#he NEEDS to look punchable he NEEDS to have a hat on that sends me into a flying rage every time i see it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stealinghero · 4 years

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SO loves Zenigata but is also not thrilled about him being way so often. So they decide to tease him a bit and send him a pic of themself with a custom made bodypillow with the policeman on it and a message: "As long as you are gone, this guy has to do." Over time they send him more pics and they get increasingly silly: BP and So in bed, BP and So in the car, BP and SO at the beach, BP and SO on a roller coaster etc. Not to be mean, just to show that SO misses him and he should hurry back soon.

Somewhere this request totally went the wrong way and I made myself cry, because I think I like Zenigata more and more. (And want to punch Lupin.)

So get your tissues and punchable Lupin-shaped ballons:

At first he had thought it was a joke. When his phone signalled a new message of his lover, a photo attached, he had smiled at their silliness.

But now this was war.

13 photos. His “replacement” and his s/o doing various things he used to do with them. Eating a healthy breakfast, commuting to work, spending quality time together at the park. His s/o had even put his favourite pyjamas on this damned pillow and slept with it in the same bed he had laid awake in for so long worrying about the future.

“Are you kidding me?”

Finally, his s/o had taken the call and had answered laughing. The Inspector wasn’t laughing.

“Zeni, what’s up? Are you jealous of a pillow?”

“Trash it before I come home or I will do it.” His voice was strained, he hadn’t got enough sleep, chasing Lupin all around the globe again. That was the reason he was in this museum late at night, waiting for Lupin to show up.

“Relax. It’s not as if I have sex with it.”

“Do you love me?”

Silence on the other end of the line. A sigh.

“Koichi, you know the answer.”

“Then show me some respect.” He hung up and put the phone away.

“Trouble in Heaven, Zeni-chan?”

Without thinking he hit the grinning thief in the face, making him fall down the rope he was attached to.

“Inspector!” A policeman came running, as Zenigata realized what he had done.

“You are arrested!!”

“Tottsan…” handcuffs clicked around the wrists of the knocked out thief.

“A body pillow?!”

Yes, he knew. Lupin knew his troubles. It was a long trip from this stupid museum to the next station where he could be put in a cell. A long and lonely ride with nothing to talk about besides this phone call from earlier.

Zenigata took out his phone and showed his enemy the photos.

“Your s/o is quite cute, I give you that. But why are you pissed? It’s cute. They miss you.”

“Wipe that grin out of your face, stupid.”

“Careful with the words, you could hurt someone.”

“Shut up, or I will make you!”

Grinning the thief leaned back as far as he could in his tied up position and watched the Inspector with a gleam in his eyes.

The other man pulled his hat in his face and crossed his arms to catch a bit of sleep before he could give Lupin to his colleagues.

“Hey, cutie. I just called to apologize.”

With a shock he shoved his hat back up, only to see the thief unrestrained with his cell phone in his dirty hands and clearly talking to someone on the phone, using Zenigata’s voice.

“About the pillow? It just remembers me it could be me being with you right now.”

With a scream the Inspector wanted to throw himself at the criminal but was stopped by a sharp pain in both wrists. The fucker had cuffed him!!

“Nothing, nothing! I finally caught Lupin and I’m ready to come home as fast as possible. What? You’re proud of me? Oh, I’ll call you back in a second. This stupid thief is making a ruckus.”

He hung up and watched the policeman opposite of him.

“You should call them. I think they want to congratulate you for almost catching me.” With these words Lupin put the cell phone in Zenigata’s coat, got up and with a flick of his wrist opened the door of the police van.

“Don’t make it hard on your lover if you’ve got issues. Or I’ll steal them away.” A short wink and he was gone.

Shit.

His colleagues had laughed about him failing again. That was just what he needed. Maybe his s/o was better off with this stupid pillow. Maybe everyone was better off without him being stupid and useless again and again.

A soft vibration brought back his senses to the present.

“Yes?” he accepted the call without looking who it was.

“Zeni? You wanted to call back an hour ago.” His s/o sounded worried.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” His mind was clouded with the laughter of the world.

“He escaped, right?” Of course they knew. What other outcome could be there after he had caught Lupin?

“I’m sorry.” Words meant for everyone he had disappointed again.

“Come home, Koichi.”

“Home?” This word had meant comfort, healing, the presence of his beloved s/o. But that was before the thing now filling his place.

“To me.”

”What for? I lost. To Lupin. To a damn stuffed version of me.”

“Just come home.”

With mixed feelings he took his hat and went to get a taxi home to this damned replacement.

Only to be greeted by another pillow.

“What the…”

His s/o smiled brightly. They had welcomed him with a kiss on the cheek and had brought him to the living room.

“Your own me.”

“My… you?”

“I guess you didn’t quite catch the meaning of the stuffed you?”

He let out a sigh.

“It was clear from the start. I’m not better than a pillow. An empty shell to have fun with.”

His s/o went pale with their eyes growing big.

“But you said…”

“That was Lupin!” he let himself fall on the floor next to the table and eyed the pillow with a picture of his s/o on it. It was kind of cute, he had to admit that.

“Koichi, I want you to listen now. Don’t interrupt, just listen.”

Without strength to fight left, he nodded.

“Everytime you leave, I miss you. If you are going around the world or just going out for grocery shopping. I feel unsafe without you by my side. I can’t sleep because I worry that you are somewhere dark, hurt and dying. I’m afraid of every phone call I receive because it could be your colleagues telling me that you’re dead. And when I get like this I hug this pillow of you, because I can’t hug you. And every time I do that I pray that my hug somehow comes to you and you feel that I’m thinking about you, sending you a thousand kisses and hoping that you come home safe.”

While they were talking, he had turned away.

“The photos?” his voice was toneless.

“To remind you of the fun stuff we did and do everyday when you are with me. And a promise of all the things I want to do with you when you are back home.”

He nodded silently.

The bath, the ghost house, the ice rink, all things they had done before.

The commuting, the breakfast, the shopping, the bed, all depicting the stuff they did together everyday.

The kiss, the hug, the picnic in the park, the things his s/o wanted to do with him.

“Koichi?”

Their soft voice combined with their hand on his shoulder made him jump.

He didn’t want them to see, he didn’t want them to think badly of him.

“I’m sorry.” And with these words, he lost control.

In a fluent motion he turned around and hugged the knees of his s/o, sobbing like the big idiot he was.

“I never meant to make fun of you. You are my big and proud Inspector after all!”

When he heard the crackling voice of his s/o he looked up – only to see them crying too.

“That’s why I got you a pillow too! So I can be with you everywhere!”

How could he be such an idiot?! How could he make such an angel on earth cry?!

With a grunt he got up, wiped the tears away and hugged his s/o softly. When they were crying, he had to be there for them to protect them and to promise them that everything was going to be alright.

“Zeni?”

He murmured a response.

“I think the food is burning.”

With a broad grin he slurped the burned noodles his s/o had prepared for his return. A slump next to him, let him look in his s/o’s face, as they reached for his noodles with their own chopsticks, sharing his food.

On the table laid their cell phone with the latest photo on it: His s/o sharing a bowl of noodles with the body pillow, a writing underneath it: “Come home soon. I miss you.”

#lupin iii #zenigata

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wyrdautumn · 6 years

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The Apothetry Ithnomik

So, now that me and Jacqueline were officially a team, I wanted her help with something that’d been bothering me for a while. Given that I am a hacker of dubious moral character, I like to make a habit of breaking into any encrypted linkservs I happen to find myself in range of, just for funsies, and on the off chance I might learn something interesting, or have a chance to quietly beef up some nice person’s network so they’ll be safer from unscrupulous actors such as myself. A few months before everything started I ran into some nodes around the city that had some weird stuff floating around them, and I mean weird, at least by my standards at the time. For a while I was convinced I was looking at some kind of dog fighting ring, but, the stuff I was seeing didn’t seem much like dogs, if you follow my meaning. I had kind of decided to let it go, wrote it off as some hoax, or at least above my pay grade. None of it was cropping up near my neighborhood--and you’d best believe I was checking--so I could let it be somebody else's problem and hope I would find out it was just some kind of ARG someday.

But once I had Jacqueline on my side, I thought it would be worth another look. I took her to the last place I had picked up some suspect LMs and asked her to look around a bit, do her arcana check thing. I was kind of hoping she'd put my mind at ease, tell me I hadn’t stumbled onto some dangerous magical shenanigans, but if I had that kind of luck I wouldn’t be telling you about it. No, once we started digging, we pretty much found what you’d expect--somebody in the city was summoning monsters from demonworld and making them fight each other for sport. Even putting aside the ethical concerns--Jacqueline had a whole thing trying to explain the nature of all this, all I really got out of it was that people expect the monsters to feel pain so they do, which seems like a shitty deal if you ask me--this whole thing was obviously obscenely dangerous and was only going to end with a lot of people dead, and we were gonna have to make it our problem before it became everybody’s.

Once you knew what you were looking for, these guys weren’t too hard to track down. They were setting up this whole big arena, converting an old warehouse into a more permanent establishment for their bloodsport. Aethersport? Hard to say if those things bleed.

Anyway, we knew where they were going to be, so all we needed was a plan. Jacqueline really didn’t like the idea of going somewhere with, like, people. She was wary, didn’t want anybody seeing her, being able to track her down. Fair enough, right? Easy fix: she lives in shadows, she can hitch a ride in mine. She keeps hidden and when she does her thing we just pretend it’s my thing. All we had to do was arrange a meeting with the boss, talk him down or scare him straight, and send anything he already summoned back where it came from. So, I tracked down the ringleader on the underweb, hacked into his deck, and wrote us an invitation in the form of some malware.

It was a harmless little thing, just locked up his deck for a bit, played some spooky music, showed him this magicky sigil Jacqueline helped me design like something he might have seen before, then deleted itself and left him a spoofed “let’s talk” message with no sender. Pretty basic trickery, easy stuff once you have access to the deck, but all the effort went into presentation. Everything we had on this guy told us he didn’t really know what he was doing, and if we made it look like this was a supernatural attack and not just some copy-paste warrior level bullshit hacking he’d probably buy it. If it worked--which, of course, it did--all we'd have to do was show up for the next fight and he’d have to bring us right to him.

They built their arena out where the factories used to be, did up the interior nice and classy like some upscale nightclub from the 20s. They kept the place admirably discrete for how much they put into it, but even if we hadn't stepped in, there was no way they were gonna keep their secret for long. Maybe they thought they could pass it off as a regular speakeasy and buy their way out of prosecution when the time came. But then they probably woulda left a bunch of angry fuck off monsters rampaging through the city before it got to that point, so maybe foresight just wasn’t their thing.

I wanted to look the part, so I borrowed a few fashion pointers from Jacqueline and ran with them. I got this flowy gothy dress and witchy black jewelry, and then I threw on combat boots and a studded jacket to add a little punk touch for me. It was a sick look, honestly, and it did the trick, ‘cause I was barely there two minutes before a few burly-ass toughs dressed up like they thought they were Secret Service came around and brought me to their boss.

They called him Cowboy, on account of his whole affectation. Wide brimmed hat, southern twang, low-key aggro with a genteel frontier greed. We’re talking a guy who missed the point of a lot of spaghetti westerns. He didn’t waste any time once his goons deposited me at his table overlooking the pit. “You’re the one who sent me that message,” he said.

Obviously I was going to play it a little coy. “Maybe. I haven’t seen your messages.” That was a lie. “How should I know which one you mean?”

“The one that damn near broke my deck, of course.” It hadn’t done anything of the sort, but I put a lot of work into making him think otherwise. “You know, I figured this’d happen eventually.” He was sitting almost sideways on his booth chair, holding the neck of his whiskey with the tips of the fingers, and all I could think about was how he would seem even less cool once he inevitably dropped the thing. “Gotta be other folks in on this shit. Somebody had to write the book, after all. I knew I’d wind up catching y’all’s eye eventually.”

“Is that what this is?” I asked him in my best husky witch voice. “A cry for attention?”

“Please, darlin’, I’m not so pathetic as that. This here is just good old fashioned capitalism. Man takin’ his advantages and turnin’ them to cash, like nature intended.”

I couldn’t resist. “So you’re using the powers of the arcane to get rich quick. I suppose it’s less pathetic.”

“Heh. Had a feeling you folks’d be like that.” Cowboy grinned like a jackal. A really smug jackal you wanna punch in the face. “Cuz I’m a businessman, and I knew if y’all were businessmen--or ladies, ‘course”--yes he did say that--”and you had the kind of power I got at my hands now, let alone whatever other crazy shit I can only imagine, the world’d be run by folks like us.”

What a fucking idiot. But I needed to keep him talking. “So you’re going to offer me your business acumen.”

“Don’t get ahead of me now,” he said. He sat up for once and leaned in. He really thought he was a viper. “I still don’t know who you are. Or why you wanted to meet me in the first place. I got my ideas, but I know you have your own agenda. So tell me what you’re here for and let’s see what deal we can cut.”

The thing about knowing you’ve got all the cards is there’s not much point in lying. So I was straight with him, which, believe me, that’s not something I can say often. “I’m sure you realize I’m here to stop this.”

He just shrugged. “I figured it might be something like that.” Then he leaned back with that same punchable look. “So what will it take to change your mind? I know I can. Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered talking to me.”

This guy thought he was so clever, and he was just ludicrously wrong about absolutely everything. I needed to make him see it. “Think about this,” I told him. “That book of yours, do you even know how old it is? How many hundreds of years, do you think?”

“19th century,” he said. “Had a dealer date it for me, before I figured out what it was.”

“19th century,” I repeated. Jacqueline whispered in my ear. I followed her lead. “Been around a while, then. And you’re right, that’s just the tip of it. Knowledge you can’t fathom, back to the dawn of civilization. Old, old, old secrets. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Not especially. Everybody knows magic’s out there now, it only stands to reason there’s people who always did.”

“That’s the point. Some people did always know. And all that time, the entire history of the human race, not one person ever had the bright idea to use that knowledge for personal gain. Nobody ever thought they could take that power and run the world with it. That’s what you believe, right?”

“Well, no, when you put it that way, I’m sure somebody tried. Maybe they just weren’t any good at it.”

He really didn’t get it. “Listen to me.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “It's not gonna work. Whatever you think is different about you, you’re wrong. What you’re meddling with here is dangerous, ‘Cowboy.’” I added the sneer. Couldn’t help it. “You’re playing with fire and when you lose control it’s going to burn a lot more than just you.”

Cowboy almost seemed like he was listening, which surprised me. “Let me show you something,” he said, and he waved his hand to pull up two screens for me, one for each of the monsters he had locked up in the pit that night. There was a mean-looking two-legged coyote thing--I figured it was supposed to be El Chupacabra--and some sort of freaky lion bear snake chimera creature that, I’m gonna be honest, looked a lot grosser in real life than it would have on an album cover.

But the weird thing about them was, they were just kinda… standing there. They were moving back and forth a little bit, but their motions were repetitive, like they were stuck in some sort of idle loop. “That’s always what they do,” Cowboy said, “least til we open their cage and let ‘em at each other. They’re dumb sons of bitches, ma’am, ain’t inclined to go huntin’ for nothin’ that ain’t directly in front of their face. We let ‘em kill each other, then we shut the winner in for a few days ‘til he fades away an’ goes back wherever he came from. Any poor bastard you put in front of ‘em is gonna get ripped to shreds, sure, but it ain’t a problem so long as you don’t let any poor bastard put himself in front of ‘em.”

I’m not kidding you, that was his grand fuckin’ scheme. That was his defense! ‘This is totally safe because everything about it is the exact opposite of safe!’ It really threw me for a god damn loop. I had no clue how to respond to that. So I looked back at the screens, and I almost forgot about all the bullshit I just heard, cuz El Chupacabra was looking back at me.

I guess Cowboy saw it on my face, cuz he glanced at the screen too. “Oh, huh,” he said. “Yeah they do that sometimes. Nothin’ ever comes of it though, it’s just kinda creepy. They forget all about the camera once they catch sight of each other.”

A jingle played over the building’s speakers and an announcer told us bets were closing in 60 seconds. The lights dimmed around the room and a spotlight came on over the pit. At this point I was genuinely pretty spooked, and I looked at Cowboy and told him, “you have to call this off.”

“Relax, darlin’,” he said, and he took a big swig of whiskey. “Why don’t you just enjoy the show?”

It was hard to keep my cool, but I thought freaking out then would ruin all that effort I put into building the facade. We always thought we were gonna have to drop in on the fight and let Jacquline take care of the monsters anyway, so I figured, okay, I guess we can just stick to the plan, why not?

But it didn’t feel right. Somehow I knew we had miscalculated. I looked back at the screens, and El Chupacabra was staring back at me, I swear looking right into my eyes. Like, right into them. Almost like--well. I guess I had a hunch. So I got up. I moved away from my seat. And its eyes followed me.

“Shit,” I said.

Cowboy turned to see what I was looking at. After a few seconds, it clicked. “Shit,” he said, and I didn’t hear what he said next, because the announcer came on again and said there were ten seconds left. Cowboy held a hand up to his ear, looking concerned, and started talking to his staff, but it was too late for them to do anything I guess, because the countdown kept ticking, down to 3 seconds, to 2, to 1…

There was a loud siren. I saw the cell doors open on the monitor and both monsters charged out of the gates. I whipped around, leaned over the balcony Cowboy was using as his perch, and watched with what I would say was an appropriate amount of terror as the monsters leaped straight out of the pit onto the floor below us.

So right away there’s pandemonium, people screaming and yelling and running, tables getting bowled over by the people and by the monsters, Cowboy spilling his whiskey all over the floor. About half of the guards ran for their lives, the other half drew their guns and started firing like that was gonna fuckin’ do anything, but luckily for them El Chupacabra and his buddy weren’t interested in the bystanders. They were coming for me. Or, more likely, for Jacqueline.

Less intelligent demons don’t really know how to deal with Jackie, is the thing. Most of the time they know she’s a threat to them, and some of ‘em try to run away or give her the slip, but you’d be surprised how often they just pick the biggest threat in the room and run straight for it. Normally that suits us just fine, but Cowboy picked the exact wrong time to show some common sense. He jumped right into action, to his credit, running off to help evacuate his customers and barking orders to the staff, and the first thing he did was make sure they threw on the lights. And they had gone all out with them, like full on covering the room with floodlights, I guess for specifically this kind of situation, which is almost an admirable precaution except for how utterly futile it is. But more importantly it just really fucked us over, because a room that bright ain’t got no shadows.

Jacqueline was wavering beneath me, the faint shadow I was casting barely enough to hold her. The monsters were skidding up the stairs, El Chupacabra leaped forward and smashed the seat Cowboy had been using, everything was going wrong and I realized I was going to die. I didn’t have very many options. And I wound up doing the thing I always do when things go sideways, like seriously you’d be surprised how much this comes up--I threw myself off the balcony and hoped for the best.

Bad plan. It’s always a bad plan. I took a hard fall and smashed into the ground. I was lucky I hadn’t broken anything, but I was bruised and hurting and winded. I could feel Jacqueline’s weight shifting around in my shadow. She didn’t have much to work with, to fight the monsters or to keep me safe. I felt paralyzed. I think she did too. And I didn’t… I didn’t like what I was doing to her. I didn’t want her to have to watch me…

Well, I didn’t want to die either. And the monsters had already leaped down. They were closing in on me, cautious, afraid of whatever scent they had picked up from Jacqueline. So I spun up my deck and beamed the worm I prepared to every device I could reach. I’d hoped to do it properly, have time to slip it by anything using more than basic security, leave my fingerprints off of it, but I didn’t have much choice. All I could do was brute force it and hope it got where it needed to.

I crawled backwards as best I could, my deck vibrating madly in my pocket, worried that if I tried to scramble to my feet one of them would take the chance to pounce. The ominous tone I cooked up started playing from somewhere in the distance, then it spread across the room, one device at a time. Then I heard it coming loud, from the monitors above the pit, and the house lights blinked out all at once. I felt a lurch in my stomach and I was gone.

Before I knew it I was back on my feet, somewhere else, still in the building but I couldn’t tell where. I was disoriented, the lights were all off save for a few bright floodlights casting long dark shadows all over the room, and the red glow from the monitors I hacked gave everything this super menacing vibe. Before I could get my bearings I heard a roar and felt something coming up behind me, and I dropped to the ground.

The chimera barreled past me and tried to swerve back around. It skidded into the wall, but that didn’t slow it down. It came crashing back toward me, but I saw the shadows swirling around me and I knew I didn’t have to be afraid of it. We had already won. So I charged right back at it. It swung its paw at my head but I ducked below it, sliding beneath its underside, and I gave it a hard uppercut in its soft underbelly that did absolutely jack shit. But then a thick lance of shadow shot out from beneath me, piercing the thing straight through its middle. It writhed and roared in pain, or whatever living aether feels, and the pillar of shadow lanced out again, stabbing it from the inside with a bunch of big nasty fuck-off shadow spikes, and then the thing just… wasn’t, anymore, and the shadows receded, and the chimera was gone.

Before I knew what was happening, I felt something swinging at my head, and then I was gone too. My stomach lurched and I was somewhere else again, but El Chupacabra must have been catching on, because I barely had time to register it barreling towards me, claws ready to rip my stomach out of my gut, before I was nowhere once more.

You have to understand, Jacqueline does the shadow thing easy. It’s second nature to her, like she knows the dance so well she doesn’t even realize she’s dancing anymore. She’ll shift and shape and reform however she wants and it doesn’t phase her in the slightest. But I can’t do any of that, and I definitely couldn’t do it back then, and being shoved in and out of your entire reality like that really fucks you up when you’re not used to it. So when I tell you I was doubled over on the ground sick to my stomach in just the grossest most pathetic seasick haze, I just want to make sure you know, for the record, that I’d like to see you take it any better, all right?

But, so, okay, yes, I spent the next minute or so shaking on my knees trying not to retch, so I kind of missed the next little bit after that. But I imagine a bystander would have just seen me grappling with my super anime inner demons and exploding in a big jaggy ball of shadow rage that eradicated El Chupacabra before it could try to get another hit off, so that’s the reality I’m gonna choose to live in.

Once I managed to gather my bearings, I took off to track down our friend Cowboy and finally finish the job. Luckily I didn’t have to go far. He was very courteously waiting for me by the bar, surveying his mostly-destroyed club. As far as I could tell everybody else made a break for it. But I guess he realized we still had business.

He tried to keep himself together, but he was fidgeting nervously and avoiding my eyes. “Well. It’s fair to say a lot went wrong here. But, I will point out, those things only had eyes for you, and clearly you had ‘em licked, so frankly I don’t know who you have to blame ‘cept yourself.” I think he could tell I was stabbing his head in my mind. “But I’m not a fool, no, and you’ve made your point, so, maybe it’d be best if we worked something out. I’m not adverse to bringing in an expert when the situation calls, and havin’ somebody who can keep the beasts in check is only a fair precaution, I would think. Obviously you can’t be in the room with ‘em, but--”

“Stop talking,” I told him. I stepped forward. He flinched. He was scared of me. That was Jackie’s cue. The shadows started swirling around me again, and Jacqueline rose from my shadow, half-formed in shadowstuff, shaping herself as a demonic figure towering behind me. We advanced on Cowboy. He staggered back, swearing under his breath.

Jacqueline took over from there. “You don’t understand anything.” She made her voice raspy and deep, a slight echo of Harvey’s cocky drawl underneath it. “This, all of this, this is the misguided workings of a neophyte, dog-paddling in water deeper than the deepest ocean, arrogant and ignorant of how small he is, how dark the waves below.” Cowboy had his back against the wall. “I could unmake you with a thought, and I am a shadow of the beasts you fail to see rising up to swallow you whole.” The shadows swirled and formed into a great scythe that she held in her towering shadowy hands, perched above Cowboy’s head, ready to strike. “This is a mercy.”

The scythe came down and passed through Cowboy. He gasped and shuddered and almost fell over, but I grabbed him by the neck and stared into his eyes. “You won’t be summoning anything again. You can try, but it won’t work. It never will. Let it go and live your life, Cowboy.”

I let him drop to the ground. I’m pretty sure he passed out. So we just left him there, and hoped he learned his lesson. If not, well, at least his next scam couldn’t be any more dangerous.

...

Nah. It doesn’t work that way. But what Jacqueline keeps telling me is magic shit’s all about, like, faith. And then she walks that back because that makes it sound like she means religious faith, and it’s not that, or like it can be, but it doesn’t have to, or something. I’m not gonna pretend I get it. But I think what it’s really about is, like… the belief that things should work the way you expect them to? You gotta have confidence in what you’re doing, and that’s what she took from him. Lot of work to make a white guy feel insecure, but I guess you can’t argue with results.

#my writing #fiction #urban fantasy #cyberpunk #alexis #jacqueline #harvey #absence

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duaneodavila · 5 years

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The Shamefulness Of Being Ordinary

Was it that the cover story appeared during Black History Month? Would it have garnered less outrage a month later? Or is that just an excuse to rationalize outrage that would have happened regardless, because Esquire Magazine did something that is unacceptable in the current climate. It put a profile story of a white male teenager on its cover.

What’s wrong with this? Robyn Kanner explains.

Still, his presence in Esquire sparked rage online. Zara Rahim, a spokeswoman for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, called out Esquire for running the story during Black History Month. “Imagine this same ‘American Boy’ headline with someone who looks like Trayvon talking about what it’s like to have your mother sit you down to tell you how to stay alive,” she wrote on Twitter. Others echoed the complaint.

I can imagine it. It sounds like a great story idea, and given that Esquire says this is the first in a series about growing up in America, may well be a profile that will follow. In fact, it sounds like the sort of thing I’ve written about many times in the past, before it was fashionable to give a damn about such matters. I also can’t imagine why it would be offensive to any normal person. But that’s not an argument against this story about Ryan Morgan.

One can debate whether the article should have run a month earlier or later, or whether Esquire runs enough stories about teenage boys of color. But few if any of those criticisms actually engaged with the story itself: Was the portrait wrong? Did it add value to our understanding of America in this moment?

While many in the press attacked Esquire, others went for Ryan Morgan. Some suggested he needed to be punched. Some suggested sending him hate mail. Others just swore.

Morgan is a pretty regular teenager. Is that the new punchable kid? He’s no Nazi. He wasn’t wearing a MAGA hat or smirking at anyone. But still, he’s punchable?

The one on my mind this week is Ryan Morgan, a 17-year-old from West Bend, Wis. He’s the cover boy of the latest issue of Esquire — the subject of a story called “An American Boy” by Jennifer Percy. Morgan is a white, middle-class teenager growing up in a conservative home with parents who support President Trump. He’s a sneakerhead who loves video games and the Green Bay Packers. He hates how politics are dividing his friendships. “Last year was really bad.” he tells Esquire. “I couldn’t say anything without pissing someone off.”

Kanner uses the outrage Morgan faces as a vehicle to discuss the problems with internet shaming. Or more specifically, Kanner’s apologia for both her shame, having once supported George Bush to be part of the crowd, and her shaming of Katie Herzog for writing about transgender heresy, retransitioning.

Kanner is a transgender person, so this is allowed. Had Kanner not been a transgender person, would she have been allowed to defend a white middle class teenager whose parents voted for Trump? Does her identity at least smooth over the natural reaction that she must be a Nazi for not hating him as she’s supposed to if she were a right-thinking person?

The comments to Zara Rahim’s twit are quite harsh. That Rahim is head of communications for Hillary Clinton makes her view significant. Clinton made no bones about proclaiming herself as the Women’s Candidate. She wasn’t shy about calling anyone who failed to agree with her social views deplorable.

A lot of people were told their interests and concerns would not only be neglected, but subjugated to social justice. The left believed this was not only correct, but due, as reparations for a history of racism and sexism. Not everyone was prepared to sacrifice their life, their family, for the sake of social justice so they wouldn’t be called bad names.

The irony here is that Ryan Morgan’s family might have been fairly mainstream Democrats in past years, where the plight of working people of all races was a focus of the party platform. His story wouldn’t have been dragged on social media. Indeed, his story would have been so ordinary that it wouldn’t have been worthy of a profile. Today, being ordinary subjects one to social media outrage. If Kanner is right, Morgan will suffer from this attack for years to come, if not in perpetuity, as his named will be perpetually tied to this outrage. For being ordinary.

The argument posited by progressives is that the ordinary perpetuates all the bad things about America, its racism, sexism, bougie values and hateful capitalism, where the majority of Americans exist.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and contend that the vast majority of Americas, of all races and ethnicities, of all genders, are ordinary. They want to be happy. They want their children to be happy. They do not want to punch anyone. They aren’t Nazis. They aren’t social justice warriors. They don’t introduce themselves by offering their personal pronouns. They don’t suffer from self-diagnosed PTSD. They don’t rape anyone, physically or otherwise. They want to live and let live.

Kanner is concerned that this teenager will suffer the shaming this Esquire profile has brought him for the rest of his life.

Digital shaming is arguably the only punishment that does not have a statute of limitations. Do we really want to live in a culture like this? Where no one has the room to grow or change or become a new version of him or herself? I’d like to think that the differences between me in 2019 and me in 2004 is a sign that we all can. The question is whether we can give one another the generosity to do so.

That’s certainly a concern, and her point about there being no statute of limitations in our culture for being wrong, even awful, about something is well taken. But there is another, more fundamental question here. What does Ryan Morgan have to be ashamed of? For being a white male middle class teenager whose parents voted for Trump? There is nothing shameful about being ordinary. It’s what most of us are.

The Shamefulness Of Being Ordinary republished via Simple Justice

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