The real reason he burnt down the village

Let's face it, we all know HR would have actually been the one to drive him off the deep end, not the dusty books of Nibelheim.

Do you think aggressive parent has fights with Tanjiro? You mention that we treat like a child a lot and we also do reckless things as well. You also put that he be upset that we’re paying attention to someone else other than them? Do you think he’ll be angery if we did ended up dating someone?

cw family quarrels

I.

On the one hand, Tanjirou and Nezuko, although, of course, are 'big children', and you were ready to let them go, but after what happened, the biggest tragedy in your family, would you want to let them go?

When you know that at any moment you can eat something, when they can die at any moment, but as soon as you reach out and protect them, your cute little coal says that he will cope on his own, like an older child.

Maybe you decide that you should let him go, scatter the last ties of this boy with your son, pretty flower, who lived all his life in a house from the past, clung to your sleeve when you worked, greeted the squirrels and with shining eyes promised that he would grow up and be your support, and almost purred when you stroked him.

Maybe you should stop hiding them from the world and let them go, but they have lived away from the world all their lives. They have lived all their lives in a family, sometimes going down to the village, where everyone is happy for them (another part of the residents were afraid of you).

You are worried, you are afraid, you do not know what to do, how to help your little coals.

You can only try to go out into the world with them, keeping them close to you and helping them gradually see new things, but Tanjirou knows that he is not a child; it was he who passed the selection, it was he who tried to help his sister. He is no longer the cute boy who liked to catch snowflakes, he is a defender, he is a support. He is your support.

But you do not need support in the person of your son, you need him not to take on too much, he is still a child who needs love, support and care, even if Tanjirou tries to show you that you can be proud of what a strong and mature son you raised!

But in any case, you are proud of him; you do not need him to prove anything to you, you love him because he is your pretty precious coal, and not because he is now an 'adult'.

And you can't reconcile in any way, because Tanjirou knows that you love him, but he wants you to be proud of him, but you are already proud of him, you don't need him to prove it. You just want your baby next to you, but Tanjirou doesn't want to be just your 'baby'.

II.

It's not that he's against it! Of course, your happiness is his happiness, and Nezuko also seems very happy; it's normal that you have a new partner. But Tanjirou can't help but be greedy, even knowing that he shouldn't. He can't help but feel disappointed and embarrassed when you flirt with someone, even if Tanjirou doesn't understand that you are flirting.

I know this may be against the canon, but I see Tanjirou as a person who is ok to share everything with "family", but as soon as he has to share with "outsiders", he becomes jealous and greedy. He was surrounded only by his family, and he was used to sharing everything with them, but with strangers? Absolutely not.

And you're certainly not a thing, but you're his parent, you were once the center of his world until he got older, and someone just flirts with you? Does someone want to be in a relationship with you? With you?

Tanjirou is bitter, disappointed and jealous.

If anyone can be with you, it must be someone perfect to match you, otherwise Tanjirou will be even more bitter. Why do you want to have a relationship with someone? Can't you still be a family? Why would you bring someone else into your family?

Is it because they are not good enough?

But at the same time, he knows that he should not think and say this, you should not justify yourself to him or ask his opinion, but this only makes him more unpleasant...

It will take him a long time to accept your new partner and someone else to whom you will pay attention.

Ultraman Fan Fic

An excerpt from a chapter of my fan fic draft novel which I’ve been writing since June during my spare time, bringing the lovable Ultraman characters from 1966 to 2020.

Chapter 3 Present Day Kyoto, Japan

It is a cold December night in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. The temple gardens are gently illuminated, the low light spinning a mysterious yarn across the silhouetted pines and chimerical bamboo groves. Just a few minutes away, the entertainment district of Gion is bustling with the energy of excitable tourists, drunken businessmen and attentive geisha. But here, up a narrow, sloping road on the eastern edge of the city, Shin Hayata have found stillness. He looks at the fallen leaves around him, thinking that a week from now, the branches of those tress will be bare and a month later, perhaps cloaked in white snow.

As he got lost in his thoughts to the night of the crash which he somehow survived, someone called out to him in a distant. A feminine voice calling out his name.

“Hayata…! Hayata!”

It’s his partner, Akiko Fuji, of the Science Patrol Division (SPD). Dressed in her orange suit uniform that is hugging her slim figure, wearing a white helmet covering her shoulder length wavy hair, with her youthful face visible through the transparent visor and her sparkling eyes reflecting her spirited nature, gazing his.

“HAYATA! I’ve been calling your name a dozen times!”

Hayata blushed, feeling embarrassed that he was caught off guard staring into nothingness while everyone around him are busy enjoying the festivities, talking, eating, drinking and laughing.

“You MUST try this shrimp tempura! It’s the best I’ve ever eaten since Nagasaki! It’s so warm and crispy! Everything about it is just about right! Oh! And don’t make me start on how deliciously spicy the sauce is!”

Hayata smiled, looking at her. That’s Fuji, for you. Always lively and full of spirits when it comes to food. He gazed at the small basket of tempura she was holding in one hand and the sauce cup in the other. He lifted his visor to smell the sweet aroma before grasping his hands on one of the tempura and gently sip it in the sauce before savoring it. And true enough, his facial expression betrays him.

“SEE! I TOLD YOU!”

She exclaimed excitedly like a five year old enjoying her first candy bar as Hayata watched and chuckled.

“You do have a knack for good food, Fuji! How in the world do you know there are such delights around here?”

She stopped eating halfway as if thinking about it.

“It’s my nose, you see! They can smell it all the way from Tokyo!”

Hayata had to laugh at that as he takes another bite.

“It’s a pity, the others are not here!”

She said as she continue munching the tempura and licking her fingers.

“If they were, I’d imagined Ide and Arashi will be squabbling over it instead of eating it.”

This time it was Fuji who laughed out loud, imagining her team members squabbling over shrimp tempura.

“Captain Muramatsu will probably steal it from them quietly while they’re squabbling over it.”

She said, laughing as she wipes away a sauce stuck on her right lips.

Suddenly, they stopped laughing as their voices were drowned by the noises surrounding them.

Fuji changed her tone of her voice as she glanced at Hayata with more seriousness now.

“Are you, okay?”

Hayata raised his eyebrows wondering where did that come from and smiled reassuringly at her.

“Never been better!”

“Oh, come on, Hayata! I saw your looks earlier, it’s like you’re caught somewhere in time!”

Hayata nodded not denying it as he continue looking around him at the people enjoying the festival.

“Just thinking what happened here five years ago and how fast we got over it.”

Fuji followed his gaze to the people around them.

“I guess it’s in our nature to be able to adapt.”

They leaned their backs against their parked patrol car as they continued eating tempura.

“You still think about that night?”

She inquired.

“Sometimes. Wondering why it happened. You?”

“I’m past wondering why it happened. I’m just wondering what will happen next.”

Hayata nodded as he considers her statement. Ever since Baltan appeared, several other aliens started appearing as well. It is not clear if Baltan is the one to lead them here or Baltan’s discovery of Earth brought the attention of these other extra-terresterial creatures here. One thing for certain, they will never be short of visitors and even though many seems to be adjusting well to this new life of normalcy, Hayata, still feels uncomfortable living in this new era, knowing fully well there are extra-terresterial beings living among them and not knowing whether they are harmless or dangerous, further adds up to his anxieties.

Baltan was last spotted at Lake Biwa, just north of Kyoto in Shiga Prefecture and recently there are rumors of its sightings in the lake. So the Captain has dispatched Hayata and Fuji to investigate and report any discoveries to determine if the rest of the team are needed to assist as they are constantly on alert for any other alien incursion elsewhere across the country. It is for this reason that the SPD has their own VTOL and STOL jets for fast travels but the weather forecast of an impending winter blizzard prompts Hayata and Fuji to travel on their six-seater all-weather-all-terrain patrol jeep instead.

Part of Hayata misses flying but part of him is relieved that he has an excuse not to fly as deep down he is still traumatized by that crash where he was certain that he would died. The darkness of the night illuminated by the explosion of his right wing and his inability to eject from his jet due to some technical issue as it plummeted down to the dark ocean beneath the colossal creature hovering over him like a demonic creature from a child’s nightmare. Again, his thoughts was disrupted by the jeep’s radio buzzing, indicating an incoming transmission from headquarters. Few seconds later, the gentle sound of Captain Muramatsu can be heard.

“Hayata. Fuji. Are you there?”

“I’ll get it.”

Fuji said as she shoved the tempura and sauce to Hayata who is struggling with his hands full.

“Yes, Captain. Fuji here.”

“Ah, Fuji. I’m afraid we have a new case developing.”

Fuji exchanged knowing looks with Hayata at this as he placed the food on the hood of the car and brushes off his hands to go closer to Fuji.

“Captain, Hayata here. What’s happening?”

“Hayata. It seems that there are reports of a Yuki Onna, just north of your current location.”

Fuji seems perplexed, not by the mere fact of a Yokai from a Japanese folklore actually coming to life but the question as to what does it got to do with the SPD? It seems of late that they’ve been investigating more paranormal cases than those of extra-terrestrials beings. Even the number of alien attacks have been decreasing, which makes the people more comfortable and complacent. People no longer regard the SPD with much seriousness like they used to during the early years of alien incursions but treat them as some “ghost hunting” team that always get called upon every time something unexplained comes up that the local enforcement are not willing to spend their time and manpower on, much less, the military. Not that she’s complaining but still. Judging by the looks of Hayata, she could tell he’s pretty much thinking along the same line as her as he listen intently to the Captain’s orders.

“It’s at Kunizakai Kogen Snow Park. It’s a small ski hill located in Takashima City in the northern area of Shiga Prefecture, just north-west of Kyoto, across Lake Biwa.”

Hayata took out his tablet to study the map and get a bearing of their current location as Fuji looks on curiously at his side. He looks at his digital watch making a mental calculation of their journey.

“80km. About an hour drive from here or so. Right.”

“Hm. Since you’re both are near, I’m sending you two. It could be another false alarm but it could also have a connection with Baltan that disappeared at Lake Biwa five years ago. Could be coincidental or could be linked, which is why I want you to investigate it immediately. Report back if you discover any anomalies. Ide and Arashi are on stand-by if you need assistance.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

“Hm. Take care. Muramatsu out.”

“Well, there it is.”

“Hayata, look! It’s snowing!”

“Already? I didn’t expect a snow till three weeks from now at least.”

“Oh, it’s so beautiful!”

Fuji’s pure heart never fails to amaze and amuse him.

“We just learned about a Yuki Onna, and you’re more fascinated by snow?”

“Don’t make me throw a snowball at you, Hayata!”

Hayata chuckled as he gets into the driver’s seat as Fuji takes the remaining tempura left behind on the car hood with her. She stood at the car door left ajar for a minute as she marvels at the snowflakes falling down gracefully from the white sky. She takes one last breath of fresh air as she steps into the car to sit beside Hayata, who ignites the car’s engine and hits the pedal to move off through the crowded streets of Gion.

Ma’at and Is/f/et

It seems the kemetic community is confused as to what is Ma’at and what is Isfet.  So let’s break this down using the most recent instance of this ignorance.  Prompted by @secondgenerationimmigrant ‘s hate-fueled rages.  I’ll let @belovedbysetandsekhmet​ and @ngdiscourse​ speak for themselves but here is my take.

Let’s start with Ma’at, there’s been alot of great discussions of what Ma’at is and I feel these discussions are some of the more pertinent and excellent ones to peruse for understanding Ma’at.  These discussions all make very excellent points and are well worth the reads: Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here!

To begin with the hate anons “someone” sent me directly after a post of light mocking beginning with this one:

Now, I appreciate the politeness of saying “please” but the rest shows a complete lack of understanding about what Ma’at is.  Nothing I’ve posted is “anti-ma’at” unless of course you are a radicalized extremist who relies on overly emotional and manipulative mental gymnastics to justify yourself.  Most of the kemetics in the little political fandom group tend to think along these lines, that being a hateful, bitter person is somehow justifiable because they have convinced themselves it’s “ma’at” mostly these people are misguided and ignorant, and to be pitied. 

It is one thing to send such hate anons to someone, and another to wish horrific harm to someone for lightly mocking you.  As evidenced in this link: Here.

To be clear, this is not an execration because nothings being purged, nothings being removed, is/f/et isn’t being snuffed out, the wyrm isn’t being destroyed, this is just pure bitter hate.  Pure malice wished on someone because you can’t handle anythign outside your echo-chamnber.  Lets break this down:

“I hope your government fucks you personally over and that you drown in debt and starve like the people who were victims of austerity in the UK. “

It takes a special kind of evil to truly wish this on someone for mocking you.  Getting a light bit of mocking and you wish the government destroys their lives and they go into financial ruin?  This is not fighting is/f/et this is actively trying to feed it.  This is not Ma’at, this is actively stomping on Ma’at out of such bitter hatred and lack of moral fiber, even in a rage, this is a truly vile thing to wish on people you politically disagree with. However, when you justify to yourself that everyone who disagrees MUST be evil and all political dissent is the work of pure evil...it’s easy to cast yourself the hero in your own demented morality play.

“I hope you feel the despair of the people who had to choose between food and heating, of the people who had to work several jobs to exhaustion just to make ends meet, of the people who had to ration lifesaving medication because they couldn’t afford refills.“

Good vitriol but poor choices of wording.  How can you think you have any morality what so ever, that at the sight of being mocked for your political opinions, you immediately turn to this as your go-to reaction to wish on people?  Wishing harm, despair, pain and suffering on people who disagree with you or don’t believe you.  How can you honestly sit there and pretend you have felt even one modicum of Ma’at’s light fill you when this is where your mind goes because you lost a political event?  Your team didn’t win this time, it sucks, sure, but turning to wanting such horrible poverty and hardship and wishing it on people who politically disagree with you...is honestly, not anywhere near Ma’at, in fact, it’s directly the opposite.  You aren’t fighting FOR Ma’at here sweetie, you’re DEFENDING Is/fe/t.  We are just people disagreeing with you on the internet, we aren’t salivating over people dying and suffering, or complicit in desiring pain and hardships on families you deluded downer debby duckling.

“How is this Ma'at, you awful pieces of shit? How can you justify this to yourselves and be OK with treating the whole situation as an occasion to get your shits and giggles out of the “leftie snowflakes who have finally gotten got”?“

To be clear, we’ve mocked SGI’s politics, we never agreed with the opposing parties.  But to an extremist so blinded by their own hubris and false senses of moral superiority...I’m sure it looks the same.  Much is the case with social justice crowds, they are completely blinded by their own foolishness that they hurl themselves into the darkness and call it light.  To blame some people who mocked you, for the evils of the world, is at best terribly naive, at worst, willfully ignorant.  These same people also tend to not understand the difference between “I disagree with you” and Fascism™, but that usually stems from not actually wanting to know the difference.  It’s a lot easier to disgrace someone’s name when you claim they are literally evil and morally abhorrent.  This is why so many who don’t bow down to the kemetic fandom’s crowd of toxic sjw’s get called fascists, or nazis, or any kind of -ism imaginable.   Mostly it just shows these people are profoundly ignorant and exist in a toxic echo-chamber headspace that is, in the long run, unhealthy.  It’s an ideology of unlearning and unthinking, it’s gross, it’s not “social awareness” because social awareness would include knowing what words mean.  Not throwing them around so hard they lose all meaning.  “Owning the leftie snowflakes” isn’t the goal, usually it’s to argue against what is thought to be bad leftist ideas, with better, more sound arguments that go over their heads because they worship their politics.

I’m sure some would argue it’s “mean” to tease these people or mock them for their bad ideas/opinions, but when you watched them support the people who led the charges in the sjw war on the kemetic community, the people they hurt, the people they smeared and chased away, the content they trashed, gods they disgraced...They become comically tiresome clowns.  We’re tired of their bullshit, the kemetic community was trashed into a garbage heap because people wouldn’t bend the knee to their political tripe.  In hateful revenge they made sure everyone who didn’t agree was either smeared, chased off, or they lied their asses off to disgrace their names.  None of them really have any idea what Ma’at or Is/fe/t are, they just throw the words around without any care for meaning, or quoting some violent racist rapists book as holy doctrine on the subjects of Ma’at.

To be clear, I’m not angry, I’ve long since passed angry and went all the way around to pity.  I pity these kids, alot.  I hope they wake up someday.

This clear overreaction is even more hilarious when you consider that they have no idea how to form an execration...imagine if such terrible people actually knew how to use magical systems to achieve working goals...the world would look like the middle east, shredded in war and poverty and religious extremism, terrorism and death.  It truly is a blessing of the Netjeru that these fools have no concept of how to use magic, heka, or execration ritual prayers.

Simple Racism? Maybe it’s more complex than that

Looking at the abuse Caitriona Balfe receives on a daily basis from supposedly ‘feminist’ women (′sisters’!? don’t make me larf ) because she has apparently married the ‘wrong’ man, a man who doesn’t fit in with the kind of man they wank over: outrageously handsome, six-pack, boyish charm, outward personality, lots of PDA, financially successful......someone like Sam (aaaaaah.....),  it  puts me in mind of the great Meghan/Kate debate.

 I know a lot of people, particularly Americans  and Persons-of-Colour, had an understandable knee-jerk reaction to the way Meghan, an American citizen AND a woman-of-colour, has been treated by the British Press and some of the public. However the way in which she was (unfairly) compared to Kate has more to it than simple racism. Here’s an interesting article from The Atlantic Magazine, 16th January 2020 that explores the issues: 

Meghan, Kate, and the Architecture of Misogyny

Policing correct female behavior keeps all women in their place.

HELEN LEWIS

Are you Team Kate or Team Meghan? If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to pick a side—and you don’t think there should be “sides” at all. Yet ever since Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, parts of the media have pitted the former actor against her sister-in-law.

Where Kate Middleton was once depicted as a dull social climber, she is now presented as the epitome of female virtue: a respectable, silent, discreet, and selfless mother. Meghan must therefore be her opposite—a political, manipulative, “woke” careerist.

Essentially, the two duchesses have been assigned to opposite sides of the culture war. All kinds of seemingly unrelated items have become symbols of one side or the other—quinoa, avocados, the English flag, attitudes toward the death penalty—and now Kate and Meghan have been conscripted too.

Kate is held up as an icon for traditionalists, metaphorically baking cookies (as Hillary Clinton once said stay-at-home mothers do), while Meghan has become the emblem of modern womanhood, outspoken and socially progressive. Never mind that they might just be following their own personalities and interests; they have become representatives of two distinct political positions. By carving up the messiness of female lives into a stark binary, the choices open to all women—not just Meghan and Kate—are limited.Women’s lives provide a particularly vivid arena for the clash between traditionalism and modernity because we love to interpret women’s choices as commentary on other women’s choices. The Meghan-versus-Kate clash has echoes of the “Mommy Wars,” the feminist shorthand for how every decision made by a mother is interpreted as a rebuke to other mothers who choose differently—breast- versus bottle-feeding, C-section versus “natural birth,” stay-at-home mother versus “supermom.” (It is notable that Prince William and Prince Harry, despite their own different temperaments and approaches, are not being turned into cultural avatars in the same way.)

There is a long tradition of regulating female behavior by defining women in opposition to one another. It is a familiar pattern in the coverage of American first ladies too: Think Laura Bush versus Clinton or Melania Trump versus Michelle Obama. While researching my history of feminism, Difficult Women, I was struck by a pattern in which “good girls” are promised an escape from misogyny, as long as they are docile and conformist—a pattern that has race- and class-based overtones. When Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney staged the first suffragette protest, in Manchester in 1905, a newspaper article about the ensuing court case condemned their behavior—they shouted and spat at policemen—saying it resembled that of women “from the slums.” The report added: “It was regrettable that such a charge should be brought against persons who ought, at least, to be able to control themselves.” The aristocrat Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton, another suffragette, wrote in her memoir that upper-class women were inculcated with “a maiming subserviency … so conditional to their very existence that it becomes an aim in itself, an ideal.”

Kate has now been anointed as the standard-bearer of that ideal. Tabloid headlines about her have become noticeably kinder since Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan was announced. She was once deemed vulgar and hopelessly bourgeois, a schemer who chose to study at the University of St Andrews in Scotland precisely to ensnare Prince William. She and her younger sibling Pippa were the “wisteria sisters”—“highly decorative, terribly fragrant and with a ferocious ability to climb.”

How times change. Kate is now the woman against whom Meghan is judged and found wanting. “Of all the pictures published in this tumultuous week for the Royal Family, one stood out for me,” the Daily Mail’s Amanda Platell wrote on January 10. “It was of a smiling mother-of-three in jeans and a jumper … No tears or tantrums here, just a woman happy with her lot and who understands how to behave as a royal.” (Platell, like many other columnists in British right-wing newspapers, is a recent convert to Katemania, having previously condemned her “wardrobe malfunctions,” long hair, approach to parenting, and flight-attendant mother.)

This new valorization of Kate is racially inflected, because Britain’s most durable template of respectable womanhood—the “English rose”—is much less accessible to anyone foreign or dark-skinned. The language used to indicate Meghan’s blackness has been noted by some writers, even as it fails to register with many white Britons: She is “exotic,” “urban,” “straight outta Compton.” The author Afua Hirsch told NPR that mixed-race people see in the coverage of Meghan “very colonial narratives about how we should be so grateful that we were allowed in.” But this “English rose” framing is not an unalloyed benefit for those anointed as the “right” kind of women, either. If minority and working-class women are attacked for being unruly and ungrateful—for not knowing their place—their wealthier white sisters are, in the feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon’s description, dismissed as “effete, pampered, privileged, protected, flighty, and self-indulgent.”

The pro-Meghan side has also embraced the culture war. She has been presented as a symbol of change—the first person of color in the royal family, an avowed feminist, a divorcée, and a woman with a successful career of her own. But as Nesrine Malik, the author of We Need New Stories, has argued, the radicalism of an actor marrying an aristocrat has often been overstated as a marker of progress. “When black and brown voices heralded the Meghan-Harry wedding as some sort of watershed moment on race it was, to use a problematic word, problematic,” she wrote. Inevitably, there are those who argue that any criticism of Meghan must be driven by racism. Although some of it undoubtedly is, Britain also has a long tradition of deeming royal women unsuitable— yet pointing this out is taken as denialism and white obliviousness.

As a result, much current commentary reads less like scrutiny of the specific situation at hand and more like artillery barrages in a proxy war. The real subject is anxiety over female emancipation and women’s roles in public life. In this framing, any praise for one duchess must be a negative commentary on the other. To be pro-Meghan is to be anti-Kate, and vice versa. Everyone is invited to pick a side, as if choosing a sports team. It is part of a broader trend where political discussions morph into something closer to battles between fandoms.

The trouble with a culture war—the reason there’s never a cease-fire—is that everyone gets what they want from it. One side prides itself on “defending traditional values,” speaking the plain truth about snowflake-Millennial duchesses and sticking up for the Queen (What did she do to deserve this?). The other sees itself as championing diversity and progressive values, standing up to racism and calling out the excesses of the media. Television and radio programs get inflammatory debates; participants burnish their in-group membership; big political arguments are thrashed out on-screen alongside pictures of attractive celebrities in lovely clothes.

But all women lose when women’s lives are boiled down to these simple binaries: selfless mother against ruthless careerist. Meghan is a mother too. Kate has political interests, such as mental health and early-childhood education. Both have nannies and live in homes worth millions. Not everything they do is “sending a signal” or “making a statement”; some of their personal choices are just that: personal choices. By focusing only on the differences between them, we lose sight of the institutions—the royal family and the architecture of misogyny—that constrain them both.

HELEN LEWIS

is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women:  A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

[For the record, like most people here, I was delighted when Prince Harry married Meghan, not least because she was a woman-of-colour, thus making the monarchy at a stroke more inclusive for people-of-colour  who might otherwise feel excluded. Which is why I am so disappointed - indeed, pissed off- at them for apparently cutting and running. Britain has made huge strides in the last 60 years to being a more inclusive country, to the point where the second and third most important government ministers (Treasury and Home (Interior)) are people of colour. In a f*cking Conservative government, mind you!   A point conveniently overlooked by certain NYT/Guardian  journalists who have made a career out of ‘proving’ how racist -and sexist - we Brits are. And yes, I know, much, much remains to be done. We’ve only had two women Prime Ministers, for example...so far.]

Setting the record straight

I am a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of people think it does.

Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected.

2. I believe we should all have access to healthcare. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen. It also makes economic sense to me that having decent healthcare is cheaper than ER care.

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free, but there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my fair share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe undocumented immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally (and don't have a valid claim under VAWA or CAT or for a hardship waiver, etc), but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc). And it takes a system not outsourcing to profiteers!!!

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, safe flights, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money will ensure their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. Certainly not right now. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist! Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something with a better profit potential in the future.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

Copy & paste Or reblog if you want. I did! No pressure.Just wanted to set the record straight.Thanks for reading.

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #133

This is old news at this point, I adore how this series can take mundane, everyday occurrences, and have them be precursors to something more substantial later on. They did it for moments like Tomoko inadvertently causing the Kyoto trip from even happening or how she just so happened to learn Nemo’s secret from Ogino, and now it’s happening with this lunch date that was planned in the previous chapter. Considering how the previous cafeteria chapters include talking about dicks and “Attack on Kabaneri”, I’m certain there will be no shortage of laughs here.  

Chapter 133: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Connect With Everyone

The relationship (if you can call it that) between Tomoko and Okada has always been an interesting one since the latter is probably the closest thing Tomoko envisions as the typical popular, preppy girl. The barrier between them is thick enough that even Nemo has to ask permission to bring Okada along instead of doing that assume-she’s-okay-with-it move she often does.   

Now you see, this is the kind of line that could’ve easily been executed in a way that would paint Okada as a clichéd tsundere. The reason why Pineapple-chan doesn’t fall into this trap is because Okada, unlike a usual tsundere, doesn’t mask who she is. Sure, she expresses discomfort in her explanation, but it’s more of trying to rectify a mistake she’s already admitted to rather than any overzealous denial. 

Ain’t that the class representative of Tomoko’s class last year? Only Nico Tanigawa would make the class rep character inconsequential in a manga. 

Number #182 on the Masterlist of Acceptable Social Etiquette that the Writer of this Review has Fucked Up at Some Point in His Life. 

Perhaps this my Western sensibilities talking, but I don’t see the issue with choosing something cheap when someone is treating you. Most people I know would appreciate the consideration. Now, there have been a few times in this series where being “considerate” is equated with “pitying”, which is understandable if there is a clear social/financial divide between the two parties. But the idea that a simple act of kindness like treating someone is a “trend”, as Tomoko seems to imply, is unsettling in how needlessly grand of a gesture it’s become.

Whether you’re a prep or an otaku, we all love udon. 

See, the fact that Komiyama even bothers to bring up her history with Tomoko says a lot about what her relationship with the latter means to her. Nemo compared her three-year relationship with Tomoko with that of Komiyama’s, but Komiyama actually felt the need to specify that she’s known Tomoko longer than that, as if their relationship were weighted with more value for it. Despite what they say, Tomoko and Komiyama’s frenemy bond has shaped them to an extent that can only be described as friendship.

...er, right?

It’s understandable that Okada would think that, as there’s no evidence that she’s ever had a real enemy before. Now in regards to being in sync. Tomoko and Komiyama are a case of being too much in sync. People with abrasive personalities tend to click well with more mild-mannered people, since they can even each other out. But Tomoko and Komiyama are basically fire fighting against fire, and that unyielding nature often doesn’t produce sunshine and flowers.

But at the same time, fire can also reinforce each other, and I believe this is what Okada is alluding to here. That even if they collide with each other, its a mutual collision that can produce not pure-hearted friendship, but a healthy dislike. Tomoko and Komiyama are long past keeping up appearances in front of others, and it’s that shared understanding that may have actually benefited the two girls in the long run.  

There’s sooo much to pull apart here on how in Tomoko’s fantasy, she’s coding Komiyama as a male while she plays the implied female love interest. I won’t go as far as to say its some internalized heteronormativity, but that her first instinct is to refer to very obvious heterosexual relationships in manga and anime simply because that’s what she consumes. I’d sure like to see Komi’s version of this. 

This leads me to wonder...would Tomoko be friends with Komiyama if Tomoki wasn’t part of the equation? I’d say their relationship would be better, but still not exactly friends.

Nemo at it again with the potshots against Tomoko. But lo and behold, it’s not Tomoko who offers a retort, as we’ve come to expect...

...but the Queen of Quiet Fury, Yuri Tamura.

We’ve only had a couple of glimpses thus far in this manga of Yuri taking the initiative, but past history with her tells us that Yuri is only like that when something she treasures is in danger of being lost. Simply put, the fact that she’s forcing herself in the conversation is more drastic than her using Tomoki as social “warfare”.

Judging from Mako’s I-don’t-wanna-be-here expression, I don’t think Yuri’s being totally honest. My belief is that Yuri kept dropping not-so-hinted hints that she wants to stalk them during lunch, and Mako took it upon her reluctant shoulders to organize the stakeout. 

I like how organically all of the connections (hence the title) are being drawn together. They don’t really take the forefront and occupy any important dialogue. Rather, the realizations that the character experience are all in the back of their minds, acting more as the glue to naturally develop these connections later on, which keeps the lunch from looking like a contrived excuse to force characters to meet each other. 

You asked for this, Nemo. There’s no turning back.

Yuri and Nemo “competing” for Tomoko’s attention was a very obvious development, but to actually see it in motion is another thing entirely. It keeps it fresh because it’s not just two girls constantly ragging on each other. They each have different approaches to this “competition”, with Nemo’s upfront-but-calculated moves having trouble against Yuri’s understated-but-relentless defenses. And especially with Yuri having more ammunition like “knowing Naruse-san”, it’s going to be an intense battle.

For all you continuity buffs out there.

Three consecutive punchlines in one panel? How do you do it, Nico Tanigawa?

Okay, but in all seriousness, I was not expecting Yuri to play the sleeve-grab card. That’s the sort of shit one says to brag about some sexualized non-sexual contact, and Yuri never seemed like the type who’d want to paint themselves in that light. Of course, it could also be interpreted as desperation on Yuri’s part, using any sort of experience she has that Nemo doesn’t, even if it’s something as minuscule as touching Tomoko’s brother.

Mako needs a vacation.

Here we have a rare sighting of the Normie Okada, out of her element amongst the ravenous, mentally-disturbed Non-normies.

I must admit, Komiyama’s diminished screentime as of late has left me with a disappointing void. My theory is that Nico Tanigawa is having trouble furthering the Tomo-Komi dynamic since they’ve stopped actively antagonizing each other. But in a way, it makes me appreciate Komiyama more in the times she does show up since no other character can pull off sexually-repressed nerd-rage like her.

Itou truly is the Yuri-prototype.

Tomoko calling her friends “friends” never ceases to be heartwarming.

One of the most unique things in this frenemyship is that Tomoko has absolutely no scruples with how she handles Komiyama. With her other friends, Tomoko will present herself as socially equal or lesser than them, but Komiyama is only one she’ll interact to with a sense of superiority. That said, splashing water in Komiyama’s face and chiding her like a rebellious cat is a strangely truthful comparison of their relationship. 

It’s a bit hard to notice at times, but Komiyama is a tad more humble now than she used to be. Her lust/crush on Tomoki is unwavering as always, but she does seem to be aware that her more ravenous behavior is usually inappropriate, and will either apologize accordingly or restrain herself from saying anything at all. The fact that the Lottes’ continuous losses play a role in this is a good way to mesh Komiyama’s two core hobbies: baseball and perversion.  

I really do wish we saw more of Itou at times. She’s currently the most “uncorrupted” girl in the group.

If this is gonna be foreshadowing an interaction where Komiyama ends up ruining Okada’s already crushed innocence a second time, I say...bring it on.

And then we have Nemo with the ellipses of amusement.

I’m sure that Yuri coming to terms with Tomoko calling her a friend is something fans have been clamoring for a while, and so it’s oddly refreshing to see it here in such an understated way. But given that this is Watamote and the smallest detail often spiral into something larger, I’m certain this is something Yuri will be internalizing for chapters to come. 

Yoshida treating Tomoki like a child is so ironically precious since Tomoki is probably three times more mature than she is. It certainly plays to a part of Yoshida’s personality that’s been established for a while now, with her fancying herself as someone older, experienced, and savvy when she’s basically a little kid in a teenager’s body. Or to put it another way, her yankee-ish way of speaking is somewhat performative like a twelve-year-old swearing up a storm ‘cause they think it makes them sound grown-up.

It’s funny how moments of intimacy can be entirely undercut based on the person who’s doing it. Wrapping your arm around someone is an act of familiarity that can imply a desire for, well, desire. But Yoshida has the purity of a freshly fallen snowflake, so there’s no sense of attraction to be found here. To Yoshida, Tomoki is just some younger dude that isn’t as “worldly” as her, and any notion of Tomoki as an object of desire is completely lost on her.

Yes, Yoshida may be a violent delinquent. Yes, Nemoto may be a calculating gadfly. Yes, Ucchi is an undeniable stalker (where is she, anyway?). But a pissed off, sexual deviant Komiyama is by far the most dangerous force in the Watamote universe. 

This was, at its core, a setup chapter. A little light on the jokes with more focus on building up the chapters that follow it. But you know, that’s not really such a bad thing, because even at its worst, Watamote is “pretty damn good”, with the subsequent chapters of their respective arcs reaching heights of awesomeness you didn’t think were possible. This may have been a tasty appetizer, but the main course is shaping up to be positively exquisite.

​Innerview: Jane Lerner / Print Magazine​ Regional Design Annual

July 2008 

Image: Gluekit

​Note: Q​&A on the​ Midwest's​ “State of the Union in Design​.​”

Question:​

I am mainly interested in your take on the “state of the union” of design in Missouri. In writing the regional essay, I am curious as to your thoughts on the quality of local design and designers, the challenges designers currently face in your area, the kinds of clients you are seeing more / less of, the influence of local art schools and the new crop of designers, the effects of larger social issues (the economy, the election, recent flooding, the housing crisis)—really anything you’d like to offer would be illuminating. I’m especially interested in any changes you may have felt in your business since last year, either improvements, declines, shifts in assignments, anything…I am just hoping to collect some thoughts from local designers in your area on the state of design in your area, with a special emphasis on how your work has changed, evolved, improved, or been challenged in the past year. Really anything you’d like to offer would be helpful and illuminating, but don’t feel like you need to put to​o​ much time or effort into writing anything up! ​Answer:​

Honestly, for about forty minutes each Fall, I let Print’s Regional Design Annual treat me to a view of what they think is the state of design union in Missouri and beyond these borders. But, do I use it as my design doctrine or bible? Nope, just reference per the moment and mild-mannered time passing. And besides, it’s always about a year behind (har-har). The rest of the year I barely flip a design magazine or book page based upon today’s happenings and I don’t interact much with other design unless having a ba-jillion images pass by me on the web world bulletin boards, the grocery aisles and department stores or when I watch movies and play passenger in cars. Oh, so then again, I guess I DO flip through (and flip off) a lot of design out there! And geesh, I can barely read most restaurant menus these days! I get confused and convoluted from a lot of design overload. Though, I guess I do care. I do celebrate design. I do love it and hate it on occasion. I do get too serious at times and then feel the need to step it back because I have to be a human being. Publications like Print must be doing something right being that they’ve been in print for decades now. And I might read it more if I could afford a subscription. But, I still think that all design is relative to the viewer who makes contact and then it’s up to them. Them being, both the general people and the people who really push the production, politics or peep show. But, mostly it should be left up to the uneducated design people (I mean that in the best way possible) that the end product is placed within eye-shot. They have to look at the whole spectrum majority of the junk, not knowing what is good or bad in design aesthetics, but what feeds them on a personal level or how hungry their pockets are. For the majority of my own nest-kick-chicks, that would be street level. I think I’m not too far off by putting my poster work in the same batter as that of street vending / food cart. It’s cheap, catchy, quick and not for everyone. But for those few minutes (or seconds pending on how fast you digest) it may or may not treat you right and then you pack up and move on to the next pickings. Sometimes you might want to try it again and that means a lot to me in this age of quick tastes and slick takes. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind for each experience to be a new taste / take. In some cases, multiple tastes / takes in one bite. So, lots of different street vendor selections or even toppings? Maybe more like one big thing of flavored beans? Canned or candied? Of course the design hand-picked for a design magazine is done so by designers. They do a fine job, but is design all relative to designers too? Maybe we should start letting non-designers pick the work just for the heck of it? I think it would be a great experiment to see what truly works on a popular vote in the culture instead of designers controlling the pop culture waves of their own profession. Something I learned about this “profession” a long while back is that there is no good or bad design, only smart or stupid (I think there are “pretty” and “ugly” categories too). I find joy pulled from all sides. More times than not, I find more breathable life in things made by the hands of unskilled makers of things. Though, it depends, I guess. And for the most part, whether it is folk art or a church secretary’s thumb prints, the egos, arrogance factor and financial bullpens typically come in less shades of gloss and floss as well. Still, one can’t help but think there is a fine line once all the meat is boiled with any “design” job. I guess that is where my formative training and “I think I know it so-and-so’s” come to bite me in the rear. I try to not think, but end up thinking too much when these questions come. What does all of this nonsense say about the state of the union? Should we even care about a state of the union with design? I have no idea. Tricky question, nonetheless. Designerly reality hits when I feel that a lot of non-designers think they are designers and that a lot of designers think that they are designers too. Though, this has probably more-so been a “thing” with many since the personal computer came into play and that’s a subject that has been beaten to death. It’s good and bad and smart and stupid and pretty and ugly. Oh, and the ability to change colors and images on myspace pages and cell phones has got the “modern” world in a hoopla of cool-aid. Everybody’s got an agenda to style and decorate everything, non-designers and designers. Whatever and way-to-go…each to their own scarecrow. I try to stay out of design dogma, fads and politics for the most part. But, it can be challenging when the “profession” feels a lack of respect compared to what it may have had decades ago (I’m still a young pup so I wasn’t around, but I love to look at old makers of things working in a room without a compouter), when brains were illuminated instead of monitors. I’m not sure if this is my area of the box to bash. But, it makes for interesting passing through. And I have a pooter too. I stick to my guns as much as I can, but still it’s a game of roulette with each day cause I never know what I’m personally going to get out of it or if what I get translates to if he or she or they or it wish for tickets to the gun show. But, I try to always do my best work per that moment and keep true to whatever direction of the dotted line it fits. Unfortunately some days make for more paper dolls than snowflakes. Personally, whenever I pull from all things, the cannon of life that I’ve built and have come to know, this is when I’m tickled most within the work. But, it shouldn’t be about me and I am no specially marked pre-packaged product. A healthy dose of all angles and ingredients apply for this position. Design calculators are nice and all, and knowing what you think you know is more than just knowing as it becomes powerful like OCD to the core and every drip and wink of life becomes that. It can be fulfilling and it can also make you want to dive in a landfill. Anyway, it’s a strange brew and I’m best when I stir and just let it happen. And I’ve had to work a full-time day job (and some) since starting on my personal design odyssey seven years ago, so I don’t know enough of “much” to really qualify for this question. I’m in constant scrape for scraps of my own eye lids. But, then again, Print Magazine has kindly donated some fine-printed room on their pages the past six years for my silly D.I.Y. bump and grinds. As if I couldn’t confuse myself even more, I found out that Print picked a piece of my mind to help represent Missouri that I didn’t think was anything too special on a whole and now they want my opinion on the state of the union. Design is all relative even among designers. I don’t get out too much, but Kansas City has had a hot bed of art and design activity burning bright for several years now. And ever since I was making visits from the farm to the city as a child, I’ve thought the architecture alone in this town stands for itself old and new. Right now there is a lot of development buzzing and lots of expensive looking structures and changes filling out formerly anorexic lots and buildings. Supposedly we are making a dent in the landscape all-around with the arts, which is kind of exciting. And there is a great sense of hometown pride right now. Though, how does that add up in comparison to the higher crime rate, poverty, loaf of bread, gallon of gas or milk? Or, anywhere? I guess in designerly terms, Print will let me know for sure later this year what is exactly going on as they summarize the Missouri plot. All I know is that the loop is small here in Kansas City and I myself have somehow managed to remain fairly anonymous and out of the loop, yet have been fortunate to grasp a few goggles. But, like I said, I don’t get out much and I don’t get to do design full time. At times, and in these times, I wonder how some individual designers and larger design firms keep all of their monitors turned on. Maybe I should hang around some of these kids who are getting by on their arts and crafts alone and learn a trick or two? But, I will just keep riding my little pony now. I suppose the new crop of talent has been a constant for a long time with the Kansas City Art Institute being here and all. Though, many newbies come in from all areas of surrounding towns and other states, not just for formal schooling. And I’m sure the location between big college towns like Lawrence, KS and Columbia, MO draw in the post-graduates. It seems like a lot of people that transplant or migrate here stick around and drop anchor for a bit. The central location, four seasons and big-little city atmosphere help make for a comfortable stay. You can throw an iPhone and hit somebody who makes stuff or plays in a band or something in the area of the arts. It’s fairly easy to find kindred spirits, comfort and a bit of headlines if you’ve got something to say. And in some cases you don’t need to say much to get attention. But, I think that in most any city now you can find a lot of people who are pushing towards titles of artist, designer, writer, filmmaker and so-on. However, the “everyone’s an artist” tag line doesn’t bulge the waist line here as much as in a city like say, Portland, OR. But, I think that there is an edge here with milder mid-west manners and a cheaper and comfortable cost of living in comparison to equally-sized and more artistically-endowed cities. Still, gas and economy prices are rising all the time so added whoopee cushions are deflating a bit. But, cats are cheaper than kids so my wife and I almost have my formal art and design education paid off. Whoopee, for real. Though, most of the natty resources I’m in constant search of right now in my pockets are time, energy and clear conscience. In my own personal art department, internet advertising on social networks mixed with small town word-of-mouth and an incestuous music scene of like twenty people pretty much makes the concert poster secondary information today. At least it seems that way on some days…some days like today. And some days feedback comes in the vein of, “It’s alright I guess, but I think we’ll just make our own in OUR style.” I have no idea what that means, but it seriously cracks me up in a “you and me take ourselves way too serious” kind of way. Stuff like that makes me realize that all of this that I push and pine for means nothing when all the images are stacked up. I like the idea of the time line and of the paper trail with life and celebrating creation, but a lot of it can take life out of context. I’m guilty a lot. Fooey…I don’t think the concert poster is a dead art and I must add that I’ve had great response and clientele to work with here. To top off this tearful tier, I have no idea what else I could do. This is the only thing that I’m told that I’m somewhat “OK” at. When fitting their “style”, of course. So, Kansas City…I simply fell into the right position with you and I enjoy you sometimes and sometimes I don’t. But, that is how the hamster ball scuttles. Though, much of my smoke stacks have cut back collaboration with concert stuffs due to just wanting to take it easier on myself and to see where else I can crawl with this pile I’m sitting on. And I come back quick, up and down. I think there will always be an avenue for printed products, plus for a long while now the concert poster in general has become a pretty hot item. Though, that is not why I do it. I just do it. Out of the gutter and onto the milk crate. Regardless, I’ve taken a step back from my typical trappings anyway to just breathe a bit in life and to avoid burning my torch out. I’m also seeing what other areas to plow. Though, I think I’ve recently caught a bit of fire again and I’m burning my brain and yours in this windy waste of writing. Adding it all up, I’m well down my seventh well here. I like it, but I have itchy roots that dig into my country backbone woods. There’s a piece of me that wants to get a piece of rural property to see some stars again and have a little full tank of time making things shack out back. And just close enough to the city for a fix of my secondary roots here if need be. But who knows what the next wind will blow? -djg

if wishing made it so (DGS2 fanfiction)

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE DGS SERIES, meaning both DGS1 and DGS2 in their entirety. Please do not read this if you do not want to be spoiled.

if wishing made it so (AO3 Link)

Fold it up, call it love, and bring it to a quiet place.

Characters: Naruhodou Ryuunosuke, Mikotoba Susato, Asougi Kazuma, Iris Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Barok van Zieks

Notes: Some writing I did as a breather in the midst of working on my actual DGS2 celebratory/appreciation fic. DGS2 has completely ruined my life (in a good way)

.…Writing to take a break from writing… what madness is this…

A note about honorifics - since they all speak English in London, my way of treating the honorifics used by the characters in-game is to make just the Japanese characters keep them (specifically Susato since she’s the most relevant example) even to the British characters if there’s not a good equivalent. …Well, I fully admit I just dealt with it as I pleased to make my life easier.

An inexpressible amount of gratitude to airisuwatoson and turnaboutancestor for their DGS playthroughs, without which I wouldn’t have been able to write this. Each and every update always had me on edge. Thank you!!!

One last warning that this fic contains spoilers for all of DGS2.

A story of a thousand wants.

“And then, you fold this triangle down to make the head.”

“Like this?”

“Yes! Very good, Iris-sama!”

At the double cheer resounding from behind, Ryuunosuke tears his eyes gratefully away from his textbook and glances over his shoulder, curiosity prickling at the back of his neck. “What are you two doing?”

Susato turns to face him, beaming. “I was just teaching Iris-sama how to fold a paper crane. Look how well it turned out, Naruhodou-sama!”

“It was only because Susie was so good at teaching me!” Iris Watson chirps, lifting her arms to proudly show Ryuunosuke the small, folded crane that rests on her hands. “It’s so cute!” The girl whirls around once, bright pink curls spinning with the motion, and the crane very nearly seems as if it could take flight right then.

Ryuunosuke crouches in front of her to get a better look, admiring the piece. “It’s really good considering it was your first time, Iris-chan.” Indeed, there is barely a careless crease or wrinkle in the paper, only straight, clean lines that are evident of a studious precision. “I still remember when I first tried folding one when I was younger. You couldn’t even tell it was a crane at all.”

A good-natured giggle spills from Susato’s lips, her hand going to her mouth. “That’s very like you somehow, Naruhodou-sama.”

“O-Oh, is it…?”

“But origami is something that can be done by anyone,” she continues, looking back fondly to Iris’s crane. “All it requires is a little patience.”

“Well, true enough.” His disastrous first attempt had left a bitter taste in his throat, and Ryuunosuke recalls the indignant determination that had refused to let him rest until he had folded a successful crane. “I actually got pretty good at it as I kept folding more, although I haven’t done any since we came to London.”

“There’s still paper here if you want to make one too,” Iris calls, waving the sheets in his direction.

After a moment of contemplation, the words escape of their own accord. “…I think I will.” He reaches over to take one of the proffered papers. “…Wait. These papers are my notes from previous cases!”

“Oh, are they?” Yet the untroubled tone with which Iris responds tells him that she is perfectly aware. “They were just scattered all over the floor, so I figured they were just going to be thrown away later anyway.”

“I might’ve wanted to look over them for reference in the future…”

At the excuse, weak to even Ryuunosuke’s own ears, Susato places her hands on her hips and looks at him sternly. “Is that how you should treat valuable documents, Naruhodou-sama? By leaving them without care or organization on the floor?”

“N-No…”

“Besides, if you are in need of references from our past cases, I have also recorded information in my notes.” With that, Susato fishes out a small, bound book, a certain pride brimming in her motions. “You may look through them at your leisure.”

“…As expected of you, Susato-san.” It is certainly not the first time, and he knows it will be far from the last, that awe at her diligence washes through his entire body and leaves a strange warmth in its wake.

“It is simply my natural duty as your legal assistant, Naruhodou-sama,” Susato smiles. “With that, I trust you have no objections to the usage of your scrap paper?”

My case notes were downgraded to “scraps”... He allows himself only a small sigh, relenting at last. “I guess it is better than just seeing them all over the ground.” Without further ado, Iris hands him a sheet and cheerfully sets about folding another one.

At that moment, the door to the attic suddenly bursts open and a tall, lanky man waltzes in, a wounded expression on his face. “What’s this? No greeting when I arrive home, and instead I find you all cooped up in this dingy, dusty attic? Without me?”

“Please don’t talk about the room you rented us like that,” Ryuunosouke retorts, barely glancing up from his task. “Welcome back, Holmes-san.”

“Sherly!” Iris squeals and bounces to the self-proclaimed great detective, wrapping her short arms around his waist. “Welcome home! How did the case go?”

A jubilant laugh rings in the air. “Need you even ask, Iris?” Sherlock flicks his distinctive deerstalker with his index finger in triumph, a wide grin meeting Iris’s sparkling eyes. “Another case closed by the great detective Sherlock Holmes! We can rest easy about rent for the month.”

Is that really the sort of conversation you have with a child? Ryuunosuke does not say, but Iris, unperturbed, claps her hands together with equal delight.

“And now,” Sherlock continues, turning to survey the rest of them. “It’s my turn to ask again, just what you all are doing cooped up in this dingy, dusty, decrepit attic—Ah!” He holds a hand up to forestall the exasperated shape that Ryuunosuke’s mouth has formed, smiling slyly. “Allow me to make a deduction!”

“I was doing some origami,” Susato interrupts brightly without heed for the detective’s grandiose conduct, gesturing to the short lineup of small shapes on the table before her. “And Iris-sama was curious, so she allowed me to teach her the most classic design, a crane. And it turned out beautifully, Holmes-sama!”

In a rare occurrence, Sherlock’s depressive episode at the interruption of his deduction does not linger and he straightens immediately. Taking Iris’s crane up in his hand, he tilts his head, examining it from all angles. “As I recall, origami is the traditional Japanese art of folding paper into intricate designs, am I right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” With a nod of satisfaction, Ryuunosuke places his own completed crane next to Susato’s skillfully folded pieces. There is only a mild twinge of disappointment in himself as he eyes his crane’s slightly uneven lines compared to Susato’s delicate work. “So you’ve heard of it, Holmes-san?”

“As expected of Holmes-sama!”

“What kind of great detective would I be if I didn’t know this much?” One hand returns the crane to Iris, the other lands in a pat on her head, making her giggle. “It might be news to you, but I know how to make a few things myself!”

Ryuunosuke’s eyes widen. “Really? Did someone teach you?”

“I suppose you could say that.” But to his surprise, Sherlock does not elaborate, and Ryuunosuke catches only a snatch of something faraway and fond in his eyes before the detective blinks and turns his gaze back on the scattered papers. “But I must say, the two of you work fast.”

Susato and Ryuunosuke blink in unison, looking down. There is a small pile of cranes sitting between them both, clearly flourishing in their absentmindedness. Ryuunosuke feels his ears grow hot, and he throws half a sheepish glance at Susato, who returns a soft laugh.

Iris leans over the pile, starry-eyed. She scoops a handful up and lets them fall from her hands, smiling as the cranes scatter back to the wooden floor like large snowflakes. “Hey, Susie? You said that the crane is the most classic design, but why’s that?”

“Oh!” Susato brings a finger to her chin, tapping in contemplation. “If I had to say… There is a type of crane native to Japan that is said to be a symbol of good fortune and longevity. These paper cranes are representations of it.”

Something stirs in the back of Ryuunosuke’s mind at Susato’s words—stories and laughter from a childhood that seem like from a lifetime ago. He sweeps a look over the cranes in a quick estimate. Certainly, not a number that any would call ‘few’, but at the same time, not nearly enough. “There’s a famous legend about paper cranes, too,” he finds himself saying, words from his memories filling his throat. “They say if you fold a thousand of them, you’ll be granted a wish.”

“A wish?” Iris echoes, her deep green eyes widening.

“Ah, that’s right!” Susato nods in agreement. “There are many variations to that legend as well. Some say that you must finish the thousand cranes within a certain period of time. Others say that it only works if one person folds them all by themselves. But the fact that there must be a thousand cranes is the one, absolute constant.”

A wistful sigh escapes Iris. “That’s such a nice story. Wishes, huh?”

“It is a nice story.” Ryuunosuke smiles, a little wryly. “When I was younger, everyone wanted to do it, and they’d try. But one thousand cranes is actually a lot more than you’d expect, as it turned out. Most children would get tired of it quickly.”

“Why don’t we give it a try?”

All eyes snap to Sherlock, who is still standing serenely, now with his pipe in his mouth. He smiles down at them with something beyond his usual frivolity. “You seem to be off to a good start, anyway,” he continues, eying the numerous cranes sprinkled across the floor. “With the four of us, one thousand doesn’t seem so far away, does it?”

“I want to do it!” Iris chimes in, nodding energetically. “It sounds like fun!”

Susato clasps her hands together, merriment dancing in her eyes. “It does sound like fun. I’m sure if we keep steadily at it, we’ll reach one thousand cranes in no time.”

One thousand paper cranes. He rolls the phrase around in his head, trying to visualize the end number. Not an impossible goal, by any means, but a question presses insistently forward. “I don’t mind,” Ryuunosuke starts, “…But who gets to make the wish?”

“Oh.”

The small sound of realization Iris makes is enough to make him feel ashamed of himself. “Not that it’s a bad idea or anything, not at all,” he hastily adds. “I mean, I’m just saying that according to the legend…”

“An excellent question, Mister Naruhodou!” Sherlock cuts in, unfazed as ever. He spins on the spot with a wink, a solution clearly on his tongue. “Why don’t we let the lucky person who folds the last crane make the wish? In any case, there’s still a while, is there not?”

Enthusiastic nods from Susato and Iris, a grin of satisfaction from the detective—not that it was ever an option, but how can he say no? “Well, let’s do our best, then.”

“Yay!” Iris skips to the table for more paper, beginning the folding process in quick, dainty motions, while Susato turns curiously to Sherlock.

“What would you wish for, Holmes-sama?”

Sherlock snaps his fingers. “A case from a rich client!” he announces dramatically, squaring his arms in the strange pose he makes when in high spirits.

Ryuunosuke tilts his head quizzically. “If you want money, why don’t you just wish for money?”

“Goodness, Mister Naruhodou.” Sherlock wags a finger in his direction, shaking his head as if the answer is obvious. “Do you think I take cases just for the money?”

“…”

“Stop looking at me like that. No! If the case is a worthy challenge to the intellect of the great detective Sherlock Holmes, then all the better! I didn’t make my fame by only taking cases based on how much I was paid, you know.”

Despite the lightness in Sherlock’s voice, the twinkling look in his eyes, the undercurrent of deliberate resolve is all genuine and Ryuunosuke cannot help but smile. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“And what about you, Iris-sama?” Noticing the younger girl’s progress, Susato presents her with more paper just as Iris folds down the head of a new crane. “Do you know what sort of wish you would make?”

Iris happily accepts the sheet, her expression bright with the possibilities tumbling through her mind. “There’s a lot of things I’d like to wish for! I’ll have to think it over.” But abruptly, her fingers slow in the middle of a fold, her gaze seeming to travel elsewhere.

“Iris-chan?”

“It should be for something important, shouldn’t it? The wish.” Her voice comes out subdued, solemn, as she continues to stare at the half-formed crane in her hands. “Something important like… being able to meet my papa soon.��� The note of uncertainty makes something in Ryuunosouke’s chest twist.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he thinks he sees Sherlock tense.

“...I think,” he begins carefully, “you can wish for anything you want.” He thinks for a moment, and then nods, decisively. “That’s what wishes are. Whether or not you think it’s important, or whether or not you think it’ll be granted, all that matters is that it’s something you want, right?”

Only for a moment, he wonders who he’s really trying to convince.

“That’s right, Iris-sama,” Susato speaks now, resolutely. “Please don’t fret about it too much. If you find that you need another wish…” She gestures triumphantly to the still sizeable stack of papers they have gathered and deposited onto the table. “All we have to do is fold another thousand cranes!”

“…You’re right!” Just like that, Iris’s smile is back on her face, the shadow of doubt from moments ago nowhere in sight, and she and Susato giggle briefly at each other. Ryuunosuke marvels at the scene and hears a sigh of what might be relief from behind him. “What about you, Susie? What would you wish for?”

“Me?” For all her enthusiasm about folding cranes, the slightest thought of the end goal does not have appear to have crossed her mind. Susato tips her head into her chin, contemplative. “I… I don’t know. There’s nothing that I feel warrants something as grand as a wish—ah!”

He jumps slightly at her exclamation. “Did you think of something, Susato-san?”

“Yes, I think so.” Susato turns to look at him, and for some reason, her eyes seem very bright. “I would like to wish... for Naruhodou-sama to become the wonderful attorney he hopes to be.”

“Huh!?” The less than flattering sound leaps out as Ryuunosuke’s own eyes widen. “No, no, no, that’s- that’s not— I mean, shouldn’t you wish for something for yourself? I-I can’t possibly accept—”

“Do you truly think that it’s only for yourself?” There is fire in her gaze and steel in the words she returns as she stares at him, unwavering. “It’s something that I too desire, from the very bottom of my heart.” Her eyes travel downward, landing on the object at his hip, and soften. “Wish or not, I believe that it will happen. This is simply… asking for a little assistance.”

He has nothing to respond with but a meek nod, something hot building up in the corners of his eyes and an lump in his throat.

“Mister Naruhodou, do you need a handkerchief?”

“N-No!” Ryuunosuke scrubs briefly across his face with his sleeve, leveling a scowl the best he can at Sherlock before glancing back to Susato. “Susato-san... thank you. I’ll do my best to live up to your expectations.”

She only smiles at him again, an infinitely gentle expression. “What would your wish be, Naruhodou-sama?”

“A wish, huh…” He has pondered the question from the moment their shared goal was decided—but he is sincerely at a loss. “I… really don’t know. I guess I’ll think about it when we get close to the end.” A wish meant a desire, a hope.

A want.

…I wonder… if it would work…

He glances out the window, from where he can see sunlight spilling in and a few, fluffy clouds drifting lazily through a blue, blue sky. Sherlock may have called the attic ‘decrepit’, but bathed in a golden glow, there is not a sight more welcoming.

A warm breeze blows into the room, sending a few papers whirling.

...Probably not.

But he reaches for another sheet.

“…How are you doing? Are you surprised to see a letter this soon? Just after we left, I remembered a few things I forgot to tell you, so when the ship stopped at a port to resupply, I took the opportunity to send this.

You’re probably still getting used to London, aren’t you? I wanted to mention that there are some things left in my old room at Holmes-san’s place that you might find helpful, like books and stuff. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t take everything back to Japan with me, so if you’re up to it, you can go over to Baker Street sometime to take anything you’d like. In fact, it’d make me really happy if you got some use out of them…”

The sound of the horse carriage clattering noisily away is quickly replaced by that of his own heartbeat, pounding loudly in his chest. It seems silly that such apprehension should eat at him, compared to everything else that has happened, and for the life of him, he cannot find a logical rationale for it.

He takes a deep breath, lifts his hand, and knocks solidly on the door of apartment 221B.

Immediately, pattering footsteps race closer from the other side, and with a click the door swings open. Deep green eyes blink up inquisitively up at him, before they widen in recognition and delight. “It’s you! Come in, we’ve been expecting you!”

Asougi Kazuma inclines his head briefly, unable to stop the corners of his lips from turning up at the child’s enthusiastic greeting. “Good day, Miss Watson.” If the still-puzzling facsimile of her in court hadn’t been lively enough, she is a thousand times more spirited in person.

“Just Iris is fine,” she says cheerily, ushering him in. “Have a seat anywhere you’d like! My special herb tea is almost ready!”

“Ah-” he starts, “You don’t have to-…” But Iris has already vanished elsewhere into the depths of the apartment, presumably to the kitchen. Bemused, Asougi looks side to side, his gaze sweeping over the cluttered sitting room. Despite her encouragement, an assortment of strange contraptions litter every possible place to sit, and he does not particularly feel like carelessly engaging with them.

“Why, if it isn’t Mister Asougi!”

The airy voice from behind him sends a jolt down his spine and Asougi whirls, a hand automatically reaching for the saber at his side. In the next moment, his eyes land on the voice’s owner and he relaxes with a huff. “Detective Holmes.”

“There’s no need to be so wary.” Sherlock Holmes, sans his usual distinctive hat and overcoat, shrugs whimsically, appearing utterly unconcerned with Asougi’s instinctual reflex. “You’re our honored guest for today.”

He bows slightly. “Thank you for your invitation.” It’s not that he means to be curt, but cautious uncertainty still holds him in an iron grip—how should he react to the man who pulled the strings behind his interrupted first journey to London?

But Sherlock only beams, undaunted. “Think nothing of it. You’re Mister Naruhodou and Miss Susato’s dear friend, after all—how could we disappoint them in treating you otherwise? In fact,” He fishes a folded paper from his front pocket, waving it before Asougi. The scrawling handwriting from what he can see on the envelope is achingly familiar. “Mister Naruhodou explicitly requested us to look after you and lend you a hand where possible.”

“Naruhodou… he worries too much.” A wry smile escapes him nevertheless. “But I’m afraid I won’t be staying long. I’m only here to pick up some items Naruhodou left behind before I return to the prosecutors’ office.”

“Mister Naruhodou mentioned those as well.” Sherlock snaps his fingers in the direction of the stairs. “Take whatever you’d like! I told him anything left is fair game for my experiments.”

He bows a second time, turning away. “Excuse me, then.”

“Ah, just one moment, Mister Asougi!” Sherlock calls, striking a strange pose. “The bottom of the lowest shelf in the farther corner of the room. I suggest you take an especially close look.”

Asougi pauses with his foot on the first step, puzzled.

Sherlock winks at him, mischief and goodwill in equal measure. “I think you’ll find something very interesting there.”

The attic glows with midmorning light, exuding an atmosphere of welcome despite the clear lack of inhabitants. Asougi stops at the top of the staircase, letting his eyes wander from corner to corner and taking in every sight of the cozy, if slightly lonely space.

This is the room where his best friend stayed and learned and lived, in their year of separation.

The room is sparse now, but by no means empty—a number of packed boxes and heavy-looking hardcover books still line the shelves against the wall. When he runs a finger along the desk, only a few specks remain on his glove; someone has been up here to dust recently.

A soft splash from nearby catches his ear, and Asougi turns to see a small glass tank filled with water—and prawns, of all things. He peers dubiously into the tank, wondering what in the world possessed his friend to keep such tiny sea creatures. As far as prawns go, they seem quite healthy—not that he can tell. Perhaps Sherlock, or more likely Iris, cares for them now in Naruhodou’s absence.

There is a door at the end of a shallow recess that branches off from the attic, still bearing Mikotoba’s name. He smiles briefly at it before moving past to the shelves at last.

Naruhodou Law Consultation Office may be labeled at the entrance, but it is Mikotoba’s influence that is clear in the level of organization present. Boxes are neatly labeled and books sorted by subject in a way that is not quite believable of Naruhodou, as far as Asougi remembers. He sifts through them one by one, pulling out the files he deems useful and putting the rest carefully back with a mental word of pity for their eventual fate at the detective’s hands.

Although knowing Sherlock, the threat might have been made in nothing more than simple jest.

Speaking of the detective—Sherlock’s words from earlier float into his mind.

The lowest shelf in the corner, was it?

In that spot, there is another large box tucked away, unlabeled. When Asougi lifts it, the box feels surprisingly light for its size. He sets it on the table, raising the lid to set aside, curiosity prickling at the back of his neck.

The box is filled to the brim with strangely shaped paper.

…Cranes?

Asougi picks one up from the multitude, eying the crane as it sits inoffensively on his palm. Paper cranes. The classic shape of origami, a common pastime in Japan. He has not expected to see one an ocean away. And moreover, this many of them. There is only one explanation.

A thousand cranes…

There is not a child in Japan who has not heard the legend, and Asougi recalls it dimly in his own memory as well. A pretty, fanciful story of wishes and hope, but ultimately, nothing more.

Yet somehow, here in Naruhodou’s room, he is not surprised to see them at all.

A single square piece of unfolded paper he had missed at first glance flaps conspicuously from a corner of the box, and Asougi pulls it free.

His eyes widen as he turns it over and catches sight of his own name in familiar scrawls, messier than usual as if written in a haste.

“Asougi,

I folded these cranes with everyone here, although we didn’t get around to finishing the very last one.

But, I don’t think I need them anymore.

So if you’d like, if you want—…”

Vaguely, Asougi becomes aware of a quiet, choked up sound that is filling the attic. At the same time, breathing is strangely difficult.

Then he realizes—the laughter is coming from himself.

He presses a hand to his mouth, his friend’s note shuddering in the other. There is a bizarre obstruction in his throat that threatens to leave him gasping.

But in illogical contradiction, his heart feels lighter than ever.

Ahh, I have never been a match for you, Naruhodou.

When he makes his way back downstairs, Naruhodou’s note in his pocket and boxes balanced in his arms, Sherlock and Iris are there to greet him and grin knowingly at the look on his face. The fragrant smell of tea wafts warmly through the air.

“It’s still hard to believe we folded all these!” Iris says as she lifts the lid up to marvel once again at the collection of cranes.

“A nostalgic sight indeed,” Sherlock nods in agreement, puffing from his pipe. “Well? What do you intend to wish for, Mister Asougi?”

Asougi starts at the question. True, Naruhodou had indicated that the cranes be left to him, but if it had been a group effort as his friend mentioned, can he really accept them? “…Are you sure I can take them? After all, I didn’t help fold a single one.”

“We don’t need them!” Iris’s response is bright and immediate. She closes the box with a flourish, leveling a kind gaze at him. “Not anymore. Besides, if they said you should take the cranes, you should.”

“That’s right. It’s not as if I hoped you would gallantly proclaim that you needed no such thing and then I could wish for a rich client—”

“Now, now, Sherly, drink your tea.”

Asougi chuckles at their banter. “…Thank you.” But as he glances back to the box, thinking, an idea comes to mind. “Detective Holmes, Miss Iris, will you help me with something?”

They turn inquisitive expressions on him. “Hm?”

“Do you have string?”

The journey back to the prosecutors’ office is uneventful, and he spends most of it gazing aimlessly out the window of the carriage.

The box of cranes sits by his side, slightly emptier.

“String?” Iris echoes, her head tipping to the side in question.

“In Japan, it’s traditional to hang the thousand cranes in groups on string,” he explains. “It makes for easier organization, as well.”

It takes Iris little more incentive to hunt for the material, and the three of them begin the arduous task of threading the cranes together in sets.

“What about your work?” Iris asks, snipping another length of string.

He waves dismissively. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

At length, they finish the job, and Asougi silently marvels that there really were nine hundred and ninety-nine cranes stuffed in the box.

He turns and holds several strings of cranes out to them both. “You have my gratitude for taking care of Naruhodou and Assistant Mikotoba during their time in London. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Iris takes the cranes, bundling them carefully in her arms, and smiles widely. “Come visit us any time!”

Sherlock places a hand on his hip, a playful, knowing look in his eyes. “Bring that gloomy reaper with you too, Mister Asougi.”

Barok van Zieks looks impassively up from his desk as Asougi enters the office, nudging the door open with his foot—his arms are otherwise occupied. “It’s unusual for you to be late without reason,” Barok remarks.

“My errand took longer than I thought,” Asougi replies shortly. “I’m prepared to make my work up in full.”

“Hm. No matter. There is little to do today, in any case.”

“Is that so?”

Brief, concise, void of unnecessary tangents. Their conversations have always been this way so far. The vast abyss of tangled, convoluted feelings that lie between them still runs deep, after all.

It is precisely for that reason that Asougi reaches into the box, scooping out a handful of the contents.

Without a word, he walks up to Barok’s desk, and scatters the cranes onto the tabletop.

For several entire seconds, silence falls over the room.

Barok’s gaze flickers from the pile of cranes on his desk back to Asougi. To Asougi’s pleasure, there is no mistaking the genuine bewilderment in the other prosecutor’s eyes—he has well and truly caught the man off-guard for once.

At last, Barok opens his mouth. “…Prosecutor Asougi. What exactly are these?”

He cannot help the grin that spreads across his face as he turns tail and strides purposefully out of the room with the rest of the box, laughter on his lips and satisfied amusement in his chest at the former reaper’s flummoxed expression. “Wishes, Prosecutor van Zieks.”

There are still many, many left to give.

A few more strings go to Inspector Gina Lestrade when he comes across her delivering a report. Her loyal companion sniffs playfully at Asougi’s boots while he places the cranes in her outstretched hands—a silent word of appreciation and apology all at once even as she accepts them skeptically.

She waves goodbye as she dashes into the prosecutors’ office, the cranes trailing in flight behind her and Toby at her heels.

The next name on the list Sherlock wrote for him is a woman by the name of Viridian Green, a woman he has never met—

But Naruhodou has.

And Asougi thinks, there will never be enough gratitude in the world to Naruhodou for all the lives he has touched.

The box has never been heavy, but there is a strange weight in the remainder of the contents despite the fact it should feel the exact opposite now.

When he arrives at the gates, the sunset burning at his back, his feet freeze in place. But if he should stop here, it will have all been for nothing.

He weaves lightly through the rows upon rows of marked stones—these are not what he is searching for. There would have been no inscription, no indication—not for a murderer. It is only by the allowance of the prosecutors’ office’s records that he knows where to go.

At last, he comes to a stop, his eyes fixed on the blank headstone before him. For a long while, he can only stare at it wordlessly, everything he has ever wanted to say suddenly, inexplicably lost in his throat.

So instead, Asougi takes a step forward, and lets the last of the cranes in his arms fall to the dirt on his father’s grave.

In the dimming light, the cranes seem to faintly glow.

It is much, much later, after he has pulled himself away, that he realizes Naruhodou’s note is still in his pocket. He brings it out, smoothing the creases, looking down at his friend’s messily inked words, and recalls how to smile.

He begins, by folding the paper in half.

A/N: Dedicated to Miryul for the many long hours we spent screaming over Asougi- I mean DGS2, haha. PLEASE LOOK AT HER ART IT'S SUPER BEAUTIFUL! (and be care of spoilers)

I also want to thank everyone for all the love towards my DGS fic from two years ago. I'm so glad Asougi's alive.

This Nationwide Program Is Teaching Millions of Students to Become Leftist Snowflakes

Photo Credit: Pixabay, PublicDomainPictures, CC0 Public Domain, https://pixabay.com/en/anger-angry-bad-burn-dangerous-18658/

Parents beware: A program called Challenge Day that applauds a culture of victimhood is planting the leftist agenda into young minds under the guise of anti-bullying education.

The program uses the power of peer pressure and groupthink to impress upon high school students the idea that everyone is a victim.

Challenge Day is no small initiative. According to the program’s website, it has been held at more than 2,200 high schools nationwide and reached millions of students.

Challenge Day purports to teach tolerance and acceptance, yet nearly every member of its board of directors and Global Leadership Council is politically left of center.

Of the 17 members of Challenge Day’s board of directors, 15 openly support leftist leaders and causes, and two have an unknown affiliation, according to Federal Election Commission records and personal social media accounts. Of their 22-person Global Leadership Council, 17 of the members support leftist leaders and causes.

This is an organization that preaches diversity but is not politically diverse itself.

The most concerning member of Challenge Day’s global governing board? The former “green-jobs czar” under President Barack Obama, Van Jones.

While Jones was in jail after a mass arrest, according to the East Bay Express, he said, “I met all these young radical people of color—I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’”

When in high school, I myself participated in Challenge Day. At 16 years old, I was a junior at Grosse Pointe North High School, a public school outside Detroit.

I was asked to step forward if I were ever called a bad kid, tried to run away, isolated myself, was made fun of by someone I trusted, or felt as if I were treated differently because of my skin color.

Approximately 100 of my peers joined me in this exercise. During this session, I felt pressured to cry, and if I didn’t cry I was made to feel heartless. Whenever someone burst out in tears, we were asked to raise our hands in unity with our hands in a “love gesture.”

In truth, it felt like an initiation ceremony for a cult.

Everyone was asked to confess their challenges. At that age, I learned to move on from my struggles and show strength when faced with adversity. Yet, I felt compelled to come up with something to say with a tear in my eye.

It felt “cool” to be a victim and to cry during public “apologies.”

During the exercise, I finally came up with an experience that fit the program’s conception of victimhood. On Election Day in 2012, I wore a “Mitt Romney for President” T-shirt to school.

In a discussion about the election, one of the students sitting next to me in class opined that those who refused to support Obama were racist.

So, at Challenge Day when asked to step forward if I had been treated differently because of my skin color, I did. Yet, students did not display the “love gesture.” Instead, I was met with blank stares.

Perhaps I would have been better off apologizing for my sex or my skin color.

Although schools often ask for the permission of parents before students participate, the program largely leaves parents out of the equation and often unaware of the curriculum of the program, or what their children say that day.

Organizers do not apprise parents of any identified problems and, as a result, parents may not know if their children need actual professional help.

Recently, Challenge Day’s leftist indoctrination became even more apparent.

After the election of President Donald Trump, the organization released a statement on its website implying that Trump is a bully, noting, “Since the election, reports have arisen of young people on campuses all over the United States who do not feel safe on campus due to acts of violence, bullying, racism and intimidation.”

Challenge Day conveniently left out the fact that the president has encouraged no such behavior and that many of these reports have been proven false.

Furthermore, the organization forgets the countless reports of violence against conservative students, including the violent riots at the University of California, Berkeley when conservatives attempted to speak there, the left-driven riots and arson during Trump’s inauguration, and the anti-Trump May Day demonstrations in Portland, Oregon.

In the same statement, Challenge Day’s endorsement of the politics of privilege becomes more apparent. It said: “We stand in solidarity with all of our communities; from the marginalized to those who have privilege and are committed as allies.”

Challenge Day even released a “Post-Election Kindness Grant.” The grant goes to schools that “have experienced post-election bullying” and want to participate in Challenge Day programs.

It must think the general public is naïve when it says that the grant is not driven by a leftist agenda. From my research, Challenge Day’s “post-election” statement and grant were not issued after previous elections.

If a school doesn’t receive a “Post-Election Kindness Grant,” it can always rely on the taxpayer. According to Challenge Day’s website, schools “have used a variety of federal, state, and foundation grants to pay for Challenge Day programs.”

According to its website, “Common grants include School Climate Transformation Grants, GEAR UP, TRIO programs including Upward Bound, i3 Grants, School Improvement Grants, and Title 1 funding, among others.”

Yes, the taxpayer is footing the bill for additional leftist indoctrination programs in high schools.

No longer are young people taught to find the good in people and society, to be optimistic, to be self-reliant, to be hopeful, and to have good relationships with their families.

Programs like Challenge Day teach students to find divisions constantly: Everyone and everything is racist, poses a direct threat to their safety, or is the product of some form of social privilege.

Instead of teaching resilience, respect, and independence, students are taught to break down and cry, discuss their feelings, and check their social “privilege.”

Want to end bullying? Teach the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or, teach the great commandment: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” That’s all you need.

The kind of victimhood culture that Challenge Day promotes has devastating consequences for our society. This is particularly the case when students become adults who are unable to recognize the importance of free speech and individual responsibility.

If Challenge Day is coming to your child’s school, hold the school’s leadership accountable. Ask how the program is funded or if a comparable program promoting individual responsibility and traditional values is offered.

Also, the Department of Education should ensure that federal funds no longer finance programs with such fractious ideological agendas.

Until students, parents, educators, and public policy leaders take action against snowflake-producing programs such as Challenge Day, our society will continue down this perilous path of political correctness and national division.

Commentary by Grant Strobl. Originally published at The Daily Signal.

Enstars: PASH! April 2017

Released in March 2017.

Thank you Nhi for the scans!! She translates Enstars stories on Dreamwidth. Check it out!

Special interview with Saori Kodama and Youhei Matsui, lyricists of Enstars unit song second series. The second half of this post includes more detailed comments on all songs they were in charge of.

They were in charge of: Saori Kodama: 2wink, Ra*bits, Switch, fine Youhei Matsui: Knights, Castle Upon Sand, Trickstar. Previously, he also wrote Enstars opening song.

Credit of lyric translations quoted in this post, references: - 2wink by PatriciaSelina - Love Ra*bits Party!! by Keru - Knights by Mike - Castle Upon Sand on wiki

Q: Both of you took part in the making of many Enstars unit songs as lyricists. What kind of impressions do you have on the game itself?

Matsui: In the beginning, the complexity of the story surprised me. The characters are divided not only by units, but also by year groups and classes. Each character has a lot of different interactions with various characters, which is something I don’t see often. I remember I got nervous thinking if I’ll be able to understand it (laugh).

Kodama: They have clubs too.

Matsui: Depending on the club, the senior-junior interactions also differ.

Kodama: There were a lot of things I couldn’t tell just from reading the main story, so when I read the event stories I got surprised by the relationship between some characters. It was worth reading.

Q: What were your impressions on the units you were in charge of?

Matsui: The units I was in charge of were Knights, Valkyrie, and Trickstar. Knights have a solid philosophy, which is “chivalry”, so they were the easiest to understand. As for Valkyrie… Say, Kodama-san, when writing lyrics, how do you read the original story?

Kodama: In my case, I’d firstly read from the point of view of all characters.

Matsui: I see! For me, I’d intentionally skim through the stories or read them from one character’s point of view, so that I can focus on that particular character who’s singing. But for Valkyrie, I properly and carefully read all the stories. They’re poor guys, I thought. If something goes wrong during my performance, I would firstly go, “Oh, come on…” (laugh) When it comes to how resolute Mika was when he started singing all by himself in that kind of situation…

Kodama: Mika had great resolve and determination, didn’t he? What about Trickstar?

Matsui: Trickstar is a unit that’s the truest to themselves. If I can say this, there’s no way they would’ve won against fine in the first place. But they did, so what’s going on there? I thought about things like that. For example, in sports, you can’t win if there’s a considerable difference between your abilities. But when it comes to idols, you can have a chance to win. When I was thinking about why that is, I thought maybe it was because of “the power of support”. I thought about the kind of people who would make me want to support them, who make me want to push their backs. So the feel I have for Trickstar is that they are important friends whom I’d root for. I could also consider about “who writes the lyrics”. For Trickstar’s songs, it seems that the lyrics would have been written by all of them. And that doesn’t mean that one member writes his own part, but it feels like a member’s part is written by the other members. I can imagine an exchange like, “Hokke, sing this part!” They are able to write others’ parts because they understand each other. I think those four are like that.

Q: What about you, Kodama-san?

Kodama: I’ll start from 2wink. From the stories, I could see that they are twins who are shouldering a heavy burden, so I figured I couldn’t write songs that only sound cute. Ra*bits also seemed easy to understand and there is truly a variety of characters in this group. I had all the intention to read the story from a character’s perspective, but Mitsuru-kun would jump in out of nowhere and go, “I’m gonna dash dash!” (laugh) I think Ra*bits gives off the feeling, “We are working hard even if we have things we worry about. This is a declaration of our determination.” I wrote the lyrics based on a collection of phrases they would want to sing.

Matsui: It’s like they asked you to write it.

Kodama: That’s truly how it felt like. For Switch, the unit wasn’t even announced yet when I got the offer. They weren’t in the main story, so I suppose I got to know them gradually at the same time as everyone else. Then, for fine… Firstly, I didn’t know what to do with Hibiki-san (laugh).

Matsui: I like Hibiki-san the most.

Kodama: Because you guys are silk hat buddies*, right? (laugh) I think it must be hard work to continue being rulers.

[*Note from PASH: The silk hat is Matsui-san’s trademark. TL’s note: yes, there are pictures if you search 松井洋平.]

Matsui: Being perfect is hard, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be a great pressure to them? I had the opportunity to write fine’s song for Enstage, but I thought a perfect unit must have perfect lyrics. But I’m not perfect, so how do I create perfection? It was something I worried about, and at the end I gave the song title “Perfect World”! (laugh) It’s like, I just have to say it myself, don’t I! (laugh)

Kodama: That’s a good way of thinking! (laugh) But if you put it that way, there’s also a genius in Knights. Didn’t that become pressure as well?

Matsui: Indeed, Knights has Leo. I don’t know who writes the lyrics in Knights’ songs, but I bet Knights’ songs are what were born within them.

Q: Is there anything that makes you think, “Now that’s what makes it Enstars”?

Matsui: If I can say this being prepared that it may cause misunderstandings: they’re not pro yet. I think their real work starts after graduation. That amateur feel is very much like Enstars, I thought. That naivety connects to “the feel of wanting to root for them”, and that feeling is the strongest for Trickstar to me. But fine doesn’t have that kind of naivety (laugh).

Kodama: I think I can understand that. I think after I’ve understood the units or characters in my own way, choosing the words that I’m going to give them is important. Even if a character’s way of thinking doesn’t match the meaning behind the lyrics, I would wonder about how the meaning would become. Does this sound difficult? (laugh)

Matsui: No, no! I listened while thinking you’re amazing. That happens, doesn’t it? In Knights for example, there’s this line, “Just being friendly will not hone this bond.” They don’t seem to be the type to say “bond” so thoughtlessly, right? But accordingly, it seems to hold a special meaning, different from what it would mean to other units. So if they’re going to sing these words, I would start asking, how would they say it? Why would they say it?

Kodama: That’s it. For Sora-kun from Switch, he’s using slightly difficult words that he wouldn’t use normally. But I think it’s because it is Sora-kun there’s a meaning behind giving him those words. Careful examination of every character perhaps, as a result, connects to “what makes it Enstars”.

Q: What do you think about the songs you didn’t work on?

Matsui: It’s amazing how fine and Trickstar became “the end” and “the beginning” unintentionally. In the lyrics, to fine’s “Finale”, Trickstar answered with “Raise the curtain!”*

[*Neo Sanctuary’s bridge: Bokura no Finale ni fusawashii maku o orosu / We shall bring down a fitting curtain to our finale; HEART→BEATER!!!!’s beginning: Maku o hirake]

Kodama: Yes! We didn’t even discuss over it.

Matsui: It’s purely coincidental. This is truly the power of the story, I thought.

Kodama: Others like “recollection*”, a word that both of us used, is a vocabulary in Enstars that holds a powerful meaning, so it comes out naturally.

[*Recollection/memories = tsuioku = 追憶, which is in Neo Sanctuary (Kodama) and Castle Upon Sand (Matsui) for example]

Matsui: Yeah, that’s right! That kind of thing really happens, doesn’t it.

Q: Then lastly, please leave a message to PASH! readers.

Matsui: These unit songs may be performed at Dreamfes or listened by other characters. For example, what kind of feeling would Wataru Hibiki have when he listens to Silent Oath? I think you can find many ways to listen to and approach every unit song. For that reason, please listen to all of them! (laugh)

Kodama: As of current, there isn’t a lot of voiced content in the game. But when you listen to the songs, you can see that each unit is singing. I think that’s amazing.

Matsui: It’s the power of the voice actors. Like really, you can see Yumenosaki is just over there. I realized unit songs have a role to make Yumenosaki closer to us. I’m looking forward to its world expanding further from now on too.

More detailed comments on each song

2wink (Kodama)

Heart Prism Symmetry: The theme is the twins having different views. When I read the story of the event Snowflake＊Street Performance of the Falling Stars, there’s a dialogue line, “It’s hard to maintain a self-image in front of a cracked mirror.”*  The way one can treat someone like a mirror and see themselves in them left an impression in me, so I implemented that phrase. In the chorus where they sing together, I intentionally made the persona all mixed up, such as with “my soul” and “Just be yourself”. I think each of them can see the other as both “your soul” and “my soul”, so by mixing up the subject both of them can blend into one. That’s the image I’m trying to depict.

[*Paraphrased; the original article didn’t quote the story dialogue exactly either. Dialogue line is from Star Chart 4, TL by Rain]

2winkle Star Beat☆: The theme is, “when these two stop feeling reserved with each other and combine together, they become the strongest!” When they sing believing they can be free, well, they’re just sparkling all over and no one can hold a candle against them. That’s what I thought, so I added lots and lots of sparkles (laugh). Moreover, Souma Saito-san sang each part perfectly, so it was truly wonderful!

Ra*bits (Kodama)

Hoppin’ Season♪: Shortly after their unit formation, it may have been a fortunate thing as well, but a strength typical of a young man is sprouting within them. That’s the image I have. I would also think about how they may have requested someone to write the lyrics to this song. Perhaps, they brainstormed the phrases themselves and showed it to them, “Right now, we are this kind of people!”  It can make you feel like they surely want to write the lyrics themselves one day. This song is exactly this developing phase of theirs. I also hope you can feel the increasing intensity from “Spring days” to “and now”, and “and now” in the last chorus. I’m sure all of you players know what happened to them in spring. Works that have an original story has strength, where it provides information that we can share just like this. It adds depth to the words.

Love Ra*bits Party!!: The theme is having a slightly grown-up party, so the lyrics are bold, just a little bit. But even if there’s a line, “Escorting you”, when Ra*bits sing it, you can really tell that they must be the ones who are getting nervous instead. I think that’s Ra*bits’ charm. But the last line, “Your heart is unprepared / because we’ll put you in a trance” may give your heart a big thump. I think it works that way because of the way the voice actors express it.

Knights (Matsui)

Silent Oath: For Knights, I was asked to treat their worldview with great care. “With story-telling style, a world of fantasy,” they said. It’s a story of a knight and the person they swore their loyalty to. This song probably has a stronger knight feel rather than idol feel. Knights is a unit that is accommodating with their fanservice, so I think they also show kindness not to destroy the worldview their fans are asking for. I thought of bringing that side of them forward. Also, the title suggests that their “oath” is not something to be put into words. If it’s set in the medieval world, where you can see a forest and a castle… I think the feelings that are concealed within their hearts would spill under the moonlight, rather than the sunlight. So the phrase “Dear Moon Light” was the first thing that came into my mind. I attached the word “Dear” to “Moon Light”. I think the dearest moonlight would affect the knight and the person they swore their loyalty to differently depending on each member. Each member would also hold different feelings regarding the phrase, “Don’t shine your light upon me” which comes up several times. Moreover, the reason why some members don’t sing certain lines… I think it’s something interesting to imagine. The choruses were done comparably quickly. The part “an eternity of purity” is referring to the title “Silent Oath”. It means to swear to an eternity that is clean of impurities.

Q: Leo’s singing “Because I will disappear myself” left an impression.

I put it towards the last chorus because I wanted to give it a meaning, because of the game’s story plot and also to make you wonder who wrote this line. Similar to this, there’s also the line, “This world filled with struggle”. While it stays within the idea of a fairy-tale, it also reminds you of the war era in the academy.

Fight for Judge: Conversely, this song perhaps brings out their true side. It can make you feel their determination in intentionally using the phrase “Fight for Judge”. I think it’s a song that audibly declares what kind of unit they are. “Nobly” is sung by Leo, but it’s not like he’s singing it thinking he’s a noble guy, but perhaps what he refers to as noble is actually his unit. He may seem to be someone who would say, “I’m noble!” (laugh) but maybe the fact that he won’t is what defines Leo. But when he’s with Knights, perhaps something like a resolve was born within him, that there’s no way he can walk away without saying the line.

Q: I was mesmerized by the line sung by Izumi, “Then once you’re prepared to struggle for it, come.”

It’s the part, “Come,” isn’t it? (laugh) If Izumi tells you to “come”… well, you would go, wouldn’t you? (laugh) There are times when I’d fling a word at a character precisely because they don’t look like the type to say it. But the amazing thing about voice actors is they’re able to make you approve of it. They grasp the intention of the song properly. They themselves are Knights, so if they’re asked to sing something, no matter what song, they’ll surely do it in this way. I think it’s something that will not change.

Valkyrie (Matsui)

Castle Upon Sand: First, I thought about the meaning behind Nazuna’s participation. From there, I thought that the theme, “coming apart” was necessary, and I started my work from creating an image in my mind perfectly and then smashing down the emotions. There are no specifics in what scene this song was sung in, and I didn’t give it a limit either. I think it’s okay to interpret the meaning behind the three singing this song in any way you like. But all of you know what happened, right? Maybe it’s when Mika started singing acapella in Marionette, maybe it’s when the three of them sang together in StarFes. After you come up with that, your imagination may start to expand, “What would the meaning of the lyrics become…” I chose the title “Castle Upon Sand” with the meaning of what seems to be perfect at a glance is something that crumbles so easily. But to me, this idiom also applies to “time”. Nazuna’s voice change also depends on “time”, and reconciliation perhaps depends on “time” as well. Also, there’s the line, “The key to the showcase is now covered in rust.” Perhaps “to rust” doesn’t have the nicest connotation, but if you think about the passage of time, antiques look more wonderful the more they rust. It’s a song that packs a variety of elements that can be seen as both good and bad.

Switch (Kodama)

Temptation Magic: Firstly, to inform more about the unit, we have the keywords “magicians” and “entertainment”. These are Switch’s first songs, so they would be introductory songs. On top of that, both songs share the theme, “We will attract your hearts with our magic, and make everyone happy!” Although, I approached both songs from different angles. To be specific, Temptation Magic uses the unit’s motif “lightning” and pierces through everyone. You can see a cool side of theirs that’s slightly more assertive.

Q: In “We’ll etch it in your heart …Switch,”* the part “Switch” is breathy and it had a great impact.

At first, I imagined that part to be a bit more machine-like. I already thought that would’ve been impactful enough, but I was surprised with how it turned out! It surely will be etched in your heart (laugh). It went beyond my imagination. It was truly amazing!

[*End of chorus: Kimi no HEART ni umekomu...Switch]

Knockin’ Fantasy: The picture I had is that in this song, they are showing their more natural selves than they do in Temptation Magic. While you don’t know if they’re expressing their true feelings, while you can feel the song’s insecurity and be entranced by it, they’re going all out with the happy feel to fill up the concert hall with smiles.

fine (Kodama)

Fortissimo of Fluttering Wings: I was given a request to reveal Eichi’s feelings. But I can’t make it into Eichi’s solo—it had to be a song sung as a unit. I started from there. So rather than Eichi’s own feelings, I kept in mind things like the burden that is shouldered by the unit fine that Eichi formed. Maybe, depending on the time period, both this song and the second track Neo Sanctuary would’ve been sung by different members. But I thought about fine’s purpose at a particular time period, and wrote the lyrics.

Neo Sanctuary: For this one, I thought about a way to make the listeners think that it might have been fine consisting of different members. Depending on how you see it, Eichi’s strong determination to open up a new world may be “evil”, but for some reason you can’t look away. Eichi is Yumenosaki’s top idol to those who don’t know him, but those he hurt wouldn’t be able to see him that way. Eichi and fine stand on top of such despair, all alone. That’s the image I have. Midorikawa-san’s “fine -the end-” was recorded more times than I expected…! For this part, I was asked to make it impactful, but I was surprised when I listened to the end product. Also, I thought the meaning of “Hibiki wataru/resounding” would waver if Hibiki himself sings that line, so I had the juniors sing it. In the chorus before the climax, Tori-kun’s “For eternity”* was so cool, and it left an impact. If Tori-kun can hit it off with a line like this, I couldn’t think of anything else but, “He’s really going to be the next emperor!” I could feel that all of the voice actors truly did a good job in making the character theirs.

[*“Towa ni ataeyou” | The whole line: We shall bestow you order (Yuzuru) for eternity (Tori)]

Trickstar (Matsui)

HEART→BEATER!!!!: What I worried about was if it’s going to overlap with the main theme, ONLY YOUR STARS. In the end, I decided that ONLY YOUR STARS expresses the excitement the [boys] have towards themselves, while in HEART→BEATER!!!! the four are going to get the audience excited. Regarding the title, there are two Trickstar members who are part of the basketball club, right? The term used in the sport, “buzzer beater” became an inspiration to the title, which means that “they are going to make your heart beat [loudly]”. You can feel that it’s something that the four would come up with after discussing with each other. You can imagine a good-natured conversation, like, “There’s this thing called ‘buzzer beater’, so what about ‘HEART→BEATER!!!!’? Sounds cool, right?!” “I like that!” Also, I added four exclamation marks, with meaning that these four are going to make a surprise together. For the lyrics, I also chose the words, as best as I could, so that it wouldn’t be surprising if Trickstar members were the ones who wrote the lyrics. There are parts where I wanted to emphasize that this is what they want to convey, rather than considering if it’s easy to sing. In that sense, the lyrics are something less technical than ONLY YOUR STARS. That’s why some lines seem like something I wouldn’t write. Youhei Matsui won’t write, “The spotlight will turn even sweat into light,”* but if it’s Trickstar members they would write it, I thought. It’s like they would put down how they feel as it is into lyrics. The line, “We can’t wait,”** expresses their feelings of wanting to sing on the stage right there, right at that moment. I didn’t have much trouble writing this song, and it felt like I wrote the lyrics after listening to conversations among the four of them.

[*Chorus of second verse: Spotlight ga ase sae hikari ni kaeteku **Beginning: Machikirenai no sa]

Rainbow-Colored Seasons: This song may not have been made by the boys in the present time. When they’ve become a bit more mature, I think they would have this kind of worldview. Perhaps, this is an expression of Trickstar members from one step ahead in the future. Firstly, Subaru’s “The changing seasons”*… it’s not something you would’ve imagined coming from Subaru so out of the blue (laugh). But that’s exactly why, if he’s singing something like this, he wouldn’t be the Subaru from “now”, but it would be Subaru who has slightly matured, has had and digested a lot of experience. Perhaps, it’s a song of Trickstar members who are aiming to stand on an even bigger stage.

[*Beginning: Utsuri kawaru kisetsu no]

I’m Genderqueer, I Guess!?

(AKA, My Experiences Accepting  — and Then Rejecting  — Womanhood)

Over three weeks ago now, on February 4th, I started out wanting to write a random little opinion piece about Disney’s Mulan. I had experienced a personal epiphany, and I wanted to revisit some of the ideas I had had about Mulan in the past, and contrast that with how I felt about it now. But, I realised, there was something else I had to write before I could. I had to write this random thing first, because this post informs that one.

So what this post is going to be about is this: I am genderqueer.

This is not a recent thing. I have not suddenly changed as a person. On the contrary, I’m exactly the same person I have always been. The only thing that has changed is the label itself: a label which, for reasons explained below, I have decided to don.

In order to properly tell you about where I am now, I have to tell you a bit about my past and give you an overview about my experiences growing up. I have to tell you how I first got to this place for my decision to come out as genderqueer/gender non-binary to make sense.

Some backstory, then: While I never directly suffered as a result of my gender identity the same way some others have, I did still struggle with gender dysphoria. I recognise that many trans and queer people have (or have had) it way worse than me, and that I am extremely fortunate to have avoided being bullied or ostracised due to my gender identity, having firmed up and sussed out what it even was only now. But, nevertheless, it was there the whole time.

Growing up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was medically wrong with me: that the doctors must have made some kind of a mistake, and everyone around me treating me as a girl ever since was simply the result of carrying the error forward. I must have had a higher dosage of androgens in my system, or maybe an extra chromosome or something. I must have secretly been intersex and just hadn’t been diagnosed. Surely, something had to have been wrong. I couldn’t have been a girl, because any definition of or expectation for a “girl” I ever heard was something so different from what I was.

As a child, I grew up with a very narrow definition of what it meant to be a girl and what girls could and couldn’t be, because that was what had been spoon-fed to me by the media and the social norms I saw around me. These norms were perpetuated at school, by members of my family, and on TV — with TV standing in as a representative for the world at large. What I saw around me was: girls liked shopping and jewellery. Girls liked fashion and beauty. Girls liked horse-riding and ballet. Girls were vain. Girls were stupid. Girls only cared about wearing pretty pink dresses and chatting about boys. Girls were… <insert other extremely limited, restrictive, two-dimensional female stereotype here>. Those were the conclusions I had come to, based on what the world was showing me and teaching me.

And I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like those girls. I was nuanced, I was complicated; I was intelligent and smart and not at all interested in love and romance, and I much preferred to hang out with boys like I was one of them than try to date any of them. I liked video games and horror films and reading thrillers and action adventures. I was no girly-girl: I was a tomboy, and proud of it.

Nothing I had heard about girls applied to me or appealed to me in any way. (I mean no offense if you are more feminine than I was and you do like that sort of stuff: it’s totally okay to be that way, too! It’s just that I, in particular, wasn’t).

I, the little weirdo that I felt like at the time, had never fit into the picture of the archetypal girl. So, I reasoned, the only logical conclusion was that I must not have been a girl. I must have been a boy. At least, I fit much more comfortably into the definition of a “boy” than I did the definition of a “girl”.

The problem there is, it’s easy to decide that certain characteristics associated with a certain group aren’t compatible with you when the characteristics given to you are so limited in the first place. There was a very specific mental image I had in my head of what a girl should be like, and there didn’t seem to be very much room for discussion. For boys, on the other hand, it seemed like they could be anything except that. That has a whole host of issues all its own — ones I won’t be getting into in depth now — where boys are discouraged from displaying feminine characteristics or emotionality, and this is just as harmful to boys as it is to discourage girls from displaying masculine characteristics. Double-standards do exist, and they are not okay.

But, putting aside that can of worms for now, boys generally had a lot more options than girls did. Of course I would be able to see more similarities between myself and boys when there was a wider range of options to choose from from the start.

Please permit me to be an optimist for a moment and say that I believe that, in an ideal world, all positive characteristics would be embraced and encouraged in children, regardless of whether they were typically “feminine” or “masculine”. We would love unconditionally, and judge each person for their own individual merits and demerits, rather than holding them up to some perceived notion of being “girl” enough or “boy” enough. Doing so is incredibly detrimental to us all because, when we start holding personhood up to some arbitrary standard, it becomes very easy to fall short. And that does not feel good for the many of us who don’t measure up.

But the real world and the ideal world are worlds apart, and social norms did, and do, exist. In any case, I certainly didn’t fit the cookie-cutter mould of what it “meant” to be a “girl”. And that felt like a failure on my part. I felt like I wasn’t enough; like I wasn’t good enough, just the way I was.

I grew up empathising and relating to men in a variety of ways, because in our culture and in our media it is predominantly male characters and male role models that we see. Female role models… Not so much. Female characters in books, video games and TV were few and far between to begin with, and those that did exist tended to be depicted as homemakers, love interests, sex objects and… nope, that’s about it. As a result, I didn’t know that there were more ways to be than just those.

That’s not to say that shows featuring more positive role models didn’t exist — it’s not even to say I didn’t happen across a few of them myself. Rather, it is that those positive influences weren’t numerous enough or prevalent enough for me, as a child, to notice; or to start to change my mind about women as a whole because of them. There weren’t enough positive portrayals of women for those portrayals of women to form part of a larger pattern; certainly not enough to challenge the already-existing patterns of behaviour that were being perpetuated far more prominently and pervasively. There were exceptions, but that’s just it: complex, interesting, autonomous female characters — women such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess — were exceptions; not the rule. (And I’ve never actually even seen Xena: Warrior Princess myself, so…)

One such example that comes to my own mind is that of Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; which isn’t actually about pride and prejudice anywhere near as much as you might think. That, I read when I was 13? 14? 15? as part of my high school’s English Literature course, and Elizabeth Bennet was probably the closest thing I had to a positive female role model in literature at that time. Even then, Elizabeth, too, was posited as the exception, not the rule: even within the book’s own canon. You see, Elizabeth was exceptionally skilled, witty and intelligent; she was particularly sensible, reasonable (even if not open-minded…) and capable of critical thought. Unfortunately, the logical continuation of such a premise leads to the (incorrect) implication that other girls… usually… weren’t. So in the book, we see that Elizabeth wasn’t like other girls. Elizabeth was different.

So while I saw myself, to a certain extent, in Elizabeth, I also saw the same demonization of —  and the desire to distance oneself from — other women which I experienced first-hand, along with the desperation to distinguish oneself from the gender norms as if they were true; not as if they weren’t. The mistake Elizabeth and I both made was that, by thinking of ourselves as “special little snowflakes” and elevating our own status to that of the exception, not the rule, it came at the cost of failing to appreciate the basic humanity and the complexity of other women: women who may, in actuality, have had a lot more in common with us than we first gave them credit for.

Meanwhile, it seemed that (cis) men were allowed to be human, and experience (almost) the full range of thoughts and feelings and ways of life attached to that, in a way that women just weren’t. But, the issue of gender and representation in media is in fact another beast entirely. What is relevant to me throughout all of this is that this all culminated in the fact that I was someone who accepted men exactly the way they were, and could relate to men in a multitude of ways; but, before discovering feminism, despised anything even remotely “female” or “feminine” and discriminated against it, dismissing it or distancing myself from it for one reason or another, despite being female myself. What. The. Fuck.

Now I’m an adult and I know better, I know that the majority of my discomfort with “the feminine” stemmed primarily from good old-fashioned sexism, both internalised and otherwise. I know now that those beliefs — both the ones I had impressed upon me, and the ones I in turn applied to others — are inherently inaccurate and deeply flawed.

Problem solved, then: it’s not that my gender identity or expression was wrong. It’s not that I wasn’t woman enough, despite not feeling like I fit in all my life. It’s that sexism exists, and sexism is the cause for all of my dysphoria, hurray(!)

Or so I thought.

Sexism does still play a part, however, and that’s what has made coming to grips with my gender identity all the more difficult for me. Before I could discern what was really true about myself, first I had to disentangle what was really true about “what it means to be a female/ a woman/ feminine” from all the fallacies, generalisations and mistruths. When I came across feminism several years ago as a young tween and learnt about what it was, it opened a lot of doors for me in terms of coming to a greater understanding of myself and the world around me. Feminism has been a very positive influence in and on my life, and is responsible for a lot of personal growth. But also, in this particular instance, confused me even further. And that’s because, I started to think that… maybe the reason why I didn’t associate myself with the concept of “girlhood” or “womanhood” when I was younger was only because the concept I had in my head had been so completely wrong all along.

Before feminism, all that internalised sexism really did go a long way towards meaning I related more to men than I did to women; or at least, thought I did, because really, I never gave women much of a chance. I had to unlearn a lot of the preconceived notions I had grown up with, and learn everything all over again from the ground up.

The more I learned, the more I came to understand; but even so, the feeling of me being different or not quite fitting in anywhere didn’t go away. It’s just that I started to think that maybe it wasn’t me who was wrong: maybe it was the gender norms themselves that were wrong. It was the idea that “women are like X and men are like Y” — and that this is universally true for all women and all men — that was wrong.

What I had to learn was that women could be anything. And I mean; I already knew that about men — but women, too?! So women can think and act for themselves, and be incredibly intelligent and have their own thoughts and opinions and expertise on a subject, and have a vast array of interests?! It sounds stupid now, especially if you already know it to be true; but it was a much-needed life lesson for the twenty-year-old me. I was already fully accepting of a wide range of personalities and occupations for men, because I saw such a wide range of men and male characters/personalities in the media. It was already a given to me that men could be anything. And yes, there is that whole “…except be feminine” thing I mentioned before, and it is an issue; but I never personally bought into that. I had my fair share of male role models with a sensitive side or more typically feminine character traits as well. What was shocking to me is that I had to learn that the same thing I had always believed to be true of men was true of women, too.

What I had to learn, absurdly for the first time as an adult, was that not every woman had to like the same thing or have the same hobbies or interests. Not all women had to look or dress or behave the same way, or any way in particular at all. Not every woman had the same likes and interests as me: but — and here was the key difference — they could have done. There was, in reality, no logical reason why they couldn’t. I realised that girls can be tomboys and gamers and total nerds and still be girls.

If that was the case, then maybe my own experience and my own expression of self — despite being so far removed from that limited childhood notion of “girl” = “pretty, vain and vapid” — was nevertheless still valid within the wider, broader and more inclusive interpretation of “womanhood”. Maybe, even with my own complete and total lack of femininity and associating myself with more typically-masculine traits and behaviours, maybe I still was a woman: just that the category for womanhood was far broader than I had been led to believe. Perhaps I wasn’t a woman who had fit into those narrow definitions I had held as true in the past; but a woman nonetheless, who could still meet the definition of a woman if only I broadened those definitions up.

No two women are the same; and as such, it makes no sense to think that there is such thing as a universal expression of that womanhood. Every single woman is a unique individual, with her own skills and experiences and her own story to tell. Just because my own experience didn’t have much in common with the experiences of those around me, that didn’t necessarily mean that I wasn’t a woman, or couldn’t have been a woman, or that I was some abhorrent anomaly. I might have been three standard deviations away from the mean; but that doesn’t mean that I was not, nevertheless, a valid data point.

So I got confused.

The feminist within me wanted me to think of myself as, and identify as, a woman. After all, I had just truly come to understand and to appreciate that being a woman was okay. I had just come to understand that “femininity” existed on a wide spectrum, and even oddballs like me could be included within that. Besides, if I was a feminist and believed in women’s rights (as a targeted approach to believing in equal rights in general), then wasn’t I supposed to be proud to be a woman? Wasn’t I meant to further the cause and #represent? If being a woman was no inferior to being a man, and if women came in all shapes and shades and were allowed to claim and celebrate their own individuality as they saw fit, regardless of the norms, then why would I need to be anything else? Was “woman” not sufficient? How could I be a feminist and yet still feel a reluctance and general disdain towards identifying as a woman?

That was one side of the confusion.

The other side of it was: well, if I wasn’t a woman, what else would I be? As a child, I had felt I fit in more with boys; but I had no all-consuming desire to be a boy or to be thought of as one myself. What I wanted was simply to be myself. I didn’t think of myself as a boy, hanging out with other boys. I thought of myself as myself, hanging out with other boys. As an adult, I feel no more and no less an affinity for one gender than the other. There is no affinity for either; and likewise, no antipathy for either. I feel empathy for everyone; a general relation towards all individuals, regardless of their gender. I don’t come down on one side or the other.

It was around the same time that I started batting around the idea of being genderfluid; but ultimately decided against exploring it any further or even acknowledging it in any real way, because it “didn’t matter, really”. I don’t know why nothing came of that back then. I guess I didn’t have the courage to pursue it, nor was there the same motivation to do so as now. I thought private thoughts: I often joked/ seriously heartfully felt that I was a gay man trapped in a woman’s body; but I also felt like a gay woman trapped in a woman’s body. And, because I felt like both a gay man and a gay woman, I reasoned that, maybe, if I looked at it a certain way, that was almost like having elements of both a straight man and a straight woman instead. Either way, I was bisexual! (Which I am, by the way.)

I tried to use my own sexuality against me; I tried to twist it around, and pressured myself to act more like a “straight woman”, or how I thought a straight woman should be. And, no, there does not seem to be much logic to that train of thought: it was just me oppressing myself, trying to knock myself back down into a more “acceptable” way of being, even if that meant flattening myself in the process. It’s weird to see how, in this way, I was still equating “straight” with “normal”, even though I was bisexual myself. This is why queer representation is so important!!

That particular mental interpretation was lacking, for many reasons. And something I didn’t think about at the time was that either way, I wasn’t cis. Either way, there was that overlap of masculinity and femininity in me: I had elements of both, but neither were quite the way convention might have you expect. I felt like I approached femininity from a male perspective: I was “feminine”, but in the same way that (some, not all) gay men are “feminine” without being women. Likewise, I approached masculinity from a female perspective: I was “masculine”, but in the same way (some, not all) lesbians are “masculine” without being men. I had traits of both within me, but even then, they were crossed over; associating my inner “male self” with the “feminine” and my inner “female self” with the “masculine”.

So maybe now, as I write this, it’s more obvious why I didn’t fit in. Everyone else around me associated “male” with “macho” and “female” with “femme”. Such extreme interpretations were at direct odds with mine, and left no room for the many variants of gender identity and gender expression in between. It was, society said, one or the other. And I wasn’t either.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t something I came to understand until much more recently, or else I might have been able to place myself sooner.

But even those past times I did question my gender, those thoughts stayed only thoughts. And in any case, because I didn’t feel like I most definitely, most assuredly wanted to be/become a man, I thought that meant that I had to be a woman by default.

So, I thought, if I can’t commit to not being a woman, I guess I will just remain a “woman”. I guess I will just stand and be counted as one of the many women who do not fit the cookie-cutter mould dictated to us by gender norms, as many women don’t. I will be just one of the many examples of why the mould is rubbish: of why putting men and women in boxes does not work, because we do not all fit in neatly. I will hold my head up as a woman and say, “I do not follow the rules, but I am not the exception. It’s the rules themselves that are jank.”

And the feminist in me was appeased. After all, this way, simply by being myself I could prove patriarchy was wrong, or something to that effect. I was proof the norms were not catch-all, be-all and end-all. I could live with being a woman; just one that defies typical social norms. And those norms ought to be questioned and defied, anyway — so I comforted myself into thinking I was doing someone some good, maybe, somehow, by acknowledging the expectations for my gender but then subverting them; and that, in so doing, it might contribute towards shattering the preconceptions themselves.

I still didn’t feel comfortable in and of myself, but I shrugged it off. I was like, “okay, maybe this is fine.” In the wise, wise words of Lindsay Ellis: “This is fine. This is fine. This is fine, guys. This is fine.”

Of course, there were still times when I felt the incongruence more keenly than at others; my wedding and the times when I get compared to my sisters were particularly triggering experiences for me. But when it was just my husband and me, together and alone, there was no incongruence. There was no discomfort. We accepted each other, and loved each other, exactly the way we were. When it was just the two of us, we could just be the two of us. When we knew each other as well as we did, on that close and personal basis, then there was no need for labels.

And so, I had privately settled the dispute of my own gender. I had mentally filed it away under “agree not to agree; it doesn’t really matter, anyway. Putting a name to it doesn’t actively change who I am.” I had told myself that that was good enough; and I had kept on living my life, continuing with things just the way they were.

I had accepted womanhood, and resigned myself to it.

And that was that.

 Cue hbomberguy’s “Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream”.

 For those who missed it and the surrounding controversy involving TV writer Graham Linehan (#thanksgraham), hbomberguy (real name Harry Brewis) is a YouTuber who makes sensible — okay, maybe not “sensible” —, well-thought out videos addressing a variety of topics in modern media: usually video games, film or television series, but he also commentates on social trends and ideologies, as well.

Link to hbomberguy’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClt01z1wHHT7c5lKcU8pxRQ

My husband first knew him from his LetsPlays, and I became a fan too because of his game, film and television analyses. (Someone who overthinks and overanalyses works of fiction for all possible meanings and real-life takeaways?? Here’s a man after my own heart!)

So when he announced he was going to do a livestream of the classic Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 in order to raise money for the organisation Mermaids — a charity offering support groups, education, and crisis hotlines for transgender individuals and their families, as well as training for corporations to raise trans awareness — we were very interested in watching it.

Link to Mermaids’ website here: https://www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/

Unfortunately, my husband and I weren’t able to watch the stream as it went up live; but we did watch through the archived footage after the fact. And boy, did it hit hard. So many feels were had. So many feels.

My husband isn’t as informed on social justice issues as I am, so a lot of the overarching context that was old-hat to me was brand-new to him. But bless him, he is learning. I, on the other hand, thought going in that I was just going to be watching a stream of a dude we liked from YouTube playing a game, and raising some money for a good cause while he was at it. What I wasn’t expecting was that some of what I heard would hit me so hard in the heart.

To pick out just a few key moments from what was truly an epic event the whole way through, Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids herself, appeared in the stream — and, let me just say, she is so effing awesome. I have an aunt called Susie Green, too, who is also one of the most kick-ass ladies I know, so awesomeness must come with the territory or something.

Anyway, among other things, Susie Green (the CEO, not my aunt) was saying (and I paraphrase) that one of the best ways to support trans people is just to let them know that they can be safe around you.

And that broke my fucking heart, because fuck. Because LGBTQ+ people could be safe around me: but if I myself wasn’t out and proud — if I myself wasn’t visible, or open about my own situation — how the fuck would they know that?

That idea (built upon by CaseyExplosion when she said just to be a friend to trans people you know) deeply resonated with me because of past personal conversations I have had with some members of the gaming group I’m a part of. In private messages, there were people I spoke to at length about gender and about sexuality. The thing is, I was never the one initiating these conversations. Due to my own experiences and empathy, whenever they brought up that they were struggling, I would listen and I would relate and I would tell them a bit about my own experiences, too. And something that came up in one of those conversations was how difficult it was to know who you can talk to about gender and sexuality stuff, because you don’t know how people will respond or who you can trust.

One of my dear friends talked to me about his struggle with sexuality and being gay, and I could understand and empathise and listen to him without judgment because, although it isn’t exactly the same, I am bi and have my own experiences with making the personal journey of coming to understand and accept your own sexual identity, and the struggles along the way. Another friend confided in me she was having confusing feelings for another woman, and she didn’t know what to do. Again, I shared with her that I could understand because I was bi, and we talked for a long time about how she was feeling. She said later I was one of the few people she could trust to talk to about this, because she knew I wouldn’t judge her.

I know people who struggle with their own experiences, and I also know people who are so far removed from those struggles in their own personal lives that they can come across a little insensitive and non-inclusive in their speech or actions; not due to malice, but sincere lack of experience, lack of information, and lack of awareness. One such friend of mine gets very confused over what is “sex” and what is “gender” and frequently conflates the two, and tends to be very dismissive of the social issues going on around him or the community’s attempts to address those issues. And again, this is not because he is an uncaring or unkind person, because he is usually exceptionally caring and kind. But in these particular instances, because he is young and uninformed and he is not part of those circles himself (nor knows others who are immediately affected), there is no reason why he would know more about it. There is no reason why he would understand.

Still, he recognises that he doesn’t understand, and he does try to learn more and keep himself open to learning more. Thus, I unofficially took it upon myself to educate him, to try and foster that understanding; and I talked to him a lot about my own gender identity, too, to kind of serve as my own example for him of what the gender spectrum was. I told him a lot about my own experiences, eventually summarising my situation as, “I don’t agree with the gender norms and I don’t fit into them myself, but I don’t really know what I what I would fit into. I’m not comfortable being a woman, but I don’t know what I would consider myself as instead, so… … …”

On each of these occasions, and many more besides, I was fortunate enough to have these incredibly deep and meaningful conversations with real people all over the world; some of whom were struggling to find understanding and acceptance at a time when they really didn’t know who they could turn to. I’m so incredibly lucky to have them in my life, and that I could learn from all of them and know their unwavering love and support. Our friendship has enriched my life, and I have been exposed to so much love and positivity and really grown as a person because of it. I’m so grateful and glad that they found me, and that I could likewise be a positive figure for them in their time of need.

But that’s just it: they found me. They took a leap of faith, not knowing the outcome, because they needed someone to talk to and they didn’t know for sure if I would be accepting or understanding: it was just that, based on our group conversations, I seemed like the kind of person who might be. They demonstrated an incredible amount of trust and faith in me, and I am extremely grateful for that. But it’s something that they should not have had to do. They should have known that they were safe from the get-go; I should have made them feel safe. I should have been more open, more inclusive; more forthcoming with my own experiences and beliefs, so that they knew they would find a kindred spirit in me, without needing to take that risk. And that is a failing on my part.

Remember how I said about how it even came up in one of those conversations that it’s difficult to know who you can talk to about gender and sexuality, because you don’t know how people will respond or who you can trust? Well, back then, my response to that was something along the lines of: “I would hate it if someone was struggling with this stuff and they felt like they couldn’t talk to me about it, just because they didn’t know that I was queer too.”

And yet…

To my shame and my dismay, although I did share my own experiences with others one-on-one once they had already started talking about it with me, I was never the first to say, “hey, I’m LGBTQ+, and if you’re LGBTQ+ too, that’s A-okay!” I was never the first to bring it up; and in so doing, I’m worried that I might have inadvertently created an atmosphere within our gaming group where LGBTQ+ members feel like they might not have been welcomed or represented.

Because our gaming group is online, everyone is totally anonymous, and no-one has to reveal more about themselves than they want to: including their appearance, their sexuality, or their gender. Still, I wonder if maybe there are some members, new or old, who are LGBTQ+ or who are internally struggling with their own self-identity, who look around and do not seem to see anyone like them. The atmosphere in our group, as is the case with society as a whole, is one where it’s assumed cis/hetero-normative by default. Topics of gender and sexuality rarely come up in the group chat; the more in-depth ones take place in private messaging instead, where they are invisible to the others.

So, by all appearances, straight and cis is the norm… even when it isn’t.

(Update: I am very happy to announce that, since I began writing this, this has now changed! Although it was my intention to come out to my gaming group after posting this, I ended up outing myself to the group early, which initiated exactly the kind of conversations about gender, sexuality, and inclusivity we should have been having all along. Our gaming group has now officially adopted “other” as a third gender option when we are asking members to introduce themselves, along with asking for preferred pronouns! I hope this change, minor though it may seem, goes a long way to helping every member feel more comfortable when disclosing their gender and their pronouns, should they choose to disclose at all.)

Getting back to the point, Susie Green saying that something you can do is to simply help trans people feel safe… That really struck a chord with me. If even people like me who do struggle with their gender and sexuality don’t say that they do, how would anybody else know? What chance do we have of finding each other? What choice is there but to feel different and alone, even if you actually aren’t?

And in my case especially, it is very, very easy to assume I am cis and straight, even though I’m not. I’m very obviously female (thanks, big boobs), and I’m married to my husband — so that makes us a straight couple, man and wife. Luckily, my sexuality was much easier (relatively) to come to terms with for me, and I have been proud to say that I am bi the few times it does come up, as I have known that about myself in that particular regard since I was 13. Even so, because it is so easy for everyone else to assume that, because I married a man, I therefore must be straight, it doesn’t come up that often.

(Even my husband sometimes forgets. We often joke around with each other about the things we say, deliberately taking innocuous things out of context and saying, “That’s racist!” or “That’s homophobic!” One time, we were joking about something — I can’t even remember what — and I teased him about something he had said by exclaiming in mock-indignation, “Hey! That’s homophobic!” His response? “Well, can you really be homophobic against someone who’s heterosexual?” And I’m just like “…”)

It’s easy to assume a woman who is married to a man is straight. It’s easy to assume everyone is cis by default, because most people are. But that shouldn’t be the default. It shouldn’t be the norm to think, “Well, I’m just going to assume everyone is cis unless they specifically say otherwise.” All that does is create the idea that everyone really is cis, because after all, not many people (dare to) say otherwise; which in turn stunts efforts to spread awareness as many people who might have identified as trans if they had had the resources to know more about it don’t have those resources in the first place. And sticking to that as the norm creates the expectation to conform. It creates the idea that people, even those who aren’t cis, need to be cis, or at least pretend to be; because that is the norm and such thinking inherently comes with pressure to adhere to it.

Assuming cis by default makes it that much harder for trans people to say anything to the contrary, because they don’t see very many people who have the same experiences they do and may not necessarily know if it is safe to talk about it. If everyone assumes that everyone else is cis unless they make a big fuss about it, trans people may very understandably not want to make a big fuss. Maybe they’ll feel, like I did, that the only thing they can do is quietly fade into the background; to try and hide, and try not to draw too much attention to themselves, or out themselves as anything other than “the norm”.

What we all need to do is be more welcoming and inclusive, right off the bat; not because we know for certain that there are LGBTQ+ individuals in our midst, but because we recognise the possibility that there could be. Because we, as a society, recognise that there are many different expressions of gender and sexuality, and all are legitimate and valid.

I don’t want to fade quietly into the background. I don’t want to not be seen, not even by other LGBTQ+ people — those who should be my fellows. That sounds incredibly egotistical, but what I really mean is that I don’t want other LGBTQ+ people to look out at the world and not see themselves reflected in it and think that they are alone; the way I did before the charity stream began.

You are not alone. We are here. We are queer. And we should be proud of it.

For me, Susie Green’s line about simply letting trans people know that they are safe around you resonated with me deeply. For me, it was a call to action. I couldn’t hide any longer, privately satisfied with my own answer that I guess I just won’t bother defining who I am. That approach didn’t sit right with me after that. I want to be known; not for my own sake, because I’m an asocial fuck who couldn’t care less what other people think of me. But hopefully to be recognised; for someone else to see themselves in me and think, “Hey, maybe that person could relate to me. Maybe they know a thing or two about gender dysphoria and would be willing to listen to me. Maybe that’s a person I could talk to.”

That was what motivated me to come out. But I’m writing about my decision to come out as if it was a very simple process. It wasn’t. I make it sound as if I was just getting on with my life; then I happened to see the charity stream; and that inspired me to come out, and so, I did. In reality, gender issues have been interwoven with my psyche my whole life. Videos and discussions on social justice, representation and important issues within marginalised communities are something I actively seek out. And even when I felt like I really wanted to come out — to show others that they would be safe with me, and that I would welcome them and refrain from judgment — there were still things getting in the way there, too. And it was difficult.

The first time I heard Susie Green’s story on the stream, about her and her daughter and how things could be made better for today’s youth, I cried a lot. I thought about it a lot. I watched nothing but Donkey Kong for days on end, and dreamt about it too: not necessarily about the game itself (but also about the game itself), but the people, and their voices and their thoughts and their stories. I was trying to make sense of it all. For over a whole month now — ever since my husband and I started watching the stream — my head has been filled with thoughts on gender. It has overtaken my entire life ever since, and that’s because I want to do more, be more — and even this first step of simply coming out of the closet myself has taken a lot of preparation. Far more than I thought it would, actually.

For over a month, I have lived, breathed and dreamed gender non-stop. And thinking non-stop about such emotionally heavy, difficult issues does take its toll; especially when you include the multiple conversations I had about coming out with multiple people, multiple times.

But those difficulties I experienced with coming out weren’t what was getting in the way of coming out. The real difficulty there was giving myself permission to be anything but “woman” in the first place.

Remember feminism? Remember that feeling I had that, if I were truly a feminist, I would be proud to be a woman — not actively wishing womanhood away. I had unlearnt and relearnt a great many things about what it truly meant to be a woman; and ultimately, what it meant was to be human, just the same way as men were human. But even so, I did not know where matters of discrimination based on sex ended, and matters of individuality began. When it came to how I felt about myself, how much of it was to do with my sex? How much of that, in turn, was due to sexism? How exactly did I feel about myself, on the individual level, if, hypothetically, sex and sexism had (and had had) no part to play in it?

I didn’t exactly know.

Fortunately, my subconscious had the answer, even when my conscious mind did not. Some of the dreams I had about the Donkey Kong stream were mindless, repetitive, and nonsensical; just as the Donkey Kong 64 game itself is mindless, repetitive, and nonsensical. I dreamt only of hbomberguy getting endlessly stuck on puzzles and wandering around in circles — not so different from the real stream, then(!) When he cleared one level, he was faced with another, and another, and another; the game stretching endlessly on, in the way that dreams do. But the final dream I had about the stream was far more emotionally significant.

In that dream, I dreamt not about the game, but the stream itself. I dreamt about the chat, and the Discord channel for other YouTubers and allies that had been set up there. In my dream, for whatever reason, I had been accepted to join the mic call. I was able to talk directly to Harry himself and the guest stars; I was able to be a part of the stream as it went out live over the internet. I was able to talk to them all first-hand. I wept at the opportunity, and I thanked them all so much for doing this; I wanted them to know how much it meant, for them to be so open and so brave and for standing up for what was right. I told them how wonderful it was to hear them talk about their own experiences and their identities, because I was still struggling with mine. I told them about my dysphoria and my disillusionment with being “a woman”; but how I lacked the certainty and the conviction to do anything about it. I also told them about the guilt I felt as a feminist; that pursuing an identity as anything other than “woman” felt like it would be very un-feminist of me.

At that, I could very clearly imagine Harry’s face and hear his voice as he gave a bewildered, “What?!” And, to be honest, it’s probably the same reaction I would have had as well, if someone else had told me the same thing. And that’s because, as Dream Harry went on to say, that’s not what feminism is about. Feminism is not about forcing yourself to be a certain way, or about trying to be what you think someone else wants you to be regardless of the personal cost to yourself — so much so that you end up disempowering yourself in the process. Feminism, rather, is about empowerment. It’s about giving a voice to the marginalised and, in the case of trans rights and gay rights, telling them that who they are is real, and that they are worthy, too.

The stream itself is proof of that. It’s an example of the community coming together to support trans rights and recognising that transgender identities are valid identities too. No-one should be forced into a box that does not fit them, but allowed to define themselves for themselves. That included me, too.

And it was weird when I imagined the YouTubers telling me this in the dream, because it made me think about how I would respond if it was somebody else telling me they were trans. And if someone else came to me saying they were trans, I would accept them straight away, exactly as they were. I’d encourage them to be true to themselves and do what feels right for them, whatever form that may take. My own personal beliefs are that trans women are real women; trans men are real men; non-binary people are real people (even though I didn’t know that non-binary identities even existed until recently); and that feminism is about raising everyone up and empowering them, and accepting and embracing everyone as they really are. I would never tell anyone else they were being un-feminist just for being themselves; indeed, I would fight for their right to be themselves. I would regard them with unconditional love, and respect what they were telling me about themselves; accepting it as true without question. I would never tell them that their identity was wrong.

But it took hbomberguy telling me the same thing in a dream for me to actually apply those principles to myself, too.

Until experiencing the stream and hearing the personal accounts of other trans people first-hand, I had still been tied down into thinking that being for women’s rights meant that I was locked into being a woman myself; or that I was doing some kind of disservice to the cause if I were to acknowledge myself as anything else. But, for everyone to be free to be themselves and to be accepted without hate and without prejudice is the cause.

That was a conclusion that maybe I should have been able to come to on my own; but either I couldn’t, or just didn’t. It took hearing all of the wonderful people participating in the Donkey Kong stream talking about their experiences for me to realise that, maybe I was okay the way I was, too.

Discovering feminism and learning that I could be exactly the way I was and still be a woman had been an important step for me. But it was not the end of my journey. I had to go a step beyond that. Knowing that I could identify as a woman, with no degradation to myself, was one thing; but learning that I could also not identify as a woman if I so chose was also an important milestone. There are more options in life than the arbitrary one we get assigned to us at birth; and for me, being so uncomfortable with mine, I saw no reason to try and force it upon myself any longer.

I hadn’t been at all sure at first where the line was between respecting women and recognising that I myself was not a woman. But now, with the help of feminism, the Nightmare Stream and the dream that it inspired, all the amazing people who participated, and even just the knowledge that an amazing charity like Mermaids even exists and is doing great work in the world… I think I’ve disentangled myself and disavowed myself from enough sexist notions that I know that it’s not that I don’t believe in being a woman. It’s that I do believe in being an individual. And as an individual, speaking on the personal level, not only do I not follow the stereotypes and/or the mandated patterns of behaviour prescribed for my sex; I don’t want to, either. There is still something to be said for how maybe those stereotypes ought not to exist in the first place, and maybe then I wouldn’t mind so much what my sex was or what my gender was. But they do, and so I do, and I know the path that has been laid out for me is not the one I want to walk down.

And I also know that, if I hadn’t’ve been motivated to come out now, even after hearing all those brave and courageous voices; even after hearing all those incredible stories of personal tragedy, triumph, and strength; even after experiencing something which, even though I was only an onlooker, nevertheless felt made me feel like there was a space for me after all, and made me feel like I was home… then I was probably never going to come out. Ever. If even that experience, which moved me so much, could not bring me to accept myself, then it would probably have never happened.

What Mermaids and the Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream gave me was something invaluable: they gave me permission to give myself permission to be who I was all along. It taught me that I was allowed to be who I was; and that who I was was okay. That’s why the work Mermaids does is so valuable: so that no child has to go through this all alone, navigating complex topics without the words to properly explain it. Mermaids gives love and support and important information and resources, so that each child can come to terms with themselves and accept themselves the way they are. And that’s much more preferable than being a grown-ass adult trying to get your shit together when you have no clue what you’re doing; scrambling to put the broken pieces back together when really, you were never broken at all.

 So, that leads me to writing this declaration:

 I know what it’s like to feel uncomfortable with the gender norms thrust upon you because of your sex.

I know what it’s like when your internal experiences of yourself are incongruent with said norms and other external expectations.

I know what it’s like to feel like you are wrong just for being yourself, and like an outsider in your own skin.

I know what it’s like when you are forced to acknowledge your assigned gender and a piece of you dies because that’s not who you are, and it starts to feel like you never can be who you really are as long as the world keeps reminding you otherwise.

I know what it’s like when even simple things, such as which box to tick on a form, can be a deeply divisive topic rife with internal conflict and strife. And I know and I loathe how, in my case, I have to opt for “woman” anyway, on account of my being female and there being no better option.

And I also know how I have struggled to come up with a satisfying answer about what a better option would have been, though I have found my answer now. (Although, going back to speaking more generally, simply including the simple and unassuming option “other” would be a start!)

 I don’t know what the fuck I am. But I know I’m not a cis woman.

Thankfully, there’s a catch-all term for that, and that’s genderqueer. That’s why I wanted to write this post: to come to terms with myself as my new identity, and re-introduce myself as genderqueer.

 And actually, the above line about not knowing what I am is no longer true, and that’s because I can get more specific than that now. Unlike when I first started writing this, I can now say that I do know what I am. Three weeks down the line, I can now say that recognising myself as genderqueer was the start of something beautiful. Through the process of writing this post — and having many, many private conversations and coming out many, many different times to many different people — I have been learning more and more about genderqueerness all the time; and, in doing so, myself.

Through those conversations and through watching and listening to the YouTube channels of other trans and non-binary individuals, I’m becoming more and more sure of myself. I’ve realised that I am very happy to identify as non-binary; and that non-binary suits me and my own situation very well. So now, it’s not that I don’t know what I am other than “not cis” and am relying on a catch-all umbrella term to cover me anyway; it’s that I know myself to be non-binary. It’s a far more accurate of a term for how I feel myself to be than “woman” ever was.

So, while I may at first have picked up the genderqueer umbrella due solely to its all-encompassing nature, only knowing at that time that I was “not cis”, it has nevertheless led to a journey of self-discovery where I’ve realised that, hey, I actually really fucking love this umbrella. And it’s a much more comfortable umbrella for me to fit under than the “woman” umbrella had been for me. It’s so much roomier under here!!

 So anyway, that’s what I wanted to say. I am bi; I am genderqueer/gender non-binary; and I am still questioning. I am B and T and Q; and LGBTQ+ folks, you are safe with me.

 fin

 P.S. Thank you, everyone who read it this far. Thank you for tolerating my self-indulgent trite as I waffle on about my own life when, all things considered, I have enjoyed an immense amount of “comfort” — or rather, the avoidance of misfortune — because of being able to pass. I have enjoyed a lot of love and support from the people closest to me and the ones I love the most, and that is why sitting down and definitively defining my gender — when really, it is something so personal to the individual — didn’t seem to make much difference to me as an individual before now. But it might just make all the difference to someone. I’m planning on expanding my thoughts on this (namely, gender identities vs individual identities) in a future piece of writing.

That said, if you are a LGBTQ+ person reading this (or someone who is unsure, or questioning) and you are not currently out, then despite my encouragement to make ourselves seen and our voices heard, please, please, please don’t come out if you feel it is not safe for you to do so. I am only coming out now myself because it is safe for me to do so; it was just inconvenient for me before, and that’s why I didn’t do it until now. Your safety and your well-being is the number one priority, so please, do not do anything you feel uncomfortable with or which you feel might put you at risk.

 P.P.S. To serve as something of a glossary: “Genderqueer” is just an umbrella term meaning “not exclusively masculine or feminine”; which falls within the umbrella term “transgender” meaning “anyone whose gender is different from that of their assigned sex”; which itself falls within the umbrella term “queer” meaning “anyone who is not exclusively heterosexual and cisgender”. There are several layers deep to this, and getting further down is just a matter of specificity.

For example, someone who is gender non-binary is genderqueer, who is trans, who is queer. Someone who is a “trans woman” or a “trans man” (as opposed to “trans” on its own) is someone who identifies as the binary identity woman or man, but were born male or female respectively. Thus, trans women and trans men obviously come under the umbrella of “trans”, but are not “genderqueer”, though they are “queer”. The Q in LGBTQ+ can thus be seen as a kind of tautology, because all LGBT individuals are by definition not heterosexual and/or cisgender, and therefore are all queer. But while all LGBT individuals are queer, not all Q+ individuals are LGBT, as they might identify as something else entirely not covered by its own letter. The Q can also stand for “questioning”. In this way, the Q catches all individuals who are unsure of where they fit in but who do not identify specifically as LGBT, and the + denotes the inclusion of all communities and identities not covered by their own letter (of which intersex, pansexual and aromantic/asexual, to name only a few, are examples).

The website OK2BME has a great page on this. Link here: https://ok2bme.ca/resources/kids-teens/what-does-lgbtq-mean/

 P.P.P.S. Interested in supporting trans rights yourself? To once again paraphrase Susie Green, Mermaids CEO, a good way to support trans rights is to support trans people themselves. Look up your local trans charities, donate or volunteer if you can, call out casual transphobia when you see it, and just generally be a friend. A number of trans individuals have crowdfunding campaigns active to try and help them cover the cost of transitioning, so that is an option as well.

YouTuber and Twitter user Mama Math (link here: https://twitter.com/hellomamamath) made a spreadsheet with links to some of the guests on the Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream who consented to be listed with the details of their websites or where to follow them. The spreadsheet also includes whether or not that person is trans. If you are interested in learning more about trans rights and what it means to be trans, simply listening to the stories of those who are trans and supporting the content they make is a great place to start. Link to the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdavyrGPnsrNdTxWBILoulCKxvIvzMkMaJoXPjNQcOI/edit#gid=0

 If you are interested in watching the Donkey Kong Nightmare Steam yourself, here are the links to the parts:

Part 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/365966431

Part 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/366901309

Part 3: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/367450055

Part 4: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369226467

 P.P.P.P.S. (Okay, this is getting ridiculous now. This is the last post script, I swear!) In case you’re wondering, as I haven’t actually addressed it at all above, my preferred pronouns are “they/them”, as I consider “they/them” the most neutral and free of assumption. While I am not agender, I nevertheless prefer gender-neutral nouns and pronouns. I consider my own gender to be more fluid, and sometimes, “she/her” or “he/him” will feel right to me; but sometimes, they won’t. For example, if someone refers to me as “he/him” online, I won’t feel compelled to correct them and actually enjoy being referred to as such. I do not have the same euphoric reaction to “she/her”, though I understand that many people will fall into old habits and believe that it is the more “correct” term to use, even though actually it’s my least favoured out of the three. My point is that, sometimes, using “she/her” or “he/him” to refer to me may be acceptable; but using “they/them” is preferable and will always be applicable, so that is what I ask for you to use.

However, I do still have a feminine side to me, and as such, I will still relate with some feminine terminologies; but I am not “a woman”, nor do I relate exclusively to women. In this specific instance, I do ask for you to avoid calling me “a woman” and refer to me as “a person” instead.

I’m considered as something of the “mum” within the online gaming group, with others teasingly and lovingly calling me “mother”, and I love that. A very important person to me calls me “sis” or “sissy”, short for “sister”, and I wouldn’t want to change that, either. To my husband, I am still his “wife”. (I recently discovered I have a major aversion to “princess”, though, so that one’s definitely out…)

I am not truly gender-neutral, which is why I do not identify as agender; but rather, I encompass both masculine and feminine traits, and therefore I will adopt both feminine and masculine terms where they seem applicable. Some days I’ll feel more in touch with my feminine side, and some days I’ll feel more in touch with my masculine side. That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to reject all gendered terms completely, and certainly not all of the time. But I do want to introduce some gender-neutral ones into the mix, so that gender-neutrality is recognised as an option. Again, I am stating a preference, with my preference being for the gender-neutral.

As for my preferred name… well, I go by my online handle “Evani” within most game-related things, and I’m perfectly happy with that. In my mind, I know that the name “Evani” is short for “Evan-Evani”: an original character of mine who has both male and female selves (better known as the Animus and the Anima, à la Jungian psychology). Those selves are named Evan and Evani respectively, and thus they are collectively referred to as both names, even when they present as one whole and not as the two halves. I’m comfortable with my online name and don’t feel the need to change things there.

My “real” name, however… After a lot of thinking about it and batting around about a million different names and variations, I finally settled on one I was happy with: “Ievan”. (Pronounced just the same as “Evan”.)

I had been looking at all kinds of different names; starting with those which were variations on my birth name, to names which looked similar or shared the same letters, to ones which had the same semantic meaning. I couldn’t find any I liked, until a friend asked me what it was that spoke to my soul. At that point, I realised I had been trying to find a name “in keeping” with my birth name, “Stacey”; not for myself but to make the perceived adjustment easier on others around me.

But to be honest, I had never, ever liked the name “Stacey”; and changing how I spelled it to “Stacie” may have made it more tolerable, but even then, I still did not like it. I had been trying to find a new name I liked, based on an old one I didn’t. No wonder I had been having such difficulty!

Recognising that, it made no sense to base my new name for my new identity on my old one. The point of coming out as non-binary was to feel more comfortable with myself and my own identity; and adhering to my past name ran counter to that.

So, with my friend to bounce ideas off of, I took the search away from “Stacey” — the name I had never liked — and back to “Evani” — the name I had already adopted for myself some years prior and had used for myself ever since, albeit only in online settings.

I choose “Ievan” instead of “Evan”, which is perhaps the more obvious choice, because it’s an anagram of “Evani”. It also meant that, by slightly changing my online name from “Evani” to “Ievani”, I could create an amalgamation of both names. “Ievani” included both the names “Ievan” and “Evani” within it, symbolising the dual nature of the masculine and the feminine and the great deal of overlap between the two; just as I experience an overlap and a merging of the masculine and the feminine within myself. I appreciated the symbolism, as well as the fact that “Ievani” captured the same meaning to it as “Evan-Evani” did; only much more elegantly, representing “Ievan-Evani” but with much fewer letters. Having taken to “Ievani” as I did, my choice of name for “Ievan”, as opposed to “Evan”, became an easy one to make.

Plus, by spelling the name as “Ievan” with the extra “i” and not as “Evan” (even though they are both pronounced the same) meant I could have the best of both worlds: I could have a name which sounded masculine, but looked feminine. It was a blend of both, and gave me a lot of versatility and adaptability to play around with as well, owing to the fact that you can draw a lot of different nicknames and short-forms out of it. Some examples: Ieva, Eva, Ev, Evi, Evie, Eve, Iev, Ieve…Now I can basically be called whatever I feel like being called, and friends and those around me can pick out their own personally-preferred nickname for me! It grants a lot of freedom and customisation, which I love. Now, when people call me by my name, I smile instead of cringe.

(As a side-note: yes, this does make me “Ievan Evans”, and you are right, it is repetitive! But I love the peculiarity. It’s been a running gag of mine to have characters in my stories whose surname is a repeat of their first name; the first one being “Evan Evans” — the aforementioned Animus — and another one called “Luca Lucas”, though the latter is technically an assumed identity deliberately made to parallel “Evan Evans”. Now I can be a part of the joke myself, too!)

Realistically speaking, I don’t expect everyone to switch over to “Ievan” straight away. Not everyone is going to read this post, and I’m not going to choose to tell everyone who doesn’t. It’s fairly common within the queer community to not come out to everyone, and not all at once. So I accept that, to certain people, I will still be “Stacie”. And that is fine. As long as I am happy with my own identity and the way I live my own life, I can make my peace with it if I will still be “Stacie” to them.

So, if you still want to call me “Stacie”, that’s fine. I won’t fight you over it. I just might not be fine with it; but even then, it’s fine.

In regards to my writing and my self-published works: my past works were published under the name “Stacie Evans” and, in that particular regard, I think I will keep it that way going forward as well. “Stacie Evans” can be my pseudonym as an author! (Which is ironic, because usually it’s the pen name that’s supposed to be the fictitious one…) While I could legally change my name, it would be a hassle; and right now, I’m happy just adopting it for myself and testing it out.

In short, I’ll be using: Ievan for real life (including Facebook, which is more personal); Evani for games; Ievani for other social media (which I consider a mix of both); and Stacie Evans for works of poetry or fiction, as well as with those who are uncomfortable calling me Ievan.

Feeling confused? Don’t worry. You can always ask to make sure! (Which is a good idea in general, about anything; and you can apply it with pronouns, too! I personally love it when people ask my pronouns, as it confers a sense of understanding, compassion and respect.) All questions are welcome, because I believe there is no such thing as a stupid question. All questions are a chance to learn more. (But please, keep it considerate.)

 Useful resources:

(not an exhaustive list; these are the things I have come across and have found helpful myself, so I am sharing them here too)

 Mermaids, a UK-based charity providing support for transgender children/ young adults and their families, as well as crisis hotlines, online forums and interventions: https://www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/

 The January Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream to raise money for Memaids:

Part 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/365966431

Part 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/366901309

Part 3: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/367450055

Part 4: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369226467

 Spreadsheet of the participants in the Donkey Kong Nightmare Steam, with links to their Twitter and YouTube accounts: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdavyrGPnsrNdTxWBILoulCKxvIvzMkMaJoXPjNQcOI/edit#gid=0

 Let’s Queer Things Up!, a blog about all things queer: https://letsqueerthingsup.com/

 More from LQTU! content creator: https://samdylanfinch.contently.com/

 Specific article linked to on the above about what it means to be genderqueer: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/genderqueer

 Specific article linked to on the above about what it means to be gender non-binary: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/nonbinary

 Genderqueer Me, a website with featured voices from transgender individuals and their families, as well as online talks about trans issues and information regarding transition: https://genderqueer.me/

 OK2BME, supportive services for the LGBTQ+ community: https://ok2bme.ca/

 Private YouTube playlist I made of videos I have watched, discussing transgender and non-binary experiences and identities, which are of personal relevance to me in some way or which discuss things which are particularly useful or important when it comes to developing an understanding of the transgender spectrum (also not an exhaustive list; I plan to keep adding videos as I find them): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv7NUhc6gDOr1AW13CmlZujWAEo2Msyh

POST 8. Snowflake to Avalanche. Some cast writing.

Rhain was the first to send some writing in, in relation to the project. This will now change some as we are aiming for a humorous delivery. I thought she had some very strong ideas. 

Matthew also provided some writing but mistook Rhains questions as ones the whole group would answer. Despite this some strong ideas still emerged.

RHIAN’S 1st Draft. 

From Snowflakes To an Avalanche

 A few thoughts…

 Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (54-72 years old) Generation X: Born 1965-1980 (38-53 years old) Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old) Post-Millennials: Born 1997-Present (0-21 years old)

 1.      Why are Millennials so depressed?

Older generations do not understand that a new era has came with the internet that has changed the functioning of society forever. Young people are now experienced widespread guilt, shame and disillusionment from a hand held device that they never let go of. We are bombarded constantly through social media that has affected our attitudes negatively, as seeing posts about atrocities or violence constantly and only able to help by feeding into a go fund me page is debilitating to any person. We are also confronted with racial issues, terrorist attacks, bullying, body shaming and suicide, on top of this contemporary shame, inherited colonial trauma affects our generation the most due to its ever growing acceptance of otherness and feelings of empathy. We also face unrealistic success standards everyone feels they must portray, this is isolating for those who feel less accomplished. We are constantly bombarded by the entire worlds every day, all day on our most prized possession. Then trying to live up to our parents standards, who expect young people to be able to go out and get a job when the economy is vastly different from when they were young and the jobs that are available are a much more competitive process than ever before.

 2.      Why do millennials treat sexuality and mental illness like fashion statements?

The acceptance of difference has never been higher among society and so has resulted in many claiming dignity in their sexuality or gender. The older generation say there are more gay people than ever or is it just that more gay people feel able to express themselves in today's climate? Perhaps our generational guilt and depression stems partly from the oppression systematically enforced by generation Z? It has not become in style to self harm or self destruct or self express, we just now have the internet to try and not feel so alone and through the internet have found ways of supporting one another.

 3.      Why are millennials so concerned with political correctness?

A struggle for the baby boomer generation is understanding the difference between political correctness and causal racism. The younger generation is in constant cahoots with all other races, we do not have time for casual racism let alone brexit, as we see the struggle of refugees daily and we see ourselves in people from other countries as we are more exposed now to other cultures than ever before, a reason to be grateful for our privilege of being able explore further in the world more than ever before through travel agencies or social media.

 4.      Do you really find traditional family life so appalling?

A traditional life is no longer appealing to a millennial who has inherited a need for something greater than the generation before. New families are being introduced and a nuclear family setting although still a viable option is seemingly not stimulating enough in this new GO GO GO media society.

5.      Everything has been handed to you. When you are so pampered, how do you feel an existential loneliness?

The previous generation believe they have pushed the world in a state of progression and although this is true in a sense that millenials are the most privileged generation yet in terms of material possessions. Now our things are collectively worth years wages of the baby boomer generation and this is supposed to make us the happiest generation! All this proves is that material things are worthless and due to our higher education standard, we are also more aware that there are more homeless people on the street than ever with empty housing being held by the government, government aid being stripped from the disabled and redirected into military programs and referendums and the government are the enemy to our generation with tensions that were beautifully displayed between Stormzy and Theresa May after the Grenfell Tower Fire.

 6.      Why are millennials so worked up over bodily ownership?

The fact that a room full of mostly rich men decide what people and more particularly women can and can not do with their bodies regardless of context is a disturbing, whether they were voted by a majority into power or not, these issues are for a body and a body alone and laws regarding the body should all depend on its autonomous state. This isn’t generational just common sense???

 Phrases and images

 Inspiring-

‘Keep on truckin’’

‘A minute at a time’

‘This too must pass’

 MATTHEW’S FIRST DRAFT.

why are millennials so depressed? It seems the ideas of success and wealth are now measured more than ever on celebrity ideals, with talentless kids such as lil pump being worth a reported 6.5 million dollars at 18. How can anyone in the real world live up to these ridiculous ways, social media is at the forefront of almost all depression id argue. Whether it is girls comparing themselves to cosmetic Barbie dolls or guys seeing footballers flashing super cars, when it comes down to it social media is a place where life looks so perfect. Thus leaving kids to believe in this perfection and in turn ask why they aren't perfect or as happy as others. Why do millennials treat sexuality and mental illness like fashion statements? We live in a society where we are told to think outside the box and be different and if you aren't different you are somehow boring or just seen as 'normal' which is something nobody wants to be branded as. therefore this generation is using sexuality and mental illness to try and define themselves and stand out from the crowd. However the numbers of people in this generation that suffer with depression and anxiety are astronomically high, and therefore it is probably more individual and different to say that you don't have a mental illness, which is sad. As for sexuality it is getting more and more socially acceptable to be openly gay, and even though some say that this causes people to think they are something they are not. some people disagree with the fact that there were probably just as many gay men and women in the 80s as there is now, it is just acceptable for gay people to be open and public about it now as was not the way in the 80s. Why are millennials so concerned with political correctness? Political correctness is often misinterpreted as just not accepting 'causal racism' we all know someone who will start a sentence with "I'm not racist but..." and then proceed to say something which is in fact just racist. usually this will be from someone of an older generation but not always and where as with the older generations I find it easier to forgive as that was the norm back when they were growing up so they have not changed with the times and is harmless, however there are some members of these generations that are just ignorant and really are racists this is often not the case. it is members of my own generation which I can't forgive this casual racism, I was brought up in the same world as them and I don't use these racial slurs or statements so why should they, it is out of pure bigotry that they choose not to accept that racism should just simply not be acceptable in this day in age. Do you really find traditional family life so appalling?

I feel this is born out of some misconstrued idea that to be successful you have to have no 'distractions' and a family is seen as the main 'distraction'. It feels like people have to make the decision to either be successful or be happy, but why can't we have both?. Everything has been handed to you. When you are so pampered, how do you feel an existential loneliness?

It is this idea that we have everything given to us and we are the most equipped generation to succeed that there ever has been that causes this existential loneliness, as we are told we have the tools to do whatever we want yet we still fail. But rather than putting it down to being human and having to fail in order to succeed, we bury any dreams we have in the fear that we won't succeed. And it is this which leads to the loneliness. The pressure put on kids now is greater than ever before as there aren't as many jobs for people and we are told if you don't have a degree you won't be able to get a job, where as generations of the past were born in to a Britain which had more opportunities as they could go and work down the pit or work in a ship yard or some sort of manufacturing jobs. where as now we have been replace by machines, and we have to fight and scratch to get opportunities for jobs.

So what’s a patron deity?

So what’s a patron deity? Historically, a deity was a patron of an organization or concept rather than an individual. Ex: Athena was the patron of Athens, so while she may provide assistance to an Athenian by virtue of their citizenship, her ultimate concern would have been the welfare of the city as a whole. A private citizen’s welfare probably would have been secondary. Clergy may have dedicated their whole lives to a specific deity, but this wouldn’t have made the deity their patron per se. I don’t know when the idea of patronship became ‘privatized’ and so widespread, but I honestly don’t care except in how it pertains to our relationships to the gods right now. Why are we looking for own personal patron deities? Is it because we want to feel like special snowflakes handpicked by a god? Maybe the individualistic, experiential nature of contemporary neopagan/polytheist practice makes this the next logical step in our religious practices? Or is it because we have a powerful longing to feel such a deep connection with the divine? The more I think about the term, whatever it meant historically, the more it seems appropriate: a patron gives support and resources, and the recipient uses them to create something of use for themselves of the community that also brings honor to the patron’s name. There’s practicality and, most importantly, reciprocity. There’s an exchange of promises made, implicit or explicit, and opportunities to demonstrate one’s reliability and earn respect, which in turn deepens the trust in the relationship and thus the power of help and action being exchanged. Nowadays, I define it as the deity (or deities) for whom you spend the bulk of your time and energy and whose aid/guidance/support/etc you rely on most. Though perhaps not the only one, they’re your primary teacher and challenger, guardian and adversary. At the end of the day, they’re the one hooked deepest in your heart. YMMV, however - it’s different for many people. But first, a reminder: You don’t need to have a patron deity to be a polytheist or pagan. The question of godspouses, godslaves, and godshards are more complicated and beyond the scope of what I’m talking about here, which is the more common standard of worship or veneration. The following are the things I personally believe to be most important in regards to patron deities (and a million thanks to River Devora, who gave me the words I didn’t have for some of these): Consider why you want a patron deity in the first place. Bragging rights? Better back off for a while and grow up, then. Guidance? Support? Much more substantial. A mix of everything? Well, we’re only human, and I’m cool with ulterior motives behind the altruistic ones as long as they’re kept in check. Pride goeth and all that. Understand your motives. You know that trope where one protagonist is hiding something from another protagonist and it gets revealed at the worst possible moment and everything gets cocked up, and it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they’d just been honest at the beginning? Don’t do that. Shadow work is meant to help you better understand yourself, which may mitigate getting blindsided by something you didn’t know about yourself or trying to keep a secret that negatively impacts your relationship when it inevitably gets discovered. This doesn’t mean you should just spill everything, but be straightforward, even if it’s to say, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Know your mind, basically. It’s a form of protection and, in some cases, a weapon. Carefully consider the deity’s nature and what you’re looking for. Some deities are more concerned for the ‘bigger picture’ than your personal welfare. My relationship with na Morrígna, for example, is very clearly one of service to my community, whereas my relationship with Anpu is much quieter and turned inward. Also, let’s say you’re a pacifist; would a deity of war be someone you want to spend time with? This isn’t so straightforward, since there are things a pacifist can learn from such a deity or things a warrior can learn from a deity of peace, but it’s still something to consider. Also, deities aren’t one-sided but multifaceted. You might find that you get something out of the relationship that, from the outside, seems strange or even counterintuitive. (I know a healer devoted to the Morrígan, for example.) But strong relationships are conducive to seeing more subtleties and nuances, and they can inspire the people involved to do more for one another than they might otherwise do for a mere acquaintance. The relationship should be balanced. You have rights. You have boundaries that should be respected. Even a surrendering of power should be by choice, as in sacred D/s. Being mortal is absolutely not the same as being inferior and, in many ways, is a greater power in itself. The relationship should be reciprocal. Don’t take and not give anything in return of equal value. On the other hand, don’t give without receiving anything in return. Trust your intuition. Probably one of the hardest things, honestly. Practice divination. Consult a trusted diviner or clergy person. “Study” your own self to figure out what is you and what is not. Be discerning, but remember that you’ll have to take a leap of faith and trust yourself - and the gods - sooner or later. Oaths must be honored. Be very, very careful about any promises you make. You will be held to them, one way or another - and if not in this life, then possibly the next. Better to start out conservatively, maybe with a trial period, rather than swear everything you are to a deity with whom you don’t have much experience. There’s no race to any kind of finish line. Do your research about the deity, its originating tradition, and yourself. Deities aren’t Pokémon. You might find yourself dealing with a variety of entities as time passes: deities, ancestors, animal and land spirits, fae, whatever. But having a big inventory doesn’t automatically make you better, and I believe that you should only deal with as many entities as is practical. Is there a reason to deal with this entity? Do you have the time and energy to maintain a relationship with them in addition to the others? Better to have strong relationships with fewer than shallow ones with many. Deities aren’t interchangeable or there to be “used.” There’s a reason deities revealed themselves when they did to the culture or people they did, and those interactions established a precedent. Even if you’re a soft polytheist or atheopagan, even if you’re eclectic or practicing multiple paths, they should be treated with respect as individuals, not novelties or tools or fill-in-the-blanks. Not being ‘tapped’ does not invalidate your worship, veneration, or belief. Not everyone gets called to a deity, and that’s perfectly fine! Hell, that can be a blessing sometimes. Choosing a deity yourself and putting in the work to build that relationship is just as valid. Not having a “godphone” does not lessen your value as a worshiper or polytheist. Some of us simply don’t experience our deities as clearly, as often, or in the same ways as others. Sometimes never. That’s okay. Basically be conscientious, self-aware, respectful, knowledgeable, and practical, at least until you guys sort out what works for you. Don’t rush or half-ass it. Seriously, the gods have been around for a while, they’re not going to disappear next Thursday. source: thepaganstudygrouppage on tumblr

Talking About Abuse

Strap in, this is a long one. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR if needs be.

It’s impossible to spend time in the #abuse tags on Tumblr and not run into discourse re: personality disorders. 

And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot because I’ve stumbled across the dividing line trying to figure out where I stand. And I think both sides need to remember this:

Mental illness does not make someone abusive. But an abuser with a mental illness may be particularly cruel.

It’s a point that abuse expert Lundy Bancroft has made, and he knows what he’s talking about.

Ideally, I’d like to see the abuse community create new terminology. What exactly, I’m not sure. I’m certainly open to suggestions. Egotistical abuse? Trumpian abuse? Egocentric abuse? Conceited abuse? I don’t know (personally, I prefer Egocentric). We’re not actually trained and qualified to diagnose our abusers with specific disorders. So I’d feel more comfortable avoiding terminology that is already well-defined as something specific that may or may not accurately apply to our situations and that, imo, removes some responsibility from abusers for their choices and behavior.

That said, on the other side of things I’d say to think long and hard about whether you want to attack and possibly re-victimize somebody who is in the long, hard process of recovery from abuse for talking about things like “narcissistic abuse.” Not everything is about you. And if you have experience with mental illness you should consider using that experience to fuel compassion for victims (who are highly likely to be suffering their own mental illness as a result of their abuse) rather than launching into them because they are repeating the terminology that was handed to them by somebody else. By all means, educate people via posts on your own blog. But if you must call out a specific person (whether by reblog or anon asks), remember that the person on the other side of that screen has just spent a very long time, years or decades in some cases, being put down, attacked, criticized, shamed, and endlessly treated as wrong and stupid. If you want to engage with them, don’t do it in a way that will trigger them. And don’t treat them like just another ableist asshole. They’re trying to make sense of what has been done to them and a lot of the people providing answers and hope to them for the first time are teaching them this vocabulary. These people, the ones with a large audience and significant influence, are probably who you should be asking to reconsider their wording.

However, I want to emphasize again to my fellow abuse survivors, that not all abusers have personality disorders (in fact, most probably don’t). Not all people with personality disorders are abusive (and we should really, really hesitate to add to the stigma they face). And abusers who DO have personality disorders would probably still be abusive even if they were magically no longer mentally ill. So just as I ask people to have compassion for victims, I’d ask victims to have compassion for the mental illness community and embrace language that allows us to talk about certain flavors of abuse without co-opting words from the DSM nor contribute to stigmas that harm others (especially when we consider that the mentally ill are often more likely to be victims of abuse themselves). We are, generally, on the same team. And it really requires very little effort to just abstain from using certain phrases or words. 

Again, mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

It boils down to the same problem I have with people calling mass-shooters or terrorists “crazy.” For one thing, it dissolves their responsibility and that’s bullshit. For another, it further stigmatizes mental illness. Millions of mentally ill people every day manage to live their lives without hurting a fly (though many mentally ill people are, in fact, hurt and abused by others). And, perhaps most insidious, it absolves society of any blame for helping create abusers.

It is NOT mental illness that makes, for example, a man shoot up a bunch of people because his girlfriend dumped him. It is entitlement. And we need to face the fact that our culture absolutely contributes to teaching men they are entitled to a woman’s attention, affection, body, emotional labor, etc. We celebrate media that repeats the trope that even the most mediocre of man will be rewarded with a beautiful woman that adores him. We talk about the friend-zone as if it’s a real thing and it is something that women unfairly do to victimize men. We tell women that they’re feelings are wrong and they should be flattered by sexual harassment. We legislate that women’s bodies don’t belong to them (and even afford corpses more bodily autonomy than living women). We tolerate misogyny in our music, movies, television, and government. We teach women they are responsible for preventing assault instead of teaching men not to assault. We teach generation after generation that “boys will be boys” and that girls should just tolerate their bad behavior. 

So, yeah. Maybe a lot of us have, in fact, been abused by somebody with a personality disorder. But unless we’re a psychiatrist, we’re not really qualified to comment on that. And we’re shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot when we frame our discussions about abuse in terms from the field of mental health. Because mentally ill or not, abusers will continue to abuse as long as they feel entitled to do so. If we borrow language from psychiatry to frame the conversation around abuse, we make it too easy for everyone to throw their hands up in the air and say “well, we can’t really do anything about it” (especially when talking about disorders that haven’t found successful treatment options).

And that simply isn’t true.

Because, guess what, we CAN do something about abuse. Now, we can’t do much about individual abusers. Only abusers can change themselves. But, and Lundy Bancroft talks at length about this at the end of Why Does He Do That, society and individuals can absolutely do things to combat problems that contribute to abuse and to protect victims. Things like:

BELIEVE VICTIMS. The rate of false accusations of abuse is, despite what MRAs would have us believe, incredibly small. Bancroft says “There is a natural temptation to speak out forcefully against abuse until the man whose behavior is under the microscope is one of our own, and then we switch sides. But we can’t have it both ways. Abuse won’t stop until people stop making exceptions for their own brothers and sons and friends.“ He also says “Nothing would work faster to end the abuse of women than having the friends and family of abusive men stop enabling them. And that begins, in turn, with making sure that you listen carefully and respectfully to her side of the story— something the abusive man never does.” (emphasis mine) 

TEACH WHAT ABUSE LOOKS LIKE. Bancroft specifically advices therapists, the clergy, etc. to “provide some basic education to any male about partner abuse. Give some examples of abusive behaviors, describe their destructive impact on women and children, and explain that a man is entirely responsible for his own actions.” I think a huge aspect of why people discount women’s reports of abuse is that they don’t recognize abusive behavior as, in fact, abusive. This comes back round to entitlement and justification as well as abusers and their allies tendency to point to worse forms of abuse to say “that’s what REAL abuse looks like, what I’ve done isn’t REAL abuse.”

REFORM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM TO BETTER PROTECT VICTIMS AND FORCE ABUSERS TO FACE REAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR ACTIONS. I won’t go into the details on specific changes that need to be made. This post is already super fucking long. You can find Bancroft’s suggestions in Why Does He Do That.

I’d add that we also, as a society, need to:

REFUSE TO SUPPORT MEDIA THAT IS MISOGYNIST. If it promotes the idea that men are entitled to behave in controlling or abusive ways it doesn’t deserve our attention, accolades, or money. We should also stop handing out awards to abusive men as if separating their performances and public persona from their abuse doesn’t teach them (and others) that abusers can abuse without consequence.

CHALLENGE DAMAGING IDEAS AND STATEMENTS. This is particularly important for men to do. If you hear dudes complaining about the friend zone, or celebrating rape culture, or otherwise espousing sexist and harmful ideas, call them out. Make it clear that such views are entirely unacceptable.

LISTEN TO FEMINISTS, SJWs, AND OTHER SO-CALLED SNOWFLAKES. There’s a false notion that when progressives voice concerns or complaints about micro-aggressions or subtle sexism, or whatnot that they’re focusing on small stuff and should just get over it. But the reality is that the small stuff matters. All the various small things add up to a culture that sends abusers the messages of entitlement they use to justify their abuse. Take the Bechtel Test. I recognize it is only one step in beginning to evaluate whether a movie is, in fact, sexist. But, generally speaking, any movie that doesn’t feature enough named, female characters with dialogue about something other than a male character sends the subtle message that women’s roles revolve around the men in their lives. It says that woman are accessories to a man’s story. When feminists call for more women in the writers’ room of television and movies, it goes so far beyond just wanting to level the employment playing field (though that’s important in its own right)! More women contributing to scripts means more well-rounded women characters and less sexist tropes being repeated. It means more boys growing up consuming media in which the world presented to them is not one that revolves around men.

If you’re still with me at this point in this long-ass post I just want to say thank you. I know tumblr is usually a place for more pithy communication. But I go on at length because there is just so much to say that is so important.

That said, here’s a TLDR for those who can’t handle the endless wall of text (I’m ADHD, I can empathize):

The abuse community would do well to create new terminology to discuss our experiences that doesn’t rely on language which may inadvertently harm the mental illness community.

Be patient and kind to abuse victims if you want to talk to them about how something they’ve repeated may be problematic so that you can avoid triggering them or adding to their trauma.

If somebody asks you to reconsider your language, be kind and sympathetic and remember that they may share more of your experiences than you realize. 

Society can do a lot to prevent and combat abuse.

And most importantly let me repeat this:

Mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

Did Ann Coulter Really Want To Speak at Berkeley?

A few weeks ago, when Berkeley was slated to have back-to-back appearances by David Horowitz and Ann Coulter, I asked my students if they knew who either one of them was. For Horowitz, the answer was a universal "no". For Coulter, the mode answer was also "no", though one student offered that she was "like an older Tomi Lahren?" My how the mighty have fallen. But of course, even long-since faded stars are entitled to attempt a comeback. So what better way to do so than through a high-profile act of martyrdom? Fortunately, despite their unknown status to the average Berkeley student, the Bay Area has an active "black bloc" community happy to oblige them. And so threats are made, and talks canceled, and somber reflections on illiberal universities published, and Horowitz and Coulter get to bask -- if briefly -- in the glow of being the bold truthsayers too raw for Berkeley snowflakes to handle. A return to the glory days, if you will. But what if things didn't go according to that script? Neither Ann Coulter, nor David Horowitz, were prohibited from speaking on campus. In both cases, they were offered a time and a place to speak at Berkeley; in both cases, it was they who declined that invitation. The statement from Chancellor Dirks -- who in my estimation has done a great job navigating very choppy waters on this issue -- provides a useful corrective to the prevailing media narrative and is worth reading in full. But an excerpt helps set the tone:

The strategies necessary to address these evolving threats [to free speech] are also evolving, but the simplistic view of some – that our police department can simply step in and stop violent confrontations whenever they occur – ignores reality.  Protecting public safety in these circumstances requires a multifaceted approach.  This approach must take into account the use of “time, place, and manner” guidelines, devised according to the specific threats presented.  Because threats or strategic concerns may differ, so must our approach.  In all cases, however, we only seek to ensure the successful staging of free speech rights; we make no effort to control or restrict the content of expression, regardless of differing political views. 

This is a University, not a battlefield. We must make every effort to hold events at a time and location that maximizes the chances that First Amendment rights can be successfully exercised and that community members can be protected. While our commitment to freedom of speech and expression remains absolute, we have an obligation to heed our police department’s assessment of how best to hold safe and successful events.

[...]

If UCPD believes there is a significant security threat attendant to a particular event, we cannot allow it to be held in a venue with a limited number of exits; in a hall that cannot be cordoned off; in an auditorium with floor to ceiling glass; in any space that does not meet basic safety criteria established by UCPD.  This is the sole reason we could not accommodate Ms. Coulter on April 27th, and the very reason we offered her alternative dates in early May and September, when venues that satisfy safety requirements are available.

Contrary to some press reports and circulating narratives, the UC Berkeley administration did not cancel the Coulter event and has never prohibited Ms. Coulter from coming on campus.  Instead, we received a request to provide a venue on one single day, chosen unilaterally by a student group without any prior consultation with campus administration or law enforcement.  After substantial evaluation and planning by our law enforcement professionals, we were forced to inform the group that, in light of specific and serious security threats that UCPD’s intelligence had identified, there was no campus venue available at a time on that date where the event could be held safely and without disruption.  We offered an alternative date for the event (which was rejected) and offered to work with the group to find dates in the future when the event could occur. Throughout this process our effort has been to support our students’ desire to hold their event safely and successfully. 

Now to be 100%, crystal clear: Violence or disruption, or threats thereof, to prevent Ann Coulter's speech is wrong and unjustifiable (and was unjustifiable when used against Milo). Ditto had Berkeley sought to cancel Coulter's speech outright (which again, it did not do). The people who engage in such violence are engaging in a wrong -- a serious wrong, a wrong that is antithetical to norms of free speech and free inquiry -- even when the subject is someone like Ann Coulter. One can believe that while simultaneously believing that Ann Coulter is a repulsive White supremacist who deserves naught but our scorn. And so the threats that Chancellor Dirks refers to are threats that cut to the heart of a free academic community. They should be investigated, and they should be dealt with. But UC-Berkeley did not make those threats. UC-Berkeley did not engage in that censorship. And the way Berkeley, as an institution, treated Coulter seems eminently reasonable. Clearly, Berkeley has an interest in ensuring the event goes off safely. Clearly, and as an institution committed to free speech, it has an interest in creating conditions where her speech occurs without incident, obstruction, or unlawful disruption. Clearly, it can impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions to try to limit the damage and obstruction that might be caused by those persons making unjustified threats and promising unlawful riots. Surely this is them taking the responsible course of action, yes? Placing Ann Coulter "in a venue with a limited number of exits; in a hall that cannot be cordoned off; in an auditorium with floor to ceiling glass" is a recipe for free speech disaster (not to mention the budgetary disaster for Berkeley when the -- quite literal -- damage has been done). And while there are limits to what sorts of venue-restrictions one could impose without violating free speech -- obviously they couldn't stick her in a broom closet and "allow" the speech to proceed freely -- that's not what happened here. Berkeley made a reasonable effort to reasonably accommodate Coulter's speech while reasonably insisting that the speech occur in a time, place, and manner that didn't cause chaos. That's entirely consistent with our free speech tradition. That's Berkeley behaving responsibly in the face of community members who were threatening to behave irresponsibly, even criminally. That's Berkeley seeking to facilitate, not censor, Coulter's speech. So why is it being interpreted otherwise? The argument seems to be that when Berkeley institutes any sort of specific procedures or guidelines to facilitate the free speech of controversial speakers likely to face illegitimate obstruction, it's "giving in" to threats -- or worse, tacitly endorsing them. To quote my old college buddy Jim Kiner: "This is America. Someone giving a speech shouldn't have to worry about the size of the windows." (Of course, it's not Coulter who has to worry about the windows -- they aren't hers to worry about. Ann Coulter can be blissfully indifferent regarding their fate. It's Berkeley -- the property-owner -- who's concerned, and it seems clearly reasonable for them to take limited steps to ensure that their property isn't destroyed in the wake of their indifferent houseguest's visit). Can we say that, in a good world, Berkeley wouldn't need to have these procedures for managing threats to outside speakers because everyone would respect everyone else's right to speak unmolested? Yes (though in such a good world nobody would be inviting repulsive trolls like Coulter to speak in the first place). But the Berkeley-blame for all this is strange, bordering on bizarre. In a good world nobody would try to hijack an airplane. Sadly, we don't live in that world, and so the TSA has certain procedures designed to manage the threat of terrorist hijackings while allowing us to travel freely -- procedures we only need because some people behave unlawfully, wrongfully, terroristically. Those procedures can be debated as too lenient or too harsh, but I've yet to hear anyone say that by having them the TSA was tacitly endorsing or normalizing terrorism. Responding to the reality of an unjustified threat is not the same thing as justifying or legitimizing that threat. Berkeley has to live in the world that exists, not the world of its dreams, and when it does so it doesn't endorse our fallen state. Rioters are wrong for rioting, but Berkeley is not wrong for taking reasonable steps to account for living in a world where rioting happens. Which brings us back to the question in the title: Did Ann Coulter really want to speak at Berkeley? Does she really want Berkeley to succeed in creating a space for her to speak without obstruction, disruption, or incident? I'm dubious. She came to Berkeley because she wanted to be a martyr -- either canceled outright or censorially disrupted. For Berkeley to succeed in offering her a space where none of that would happen thwarts her goals. After all, accepting Berkeley's terms would mean that her speech would likely not be shut down, or disrupted, or even been particularly noteworthy. It would have to attract attention solely by the merits of her ideas. No wonder she found it unacceptable. This, in fact, is what happened with Horowitz. He too was offered a different venue -- one which promised that his speech would be able to occur freely, without incident or disruption, and receiving only so much attention as was warranted by his fame, merit, and talent. And once that became the deal, his booking agent decided (I know this from first-hand sources) that the new offer to speak -- one which was unlikely to spark massive protests or demonstrations, but would simply allow his talk to occur in peace -- was unworthy of his time. What's the point of coming to Berkeley if you're not going to get run out of town? And so here were see the horns of the dilemma Berkeley finds itself in. On the one hand, it is facing a community (often not primarily comprised of students) which behaves in ways which are censorial and intolerable towards particular viewpoints (that these viewpoints are fairly characterized as racist ones does not justify said censorship). And so it takes steps to counteract these violent tendencies and ensure that its doors nonetheless remain open to speakers of all sorts, even the most repulsive ones, without incident. But then it discovers that actually, many of these speakers desire nothing more than to be "censored", to be "shut down", to be the proof of the intolerant liberal campus and the censorial lefties who can't handle their ideas. The worst thing that could happen to them is a Berkeley which successfully manages to enable their speech without incident. The whole point is for there to be an "incident". The whole point is to become a martyr. And so if they're not "censored," they'll just drop out and say they were anyway. And their gullible followers will eat it up. via The Debate Link http://ift.tt/2pobwd4