastly as ever, gaze still proud, still unflinching, Crowley’s eyes track the bob of Aziraphale’s Adam's Apple- what a ridiculous name- as he swallows almost imperceptibly.

Crowley has Made a Choice. If he is to Fall Again (but he has been Falling in Love for so many years, centuries, millennia), it will not be a vague saunter downwards. It will be a purposeful march to arms, to serve in the armies of Their Side, the only side that matters anymore. The rallying cry of “to Aziraphale!” has been shouted and Crowley would rather be damned- again- than leave him to fight whatever battles he must alone.

Aziraphale did not seem to have reacted to Crowley as he smoothly, though not necessarily without great difficulty, removed his sunglasses and thus pulling away the emotional wall that is always in place, unless he is drunk or alone or both, or on very rare occasions otherwise. He leans in, moving like he is in a dream, and his somewhat less plush chair finds itself a great deal closer to Aziraphale than it had been previously, allowing his palm, miraculously free of the sweat that had beaded there in just a few moments ago, a few wingbeats of soaring, falling, twisting thoughts, to rest on Aziraphale’s cheek. His fingers, long and thin and as bony as a skeleton’s(Aziraphale had once called them slender, beaming fondly as he held the tips of Crowley’s fingers in his own. Although both of them had been drunk at the time, Aziraphale had been rather more so, and Crowley had done his best to convince his heart that if it was going to beat so fast it might as well not beat at all) were allowed to tenderly wrap one golden-white curl around themselves, and somehow, miraculously, Crowley was allowed to purposefully (slowly, hesitantly, seeking permission the whole while, yes, but purposefully) march his lips on a pilgrimage to Aziraphale’s own holy pair.

At some point, Aziraphale’s eyes, thick with some undefinable emotion, had transferred from Crowley’s chin- no, not his chin, his lips - to Crowley’s eyes, and Crowley is reminded yet again that he is a Principality, a Nation Unto Himself, and thus is capable of moving with all the undeniable deliberateness of its ruler as he moves to meet Crowley in a kiss as soft as a rumble of thunder in the distance, followed- or, do they happen in the same moment? who can tell- by an arc of wondrous electricity, searing and sweet, along the places where Crowley’s atoms meet Aziraphale’s atoms and it feels like nothing has since Crowley spread stardust through the heavens, so many, many years ago.

Like any lightning bolt worth it’s stuff, the kiss is too short to really be comprehended, leaving behind only ghostly after images and a brief whirl of panic in which one's brain must catch up to the fact that it is still in fact in existence, and has not been blotted out for daring to be the tallest thing, the most favourable target around. Crowley’s brain, despite being of an altogether different and more powerful type than usual humans’, went through the same process, thudding about in a trembling, wild panic that brought to mind- well, a mind that was not struggling to catch up with six thousand years worth of love being wrestled and tugged and squashed down and suddenly freed in an instantaneous rush- the origin of the word “panic,” back to the Greeks and the half-goat immortal Pan, who actually happened to be a particularly wild demon who, unsurprisingly, as he was a demon, hated Crowley.

Aziraphale’s eyes had fluttered mostly closed, and one of his hands had settled on Crowley’s hand-the one resting on Aziraphale’s cheek- with the grace and warm regality the hand’s owner had used when on his chair, the other tangling and lacing and tangling again in Crowley’s other hand, his somewhat shorter and infinitely warmer fingers possessive with Crowley’s. He is mine, said his hands, and nothing could take him away from me.

Aziraphale had once pulled Crowley along with him to one of the original performances of Romeo and Juliet. It was exactly the sort of thing any proper demon would scorn and scoff at, and so perhaps that was why something of it had lodged itself in Crowley’s heart. He’d seen it dozens of times throughout the centuries, and had it read to him once otherwise, in secret, stolen moments, hiding away from everyone, those who might have ever cared most of all, and memorized it as quickly as he could, lining his soul with it’s gentle sighs.

(He still absolutely could not stand the other tragedies of Shakespeare, and overall thought the funny ones much more deserving of attention.)

Whatever the cause of Crowley’s shaking voice, the Bard Himself would have been moved to tears with the tenderness with which Crowley and Aziraphale held each other, the vulnerability of voices that shook themselves into stability. Their faces were inches apart, if that, and each murmured word puffed against the others’ face, caressing them and warming them with love.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:” Crowley’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, the bursting of his heart prolonging the s’s into an adoring hiss. “My lips, two blushing pilgrims stand, to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Aziraphale was smiling, soft lips curving up like a beam of sunlight- or moonlight, who can tell the difference after all? Crowley is in love- and if Crowley’s voice was a half-remembered dream brought to life, then Aziraphale’s was a loving caress, sure and impossibly soft, a fire in a hearth, tamed only because he wanted it to be, wanted to warm Crowley and bring him joy, a scratch of loving laughter because here was his demon, reciting him love poetry because who were the original star crossed lovers if not they?

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,” here he moved his hand, and Crowley’s too, so that their palms hung in the air against each other, fingers entwined, “and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

Crowley’s throat was dry.

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” he croaks, heart beating fiercely , and he is glad that he does not technically need his heart to survive because he does not think it’s working correctly.

“Ay, pilgrim,” says Aziraphale, softly earnest and softly, fondly amused in one. “Lips that they must use in prayer.”

“O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.” Crowley is not sure when, if, his words and Romeo’s became one, a needing keen, desperate want lying like a snake waiting for the moment to bite Orpheus’s bride and send her down to the Underworld, to Crowley, to keep Aziraphale there with him forever- ��They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

They kiss, again, and it is just as much of a sweet shock as when Adam first came, as much as a gift as the first rain, as much as a wonder and a fierce delight as the first of anything, and all of the faith Crowley has lost is exalting in the streets of his own personal path from quiet despair.

It is rather longer than their first kiss.

Aziraphale is an excellent kisser, and Crowley is more than happy to let him take the lead. One hand stays, snaring Crowley’s hand, and the other moves from Aziraphale’s cheek down to Crowley’s side, skimming over his jacket and coming to rest on Crowley’s waist, pulling him as close as possible without toppling Crowley out of his chair. Then Aziraphale nips Crowley’s lips and Crowley involuntarily- though not unwillingly- gasps his mouth open and for a single starstruck moment, a fraction of the time it takes to blink- not that either of them were blinking, eyes closed into the kiss- they stand on a cliff edge and then Crowley’s mouth is burning with something with just a tinge of holiness, a brilliant spark that Crowley couldn’t imagine parting with, even if he were to dissolve into a demonic puddle, which he feels he is dangerously close to. Not because of Aziraphale’s holy saliva, but because, despite all his bluster and posing and brag, Crowley is ultimately a very sensitive being and being kissed so thoroughly is quite undoing him. Aziraphale does not have a snake tongue, though Crowley could have been fooled. It is light and nimble in Crowley’s mouth, darting around for surely not enough time, an eternity that feels like an instant, and Crowley misses its presence terribly in the second or so it takes Aziraphale to move his lips- which Crowley realizes taste of ozone and vanilla chapstick, a touch of wine(neither of them are drunk, and Crowley is glad) and something intensely older, something inherently Aziraphale, from Crowley’s lips to the corner of skin next to them, open-mouthed like he’s delivering a benediction(and being blessed had never been so wonderful, not for an angel and certainly not for a demon) and Aziraphale is pressing passionately precise kisses down Crowley’s face, onto his neck. He pauses for a moment at the hollow of Crowley’s throat, and it is the opposite of Falling. Perhaps, the small part of Crowley not currently occupied with the angel, his angel, kissing him like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, muses, all that is needed to turn a demon into an angel is love, true and angelic and specific love directed full force onto them, and then that small part of his brain joins the rest of it, exalting wholly in the moment. And then joins in protesting, like a wave crashing against the immovable bone-rocks of the beach, when Aziraphale stops. His thoughts had been mostly compressed into emotion, to allow for him to process the sheer amount of information and sensations flowing through his nerves. So it took some time- not a lot, mind you, but any amount of time is a lot during possibly the most important moment of your six thousand year life- for Crowley to start properly working again, and so as Aziraphale rose his head back to the level of Crowley’s, all he could manage was a sound that was most assuredly not a whimper, nor a whine(at least if you were to ask Crowley about it later), but more of a “ngk.”

Aziraphale’s cheek was warm and pink under Crowley’s hand, his breath was a little heavy, and his eyes shone like stars pulled from the undeserving heavens.

“Aziraphale, I-“ Crowley can hardly speak. He doesn’t want this moment to ever end, can’t bear to imagine what it would be like to exist without Aziraphale’s hand in his, without Aziraphale’s lips on his.

“My darling, my dearest,” murmurs Aziraphale. “My demon.” He is fond, and not long ago(no, not long at all) Crowley would have resented being called something so soppily un-demonic as “darling” but that was then and this is now. Crowley would endure a “sweetie tums” if it was Aziraphale speaking. Maybe. Well, maybe not that particular pet name; even if Hell no longer wants anything to do with him he is still a demon and he does have some self respect and Aziraphale is pulling Crowley out of his chair and onto Aziraphale’s, except the chair was not of a size that they could sit next to each other on it(funny, Crowley could have sworn that it was bigger, not that he was complaining) and so Crowley ends up kissing Aziraphale like it’s the end of the world from the angel’s lap, both of his arms around Aziraphale’s neck, fingers running through almost white curls and one of Aziraphale’s hands pressing warmly on his waist, and the other on his back, pushing Crowley in even closer to Aziraphale. Everywhere that Crowley’s skin touches Aziraphale’s there are intense tingles, like his entire body had fallen asleep and was only just now waking up. Crowley has recovered enough of his usual swagger to put his snake tongue to good use, and Aziraphale is matching him. Finally, they are going the same speed, and the wait is worth it. They are caught in a bubble of time that is purely their own, existing solely in the arms of the other. Like two halves of the same soul, bright and lasting and burning with infinite starfire. “I love you,” says Crowley. “I love you, I love you, I love you-“

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” replies Aziraphale, pulling from his beloved books to express what he alone cannot find the words to describe. “I would love you if I never saw you again, and I would love you if I saw you every Tuesday.” Aziraphale is pressing kisses to Crowley in between quotations. “I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. I love you, Crowley,” and all the while, Crowley melted into Aziraphale. Demons are not used to really any amount of love, and though Crowley was more used to it than most, as he had been living with a literal being of love for several millennia, he was being inundated with the type of love he didn’t think he’d ever felt in such focus, not in Hell, not on Earth, and his memories of Heaven were foggy enough if he had felt it he couldn’t remember and so it didn’t count, and Crowley was nearing the point where he might just turn into a snake(which would be rather embarrassing) and so Crowley shut up the angel as effectively as he could by kissing him even harder than he had before and using all of his devilish wiles available, though admittedly he didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing.

Aziraphale shut up.

Which of course meant that was the moment that the bookshop doorbell rang at that moment, and Aziraphale, hardly breaking stride, snapped the sign on the door from begrudgingly open to happily closed and called towards the entrance from among where they draped around each other somewhere among the stacks,

“We’re closed!” Without waiting for confirmation that’s whoever it is has left(or rather, found themselves roughly shoved outside the door, in accordance with the sign), he turns back to Crowley, deepening the kiss, grabbing lapels and twisting fabric, pulling both of them to their feet with reckless and purposeful abandon. Every line of them scorched in a most delightful way, tingling and roaring and crashing within and around them like a tempest. Lost in each other, bits of their true forms begin to leak into the physical realm. Wings sprout from their backs with a contented, aching gasp. A nimbus of eternal, ephemeral energy lances around Aziraphale, crackling pleasantly where his skin meets Crowley’s, whose hands have slipped under Aziraphale’s creamy soft, oversized knit sweater. His fingers are rubbing little circles, little pieces of golden forever, into Aziraphale’s skin, like watching an hourglass and tipping it over with just enough sand left in the top that it never ran out. Scales, black as an oil slick, dance along Crowley’s spine, and form constellations on his shoulders, hiding beneath a leather jacket and silky smooth shirt. The whites of Crowley’s eyes disappear- their owner has better things to think of- and under his eyelids they shine with an inner light, winging their way to the height of joy. There are no words for this moment, but if Aziraphale were to try to voice what could only be described as ineffable, every word would ring with a hundred holy chords, a hundred hallelujahs, their nuances and trembling songs inaudible to the mortal ear, overlapping in whispers and yells and gentle screams in languages that haven’t existed in millennia, that won’t exist for millennia, in tongues that would break minds and addle thoughts into a twisting, writhing mass, the bastard children of Babel and things far older. The two of them hold infinity in the palms of their hands, and an hour would hold eternity, if they asked.

They had started somewhere in the twisting, purposefully labyrinthine shelves of the book shop, lazily filling out crosswords from local papers and sharing smiles over hot chocolate with too many marshmallows. Evidence of the rest of the day could be found in the books, knocked from the shelves and hastily miracled back into place and then knocked again, Aziraphale’s beloved jacket, thrown over a chair, black and white feathers scattered- one here, one there, three a few feet away, and finally in an angel and a demon snuggled together on a couch in the back room of a bookstore that ran odd hours and always smelled vaguely molding, stealing kisses and giggling at each other as late-night television quietly mumbled on an old box set, complaining that no one was paying it attention.

“I didn’t realize you remembered that much about Romeo and Juliet,” said the angel, gently playing with the edge of the demon’s sleeve, dark black- except when it caught the light just right, revealing a glowing grey- and all sharp edges and hard lines- until you touched it, when it became soft as a lover’s sigh, soft as a lamb in Eden.

“Well,” said the demon, clearing his throat. “I may have seen it a few times over the centuries.”

“Enough times to have it memorized?” asked Aziraphale, with the kind of voice that could not be used without a raised eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t like the tragedies.”

“I don’t!” Crowley said hastily. “I just-” His voice softened. “It reminded me of us.”

“You old softie,” teased Aziraphale, kissing Crowley’s cheek.

“Oi, I’m a demon , I’m not soft,” groused Crowley, smiling. “Just very, very in love.” And he kissed Aziraphale back, this time on the lips.

Lovers have been feeding each other sweetly sickening coos since the beginning of time. Aziraphale and Crowley had watched, silently, as Adam and Eve whispered sweet nothings to each other, and both had grimaced slightly and turned away as nothings had progressed into rather loud and vigorous somethings.

However, nothings were more than enough to lull one particular demon into sleep, safe in the arms of his beloved like he was nowhere else, and Aziraphale was more than happy to play sentinel.

After all, he was a Principality, a Nation Unto Himself, and a good ruler will always take care of his own.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #n writes #good omens fic #i cant believe i actually wrote the words ‘holy saliva’

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finsterhund · 5 years

Text

Childhood Emotional Abuse and the Resulting Unhealthy Fears Involving Comfort Items

For those unfamiliar with the concept of comfort items/comfort objects the idea is simple. People, children especially, become emotionally attached and find comfort in an inanimate object. The most famous example being Linus’ blanket from the Peanuts comic.

Studies have been done that show comfort items being more common among children living in suburban communities and in cultures where parents are expected to work full time and spend long periods away from their young children. Rural communities where parents stay closer to home and work in jobs that can be done on one’s own property see comfort objects in children less.

It used to be believed that a comfort item was evidence that a child did not have a healthy strong bond to their maternal figure, but more recently it’s suggested that developing a bond with a comfort item can also be the first steps to independence from a parent as a child explores their personal identity being separate from their provider. It being the first thing that is theirs that they have responsibility over.

Comfort items are also fairly common in children with developmental disorders, and adults on the autism spectrum can often have them as well. They serve as a means of grounding one’s self and finding familiarity, security, and safety in an unfamiliar or perceived unsafe environment.

And with that understanding it should come at no surprise that people with trauma disorders will have comfort items as well.

Recently I’ve been trying to rationalize why I have such an unhealthy view on the physical health of, and personal responsibility for the natural wear on my comfort items. I’ve seen many others who don’t seem emotionally devastated by comfort items fading, greying, losing their softness, becoming threadbare and such. There’s more an interest in protecting the textile feel of the worn stuffed toy than there is in making them bright and soft again. But for me it’s a source of emotional anguish.

To me the physical wear on any of my stuffed animals (my comfort items are almost exclusively stuffed dogs these days) is the source of significant mental duress. To the point that I will suffer not bringing them places because I fear for their safety. At the cost of my own comfort.

I have figured out what I think is the reason for this.

I have severe abandonment, attachment, and loss issues and these have been directed at my comfort items due to the sheer amount of times in my early childhood that mine were stolen, harmed, and destroyed by my birth parents. Often times as a punishment or as an attempt to forcibly “cure” me of my mental illnesses.

Warning: the following few paragraphs will be discussing this. In explicit detail. I want to get it out of my head. I want my experiences out. I want them heard. But they are tough to hear.

My earliest memory of a comfort item being stolen were the most common way my birth mother punished me for anything and everything up to about age 7. My birth father physically abused me which many people will rightfully say is worse, but the things my birth mother did were severely emotionally abusive. Bear in mind, the reasons for this “punishment” weren’t always bad things that I had done. Off the top of my head some of these reasons for being punished were:

Not paying close enough attention when something pertaining to her religion was being done or said

Complaining about something to do with her religion in any way was immediately and severely punished. Was pretty much the only time she herself physically abused me.

Stuttering when reciting passages from the bible (bear in mind this was age 3-6 and I had a significant speech impediment)

Being selectively mute

Speaking out of turn

Crying. For pretty much ANY reason. Including fear, hunger, and pain

Accidentally hurting myself

Not eating properly (holding cutlery right, chewing properly, being a picky eater)

Showing visible fear or apprehension in public

Not wanting to be held, hugged, touched, or picked up

Showing resistance towards intrusive, uncomfortable, or unpleasant medical procedures

If it was severe enough (it angered her enough to resort to violence) she would “safely” beat me with her hand or a wooden spoon, but most of the time it was a psychological punishment that took advantage of my Achilles's heel: stuffed animals.

Now even though I definitely was not ready, she forced me to sleep alone starting around the age of 2. I was one of those kids who was TERRIFIED of sleeping. (not of the dark yet, but that’s coming, oh don’t you worry) I did not feel at all safe in the house when it was day time, and was constantly afraid and looking over my shoulder and alert of impending dangers. My ears constantly pricked for the tiniest of sounds. This is common for CPTSD sufferers. It’s hyper-vigilance. Anyways, this was worse at night. It was too quiet, and my birth mom was often at work. That was when she worked. Night shifts. So naturally being without her (despite her shortcomings I trusted her and relied on her back then) it was scary. This was also the same time frame that the Spot incident happened which messed with my brain severely. I remained a bedwetter up until around 10 due to this and further complications because of how I was emotionally abused.

The point I’m haphazardly getting at and providing context towards, is that I would usually be punished by having my stuffed animals taken away at bedtime. Knowing, full well, that they were the only things that helped me feel safe. She made a big deal about this too. Mentally degrading me for it. Sometimes she’d take them away one by one to further incite fear. She made sure to know each of their names and made it seem like they were going to be emotionally harmed by being taken away as well. I remember one distinct instance where I didn’t want to recite whatever bullshit she was trying to record me saying on camcorder (I was also scared of cameras) and I whined and tried to run away. She pinned me down in place and said that for every mistake she’d take away one of my stuffed animals. I couldn’t talk. Evidently we got down to all of them (about five) at which point I began sobbing and pleading with her to have even a sliver of empathy. She did not.

This punishment sits comfortable in the timeline coincidentally around the same time that my nyctophobia first started to present itself/develop. It also aligns with when I was locked in my bedroom with the light bulb removed for hours at a time as a punishment. I could not in any way verbally react to being forced to sleep in the dark with no stuffed animals because my birth father would just beat me. Even crying relatively quietly. At that point I was unrelenting and “the only punishment that worked” was physical violence. Everything else had been taken from me. I’d pass the hours by holding as still as possible and breathing shallowly. I was given a nightlight by a relative eventually but this was also frequently stolen from my room for bedtime as a punishment. My memories of this blend together with being forced to sleep in the dark later into my childhood. It was all the same: The completely cover yourself with a blanket, not move or make any sounds, and hope you mercifully fall asleep even though it feels like you’re suffocating under there thing.

My birth mother rarely relented with the bedtime punishments. Even though I would spend the rest of the day begging her to. She could pretty much force me to do things just by threatening them. I tried to be as good as possible but it really felt like she could do it at any time, no matter what. Like she was deliberately looking for things that would justify it.

She showed a lot of resentment towards me and did psychologically abusive things like this frequently back then. She did let up with time. Early in my life she harbored a lot of resentment because my conception had ruined her life, career, and tied her into an abusive marriage and she did, no question, take it out on me. I think a big reason why it stopped is because in order to get me ready for kindergarten I had to see a speech therapist and they immediately told her that she was being fucking batshit and making me worse.

I don’t 100% blame her for this. I know full well extremists in her religion promote this as “proper child training” and she was extremely gullible, believing pretty much anything that was spoonfed to her with the trappings and flavoring of her faith, and that a lot of the time my birth father would make her punish me or else he’d physically assault me. But still, it’s obviously something that destroyed the way my brain works. I was something she didn’t want. That she didn’t value. She learned to love me (or at least the concept of having children. She doesn’t value ME per say, as an individual or for who I am) later, but the early childhood developmental damage was done. We can dance around the issue of who’s responsible, who’s guilty, who’s at fault all we want but in the end it happened and I suffered for it.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier where if it involved her religion she’d go feral, at one point when I was a very very very hyper 5 year old stuck inside for Sunday school instead of getting to play outside on a bright warm summer afternoon like a regular boy I had brought a dog with me named Swirly. A golden retriever with slightly curly fur fabric and a soft fake rubber nose. He had been bought at a Rexall drugstore. Anyways, I was bored out of my fucking mind because I was 5 and was forced to sit in a stuffy dusty room and listen to big complicated grown up words from a six thousand year old “translated into extremely dated English” book and started stimming with Swirly by moving his ears up and down and similar small, non-obstructing things. Once Sunday school (hour and a half) was over it was pretty much time for the regular church service (hour and a half to two hours) so for those wondering that means a 5 year old boy who is very hyper having to sit still and do nothing and “pay attention” in extremely uncomfortable clothes his birth mother forced him to wear for a total of around 3-3.5 hours. So, knowing that the five or so minutes between the end of Sunday school and the beginning of the regular service would be the only chance I got, I began running around in the church basement and tossing Swirly up in the air and catching him. A fun activity to get some of my pent up energy out with and stretch my legs right? Wrong. My Sunday school teacher who was an asshole and an absolute lying manipulative scab got all snappy and hostile towards me and tried to force me to hand over Swirly. She had never hit me, she had no power over bedtime, so of course I wouldn’t obey. Fuck you. So I refused to hand over Swirly and easily avoided her by running the fuck away and hiding in the storage closet. She then snitched to my birth mom, claiming that I was a “serious disruption” and being “disrespectful” and “not paying attention.” My birth mom then took me outside to scream at me, took Swirly, locked him in the car, and then when the ordeal was finally over she took me home and beat the absolute shit out of me and then wouldn’t let me sit down after because I’d get blood everywhere so I was forced to stand but I ended up just lying down face first on the floor because my legs got too tired. Swirly was kept on a high shelf in the cupboard for a month as further punishment. Part of me thinks I still have him... somewhere... I renamed him to a character in a book I liked. But yeah. In case it wasn’t obvious I hated going to church. Sure the windows were cool and it taught me the valuable skill of staring off into space and daydreaming about cool space battles and shit, but it was so much a waste of time that I will never get back. I also wasn’t allowed to bring toys with me after that. Made me hate it even more. Congratulations.

I was immune compromised and that factored into stuffed animal theft a lot. She would frequently take my stuffed animals and force them through the washer and dryer. On hot cycles. Sometimes used bleach. This destroyed many of them and caused further distress. I started actively fighting against attempts at washing my stuffed animals with tooth and nail; hiding them, attacking with violence, and the classic begging and pleading and hysterical sobbing. It was at this time she introduced me to a book called The Velveteen Rabbit. This book actually has extremely positive messages about the wear and tear of children who love their toys making them “real” which likely would have helped me with this if not for how I was introduced to the book but it ended up being completely ruined for me because instead it was used as a cautionary tale of “let me wash your stuffed animals or I will BURN THEM” because of the boy in the story having his possessions burned due to scarlet fever. I really don’t know what it is about Christians and burning things. Specifically stuff that’s made for kids. To this day if you burn something meant for kids I will laugh at your funeral. You are a detriment to society.

So anyways, I was threatened with fiery stuffed toy execution if I didn’t let them get matted and torn with chipped and shattered safety eyes in the washer and dryer. At one point I did get a stuffed toy burned. By my birth father. I don’t remember why but I do remember him tormenting me about it, degrading me, and being physically restrained as he threw the penguin who’s name has long since been repressed in a far recess of my brain never to come out again into the woodburning stove. I remember the event like an out of body experience where I was only loosely connected to the physical plane. Like I’m not in control of my own body. Most of my traumatic memories are like this. It’s like I try to forget that that was me and that I’m watching a movie instead. My brain humanely doesn’t show the actual burning. Only the toss.

I’ve had other things burned. Books, VHS tapes, computer games, drawings I’ve made, etc. They’ve all been extremely traumatic and my brain blocks out most of them. I remember I had a Dragonball computer game or something (all I remember was it was a disc) and my birth mother burned it because she was under the impression that Japanese cartoon styles looked “evil, hateful, and demonic.” This happened sometimes too. I wasn’t even being punished. She was just a religious lunatic who thought kid-friendly media that didn’t promote her religion was dangerous and needed to be destroyed. She frequently got parenting self-help books that promoted beating your kids and burning secular toys to show your kids that they were evil. She eventually eased up on this with time though and I went from being screamed at for wanting to watch Pokemon at 4 to getting to own Pokemon cards and Harry Potter books (bot not letting my birth father find out) at 12.

Things being burned happened a little bit later into my life, around 5-10. The stuffed animal theft (with them being returned eventually most of the time) was from earlier. Theft of personal possessions that held significant emotional value to me was continued to be used but it stopped being used as a punishment and started being an attempt to “cure” me of being mentally ill. “Weak” as my birth father called it, but as I’ve come to suspect “easily identifiable as being abused in the home” as being the true motivator. They were under the impression that I needed to be forcibly made to stop having comfort items altogether.

I had trouble with sensory feelings. I could only wear specific fabrics, clothes that fit a certain way, and would become severely distressed if forced to wear an unsuitable fabric or something too tight. As a result I would become attached to articles of clothing for feeling just right. I had a pair of bright green shorts and they were my favorite shorts. Even though the only damage that ever befell these shorts was easily fixed, my birth mother decided that I was relying “too much” on these shorts and tried to hide them. I found them. She then destroyed them in my presence to “teach me a lesson.”

Things like this happened frequently throughout my life. Another instance I remember vividly, when I was 8 or 9 was when me and my brother got happy meals from McDonald’s. They came with a little stuffed toy. My brain can’t piece together what it was, repression and all that. But I remember it being red. My birth mother had taken us out to McDonald's for some positive reason. Because we had good report cards or something. Anyways, so we had McDonald’s and went back home but she forgot something at the restaurant so she went back to get it. Leaving me and my brother alone with my birth father who decided for whatever reason that we hadn’t deserved McDonald's so he came into our rooms to beat us and take away the toys. My brother submitted quicker than I did and I heard him hit the wall and not cry after before my birth father went to me. I had a death grip and absolutely did not want to let go. I put up more of a fight and he physically assaulted me, squeezing around my throat with one hand and tearing the toy out of my hands with the other. It ripped. I tried to take it back and he repeatedly slammed my head into the metal bars of my bed frame, causing bruising and broken skin on my right temple.

My birth father frequently did shit like that. Just decide out of the blue that we didn’t deserve something or needed to be taught a lesson. My birth mother when she was around would come between us in these circumstances so he often waited until she was gone. He didn’t like us being “spoiled” with praise, nurturing, rewards, and food so he’d often treat us this way after something positive happened like we went with my birth mom to see a movie or to the swimming pool. Getting a new stuffed animal was usually grounds for harassment.

Honestly the fact that this was so common it’s a wonder that I’ve managed to keep the most important stuffed animal from my early years with me. Battered, worn, falling apart, missing his face, with skin grafts and a loose eye Ope is worse for wear, that’s putting it lightly. But I still have him. My guess is that it’s because he was given to me by my grandparents and they died when I was five. My birth mother had and still has a lot of remorse for leaving them, for not listening to them about my birth father, etc. His connection to them probably saved him from destruction or being thrown away. I’m not complaining. He matters so much to me. Despite how badly he’s fallen apart all these years he’s the only stuffed animal who’s degradation doesn’t cause me as much emotional stress. It still makes me sad when I think about it, but that’s just Ope. I still chew on his nose. Some things are eternal.

The last time I had to deal with parental stuffed animal theft was later. Within the couple years or so before my friend rescued me and took me in and we shared that fateful first apartment. At that point my birth father was gone and the locks were changed. He wasn’t living there. Because of my high school’s disability program I had got a part time job. Yes me. With a job. It was possible at one point. Anyways, while I was out, being the SOLE BREADWINNER of the house at the time, my birth mother for some fucking reason decided to take a bunch of my stuffed animals to the thrift store. In her infinite wisdom she didn’t think far enough ahead to consider that:

Going to thrift stores is one of my only recreational activities.

That I did so very frequently.

And that exact thrift store was my favorite one to go to.

Never mind the fact that eventually I would have noticed when I got out my stuffed animals to brush them for stress relief. She really did think I was that stupid. It went about as well as you’re thinking it went. I went to the thrift store, went to the stuffed animal section. “Oh. I have one of these! I have one of these too. Wait... the dent in his safety eye is the exact same one that I--” And then I was in HYSTERICS as I had to buy back as many of my stuffed animals that hadn’t been sold yet as I could. My brain repressed pretty much everything after discovering that they were mine. Can’t remember bringing them up to the front or coming back home. I was absolutely DESTROYED. Why the fuck would she have ever thought that this was an okay thing to do? I don’t know.

When I went back there to clear the old house out several years later she had the nerve to get mad at me for wanting to donate things I didn’t want (but she wanted me to want), as if she hadn’t snuck behind my back and done it to things I actually held value in, taking advantage of me being at work to do so.

Looking back on just how much my comfort items were exploited to abuse me and torture me for the crime of existing it really isn’t a matter of WHY I get so manic about and attached to the ones I have now. You should be able to see the clear path of progression that lead to me being so terrified of bad stuff happening to my things. I also have to wonder if this didn’t also contribute to my unhealthy addictive and obsessive personality. I was misdiagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and I wonder if my hypersensitivity, special interests, and the like are the result of being punished for enjoying things and having boundaries. Maybe my new psychiatrist will be able to tell me that. But for now I just wanted to write out a bit of a memoir about these sorts of things. It feels good to acknowledge and expel them onto the internet.

Where I am now I am constantly buying stuffed dogs, each with their own name, each being cared for and valued. Some are more important than others:

Tiny, bought for me by one of my best friends Rob/Fishytales who is my immediate go-to when I’m having mental problems to just hold close. Afraid to let anything happen to him he mostly gives comfort by just being there. A reminder of what a great friend Fishy is.

Whisky, who goes with me to conventions as part of my cosplay, who I hold in my arms when I sleep and who’s deteriorating softness has been the subject of many a late night vent post or cry.

Wheezy, who I bought at a flea market where I eventually got robbed and lost everything else I bought except him because I held onto him. A meme parody of the original Whisky who ended up being the one I brought around in public when we were searching for a new place to live and I didn’t feel safe where we were crashed for the time being.

The beanie baby dog army, toys used to be kept as an “investment” now selling for a dollar a piece and easy to buy in perfect condition. A reminder of my early years and great high quality stim toys who look cute and are satisfying to hold. My four favourites being the one I had as a toddler, the one I always wanted to have but was never able to, the one that’s named after my first childhood dog, and the one who was also a dalmatian like the first aforementioned one. (Dalmatians used to be my favourite breed)

The customized beanie baby dogs with wings, just like my dream stuffed animal I’ve always wanted to have, and just like my imaginary friend who became my voice when I had none.

There’s the Vicious plush and the Andy plush, characters from my favourite video game who brighten up my room and make it feel safe.

I have a little red pillow that is technically a comfort object. I’ll always hold onto it.

And my Andy hat helps too doesn’t it? It’s like armor for when I go outside. Being Andy is my first line of defense for fears and trauma woes.

Last of all is Ope. Who despite looking like a rotting corpse has kept me moving forward and feeling brave. Who comforts me with his textile feel, smell, and just by being there.

And you know what? So many people, even now, have at one point felt the need to berate me about my “stuffed animal problem” as if my 1 dollar each beanie babies are as much of a crisis as your super expensive but socially more “acceptable” adult grown up hobbies, or in any way comparable to having thousand-dollar-limit credit cards or car payments or whatever.

Like no offense, but it couldn’t be more obvious that these mean so much to me because of severe trauma and child abuse. Your lack of compassion or failure to acknowledge another person’s life experiences is demeaning and degrading. Wow. How dare I buy stuffed dogs at thrift stores and occasionally on ebay and want to get collars for them and bring them around with me everywhere. It might not be that way for every child with a comfort object, but mine WERE because I didn’t have a bond with a maternal figure. And I still don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to have parental guardians. I don’t know how to feel safe. I have violent nightmares almost every night and wake up with bruises all over my legs. Apparently I’m not loud during these nightmares so they’re easy to ignore. I get that. Fine.

But listen. We are mortal, only here for a little while. We shouldn’t have to suffer just to appear normal to appease some industrialist dehumanizing status quo. We should do things because it makes us happy, because it makes us feel safe, because it gives us comfort, peace, and enjoyment. We should care about comfort, health, safety. That means having a home, medicine, food to eat, and of course, things that bring emotional well-being. Like my dogs do for me.

And when you ridicule me and make fun of me for doing what I can to feel safe in this big scary world, you are serving as echos of the same violence that refused to let me bring them to school, that took them from me to try and force me to be “normal,” that stole them from me to punish me for things that children just do, because their children. You echo the way they were stolen to “cure” me of things of which there isn’t a cure. Which DOESN’T WORK. It only causes further mental damage. So all you’re doing is being the ghost of that damage. making so that I can’t escape it, recover, or heal.

I don’t know if I’ll ever not feel guilt for my stuffed animals showing their age, getting dirty, and little accidents that sometimes just happen. Maybe with time I’ll stop projecting blame onto myself, the victim of what happened, and realize that I was just a regular kid in an irregular situation. But until then I DO know that YOU shouldn’t be projecting shame onto me for something that harms no one.

I wish I could go back to when I was five and knew how to stand up to people. To tell adults that invade my personal boundaries “No.” Because telling me how to live my life is the definition of invading my personal boundaries. And you need to stop.

I’m proud of my stuffed animals. I care about them. In spite of how I was raised to perpetuate violent and fear I want to treat them with love, respect, and dignity. They’re not just worthless, disposable, things. I love them.

And my first step to standing up for myself and not taking blame for things that aren’t my fault will be bringing them with me. Keeping them with me. I will not be ashamed of them. I have not only suffered but survived horrors few children in the western world go through and my stuffed animal entourage is my reparations. I have the right to have them. Especially after my past.

They give me independence. And that there’s something I have control over in this world.

#comfort object #comfort item #stuffed animals #actually traumatized #actually cptsd #cw: child abuse #text post #long post #ask to rb

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inviictas · 5 years

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⌜ NON-BINARY, SHE / HER / THEY / THEM | killer queen by queen, slytherin, entj ⌟ ⏤ meet MAKENA RENÉE THURMAN ; a TWENTY SIX year old who kind of resembles ZAZIE BEETZ, don’t you think? they originally hailed from HAWAII where they lived with their parents, COBRA BUBBLES & NINA THURMAN ( LILO & STITCH / OC ), but word is that they’ve been focusing on spoiling their daughter this past year. they’ve always been pretty INTUITIVE & STAUNCH, but have gotten way more IRASCIBLE & INSCRUTABLE since they woke up. maybe their powers of TYCHOKINESIS & LATENT TELEKINESIS can help in taking down the dome. you can check out her stats HERE.

she was beautiful in the way a ( forest fire ) was beautiful: something to be admired from a DISTANCE, not up close.

SECTION ONE OF FOUR: BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warning for talk of car crashes, alcohol, drugs and pregnancy

makena renée thurman. she was born by c section at 4:23 am on august 20th, 1992, for all intents and purposes the daughter born of the love shared between cobra bubbles and nina thurman - only the family ever REALLY knowing that in truth, she was something of their blessing, moreso than she was a miracle. cobra couldn’t have children. they had discovered it LATE, and had always felt just a small bit hopeless about their situation. it was outright impossible for them to ever have a child of their own, but after a great deal of deliberation, they made the choice to go down the road of sperm donation. little makena was the final result.

the truth of their circumstances was not a secret they felt was appropriate to hide from their daughters curious mind. even young, she had QUESTIONS, and to their credit, they gave her answers. the first time she asked she was five, and the question amounted to “why [she didn’t] have a younger brother or sister yet”. she loved thayer - squealed with childish excitement every time her older brother so much as APPEARED around a corner, held onto every word he said, followed him everywhere that he went. but she wanted to be a BIG sister, she said, sullenly, and cobra didn’t hesitate in explaining. mommy and daddy love each other very much. we always have. and we wanted you so much that we found a way to have you, even though it wasn’t easy. and maybe someday, we’ll find a way to give you a younger brother or sister, too.

the next time the subject was broached, she was ten, and it was by her mother. nina sat her down to have the talk about the birds and the bees and after a previous nights discussion, had decided, with cobra, that it was time for makena to know DETAILS. she threw them in at the end. that’s what dad meant, when he said we found a way to have you. MY egg, and someone else’s sperm. you aren’t his, biologically, but that doesn’t make you any less of OUR daughter.

and it was true. it ALWAYS had been. in spite of the fact that she was not born belonging to them both by blood, nina and cobra were her parents, mostly for better, and sometimes for worse. she grew up safe in the knowledge that she was loved beyond comprehension, and was allowed all the space that she needed, to grow and develop into a young woman who knew her own mind, first and foremost. they took in turns being the strict voice of reason, but mostly, so long as she wasn’t taking the mickey, makena was allowed to make MISTAKES and learn from them. neither blew up, the first time they were called for her causing trouble in class and having to be removed. they sat her down to discuss why, and they worked to resolve her issues - which at the time, were to do with girls that wouldn’t be nice, and a teacher that refused to discipline them. when she was scared to go to the doctors, they asked her why, and when she said it was because she didn’t like their USUAL, they simply changed. they made sure that makena was comfortable in expressing her thoughts and feelings, and ensured that she never thought twice about doing so. when she wanted to try a cigarette, she didn’t resort to joining friends behind the bike sheds, but simply asked whether she could. likewise, when she wanted to go all the way with her first boyfriend, she told her mum and nina ensured the house was EMPTY - and after the breakup was there to stroke her hair and tell her that boys were rarely worth it. they were GOOD parents.

it was a double edged sword. nina and cobra taught makena to be INDEPENDENT, and this was a lesson they considered most important - because both were aware that they wouldn’t always be around. they were GOOD parents, but they also didn’t discipline her when it was seriously needed, and they weren’t always such a steady presence in her life. sometimes, cobra would disappear for weeks at a time on a particularly important job, leaving her with nina. sometimes nina, an agent in her own right for a separate government branch, would take a job that required her to be gone for months, leaving her alone with cobra. sometimes BOTH had responsibilities to their work that required them to leave together, and though they entrusted makena to the care of boarding schools, she had been given too much freedom by them for too long to accept rules and regulations that came with living under those roofs. she caused TROUBLE. she got herself into sticky situations. makena had always been a girl too quick to react, and too willing to use her fists. they returned once to find that she had been literally locked in her room just hours before for everyone’s protection bar her own. they returned another time to discover that in their absence, she had run away to join a rally against the superhuman registration act - a trend that would continue for years. nina and cobra operated often in shades of grey. the world was not black and white, and neither was their outlook upon it. makena took after THEM, more than they could have imagined.

she was ANGRY. she was resentful to her parents for leaving her behind, and she found herself filling with rage each time she turned on the tv to see more and more people like her, like her family, like the POWERED individuals she could relate to, being prosecuted for being different. she acted out, because that was the logical next step - and in the process, she became the pain in her parents backsides. they were good. but they were also all too quick to believe that makena could handle these long stints alone well. it was only when they started seeing her in the background of news reports and started receiving calls from her school for some new stunt she had pulled - such as the time she hung a crude banner reading the physical ed teacher for filth outside that particular school - that they started to see one of their biggest parenting faults.

and then a phone call came that wasn’t about makena’s antics. and it scared them - it REALLY scared them, more than they’ve ever been able to say. she was younger than most of the group, on that fateful night. she had always gravitated towards the older kids, always found herself getting along with them much BETTER. one had stolen a car from the garage, and they were all laughing and talking and singing along to music that was playing far too loud and they weren’t really focusing on the road, which they should have been, because it was ICY, and because the fog was impossible. they drove off the side of the road. the car fell into the water, below. it broke through the layer of ice, shattering the windows enough that the ice cold water begun to spray in, and makena went into shock. she doesn’t remember what happened. just the water. how she ended up with a lungful. how it was dark and unrelenting and she thought, the whole time, that she was ALREADY dead. she remembers the burn of her throat as she had thrown up the water that had been stealing her lifes breath away, and she remembers the fog clearing and the stars above her in the sky, and then after that, she doesn’t remember anything until she woke in the hospital with her mother and father sat on either side, grasping one hand each and promising not to leave.

they kept the promise. for a WHILE, at least. a few months. and they were more strict with her, too. wouldn’t let her out without knowing where the end destination was and who she was going with. wouldn’t take her back answering even LESS so than usual. but they slipped up, eventually. when she was BETTER, when she had been for a while, they started to ease themselves back into work - one would leave, then the other. and then, when both had to start leaving at the same time… well, the only logical way around fully breaking the promise they had made was to take her with them.

they had moved around a lot, when makena was younger. they had spent months living in different cities across the states, sometimes across the world - they always came back home to hawaii. now, it seemed as if they never WOULD. she was constantly shuttled between whoever had the most free time to spend with her, their time together as a family growing less and less. they said they kept her with them, said they kept moving her from school to school and place to place because they loved her and wanted to keep an eye on her, but RESENTMENT grew in her heart, unbidden. she loved to be cultured, don’t get me wrong, loved to see the sights and experience what the WORLD had to offer - but she would have given anything to stand still, something she had never really realized she liked doing ‘til she couldn’t.

so she rebelled. she did what she was learning she was good at. soon enough, she wasn’t leaving schools behind because they were upping sticks once again, but because she was getting forcibly removed. she would sneak out of whatever house or apartment or studio flat they had for the time being, fake id in hand, and she would join friends that she wouldn’t have a week later at the seediest nightclubs they could find. her parents or parent, however it was set up for a time, would return home to discover that she hadn’t returned from school that day and instead chose to head to a rally. worse: more than once, they had come home to discover that makena had run away, joining whichever group would TAKE her. her time on the streets was often short lived, but the girl who had always used her fists to solve her problems learnt, over time, an art of survival. she had always been taught to be independent. she learnt, now, how to be STRONG.

and then she was eighteen. and she realized, as the first rally that she had attended since her birthday dissolved into a maddening sort of violence, that her parents weren’t going to come and GET her, anymore. it wasn’t their job. she was an adult. she had to make adult choices, and when she returned home that night, battered and bruised, she informed them that she was leaving.

and to everyone’s SURPRISE, it wasn’t to join those insurgents that existed, out in the world. it wasn’t to become an extremist. makena decided, on her own, that she wanted to get an education - a steady, stable education, one that she wouldn’t have to always be running to catch up on. she found a little place of her own, she got herself settled, she started attending walt disney academy - and she, to no one’s surprise, kept up her regular ANTICS on the side. one grown up decision does not a grown up make, and makena couldn’t shake habits of her past. she was selfish, and reactive, and she had great difficulty in keeping herself in check - and with a pretty severe partying habit also on the board, it goes without saying she got herself into quite a bit of trouble. she lost almost every job she held, in college, because she was fired - not because she WALKED, like she so often claims. she got suspended twice for brawling and for indecent exposure ( it was a dare ), respectively. she got kicked out of her first ever shared flat because she and her roommate had a disagreement that there was no going back from. and she, terrible as it sounds, loved every second of it. she loved to be free. she loved to do what she wanted. no longer living a life on whatever whim her parents had, they were able to once again develop a CLOSE relationship, and once again, felt comfortable in allowing her to make the mistakes she needed to make, and learn from them.

and then came her ex. her father might have said, at one point, that he was the biggest mistake his daughter ever made - and when ANGRY at him, she might have agreed. but the truth is, he came into kena’s life at a time when she didn’t really know she needed someone, and he taught her… so much about herself. after her one serious relationship ended, kena had settled into a life of casual dating, because it fit who she was, or at least, who she has always presented herself as - a free spirited, free talking, wild hearted woman. and it was CASUAL with him, at least for a long while, but then came so much more love than she had ever thought she’d feel, and so much heartbreak, too. she should have known way back when that it was BECAUSE she loved him so much that it always hurt so bad, when they argued - if their explosive conflicts could even be called so, sometimes. neither were perfect. neither was the relationship. but they always came back to one another.

and then - then came KENZIE. she wasn’t a part of the plan that kena had for her life, not in the least. and when she thinks back to the day that she finally bought the test that her friend had been insisting on for days, she remembers how she had sat on the bathroom floor, eyes tightly shut and her fingers crossed painfully, wishing and hoping and even praying that what she knew was TRUE wasn’t - and she feels ashamed. she hadn’t wanted a baby. had never really thought of herself as cut from the cloth of mothers, and felt like she had too much left in life to do - too much to achieve, too much to see, too much to drink - before she could COMMIT to such a thing. she went through all the motions, she sat through the appointments, she grinned her way through the first scan, but she was scared and in her mind, ALONE. and then she felt a kick. just one. the baby had moved before - she’d felt it fluttering at times and thought how real it all was, and how out of her depth she was - but she was sitting on the couch one evening, watching the real housewives, and she had shouted something rude at the tv, and where her hand had been resting atop her so far, so small belly, she felt a tiny kick. and everything changed. every single thing. it was like the world had shifted on its axis, and makena asked the bump she’d felt no real connection to, to ‘do it again’ and it DID, and once upon a time, she’d thought that she wouldn’t love anything more than she had loved him, but god, how wrong she had been. how stupid, and how small minded, to ever think that ANYTHING would matter more than the little life that was growing inside of her.

she promised her bump, every night before she fell asleep, that they would make it WORK. all of them. everything. she was just finishing up her degree - she started sending out resumes immediately, to try and secure a job for when kenzie had come along, and she got lucky. the job as BOOKING AGENT, something she had always kind of wanted, sort of fell into place. and she promised she’d sort herself out. and no matter what - no matter what happened between she and her ex, she knew both of them would do right by their bean.

kenzie thurman came into the world, and makena’s whole life changed. her lifestyle slowed down, big time. she settled into her nine to 10 jobs. her relationship with her boyfriend came to one, seemingly final end. and she kept her PROMISE. they made it work. she learnt, quickly, she didn’t need to hit a club every night to be content - because staying home to read kenzie a book was just as thrilling. she didn’t need to drink so much she couldn’t remember or take little pills that were offered at the bar, because getting home in one piece was a priority, now. she didn’t have to BRAWL. not as much, anyway. fight club came in handy, for a woman who had always found the answer laying on the other side of her fists. her job was satisfying, at least one of them. and she and her ex - they still had their many differences and disagreements, but they weren’t so BAD at the co-parenting thing, if makena said so herself.

things changed. she learnt, fairly quickly, that change wasn’t a BAD thing.

SECTION TWO OF FOUR: HEADCANONS

owns a two year old polish lowland sheepdog that she named “mr clean” because, and only because, he reminded her of a mop the first time that she ever saw him. insists that she adopted him from the pound with that name already ingrained in his memory and often will say she “tried to change his name, but he wasn’t having it”. is lying. loves him more than life itself, weird name and all.

tychokinesis ; the ability to manipulate probability, causing unlikely things to happen or likely things not to happen. like her mother before her, makena is something of a lady luck - however, her power manifested AFTER the car accident that could have easily claimed her life, and… she doesn’t really know about it. SOMETIMES, when she’s angry, things will move. she’s always known she possesses a level of telekinesis. but she knows very little about her ability to manipulate probability, little enough that she doesn’t really know she has that power, and hasn’t really honed it.

SECTION FOUR OF FOUR: WANTED CONNECTIONS ( NOT ON MAIN )

hawaiians she grew up w !

also . ppl who .. shared her beliefs. u cant tell me that ppl who hate magic and whatnot dont exist in this world n kena ... has been hating on them from min one .

ppl she hired for voodoo lounge ! u got a singer ? a char in a band ? hmu. kena books all the shows / accompanying acts , so she could’ve booked them before !

exes , cos , she prob has … so many

n current flings ! she’s been , u kno . tryna move on from her ex. she casually dates quite a bit but. it never rly goes as far as ‘introducing them to kenzie’ cos … she wants it to b serious before That happens

ppl she still parties with

hm . ANYTHING !

SECTION FOUR OF FOUR: WANTED CONNECTIONS ( ON MAIN )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their EX BOYFRIEND, FATHER OF HER CHILDwho resembles DAVE FRANCO, OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN, RAMI MALEK, ALFIE ENOCH / UP TO PLAYER and should be 27+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( we stan two flawed individuals who are just … trying to successfully coparent their four year old daughter kenzie , best they can. there’s a little bit to hash out so to speak, but the cliff notes is … kena and her ex were VERY serious from when she was about eighteen, but also were… incredibly on and off. both of them are fairly quick to anger people, and one or the other would call things off for dramatic flair when their arguments went too far, or sometimes - rarely - it would be an amicable split when they thought it was for the best. they’d both see other people during their off periods, but the problem was that while at a lot of points, they really weren’t healthy - they also just couldn’t help but come back together, time and time again. kena didn’t want to be a mother at first, but the idea of kenzie certainly chilled them both out a bit, and after she was born… they both had something to try to be better for, which in turn led to their last split, which seems pretty permanent. they don’t have a custody agreement decided upon by the courts and are just trying to do whatever they can, as best as they can, and they’re REALLY trying. basically, two people who would bicker and argue and shout and yell quite a lot, once upon a time, who were always that couple people thought would be better apart - just trying to better themselves a little late, for the sake of their girl. )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their TUGGED ALONG ON A STRING EX who resembles DAVID CASTENEDA, DEV PATEL, KEKE PALMER, JANEL PARRISH / UP TO PLAYER and should be 25+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( from the time she was eighteen to when they officially broke up, she and her ex had a … pretty volatile relationship. there was a lot of love, don’t get me wrong - but they were two strong personalities with a tendency to explode, and sometimes, simple arguments turned into them being “on a break”. both dated other people during such times, but this is someone who makena kind of.. led on, i suppose, for lack of a better term. they dated more than once. they were her go to, for a time, whenever she and and her ex split. and she didn’t like herself for it - she’s not THAT bad - but she wasn’t ever good at being alone, meaning that it just kept happening, even if she recognized she should have let them go, because she was always going to go back to her ex. eventually, for reasons to be discussed, it did come to an end, but it had definitely already gone on for too long, and how things are now is up in the air. )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their ADULTHOOD SUX SQUAD / MAX. FIVEwho resemble UP TO PLAYER and should be 24+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( you know what’s hard about adulthood? all of it. makena was kinda super shuttled towards having to be a functioning adult when kenzie came along, but that doesn’t mean she 1. enjoys it and 2. is any good at it. paying bills on time is hard. remembering to renew her internet security is hard. getting regular smear tests? hard. nothing is easy, and this is the group of friends she laments that with. three to five wine mom’s / dad’s / parent’s / people who aren’t parents but who are in or around the same age and having just as much trouble adjusting / etc who met in a doctors office or something and who now get together every week just to - u guessed it - drink wine and complain about taxes and anti-vaxxers. )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their MAIN RIDE OR DIE who resembles DREW RAY TANNER, HAYLEY LAW, ANTHONY RAMOS, CARLOS VALDES / UP TO PLAYER and should be 24+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( everyone needs their few ride or dies, and while makena likes to think of herself as a lone wolf, she’s just as in need of a few close friendships as anyone else. they’re her oldest friend - someone she met when she was just a little kid, who never seemed to grow tired of her, and who she never grew tired of either. they know all her secrets, they know all her lies, and she knows just as much about them. no matter what, they’re in each others corners, and nothing will stop them from helping out if ever it’s needed. )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their FELLOW MOM FRIENDwho resembles UP TO PLAYER and should be 24+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( it’s . basically what it says on the tin. kena didn’t always WANT to be a mom, and way back when, she met this character at one of her antenatal classes. maybe they were more prepared than she was, and helped her to see the good in it. maybe they were just as freaked out as one another, and learned to be happy along the way. however their friendship started, they grew pretty close in those few months, and remained close friends ever after - meeting up a couple times a week to let their kids [ born pretty closely together! ] have a playdate, or even to just… hang out. drink coffee. watch a movie. they get one another in a way that a lot of kena’s friends DON’T get her, now, and they’re super close because of it. who else do u talk to abt how u pee a little when u sneeze , now ? )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their ACCIDENTAL VICTIMwho resembles UP TO PLAYER and should be ANY AGE. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( makena has some level of probability manipulation, which wasn’t always something that she … knew about, for want of better terms. this first manifested as doing well in tests she didn’t study for, but stressed about until her powers kicked in, or being unusually good at convincing her parents to allow certain things, or… dot dot dot. a lot of lucky coincidences, if you will, have dotted HER life - but for this character, just being in the vicinity of the girl that doesn’t like them and who they certainly don’t like either ( reasons tbd ) turns their luck sour. she projects onto them without even MEANING to, twisting their luck and turning it bad - meaning that when they’re around kena, they’re FAR more likely to suffer some pretty horrible happenings. maybe they realize what’s happening.. maybe not, and it’s something that needs to be discovered. either way… who’s to say how they’ll solve it? )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their EX HOUSEMATEwho resembles UP TO PLAYER and should be 24+. they should be the child of UP TO PLAYER. applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( in the years before her daughter was born, makena wasn’t always the most stable of people. she’s also never exactly been the WORST, but… she’s always had a lot of issues with keeping her emotions in check, and she used to be horribly selfish and petty, at the worst of times. after becoming friends in college, she and this character decided to get an apartment together and split the costs - but after a few months of this, shit hit the fan, and kena fucked up in a way that she couldn’t go back from, resulting in them kicking her out. they’ve barely spoken since, and she harbors.. a lot of resentment, for that fateful event. )

MAKENA THURMAN, our ZAZIE BEETZ fc is looking for their ADOPTIVE SIBLING / THAYER REYNOLDS… BUBBLES? who resembles LAKEITH STANFIELD, JOHN BOYEGA, SHAMIER ANDERSON, KEITH POWERS / UP TO PLAYER, SHOULD BE AT LEAST HALF BLACK and should be 26+. they should be the child of COBRA BUBBLES ( ADOPTED ). applicants DO NOT have to contact VINA to talk over details before applying ( the lit only change i’m making to the cobra bubbles fam is … cobra couldn’t have kids, and so thayer is adopted, and makena is a child of cobra’s wife and a sperm donor. they mightn’t have the same surname, there may even be something of an age diff ; but kena LOVES her brother, and probably counts him amongst her closest friends. bring kena her bro and kenzie her uncle ! )

#wda: intro #⌜ ･ﾟ ⸰ ･ * not a woman born easy to swallow ― biography. ⌟ / thurman.

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trevorkx · 5 years

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Class

Afterparty in the large sitting room of our hostess. We had the good light dinner, now the atmosphere is relaxed, conversation flows freely, everybody is happy. We sit on the lounge, I wear my suit, you have your elegant evening robe. You drink sherry, I sip my single malt. You slowly stroke my erect dick, liberated from my trousers, but it is not the center of my or your attention. Both you and I contributes to the debate, your remarks are as witty as usual, my comments are more thoughtful.

As much as we enjoy pleasant company, we also enjoy those touches. I relish your palm and fingers fondling my cock, you like the feeling of my soft hardiness and and slow trobbing. We may have sex anytime we want, so there is no anxiety or pressing, we do it because we want, not because we have opportunity.

Our roles are ambiguous in this moment. It may look as if you are the owner of my dick and just love to tease me and show I am your possesion in public. On the other hand, very easily you could be a doll pleasing her master. Or we are just having good time, feeling relaxed in this circle of friends who consider sex not a necessity but an art, as may be observed by the amount of naked skin and activities around us.

Mentioned activities are decent in this moment. The company enjoys predominantly the debate now, some society topic brought from the dining table. Kissing is limited so anybody can promptly react and touching is not overwhelming. The woman in the armchair next to us has her breast exposed, her partner slowly fondling them in his hands. Another lady has her thighs groped by two men sitting on her sides. Still another one is lying curled on the sofa, her head on the lap of her spouse, breathing on his cock. A girl in a cocktail dress kneels on the carpet at the hostess feet, freed from heeled shoes, but wrapped in dark stockings, and licks them thoroughly, including the soles.

Nobody’s in hurry. The night is young, no need for any impatiance. The young male servant takes care about our drinks, but nobody wants to get intoxicated - not with alcohol. About one hour passes in this relaxed mood, it may be around midnight.

Conversation slowly mutes down and I may concentrate more on what your hand is doing. The throbbing in my dick gradually intensifies and you notice it - by the sensation in your palm and by the time I said nothing. In this moment you decide to remain decent and address the hostess: “Jane, would you please?”

The hostess stops petting her girl and raises her head. She understands immediately your request.

“But of course … Miriam!”

She commands the girl just with her eyes. The girl stops licking, stands up and steps to the firm old table made from dark oak wood. The hostess put on her shoes and follows.

“Bend and lift your dress!”

Unlike her mistress the girl is barefooted and has no stockings. In fact, she wears nothing but the dress - it may be seen immediately after she rolled her dress up her belly. She is lesbian and she is not happy with the situation. But she also adores her mistress and will do anything what her mistress asks for or command her, so she resignedly put the upper half of her body on the table desk, standing on her tiptoes. Most of the visitors could see her from the side.

Accompanied by you, precisely speaking led by my cock, I approach her from behind. You guide my erect member slowly into her pussy. The girl inhales and turns her face away from the room. The hostess grasps her hair and softly, slowly, as if just reminding her, turns her head back so she can see her audience and the spectators can see her expression in return. She is blushing deeply and everybody understands this is her debut. Smiles appear on many faces.

I appreciate what would any man appreciate being in pussy of young, not overly used girl and reluctant girl. I do not push hard, I relish that delicate sensations, resistance combined with willingness. I take my time. I regret a bit the girl just not enjoy the fucking, but her pleasure comes from different source, this is not my place to resolve it. After an hour of your preparation it does not take me long to spurt, especially when encouraged by your hand on my shoulder. In the moment I narrow my eyes reaching the climax you steal my mouth and shove your tongue deep inside. Making love in proxy is such a thrill.

I take out my cock and wipe it on the girl’s asscheeks. Then I hide it though I am sure it will be out again sooner than later. The girl tries to straighten but her mistress keeps hear head firmly pushed against the table. She looks around the room: “Anybody else?”

Two men raise from their seats and steps closer. Their spouses take this opportunity to sit together, hug and start making out gradually during the scene. With a nod one gentleman let the other start.

The girl is definitely unhappy when the man unbutton his trousers and starts raping her hole again. Her mistress notices, lowers her head to the girl’s ear and whispers something while the man dick slides in and out, making smacking noise, soft, but clearly audible in the silence. Hostess’ whispering definitely affects the girl. After few words her body tenses even more and you can see undisguised fear in her eyes. But then her expression relaxes and as more and more sentences from her mistress flow into her brain, she even starts enjoying the fuck. Everybody in the room is so curious about what she hears and I am not sure whether to be happy or unhappy she was just a suffering doll when I raped her.

It does not take long and the girl reaches orgasm. The hostess raises her head, proudly glances around the room and instead of pushing the girl’s head forcibly against the table, she softly strokes her cheeks and temples as the girl climaxes in silent spasms.

This is the irresistible signal for the man fucking her who quickly adds his load to my one. When his shiny cock slides out, he’d like to clean it out, but the obvious place is already covered with the mixture of my sperm and girl’s juices. “May I?” ask the man reaching for the hem of the girl’s dress but the hostess shake her head. Instead she pats Miriam’s cheek: “It’s your work, Kitty!”

Miriam has to recover a bit. Her eyes are still hazy and she has to remember where she is. Her legs are still trembling when she stands up and immediately kneels down to use her mouth to do her duty. The slight movement of the man’s head acknowledges what she does to her mistress. Everybody is content with the exception of the man who is to fuck Miriam next. Her crotch and ass are a mess and not everybody appreciates that.

The hostess is aware of this and calls the servant. “Clean her, Richard!” The servant start to kneel too but she stops him with her hand. “With your shirt, please.” Without any sign of hesitation the servant takes off his shirt and starts impassively wiping all the respective places. Miriam, slightly bent forward and her mouth still processing the spoils cleaned of the man’s dick, is facing the guests and her face is brightly crimson when wiped as some soiled child (which she is now actually), especially when Richard reaches her inside parts. When he wants to leave the room and find some clean shirt, his mistress stops him: “Wear it!”

The hostess now assesses the situation and decides it’s time for change. “Please make some space,” she asks the pair on a leather sofa and they willingly move to one side. As Miriam sits down they willingly help spread her legs and put the left one on their laps, immediately exploring and touching it. The hostess sits from the other side and do the same with the other leg. With legs bent in knees and raised up, Miriam’s naked crotch is situated on the very edge of the sofa. With a nod, the hostess invites the third man to take his turn.

The man leans on the back of the sofa with his hands round Miriam’s head and unerringly inserts his cock into lesbian doll’s cunt. In this angle and, he gains sufficient lever, and excited after last few minutes he starts pumping much more vigorously than me or the second man. The little maid gasps and bites her lip. Even though men are not her favorite partners, she can’t help but feel excitement under such circumstances.

The hostess adds to this excitement and her hand finds its way on the girl’s breasts under her garment. As her mistress knows all her weak places very well, it does not take long and Miriam starts moaning more than softly. But her mistress deems it inappropriate in this moment and she mutes her groaning with a kiss and her tongue serves in the place of gag. Few seconds and Miriam’s back arches.

However, this man is not spent on his not so willing partner orgasm and continues fucking her. Miriam is now very sensitive and start yanking as restless filly, trying to liberate herself from unrelentless attacks on her delicate places, but she’s not allowed. Both the pair and the hostess keep firmly her legs spread and it seems as if her mistress swallows muffled cries escaping from the very depth of her body. It takes some time before she is saved and the man sprays his seed on her belly.

“Anybody to taste?” claps the hostess, looking around with shiny, reddish mouth, addressing mostly women and most probably the wife of the author. But before she untangles from the complicated embrace of the other woman, the man, belonging to the couple a bit concealed in the dark corner till now, stands up. For his woman, it was the first visit. She seemed very ethereal and distant and she looked a little shellshocked by the libertine approach of other guests.

Without any sign of hesitation or shame he kneels between Miriam’s separated thighs and carefully licks the rich yield on her smooth skin. It is obvious he’s trying not to swallow and keep the biggest possible amount in his mouth. Then he returns to his wide-eyed partner. She raises her head, opens her mouth and he let the stream of sweet mixture - the other man’s sperm, Miriam’s sweat and his saliva - between her lips.

I hear you whisper: “She won’t be as innocent as she might seem” and feel the encouraging squeeze on my butt.

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years

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The Vindication of Venom Part 1: Introduction and Background Context

Part 2

This essay series is my attempt to address some of the criticisms surrounding the most famous Spider-Man villain of all time, Venom.

To be specific I will be tackling the original earliest portrayal of the character from Amazing Spider-Man #300 and the criticisms levelled at him in that issue.

I am not endeavouring here to look at the Lethal Protector era of Venom, the Daniel Way run of Venom or even versions of Venom from later on in the David Michelinie run of Spider-Man and make a case for why they aren’t so bad.

Fair warning, not only will there be SPOILERS if you’ve not read many Venom tales but this series as a whole is very lengthy. I will also be reusing images throughout these posts as reminders or to illustrate different points so apologies there. The same goes for some of my general points.

With that all said let’s kick off by laying down some foundations for what is to come.

Introduction

Long story short, my thesis boils down to two essential lines of argument (though there are some other points I will get into as well). These are:

a) That Venom/Eddie Brock was a more poorly conveyed character than an outright poorly conceived one. That is to say he isn’t a character who, as has often been the criticism, doesn’t inherently make sense. Rather the nuts and bolts of what makes him tick, whilst present when you look closely enough, are not made explained in the clearest way possible.

b) Readers of the past and present project expectations onto the character that are not in fact warranted by his original concept, or at least the original intentions for the character.

With that said, for the sake of context let’s give little bit of history on Venom leading into ASM #300 and his real life origins as they are vital to understanding people’s problems with the character and my proposed counterpoints.

Conception

In the mid-1980s writer David Michelinie was given the chance to write the recently launched Web of Spider-Man ongoing series. It was during his tenure as the writer of that series that he originally conceived of Venom, later bringing his ideas over to Amazing Spider-Man when he became the main writer of that book.

Michelinie’s original conception of the character though was drastically different to what we wound up with on the page in 1988. In a 2008 interview he explained in his own words the early thinking behind the character:

Initially she [Venom] was a woman...The whole idea is that whenever I write a character I try to utilize the unique aspects of that character. And one thing Peter Parker had that no one else had was his spider sense...Someone flings at him from behind its a reaction he doesn’t even think about it, he ducks. And this has saved his life so many times I started thinking ‘Well, what if there was a villain who didn’t trigger that spider sense? How would he react? How would he cope with that?’

And they had already established in Secret Wars that the black costume didn’t affect Peter’s spider sense. So I started working out a character who would join with the symbiote costume and actually be a villain...

...My original origin story had been a woman who was pregnant and...her husband was trying to flag a cab as she was going into labour, and a cabbie was driving along looking into the sky at the Living Monolith, tying it into that graphic novel, [Michelinie wrote the Graphic Novel in question] where Spider-Man was fighting the Living Monolith...and he hits the husband and kills the husband...the shock of this sends to woman into premature labour and she loses her child, all because the cab driver was watching Spider-Man. So she became unhinged and when she got out she had this fanatical hatred of Spider-Man, blaming him for the loss of her husband and their unborn child. And that drew the symbiote to her and she became one with the symbiote and was going after Spider-Man...

When Michelinie came to write ASM something special was required for the milestone ASM #300. To this end he proposed they use his Venom character, but then editor Jim Salicrup felt that the readers wouldn’t be able to accept a woman being a threat to Spider-Man. As such Michelinie revised his origin for Venom and we got the character we know today.

Now let’ take a look at Venom’s origins in the pages of the comics themselves.

Backstory

In the Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars maxi-series Spider-Man, among other characters, finds himself transported to the patchwork planet Battleworld to fight a group of super villains. Over time his costume is damaged and, on advice from other heroes, he seeks out an alien clothing machine. However he gets far more than he bargained for. Instead of simply replacing his traditional red and blue outfit Spidey now sports a sleek new black and white costume seemingly made of an extraterrestrial material that flows like liquid and responds to his very thoughts.

After taking the costume back to Earth and going through various other twists and turns in his life, Peter takes the costume to be analyzed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four where he discovers the truth about it. That is it not in fact a piece of clothing but in fact a symbiotic alien life form that does not wish to separate itself from Spider-Man.

The symbiote later escapes from the Fantastic Four and attempts to forcibly bond with Peter again in Web of Spider-Man #1.

Knowing the symbiote’s vulnerability to loud noises Peter frees himself by going to a church bell tower, although this puts his own life at great risk too. Unexpectedly the symbiote actually saves his life despite Peter’s rejection of it. This is because through being bonded to Peter the symbiote has begun to experience human emotions.

Though no one knew it at the time (and it wasn’t strictly speaking confirmed in-story until Amazing Spider-Man #388, published over 8 years later), the character we now know as Eddie Brock/Venom was first hinted at in Web of Spider-Man #18. In a single page Peter Parker casually awaits a train when a pink sleeved hand pushes him from behind into the tracks. Though he saves himself what is most alarming about the incident is how Peter’s spider sense never reacted to warn him of the danger.

Personally I think the pink coloured sleeve is a hint that this mysterious assailant was intended to be a woman.

A similar incident to the above occurs in Web of Spider-Man #24. Peter (sans his costume) is using his powers to walk on the outside wall of a building when a mysterious figure abruptly grabs his leg and detaches him from the wall sending him falling. Peter is alright but again he is alarmed by the lack of warning from his spider sense and presumes that the culprit of this incident and the one at the train station are one and the same.

On a side note the fact that the assailant was physically strong enough to detach Peter from the wall could have been a hint that they possessed a degree of super strength.

Though no readers knew it at the time, we got our next look at this assailant in Amazing Spider-Man #298 where he observed news clippings about Spidey and spoke about how he ruined his life and how he will soon return the favour.

We got our first full look at the character in the very next issue when he confronts Peter’s wife Mary Jane in their apartmen, giving birth to (for better or worse) a giant of the Spider-Man mythos.

In ASM #300 we finally got to see the face of our new villain and follow his activities leading into his climactic battle with Spidey.

And then of course, rather infamously, we got his origin story dropped on us.

He is Eddie Brock former reporter for the Daily Globe newspaper. During a killing spree perpetrated by the mysterious serial killer known only as the Sin Eater, Brock was contacted by Emil Gregg who confessed to being the Sin Eater. Brock published his story and later revealed Gregg’s identity to the world. However shortly thereafter Spider-Man captured Stan Carter who had been the real Sin Eater all along, Gregg merely being a mentally ill serial confessor.

Losing his job and reputation Brock hit very hard times and blamed Spider-Man for his misfortune, nursing a burning hatred for the wall-crawler.

Trying and failing to end his own life he found himself in the same church that Peter rid himself of the symbiote. The symbiote had grown to resent Spider-Man and sensing a mutual hatred in Brock bonded with him, granting him powers similar to the wall-crawler as well rendering themselves undetectable to his spider sense.

Armed with the knowledge of his secret identity they dubbed themselves Venom and embarked on their mission of vengeance by killing Spider-Man.

An important note to all of this is the fact that Brock’s recounting of the events surrounding the Sin Eater seemingly contradict the original story starring the character. In the original Sin Eater story arc (also known as ‘the Death of Jean DeWolff’) Emil Gregg dressed as the Sin Eater and invaded the Daily Bugle, where he was apprehended, Brock seemingly never playing a role in his capture.

I should mention that there are three mini-series which retcon certain elements into this backstory.

In Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars, we discover that the insane mercenary Deadpool participated in the conflicts on Battleworld and actually wore the symbiote before Spider-Man, the story even alluding to Deadpool’s own mental conditions as contributing to warping the symbiote (and by extension it’s future hosts).

In AXIS: Carnage we revisit Emil Gregg who is operating as ‘the Sin Eater’, an apparently supernatural entity who literally consumes somebody’s sins. The story even outright states at one point that Eddie Brock was correct in his original outing of Gregg as the Sin Eater.

And finally during the Deadpool: Back in Black mini-series we see Deadpool once again bond with the symbiote a while after it was rejected by Peter Parker in Web of Spider-Man #1. It is in this mini-series that the symbiote first transforms into the fanged, long tongued monstrous visage we all know today. The story also hints that Venom’s very name comes from an encounter between the symbiote empowered Deadpool and Kraven the Hunter (the incident also apparently giving Kraven the idea to bury Spider-Man alive as seen in Kraven’s Last Hunt).

Whilst entertaining stories, since these stories are retcons stemming from non-Spider-Man titles (and also don’t make sense in some cases) I’m not going to take them into account going forward with this essay series.

The criticisms

Now we’ve laid out Venom/Brock’s origins we need to define what the main points of criticism are when it comes to Venom’s beginnings. Chiefly these amount to the following:

· The extraterrestrial origins of the symbiote are ill fitting for Spider-Man’s more grounded world

· The symbiote’s hatred of Spider-Man is contradictory to how it had been previously portrayed

· The symbiote is alive despite us seeing it die in Web of Spider-Man #1

· Other versions of the character (such as Spider-Man the Animated Series, Spider-Man 3 and the Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Series) all make Brock to be a much better dark reflection of Spider-Man than the original comic book version

· Brock was a previously unknown character who is unconnected to Peter Parker’s life in or out of his costume.

· Brock’s origin story involves rewriting events from the Sin Eater storyline to facilitate his fall from grace

· The reveal of Brock as Venom, especially in light of previous two points, is a bad resolution to the mystery story seeded in issues leading to ASM #300

· Eddie Brock’s motivations for hating Spider-Man are weak and make no sense, this being perhaps the single biggest point of contention surrounding the character

I am going to now try my best to address these criticisms in order although some of my points involve tackling more than one of them simultaneously, or otherwise weaving between them. Furthermore some of those points require multiple instalments to properly address, especially that last one.

Whilst I will endeavour to bring these point back up when appropriate please try to bear them in mind as we proceed going forward.

Part 2

#Spider-Man #Venom #Eddie Brock #David Michelinie #Peter Parker #Deadpool #Wade Wilson #Carnage #Sin Eater #Cletus Kasaday #spider-man the animated series #Spider-Man 3 #the spectacular spider-man animated series #marvel animation #symbiote #symbiotes #The Vindication of Venom

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thenexusofsouls · 3 years

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With the Strucker ad from WandaVision, I remembered the first time we saw the twins, locked up in separate rooms. How would Marya react to that? In that scene, Wanda seems to be doing well with her powers, but poor Pietro... is just hitting walls and grunting. I don't think Marya would like to see them locked up, but even then, how would she feel knowing that they VOLUNTEERED? It's so sad to think about.

{i am the caretaker of souls} Okay let’s take these one at a time...

Seeing them locked up in cells:

Marya knows her twins. She may not be their biological mother, but she is their mother, the only one they have every known, and she’s raised them both from the moment they were born. Looking at the twins in their cells, she’s immediately saddened and infuriated. She’s immediately unhappy with either of them being there.

Maybe Wanda does seem to be doing okay with her powers, but she doesn’t look well otherwise. To Marya, she looks malnourished, sleep-deprived, and traumatized. Her baby girl doesn’t deserve that and she wants to slit the throats of whoever did it to her.

Pietro is even worse. He looked the same, but then add restless as a caged animal to that list. Pietro needs to be free. He needs to move, to run, to express himself, both in personality and because of the needs of his unique body. To cage him... is to crush his spirit. Pietro is a wild child. He has a spirit that shines brighter than most with regard to energy and passion. He needs... to be free to fully express that. She knows this, and to see her son slamming himself into walls because he doesn’t have room to properly stretch himself and get out his pent-up energy with it not at all his fault, is heartbreaking to her.

Also... just seeing the twins separated... She knows this is not how they should be. Wanda needs her brother with her or she worries for him and feels nervous on her own. Pietro needs to be able to protect his sister or he gets very anxious and acts out. Forcibly separating them like that... is both wrong and cruel and shows a disgusting disregard for the closeness and sacredness of the profound bond that they share.

Finding out that they volunteered for the experiments:

This... would bother her on two levels. First, she would find it very sad and regrettable that her twins were pushed to the point of thinking that vengeance was the answer, and that the way to that vengeance was to give up control of their own lives and bodies to some extent. She would never have wanted to see them come to that kind of tragic conclusion, especially not from an event involving her. If she knew that their desire to avenge her was part of the reason why they volunteered, it would cause her an immense amount of guilt.

Secondly............. if she knew that it was Hydra who had them, and knew the origins of Hydra as being rooted in Na/zi research and ideals, she would be absolutely horrified to see her twins in their hands. Marya’s family is Jewish and Romani, having roots in those who survived the Holocaust and other horrible events in which they were persecuted and killed by the exact types of people running the twins’ experiments. It would terrify her to see them essentially in the clutches of one of the worst enemies of their family, religion, culture, and heritage. She would desperately fear for their lives at that point and would do anything necessary to get them out of there fast.

#muse: marya maximoff #tw: holocaust mention

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socialjusticeartshare · 4 years

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Taking Children

An excerpt from Taking Children: A History of American Terror by Laura Briggs

Taking children has been a strategy for terrorizing people for centuries. There is a reason why “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” is part of international law’s definition of genocide. It participates in the same sadistic political grammar as the torture and murder that separated French Jewish children from their parents under the Nazis and sought to keep enslaved people from rebelling or to keep Native people from retaliating against the Anglos who violated treaties to encroach on their land. Stripping people of their children attempts to deny them the opportunity to participate in the progression of generations into the future — to interrupt the passing down of languages, ways of being, forms of knowledge, foods, cultures. Like enslavement and the Indian Wars, the current efforts by the Trump administration to terrorize asylum seekers is white nationalist in ideology. It is an attempt to secure a white or Anglo future for a nation, a community, a place.

The past stalks the present, the ghost in the machine of memory. This is why history writing matters; it gives us ways to understand the specters already among us and to assemble tools to transform our situation. Things change; the epidemic of child taking in the context of mass incarceration is quite different from separating refugees from their children at the border, but you cannot track the differences without a map of what happened. Writing histories is also a defense against the efforts to implant false memories, the insistence that things happened that did not. The Obama administration did not have a policy of separating children from their parents. Telling history’s story is a way to define it, to put limits on the infinite range of things that might have happened.

Part of the reason this theater of cruelty at the border worked was precisely because of its history. But that is also why it faltered, in the sense that it generated passionate and angry denunciations of, for example, immigrant child detention centers as “concentration camps.” We are primed by memory — by bits of stories handed down across generations, conversations, things read and half-remembered, formal histories, activists’ words and actions, and lies and distortions — to react in certain ways to events in the present. It is not that the histories of child taking repeat or that one set of events parallels another; it is that the past is brought to life in the present. William Faulkner famously evoked this sense of history when he wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Yet for all the anger the policy engendered, the demand for it to end also failed. The administration found a work-around that continued to separate children from their kin and caregivers. Instead of saying that children were being taken because parents were applying for asylum, the Trump administration began saying that it was because they were “neglectful” or dangerous to their children, often with the flimsiest of evidence — a diaper not changed quickly enough, a past criminalized disruption that caused $5 in damage. This, too, was about a failure of historical memory, as opponents failed to mobilize sufficient opposition to the ugly history of the use of “child neglect” to take the children of insurgent communities of color. The administration was reprising a tactic used against welfare mothers, who faced a definition of “child neglect” in the 1950s and ’60s that included having a common-law marriage, a boyfriend sleep over, or an “illegitimate” child. The Trump administration also used the Obama-era tactic of detaining immigrant children with their parents. It called parents criminal — either through a (failed) strategy of naming crossing outside regular border checkpoints to apply for asylum a crime, which courts repeatedly said it was not, or through the more successful efforts to call acts felonies that would be trivial administrative matters if people weren’t migrants, like giving a wrong name to the police. Other immigrants and asylum seekers in fact had criminal records. In the absence of a strong movement to protect the parental rights of those who are or were incarcerated in the United States — immigrants or not — the administration’s work-around, too, served to demobilize the movement to reunite refugee and immigrant children with those who cared for them. Opponents of the policy failed to understand the deep history of the criminalization of parents of color, the way foster care had become a state program of child-taking, and to realize how easily refugee parents could be transformed from harmed innocents to dangerous criminals.

While international and US law make much of the difference between immigrants and refugees, the Trump administration sought to collapse that distinction. Asylum for refugees was a product of the post-World War II response to German concentration camps, and states don’t like it much. Unlike regular immigration, which can to some degree be metered according to the labor needs of a nation or an economy — changing laws to allow more immigrants when more workers are needed, fewer when they aren’t — asylum is understood in international law as a right that follows from being persecuted for one’s ethnicity, race, or political view. The model is Jews under the Nazis, and it was extended to groups like the Hmong in Laos, who were forced to flee because of their aid to the Americans in the war in Southeast Asia. The international asylum system, however, has never worked well in the United States (or a great many other places), and Cold War refugees from politically unpopular left-wing governments, like those from Castro’s Cuba, have been massively favored over refugees from right-wing governments, like those who fled El Salvador in the 1980s. In the eighties and nineties, activists argued that race was a factor as well, with Reagan and the first Bush administration refusing Haitian refugees while accepting largely white Cubans. (Ironically, by 2019, many of the refugees sitting in Mexican shelters awaiting asylum hearings were Cuban. The favoritism did not last.) Bill Clinton campaigned against the distinction that allowed Cubans but not Haitians to petition for asylum in US courts, arguing that everyone had a right to go before a judge to make their case. As soon as he was elected, however, he too began to insist that Haitians couldn’t apply for asylum because they had not reached the land border of the United States, sending them instead to Guantánamo Bay, the US naval base in Cuba. Indeed, Clinton made a mockery of the entire notion of asylum, signing legislation that allowed “expedited” review of such claims, which ensured that people did not set foot in front of a judge but, rather, made their case to an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service, later ICE) official whose expertise was enforcement, not the finer points of the law.16 George W. Bush and Obama steadily expanded the use of expedited removal, to the point where, by 2013, it accounted for 44 percent of all deportations, compared with only 17 percent that went before a judge.

Taking Children is a book about how we got here. It tells the stories of the detention of children at the US-Mexico border since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and it also explores four other contexts in the past four centuries where the US state has either taken children as a tactic of terror or tacitly encouraged it. The first is the taking of Black children, beginning with the centuries of racial chattel slavery. Chapter 1 examines slavery and its aftermath through the decades after World War II, when white supremacists sought to dull the moral force of demands for the end of segregation by drawing attention to families and households they tried to paint as pathological: single mothers and their so-called illegitimate children relying on welfare. With the cooperation of the federal government, Southern cities and states put Black children in foster care as punishment for Black adults’ activism against segregation. Chapter 2 investigates the taking of Native children, beginning in the closing decade of the Indian Wars, designed to quiet further revolt. Child taking continued through the emergence of movements for sovereignty and against tribal termination in the middle of the twentieth century. Again, states responded with an aggressive discourse about welfare and illegitimacy, resulting in removal of one in three Native kids from their homes. In response, from 1969 to 1978, tribal councils, the Association on American Indian Affairs, and Native newspapers, newsletters, and radio shows began a campaign for an Indian Child Welfare Act, calling the taking of children the latest episode in centuries of settler colonialism — and they won.

The third episode of children being ripped from their parents and communities I examine in the pages ahead unfolded in the anti-Communist wars in Latin America and their aftershocks. After reprising the better-known cases of disappeared children in Argentina and the Southern Cone, chapter 3 tells the story of Central America: how governments in Guatemala and El Salvador took the children of suspected Communists and placed them for adoption or in institutions to an extent that is still being unearthed. In Honduras, the Reagan administration backed the Contras, a mercenary force seeking to overthrow the government of Nicaragua that happened also to be working with cocaine and marijuana traffickers from Colombia and Mexico, which set in motion much that followed. Within the United States, it sparked the “crack” epidemic, the subject of chapter 4. Crack cocaine justified the launching of a new campaign of harassment of drug users, not just dealers, including massive testing of Black pregnant women and taking their children into foster care in the name of protecting “crack babies.” Native women were caught in a parallel “crisis” that sent them to jail for drinking during pregnancy and sent their children to foster care.

The expansion of cocaine consumption also vastly empowered and armed drug cartels, launching the events that would end in the waves of refugees and asylum seekers that arrived at the borders of the United States in significant numbers beginning in 2013, as we will see in chapter 5. Central America’s Northern Triangle — Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador — had became increasingly unlivable for impoverished people, particularly youth, as the cartels and gangs claimed their neighbors in an ever-accelerating spiral of extortion, kidnapping, violence, and murder.

Taking Children is about a long history in the Americas of interrupting relations of care, kinship, and intimacy, and about how disrupted reproduction produces new regimes of racialized rightlessness. Child taking is, I am arguing, a counterinsurgency tactic has been used to respond to demands for rights, refuge, and respect by communities of color and impoverished communities, an effort to induce hopelessness, despair, grief, and shame.

This is not the whole story, however. There is also a fierce tradition of protesting this practice by the targeted communities and by those who acted in solidarity with them. Many people have found these policies repulsive and abhorrent, and activists, lawyers, and policy makers have sought to reform them. When we forget about the ways that governments have taken children, we also lose a powerful history of communities standing up against that practice, one that has often been quite successful, and provides resources for how to imagine doing it even now. Walter Benjamin wrote urgently about understanding the power of history in this way: “To articulate the past historically does not mean torecognize it ‘the way it really was.’ It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” Benjamin’s point was that we will never see the past as those who lived it saw it, never grasp it whole, but we don’t have to be troubled by this partial vision. In his view, we need memory — history — for something else, for the way it is useful in the present, in a crisis (he was thinking of fascism).

This work is inspired by social movements’ responses to crisis, including one that Black feminists in the United States have started calling reproductive justice. In recent years, we have seen new protest movements coalesce around missing children — sparked by the mothers (especially, but also fathers and grandparents) of unarmed Black and Latinx youth shot by police or vigilantes — Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Jessie Hernández, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Antwon Rose, and so many others. In Mexico, a nationwide movement to end state- and police-sanctioned killing by criminal organizations coalesced around the demand by the parents of the young adults disappeared from the Ayotzinapa teacher-training school that they be returned alive. For forty years, some of the most effective opposition to the political right in Latin America has come from family members of the “disappeared,” those arrested or kidnapped by police and para military forces. While most opposition to right-wing governments was dismissed as the work of Communists and “terrorists,” groups like the Comité de Madres Monsignor Romero (Comadres; Committee of Mothers) in El Salvador claimed moral authority by speaking on behalf of disappeared sons and daughters literally in the name of Archbishop (now Saint) Óscar Romero, who was killed by the military while celebrating mass in 1980. In the 1990s, despite Central America’s truth commissions initially refusing to believe that disappeared children and infants were not dead, parents’ groups like Pro Búsqueda began searching for, and sometimes finding, children who had been taken to orphanages and boarding schools — and sometimes adopted abroad. These parents, kin, and caregivers cast the war and the taking of children in a new light, while continuing to fight for a full reckoning for the crimes committed in the name of anti-Communism.

This is the legacy that we carried into the twenty-first century. In the United States, both Democratic and Republican administrations have sought to deter those who lawfully sought asylum by punishing parents as parents and their children. The US government sought to terrify people into not asking for a review of their asylum cases by putting their children in camps, even as it enacted policies that ensured they would come in ever greater numbers. In the pages that follow, this book builds out these stories about how taking children came to seem reasonable, a kind of pain that kept the peace or maintained the status quo, and how people again and again stood up to that violence. Taking children may be as American as a Constitution founded in slavery and the denial of basic citizenship rights to Native people, African Americans, and all women, but activists in every generation have also stood up and said it did not have to be.

Laura Briggs is professor of women, gender, sexuality studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption, and Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico.

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#taking children #taking kids #history of terror

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lazyupdates · 6 years

Link

Time magazine has just made its new cover for 2 July issue public and its portrayal of US President Donald Trump as a heartless child tormentor is incredibly haunting.

In the cover, Trump is shown looking down at a crying child, who was forcibly separated by the US border police from her mother after the latter was arrested on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. The photo had gone viral causing huge outrage both in America and abroad.

A popular US magazine New York Daily News had termed Trump an animal. Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai had reacted with shock. Pichai’s tweet had said, “The stories and images of families being separated at the border are gut-wrenching. Urging our government to work together to find a better, more humane way that is reflective of our values as a nation.”

In the haunting photo a small baby��(same has now appeared on Time cover) in a red top and blue trousers was seen weeping bitterly while looking at a person, who’s believed to be questioning her mother on suspicion of having entered the US illegally.

The magazine also carried an equally hard-hitting article, which said, “Presidents have many jobs, and one is telling us who we are. For the first 240 years of U.S. history, at least, our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. The Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson etched onto the Declaration of Independence were given voice by Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama.

“Donald Trump doesn’t talk like that. In the 18 months since his Inauguration, Trump has mentioned “democracy” fewer than 100 times, “equality” only 12 times and “human rights” just 10 times. The tallies, drawn from factba.se, a searchable online agglomeration of 5 million of Trump’s words, contrast with his predecessors’: at the same point in his first term, Ronald Reagan had mentioned equality three times as often in recorded remarks, which included 48 references to human rights, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.”

The new Time cover too has gone viral even before its publication. Several prominent people have begun sharing the cover with moving comments. Journalist Tim Pickard asked, “Trump is proud of his numerous Time covers, wonder what he’ll make of this one.” White House JD Durkin wrote, “that is some image. the new @TIME cover.” Investigative reporter Brian Krassenstein dared Trump to hang the photo in his hotel lobby. He wrote, “Wow!! This week’s Time cover is chilling.”

Faced with international outrage, Trump was forced to sign a reversal order on Wednesday. He bowed to relentless pressure in the US and around the world and signed an executive order that the White House said would keep families who cross into the US illegally together.

“You’re going to have a lot of happy people,” Trump had said as he signed the order, billing it as the most significant presidential move on immigration in half a century — even though he was fixing a problem his own administration had caused, reported CNN.

It’s, however, not clear whether the children already having been separated will be united with their parents any time soon. US immigration officials said that as many as 2,342 children had been separated from 2,206 parents from 5 May to 9 June amid a “zero-tolerance” crackdown on illegal immigration brought in by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Last month, the US administration publicly announced its decision to charge every adult caught crossing the border illegally with federal crimes, as opposed to referring those with children mainly to immigration courts.

Time magazine’s new cover with Donald Trump as heartless child tormentor is ‘chilling’

The post Time magazine’s new cover with Donald Trump as heartless child tormentor is ‘chilling’ appeared first on Lazy Updates.

#lazy #lazy updates #Updates #trending #news #bollywood #recipes #entertainment

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dtriebwa-ala421-blog · 6 years

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testimonial on social identity

I don’t think I was born lucky, but, somehow, luck finds a way. I came into this world during the second divorce of the same couple —– apparently, matchmakers really don’t work out after all. My mother came from a line of established teachers. My father: a farmer-turned-businessman who (unsuccessfully) used up my mother’s money in a series of business ventures.

Aside from the my father being described as “chubby” by my mother in my official adoption file,a shocking adjective to my younger self’s mind, I don’t know much else about my birth parents.No medical history, no pictures, not even a name. While my agency actively blocked all adoptees from searching for their birth parents until the age of 18, I understand the logic. When one door is forcibly closed, it’s sometimes better to leave it that way, at least until the wounds heal and life goes on in the meantime.

As I said, luck finds a way. After being in an orphanage for only two days, I was taken inby my foster parents, and raised well, if you can count being fed table food at 6 months of age. In the U.S., as all of this was happening, my parents werehad been busy raising their daughter of two years and were ready to adopt again. My sister likes to say that the experience of raising her went so well for them, they just had to adopt from Korea again. In reality, I was always a much better behaved child than her, but we all react to the uprooting and reestablishing of family in different ways.

I don’t remember ever being told I was adopted. It was never a secret, and I guess I’veknown for as long as I can remember. What mattered more to my family than titles or officialprocesses of how our family came to be was that we were, in fact, a family. Why should love bybirth or by adoption be seen as more real, valid, or strong? To my parents, we were theirchildren, and to my sister and me, they were mom and dad.

What my sister and I didn’t know then, and wouldn’t come to realize until years and many formative experiences had passed, the circumstances that gave rise to the ability to care.My sister, a presumed result of a one-night-stand, and me, a binding accident in a loveless bond, were, no doubt, accidents. Unfortunately, it seems that the ability to account for and overcome such mistakes is tied directly to one’s financial capital.

At this point, I think it’s important to give a bit of background on the history of Korea since the mid-20th century. Before WWII, Korea, like many other Asian nations pre-colonization, employed a policy of isolationism. However, this did not stop the country from successive invasion and occupation by the Japanese, the Manchurians, and white Western missionaries and governments. WWII ended with the division and occupation of Korea by theSoviet Union in the North and the U.S. in the South. Conflict and pressure for reunification eventually led to the Korean War in 1950, which ended in a return to the pre-war status quo. In the proceeding decades, South Korea oscillated between democratic and autocratic regimes and government schemes. Early efforts focused on establishing anti-communist and pro-U.S.sentiment in the country along with plans for rapid economic growth. This growth took off in the1980s, as South Korea’s focus on electronic and automobile industries strengthened along with its relations to the U.S. A return to democracy in 1988 with the establishment of the Sixth Republic cemented South Korea’s place as a rising East Asian and global power as well as aneconomic and cultural lap-dog to the U.S.

There is a word in Korean: han. With no direct translation, the idea of han encapsulates asense of shared cultural trauma, oppression, and isolation against insurmountable odds. Understood as unavenged justice, pain, and helplessness, it’s really quite clear after taking sometime to recognize Korea’s historical context. Although I have no idea of my birth parents’ involvement or attachment to the Korean War, I’m sure they’re no strangers to the idea of han.

In contrast, my parents are somewhat new-middle-upper class. While both their grandparents shared the experience of many poor, white, farmers, both sets of their parents successfully completed not only an undergraduate education but notable post-secondary study, landing them prominent positions among companies such as Dow Chemical, Ford, and the U.S. Air Force. They say that you can never really escape your class, and I would say that for my parents, this is especially notable. Despite how much money one makes in the course of their lifetime, it is the sensibilities of financial stress informed by their childhood experiences that dictates the way they handle money in the future. Despite my mother having turned in the first ever computer generated assignment received by one of her professors, her father continues to finish his plate clean every meal out of an obligation intensified by his own mother’s experiences in the Great Depression. So it is with this lens that I approach the idea of the new-upper-middle class.

As such, my sister and I are the first generation to experience the fortune of this income bracket not only financially and materially, but in the cultural sense as well. In my mind, one of the hallmarks of a middle-class lifestyle is the stunning absence of money from personal experience. As a child, my family always talked about money in an abstract sense – this might be too much, or a great price, but our consumption patterns have never really changed. Through my parents money I have enjoyed club sports, school sports, music lessons, nice meals, instruments, family trips, and a peace of mind not known by the majority of the world.

Until fairly recently, I didn’t question most of the things in my life. I’m adopted, that’s a fact. I have nice things, I guess that’s a fact. Since coming to college and doing a lot of critical thinking about myself as a necessary step toward mindful self-development, I’ve realized that maybe luck and money are one and the same. With enough money, perhaps my birth parents could have remained in my life, separate but able to take care of me physically and emotionally. With enough money, my parents were able to pay fees and costs of living to keep my sister and me happy, safe, and healthy. With enough money, they even support my wanting to reconnect with my birth mother someday.

I’m torn. Torn between the embodiment of this comfortable lifestyle that I’ve lived and the people who have suffered for me to get here. Torn at the heart thinking of the U.S.’s quest for luck in the Eastern Hemisphere, and their support-turned cultural domination, I mean facilitation, of South Korea doing the same. Torn thinking about my life shaped by ideologies I don’t support and the material horrors of the ideologies that I do. It’s kind of poetic thinking about how my story begins with conflict over money, both personally and globally, and how my identity today is continually shaped by my interactions with it. I hope one day to bridge the gap between luck and income, and to help others torn apart by conflicts out of scale of the human experience. Until then, I’ll continue to live dialectically in the relationship between my privilege and the circumstances that shape it, and, maybe, find peace and identity along the way.

#assignments

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lana-shhhhthoughts · 7 years

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A Girl, A Bull, and Two Raging Men.

Here are my shhh-thoughts about the Fearless Girl, Charging Bull and an ugly Piss-y Pug that literally no one wanted. I call this palaver, “The Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly Real Life Play of the Art World” - cos apparently not all reactions to taking offence are equal and opposite (sorry Newton) - as in this case, where one seemingly swallows the other until they explode. Fortunately for the Pug (and for all of us), it was removed before someone else made a statue of a flea infestation, and someone else, a flea treatment, ad infinitum.

Before I continue with my thoughts about that dumb Pug, we need to discuss the history of the story. And before we do that, I would like to publicly state my sincere admiration for how each artist seems to deploy the character traits reflexive of their own sculptures in dealing with this palaver: Di Modica is stomping his feet and snorting at the misappropriation of his work, Visbal appears to be quietly standing her ground (check out her quote below), and Gardega, well, he just snorted, took a piss on some art and was forcibly removed from public space for being allowed off-lead. It is also intensely interesting to me that both male artists chose animals who are well known for snorting. #notallmaleartists

So. Back to the history. Way back in mid-December 1989 (that’s almost 30 years ago, kids), the world was a very different place to what it is now. Yes there had been a wave of feminism in the 70s, sure, but let me tell ya, women were still push overs in the business world in the 80s. If you don’t believe me, check out my old favourite films of the day, 9 –5 and Working Girl (where unbelievably, Melanie Griffith must have had the ONLY female boss in the firm). Great films. Great. Yuge. And then watch the film Wall Street, if only to count the number of women not relegated to being secretaries. It’s no secret that finance is dominated by men and I don’t think anyone would deny it, though they may debate the reasons behind it.

Meanwhile, in a studio not far away from the Gordon Geckos of New York but in an antithetical world, an artist by the name of Arturo Di Modica had spent $350,000 of his own money and worked for 2 years on the beautiful, massive bull that we now know and love as Charging Bull - his response to the Wall Street crash of 1986. His artistic intention was for Charging Bull’s symbol of virility and courage to be a “celebration of the can-do spirit of America … where people from all over the world could come … and through determination and hard work overcome every obstacle to become successful.” But artistic intention and artistic interpretation don’t always match up, especially as the passage of time alters our understanding of society. It’s important to note here that it was not commissioned. It was a piece of guerrilla art delivered under a giant Christmas tree in front of the Stock Exchange on Broad St in the middle of the night. Di Modica still owns the statue and it is on loan to the city. It’s an incredible act of generosity by an artist - and that needs to be acknowledged. And it was his symbol of love for his adopted country. At the time. In 1989. But regardless of whether an artist likes it or not, we always look at art through a prism of history and experience. And things have changed since 1989. For the sake of argument (in case you just CAN’T relate to the feminist angle) let’s create a specific, more universal example: let’s look at the Bull again, this time placed in the context of the GFC -

At one point (to the artist), The Bull may have been a symbol of courage and virility, but its deliberate placement in a post GFC financial district places it in a defined environment, and our bull suddenly takes on a darker and more aggressive meaning. Instead of being “courageous and virile”, standing as separate entity to Wall Street, it now “represents” Wall Street. As representative, we see that our trusted bull invested in fragile pottery, built a china shop around all of us, had a large and public tanty, and destroyed everything. His virility also fucked us. Royally. In every way conceivable. He fucked us up and down, round and round and inside out, then walked out of the shop feeling satisfied with himself, because not only did he get away with it, he also ended up getting fed from the hand of the country that keeps telling him he’s a good boy. ‘Cos you know, “bulls will be bulls.”

I may have gotten off on a tangent there, but my point is that post GFC, this bull takes on a dangerous and entitled quality. And thus the original intention of the artists’ work is blown away by history, and blown away by the eyes through which the viewer looks at it - eyes that still have shards of china left in them that sting.

The place of women has also changed since 1989. You just can’t make a movie like 9 to 5 anymore because people would be like “why are all those women using typewriters?”. But back then Di Modica chose a Bull as his symbol, because I guess maybe to him, the bull represented “people”, and by “people” that meant men. After all, at that time, it was mostly only men who worked the paid jobs, and definitely only men who worked the WELL-paid ones. In fact, I’m sure Sigourney Weaver’s boss character in Working Girl was probably paid just marginally more than Melanie Griffith’s secretary character was. It was only men who could apparently make positive change through their paid work. And only men who led. And he’d have been right to think that. Because most people would have thought that. At the time.

A male cow. A. Male. Cow. Whoooo boy! How on earth could Di Modica have known that in the future, placing a bull in the financial district could be interpreted as male dominance that stands in the way of women climbing financial ladders? He couldn’t. Because the world was different then and while MOST women were doing unpaid or underpaid work that allowed men to succeed in their careers – they simply weren’t acknowledged as being able to succeed themselves. What Di Modica didn’t address then, was that women WERE working very hard and HAD the determination. They just weren’t recognised for it. And so, the animal he chose to represent “the people” was male.

I guess my long and drawn out point is that depending on your life experience, the bull is likely no longer viewed in the way the artist originally intended and it is more than likely no longer a symbol of love for an adopted country, but a negative reminder of bullishness and dominance, and that the privilege of power will still win in the end. And thus, someone thought that perhaps it is time to change the reading of that art to something more positive. Enter State Street Global Advisors, Kristen Visbal, McCann and Fearless Girl. There has been a LOT said about Fearless Girl. Initially we loved her! I mean, yes, it took appropriation to a whole new level, making the world discuss the pluses and minuses of appropriation (which is a whole other post), but in general, suddenly a lot of women around the world got excited. Because they could see themselves in her, and they could see her in themselves. We’ve all faced that angry bull - not the 1989 interpretation, but the one we see in 2017: the dominant males who refuse to let us pass (notallmen guys notallmen). We empathise with her, we know she’ll grow into a woman with the same stance, I think most of us wish we were her. The bull snorts and she breathes it in like it feeds her. It is wonderful and empowering and celebrates mixed race. Certainly, I know women who bring their daughters to the statue and I already know young girls who adopt her stance. That alone is priceless. So we loved her. We loved her!

Until it was revealed that SHE was an advertising campaign. Let me get this straight…. we LOVED HER… and then we found out an artist actually got paid in dollars instead of “exposure” and suddenly it’s not ok. Is it because we felt duped? Or because the company has a NASDAQ ticker of SHE? Now, SSGA are not entirely clean – they allegedly invest in mining, petrol, and fracking amongst other frightening things, and some of those companies have associated human rights violations. So, when I write this next paragraph, I am in no way defending those investments (which do absolutely need to be considered in the context of feminism) but for now I will separate it for just a moment. Because… Advertising or not, you cannot deny that SSGA and McCann got it right. Someone there should deservedly be guzzling multiple cases of Moët, because this work was a great success until we decided that a corporation shouldn’t be paying for art. So, it’s an ad. But it’s an ad that works, unlike the failed Pepsi ad, and the “come drink a beer with me and I’ll change my deep-seated hatred of transexuals” Heineken ad. Those ads don’t work and will never work, because they don’t speak our truth. Let’s face it: Margaret Court ain’t never gonna change her mind on same sex marriage just by sharing a Heineken with a gay couple deeply saddened by their inability to get married in Australia. But finally, finally, here is an ad that actually harnesses the zeitgeist, and does it in a fierce sculpture that we, as the world, can enjoy as a work of art after they’re done advertising it. Or, another way to think about it is as a commissioned sponsored work (and god damn it, art SHOULD be sponsored). And women are fiercely protective of it. We so rarely see ourselves presented in art in powerful poses that when a dude bro is photographed humping it, to shame and diminish her power, we immediately react. I mean seriously, who WAS that guy? Because…. Fearless Girl is more than just a statue. She IS us. I mean sure, not everyone agrees: The Washington Post published a piece saying it “portrays the empowered woman as a child, reinforcing the idea of femaleness as cute and inoffensive.” But I’m a proud femmo, and I vehemently disagree with that statement. “Cute and inoffensive”? Tell that to all the MRAs losing their shit over it. Which is another sign that it works. OK. We need to get to some nitty gritty. I am a left-leaning lefty leftist, and yet here I am defending an investment management firm with potentially dirty ties. But here’s the thing, my left-ism is based on what I think is just and true in the world, but I pepper it with a healthy dose of realism and logic: We’ve been busting the balls of financial industries for not doing the right thing for a long time (cos let’s face it, they’ve been assholes), and finally a firm decides to do something about their gender equity and we’re all like, “yeah nah, this is bullshit - you’re only addressing gender equity because you think that’s what people want.” Ummm…. Yeah!? Of course! They’re responding to what we’re asking for! Get with the program! We demanded, and they are finally delivering. And yet we rail against them for finally doing what we’ve been asking for all these years and we slam them for paying an artist to advertise their inclusive hiring practices.

And here is why that is wrong. They nailed their advertising. We’ve been talking about Fearless Girl since she was installed because the issue divided people, which in and of itself means it was successful: now the world knows that SSGA hire women. We shouldn’t be bawling them out for using corporate feminism, or art as advertising or presenting it as guerrilla art, we should be nailing them to the wall for alleged dirty investments. We should be holding them accountable and saying, “hey, well done on Fearless Girl and congrats for actively encouraging gender equity in your firm. Good one. Five stars. Go you. Shame it took you so long but never mind we got there in the end and now we can all move forward. Speaking about moving forward, let’s have a wee chat about Rio Tinto…”.

‘Cos at the moment, my guess is that they are thinking that whatever they do, they can’t win: Keep up bad employment practices? The public hate us. Try to address gender equity? The public hate us. So, given that we are loudly castigating them for publicly announcing their gender equity, why on earth would they bother cleaning up something a hell of a lot bigger: their investment portfolio?

Look. All your corporate feminism arguments are valid: Yes, they shouldn’t use feminism for corporate gain – but if the net result is that it puts more women in high positions, then use it. I don’t care. Just give women better jobs and better pay. Whatever gets us there in the end. They will always only put their profits first instead of the “right thing to do”, BUT if aligning with a feminist fight means they get more money, then it’s incentive for them to promote more women and you know who wins? Women. (And them… they also win, but the main point is that women might have a fighting chance of paying a mortgage before we die. Plus, if we finally get gender parity in finance, then we also have equal rights to be assholes if we wish.) Basically, as pure advertising though, McCann, SSGA, and Kristen Visbal totally nailed it. Good on them. You know who didn’t nail it though? Gardega, with his ugly pissing pug.

Once again, artists does not get to dictate how their art is interpreted by the viewer, no matter their intention. Sure. Alex Gardega may have been TRYING to make a statement about corporate interference in existing artworks, but what the world ACTUALLY saw was him pissing on fearless girls who to be frank have enough to contend with in the world thank you very much. Here’s the thing - and again I stress that contexualising art in the year that it is viewed is key - in 2017, women are still fighting the bull and trying to stand our ground even while dude bros are photographed rape-humping our fearlessness (suuuuuuuuch a duuuude), and yet Gardega chooses to completely ignore the social context in which he creates his ugly pissing pug, and decides to take over an important discussion with his man voice by literally pissing on the conversation. If there was an art equivalent to being mansplained, this is it. I mean, it’s not like Gardega made the work years ago, like in Di Modica’s case where the context has changed around the artwork making it read differently. No. In fact it’s worse. Gardega has completely and utterly ignored and misread the CURRENT situation, blatantly disregarding women’s daily struggle to not be debased, and he deliberately chose to piss on an image that many women see as either a mirror or an aspiration of ourselves. What a douche-canoe. If it had been a fearless BOY, would this have all happened? Would we be having this discussion at all? Would a pug be pissing on the boy’s ankles? Well no, because the artwork wouldn’t have needed to be commissioned at all if it was a fearless boy. And hence we see why she is necessary. Pissing Pug was removed a mere 3 hours later. I wonder how he feels. Is he proud? Is he indignant? Is he at ALL embarrassed that people think his art is shit? His ill-thought through, base-reaction work had zero layers to it, with complexity and depth so badly lacking that its feet are sticking out of its shallow grave. I wonder if he cares. Quite frankly, all I care about is that he has not completely derailed the conversation, yet is a mere blip - the short interjection of a self-important man who thinks he knows about “stuff” and tries to storm into a situation like a bull. But he’s not a bull. He will never be a bull. He’s a pug. A short, badly-made pug, who, try as he might, simply can’t see the whole lay of the land, because of his own stature and perspective. Ironically, if only he’d stopped pissing on fearless girl, perhaps she may have picked the pug up lovingly, so that he could see more of what’s around him. Clearly the artist has felt strongly enough that he had to interject with his statement, but he also clearly knows nothing about the conversation between the bull and the girl, because he just wasn’t listening properly. And thanks to this guy, the girl, who was otherwise busy with the bull, now has to multitask and find the time to shake the annoying piss-y pug off her leg.

Pissing Pug means nothing to Fearless Girl except for an extra bit of laundry and a wash. Of course he means nothing. Because she has a Bull to contend with.

PS. I am fighting the urge to not post this. In fact it took me a good week and a half to post it after writing it, and now it’s no longer current. I took so long, because posting a shhhhh-thought is scary stuff: the minute this goes online is the minute I open myself up to online abuse. But I am trying to take my cues from Fearless Girl and face the bullies anyway.

PPS. I have deliberately avoided discussing the issue of appropriation and Di Modica’s reaction to Fearless Girl in this post. I hint at it, but figured it has been debated in plenty of other forums and I simply had something else to say. Also, this post is long enough as it is.

“I feel like to remove this work at this point would be to diminish everything that she stands for,” Visbal says of the brewing controversy. “Really and truly when Mr. Di Modica placed his work in 1989 it became a public work just like Fearless Girl—it belongs to the public, and the placement of Fearless Girl is simply an expression of the right to freedom of speech. There’s been some allegation that this is a corporate work but it really doesn’t matter how we came up with the piece,” she continues. “It was modeled from start to the completion of the piece by me and I utilized the same methods I use in creating any work. I’m sorry that Mr. Di Modica is not happy with the work—I asked him to join me at our sculptures twice. I think if he had taken the time to listen to how we view Fearless Girl and his work, maybe he would be embracing the women that the Fearless Girl represents.”

#fearlessgirl pissingpug chargingbull

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