#does anyone else who was born right at the start of the 2000s
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my review of house md season one is i love it and i would like to see more medical malpractice thankfully based on what i know i don’t think i will be disappointed
#and unfortunately wilson is my fave…..#somehow with everything homo as hell I’ve seen i was like oh I’m sure s1 won’t have a lot#but omggggg they were really going for it from day one!!!#AND ITS STILL NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT HAPPENS LATER!#does anyone else who was born right at the start of the 2000s#and don’t have a lot of memories of the early 2000s but it’s still when you gained consciousness#does anyone else like that find that early 2000s shows are weirdly nostalgic in a way. i have little memories of 2004 but im comforted by#the 2004-2005 gloss all over the episodes
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Hi it’s me again, the anon who asked about the Joker hating Dick. Back with two more things, sorry. First is Dick being the hardest bat for Cass to read, is that canon or fanon? Another is Dick, Cass, and Bruce being the only bats (heroes?) able to beat Jason in a fight, where is that from?
Sorry for the lengthy ask and I hope you’re having a wonderful day 💕
Hey again (＾▽＾)!! Not at all and thanks <3
Dick is just a hard person in general to read for anyone.
Titans (2016) Issue #11
And this is coming from a mind reader and empath.
But in terms of Cass, I think it may be because he's the only one whom she can't tell what he's thinking without him saying something. For example with Tim,
Batgirl (2000) Issue #59
Even though they're just sitting there silently, Cass can identify every emotion that Tim's emoting without him saying a word. However with Dick, she only learns about him by watching his interactions with other people.
Nightwing (1996) Issue #81
She can still read his fighting movements but she doesn't have the same level of emotional understanding of him through body language that she has on everyone else. I guess it comes with him being a born performer. It's like her trying to read Alfred given that Alfred and Dick both understand and bond with each other over their acting abilities.
Another thing about Dick and Cass is that Dick is able to read Cass as easily as Cass is able to read other people.
In fighting, just like she can easily see his form
Batman and Robin Eternal Issue #1
Dick can see hers too
Batman and Robin Eternal Issue #1
He's able to identify her weakness and analyze her fighting technique just like she's able to do his. Although Cass wins because she's always quicker on the draw than everyone. It comes with her almost meta-like ability to identify weak points in someone's body language.
So that's canon for emotional understanding I think but unless I have the direct canon panel I can't say for sure.
Dick, Cass, and Bruce being the only ones of the bats to defeat Jason is canon.
Dick beat Jason even after being electrocuted, tranquilized, hit with fear toxin, and blown up in the Battle for the Cowl
Batman: Battle for the Cowl Issue #3
Yet even after all this he still wins. He accidentally uses too much strength though and knocks Jason off the ledge
Batman: Battle for the Cowl Issue #3
Dick is always controlling his power. He's careful in the way he fights and goes easy on everyone especially if they're his friends of allies (evidenced in Vigilante comic), but when he loses that carefully maintained control, he always wins. There are other instances where Dick wins too but to give one that evens the playing field (where neither holds back), Battle for the Cowl is the best example.
This idea of holding back ties into Bruce too. Bruce doesn't restrain himself nearly half as much as Dick does but he does it too. When he doesn't hold back against Jason, he wins
Batman: Under the Red Hood Issue #13
Cass beats everyone, there's no question but here's the evidence anyway:
Batman and Robin Eternal Issue #3
Even as he's saying this, Cass has already identified all of Jason's weak points
Batman and Robin Eternal Issue #3
People sometimes use the following scene to say Jason can beat Cass but c'mon. It says right there he caught her by surprise and she wasn't seriously fighting.
Batman and Robin Eternal Issue #3
But Jason can beat Tim, Duke, and Damian canonically.
Here he beats Tim when Tim decides to dress up as Batman.
Batman: Battle for the Cowl Issue #2
It's kind of a one-sided fight. He also beats Tim when Tim is Robin but it's a little unfair to use that given than Jason is a trained adult and Tim is sort of just starting out. Also to be fair to Tim, Jason catches him by surprise and hiding but overall I'd say Jason still wins.
He also beats Damian in a fight rather easily
Teen Titans (2016) Annual #1
He also beats him in Batman and Robin and in Batman (2016)
Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #5
Although Damian has beaten Jason a few time in a no holds barred fight. I guess it just depends on how much they feel like fighting and who's writing. I can't tell with these two but I believe Jason would win eventually.
He can beat Duke too
New Talent Showcase 2017
He does it so easily.
I can't remember him fighting Stephanie so I'll leave her out. In terms of fighting ability in the batfam, I'd say Jason's solidly in the middle. Still a strong fighter though.
#dick grayson#nightwing#tim drake#red robin#cassandra cain#black bat#orphan#jason todd#red hood#bruce wayne#batman#damian wayne#robin#duke thomas#dc signal#cl anon asks#thanks for the ask!
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Muse full gigs
Some full shows that are available, for anyone who wants to partially relive the Muse live experience.
I figured no one's made lists in a while.
La Cigale, Paris By-Request gig 2018
youtube
rarities + I guarantee I'm gonna fuck up Space Dementia + water spitting + Matt and Dom playing Grammy hosts in the way they announced the winners of the by-request polls
Some cool and noteworthy gigs:
Live Lounge 2012
The Mayan 2015 (performance wise this gig was stunning)
Royal Albert Hall 2008 (Teenage Cancer Trust charity gig - Megalomania on the pipe organ!)
Reading Festival 2011 (10 years of Origin of Symmetry - played the album start to finish)
AOL Sessions 2006
Reading 2006 (Muse's first time headlining if I remember right. Plus, Matt's moves!)
Glastonbury 2004 (first Glasto headline and a must-watch! Of the iconic mad-scientist, white lab coat era. Muse had called it the best gig of their life so far, at the time)
(*Ruled By Secrecy was played live but wasn't included in the concert footage DVD and isn't in this video upload either)
Montreaux Jazz 2002 (height of piano maniac-ery days. Would also recommend Pinkpop 2002 but they don't. have. the footage anymore :( Space Dementia at Pinkpop 2002 was phenomenal. 2004 is also good, but I never found 2002 again. Speaking of which,)
Pinkpop 2004 (most songs are in, a few performances missing unfortunately)
MCM Café 1999 (marvel at what a good live act this young band aged 21 already was—with about 4 years of gigging experience under their belts. Insane how good they are.)
Wembley 2007 (H.A.A.R.P. The first band to sell out the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium. 90,000 people. You need to understand, seeing Chris lift up and point his bass at the crowd at the end of the slightly modified Jimmy Jam riff before Time Is Running Out was a religious experience that changed me and we're lucky enough to live in an age where you and I can witness it over and over and over again and I'd suggest that you do)
Rock Am Ring 2018, uploaded to the Internet Archive by the Muse Historical Society!
Austin City Limits 2013
Philipshalle 1999
Philipshalle 2001 (all suggested in notes, check out the crystal clear gifs from @hotbellamy! :O )
A few additions I remembered after publishing:
Eurockeennes 2000 (opened with a then-unreleased New Born. Matt playing a full gig in red sunglasses. Treat to watch. Link's stretched up to fit modern screens but if you want a bit of clarity and don't mind the late 90s ratio stretch, here's a different link)
2002 (quality's a bit shit but that is literally what telly used to look like)
Shepherd's Bush Empire 2006 (Early gigs are always interesting because over time Muse develop different ways of playing songs that are fresh off new albums. The way they work through Take A Bow live is a bit different here, Dom's the one controlling the opening verse synths! During the Abso tour, Matt would play that bit on the piano as an intro to Space Dementia and if I'm remembering right, he does now on the pianos (correct me—this was on the ST tour as well). Also, Starlight in Bm at this gig)
Rock Werchter 2023 (Muse play Rock Werchter in Belgium almost every year, except for the pandemic and 2012 I think, but this year's was a bit special. Best performance of Madness I've seen in a while, I love what he does in the outro! MOTP returns to the set. Muse had tech troubles at the end that caused them to restart Knights of Cydonia twice, to no avail. They finally cut it back for a guitar-bass-drum-vocals-only performance of Showbiz, and Matt's voice sounds exceptional on it— the best in recent years)
Bizarre Fest 2000 (BLESS SOMEONE HAS RESTORED THIS FROM VHS TAPE IN HD, this is so much better than back in the day!! If the falsetto at 1:13 doesn't do it for you, you're into the wrong band, nothing else will help. What an electric performance this was!)
Gigs from WOTP 2022/23 festivals tour last summer:
Nova Rock
Rock In Rio
Ejekt Fest
Isle of Wight
Hurricane Festival 2023 (a festival at which Matt once complained that Muse's set was cut short by... hurricanes. But the audio mixing at this gig was really good!)
These are in no particular order, and obviously not complete, I just realised no one had put together a gig archive in a while so I thought I'd give it a stab!
Will edit and add others whenever, there are obviously glaring omissions still!
#gig archive#muse band#muse live#there was this ridiculous 360 cam footage of Reading 2011 and for some reason that was the only one I could find.#That was years and years ago of course so I'm thrilled to have a proper and full recording of this!#Youtube#for anyone that wants to get extra into the spirit before your gigs lol#muse#muse gigs#muse full gigs
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What do these three people have in common? Well their birth charts to start out a very similar and they have all had very similar kind of accusations truth and also being able to brush it off at the same time. I have start with Wendy Williams who notoriously worked in I guess the 80s and the nineties to become radio host and almost like a gossip blind item of the original of what people are doing now and people dislike her but they’re all doing the same thing, she worked really notoriously and her and was often at times. The only woman and probably had a lot of and did have a lot of discrimination and black. She was the middle child children when she was younger she was overweight and her parents were very nasty to her about it actually all of these people have this in common as well, that he said he was a fat little fucker when he was younger and Courtney was not fat but chubby people who were not cause I don’t agree with the whole thing of medium because that’s what caused my own differently to what I was anyway so they had similar child all born in 1964 I believe They had people. I’m not too sure about this. She says she’s had money taken away from her and embezzled and from the Kirk Cobain estate but she was very unwell in the early 2000 Tyson had it he had it with Robin given his mum who wanted to really see the relationship like a lot of Hollywood relationships as a agreement and a More kind of relationship if you know you know he was very real for not wanting that and then he had the charges of rape against him which he won’t prison for which a lot of people has persecuted the victim which I think is disgusting. I’ve seen an into the victim and I believer, but what am I getting to in this? This, what I’m getting to all these three people have very redeemable characters and they have redeemed themselves in many ways Courtney with drugs and sort of now emigrating to England if that’s alright living in London now and not being in the spotlight so much where is before she lived for it I think all three of them dead Wendy Williams that’s a whole Nother topic really because I think she Has had an MK2 kind of situation where they have wanted her to shut up she was the original of what did he was doing in fact one of her last interviews on her show was with him meant to be making up on it and seven so they have the modalities cardinal fixed and mutable all evenly distributed in the chart which is good because you don’t sometimes want too much of one and not of the others so that brings me to all three of them are cancers with the Sun in cancer they all have Leo Mercury so they always think they’re right when they’re not.
They always have to be a bad person to have to say and that can be the part of people putting the people not liking them so much because mercury does not like to be in Leo, it’s not a good time for Leo basically or plan to be in because it’s first attitude with words which is partly what makes them so excellent at what they do especially and in the fact of the business is there but you can also make you dislikeable because you won’t anyone else approach we have the fact that they all are Gemini Mars and Venus which is a trait I said in a chart I I’m really charming when Venus and Mars are in the same. You’re gonna get somebody who is very good at fitting in social they might have a problem with boys definitely have a problem with balancing out their masculine and feminine inside and it could be pleasure versus pain a lot and you can see that just by looking at these people
and what they have gone through in Life, the whole accusations Courtney had and still does to this day over Kurt death things are going on and supposedly stealing money off her and not being able to have access to it while looking really unwell as I said previously embezzling Tyson and him but these people matured as a man Tyson has able to redeem himself in a lot of ways they all have lived really many lives. They’ve all had drug problems too and they’ve all just done out their things because of the similar to their chart. I do not no Tyson rising sign to me he could be a cancer rising but he could also be a tourist rising even arising because of the boxing so it’s hard obviously with the data they put on birth choice so you don’t know even a chart with an AA rating Rod and rating he can’t always tell so I tried to carefully celebrities and tried to talk about their Mars and Venus signs, and maybe not even that moonshine because we don’t know because I still think Beyoncé could be a Leo. Everyone thinks she’s a libra rising I don’t believe. so Courtney with her labouring that’s all the looks and how she’s a bit obsessed with looks and mentions it a lot in herself and others that can be the shallowest but it can also be that Gemini side with the gift of the gab and the fact that she did this song about the dress with her and cat For this dress and it became a massive thing , when is an Aquarius rising of course makes so much sense to me alien like big big boobs over the top boobs kind of like Nicki Minaj it’s very funny because they’re in that sense of having that Aquarius first house as well. You do get a lot of Carians that are too, although I think this isn’t talked about much but yeah, this is why I think these personalities are very similar .
Final PSA to this is a fact that Courtney Love called out Harvey Weinstein in 2005 and got blackboard for her never to see the live date or many years later and that’s only the light of day so people with Gemini placements can be whistleblowers but you need to be careful because they do embellished the truth a little bit sometimes not all of them. It’s more common in the women and I believe that the man.
#astro observations#astro placements#astro community#astrology observations#astro notes#astroblr#fypage#astrology#cancer placements#gemini placements#leo mercury#mike tyson#wendy williams#courtney love
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Because a lot of people did so, here my contribution to the Walker kids (also shamelessly to just talk about one of my OCs that i never manage to talk about):
Grace, born right in the middle of David and Logan, in April 2000, tho to a different mom, which is all fine and well, they all three were together for awhile and happy about the kid. Grace was a papa's girl, she loved Elias a lot
Tho when Grace was 8, they split up and Grace went with her mum to her home country of Germany (why? I'm german it's the only reason) There she still grew up around military, because her step dad also was a soldier, just in the german airforce.
She started growing resentful to Elias, because she thought that he didn't want anything to do with her anymore, because there were no calls, no letters, nothing from him. Eventhough she wrote him countless times, til she was 14 and gave up.
After ODIN took place she used her us-citizenship (cause she was born there) to join the us army too, given that she never really lost her sense of home to the US and also partly to see if she can manage to run across Elias or her brothers along the way and see if they even remember her.
She worked her ass of, becomming one of the best and coming on Merricks radar and getting pulled into the ghosts, where she for the first time again sees Elias, who does not seem to recognise her (she isn't running under the name Walker, but her Step dads name that she took when her mum and him got married). She plays along, staying distant to Elias, because she doesn't wanna get close to him again, not if he doesn't remember her.
She does tell him or rather everyone, in a fit, when she couldn't hold it down anymore. She basically turns to scream everything she had in her since she was 9/10 and started thinking her dad forgot her. Everyone is perplex, because Elias did say that he has a daughter out there somewhere, they all still thought she was (more or less) safe in Europe. Hesh and Logan are stunned that ther sister is back, without anyone knowing, especially because they thought that she left them, never to be heard from again.
Elias is just hurt and angry, not at Grace tho, he lets her scream everything out, before hugging her and apologizing that she felt that way and that he could never forget her, before telling her his side. Because what Grace and the boys didn't know was that the split wasn't nice behind the scene, that's why Grace's mum took her onto a whole different continent and that she left without an address or a number that he can call to keep in contact, he wanted to but he couldn't. (Also he did write letters for her birthdays and other stuff, had them in a drawer for the day that they actually either meet again or he finds an address to send them to, but they got lost in the destruction of ODIN) Basically her mother cut off all ties and the letters that Grace wrote, seemed to never have been sent out to Elias in the first place. Which obviously leads to a whole other sort of anger, but they decide to try to contact her mother, when the shit around them dies down a little bit.
When the shock dies down the boys get excited that they got their lost sister back. And they all do grow closer againm and start to catch up about how life went while they were apart.
That's it for now, also don't ask how that worked with custody and everything, in my head basically Elias gave up his, because it all would've been difficult with Grace being on a diffrent continent, but i don't know, not my area of expertise. And to the fact that he couldn't find them, if you don't manually agree to be put into the telephone book here in Germany, no-one can find out your address without illegal methods (unless you post it somewhere else yourself, we take privacy very serious)
-🐑
That's some well thought out lore! Nice. Points for tragedy, everybody got hurt here. Dang. Poor girl, just wanted her dad.
Ngl tho she funny as hell for not telling them. Undercover until she get's pissed enough, lmaoooo.
I was gonna make a joke about needing to make my own Walker but I think I already did lmao, I forget his name tho. Roger? Call sign was dumb too. I should make like actual notes on him, it'd be fun.
#call of duty ghosts#elias walker#logan walker#hesh walker#grace walker (sheepy's oc)#me-is-confused#🐑 anon#i'll still add the 🐑 tag because well. while no longer anon. you are sheepy 🐑 baah
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The Audience's findings #1
Lives are weird aren't they? How every single person has such a unique experience. Every single one! Here's an example of a life, completely different from everyone else's! Like everyone else, this kid is made up of stardust, which is cool but I think we’re going a little bit too far in the past now. Little bit of a fast forward: late 2000's, this kid is born somewhere in the Dutch Province Noord Holland. Born in a hospital, their family consists of their mum, dad and older sister. Their parents are a little on the older side, but the kid doesn’t care cause that means their parents have more life experience, and thus more stories to tell. Who doesn't love listening to stories? Their parents are kind, and caring, and just overall amazing figures to look up to in life. The kid has been raised to be kind and understanding, and patient, they are as much as they can. Always going out of their way to always say "hello", "thank you" and "have good day!!" the employees of the stores, restaurants and other companies they visit. A lot of people don't, the lack of gratitude in the people who don't bothers them deeply.
They want to make clear to employees that they are valued, always! This might be because the kid is a bit of an outsider. in kindergarten, primary and secondary school, they were (and still are) being made to feel like there's something wrong with them. Their classmates exclude them and make fun of the kid (behind their back of course, cause bullies are cowards) and they don’t want anyone else to feel that way. Thats why they always value everyone, try to see the best in everyone and give everyone a chance (even when they really, REALLY shouldn’t).
When they are very little, the kiddo spoke quite late, they barely said any words at all, but when they started to talk it was full sentences, right away (and ho boy with a lotta sass too). The first sentence was "MOMMY, ME WANNA WATCH TV, NOW!". Their mum prioritized doing the laundry over putting on the tv right away, and the little one did NOT like that. But that’s something the kid does more often, not starting something until they fully understand it. Probably the autism. In primary school they were really smart, but had trouble actually performing well in class, especially with maths. They always finished the schoolwork late, if at all. They tried to do it, but it was hard to concentrate. They even had to stay in to finish the work while the rest of the class got recess, that made them kid feel even worse. The first year of high school they also often didn’t finish homework (again they had trouble concentrating) but now they got away with it because of covid. In the summer holiday after the now teenager found out they had autism and ADHD They god medication, and since then they’ve been thriving. Exceptional report cards. Last year they only had eights and nines (outside of PE) on their report cards, in other words, straight A student. They are especially good in and, to their surprise, math. They are always 1 or 2 lessons ahead of the schedule. They are also exceptionally good at English, being allowed to do an accelerated course that allows them to finish English a year earlier then their peers. It probably helps that their parents raised them on English tv since they were a toddler. Not to mention that they have English relatives and that their mom is an English teacher who lived in England for a year.
The kid is also very openly queer. They had the luck of parents telling them since they were like 7 that if they ever found out they weren't straight, they could tell their parents and their parents would accept them. The family was also never an issue since they had a grandma in a sapphic relationship (had because the granny's partner died about a month or so ago) and a cousin a gay relationship so they knew the family would be accepting.
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@generalorcaptain from here
He never remembered a time before all the scars. His mom had said he was born with them when he asked. The look she'd shared with his dad had said more than her words alone had. What kind of soulmate must he have?
.Scars like rope burns on his wrists, ankles and around his throat, whip marks across his back, a scar on his lower left side, another on his right shoulder. He was even missing a toe. Titus grew up not giving them much thought, but when he helped his dad with the ships or went fishing with friends or swimming, he saw the looks people gave him every time he took his shirt off. A mix of pity and horror. What kind of soulmate does he have?
They assumed that anyone who had that many scars must have been some kind of criminal or something, which made them question what that meant about him, for being the soulmate of someone like that. It started to frustrate him the older he got. He started hiding them, glaring any time he caught someone giving him that look again. But he started to wonder the same thing that he'd seen in their eyes for years.
The first time he got a noticeable scar was after Cavaugh was destroyed, after he'd joined the King's Guard. The tip of a sword caught him across the face, cutting the bridge of his nose before skipping down his cheek. He was lucky it wasn't worse. Very lucky.
There was some tiny bit of satisfaction, petty though it may be, that he'd finally left a mark on his soulmate.
What surprised him a little was just a few days later, when he noticed an identical scar on the face of a young man he'd literally never seen before in his life while at store. He didn't give it much thought before moving over to the man.
"Excuse me. Did you just get that?" he asked, motioning to the scar.
Ardyn didn’t have a soul mate. He remembered as a child, always looking for a scar or a bruise. Any sign of the person the god’s had given him. But each day, each month, each year his skin remained flawless. By the time he got the scars from Shiva, he’d long since given up on having a soulmate. So he found himself relieved when the Oracle was attracted to him, when she wished him for a husband. Her holy destiny meant she had no soulmate, to keep her loyalty to the gods. Which meant she’d never leave him for someone better.
But of course, they got too attached. Then they lost their children, lost their happy ending, and he was left cursed. He at least could be relieved to know that the death scars he acquired would never touch anyone else. Shiva’s punishment and the lost toe from frostbite would have been bad enough. But then zealots whipped him to death for interfering with the Oracle’s destiny. His brother had rescued him, and then centuries later he led a failed revolt ending in him being lashed to a boat by ropes. Then the gun got invented, and he learned fast to avoid those. Each time he thought “at least no one but me has to deal with this” and moved on.
Then one day, 2000 years after he was born it happened. He looked in a mirror and saw a scar on his face he knew he didn’t acquire on his own. A soulmate, now? He laughed bitterly, the Astral’s had a sense of humor, didn’t they? He cringed at the thought of the poor child growing up with an immortals scars. They must hate him, for the stigma that would have left. A mortal looking like this would have been a terrible match, someone people would judge them for. And really, hadn’t he done his share of illegal shit? He got drunk that night, then put the scars out of his mind.
A few days later he was browsing on a stop off, and a young man stopped him. He was handsome, tall, muscular. And he had a matching scar on his face as Arydn, to say nothing about the ugly rope marks around his throat, the peaking evidence of similar under his shirt sleeves. Ardyn swallowed.
“A few days ago yes, I imagine you were born with yours.” He said, “If you’d like a drink I could explain.”
He usually avoided telling people he was immortal. But this young man had spent his entire life covered in the mess of his curse. He deserved to know.
“My name’s Ardyn Izunia by the way.”
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5/5/23: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Feldwebel (Sergeant) Wilhelm "Wil" Volker, sans cap (top drawing) and with cap (bottom drawing). He romantically pursues Adelina Dobermann, though both characters end up with someone else. I also just learned he's a count, and is blind in one eye. There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.
Regarding his design, he's a black-and-silver German shepherd. I also gave him a more period-accurate haircut I should've been giving most of the male characters, oh well.
TUMBLR EDIT: Surprise! I never knew much about Wil at all aside from him being a rival to Stephen Gerhardt for Adelina Dobermann's romantic attentions. Right as I got to drawing him, he started to open up. I'm still learning about him, and as it turns out, his story ends up playing a major role in Lt. Hesse's development late in the story in a way that is also still developing, so some details may be iffy.
Here we go!
Wilhelm "Wil" Volker dates back to at least the circa-2000 reboot, and I'm pretty sure his basic personality, unlike Hesse's, has remained the same...let me check.
WILHELM VOLKER: Sgt.; Nazi soldier and friend of Gerhardt's who develops an affection for Adelina. Friendly and courteous; loves to joke around with Gerhardt, not realizing he's a rival. Current storyline
Yep--aside from being a friend of Gerhardt's, that's pretty much accurate even today. Now to today's version...
Much of Wil's early story is told only in retrospect and in passing, to Adelina. He's born to a Junker count (Graf) and countess, and named for Kaiser Wilhelm II, for better or for worse. (That's actually a new detail. He expresses mild embarrassment when admitting this; it's probably the reason he goes by the nickname Wil.) His father is killed in the Great War; the Spanish influenza takes the rest of his family, aside from an uncle (this guy becomes a more important character, so he needs a name), who takes care of toddler Wil when he too gets sick. He nurses him back to health and effectively raises him like a son. As with so many other families in this story, they're the last left of their branch.
When war blooms again, Volker joins the Wehrmacht to defend the Fatherland. He's seriously wounded and requires a bandage over both his eyes. The doctor tells him that while they've saved his eyes themselves, they may not have saved his vision. His uncle visits as he recuperates; finally the bandage is removed and the doctor asks what, if anything, he sees. After a moment or so of blinking, Volker tells the doctor he's holding up three fingers. He can blurrily see with his left eye...his right eye is blind. He puts on a brave face--it's better than not being able to see at all--but it means he can no longer serve in combat. It looks like he'll be discharged from the military. His uncle pulls a few strings and manages to get him a desk job, though Volker finds it tedious and unrewarding. When recruiters tell him he can work for them running much more interesting errands, he joins the Nazi Party. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other about anyone the Nazis deem "undesirables," but parrots the party line anyway, because it's required. For the most part though, he just does his job running various errands for Nazi Wehrmacht members; it's a no more glamorous job than before, but at least he gets out of the office.
He's there when somebody runs into Lt. Hesse and Adelina Dobermann, knocking them in the mud; while the offending party helps up Hesse, apologizing profusely (and stealing some of Hesse's papers while he's at it), Volker sees to Adelina. She thanks him but otherwise barely acknowledges him, being too concerned about Hesse. (Hesse later discovers the papers missing and has the guy and his entire family gunned down but that's neither here nor there.) Later, however, when she gets turned around and lost on a visit to the city, Volker happens to run into her again; when she tells him she's lost he helps her find her way. This time they introduce themselves before they part ways...or at least, Volker does.
Adelina: "I'm sorry I didn't get your name the last time."
Volker: "Volker--Wilhelm Volker. Call me Wil."
Adelina: "Good to meet you...Adelina--"
Volker: "Dobermann. I know who you are. Everyone here loves your father."
Adelina is embarrassed by the attention her father, Louis Dobermann, gets her by association, but she's also very proud of him, so Volker's comment makes her blush. Once she departs, Volker can't get her out of his head. When the guy he's currently working for visits the Dobermann estate, Volker makes sure to go with him. There he meets Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt, who's just been assigned to the estate as a sort of informal guard (Dobermann has a standing arrangement with the Wehrmacht to keep undesirables off his property), along with Addy again, and Lt. Gunter Hesse, an SS officer who's a friend of the family. Volker's gotten skilled at people watching, and he picks up on a LOT of little details nobody else would even notice. He senses the tension between these three--between Gerhardt and Addy, between Hesse and Gerhardt, between Addy and Hesse. There's a very subtle but obvious (to him) romantic tension between the first two, despite neither of them knowing it themselves; meanwhile, Addy has a crush on Hesse (who's twice her age and has helped raise her from a baby so he thinks of her almost as a daughter, plus he already has a mistress, Sophie); and Hesse has picked up on the same vibe Volker has, so he's rather overprotective of Addy, and suspicious toward Gerhardt. None of them openly acknowledge any of this, so Volker decides he'll give catching Addy's eye a shot. He doesn't get to immediately, as his current boss loses his temper with Dobermann for some reason and storms off, leaving Volker to awkwardly try to smooth things over; but at least this gives him an excuse to return to the estate.
Over the following days he becomes a frequent visitor and gets to know the others in the household, including fellow Wehrmacht members Sgt. Alger Holt, Lt. Senta Werner, and PFC Konrad Helmstadt. He's surprised to meet the household physician, Dr. Tobias Schäfer--who's Jewish. Oddly, Hesse attempts to bully him into not ratting Schäfer out; Volker promises he has no intentions of doing so. There have actually been rumors of a Jewish person illegally living with the Dobermanns, but he had no idea they were true, and Dobermann is influential enough to keep prying eyes away. Volker is more surprised that an SS officer would participate in such a coverup; he figures Hesse must owe Dobermann a debt of some kind that overrides his loyalty to the SS. (It's actually more complex than this, but basically that's the truth.) In addition, Hesse and Schäfer appear to be on friendly terms, frequently communicating with each other via sign language (Schäfer is deaf), despite Hesse's known history of despising Jews. All of this just goes to show how complicated the personal situation is at the Dobermann estate, and Volker, frankly, finds it fascinating how unaware everyone is of it.
He attempts to get closer to Addy, which is a complicated process itself in that she's so fixated on Hesse yet oblivious to anyone else's interest in her. At least he doesn't directly have to contend with Gerhardt--when asked, Gerhardt insists he has no romantic interest in Addy, and Addy shows no interest in him--yet Volker senses it anyway. Still, he tries. Results are terribly unpromising at first, as she seems as uninterested in him as in anyone else but Hesse, but as time goes on and it becomes clearer that's never going to happen, she cautiously begins to open up. She one day overhears someone refer to Volker as "Herr Graf," and seems surprised, addressing him after the other guy leaves.
Addy: "Herr Graf--?"
Volker: (blinks in surprise, then looks embarrassed) "Ahm..."
Addy: "He called you Herr Graf...you're a count?"
Volker: "Technically."
Addy: "Why did you never mention it?"
Volker: "Honestly...I'd prefer people judge me by what I can do, rather than by what title I have...a title that frankly doesn't mean much anymore, anyway."
Addy: "Papa's a lot like that."
Volker: "I rather got that impression. Difference is, he's done quite a lot of good with his position, meanwhile I'm a glorified lackey."
Addy: "I'm sure you're doing someone some good."
Volker: "Well, if I could do even a fraction of the good your father's done everyone, I'd be happy."
Addy: (blushes and smiles)
Volker: "You're very lovely when you smile."
Addy: (blushes harder)
So, there it is, the opening: Not only does Volker figure out how to catch Addy's attention--through her pride in her father--but out of everyone she's crossed paths with so far (with the possible exception of Helmstadt, who's a family servant, so not so suitable after all), Volker is the most appropriate choice for a suitor: Addy is a Freiin--an unmarried baroness--and were she and Volker to become an item, she would actually be marrying up. Add to that the fact that the two of them are the last of their family lines, and a union between them just seems like a foregone conclusion. Hesse even seems aware of this, in that, unlike with his subtle hostility toward Gerhardt and Addy getting too close, he doesn't express any such overprotective feelings toward her getting close to Volker.
The one wild card is Louis Dobermann himself: Oddly, out of everyone, he's the only one who never offers an opinion or reaction either way--he's equally aloof and forbidding toward everyone. Nothing--not monetary enticements, not favors, not flattery or service--cracks his stony facade even a little bit. Volker can't get a read on him; he's a mystery to everyone but Addy and possibly Hesse. This puts him at odds with the Nazi Party, who often question his loyalty to the Third Reich, so that puts a crimp in Volker getting too close to Addy--Dobermann could be a liability. He decides to take the risk, and he and Addy grow closer over the length of the series, though it's a very gradual process.
There's a lot going on that Volker ISN'T aware of. Firstly, that Gerhardt is an American spy, who is also trying to determine Dobermann's loyalties. Secondly, that Dobermann, in fact, opposes the Nazis, and not only that, but he's been informally recruited by the resistance Diamond Network, via his presumably (not really) deceased wife Inga: She'd been introduced to the Network via Dr. Schäfer, and had been ferrying Jews and others to safe passage through hidden passages within the house (Volker stumbles across one of these and starts exploring it, to Schäfer's chagrin, before--"Spinnen, Spinnen, Spinnen, eeeehhhhh!--grosse Spinnen!"--spiders startle him back out) before being caught in the act; Network leader Josef Diamant convinced Dobermann to continue her work, so he let those on his staff who were in the know keep doing so while he stepped back. (Meanwhile, Inga's death was faked.) And thirdly, that his own uncle, who raised him, is sympathetic to the resistance efforts, too.
This is an angle I haven't fully delved into yet, and my memory of how this scenario initially played out in my head has faded already, but somehow the elder Graf Volker gets informally connected to the Network; I doubt he's a full-fledged member, most of the Junkers who participate aren't, but he does what little things he can to help. He's definitely on the Network's radar as an asset and a "friendly." He's low level and unobtrusive enough that the Nazis don't really think to look into him. He keeps his nephew in the dark: When Volker joined the Nazi Party, he was actually quite dismayed, though he hid it. He's pretty sure by now that Volker isn't terribly into their beliefs and principles, and joined primarily for the benefits and connections it would get him; this is a relief, though it means he could be in even greater danger if found out, so the older count never clues him in. He wants to help the resistance, but even more, he wants to keep his nephew safe.
At some point far through the story, though, he gets found out. I need yet to work out the details how. The SS takes him into custody and he ends up in the hands of Lt. Hesse, who works for the SS's intelligence division, and 2nd Lt. Paul Wozniak; they put him in the car and go driving. Unlike Volker, and Addy, the elder Herr Volker is very much aware of the awful stuff Hesse is involved in, the numerous massacres and murders he's ordered, including a Junker neighbor of the Dobermanns', and the entire family of that guy who knocked him in the mud all that time ago. He's also done his own research into Hesse, knowing that he was orphaned as an infant and raised a ward of the state, joining the military after never getting adopted, fighting in the Great War, recuperating from injuries and morphine addiction under the care of the Dobermanns, and ending up radicalized by the SS after the military abandoned him. Hesse attempts to question Herr Volker as they drive through the country, but he gives little information, resigned to his fate. Herr Volker, in fact, starts to turn things around on him, questioning Hesse's loyalty to the SS. This is the chink in Hesse's armor--he orders Wozniak to stop the car, and tells Herr Volker to get out; full of dread, Herr Volker nonetheless obeys. Wozniak watches from the car as Hesse marches Herr Volker off into the woods at gunpoint.
Once they've walked far out of sight of the road, Hesse orders Herr Volker to stop, and gestures at him to kneel; Herr Volker again obeys, certain he's about to be executed, but decides to go out with his best effort.
Herr Volker: "I see I struck a nerve."
Hesse: "Shut up."
Herr Volker: "That means I struck a truth. So it's true, then? What I guessed. That blind devotion of yours isn't so blind after all. You're starting to see it, aren't you?"
Hesse: "You don't know anything about me."
Herr Volker: "I know plenty. I have my sources, like you. I know you grew up alone. Unwanted. I know the Dobermanns showed you kindness but it wasn't enough. I know you were hurting, lost and angry. I know you were searching for somewhere, anywhere, to belong. And I know you found them and they offered you everything you ever wanted. A place, a purpose. A reason to exist. Proof that you're worthy... You aren't correcting me, there must some truth in it, nein?"
Hesse: "Like I said. You don't know anything. Except how to betray your own people."
Herr Volker: "I haven't betrayed anyone. I'm not the one murdering my own countrymen."
Hesse: "Exterminating pests isn't murder."
Herr Volker: "Keep telling yourself that. Keep believing it. You have doubts now, though, ja...? It's one thing when it's someone like me saying it, but something else entirely when it's one of your own. Or your own eyes...you're starting to see it now, aren't you? All those truths you've spent your life believing in, those truths they fed you, they aren't so hard and fast after all, are they?"
Hesse: "Shut up!"
Herr Volker: "You'll have to make me! It's why you brought me out here, isn't it? It should be easy for you by now, shouldn't it? After all the blood you've shed? So why are you hesitating? Because I'm right?... There it is. That look. You DO doubt. What was it, who was it who started to make you doubt? This thing you put all your faith in. All the lies you built your life on. What you would give your life itself for."
Hesse: (brief silence) (takes a step back) "Get up." (Herr Volker hesitates) "Now!" (Herr Volker slowly stands) "Now run." (Herr Volker hesitates again) "I said run!"
Herr Volker: "You'll have to kill me looking me in the face! I won't give you the satisfaction of turning my head!"
Hesse: "If you don't run, I'll put a bullet in the brain of your nephew next."
Herr Volker: "He has nothing to do with this. He doesn't know a thing."
Hesse: "I don't care. Do you?" (aims) "Then run."
Herr Volker realizes he has nothing to bargain with. He doesn't trust Hesse to leave his nephew alone, but it's the tiniest chance he has; he turns and hurries off into the woods.
Back at the car, Wozniak stiffens when he hears the gunshot. He gets out of the car and pulls his gun, straining his ears and eyes peering into the trees--"Kamerad?" he calls, then, louder, "Kamerad!" Rustling noises come and he aims, letting out his breath and relaxing only when Hesse comes back into view, alone; Wozniak lowers his gun but keeps looking into the trees.
Wozniak: "What happened?"
Hesse: "He tried to escape." (lets himself into the passenger side; perplexed, Wozniak heads to the driver's side and gets in)
Wozniak: "You shot him?"
Hesse: "He left me no choice."
Wozniak: "Should I send someone to retrieve..."
Hesse: "Nein. Let the animals eat him." (sits back) "Drive, bitte."
Although obviously bothered and pensive, Hesse insists on delivering the news to Volker. Volker isn't just stunned and heartbroken, he's confused--"Uncle's always kept his nose clean, he's never been into this sort of stuff," he insists, when told about Herr Volker's resistance ties. The SS has already gone through the entire Volker residence from top to bottom and found nothing to incriminate Volker himself--his uncle was apparently telling the truth when he claimed he wasn't involved--so he's quickly cleared of any suspicion. The incident plants some very big seeds of doubt in Volker, though; he feels he has no reason to suspect Hesse is lying, all available proof points toward his account of Herr Volker's death being the truth, but something still niggles at him. His gut tells him something more is going on.
As I said, that bit takes part late in the story, by which point Volker's realized something: He and Adelina are never going to be a couple. He does pursue her for quite a while, and once she herself finally realizes Hesse will never consider her anything more than his niece or adopted daughter, she tries to let go of her feelings for him and focuses on Volker. Volker's been trailing after her for ages, and he seems genuine. Like Hesse, she knows he'd be the best match. She starts tentatively returning his attention, and the two of them begin to spend more time together. For Addy, it's strange but flattering for a man to show interest in her, and she does put in a good effort; but the more time goes on, the more uncertain Volker himself grows at the prospect. He notices the time she spends, when not with him, with Gerhardt; the two never display any romantic intent toward each other, but something about the intensity of their interactions, their banter and especially how enthusiastic Addy gets about discussing things with him, indicates to Volker that there are strong feelings there, even if Addy and Gerhardt can't see it. By the time Addy tries to kiss Volker, he reluctantly pulls away, not letting her. Addy is understandably confused.
Addy: "What is it? What's wrong?"
Volker: "I...don't believe this is what you want."
Addy: "What do you mean? Of course I do."
Volker: "Nein...you don't. There's someone else you want, not me. You've wanted him all along."
Addy: "Who? Not Uncle Gunter, I realize now that was silly--"
Volker: "Nein, not Herr Hesse...you already know who." (Addy looks perplexed) "You should see the way your face lights up when you talk to him."
Addy: "Who...?" (they stare at each other a moment) "Herr Stephen...? But--he's my friend. He doesn't think of me like that."
Volker: "I notice you don't say that you don't think of him like that."
Addy: (blushes & averts eyes) "It...what does it matter what I might think of him? I'm here with you, aren't I?"
Volker: "You shouldn't settle for your second choice."
Addy: (guiltily) "I didn't mean it like that, Herr Wil--"
Volker: "It's all right--I know how you meant it. But it's so, isn't it? And I really wouldn't want to be the one who keeps you away from what you want. How do you think I'd feel every day...? Knowing that?"
Addy: (murmuring) "I thought this was what I wanted." (long silence) "Are...are you angry with me?"
Volker: "I'm disappointed...I could never be angry with you, though. You don't choose who you love... (lighter) Frankly, it looks like I never stood a chance."
Addy: "I don't even know that he feels the same way."
Volker: "Well, there's only one way to find out."
Addy tries to summon the courage to ask Gerhardt how he feels, though isn't sure exactly how without humiliating herself; Gerhardt himself ends up inadvertently opening that door. He's developed feelings for Addy but given his position as an American spy (and a Jewish one, no less) playing the part of an Aryan German soldier, he denies this even to himself. His true role there is to determine where Herr Dobermann's loyalties lie, and getting involved with Addy would be a big no-no. When Addy pours out all her grievances to him one day--including her assertion that she looks nothing like the blond-haired, blue-eyed ideal most men seek--Gerhardt interrupts, saying, "What are you talking about? You're beautiful." The comment, said without thinking, stops Addy cold. Throughout the series, she's been referred to as lovely, cute, pretty, juvenile things like that, but nobody has ever used the word beautiful, the word that's been used to describe not just various Aryan women like Hesse's mistress Sophie Sommer and the SS chief's wife Eva Heidenreich, but her own mother Inga, who was dark haired and brown eyed. (Addy takes after her, and looks nothing like her blond-haired, blue-eyed father.) Hearing Gerhardt call her the one word she was sure didn't apply to her sparks something--it means he's noticed. When they find themselves alone, she tries to kiss him this time, and although he's startled at first, he reciprocates. They end up falling asleep in her room; Gerhardt doesn't get the chance to slip back out before someone knocks on her door in the morning. Addy doesn't wake, so Gerhardt hurries to get dressed and answer the door, steeling himself for whatever might come--for some reason he doesn't expect Hesse, yet that's who it is. Painfully awkward, considering that Hesse thinks of Addy almost as his innocent little girl, yet here in her room is this guy who's completely unfit to be there.
Hesse: (blinks, surprised) "Herr Gerhardt--?"
Gerhardt: (hastily) "Herr Hesse."
Hesse: "What are you..." (peers further into the room, sees Addy still sleeping in the rumpled bed, then back at Gerhardt; his eyes start to go black) (tersely) "Finish dressing yourself. Then meet me in the hall." (turns & walks away)
Gerhardt: "Ja, Herr Hesse." (grimaces & finishes buttoning up his tunic & smoothing himself down; casts a look back at Addy before exiting, shutting the door, & following Hesse down the hall & around the corner) (upon rounding the corner, gasps--Hesse grabs him by the collar & slams his back against the wall, shoving his pistol under Gerhardt's ribs)
Hesse: (leaning close) (low, quiet voice) "If you hurt her. If you make her shed so much as one tear or have one regret. I'll unload my gun in the back of your neck and dump you in an oven. Understood?"
Gerhardt: "I--I have no such intentions."
Hesse continues glaring at Gerhardt for a few seconds, then lets him go. Gerhardt has to steady himself, unsure if this trouble is worth it. Later on, when he comes across Dobermann sitting with guests in the parlor, the baron stares daggers at him and he realizes that somehow he knows; and then even later when he meets with Josef Diamant, Diamant throws his hands up and hisses, "What were you thinking--?? Herr Dobermann's daughter! I should wring your neck myself!!" Not only does he have no idea how the hell everyone seems to have found out what happened so fast, but he hadn't known Addy has so many father figures watching her like hawks. "Not you, too," he groans when he runs across Volker, who gives him a look; Volker replies, "I'm just glad I'm not in your shoes right now." For her part, Addy is mortified to learn of what he's going through; she apologizes profusely and offers to intervene, an idea Gerhardt quickly shoots down, knowing it would only make things worse. He assures her his problems aren't her fault even as she promises to speak up if he needs her to.
As these two are getting closer to each other, meanwhile, there's someone else Volker's been interacting with more often: Lt. Senta Werner, the female Wehrmacht officer residing at the Dobermann estate. Her very existence mystifies Volker when he first meets her, as the Nazi Party and the military heavily frown upon women joining; they almost exclusively serve in auxiliary roles, doing secretarial work, radio communications, things like that. Senta wears a Wehrmacht uniform and sidearm, knows how to fight with a sword and ride a horse, and from what Volker is told, could hold her own pretty well in combat should she need to--she's had training--it's just that such service is forbidden to her. She only managed to obtain her position via family intervention, i. e., bribery--a fact that rankles her--and even then, the only position she was allowed to serve in was keeping watch over the Dobermann property, a job Dobermann offers various Wehrmacht members who are capable yet not quite fit for active service. Senta accordingly has an attitude problem. She longs to do more, to serve the Fatherland, yet is prohibited from doing so. Once he gets past his initial confusion, Volker attempts to befriend her as a fellow Wehrmacht member, treating her almost like one of the guys, though Senta isn't exactly enthusiastic at first. She spends most of their interactions berating him and just being a jerk in general. Volker is very difficult to offend, though, and he can tell her overly aggressive attitude is a defense mechanism, likely from having to deal with so many condescending people who doubt she's fit for her job. (Indeed, this includes her own mother, who had wanted a son--Senta's twin brother was delivered stillborn and Senta's been trying to fill in for him ever since.) Volker doesn't outright hit on her, since at the time he's still hung up on Addy, plus Senta has her eye on Dobermann himself--which pisses off Addy, who still mourns her mother and is always straining for her father's attention (Dobey keeps an emotional distance which Addy misinterprets as disappointment in her). As time goes on, however, Senta's attitude toward Volker softens and her barbs become more like banter. The two of them don't really realize that they've developed tentative feelings for each other, however, until everything comes to a head at the Dobermann estate with the sudden and unexpected return of Inga Dobermann.
Yep--Inga has been alive, and in hiding at a neighboring household, the entire time. And oh, also, it turns out Louis Dobermann's loyalties lie not with the Nazis, but with her--and Inga had been working for the resistance Diamond Network before nearly being caught forced them to fake her death. Her husband took up her mantle and has been allowing Network members and refugees from the Nazis to utilize the estate as one step of an advanced network of safe houses and passages to flee the country. Although much of the help staff, including Wehrmacht sergeant Alger Holt, is in on the plot, many other of the household's residents--including Addy herself--have no clue. Inga showing up shortly after revealing herself to Addy at the neighbor's house, however, just as the Allied armies are approaching and the Third Reich is starting to crumble, begins to rapidly unravel everything.
This part of the story is outlined in various other entries, but the version closest to Volker's POV is HERE, in Senta's entry. As Volker and Senta escape to safety with each other and Senta's mother, who like Volker has since turned her back on the Nazis (he'd been growing disillusioned the more he learned about their war crimes, and the revelation that Inga herself is Jewish--making Addy half Jewish--finally decides him so he actively turns on them), Senta's mother mistakes them for a couple--and to both their surprise, they find they aren't entirely opposed to the idea. It just sort of happens naturally as they move into a small house in the countryside to try to start their lives over following the war.
There's a further development that occurs either sometime during all this or immediately after (still ironing it out). A former Diamond Network member/associate (who knows, maybe the same doctor who helped Frau Werner?) brings news to Volker as well--or more like, a visitor--his uncle. Volker, astonished and overwhelmed, hugs him tight, exclaiming that he'd been sure he was dead, Hesse had told him as much. How, and why, is he showing up again after so long, alive? Even Herr Volker, overjoyed that his nephew has made it out of the city safely, seems to be almost beyond words trying to explain what happened, but he finally settles himself enough to outline events since Hesse marched him off into the woods at gunpoint.
"There it is. That look. You DO doubt. What was it, who was it who started to make you doubt? This thing you put all your faith in. All the lies you built your life on. What you would give your life itself for." Although he doesn't understand why, Herr Volker knows this was the point at which something in Hesse's original plans shifted, and he told Herr Volker to run. Herr Volker did so--falling to the ground as soon as he heard the gunshot, sure he was dead. After a while he opened his eyes and realized he was miraculously still alive--and what's more, he was unwounded. A quick physical check revealed he hadn't been shot at all. He waited a bit longer yet nothing else happened, no one arrived to check on him, so finally he crept back in the direction of the road. Hesse's car and the two officers were nowhere to be seen. Hesse had apparently fired into the air or the trees, returned to the vehicle, and departed with Wozniak, leaving Herr Volker behind--alive. He doesn't understand why or how, but something he said got through to Hesse, and Hesse let him go.
This is a truly bizarre development, considering Hesse's loyalty to the SS, but further details that emerge begin to make sense, and paint a far more nuanced picture. I don't know that they ever learn the entire truth, but here it is. Yes, Hesse HAD been blindly devoted to the SS, which he viewed as both an extension of his childhood aspirations--living unwanted in an orphanage, of becoming a "knight" and providing a service--as well as the adoptive family he never had. The SS stepped in when he was near his lowest, offering him not only a sense of belonging and being useful, but also a shared enemy on whom to place all his spite and bitterness following his abandonment by the military after the Great War. His job in the Allgemeine-SS offered him the chance to go after these enemies himself. He nearly outed Inga Dobermann herself, but instead, not realizing what she was into, he helped downplay the investigation of her "death" so she escaped with her secret intact. He did this because the Dobermanns had been his only friends following the war, nursing him back to health and treating him as a member of the family; he'd fallen in love with Inga, although he never acted on it, and spent his life protecting them from his own associates. Despite his loyalty to the SS, he always placed the Dobermanns first, potentially jeopardizing his own job.
As the war went on, however, it grew even more complicated. Hesse finally started to see signs that his beloved brotherhood was hopelessly corrupt and rotting from the inside out; numerous times he witnessed hypocrisy much more blatant than his own (he of course found ways to justify his own), including from higher-ups such as his former commanding officer in the Waffen-SS, General Vincenz Immerwahr, and his then-current boss in the Allgemeine-SS, Colonel Rupprecht Heidenreich. Immerwahr once hit on Hesse (and often invited young male officers to his place to "enjoy the view"), yet the Allgemeine-SS refused to investigate when Hesse filed a complaint, deeming Immerwahr far too important to subject to such treatment; Heidenreich, meanwhile, despite all his outward revulsion toward everything "degenerate," constantly cheated on his wife Eva (including with a half-Jewish woman, though I don't know that Hesse was aware of that detail) and saw no problem bending the rules when it suited him (such as covering for Immerwahr's behavior). Whatever strict rule the SS may have had, it was never so strict that those in power couldn't make an exception. Much of this corruption was exposed to the outside world when Eva Heidenreich--with the aid of her lover, Waffen-SS officer Erich Arzt (whom Hesse was also familiar with)--orchestrated the murder of her own husband, initially pinning the blame on the Diamond Network. Hesse was dismayed to find that the despised Josef Diamant actually had nothing to do with the incident, and it was an inside job, motivated purely by jealousy and spite. Eva was executed, Arzt committed suicide, and Hesse was left emptyhanded trying to figure out all that had gone wrong. His knightly brotherhood didn't seem so noble anymore.
Some of the harshest truth came from SS-Totenkopfverbände Major Jan Delbrück, adjutant of the local labor camp. He and Hesse were not fond of each other, due to Hesse's investigation of Delbrück allegedly visiting a Jewish prostitute; Delbrück insisted Hesse had tarnished his honor and the two dueled over this. Hesse won the fight, but, wearied out by all the dramatics of being considered an SS "rat" by his fellows, decided to drop his investigation. He ran into Delbrück again much later, after spotting him marching in a Waffen-SS unit that had just returned from the Eastern Front; surprised to see him there, he asked what was going on. Delbrück explained that things were getting quite bad in the east, and troops were running short, requiring the Waffen-SS to call eligible members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände into active service. Hesse asked why then were they here, marching in parade? Delbrück tersely replied that it was purely for show: The government realized the war effort was all but lost in the east, and so called back some troops to march into the city, looking victorious to help boost civilian morale. Delbrück and his comrades actually volunteered to remain at the front to continue fighting yet were refused, indicating just how bad things were getting. He bluntly informed Hesse that everyone was being lied to, right to their faces, and the Reich was set to collapse at any time: "Perhaps you'll listen to me this time, Kamerad, and get out while the getting's good, because no one's going to have your back anymore but you."
Hesse got much the same message from Wozniak, who privately informed him that he and his new wife and child would be leaving the city as soon as possible and seeking shelter elsewhere. (Hesse knew Wozniak's family had fudged their German ancestry and were in fact Polish--much of the SS itself was aware yet covered it up--but he didn't know Wozniak was also gay and his marriage to an unwed mother was a scam.) Increasingly disillusioned, he took his mistress, nightclub hostess Sophie Sommer, on a weekend getaway to a mountain lake cottage for one last escape before figuring out his own final moves, after proposing to her. Sophie, who'd previously laid bare a lot of her unsavory past to Hesse (including being a teenaged prostitute, and nearly dying from an illegal abortion following an affair with a married SS officer), had tried to dissuade him from this, but he was adamant. Here's part of the exchange, from Sophie's entry:
Sophie: "Gunter, you barely know me."
Hesse: "I know enough. I know what matters. I'll ask the SS, but you have to answer me first."
Sophie: "You're not the first to ask. I know your people. All your regulations and laws. It's easier to fight the Red Army than to marry into the SS."
Hesse: "They'll accept you. Look at you. You're perfect."
Sophie: (frank look) "You of all people know you can't tell just from looking at a person, Herr Gunter."
Hesse: "I'll find a way."
Sophie: "And what if they don't accept? What if they tell you nein?"
Hesse: (brief pause) "Then I'll choose you."
Sophie: (stunned silence) "You'd...give up your life, for me?"
Hesse: "You don't know this by now?"
For clarification here: Sophie had been asking if Hesse intended to choose her over the SS (give up his life with the Schutzstaffel) if it came to that, and Hesse confirmed this: He'd finally found something more important to him than the SS, and his loyalties were now with Sophie. Considering the role the SS played in his life, this was a VERY momentous decision, and they both knew it. The weekend they spent at the cottage just strengthened his resolve, and his encounter with Herr Volker sparked something. Compare the dialogue:
Sophie: "You'd...give up your life, for me?"
Herr Volker: "What was it, who was it who started to make you doubt? This thing you put all your faith in. All the lies you built your life on. What you would give your life itself for."
Herr Volker did indeed make an impression on Hesse that day in the woods, echoing Sophie's own words, about what exactly he was willing to sacrifice for. That thing was no longer the SS; it was the person he loved and the prospect to finally have a family. All the other evidence he'd been getting snatches of, the hypocrisy and the info that he'd been lied to by everyone he looked up to this entire time (main example, that Germany really DID simply lose the Great War, there was no stab in the back from the Jews), added up. Tiring of the deceit, Hesse told Herr Volker to run, and covered up another escape; Herr Volker sought safety with the Diamond Network, effectively going underground until the Reich fell. Unknown to everyone else but Sophie and his close confidant Theodor Schulte, Hesse started making his own plans to escape with Sophie and start a new life on their own...the difference is, unlike Wozniak, he waited too long. His remaining loyalty to the Dobermann family, ironically, is what helped do him in.
Volker fills his uncle in on some of the rest of this as he was there to witness part of it. Hesse rushed to the Dobermann estate upon the report of a disturbance, similar to the night Inga Dobermann was "killed"--bizarrely, Inga was again the cause of the fuss: After revealing herself to Adelina, she returned to the estate and to her husband. Everyone arrived around the same time (unknown to them all, Senta Werner's own father was the one to rat out the Dobermanns), and while struggling to figure out how to handle the situation, Hesse was shot and killed by Josef Diamant. You've probably already read over that above; there's a more detailed version HERE in Dobermann's entry. Anyway, Volker and his uncle reach the same conclusion, that something had fundamentally changed in Hesse's worldview, to allow him to let Herr Volker go free, and to make him hesitate long enough to inadvertently allow the Dobermanns to escape. Volker wonders if this latter incident was so inadvertent, however; although Hesse had threatened to take the Dobermanns into custody, his indecision was obvious. Herr Volker's odd tale just lends credence to this thought. The two of them, though, have no way to prove their suspicions that if he'd had a little more time, Hesse might have done something completely different.
Currently, Volker isn't set to show up in the final story, Ultima Thule (this could change); also, considering the timing, I'm not sure how this bit with him being reunited with his uncle could fit into the penultimate story. So this needs some working out. It's opened up an "alternate" scenario, however, that I've been sorely tempted to insert as Reunion's true climax, taking the place of the one outlined in other entries. This would entail other semi-major plot changes too, however, so I haven't gone with it yet. Currently my tentative idea is to introduce some sort of psychic element or visionary experience into the story (this isn't completely out of place, Turquoise and Nixie are clairvoyant characters, yet on the rodent side of the story--I don't have any such characters yet on the canine side) which would allow the characters to see how things would have played out if Hesse had gone in a different direction as he started to plan yet never got the chance to do. (Originally Hesse was just going to tell Inga what he would've done, but IMO that's not convincing enough.)
Here's the alternate scenario that's emerged, likely also in need of ironing out:
What's the same: Addy meets with Josef Diamant and Inga outs herself to Addy at neighbor/resistance collaborator Katharina von Thiel's house. Herr Werner catches wind of this and rats the Dobermanns out to the officials. Hesse is one of the parties notified, and he and various other officials and troops, separately from him, head out. Inga and Diamant arrive at the Dobermann estate and the Dobermann family is reunited. Everyone, including Lukas Mettbach, Hesse, Volker, as-yet unnamed Wehrmacht officials, and already-present parties including Sgt. Gerhardt, Sgt. Holt, Senta, PFC Helmstadt, and Dr. Schäfer, converges on the estate. Inga's status is discovered and there's an armed showdown. Helmstadt turns on the Dobermanns. Volker is wounded, yet kills Helmstadt.
What's different: Hesse likely arrives a bit later than previously, so misses the conflict with Helmstadt. He may engage with Diamant and may get wounded, but isn't killed this time. Somehow Diamant escapes, likely with Lukas's aid/force since I don't believe he would willingly abandon the Dobermanns no matter what (maybe Diamant is also wounded?--it can't be too serious though, as he later helps the Dobermanns to the mountains--or maybe he's almost caught by officers arriving at the estate?). Hesse holds the Dobermanns at gunpoint and threatens to take them into custody same as previously; Addy likely still jumps in front of her father, catching Hesse off guard. The Wehrmacht officials intervene before Hesse can act, and start taking control of the situation; Volker, Senta, and Holt are temporarily removed to the stables as previously. As everyone is trying to coordinate how to handle things, Hesse volunteers to personally drive the Dobermanns and Schäfer into the city (where the situation is likewise rapidly deteriorating as Allied forces are approaching from the west and east) to SS headquarters for interrogation as Allied collaborators. The Wehrmacht official in charge agrees. Hesse marches the Dobermanns and Schäfer out to his car at gunpoint and makes them get in, the Dobermanns in the backseat, Schäfer in the front passenger seat. They depart.
For a time Hesse drives in silence along the lengthy dirt roads, not speaking; a few other vehicles follow at a distance. After a while Hesse peers at the Dobermanns in the rearview mirror, at the following cars in the side mirror, then ahead again; his mouth sets in a firm line. He grips the steering wheel more tightly. Schäfer jumps a little when he lightly taps his arm, and turns to look at him; Hesse signs something. Schäfer stares at him a second or so, then twists around in his seat to look back at the Dobermanns. "Get down," he says, and although Addy and Inga try to ask what's going on, Dobermann puts his hands on them both and pushes everyone down to the floorboards. Schäfer ducks as well. Hesse abruptly floors it, turning and heading down a side road and away from the city. The vehicles trailing behind struggle to catch up; after a few more moments they open fire, striking Hesse's car several times (to the panic of Inga and Addy), but Hesse manages to elude them. He catches Schäfer's attention and signs at him again; Schäfer peeks out the window and after briefly surveying their surroundings, points and says, "That way." He continues giving directions as Hesse follows them, until at last Hesse pulls the car over at the side of the road and halts. Everyone peers at him uncertainly; he's breathing hard, looking near panic himself, as if he can't believe what he's doing. He pulls himself together and gets out, signing at Schäfer; Schäfer gestures at the Dobermanns, and they open the back door to get out as well. Everyone gathers in the road; Hesse points toward a mix of woodland and scrubland to the side.
Hesse: "Doktor Schäfer says there's an underground bunker that way?"
Dobermann: "A passage. Ja."
Hesse: (signing at Schäfer) "Take them there." (to Dobermann) "I'll wait here and make sure they don't follow."
Dobermann: "And what about you?"
Hesse: (pause) "I'll be fine. Go."
Inga: "Herr Gunter...?"
Hesse: (faint smile) "Look after each other."
(Schäfer gestures and hurries off; Dobermann takes Inga's and Addy's arms and steers them after him)
Addy: (calling out) "Uncle Gunter--? Uncle Gunter...!"
Hesse simply stands in the road and watches as they go, Inga and Addy calling after him a few more times as they hurry off toward the trees. The sound of automobile engines revving and gravel tossing is already growing closer; one last glance back shows them Hesse looking down the road at whatever's approaching, before he's lost from sight. Shouting/arguing noises come. They're about to reach the trees when the sound of assault rifles firing echoes in the air; Inga and Addy both cry out, and even Dobermann grimaces--Hesse hadn't been armed with an assault rifle. Only Schäfer fails to react to the awful implications of the sound as he can't hear it; Dobermann grasps his now-weeping wife and daughter tighter and hurries them along after him in the direction of the underground passage.
Master Sergeant Schulte arrives, this time not at the Dobermann estate, but on the road where Hesse's car is still parked, idling. (Need to figure out how he knows to turn this way; perhaps he sees a sign that Hesse's car had gone down that road.) He rushes to Hesse, who's lying in the road, torn and bloody and unresponsive. (A detail here I've never covered yet: Much earlier in the story, I believe Hesse gets accidentally(?) dosed with some drug and spends a while dealing with residual hallucinations; one occurs during a solar eclipse, wherein he stares deliriously at the sky and envisions first a Black Sun, then a symbolic battle that appears to predict Germany's defeat and, in some manner, Hesse's own death. The look he gets on his face while lying in the road staring at the sky is meant to echo this earlier incident, making the vision of his own death and the fall of the Third Reich come around full circle. HERE is a song for this particular scene, enjoy.)
What's the same: Schulte clutches Hesse in his lap and sobs, "Boss, Boss," for a few moments. Realizing there's nothing he can do for him but head back to the city to find Sophie and shuttle her off to safety, he does so, reluctantly leaving Hesse's body behind. He finds Sophie at the nightclub, informs her of Hesse's death, and begs her to come with him; devastated by the news, she refuses, not seeing the point. Schulte's efforts to convince her to flee for the safety of her and Hesse's unborn child fail, and he leaves emptyhanded; on his way out, a nightclub worker who's been collaborating with the Diamond Network shoots him in the head and kills him. Sophie, hearing this, takes out a gun Hesse had bought her to protect herself when he's not present, and commits suicide. The nightclub worker finds her already dead; he uses her lipstick to write "NAZI-HURE" (Nazi Whore) on her mirror before leaving. Later, American Allied forces discover the bodies, but Axis forces find Hesse's and Helmstadt's bodies and spirit them away for Project Ultima Thule.
You can see some of the bugs that still need ironing, for example, where Gerhardt ends up during all this (he's supposed to stay with the Dobermanns), and how they reconnect with Diamant and Lukas (who provide them with horses and escort them to the mountains before parting ways). Perhaps they all make a plan ahead of time to have a safe meeting spot in case they get split up, and perhaps Gerhardt gets his cover blown along with the Dobermanns and so accompanies them and Schäfer in the car with Hesse? Unsure.
Anyway. If this remains an alternate scenario--what Hesse WOULD have done, if Diamant hadn't shot him first--then it needs to be revealed somehow to the characters in Ultima Thule. The thing is that the more I dwell on this alternate climax of the story, the more I lean toward it being the actual plot. It offers Hesse the chance to redeem himself just a tiny bit--NOT completely, not even close, but he would at the very least repay the debt he's owed the Dobermanns all these years for saving his life. Not only that, but there's a nice irony in Hesse getting killed in the exact same way he ordered the massacre of the family of the guy who knocked him down and stole his papers all that time ago. And it helps make his about-face in the final story more believable. With the bonus that I wouldn't need to shoehorn in a clunky supernatural subplot.
SO...that's my heads-up, that a major plot change may end up occurring soon. I know it's kinda dumb for me to get into all this here--in Volker's only tangentially related entry--but Hesse's interaction with Volker's uncle is a catalyst--almost a trial run--for this, and I haven't had anywhere else to share it, so...
Anyway. Volker ends up not with Addy, but with Senta, while Addy ends up with Gerhardt. I imagine they have the opportunity to meet again sometime after the war, though that's a story for another time, as I need to finish this one up.
[Wilhelm Volker 2023 [Friday, May 5, 2023, 4:00:19 AM]]
[Wilhelm Volker 2023 2 [Friday, May 5, 2023, 4:00:35 AM]]
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Long post about whiteness
I’m seeing a lot of false-start questions based on a narrow understanding of whiteness. Whiteness (and recovery from whiteness) can be tricky to unpack because it has a lot of layers that have been added over the years. So you’ll run into a layer and may be tempted to stop there, but it goes deeper.
1) Racial identity was a vague belief before it was officially named, but it’s not as old as many think it is. Prior to European Expansionism, travelers and merchants and militaries alike have generally referred to people based on their place of origin or their language. The idea of vaguely lumping hundreds of ethnicities together based on a handful of physical attributes started to kick up when Portugal began capturing and enslaving huge numbers of sub-Saharan Africans in the mid-1400s. As slave traders and “explorers” brought shiploads of captured, multi-ethnic Africans to Portuguese auction blocks to be traded all over Europe, what set these enslaved people apart from anyone else there (including other enslaved people) was a) the fact that they were to some degree darker than the Portuguese despite displaying a wide range of skin tones, b) were from Africa at the time, and c) were enslaved. When Christian militant and royal biographer Gomes de Zurara was hired in 1453 to write about the life and “accomplishments” of Portugal’s most famous slave trader, Infante Henrique aka Prince Henry the Navigator, he officiated, in writing, the idea that all these newly enslaved people were their own class of people with no differentiation between them. Here, race is a burgeoning social narrative invented to praise European slave traders, and this racial concept is defined in relation to slavery, African origins, and skin tone. Racial concepts appeared in tandem with racist concepts, because races began to be envisioned in order to excuse the abuse of others. The ideas of whiteness and blackness were birthed simultaneously, specifically around slavery, and they became deeply entrenched beliefs before they were ever officially named.
2. “Negro” became the first major racial term before “white” was widely used, binding the development of racial concepts even more securely with the practice of European slavery. In fact, race and racism became encoded in colonial-American law in 1640, when African servant John Punch ran away from his European buyers along with two European servants. He was eventually recaptured, as were his Dutch and Scottish companions. However, the colonial judicial system sentenced Punch to a lifetime of slavery, while the two Europeans had an extra year added to their initial servitude. This marks the first record of a Euro/American legal precedence for lifetime sentencing of enslavement based openly on race. John Punch’s African lineage and the other servants’ European lineage were the differences between their sentencing. Here, European origin was what freed a person from being of the “negro race” and therefore severely reduced one’s likelihood to enslavement. It was also the requirement for incoming settlers who wanted to be able to buy land. Only white people were allowed to develop inter-generational wealth, at a time when this continent was being carved up by land speculators for massive profits.
3. The concept of whiteness was officially named by Carl Linnaeus in order to rank Europeans as superior among other conceptual categories of people. It involved grouping hundreds of ethnic groups together to form white, yellow, red, and black races in he text “System Naturale" (1735). While primarily an introduction to our current taxonomy system, it included these racial categories. It was highly regarded by Europeans eager to cast themselves as superior because it a) created a popular “scientific” framework for excusing the most obscene (and profitable) crimes against humanity, b) officially outlined/invented the white race and identified it with everything good and the black race as everything bad, and then c) clearly defined Europeans as the basis of whiteness, “Homo sapiens europaeus.” Here, whiteness is coined to describe European ancestry, particularly in relation to “grotesque” non-whites.
4. An individual’s personal ideas of whiteness fluctuates with time and circumstances. As governments, social institutions, literature, etc all work to redefine history and clean up their image, people have different/less information to work with, but the effects are the same. The popular spoken definition of whiteness is often simply a reference to a relatively pale skin tone caused by European ancestry. Obviously there are pale people in other places around the world who aren’t European and weren’t related to the slavery of European Expansionism, so pale skin isn’t enough. The relation to Europe’s capitalistic global expansion is key. But what about European countries who didn’t go expanding this way, or whose involvement is harder to pinpoint? After all, most of the trading of enslaved indigenous peoples from Africa and North & South America were carried out by the Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch, French, British, Spanish, and Americans. Well, the rapid enrichment and development of the rest of Europe for centuries to come was specifically made possible by all the labor, resources, and capital brought in by this period of the European slave trade. European ancestry links every white person to privileges and developments born on the backs of black and indigenous enslaved peoples. Furthermore, simply being white makes one safer from these kinds of exploits, and today it also makes one safer from the effects of generations of racial prejudices and resource extraction on the global scene. Which brings me to...
5. Whiteness tends to involve one’s relative freedom. Freedom of movement, both physical and social, without immediate threat of policing. Freedom to explore one’s ancestral history without being blocked by 500 years of forced removal, renaming, forced childbirth, etc. Freedom to exist without having to actually know or respond to one’s racial identity. This one’s really important. Whiteness involves not having to think about being white, usually in relation to living in a country/region whose laws and norms are defined and enforced almost exclusively by other white people. Since whiteness and blackness arose mutually around the European slave trade, blackness is inherently tied to a lack of rights/freedoms and whiteness is inherently tied to an abundance of them. That doesn’t mean that every white person experiences these equally, and there will always be exceptions to the rule. But the exceptions don’t make the rule, and after centuries of globalized white supremacy, whiteness has become a subconscious signifier of power for people all over the place.
The big take-away is this: whiteness is inherently toxic. There is nothing positive to defend in whiteness. It was born out of ugliness and it is ugly to its core. That’s why it feels so bad. It’s why “white pride” is always ugly. However, the solution is not to disconnect from our ancestry. All that does is leave us trapped here, in an ugly set of circumstances, with no concept of who we are except what we’re living in, now. The real work to be done is to connect with our ancestry before whiteness, with the ancestors who related to the land as a living entity, before the land was limited in social memory to a source of private capital, servitude, and empire-building. This land, this Earth, is the backdrop against which all our relativity is measured. From this place of relative security, understanding, and development of the spirit, we can withstand the reality of our more recent ancestors, and finally heal from the last 1000 to 2000 years of trauma.
I know I’ve said this before, but now that I have this huge post, I’ll repeat it: Dr. Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine is a really helpful book and/or course for this whole process. It’s not the end-all be-all resource, but it’s a great start! I’m also always down to talk about this stuff. Hit me up. I need to be able to talk about it, too.
(I should add, while blackness was created by white people and therefore was born out of the racism of whiteness, blackness was forced on people, while whiteness was claimed by the takers. It’s no white person’s place to have an opinion about "black identity.” White people started race, so white people are responsible for deconstructing our own race--no one else’s. We cannot be “post-racial” while everyone else is still living the violent reality of racism.)
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Hey, Cuba-anon again with a slightly different question. Less about Cuba, more about foreign policy and ethics in general. I am interested to know what you think about Nationalism and it’s place in the modern world. How should one view their relationship to their country versus their relationship to the global community?
To give my point of view, I think I am a pragmatic nationalist? I am not gung-ho about America because “it is the best nation ever and the president is never wrong, uwu”, but rather because I live here, my parents and grandparents live here, and if something in the world negatively impacts America it will by extension negatively impact me. I don’t think other countries are beneath me or anything, but I also know that the feeling is not always reciprocal. So, to me, putting the well being of Americans first and everything else second is similar to putting on your air mask first before helping others in the event of a plane crash.
Either way, would love to hear your point of view and see how others tackle the question.
(sorry for the delay in response, got halfway through writing this then saved it to drafts and completely blanked on it)
But okay, interesting question, and worth breaking down.
So, you know how through the '90s and early 2000's there was this just utterly overpowering narrative where the last chapter of every history textbook ended with a chapter about how national borders were less and less important and how through the magic of The Internet young people were more connected and cosmopolitan than ever, with the strong implication that the weight of history was pulling us inevitably towards a post-national utopia of frictionless exchange and understanding. Call it the Star Trek ideal.
Hasn't exactly worked out, of course. And to a large degree was bullshit even at the time (or the optimism of academics expecting all of humanity to think like they do, being charitable). But in my heart of hearts, that's still how I think things should work.
But okay, to get a bit less abstract, a bunch of barely connected thoughts-
- Nation-states (and states generally) are, at best, convenient administrative divisions of humanity. They have no value outside the services they provide to their residents, and certainly no rights or moral worth outside that. America doesn't deserve your loyalty or life anymore than the state of Ohio or city of Baltimore do (replace with wherever you live.)
-If you accept the basic idea of humans having equal moral worth (or anywhere close to it), then the entire idea that someone's entire life should be defined by what side of an imaginary line on a map they were born on seems obviously absurd as soon as you start thinking about it?
-Nations - in terms of borders, whose included, what characteristics are 'national', etc - are also both contingent and a great extent artificial, defined by state and cultural elites via a standardized language, a mythologized national history, patriotic holidays, nationalizing and creating traditions and rituals, national education and entertainment, etc, etc. There's nothing primordial or inherent there.
-Unfortunately, people really, really like having teams to identify with, and like excluding people from those teams and/or treating them like shit for not belonging to them even more. (People talk a lot about x or y horrible thing being fundamental to human nature, but I really think this is one of the places where human nature really lets us down.)
-Nationalism is an extremely easy and powerful way of dividing the world between us and them, and across the world there has been massive success using it as a locus for identity formation and to organize populations around basically every sort of project imaginable, from funding public education and welfare to genocide.
-Nationalism is, as mentioned, inherently exclusive - and no matter what it's proponents say, in practice there's always someone within the borders of the nation who doesn't quite fit (in the European context, Romani and Jewish people are the most obvious examples). Cases where the nationalist imagination doesn't perfectly overlap with state borders, or with the identity of some subset of the 'national' population also tends to go, uh, badly.
-However, within the national population, appeals to national solidarity or theoretically shared ideals can often be (to a limited degree) useful in transcending or working to ameliorate regional, ethnic, class, etc divides.
-While it's true that large chunks of the American (Canadian, British, French, Japanese, etc) populace benefit quite a bit from their position in the current international system, it's almost universally the case that what foreign policy elites consider 'the national interest' extends far, far, far beyond anything that provides concrete benefits to the average citizen - I'll just gesture vaguely towards Afghanistan, here. Or World War 1 - and quite a lot of death and misery is inflicted for the sake of a narrow slice of the elite's material interests and entirely meaningless concerns around national glory and prestige.
-To be frank, in specifically America's case, putting the interests of co-nationals first and everyone else second is less putting your own air mask on first and more launching a life boat at half capacity to make sure you have leg room.
-But, again, the fruits of pursuing the national interest really, really aren't evenly spread. Does the US government's tireless and vicious championing of stringent IP laws, regardless of how many needless deaths result from the constraints on the drug supply they create, really do much for the average American?
-Which, to go back to the air mask analogy, brings up the awkward point that very often it's not so much putting your own mask on first as tearing the masks off people around you so you have extras, just in case. How much less is the life of someone on the wrong side of the border worth? Half as much? A tenth? A thousandth? The pursuit of America's national security and national interests has a death toll well into the millions.
-Honestly, even if you don't care at all about foreigners, in terms of domestic policy it's just a useful heuristic to instinctively distrust anyone who relies too much on nationalist rhetoric to justify themselves. I mean, the music's almost always bad and anyone who actually gets invested in the symbolism of their flag is reliably a complete killjoy, but even beyond that - they're just very reliably the worst people. This is admittedly unkind and not always true. But, well, see that quote about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, which applies wonderfully to both people and organizations. If someone's trying to sell something by wrapping it in the flag, that usually means they don't want you looking too closely.
-Viewing the world through a nationalist framework and caring about zero-sum issues of national prestige also make it incredibly hard to coordinate around issues that don't care about national borders, or are going to disproportionately hurt people without rich and powerful nation-states defending their interests. Like, I don't know, global pandemics. Or climate change.
-Anyway, in conclusion, borders bad, nationalism bad, and also any officially codified 'Patriotic' culture is instantly cringe. Hopefully some of this makes sense.
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CHAPTER 1 “GOODBYE, DEAN“
SUMMARY: you decide to leave the others
WORD COUNT: 2000
You leave the shower feeling almost reborn, last night's hunt was successful and the family haunted by the ghost of the father is finally free. Your eyes are still tired but mentally you are quite awake and rested. You tried not to listen to Sam's light snores as he slept in the bed next to yours, Dean stayed up late to set up his weapons and write in his diary about this night's hunt. You would like to read it but you know the value it has for him, so you just look at it from a distance hoping that one day you will be able to leaf through those yellowed and ink-filled pages. For the moment, you go through your diary and read the things already written above. Sometimes the memories of your life come back in your mind, but you chase them away by shaking your head. You are too busy to be distracted by those bitter feelings.
You look at your silent reflection stuck in the mirror and wonder what you would be now; if that night the demon in your best friend's body hadn't killed her boyfriend in front of your eyes. You'd probably be in college, recovering from a hangover, have your own home, and you wouldn't have to move from motel to motel. The only thing that heartens you is the knowledge that if none of this happened, you would never have met the two brothers with expert faces and the angel with the tie. You smile thinking that, after all, it wasn't that bad for you. You dry your hair as best you can with a towel and leave the bathroom after wearing something comfortable. You run into Sam waiting silently on his bed
"Sorry if it took me so long" you smile at him and glance at Dean lying with his head on the blue pillow
"Don’t worry" Sam is nice to you and always tries to make you comfortable, Dean on the other side ...
"I hope you left some hot water" the deep voice of the oldest takes you by surprise, usually you two don't talk much. Your relationship is limited to exchanging information during a hunt, nothing more, and nothing less. You don't know why he's so grumpy with you, probably because he doesn't like working with anyone other than his family
"Yes, I didn't waste a lot of water. Only that the hair dryer is broken and I had to do it with the towel" you don't know why you are explaining so much to him, maybe because he always makes you feel bad or because you can't resist his penetrating gaze
"Cut them" he smiles at you sarcastic and you shake your head sitting on your bed to listen to the messages on the answering machine, there is only one from an unknown number
"Forget it" Sam whispers to you before closing the door behind her
"You did well the other night" Dean doesn't even look up from the paper he's reading, but his words fill the room "for being a beginner it's good that you haven't killed one of us yet" the spontaneous smile that was born on your face, disappears in the blink of an eye
"Thank you" you reply gruffly. Why must he always be so cruel? You wonder as you lay your still damp head on the pillow. Without saying anything else, the light-haired guy gets up and walks out of the motel room where you reside. You snort loudly and put your hands in your hair, arrogant, which is nothing else. Finally, left alone, you can listen to the message on the answering machine and the more you listen the more you remain speechless
"Where is Dean?" Sam makes you jump and you look at him badly
"He’s gone, he didn't give me any details" Sam sits at the foot of your bed placing a hand on your knee
"I know he can be rude and presumptuous at times, but he's not very good at showing his true emotions" he tries to smile at you but a grimace takes place on his sleepy face "but that doesn't mean he doesn't care" you look at him tilting the head to the side
"Sam, he hates me"
"Who hates you?" you whirl around feeling the weight on your bed and a different voice echoing in the room
"Cass" you shout "how many times do we have to tell you not to do this, we humans die of a heart attack" the angel chuckles and exchanges a greeting look with Sam
"What happen?" he's too curious for your taste, but his kind ways make you put aside his incessant questions
"Dean" Sam informs him "obviously he is treating her in a horrible way" Cass nods almost remembering another dean from the one he has known for a long time
"He did it with me too, you just have to give him time" you laugh sarcastically
"We've been hunting together for three months now, not even an act of kindness" you mutter sitting on the mattress
"Mph" Sam taps his index finger on his chin "I think he does it because you're the only one who doesn't accept his behavior" you poke your eyebrows and wait for him to keep talking "you know, he says one thing and you answer the same way. You do not get easily thrown off by his arrogant behavior and last but not least" he holds a laugh" you did not fall at his feet"
"So only because I don't hang from his lips I deserve to be treated like this"
"Hey, yn, we're talking about Dean, it's impossible to understand what's going on in his head" you snort and eat a fingernail in desperation
"And then, you two look a lot like each other" you incinerate Cass with a look and decide to change the subject for a while.
You are alone again and wander around the room lost in thought, one hand under your chin and the other in your hair. You walk and walk, silently mumbles and exhausted sighs. You are so focused on getting lost in your head that you don't hear the lock click, you turn away distracted and your irises meet Dean's green eyes.
"Where is everybody?" he asks gruffly as he throws his heavy leather jacket on the bed
"Sam went to get something to eat and Cass well I think he is solving some problems in the upper floors" you avoid looking at him to give him the same treatment that he gives to you
"I thought we will leave tomorrow morning" you follow his steady gaze on your backpack already full of clothes and the bed made up "has there been any change of plans?" he asks starting to grab his bag
"No" you sigh letting your hands fall on your hips "no change of plans, you are leaving tomorrow morning I'll leave soon" his gaze focuses on you. His pupils scrutinize you carefully and his lips part
"I don't understand" he murmurs shaking his head
"Well, I don't see why I should stay in a place where I'm not welcome" you look at him so intently that you force him to look away "and then I have an important job to do. Alone" you specify without taking your attention away from him
"Does Sam know? And Cass?" you shake your head
"I wrote a letter, if you can give it to both of them" you rummage in your bag and grab the two white envelopes "please" you add seeing his hesitant face
"No letter for me?" he tries to smile even though his eyes betray him
"No" you lie knowing that his letter is hidden in a pocket of your jacket but you are too cowardly to give it to him "I know you can't stand me, but give them these letters. Okay?" he nods and you feel more relieved so you turn to grab your duffel bag
"Don't do it" you hear him whisper behind you, you turn around believing you didn't understand "don’t" he sighs "don't do it" you look at him confused, very confused
"I thought you could not stand me" he nods slowly giving you almost right for once
"yes, but I must admit that you are a good hunter and you can be useful to us"
"I'm not as good as you are" you admit
"But you can become it" he almost seems to be fighting against himself, as if the words wanted to run away from his mouth but he stopped him "stay, you can learn a lot" you look at his silent face and dull eyes and the desire to sit on the bed and staying there with them skims your mind, but you have a job to get done
"I can't, Dean, I'm sorry" he nods in defeat and turns to his bag
"At least take this, it's better than the cheap knives you have" you chuckle and grab the leather sheath, look at the wooden handle with his initials scratched on it
"Thanks, Dean" you smile sincerely this time realizing that you have never shared such an intimate moment since you met
"Pay attention and remember what we taught you" you nod and pass him
"Goodbye, Dean" you look at him one last time to print his image in your mind, you walk away almost expecting his big hand that grabs your wrist to draw you to him, but you feel nothing but his gaze on your shoulders until you close the door behind you.
#supernatural#SPN#spnfandom#spn fic#dean#dean winchester#dean fanfiction#dean fanfic#dean winchester chapter#dean x reader#dean x y/n#one shot
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Alrighty folks here's my pinned post.
About me:
He/him/male
Im 21 years old (born in 2000 baybeeee)
Not comfortable sharing my first name (even tho it's super common and you couldn't find me using it). So on here I'll go by Eugene (my middle name).
Im currently at the highest weight I've ever been at, litterally 100 lbs over my starting weight (when I was either 11 or 12 at 4 foot 2 I think?). So please be cautious when talking to me about numbers at the present moment (Feb 2022).
Gae 💅 though currently dating a nonbinary beast
List of disorders cause I find it funny:
EDNOS, PTSD, chronic MDD, Chronic Insomnia, SAD, Chronic Substance abuse, ADHD, Bipolar (aka manic depressive disorder), (fuck dude im making this at 4am so im forgetting so fucking many), GAD, Panic disorder, dysthymia (I group that in with MDD but it's still a separate diagnosis ig), Social Anxiety disorder, unspecified psychosis, codependency disorder, gender dysphoria, and lastly a thing im not diagnosed with cause I don't bring it up in therapy and I actually don't feel like disclosing because of stigma around it and I'm not in the place to be told I'm faking by random strangers who don't know me or being told I'm doing it on purpose for attention thanks very much assholes.
How am I not permanently in a mental facility? Negligence probably! Stick around to see if that fact changes I suppose.
God what else do I say?
Stats: (again I'm at my highest weight ever, please don't comment on this to me, I just found out about it yesterday legit).
Cw: 270
Hw: 270
Sw: 170 (I was 12 and 4"2)
Ugw: 98
Is it even possible???
Im 5"4 (short kingg)
Things I struggle with due to mental health:
Eating (ok duh?), weight, body image, flashbacks, sleeping too much or too little no in-between, depressive episodes that usually land me in the hospital, hospitalizations (high score: 6 times in one year between December and March), major mood and behavior swings, Panic attacks that can last up to like a full fucking day rendering me completely useless, sometimes I see shit that isn't there, sometimes I hear shit that isn't there (they're thinking these are depression related psychosis mixed with not sleeping for like 4 days solid and not eating. Makes sense to me), I need people. No like I need them like I cannot be independent without trying to k!ll myself every single day, suicidal ideation, self harm, I have to get biweekly IM injections of boy juice into my ass-- and not the fun kind-- so I don't try to die constantly, and then other things I will not disclose ♡ and im poor.
At the moment I see 3 therapists and I'm looking for a fourth. Just therapists, this dosent include physical doctors or psychiatrists or psychologists or anything. One does CBT, another does EMDR, another is a nutritionist, and the one im looking for will be a DBT therapist. Gotta fucking collect them all am I right? (I'm not treating it like a game: I have to make jokes about it).
I am currently restricting and exercising (doing a piss poor job at it if I do say so myself).
Trying to stay below 800 a day currently.
Want to exercise daily but I simply do not have the time to. Will do it on the weekend tho! But right now I wake up I work I come home and scroll through tiktok and tumblr and then I "wake back up" again. I "sleep" when the gym is closed.
Wanna get to know me more? Please send an ask or message me im lonely and very open and honest about what I go through (except the disorder I will not disclose to anyone, thank you in advance for respecting that boundary!).
I love music and deeply enjoy connecting through music with people. I listen to anything I can understand the words to (this excludes country im sorry).
My favorite things to consume? Cigarette smoke and human hearts 💕
and taco bell 🥺
I like playing the cello, doing art (painting, sculpting, throwing, drawing, digital, animation, glass work, and a few lesser ones). I love and adore my partner they are the best thing that has happened to me. I like driving and singing.
I dislike showers (body dismorphia and gender dysphoria and ptsd, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS), and yeah.
Im getting tired fucking finally after 2 days so I have to act now and sleep or else it'll be 2 more. Please message me if you have any question, need advice, want to talk and chat, ect. Disclaimer: if you are asking for advice I reserve the right to refuse and turn you down. This is not personal. You issues are real and they are valid you're on fucking eddie tumblr for God's sake.
DNI: Pedo/pedo sympathizers, under 18, fat phobic, homophobic, transphbic, or a generally shitty person.
Ok off to bed I go. Thanks for reading even though I know no one did. Thanks for letting me pretend.
Goodnight friends! Good morning? Fuck off dude idk, it's 5am.
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Going Angst
Day Five: Death
Trevor wasn’t sure how much luck he had.
Some adults thought it was very concerning he was found right on January 1st, 2000. A day that brought upon the paranoia that such a year would cause the end of the world.
Yet for Trevor, he knew it was lucky someone found him. Only covered in a few blankets, he would’ve died from the cold and the lack of any food. Instead he only lost his left leg and left hand to frostbite.
However this also caused some problems, such as convincing adults that he was alright, and that they should adopt him. He was able to do most things that other kids in the orphanage did, like talk, walk, watch tv. What about him made him different?
Most of the other kids in the orphanage were around six years old. A few older kids hung around upstairs, not wanting to deal with the noise downstairs. Trevor however liked spending his time in a small corner he found by himself. It was his space, just for him and his ghost parrot Skully.
Unlike other people, Trevor was captivated by the talking ghost bird. Skully was the one responsible for defining words he didn’t know, like radiant, horrendous, homophones, synonyms. He was really smart, and Trevor liked to think spending time with the bird made him smart.
“Hey Skully, guess what,” he spoke as he snuck into his corner.
Skully woke up from his nap with a snort, glancing around the room sleepily. “Oh, it’s you,” He spoke in a dull manner. “What sort of news do you bring, young Trevor?”
“One of the kids, JT, said we’re going to the pool tomorrow for a trip!” Trevor spoke excitedly. “I’ve never been to one before. I don’t think I even know what swimming is. Do you?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t born a waterfowl, so no, I don’t,” Skully answered, stretching his bony wings.
“A waterfowl?” Trevor questioned.
The bird sighed. “Any species of bird that’s capable of swimming, complete with feathers that are waterproof and webbed feet. As you can see, my feet are far from webbed,” He added, holding up one for proof.
“Ohh, that makes sense,” Trevor spoke, searching the room for the stash of race cars he hid inside one of the room’s walls that he and his friend played. “Heh, you look like you know everything, Skully. I hope I get as smart as you.”
The bird took a moment to puff his chest out. “I don’t know if you’ll learn as much as myself, but who knows,” He replied, preening himself.
Trevor finally found one of the race cars, the blue one he gave Skully since he knew the bird had a fondness for the color. He set it aside as he searched for the other.
“Hey Skully, do you think that there might be someone looking for a kid when we get to the pool?”
The bird flapped down from his perch onto the floor. “Possibly.”
“Do you think they might choose me?”
“I don’t see why not,” Skully answered, placing a foot on the race car and driving it around. “You seem in good health, and I’m sure they wouldn’t say no to someone as chipper as you.”
“You really think so?” Trevor responded.
The bird looked up to view the human.
He held his race car in his hook hand. It resembled a pirate ship, cobwebs covering it. A spider crawled onto Trevor’s hair. Yet there was no doubt in his mind that some human would be able to see the true kindness the kid had.
“Absolutely. But you better move the spider back to its corner before you scare someone.”
“Oh, sorry,” Trevor apologized to the tiny creature, gingerly placing it back into a crevice.
“Can we race now?” He asked Skully, cleaning off the spider webs from his hook.
“Of course, you better start us off. I’ve been practicing.”
“I bet I’ll still win!”
“We’ll see about that, young Trevor!”
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Skully was napping again when he felt something stirr his core. He nearly crashed onto the floor from the shaking.
He knew only one reason why his core trembled like that.
Someone, or something, had died. And rather close by it seemed.
Skully wasn’t one to see the newly departed, but it had grown rather lonely inside the orphanage whenever Trevor went on a test trial with any human couple seeking a child.
The bird sighed as he took flight. It wasn’t Trevor’s fault that he had been found abandoned and his body already experienced his first touch of death. He didn’t like those humans who casted glances that the boy looked right through. All he asked from the world was a home. Why were humans so stupid in bot being able to answer such a simple wish?
He flew over the city to the place where his core trembled. There. A pool. Outside an ambulance was parked, it’s lights flashing. Two police cars were already driving down the street just a short distance away.
Skully panicked. Young Trevor mentioned that he and the other children were going to the pool earlier today. Had one of them died?
The bird turned intangible and surveyed the crowd. Some of the kids from the orphanage were standing outside, crying. Most were being comforted by the adults that often volunteered at the orphanage and were wrapped up in blankets.
He spotted JT, one of Young Trevor’s friends, among them, and gave a brief sigh. That boy was alive. But what of his friend?
Skully flew to the ambulance. Inside some adults were assessing a body. He recognized the bit of hair on top of the small head. His core stood still as he looked at the monitor.
There was no pulse.
He had to find Young Trevor.
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It was some short while after the sun dipped over the horizon, the sky getting darker tones of blue. Skully had searched most of the city area of Amity Park with no luck of spotting Young Trevor.
He went to fly over Amity Park and spotted a small ghostly figure resting on a bench. A small gasp escaped his beak as he swooped down.
He landed on the bench quietly. The boy didn’t seem to notice, as he was busy crying, hiding his head in his hands.
The bird cleared his throat. “Young Trevor?”
No answer.
Skully gave a sigh. “I know it’s a lot to take in, believe me. But I’m here for you if you need anything-”
“Why didn’t they notice me?”
The parrot looked up. “Come again?”
“I was right there, I wasn’t able to swim. I didn’t see how far I floated out into the deep end until…” The boy’s words were lost to his sobs.
“I thought adults were all supposed to care for kids. I wasn’t able to swim, someone, anyone should’ve seen me!” Trevor’s face peered over his hands as he looked out into the distance, tears dripping from his nostrils and his eyes. “It was so cold, Skully. The water was so cold.”
“...Trevor-”
“I hate them.”
“Young Trevor?”
“I hate them!” The young ghost yelled, sniffed his nose. “I should’ve seen it all along. Why else didn’t anyone want me when I was alive? I didn’t matter to them cause of how I looked. And now they want me while I’m dead.” The boy paused, once again processing what had happened. “And now I’m dead,” He whispered quietly.
Skully climbed up Young Trevor’s shirt till he was perched on his shoulder before nestling next to his neck.
“There there my boy,” He muttered. “It’s alright. You’re just scared of what occurred today. It wasn’t no place for you to die. But I promise you’ll be missed.”
“Who’s going to remember me?” Young Trevor asked.
“JT for one. I spotted him crying a river of tears while I went looking for you.”
“Oh gosh, JT,” Young Trevor choked, his eyes watering up. “I didn’t mean for him- I didn’t want this- I tried so hard to get someone to notice me-”
“It’s not your fault, nor should JT feel it’s his fault either,” Skully comforted the child. “Things like these just happen. We have to move on, even if it hurts now, or hurts for a long time.”
The pair were silent, the first few stars in the sky showing up.
“Skully?”
“Yes Young Trevor?”
“I want to change my name.”
The bird glanced at his face. The boy’s eyes looked irritated from crying. “Why do you want to do that?”
“I don’t want anyone to call me Trevor. That’s what all the adults called me. Everyone else like JT called me One Leg Trev. They always came up with cool nicknames cause I reminded them of a pirate.”
His eyes lit up. “I’m going to call myself Youngblood. That sounds like a pirate name. Only kids get to call me that. If any living adult tries doing that, I’ll haunt them until they leave their home.”
“Young Trevor-”
“It’s Youngblood.”
The parrot held back his words. “Youngblood, are you certain about this?”
“I’m done listening to adults. I’ll haunt the adults inside that orphanage until every kid inside gets a new home. I’ll get a crew, and we’ll all make sure that no adult who does any rotten stuff to kids gets away with it.”
Youngblood casted a look at Skully. “You’ll stay and be my first mate, right?”
Skully’s throat choked up. The boy was still grieving. He hadn’t the slightest idea of how permanent choices like these lasted in the afterlife.
But he knew he couldn’t say no. It was dangerous to leave a young ghost like him alone with no one to guide him through the Ghost Zone.
“Yes, I will.”
#danny phantom#going angst week 2021#death tw#neglect mention#youngblood#[[ I wasn't sure what to call the bird so I named him Skully ]]#pink lion dabbles
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A Guide For Yuuram Fans
Hello fellow yuuram fan!
Have you ever caught yourself thinking:
- Does Yuuri like Wolf?
- No, but I mean like "Does he REALLY like Wolf?"
- Am I getting invested just to find out it's clickbait?
- Is Yuuri ever going to accept Wolf's feelings?
- Does Yuuri like guys?
- Will they get married or not?
You have questions?
I have source material-backed answers!
The Basics
First, you need to understand that there's a variety of so-called canons. There's an anime canon, a manga canon, a drama cd canon, a musical canon, and then some other random things that you can't really call canon but exist: such as games, radio shows, tv stuff not written by the author, etc.
All of these canons and non-canon stuff are fine, and you can enjoy them as much as you want, but they're NOT the source material.
Source material are only the novels and stories that have been written by Takabayashi-sensei (anything in written form and some dramas also written by her according to interviews).
Takabayashi-sensei is the author of the novels (the source material out of which everything else is derived), and her word is "god's word". By the way, she used this term to refer to herself in regards to the maruma series, I'm not fangirling, but using terminology she herself used.
Please understand that most of the material that isn't 'source material' has been altered in many ways to appeal to a 'larger audience' (manga and drama cds), or to make it palatable to the more homophobic society of the 2000s (in the case of the anime). When the anime began social media didn't exist. And when the anime ended (in 2009), social media was in its infancy. That's how long ago these media were adapted from source material.
The Fandom
The fandom has influenced the source material itself at times (such as Conrad fans throwing a hissy fit when he died in novel 5 to the point that Takabayashi-sensei had to resurrect him and change who the key was and many other plot points since then). Certain shippers still force sensei's hand to write fanservice here and there, and despite that, one thing has been clear from the beginning:
Takabayashi-sensei's 'main couple' is the one she got engaged back in novel 1: Yuuri and Wolf, the royal couple.
The Bias
Before we get into the thick of this, let's take a moment to understand bias. I'm sure that if you're reading this far into this you really like yuuram and don't have a problem with homosexuality, boys love, etc. (I use yuuram to mean the royal couple: Yuuri and Wolf, nothing to do with 'who's on top' or anything like that, just a name for the ship with these two characters).
Despite that, anyone reading this has been born and raised in a highly hetero-normative society where if a girl so much looks at a boy she must be into him, and vice-versa.
Who can forget the "He was a boy, She was a girl, Can I make it any more obvious" lyrics of the 2000s? Same applies to 'ships' all across the board.
If any, and I mean any 'boy-girl' relationship was 10% of what the yuuram relationship is, there wouldn't be a single doubt that those two are in love, dating, married, and living happily ever after.
But when it comes to Yuuri and Wolf it feels like pulling teeth to get people to accept that they’re in a relationship. I blame mostly the anime for including weird non-canon ideas into fans minds, as well as heteronormative societies.
Please don’t be this person:
Finally, please take a moment to read THIS as an introduction to my next section.
The Royal Couple
Begin by forgetting everything you consumed from other canons (TV, manga, fanfics) if you truly want to appreciate the Royal Couple in its source material form.
1) Romantic interest
The source material has made Yuuri very interested in Wolfram since the very beginning. Of course, at first, he was only interested in Wolfram's physical appearance. But the more he got to know Wolfram the more he cared about him and the less he cared about his physical appearance.
To get a full picture of how madly he falls for Wolf, you need to read the novels, but here are some excerpts to illustrate my point:
How it started:
Source: Novel 1-Chapter 1
"Even if our bodies are evenly matched, when I just glanced up, I've already been defeated. How can he be this beautiful! (どうよ、この美しさ！) At the same time, his head is emitting an aura. Although it's likely that it seemed that way because of his dazzling blond hair. His looks and voice are like an older Vienna chorus boy. His white skin seems transparent, and his irises are an emerald green that make me think of the bottom of a lake, and furthermore he doesn't have a split chin. He's an angel, definitely an angry angel. However, because he's in this place, he's probably a beautiful demon."
-> Yuuri writes a fucking sonnet in his head about Wolf's beauty when they meet.
Source: Novel 1-Chapter 10
From the far side of the corridor, the blond with wavy hair comes running. The intense navy blue uniform suits him; the mazoku Prince Wolfram. I muttered in a sigh 'Although he's a man, he's this beautiful, Günter'.
-> Yuuri complains to Gunter that Wolf is too beautiful.
How it's going:
Source: Novel 17, Chapter 7
"Those words hurt me deeply inside my heart, a pain as though I was burnt in an instant. Because I had an experience like that, in which I nearly lost the most important person to me, just because he was wearing someone else’s clothes."
-> Yuuri calling Wolfram his most important person, code in the maruma series for person you're in love with.
Source: Do you want an exorcism? 2 (post novel 17)
"And because of that rich VARIETY in the configuration, mazoku is more an ethnicity than a race.
You have from kotsuhizoku, kotsuchizoku, and bone fish who are living creatures, even though they are just bones, to the seasonal migrating tribe of half-humanoid, half-fish maidmer princesses. As for the humanoid ones, there are regular looking ones like me or Conrad, but there are also some who are super beautiful like Günter or Wolfram............. as for the last one, this is just a little bit of my own personal bias, but it makes no difference if he's beautiful or not."
-> Yuuri saying that the beauty he went head over heals in novel 1 for, doesn't matter to him anymore because of his 'personal bias'
Source: Misepan 2: (post novel 17, arguably the last story written near the release of the novels)
"If I was in trouble, and I was missing something important. And you had one that was exactly the same ...."
"I'd lend it to you, of course"
I thought about this, literally with my hands on his chest. In fact, with my hand, that was pressed against his chest, I could feel that the speed of my partner's and my heartbeat was the same. Anyone would get blood rushing to their brains when they're seriously thinking about something. When I could calm down a little, I let out a small sigh.
"Or rather, when it comes to things that I can give you, I would give you anything, Wolf."
-> Yuuri tells Wolfram he would give him anything in the world.
2) Sexual interest:
-There are several times when the source material implies that Yuuri and Wolf don't just sleep at night.
Again, please remember that in the novels Greta does not sleep with Yuuri and Wolfram. This was a TV addition to appease homophobic minds. In fact, in the novels, Yuuri forbade Greta from sleeping with them because she's 'too old'. Also source material Greta is rarely in Shin Makoku as she's studying abroad half the time.
Source: Novel 2- Chapter10
"If I leave it up to you, it will never get settled."
"So, what kind of settlement do you want...?" My voice trails off as he sways his hips closer.
The former mazoku prince's face brightens and he pulls me down by the arm.
"Wah!"
"So you finally feel like settling things!?"
"I don't ~"
I'm scared to think about what sort of settlement this is. I'm not going to lose my life or anything, but I do feel like there's something else I'm going to lose. I desperately extract myself, fly into the bathroom and lock the door.
"Yuuri!"
"Wait wait wait! I gotta take a bath first, okay!? You don't wanna do it with a sweaty guy, right!?"
Do it...? I blanch at my own words.
-> Yuuri's subconscious is clearly working against him.XD It looks like Yuuri doesn't want to lose the v-card yet (he barely knows Wolf at this point), but he still says to Wolf he should take a bath before they do it. Gambare, Yu-chan
Source: Novel 4 - Chapter 1
-> Yuuri and Wolfram have been sleeping together for 3 months at the beginning of novel 4! Please! If this was a guy and girl you wouldn't be wondering what they're doing! He has a lock on the door! He can keep Wolf out , order him out, but he never does. Don’t be the gray haired lady!
Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1
- "As a measure against Wolfram, who somehow even on our trips sleeps in the same bed as I do, I made a wall with three pillows which also had cute egg shaped buttons. I tucked my shirt into my pants, so that my stomach wouldn't get cold. After all, in the mornings when I woke up, both my clothes and my sleeping posture were always preposterous."
-> Yuuri says he puts some pillows to avoid getting into the weird sleeping postures and getting his clothes messed up and shirt untucked, but he never thinks of 'not sleeping with Wolf'~
Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1 (same book as last)
- "While watching Wolfram's cheeks get red in excitement, a surprised Josak swallowed the question" You even sleep together when you're out on a trip?".
-> Even Jozak (the spy who's supposed to know everything) seems surprised that they're "sleeping together all the time". They're clearly hiding it from people.
Source: Maru maru maruMA- (book with series info and interviews)
Takabayashi-sensei replied to a question about Yuuri and Wolfram and what would happen once they get married... and she said it clearly: They'll have sex.
("Please answer my maruma question", maru maru maruMA)
Source: SS: Murakenzu 2018-11-13 (Paper 1 accompanying cd72)
"Yeah, my father was talking about it, and she's still being called 'Gokumi', huh? At any rate, even if he was smiling way too much, his footsteps started to sound louder and faster as he got farther away. In that moment we thought: Eh? Is it that bad? Maybe they saw something while we were sleeping, or rather, maybe they took peeping photographs and want to do something bad with them."
"Rather than while you were sleeping, before going to sleep?"
"You mean like, when I do practice baseball swings naked or something?"
"Yeah, naked practice."
"Or maybe like, a picture of Wolf's butt when he's wearing his sexy negligee or something?"
"Ah! If a picture of it peeking out is released it would be bad, huh?"
"Then, I suddenly realized that "secret" might just be a hook. In other words, those trick titles that often appear in sports newspapers."
"Yes, yes."
-> Yuuri talks about Wolfram's butt showing as a common place and about himself being completely naked doing 'baseball practice' in the room with Wolf, whatever that may mean.
3) Illustrations
The 4 wedding pictures. Yuuri and Wolfram have been illustrated as married four times by the series' illustrator:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4
And I like to add this fifth one (used in There's Valentine's Day in Shin Makoku!? DVD special), since in the black and white version, there's a comment by Takabayashi-sensei that says: "With this we've finally won against the anime team! ", meaning they beat them to the wedding.
4) Terminology
Yuuri and Wolf are referred to in tweets by Takabayashi-sensei, GEG-san and Temari-sensei as the Royal Couple (ロイカプ). The author, editor and illustrator all know already what they are and that's why they call them that.
More information:
Please, please read the source material. But if you won't, at least read some of the analyses I've made to find out more about yuuram. Yuuram is here, it’s canon, and their ship has sailed a long time ago, in novel 1. They were always meant to end up together and they have. (”The dream ending” was how the author wanted yuuram to end, happily married). This isn't clickbait, or fanwork. The author likes the Royal couple and will see that they end up together no matter what.
Additional information:
Yuuram in novel: 1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17
* Novel Analysis: Crossheart and Love Letter
* Novel Analysis: Misepan2
* Novel Analysis: Do you want an exorcism?
* Bias in KKM: English version of KKM
* Novel Analysis: Yuuri confessing to Wolf (w/quotes)
* Novel Analysis: Physical and mental development in mazoku
* Novel Analysis: Yuuri and Wolfram’s daily routine (with quotes)
* Novel facts: No mpreg in Shin Makoku (I get asked a lot)
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TWO WOMEN WHO vandalized the Dakota Access pipeline in an effort to halt construction have been indicted on charges that carry up to 110 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. They are among the harshest penalties environmental activists have faced in the last decade.
Civil liberties lawyers say the charges are in line with industry-inspired scare tactics meant to deter citizens from participating in direct-action protests or acts of sabotage against oil and gas companies. As the deadly impacts of carbon emissions grow ever clearer, the fossil fuel industry has increased pressure on lawmakers and government officials to penalize those who would inhibit their projects’ operations.
At the same time, a growing number of activists have demonstrated willingness to break laws in order to highlight the urgency of the climate emergency and other ecological crises. Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek, who stand accused of damaging pipeline valve sites using a welding torch, “tires ignited by fire, and gasoline-soaked rags,” are part of that trend.
The arrests come more than two years after Montoya, 29, and Reznicek, 38, publicly took responsibility for a series of acts of sabotage that they said was necessary to protect the rivers and waterways under which the Dakota Access pipeline passes. Both women had been involved in the Indigenous-led struggle to stop the pipeline, which attracted thousands of people to opposition camps in North Dakota and Iowa in 2016 and 2017.
“We are speaking publicly to empower others to act boldly, with purity of heart, to dismantle the infrastructures which deny us our rights to water, land, and liberty,” Montoya and Reznicek stated at a press conference in July 2017.
They told The Intercept at the time that they planned to use a necessity defense to argue that they had no choice but to act. Civil liberties attorneys said they are not aware of such a defense being accepted in a federal case related to climate change or environmental issues. It has, however, begun to gain traction in lower courts, where a handful of pipeline protesters have successfully argued that they acted out of necessity.
...
“I wish the government would use the same resources to go after the oil companies and pipeline companies, but clearly they’re not interested in that,” said Bill Quigley, an attorney who previously represented Montoya and Reznicek. “They shouldn’t be prosecuted; they should be praised. They’re trying to stop the destruction of the human race.”
...
By the spring of 2017, however, the pipeline company had overcome the water protectors; construction was all but complete and the camps mostly cleared. It was then that a series of above-ground valves along the pipeline route were pierced by welding tools.
In response, the mercenary security company TigerSwan launched a multi-state dragnet in search of the saboteurs, who they referred to as eco-terrorists. Montoya and Reznicek were their primary suspects, but internal reports TigerSwan filed to Energy Transfer Partners also described how security personnel cast suspicion on an array of other activists. They reached out to pipeline opponents’ neighbors and local businesses for help in their search. They surveilled one Native couple’s private home and photographed their property. A TigerSwan contractor posing as a water protector sought information about Montoya and Reznicek from pipeline opponents who believed him to be a friend. The documents show repeated instances of the company attempting to feed information to local and federal investigators.
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At an energy industry conference in 2018, Kelcy Warren, CEO and board chair of Energy Transfer, mentioned Reznicek and Montoya’s actions. “I think you’re talking about somebody who needs to be removed from the gene pool,” he said.
The oil industry used the acts of sabotage to push for a crackdown on pipeline opponents. In 2017, the American Legislative Exchange Council introduced model legislation that would increase penalties for anyone who interfered with oil industry operations. Iowa and at least seven other states have passed related anti-protest laws. More recently, industry lobbyists, as well as members of the Trump administration, have proposed federal legislation to make it a felony to inhibit pipeline operations. Most of the legislative proposals are broad enough to net individuals who commit no acts of property destruction.
Meanwhile, since it started operating, the Dakota Access pipeline has had at least 10 spills, and this past June, Energy Transfer announced plans to nearly double the pipeline’s capacity. A recent study indicated that current fossil fuel infrastructure leaves humanity with less than a 50 percent chance of avoiding unmanageable climate crises.
Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment.
In parallel to industry lobbying, fossil fuel opponents have advanced their own efforts to set legal precedents that protect dissent. “The state of the necessity defense in climate cases is emerging, and it is gaining acceptance in state courts across the country,” said Quigley.
Pipeline protesters in Massachusetts have had the most significant success in mounting the climate necessity defense. In March 2018, a judge found 13 opponents of a Spectra gas pipeline not responsible for civil charges related to their attempts to block construction, because the environmental risk posed by the pipeline made their actions necessary.
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Meanwhile, the most severe penalties for participants in the movement against the Dakota Access pipeline have been borne by Indigenous opponents. Red Fawn Fallis, for example, faced a potential life sentence after a gun in her possession went off as she was tackled to the ground by police. The Oglala Lakota Sioux water protector is serving a five-year sentence.
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It’s unclear why the investigation took more than two years, but a possible historical parallel can be found in a string of arrests in the mid-2000s, during a period known as the Green Scare. Law enforcement officers arrested environmental activists accused of involvement in arsons, years after they committed the alleged crimes. The FBI had used that time to build cases against an array of actors. “Based on past experience and based on some of the other clues that I’m seeing, I certainly have a concern that there may be more than two defendants, but that is real speculation,” said Regan, who represented many Green Scare defendants.
The indictment against Reznicek and Montoya claims that the acts were carried out “with other persons known and unknown by the Grand Jury.” In an interview shortly after their confession, Reznicek told The Intercept, “At no point was anyone else involved in these activities. Not even in consultation. Not in anything.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Iowa declined to comment.
Regan called the charges against Reznicek and Montoya evidence that the industry’s legislative initiatives are a public relations stunt. “What these charges indicate to me is that the state does not need any of these gifts to the fossil fuel industry. The existing crimes are more than adequate, because obviously ‘malicious use of fire’ is not a crime that was drafted by ALEC,” Regan said.
Montoya remains in jail in Arizona, awaiting a hearing, while Reznicek was released on bail Tuesday, on house arrest with an ankle monitor. Her trial is scheduled for December 2.
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Kicksaddict Sneakerhead PROFILES Interview Series: @CakedaGawd
After a long Hiatus, we’ve returned! Our popular Profile series has been requested almost on a daily basis (Thanks for the tweets, dms and emails). We were even threatened! (Thanks by the way).
Cake The Gawd! This one was so much fun. Tap in.
Where are you from? Brooklyn, NY born in Crown Heights raised in East Flatbush.
How long have you been collecting sneakers? I was introduced to sneakers in 1991 but I started collecting for myself in 98.
What’s your favorite sneaker and why? Air Jordan 6 Infrared. It's the shoe Michael was wearing when he won his first championship, and to me just it’s just the most beautiful Jordan shoe to date! The silhouette is unmatched, it is timeless, and no matter how many times it is retroed I will buy it!
Besides your hometown, what is the best city for sneakerheads that you know of? Why? I would say LA 100% !! It is a vibe out there. I am part of a sneaker group and 75% of the people in there are from LA. They really about the culture they know their shit and they are fresh as fuck too.
Do you collect just for collecting or do you collect and rock? I collect and rock. That is why I double up on certain shoes.. Some kicks you gotta have for store and show but some you just have to rock them!
What sneaker got you into the sneaker game? I cannot pinpoint one thing, it is so many things. It was Music, my parents introducing me to Nike, my older cousin, basketball, the dope boys around the way, and my 3rd grade crush and her cousin who both had Aqua 8's. (LOL) I cannot just say 1 thing because they all had a significant part in it.
What are your thoughts on these fake celebrity sneakerheads? I hate them all! All of these dudes just get perks, some of them do not even know the shoes. That shit really gets under my skin. Showing off shoes that they get and not even knowing the name or numbers of the shoes, creating their own names. Shit is sickening. S/O to the Sneaker Gawd Wale !
How do you feel about the Off white collabs? I liked the first round of the collabs. With the Presto's, Air maxes, Blazers, and Jordan 1's. I think after that it should've been left alone. But I can respect what they are doing over there. I just won my first pair of Off-White's with the Lot 50 joint.
If you could wear only one sneaker for the rest of your life, what would it be? Air Jordan 3 Black Cement. Yes 6's are my favorite of all time but the Black Cement 3's just go with EVERYTHING!
What advice would you give as far as storing and preservation of your sneakers? Wear your kicks man. I store and rock! I get it, wanting to save shoes but putting them away and never rocking them, when you finally do ya it’s separating and crumbling. In order for your kicks to last they gotta be worn anyway. Unless you're truly just on some collecting only for show vibes.
What is the most you’ve ever spent on a pair of sneakers? $900... I was able to land Black and Red and Royal 1's from 2001 together. A friend of mine had them and said he couldn't think of anyone else. I had literally just started my new job. A chunk of my first check went to that pick up.
Have you ever waited in line for a pair of kicks? I waited in line once in my life for shoes and swore I would never do it again. It was for the 2001 True Blue 3's. I waited online at like 7 in the morning at Kings Plaza. LMAO I said this will never happen again. I didn't have the patience for it. I do not know how ppl used to do that shit or camp for kicks. I was there for 1 hour and I was like this is ridiculous.
You're also a photographer, how long have you been taking photos? I have been taking photos since 2011 but officially became a photographer in 2013.
How do sneakers play a role in your photography? That is a great question because I didn't want the 2 to mix at all. Because I'm a scenery and landscape photographer. But I got into photography because of sneakers. No offense to anyone but a bunch of these "influencers" get on IG with their DSLR cameras, take some on foot shots and call themselves "Photographers". 90% of them do not even understand lighting. I didn't wanna be one of those guys because I actually live this and study it. But recently I just started letting it be that and owning it. I am nice with this photography shit when it comes to sneakers. I have a deep connection with shoes and I love incorporating that into my art. I thank my wife for that. I told her I don't wanna be just another sneaker photographer and she said to me who said you have to be ?! I took that and ran with it. Off-White just recently featured some of my pictures on their Instagram.
I remember you saying you're a sneaker enthusiast, what is the difference between that and a sneakerhead? An enthusiast really studies sneakers. Sneakerheads just love sneakers like it ain't really about the history and all that for them. They just love shoes because it is cool and makes them feel good. Us Enthusiasts are invested. Things matter like knowing years of a shoe. For example, an enthusiast would look at a pair of Jordan's like Taxi 12's, We know Michael wore those in the 1996 - 97 season, but we also know that Martin gave away a pair on his show for the Christmas episode to the kid who had holes in shoes. They are tied to iconic moments. A sneakerhead may love Bordeaux 7's because they are dope looking shoes. Where for me it's that Michael Jordan wore those in a video with Michael Jackson and Kris Kross in the 92 Jam video. MJ and MJ in a video with Kris Kross, do you know what that did to my childhood?! Give you one more example that is not even Michael Jordan related. Piggy backing off of Kris Kross,The Patrick Ewing’s were one of my favorite kicks growing up besides seeing Pat play in them one of my favorite Hip Hop covers of all time is "Totally Krossed Out" and Kris Kross is wearing both colorways. So you see what I mean there is so much tied to it with being an enthusiast. This is just my opinion though some may not agree so don't shoot me! (Ha)
From the time you started collecting up until now, would you say that the sneaker game changed for the best or the worst? I have been collecting for 20 plus years now. I have seen the game at it's best, I have seen it die, I have seen it revive, and now I am witnessing the death of it again. The sneaker game is disgusting right now, and I honestly do not think it will ever recover. It really saddens me. It is a popularity and money contest right now.
Does pricing affect your collection? Hell No! And I hate that some people are trying to make this the norm. IDGAF if you paid $500 - $2000 for a pair, It doesn't mean shit. The narrative is getting outta hand.
What does the word “Hypebeast” mean to you? Hypebeast is a person that only buys shit for status and popularity. They cannot form their own opinion about shit. They have to wear and cop items based on what every celeb is wearing or whatever these Social Media "Influencers" are saying is hot! It is not only sneaker related either. N*ggaz were hypebeasting for PS5 last year..
What are your thoughts on the females in the sneaker game? They are the best! I wish we had a Sneaker union and it was only run by females! The men in this game are annoying and so over the top. It is so bad that they feel the need to compete with women. The men get shoes just to show off to one another. Like what type of shit is that? The females are cool. I had a dude on twitter tell me women don't know the value of a shoe let alone about the shoe. The men feel like they always gotta try to shit on the women. The women are just trying to be part of the culture and enjoy it. And they shouldn't have to try to be part of something that is open to anyone who is willing to be invested and understand the culture.
Any advice for a young kid coming up in the sneaker game? Wear what you like! Respect the game and the people who have been doing it before you. Because this new generation of sneakerheads are little entitled dicks. No respect whatsoever!! I don't care about Travis Scott shoes. Without Jordan being who he is Travis wouldn't have a Jordan silhouette to collaborate with! Same with Off-White. These silhouettes were here before these guys. Say know your history and pay homage!! BUT STAY humble.
See I follow you and I'm loving the way you include your daughter in your work, what does that mean to you? Man, it is beautiful!!!! Without even trying she is invested in the culture. Both photography and shoes. Myself and my wife are both heavy into photography, art, music, sneakers, and clothes. My daughter is into all the same things but we are letting it be her own experience. We are not forcing anything on her. We want her to enjoy being a child and whatever things she picks up from us along the way is just a bonus. But I love shooting her, and I love when she asks myself and her mother "do we like her fit". It is truly a blessing man!
All photos by CAKEDAGAWD
Follow : https://twitter.com/CakedaGawd
https://www.instagram.com/whatsinthesyrup/
#Kicksaddict#cake#photographer#cakedagawd#airjordan#airjordan1#airjordan6#clothing#baby#infrared#airjordan4
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