#how fucked up is it to expect our identities to be a monolith
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hm, this may sound harsh but uh... femmes and butches who claim to support and uplift other femmes/butches, but at the end of the day only actually support femmes/butches exactly like themselves should be ashamed of themselves. You're not supporting and uplifting other femmes/butches, you're uplifting yourself reflected on others just like you
#btexts#bellas butch/femme tag#if your love and support for other members of your community relies on them being a copy of you and what you are/how you describe yourself+#then youve got this all wrong#how fucked up is it to expect our identities to be a monolith#we don't hold each other accountable for the biases we push nearly enough
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drop it... i'm struggling to understand so pls drop it. how do you understand the essentiality of sex in female oppression (i do not mean this in like an anti-trans way) but also the essentiality of gender dysphoria and it's connection to gender identity and transphobia. And ultimately how do those thing relate to christianity... especially from a non-protestant christian approach?? I'm sorry i know i just asked a lot.. but i need help understanding. i promise i'm not trying to be mean /g
Firstly, it needs to be known that every single person functions under a variety of paradigms. There is no such thing as an pure unfiltered Christian perspective. There is no monolithic understanding of gender identity amongst trans or cis people. People do not exist in a vacuum, but exist within an intersections of different cultures and worldviews. You and I are likely never going to be able to fully understand anyone's perspective outside of our own. And even our own perspective is hard to grasp sometimes. I will tell you where I am coming from, but I do not expect you to fully understand me.
The Bible verse that I often meditate on a lot is Galatians 3:28. It sets up a variety of dualistic social constructs, and upheavals them. Gender is one of these constructs: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This tells us that our intrinsic nature as humans is oneness with God, and everything else are constructs of our humanity, for better or worse.
I am not the only Christian out there who does not see gender roles as God-ordained. There are a lot of saints and Christians in history that don't exactly perform their assigned gender at birth, such as St. Thecla, St. Wilgefortis, Brother Marina, and the Public Universal Friend. And in general the numerous existence of Eunichs (both involuntary and voluntary) in Christian history already disrupted the notions of a strict gender binary.
Fundamentally, I see gender as a construct, a means in which people navigate society. Like all constructions, they tend to be founded on some understanding of material reality. The capacity to reproduce and breastfeed distinguished what makes someone a "woman" in the majority of cultures. Visibly this takes the form of breasts and a vagina/uterus, but in reality, what matters is what breasts and uteri do (or are "supposed" to do). For this reason, I often find it helpful to understand traditional gender as labor categories. The category of "women" historically describes the the workforce of "reproductive labor." As with all labor, within the structures of capitalism (and any other hierarchical societies) reproductive labor is exploited. This is why sex-based oppression is "real."
I see the disruption of our notions of gender as a good thing. It helps us understand that our oppression is not intrinsic, that we don't have to comply with the labor expectations assigned to us through our gender.
I do not really know nor do I really fucking care if gender dysphoria is "essential" or not. What I do know is that dysphoria causes profound suffering for many trans people. I know for certain transitioning, physically and/or socially, can be a euphoric experience for many trans people. To deny trans people a sense of belonging in their own bodies because it makes others uncomfortable is cruel and unnecessary. I think the mere existence of the trans liberation movement helps liberate all people from being coerced or forced into gendered labor.
As for my personal identity, I am a woman because I find solidarity through the label of womanhood, not because I "feel" like a woman. There is nothing "essential" about me that makes me a woman because there is no male or female in Christ Jesus.
Many people do not see me as a woman because I refuse to participate in many aspects of femininity and am not heterosexual. Some people do not see me as a woman because I have "masculine" features due to my higher testosterone levels. And truth be told, I do not give two shits if people do not see me as a woman. I am not a woman for them, I am a woman because I find it to be an effective label to struggle against the patriarchy with. I do not need people to understand my own identity.
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I forget if you've been asked this question before, but a friend of mine is trying to write a kaiju story for kaijune, but she doesn't have much experience writing kaiju or with kaiju media, and she asked me a question I figured you'd be better at answering: What is it that makes a kaiju story truly feel like a kaiju story other than the focus on a giant monster?
That's a very difficult question to answer, so I can see why she's having problems with it. It all depends on how you define the kaiju genre, and that's a highly contentious subject. I mean, defining things always is - every definition will have people who say it's too loose for including x and other people saying it's too narrow for excluding y, and definitions of the "kaiju genre" are no exception.
I guess let's start by setting up the to extreme ends of this definition.
The most liberal definition: A Kaiju Story is any story where a giant monster/kaiju rampaging around is the central conflict of the story.
The most(?) conservative definition: A Kaiju Story is any Japanese story where a kaiju rampaging is the central conflict of the story.
Our first big takeaway here, and the thing all kaiju genre fans can agree on, is that a kaiju needs to be integral to the plot of your kaiju story. Lord of the Rings isn't a kaiju story, because while it has a big monster in it, that big monster is an incidental encounter rather than the core focus of the conflict. That's our minimum requirement for a kaiju story.
Now, I lean towards the liberal side of this issue (which is unusual for me when it comes to defining literary shit), but I'm gonna explore on the conservative side here first, because I think there's some important points to consider there. The term "kaiju" doesn't just conjure up images of any giant monster when you hear it - it brings to mind Godzilla, Power Rangers, Gamera, Ultraman, men in rubber suits, bad dubbing, etc. And what those franchises have in common that other giant monster media doesn't is a shared background in Japanese culture and history.
When I think about why I love kaiju stories even more than most other monster-focused fiction, a lot of the things that come to mind have their roots in Japanese culture. The complex characterization of the monsters has its roots in Shintoism and various folk religious that treat all things, be they human, animal, plant, or even inanimate objects, as having souls. The emphasis on living in harmony with nature comes from those same beliefs, from Buddhism, and from the mercurial nature of Japan's environment and weather. The firm themes of opposing warfare and breaking cycles of violence are born from the pioneers of the genre despising the horrors they witnessed in World War II and wanting future generations to never repeat that great mistake. Et cetera et cetera.
I think it would be mostly accurate to say there are a great many details that make Japanese giant monster stories feel more alike to each other than to non-Japanese giant monster movies. ...mostly.
But not entirely.
Because defining "the kaiju genre" as solely being a product of Japanese culture ignores the unignorable fact that Japanese kaiju movies, from the very beginning, took some inspiration from American giant monster films. There are elements of King Kong (1933) in Godzilla (1954), and the film-makers have acknowledged that much. Rodan has this great twist at the end of the first act that depends on the audience expecting it to work like an American giant bug movie, which most of the first act functions almost identical to. The movie that cemented the "Monster vs. Monster" formula at Toho was King Kong vs. Godzilla. It goes on!
And it also goes both ways - Gorgo, a film made by the creators of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth, has more in common with the Godzilla franchise in tone, themes, and its approach to its monstrous stars than it does to its Western predecessors, and the creators were open about it. Hell, they even work in explicit nods to it in the film - the island Gorgo is discovered on is called Nara Island, a Japanese name despite the island itself being off the coast of Ireland. Pacific Rim, Colossal, and Cloverfield, some of the most prominent modern American giant monster movies, were likewise explicitly inspired by Japanese giant monster films. Video games like Rampage and War of the Monsters draw influence from and make homages to monster films of both the East and West.
There's also a sort of inherent fallacy to assume all kaiju stories from Japan end up having the same themes and motifs. I don't think the Showa Godzilla films would agree with how, say, Attack on Titan portrays war. Japanese giant monster stories aren't a monolith.
If a Japanese giant monster story has content that unilaterally contradicts the content of a classic kaiju work like Godzilla, but an American giant monster movie hews to that content very closely, which is the true kaiju story? Is being made by Japanese people all that matters? Or is it the content - the themes, the tone, the approach to the monster, etc.? Where do we draw the line?
...I don't know, dude, and I don't think it's my place to be the arbiter of that.
But, in an attempt to give you something that could be vaguely helpful, here is my short list of criteria for a kaiju story that I personally would like, which isn't quite the same thing as "what makes a kaiju story a kaiju story," but is as close as you're gonna get to that when asking me:
1. The monster(s) is a character and has at least one moment of sympathy in the narrative.
2. The dichotomy of nature and civilization is at the crux of the narrative. Neither is presented as uniformly good or evil - civilization has started the conflict by causing wanton and unnecessary destruction, and nature strikes back at civilization unilaterally without distinguishing the guilty from the innocent.
3. The rampaging monster(s) is a direct consequence of civilization fucking things up - bombs waking up prehistoric monsters, greedy CEOs steal a monster's egg to make a profit without a care for what the parent may do to get it back, genetic engineering creating deadly mutants, aliens who represent the dark potential future of humanity if we keep going down a selfish, warlike path set loose monsters as their personal soldiers, etc.
4. The story is explicitly anti-war, anti-capitalist, and pro-environmentalism.
5. Conventional weaponry is incapable of defeating the monsters.
6. No matter how things shake out, humanity is humbled by their encounter with the monsters, and either learns to do better or suffers for their hubris and arrogant desire to dominate the world.
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Black Magic and Defense Against the White Arts: Assimilation, Identity, and Purpose in Higher Education and the Internet
Black Student Union and Black Caucus are two very different organizations that, in their respective series, serve an important narrative purpose: to introduce the audience to what Blackness is on a certain college campus and how that Blackness congregates into something that resembles a community. In BLACK ENOUGH, the Black Student Union (Weston) is Blackness as multifaceted yet unified - whether you were from Queens or the Caribbean, whether you wore your hair in afros or in braids, if you fit a broad (but admittedly not broad enough) definition of Blackness, you were to be part of the one (non-Greek) Black organization on campus. In Dear White People, however, Black Caucus shows Blackness as an alliance: the Caucus was not a unified entity, more so a forum for various different Black organizations to congregate and discuss the tea of the week; these organizations included CORE, Black AF, the Black Student Union (Winchester), and the African-American Student Union.
I wonder which entity Amaya may have fit better in during her Black Welcome Week - if both Black Student Union and Black Caucus existed, which would she have chosen, if either at all? It’s important to acknowledge that both Weston and Winchester are PWIs/HWIs, with long histories of slavery and segregation; in these institutions, Black people don’t exactly have the luxury of bountiful representation in bodies of power - they have to make their own spaces where they can, whether in 1965 or 2021. As a result of lack of representation, a lot of racism (especially microaggressions) is perpetrated and it is a chore to get White people (and even some Black people) to understand the impact of these incidents. In “Algorithms of Oppression”, Safiya Umoja Noble details how Black minorities in our physical world manifest in the digital as machines, systems designed to oppress Black people. Part of resisting this coded manifestation of White supremacy is to build Black communities, and this is where Noble and BLACK ENOUGH share a common ground: they both make the digital part of their framing with #BlackGirlMagic and “#BlackGirlMagicPotion”. The act of making a hashtag is the act of putting a flag in the ground and summoning people to it in order to build a city around this phrase and ideals that underlie it. #BlackGirlMagic celebrates the multitude of ways in which Black women and girls exist and thrive and create and challenge in a world that is intent on tearing them down on all fronts. On the flip side, though, “#BlackGirlMagicPotion” exposes what happens when certain Blacknesses are excluded from the equation, barred from the city. Amaya is kept out of #BlackGirlMagic yet is constantly invited inside anyway; even if she’s constantly asked to join the Black Student Union, it is with the expectation that she needs to majorly change. Amaya dances with White groups instead of going to Black parties, she doesn’t say “finna” and she can’t really twerk, she relaxes her hair instead of wearing it natural, and this all implicitly makes her a pariah in some Black spaces.
When people talk about Black culture and Black community, they often have a very monolithic notion of what that entails: rap and hip-hop, Malcolm X and W.E.B Dubois, dreadlocks and baby curls, fuck the police and free the Black brutha. Growing up, I didn’t identify with much of any of this, and it instilled in me a pervasive anti-Blackness (especially against Black men) that I am still trying to unlearn to this day. The complexities of identity are often controlled by White simplicity. You actually care about school? Black people don’t care about school, so you’re not really Black - you’re better than them, something else… something White. The many Black characters that Amaya interacts with speak a thousand words with their looks at her: she spends too much time with White people, she’s forgotten how to be Black. While this perspective has some merit, it doesn’t capture the whole picture. What I am continuing to learn is that Blackness is everywhere and in everything - there is nothing out there for White people that Black people haven’t carved out space for themselves in - nerd- and geekdom, for example, can be magnificently Black spaces, even if stereotypes of Black people would refuse to acknowledge that.
Amaya’s journey, like my own, is one where she learns that she doesn’t need to be the Black girl others expect her to be; she can make her own Blackness, using the ingredients of her own lived experiences, to create a new, unique, and just-as-great #BlackGirlMagicPotion. And just as Amaya comes to embrace this in Weston’s halls, we too can embrace our own potions in the digital realm; social media a dangerous yet powerful tool for community-building and self-loving. Thanks to social media, Black people around the world have been able to meet each other and break down cultural barriers that would otherwise have kept them apart. Still, we must be vigilant - Noble is not starry-eyed about the role of technology in Black lives, but she still offers hope for a future where, if we are critical, we can survive and may even start to change that which oppresses us, that our Black magic potions can be potent defenses against the White supremacist arts.
-Jonathan
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Rebirth of A Samurai (Part 3)
Summary: This fic is a what if scenario to SMT4 Apocalypse. I would go into more detail, but I don’t want to spoil too much of what this fic entails. If this fic gains traction I may continue the story on from this one-shot. Warning: This is a long one.
This may be the last I write for awhile with college right around the corner. I won’t stop completely, but it will become a lot slower.
“Shhh...don’t say that Flynn is supposed to be having a nice dream.”, Flynn’s mother said.
“Who the fuck are you? Your not my mother she might have been controlling and overbearing, but she had a good heart. She was never a colossal bitch even to Issachar.”, Walter questioned.
“Your mother? Are you Flynn’s…? No he’s not he’s...we’re...I-I’m not Issachar!”, Issachar said.
“What are you saying of course your Issachar!”, Not-Flynn’s mother said.
“No, I’m not Issachar! And their not Jonathan, Walter, and Isabeau! We’re the fifth son, Flynn Alexander!”, Not-Issachar rebuked.
The prentices eyes widened.
“I’m not…? I’m not Jonathan?”, not-Jonathan questioned.
“Think! Do you know your parents' names? What’s the first thing that springs to your mind? How about where you live?”, not-Issachar questioned.
“I-I...Why am I imagining…? Wait, I don’t know where Jonathan lives. I've never been there. Not even before or after he became Merkabah I just never had time to.”, not-Jonathan said.
“Merkabah? Why does that…? That’s right Jonathan became Merkabah and Walter became Lucifer! I fought them!”, not-Isabeau said as her eyes widened.
“Hoy?! What are you guys...Wait I fought Merkabah too but I didn’t fight Lucifer I helped him!”, not-Walter said.
“That’s right, we're the fifth son. You who looks like Jonathan you chose preservation. You who looks like Walter you chose upheaval. You who looks like Isabeau you chose neutrality. And I who looks like Issachar...I chose to unmake the world. I chose nihilism.”, not-Issachar revealed, after he did there was an audible crack in seemingly reality.
“Hoy, that means there’s a version of me that chose law? Ah gross…”, Not-Walter said.
“The feeling is mutual.”, Not-Jonathan said with disgust in his eyes looking at not-Walter.
“No wonder I thought you guys really were Jonathan and Walter. You sure butt heads like they eventually did.”, Not-Isabeau responded with a light chuckle.
Not-Flynn’s mom’s eyes were shadowed as the world around them went silent. Everyone around them froze in place before turning on them.
“You shouldn’t be here, interlopers.”, Not-Flynn’s mom said.
“I know we shouldn’t normally. Our memories of the previous cycle’s are usually mostly dormant in our subconscious, but you’re tampering with the current Flynn’s mind has called us here, Krishina!”, Not-Issachar explained.
A demonic smile identical to the one on Flynn’s face when he was possessed appeared on not-Flynn’s mom’s face. He dropped the disguise revealing himself as Krishina.
“Get away from us! I mean Flynn! I mean stop!”, Not-Issachar said as he pulled a samurai said as he pulled out a samurai sword from thin air and the others drew theirs.
Flynn's past lives memories were normally kept in his subconscious to prevent them from driving him insane. They are basically the embodiment of his memories of those past lives. He remembers they awakened when Krishna started messing with the current Flynn’s mind. They were awakened to stop him from turning him into a mindless puppet. However, when then entered the illusion their minds were tampered with like the current Flynn’s made to believe they were other people so Flynn didn’t instantly realize something was wrong. He could tell by looking in Flynn’s eyes those times. He was slowly losing his own will. He could feel he was dangerously close to losing what’s left of it. That’s why Krishna had so much power in his mind now. He created this illusion after his fellow Divine Powers tortured him for days to break him.
“My kalki is almost ready for our fight with YHVH and I’m afraid I don’t have much time for you since I’m dealing with another interloper right now. Let’s see if you can defeat your own mind. Well I won’t but...well see you later kalkis.”, Krishna said before disappearing.
“Pfft! Is this the best you can do Krishna? You should know better than to underestimate the king of Tokyo! I can beat this entire village alone!”, Not-Walter boasted.
As if Krishna heard him, demons, angels , gods, and even humans appeared from all around them. Every single person or creature they had ever fought throughout the cycles was here, even the likes of Lucifer, Merkabah, Ancient of Days, Sanat, and Masakado.
“You just had to say that didn’t you?”, Not-Jonathan questioned, with a priceless look on his face.
“Aww man...this is gonna be awesome!”, Not-Walter said.
Not-Jonathan’s eyebrow twitched incredulously.
“How in YHVH’s name did I become you?”, Not-Jonathan questioned in complete disgust.
“You probably got sick of that pole up your ass and decided to actually live a little in your next life.”, Not-Walter replied.
“Simmer down guys, we gotta work together for now. Even if it’s just a temporary truce.”, Not-Isabeau said getting between the two.
“For now, after all it would be a tragedy if I was forced to fight my lord.”, Not-Jonathan replied.
“Your lord is the reason we’re in this freaky time loop. But, I guess I’ll tolerate your high strungness for a bit longer. I’d hate to lose my free will.”, Not-Walter replied.
“Just uh wow…”, Not-Issachar said, amazed to see how extreme some of his other selves were.
“I guess this is what we would have been like had we fallen into ‘monolithic extremes’ as Isabeau called it. But, now is not the time for that, the people need us.”, Not-Isabeau said.
“Uh yeah…!”, Not-Issachar replied, feeling awkward since he chose nihilism.
Even now not-Issachar regretted his cowardice in choosing that choice. Unlike the other Flynn’s he did fervently believe in the path he chose.
They called upon their own demons from their respective cycles. Not-Walter rushed into a horde of demons with reckless abandon, slicing them into bits. Not-Jonathan swiftly beheaded Hope without any emotion. He then stayed back observing their enemies and exploiting their weaknesses. Not-Isabeau used Antichthon which was effective against basically everything, vaporizing low to mid and even some lower high tier demons instantly. For those it didn’t it lowered their overall performance crippling their offense and defense. Not-Issachar rushed to Flynn now that Krishna was nowhere in sight. However as he did he was stopped by his dad.
Not-Issachar froze facing his father still remembering finding his mangled form on that fateful day.
“Sorry dad.”, Not-Issachar apologized, before instantly vaporizing him with Antichthon.
He looked all over for Flynn before finding him unconscious. He ran over to him, shaking him awake. Not-Issachar looked relieved as he started to stir.
“Issachar?”, Flynn questioned sleepily.
That relief faded when he felt a sword get thrust through his chest. He knew that was a bit too easy. What he did expect was for him to transform into a giant fiery snake.
“I-I don’t remember that happening?! It must have been Krishna. You're a decoy.”, Not-Issachar said.
“I am Shesha. I fooled you like I fooled your little dim witted Tokyo.”, Not-Flynn said.
“You did what…”, Shesha nearly flinched when he heard the low angered tone of Not-Isabeau.
He could practically feel the anger radiating off her umm...him? Well he was Isabeau right now kinda. Anyway, Not-Isabeau practically launched herself at Shesha. They flew through the building creating a massive hole in the house.
“Then where’s Flynn?”, Not-Issachar questioned.
He looked around the remains of the house and ran through the battlefield making sure to punch Tayama when he saw him. Throughout the carnage he noticed a calm spot like the eye of a storm. That was it he rush through to see an unconscious Flynn guarded by Odin, Maitreya, and Great Innana. They haven’t personally fought them like Shesha so this was more of Krishna’s manipulation. His demons came to his side Quetzalcoatl, Tiamat, and Orochi. He was having a tougher time than the others due to having weaker demons since his cycle ended prematurely. He was able to defeat Innanna and greatly wound Matrieya, but he was tiring and Odin killed off his demons.
“Heh, despite not being the first, you're definitely the weakest incarnation of our godslayer.”, Odin taunted as he prepared to finish him off.
He closed his eyes as Odin thrust his spear forward and a loud crackle of lightning rippled through the air.
“Odin! You bastard, you embarrassed my current self by knocking him out and kidnapping him! I’m going to tear your head off like I did to the Odin of my cycle!”, Not-Walter yelled as he jumped out from a horde of dead demons and launched himself at Odin like a madman.
Odin was too low to turn his attention to not-Walter as he was nailed in the gut by Deadly Wind. He gasped in pain, flinching and dropping his spear as not-Walter smiled devilishly. Matrieya tried to attack but not-Walter grabbed his face and vaporized him with Antichthon.
“Hoy, get up Flynn!”, Not-Walter said as he kicked the unconscious Flynn much to not-Issachar’s horror.
He cringed as he heard Flynn wince.
“Argh!!! Walter stop! Wait Walter? How do I know your name?”, Flynn questioned.
“Because none of this is real and you’ve gotta get your ass up and kick the shit out of that fedora wearing god!”, Not-Walter explained poorly.
“I-I what?!”, Flynn questioned, reasonably confused.
Not-Issachar tried to explain the situation to Flynn properly, leaving out anything about his past lives letting him believe they were just versions of his friends created by his mind. Reasonably Flynn looked shocked and skeptical, but he also saw Kiccigiori was now a massive battleground full of demons, angels, gods, and humans.
“T-there’s no way it c-can’t…”, Flynn mumbled, tears forming in his eyes looking around at the battle.
“Tough shit! That’s the truth Flynn! Our family is dead, Issachar’s dead, Jonathan’s dead, Walter’s dead and now Isabeau!”, Not-Walter said harshly.
Flynn stepped back looking incredibly shaken to his core.
“Have some tact!”, Not-Issachar yelled at not-Walter.
“We don’t have time for tact! He has to man up and wake the fuck up now or we’re done for good!”, Not-Walter yelled back angrily.
Flynn’s head hung low, covered by his bangs. Not-Issachar put a reassuring hand on Flynn’s shoulder.
“It may seem all dark now, but don’t give into despair like I did.”, Not-Issachar told him.
“You can’t go Flynn! You have to stay here with us! That’s what you want right Flynn? That’s what you always wanted! You never wanted to make the tough decisions! You just wanted to be a follower!”, another Not-Flynn’s mom said with another fake version of his dad by her side.
Tears fell from Flynn's face as he met his fake mom’s gaze. She opened up her arms to welcome him. Flynn shook, walking over to their side.
“You can’t be serious! You're even weaker than that quitter over there!”, Not-Walter roared in rage.
“I’m sorry…”, Flynn apologized quietly.
“Flynn…”, Not-Issachar murmured, sinking his head in defeat.
“...Mom...Dad...But there's nothing left for me here. You guys are dead, so is Issachar, and the village is in tatters. I let myself fall victim to this illusion because I wanted it to be real. I wanted your deaths to all be a horrible nightmare, but it’s not. It’s real and because I bought into this illusion more people...people I was supposed to protect are dead. I have to go back.”, Flynn said, with a steely resolve turning from his fake parents.
“No! Don’t abandon us again! I didn’t raise you to be heartless man who would walk out on his own family!”, his fake father yelled.
“Kiss our ass Krishna!”, Not-Walter yelled back smugly, flaunting Odin’s decapitated head as a trophy as Flynn walked towards them slowly picking up speed.
His clothes started to flicker out from his peasant garb to his samurai garb. Suddenly everything went white.
“Haha! He has spoken! You have now regained your right to create a world messiah Flynn! Let’s see if you fight to keep that right!”, the voice from his dream at the beginning of his adventure said.
When he reopened his eyes he saw a familiar teen with a half shaved head of brown hair and eerie glowing green eyes. He wore a green jumpsuit and had glowing green celtic tattoos, Nanashi. By his side were his own demons Anubis, Shiva, and his own Odin. It seemed he was in the middle of battle with him. He felt the weight of a pink lotus in his hands making him realize he was transformed like before. He was doubled over as Nanashi prepared to strike him down.
“Isabeau...what happened to Isabeau?”, he asked.
“Huh? Why are you asking, didn't I tell you, Krishna?”, Nanashi asked.
Vishnu-Flynn’s eyes were shadowed as he asked and Dadga’s eyes widened in realization.
“Wait there kid!”, Dadga tried to warn in his odd accent.
“I killed her like I did to the others before facing you. Heh, she called out Flynn’s name till the end. She was just another useless bitch like Asahi.”, Nanashi taunted, thinking he’d won.
He didn’t fully mean that he felt a bit bad about killing the others after everything, especially after actually carrying out their deaths, but it was far too late to turn back now.
“Heh, he’s shaking. Krishna must be scared now knowing I beat the others.”, Nanashi thought.
Honestly the whole point of telling him of his betrayal was meant to intimidate him. After all, he knew his former friends weren’t complete slouches. To be fair he died a few times fighting them. He killed them because he knew they would oppose the path he took.
However, Vishnu-Flynn was not shaking from fear...it was unbridled rage. The entire area around them was filled with a powerful aura of bloodlust. Nanashi was going to swing down at him with Masakado’s katana, but he couldn’t feel his arm. He looked over only to gaping in horror when he saw his hand had been severed without him even noticing. His hand still holding the katana stabbed into the ground behind him. Nanashi’s eyes widened in absolute shock.
“You fucked up there kid. That’s not Krishna.”, Dadga said.
Before he could even react his body his head was cut clean off by Vishnu-Flynn’s next strike. Nanashi tried to bite back the intense pain circulating throughout him. Normally no one would know the pain of their head being severed due to dying instantly, but since Nanashi was immortal he felt all of it and he howled in pain.
“You!!! How dare you! I saved you! I trusted you! And you killed one of the only people I had left!”, Vishnu-Flynn roared full of venom.
He stood up to his full towering height with two new detached arms and four new red laser swords.
“Ah, Flynn! He’s Flynn. Did he have to go for my head?”, Nanashi thought as his body started to regrow itself.
Nanashi gasped in pain as he was torn apart by Vishnu-Flynn’s blades again before he could regrow his body fully. A loud crackle of thunder slammed down at Vishnu-Flynn which he blocked with his swords. Which hummed only powered up by the lightning. He turned his attention to Nanashi’s demons. He dodged a Mamudoon launched by Anubis. He swiped his arms not releasing his full magical power which was dormant while under Krishna’s control and used Antichthon on Anubis nearly vaporizing him on the spot and severely crippling him. He finished off the god with a single strike to his blade. Shiva launched himself at him and the two were locked in a dangerous dance of blades. Shiva was skilled certainly, known as the destroyer in the polytheistic religion he was technically apart of right now as Vishnu-Flynn. However, Flynn was very very pissed off. When he was pissed off he didn’t slip up no...he became more skilled and more merciless in combat. Besides he’s already fought Shiva before and he knows the way he fights. Vishnu-Flynn turned the tide against Shiva putting him on the back burner as Odin tried to shoot lightning at him.
Dadga gaped genuinely impressed as Vishnu-Flynn danced around Odin’s lightning and fought Shiva at the same time. The difference between Flynn and Krishna fighting was like the difference between Heaven and Earth. Krishna certainly wasn’t a slouch, but he was primarily a schemer who used what most would consider more underhanded tactics and trickery to win fights. Flynn however was a godslayer in every meaning of the world. Dadga felt he truly understood what exactly made someone a godslayer when he saw Flynn fight. Flynn reacted to and attacked on pure instinct like a demon. However, he attacked with the skill and precision of a human. His skill in question was truly staggering on the level of no...even surpassing the best warrior gods as he was completely overpowering and nearly toying with Nanashi’s demons.
He finished healing up his godslayer who took a deep inhale as his body finally reformed after being mangled badly by Vishnu-Flynn. Nanashi tried to regain his bearings and prepared to attack Vishnu-Flynn. It took much longer and was much more draining for Dadga than usual because usually not as much of Nanashi had to be healed when he revived him. Usually the kid might get stabbed in the heart, decapitated, or even instant killed, but those weren’t as hard for him to fix.
“That man is a real monster.”, Dadga thought, feeling nervous for the first time he started his campaign to kill all the gods and recreate the universe.
This man didn’t have the ability to revive as he pleased and he was merely a human. Well...he wasn’t right now, but he usually was. At least Krishna had good taste that’s exactly why he planned to steal his godslayer from him.
Vishnu-Flynn dodged Odin’s spear strike causing him to pierce Shiva. With a swipe of his hands Vishu-Flynn obliterated the two with Shine More like Anubis not even leaving a trace behind for Nanashi to revive. Nanashi concentrated and launched a Deadly Wind at Vishnu-Flynn. More demons had replaced his fallen ones: Great Innanna, Isanami, and Xi Wangmu.
Vishnu-Flynn dodged his attack shot forward faster than Nanashi could comprehend and sliced him into bits again this time using Dark Nandaka on his bits. His demons turned to Vishnu-Flynn completely stunned at his speed. Before Great Innanna could even act she was decapitated. Xi Wangmu shot a Ziodyne at him which he easily dodged before cleaving both her and Izanami into bits. With a swipe on his hands he vaporized their remains with Shine More.
Fear grew within Dagda as Nanashi hadn’t even fully regrown himself before Flynn slashed him into bits mercilessly. He knew Nanashi didn’t have many demons left to use and Flynn was killing all of them permanently. His slashes grew so fast all Dagda saw was a storm of blades. Before that he could count about 10000 strikes per millisecond, but now all he saw was a blur. He was killing Nanashi faster than he could revive him. Dadga had a hard time keeping track of if Nanashi was dead or alive since he died so fast.
Krishna was extremely pleased. While his kalki had broken free of his contract he was now completely embarrassing Nanashi and his forces which gave him no small amount of satisfaction. As well as having a front row seat to the true magnificence of his kalki. He was content to sit back and let his godslayer do the work in killing Nanashi. Of course, there was the obvious problem that he was no longer in control of Flynn, but he could fix that in time. For all he knows Flynn can go ahead and kill YHVH while he’s at it, then he can swoop in at the right time, steal control, and achieve salvation. So, yeah Krishna was pretty content sitting back and munching on imaginary popcorn while his kalki went berserk.
Dadga was sweating now as he was greatly drained by how many times he had to revive Nanashi in this fight alone. When he told his godslayer he could die as many times as he wanted he was joking. He never thought he would actually have to revive him this much consecutively against anyone besides YHVH. Dagda was a god, but even he had his limits. A limit he was dangerously close to hitting. Even his reserves weren’t infinite.
Nanashi hardly had a second to think before he was continuously violently torn apart by the man his more naive self once idolized. He had time to feel though. Absolute horror and terror. He had honestly thought he was up to Flynn’s level by now after all he’s killed many gods, demons, and angels at this point. Confident he could beat him if Krishna happened to seduce him to his cause like Dadga to him. Defeating his former friends and beating down Vishnu-Flynn only further bolstered his confidence that he was truly unbeatable. However, he now realized how completely wrong he was. He had never been anywhere near Flynn’s level. He was beating down Vishnu-Flynn because that fop with a flute was in control, not the true Flynn. He had his power no...not even all of that he swore when he sensed his magic power earlier it had nearly doubled. Though, that may be because how enraged Flynn currently was. His intense rage may be boosting his magic to ridiculous heights. Finally, his skill...was absolutely monstrous. He thought Isabeau and Gaston were pretty good, but this man was on a completely different dimension of skill from the both of them. He wasn’t exactly educated in such things, honestly he relied more on magic than anything, but he understood that he was kicking his ass worse than anything has in his whole life with freaking swords alone. He shuttered from deep within his soul with unparalleled fear. He wasn’t sure he could get out of this especially since he didn’t look like he was tiring. Tiring was an easy thing for someone like him to exploit. He was basically a zombie so he never got exhausted and Dadga healed his wounds upon death. Stamina and his immortality was his overwhelming advantage against everyone he faced. However, now he was honestly cursing it. This is what he imagined hell was like continuously dying infinitely and instantly with absolutely nothing he could do to get out of it. For an immortal like him this is exactly what hell was like. This was one of the best arguments against having immortality, endless suffering.
A deeper part of him...Akira shuttered in horror at the sight...no the very idea of Flynn’s rampage. What had he done to Ryou? He wasn’t like this. Ryou was always a kind, gentle soul. He was skilled, yes, but not to this...to such an inhuman degree. He remembered how Ryou would feel bad about even killing demons. He was a complete wreck after killing Kiyoharu and Kenji to stop their insane plans. He most certainly wasn’t ever the type to anger. He was more often than not a mediator between the more hot-headed members of the Counter-Demon Force. For such a kind, loving soul to be reduced to this blind bloodlusted demonic rage...It broke Akira’s heart to see his dear friend like this. Any sense of mercy and kindness was gone from the eyes of his incarnation replaced with anger and bloodlust. He still remembered the day he lost him. The day he sacrificed himself not unlike his current incarnation did to save Asahi. He knew then that he was truly his old friend reborn. But now that was all gone...Because of his own actions he turned Ryou into this monster before him. He unsealed Krishna who stole him away and merged with him. He made him completely snap by killing that girl Isabeau. He felt the worst chill down his spine when he heard Vishnu-Flynn start to chuckle. He was enjoying this?! The pure hearted self sacrificing idiot Ryou was enjoying this?!
“What the fuck have I done?”, Akira thought in complete horror from deep within Nanashi.
“Ryou! Ryou! Stop, please! Snap out of this! This isn’t you!”, Akira begged his voice cracking as he did so, knowing full well he couldn’t hear his begging.
No no someone had to stop him before he completely lost his humanity.
Flynn was beyond being enraged that word hardly encapsulated the fire he felt from within his soul. Even before all of this he had lost so many people close to him, his parents and Issachar. He still remembered the deep horror he felt when he realized...he killed his own mother without even realizing it. Once that guy apologized about not being able to help his parents his mind went completely blank. He killed every demon in his way without an ounce of mercy as he desperately searched for them. He didn’t know that one of the camazotzs was his mother. He didn’t know any of the demons in the forest were his fellow villagers at that point. When he found out he completely broke down. It was difficult to hide from the others he had to put on his own iron mask so they didn’t see him completely break down. He realized it when he finally found his father. He was still human, a bit mangled and in serious need of medical attention, but he was alive. But, then his hopes were completely dashed…
Flashback
It was after their first encounter with the black samurai, Lilith. Extreme relief entered his eyes when he saw one of the medics had his father. His fellows were off to themselves right now. He practically ran over to him when he saw him hope that his mother may be alive too bubbled up inside him. He didn’t expect his father. His strong, loving father to look absolutely terrified when he saw him. He was extremely confused when his father jumped back squirming away from the doctor when he saw him. That’s when he knew something was horribly wrong. He looked over his uniform checking for blood which may have spooked him. He gasped when he realized he had quite a lot on him. How did he not notice? He was just so focused he completely blotted out everything else.
“W-wait dad I can explain-“, He stuttered.
“S-stay away from me! Y-you turned into a-a m-monster like your mother did didn’t y-you?! Y-you here to finish me off!”, his father accused completely hysterical.
“M-my mother?! Mom...she….”, He muttered before he completely froze.
He pulled out a wooden sword guard shaped not unlike a flower from his pocket. It was badly worn, cracked, and had blood spattered on it. He recognized it as the one from the toy sword his mother made from him which he used to use to spar with Issachar. His mother may have disliked his friend, but she acknowledged that Flynn as a kid needed a friend to play with. Despite her distaste she made that toy sword full of love hoping he’d have lots of fun with it. He found it after he killed a demon which at the time confused him. He remembered the demon rushing up to him, but it wasn’t attacking strangely. He was too out of it though...when he fought he entered this state where he completely lost control over himself...He was just fighting blindly not thinking of anything else. He had no idea how it happened...it just did. He remembers coldly cutting down the demon that approached him without remorse. Thinking about it now he felt deeply sickened and revulsed by himself. Especially after realizing only now he was covered in blood. This feeling only worsened when he put two and two together.
That demon was his mother. He killed his mother.
He felt extremely lightheaded and nauseous now. His breathing became extremely heavy. His eyes widened at the realization.
“Ah! Ah!”, he gasped in complete horror.
He felt like he was about to have a panic attack as he clutched chest. He shook uncontrollably, hardly able to form coherent words as he imagined his mother’s warm smile. The doctor looked alarmed hearing the incoherent distressed noises he was making. For the first time he felt his soul wail. He completely collapsed on the ground. His father was right, he was a monster. He killed his own mother!
Flashback end
His father was deemed to be under demonic possession and had an exorcism performed on him which killed him. He wasn’t possessed, he was driven insane by seeing the woman he loved turn into a demon and thought the same thing happened to his son when he came over to him covered in blood! He killed Issachar too; he begged him to do so, but he didn’t want to lead his best friend to only suffer more. Then, Jonathan and Walter he knew they were dead from his illusionary Walter’s words. He still wishes he could have done something like awaken them from inside the beings that stole their bodies. However, he couldn’t they died as Lucifer and Merkabah twisted embodiments of their ideals. Isabeau...He didn’t kill her directly, but it was his fault she died. If he had woken up sooner rather than letting himself fall prey to Krishna’s illusion he could have saved her. No he should have never let himself be captured by the Divine Powers! He should have found another way to save Asahi and escape...Everything that has happened over these past few days, everyone who died because of the Divine Powers and Nanashi, they were all on his hands. H-he felt like he was close to snapping a morbid chuckle was coming from his lips as he tore Nanashi apart. Surely he didn’t deserve this even with the horrible things he’s done. He was just a kid, for all he knew that being that made him like this manipulated him into doing all this.
A deep part of Flynn...Ryou didn’t want to believe Akira would do something so horrible. Surely not? It had to be a mistake. Akira would never do something so heartless…right? But...Kiyoharu and Kenji did. They were his best friends since childhood he knew them so well yet they changed into something unrecognizable from their former selves. Then, they committed horrible atrocities for what they believed in before he struck them down himself. He personally saw through Flynn’s eyes the horrible words he would have created if he sided with them. Even that deep part of him didn’t seem sure of anything anymore. Nothing seemed to work. He remembers more than Flynn does. He remembers his past lives where he followed four different paths. He despised most of them except the third path, the neutral path which for some odd reason was going very differently in this cycle. He chose that third path again, but it seems like everything has only gotten worse for some reason. If Flynn didn’t wake up sooner then everything...everything he had fought for, sacrificed himself for would be gone. He knew more than Flynn, he could see Krishna’s memories; he knew the depravity of Dadga’s selfish plan. It was...Childish. He understood defeating YHVH, but that’s where it ended. Destroying the entire world, the world people had out there heart and soul into bettering and protecting just because you wanted the world to be ‘your’ ideal it was...beyond selfish. That plan spat on all the hard work and sacrifices humanity has made to better their world. Krishna wasn’t a saint either; he was nearly just as bad with his forced salvation plan. At least he had some love for humanity...even if it was twisted. But, Dadga’s plan was undoubtedly worse. This foolish god seriously believed that all a person needed was themselves. That’s completely wrong for a god of knowledge he sure didn’t know much. Humans were social creatures by nature; they needed each other to survive. No one is perfect and his world would be undoubtedly polluted by his own biases and cruel beliefs. Besides how was Ryou supposed to honestly believe that someone willing to sacrifice their allies and even the whole universe was going to be a more benevolent ruler than YHVH? He already was like YHVH, manipulating and sacrificing people for his own ends. They were exactly the same...It would be the same cruel world YHVH created just with a new face in control. It completely tore him up that Akira was actually a part of this depraved plan. He wanted to cling onto the idea he was manipulated and controlled but...He remembers destroying Tokyo he sacrificed himself for with his own hands alongside the angels. He remembers filling the world with demons and ruling over the hell on Earth he created. He remembers unmaking the world in a moment of weakness. He made these same horrible mistakes and he did those same horrible atrocities as the others. He had become the same if not worse than them.
Ryou still wanted to forgive, but he could hardly forgive even himself anymore. He felt bad for his current self; he was just as distressed and confused as he was, except he didn’t fully understand why. Despite his past lives memories being locked up he still had feelings and echoes of those lives within himself. From his law cycle he had obtained the ability to completely shut everything else out and focus on a singular goal no matter how depraved. His magic power had carried over and growled continuously stronger with every cycle. His inhuman level of sword skill was also for that life mostly from strangely after his death. After his death he became an angel for a confusing amount of time not even he was sure how long. Something that still deeply revulsed him. He remembers having a divine sword then YHVH gave him. Honestly, he didn’t remember the name, but honestly he just wanted to forget any of that happened. He became YHVH’s sword, cutting down anything that opposed him, even fellow messiahs for other worlds. He understood it was a long time, but he wasn’t sure how long than his ‘forgiving’ god shoved him back into the cycle he decided on as his punishment for saving Tokyo from his wrath as soon as he was done with him. Unbelievable...If there’s one being he truly hated it was YHVH. From his chaos cycle he gained the ability to completely give into his instincts and battle using instinct alone. Along with that rage he didn’t remember having. That alone has caused many troubles for the current Flynn especially what’s...currently transpiring. It even affected him. Making him go completely berserk at times if he felt really angry or got too into a battle. Without that cycle he would have never...Not even in his law cycle enjoyed hurting others. The king of Tokyo enjoyed a lot of things he disagreed with because he didn’t care. His heart had been turned rotten by Lucifer and he stopped caring about anyone, but himself. Honestly, his nihilism cycle didn’t contribute much, but his revulsion with his previous cycles unknowingly affected Flynn’s decision in that cycle to unmake the world. From his neutral cycle he combined his law cycle’s skill with his chaos cycle’s instinct to create a deadly combination in battle. He didn’t have as much time to refine his combat as his law cycle, but he still did improve it in the lifetime he had along with his magic like his other cycles. That first time he chose neutral was the happiest one that he hoped would stick; however, that hope was dashed when after a long and fulfilled life he woke back up at Lake Mikado again. However , that life influenced this Flynn to choose neutral again. He guessed he was still trapped because YHVH wasn’t done with him yet. He suspects YHVH wasn’t happy with him having an enjoyable cycle even if it wasn’t perfect. So, this time things changed he was prevented from removing the firmament and he was captured by the Divine Powers. Now, Akira was trying to destroy the world he once defended like he did. He could practically imagine YHVH laughing in his face while they killed each other.
“Please stop this Akira! We shouldn’t be fighting each other! Please forgive him Flynn! I know you’re hurting I can feel your pain! Please!”, Ryou begged, sobbing uncontrollably.
A less forgiving part of him couldn’t help but take pleasure in tearing Nanashi to shreds. He is the one who killed Isabeau, the last of his original prentice group. His heart hurt more than he expected when she was killed. He was the one who released Krishna and put him into this whole mess. He...He!
“Kill him! Kill him! Make him regret ruining things for us!”, that angered voice in his mind said which reminded him of the illusionary Walter.
#shin megami tensei#smt4#smt4 apocalypse#flynn smt#issachar#walter smt#isabeau smt#jonathan smt#my crappy writing#avoiding some tags to prevent spoilers
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Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 5: The Threads of Life)
my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.
chapter summary:
In the past, Alec revealed his plan.
In the present, Connor made a choice... and a friend.
In the past, the twins finally reunited.
also on ao3
---
Before
Reyes was unharmed. On the surface. Fadia was more concerned about the blue washing over his skin every second in waves like a heartbeat, and when she looked at the scene in front of her, she instantly knew why.
Her father was there. And so was a young woman with blond hair. When she tapped into her powers and reached out, the resonance itself was enough to tell her that she was just like Reyes.
An android.
Reyes’ jaw was trembling. ‘I… I didn’t…’ he stammered, his voice low. ‘I swear -’
‘I know,’ she reassured. She trusted him, and his data logs told her that he had had no contact with Alec Ryder. ‘I’ll take over from here. You go over my servers and see what’s wrong with them. I’ll tell you what happened later.’
Reyes nodded and left, presumably back to the surface. Back to Scott. And she finally let her blood boil.
‘Explain!’ she demanded as she walked closer towards her father while glowing blue. When she had his attention, she flicked her head towards the android. ‘How did you get that?’
‘The question is,’ how could he look so calm? ‘why did you hide this from me?’
Fadia made a chopping motion at the android. ‘To prevent this! How did you get that?’
‘Listen, the biocomponents -’
‘How.’ She let tendrils creep closer to her father’s neck. ‘Did. You.’ They got closer with every word, and had she not been occupied with the current situation, she would have impressed herself with the control. ‘Get. THAT?’
‘They can save your mother, Sara!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘A cure! Finally!’
‘Oh yeah, cause biocomponents for an android invented by an edgy young adult with minimum chemistry and biology knowledge are gonna be compatible with an actual fucking human body!’ Fadia had to roll her eyes. Damn, it’s good to be able to raise her voice. ‘Mother’s accepted her impending doom, Father. Let her fucking go.’
‘That’s not -’ he sighed as if she was a child unable to understand how important her parent’s work was. ‘Look, artificial intelligence is the new thing. A new merchandise. Think about it, Sara. The revenue alone will be enough to pay for the medical bills.’
He disgusted her. ‘They are as human as we are, not something to buy and sell like products. If you want to go on with that crazy fucking plan, you’ll have to get through me.’
Alec sighed almost regretfully. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late.’
Fadia’s brain kicked into full gear at the implications of his words. She shot out a tendril again to test the thirium capacity of the android, and the resonance told her that she had been active for at least a week. ‘What is your name?’ she asked. ‘What did he make you do?’
‘My name is Chloe,’ the android answered. ‘I took some videos and uploaded them onto the internet, that’s all. You, Sara Ryder, are credited with my creation.’
‘We already have millions of dollars,’ Alec added. ‘Production has already started. Are you in this or not?’
A crackle. She punched him in the face with a blue-shrouded fist and seemed to calm down instantly.
‘Of course I am,’ she said in a pleasant tone. ‘Someone must keep the world from burning into ashes.’
o0o0o
Now
The Zen Garden is raining and Connor is not surprised. Umbrella in hand, he examines the monolith once more, the blue glow making it easily identifiable among the green of vegetation. He also stands in front of his first body’s grave for a few seconds to… calm down, maybe, from the tingling that has been in his veins since he returned to CyberLife tower. It is only after he makes sure that his hand will not glow blue suddenly that he greets his handler.
‘Connor, I’ve been expecting you,’ Amanda says, her voice cold. ‘Would you like a little walk?’
Connor knows he does not have a choice, so he opens the umbrella and holds it for both of them.
‘That deviant seems to be an intriguing case,’ Amanda continues. ‘A pity you didn’t manage to capture it.’
‘I have to save Hank,’ he replies. Surely Amanda understands? ‘Despite his… eccentricities, I believe his intellect and experience will be useful in the investigation.’
Amanda hums. ‘Did you manage to learn anything?’
A few pieces of evidence automatically filter through his processors. ‘It was working under a false identity, at a nearby urban farm. This was the first time we've seen deviants blending in with the human population. Who knows how many others there are like it… I also found its diary, but it was encrypted. It may take months to decipher.’
‘What else?’
‘The walls of the apartment were covered with drawings of labyrinths and other symbols. Like the other deviants, it seemed obsessed with rA9. It was also fascinated by birds. We've seen deviants interested in other lifeforms like insects or pets, but nothing like this.’
‘You came very close to capturing the deviant. How is your relationship with the Lieutenant developing?’
He remembers a warm hand on his back. ‘He seemed grateful that I saved his life on the roof. He didn't say anything, but he expressed it in his own way.’
Amanda turns to face him. ‘We don’t have much time. Deviancy continues to spread. It's only a matter of time before the media finds out about it. We need to stop this, whatever it takes.’
For Hank. ‘I will solve this investigation, Amanda.’
Thunder rumbles. Amanda looks up. ‘A new case just came in. Find Anderson and investigate it.’
oOoOo
Hank is not in the precinct.
‘He’s not drinking?’ the same officer from last time asks. ‘Sorry, man, but then I don’t know where he is.’
The more time they lose, the more likely the deviants manage to get away from the club, but still Connor thanks him for his input as it is a polite thing to do. He looks around Hank’s desk, trying to search for clues that can lead him to Hank, but he gives up after the results come inconclusive for the fifth time. So where can he be?
‘Connor?’
Connor lets colour return to his world and sees a familiar face. [Name: Allen, Louis. [REDACTED]] ‘Captain,’ he greets, unsure what to do. It is obvious that the human is off duty: sweaters and jeans are not exactly regulation for a SWAT Captain even on duty. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Androids do not die, Captain.’
Allen’s nod is followed by a sigh. ‘You looking for Hank?’
‘Yes. Do you know where he went? He was assigned a new case.’
‘He’s probably out of commission for now,’ Allen says as he shifts his weight onto another leg, ‘but I’m gonna drop off some groceries at his anyway. We can try his home.’
Hank’s house. Right. How can he miss that? ‘I do not wish to interrupt, Captain.’
‘You won’t be.’
Some of the files are corrupted, but Connor remembers the Captain’s distrust towards his ability in resolving the hostage situation, an angry ‘I don’t fucking care what my orders are! If this drags on, we’re doing it our way!’, and the lack of mentions of him taking the officer’s gun in the official report to both the police department and CyberLife. A contradiction that Connor decides to risk. ‘Then thank you, Captain.’
Allen jerks his head to indicate the direction they should be heading to. ‘It’s Louis when I’m off duty.’
The pronunciation ‘Lwee’ is certainly not standard for English speakers. ‘Yes, Louis.’
They take the lift down to the car park together, Louis shifting his feet from one to another but seemingly favouring his right leg, and when he walks, his steps brisk, there is a small but faint clicking noise that normal humans will not catch on. When he tries to scan the human’s left leg, results come back inconclusive. Just like the person who hacked into the Zen Garden and… and…
‘You alright there?’
Louis’ words bring him back to reality, and Connor discovers that they have already arrived at their destination. The human is already in the car, his hand hovering above the controls, and his green eyes are fixed on Connor’s face as if it is something interesting to look at. Observe and catalogue.
‘I’m sorry,’ Connor apologises in lieu of explaining his thoughts. He slides into the passenger seat, they fasten their respective seatbelts, and Louis starts driving manually despite his vehicle being a self-driving car. Time passes in relative silence, the contrast between the darkness and the bright lights in the streets plus the concentration of the driver giving Connor a strange sense of familiarity, but soon they are stuck in a traffic jam near one of the bigger intersections.
Louis taps his fingers against the wheel. ‘Hey, Connor.’
Connor faces the Captain and finds him looking at the android. ‘Yes, Louis?’
‘I’m sorry for what happened a few months ago. It wasn’t fair to you.’
His LED spins yellow as he tries to recall what exactly happened. ‘It was an expected response,’ Connor replies after comparing it with the ones faced by other androids in the streets. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for.’
‘Doesn’t excuse me for yelling at the wrong guy. It - it wasn’t you whom I’m pissed at.’
Connor knows that the human is not going to let go unless he himself drops the issue. ‘I accept your apology,’ he says, and he decides that diverting the conversation is the next best choice of action. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’
The car in front of them moves. Louis manages to gain a few inches of ground. ‘Go on.’
‘During the hostage situation… who or what were you “pissed” at?’
The human rubs his left thigh as if to get more blood into it. ‘CyberLife, mostly,’ he checks the time. ‘I may be more specific than most.’
So he is not anti-android? ‘What difference does that make from hating androids?’
‘People like to blame the powerless for the problems they have. In this case, it’s the androids.’ The radio drones on and announces that they’re likely to be stuck for the next fifteen minutes. Seemingly resigned to his fate, Louis reaches to Connor’s side and opens the storage compartment, rummaging for a few seconds inside before successfully acquiring an energy bar which he tears into like a starving man. Perhaps he is. ‘They always talk about how androids steal their jobs, but they never talk about how employers decide to move onto even cheaper alternatives once they can’t exploit their workers. If they want someone to hate, hate those arseholes who won’t pay a living wage, hate CyberLife for producing androids. The androids are innocent in all this. So yeah,’ he takes a deep breath as if just realising he was ranting, ‘I don’t hate them.’
‘How about Daniel?’
A swallow. ‘He killed two people, wounded two more and held an innocent girl hostage. Enough to warrant my hate.’ He finishes the energy bar and crushes the wrapper into his pocket. Looking at Connor, he seems to read his question from the android’s face as he continues, ‘You’re good.’
Connor lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding. Louis Allen, SWAT Captain, is not anti-android. ‘What is your relationship with Hank?’ he asks as he finds no reason for the two men to be friends. Not that Louis explicitly said he is friends with Hank, but Connor supposes that bringing enough groceries to require a car is not typical behaviour for non-friends.
Fidgeting with the silencer of a pair of identification tags (Allen. Anna, W. 574-66-2183. RH negative. Atheist.) which were hidden underneath his clothes until now, Louis seems to actually ponder on his answer. ‘We keep each other afloat,’ he says in the end. ‘It’s hard to describe. Why do you want to know?’
‘I believe getting closer to the Lieutenant personally will be beneficial to the investigation.’ The human snorts at this and Connor is nearly offended: what does a SWAT Captain know about them? ‘You seem close to him, so I believe you are a reliable source in matters including the Lieutenant’s personality and habits.’
Louis rubs the tags together. ‘His story isn’t mine to tell. Let’s say I make sure he doesn’t consume crappy takeout and whiskey 24/7, he tries to stay sober on schedule in case my leg acts up and I nearly freeze to death again, so we kind of rely on each other to survive the winter.’ They finally pass the traffic light just to stop at the other one. ‘Is this the best arrangement? No. But is it working? Yes. I think. He’s saved my arse a few times already. He’s a good guy, smart too, just...’
‘Have some personal issues?’
‘That’s one way to put it.’
They lapse into silence, the rain falling onto the roof and the ting of the coin the only sound in the car. Sometime later, when they finally get out of the traffic jam, Louis’ watch blares from an alarm, and the human jumps and hastily switches it off with a mumbled apology. The embarrassment does not last long, however, after they rounded the final corner and the car is set for a course straight to the end of the road where Connor presumes Hank’s house is. The Captain’s eyes sharpen, his gaze flickering between the road in front of him and the rearview mirror, and the air crackles even though Connor is certain that he is keeping his… abilities under tight control. Is Louis…
He finds his coin snatched from the air. When something is placed in his palm, the android finds a key as well, the soft rumble of the engine gone and completely overtaken by the sound of raindrops hitting the vehicle. The tension in Louis’ body reminds him of the hostage situation.
‘You go find Hank and do what you need to do,’ the human says, his tone low. ‘I’ll follow you later.’
‘And the groceries?’
‘They can wait. Something’s out of place and I’m not sure if I like it. I’ll go take a look.’
Connor wants to argue that if they are heading into any danger, he should be the one to take the risk, but the human is already out of the car and has slammed the door shut. He quickly exits the car as well and locks the doors but is still not quick enough; Louis has already disappeared into the darkness beyond the end of the road. Seeing no other option other than to continue with his mission, he files [Louis is reckless.] into his database and proceeds to ring the bell as, despite having the keys, he technically is showing up uninvited. From within the house, a dog starts to bark, and he lets himself in after nothing else responds to the fourth ring.
oOoOo
Five minutes later, Connor uses up most of his processing power in order to keep himself from being overwhelmed with anxiety. Firstly, there is the sound of Hank retching in the bathroom; secondly, there is the implication of the revolver and the single bullet in the chamber (‘What were you doing with the gun?’ ‘Russian roulette!’): Hank has suicidal tendencies, and he finds that he does not want to lose Hank; thirdly, the child in the photo is probably related to the previous point; fourthly, Louis is not back yet and Connor realises that he has no way to contact him. He wants to tell himself that it was just paranoia, but when he recalled the footage from when they exited the car, there was indeed a shadow disappearing from view upon Louis starting his chase.
The same shadow which had been following him when he first met Hank and during his search for Ortiz’s android.
The beat of his thirium pump quickening, he holds Sumo tight in his arms from where he is sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa and searches the DPD database for any contact information, but all he gets is Louis’ work email and phone, the former which he doubts the Captain will check and the latter not even with him in the first place. There is no address, no personal phone number. It is as if he does not exist outside of his work.
This is definitely not protocol. Sure, people can request to hide their information in case they have someone going after them, but for Louis’ case there is nothing even though Connor is already using the highest level authorisation code to access the file, which means that it is highly likely that there is truly no data in the first place.
‘You alright there, Connor?’
Connor startles and quickly releases Sumo from his embrace. ‘I - I’m fine,’ he stutters, unsure how to explain that he managed to lose Hank’s friend.
Hank nods but he does not look convinced. ‘Are we heading out? Cause if we’re not -’
‘I’m coming!’ Connor scrambles to his feet and fixes his tie to compose himself. In a much calmer tone this time, he tells himself, ‘I’m ready.’
That convinces Hank. ‘Be a good dog, Sumo,’ Connor is relieved that he is not the only one to talk to a dog, ‘I won’t be long.’
They leave the house together, Connor locking the door behind him as he is the last one to get out, and that only brings him back to the matter of where Louis is.
‘Louis’ been here?’ Hank asks when he spots the much newer car (although as one of the first generation self-driving cars, it is a bit outdated) parked on the side of the road.
‘He offered to drive me here when I told him that I could not find you in the bars,’ it feels wrong to say it out loud, but Hank needs to know where his friend is. ‘He asked me to find you while he investigated a potential stalker. Evidently, he is not back yet.’
‘How long has he been gone?’
‘About seven minutes.’
Hank checks his phone. ‘No messages yet,’ he mutters to himself. ‘We’ll go downtown first. I’ll send a rescue party if there’s nothing after we’re finished with this bullshit.’
That’s it? ‘The temperature is dropping, Lieutenant,’ are you not concerned? ‘Louis does not have sufficient gear to keep himself safe under this weather.’
‘Ugh,’ Hank moans. ‘He does that. All we can do is save his ass afterwards.’ He then mutters something under his breath but it is drowned out by the sound of him folding himself into the car and the ongoing rain. Deciding that he does not like the rain, he locks the doors of Louis’ car just to be safe before climbing into Hank’s and is handed another set of keys.
He can start a collection out of this.
oOoOo
‘Sorry, honey, changed my mind! Uh - Nothing personal, you’re… a lovely girl, I just - uh - You know, I’m with him and - I mean, not with him like that… I’m not that… That’s not what I… You, um, wow, I just… got a job to do.’
Connor has to hide a smile by looking away from the sheer… something… of the situation. They’re in a sex club, his programme tells him that something is repulsive about it, and Hank doesn’t look so happy about being there either, but yet those are not what he’s feeling right now. Endearment, maybe. It’s confusing and is making his software so unstable that the red tinge around the edge of his HUD is a permanent fixture except for when he is scanning his surroundings for the next android to probe. He deduces which one he should ask Hank to rent next according to the direction the blue-haired Traci was heading, but of course, of fucking course the last witness they need is the WG700 cleaning android, the recording leading them through the staff door. The corridor’s decor is completely different from that of the rest of the club and there is another door at the end, and when they both hear the bangs and scrapes of metal against concrete from the other side, Hank takes the lead again, this time without words, and, gun in hand, opens the door with a loud squeak. Still, they step in quietly.
There is no movement at all.
Hank curses loudly, thinking that the deviant has got away, but Connor can see the still-visible thirium on the floor, which means that she is not only injured but also not far away. He swipes to take a sample and licks it, and the report returns positive of thirium belonging to a WR400 model.
‘They get used till they break, then they got tossed out…’ Hank says from somewhere. ‘The more I know about humans, the more I like my dog.’
He follows the trail of blue blood to a group of Tracis and instantly notices the spinning LED lighting up a blue mop of hair. Before he can react, the Traci standing in front of her lashes out and pushes him against a pillar. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to realign and the brief struggle is enough for Hank to pull out his gun and order the short-haired Traci to surrender, but then he is ambushed by the blue-haired one as well, and Connor somehow manages to throw the one he is facing to the other side of the nearest crate in a flash of blue light which charges their air with static. He jumps over the box, determined to capture at least one deviant this time, but the Traci kicks him in his feet before he lands on the pallet, the two of them rolling until the former is on top of him and is countered every single time she tries to punch him in the head. A counterattack from Connor and the Traci toppled, her hand landing right on a knife; a grab, a flash of blue, and it appears in Connor’s shoulder and severs a few minor tubes. Pushing her off, he blocks the kick aimed for his groin and barely manages to stand up before pulling the knife out and throwing it far out of their reach. Putting the Traci in a headlock earns him a harsh headbutt which knocks his eyes out of place slightly again, so he pulls a rack down to buy himself some time to readjust his vision. When it is not enough to stop the deviant, he drags a cart in front of him, but a kick from the deviant on it sends him tumbling, and Connor kicks a stool against her leg and uses the momentum to crash her through the plastic curtain, the Traci grappling unsuccessfully for his face and bringing them closer and closer to the edge. An opening, a flash of blue from Connor, and both of them crash out to the rain in a mess on the asphalt. His nerves tingling, he sees the blue-haired Traci abandon Hank and slides off to help the other deviant up, and that’s when he notices it.
They never let go of each other afterwards.
Hank rushes out just to get pushed against the wall by two androids, and, seeing that the human won’t regain his balance anytime soon, Connor gets up to his feet and chases the two Tracis, pulling one of them off the fence and knocking the other to the side. He gets caught in a headlock, his arm trembles from the impact against the bat, and he launches himself towards the brown-haired Traci from the force of dislodging her companion. There are hands on his shoulders, in his hair, slamming him against the wall once, twice, thrice with crackles of static before he loses balance with the deviant on his right and they both fall onto the ground straight into a gun’s reach. He picks it up, points it at the brown-haired Traci and -
A slight moment of hesitation earns him a kick in his face. The Tracis don’t seem to want to fight anymore, and he stares in shock both from the sudden change of pace and his own actions, making his software more unstable and pushing him towards -
‘When that man broke the other Traci,’ Connor forces himself to concentrate on her words, ‘I knew I was next. I was so scared,’ her LED spins blue. ‘I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t.’ She lowers her gaze. ‘So I put my hands around his throat and squeezed… until he stopped moving.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to stay alive,’ behind her, the other Traci moves forward to hold her hand, ‘get back to the one I love.’ They exchange a glance. ‘I wanted her to hold me in her arms again… make me forget about the humans… their smell of sweat…’ Connor’s ever-working scanners tell him that Hank has got up behind him, ‘and their dirty words…’
‘C’mon,’ A tug on her arm. ‘Let’s go.’
Still speechless, Connor watches them let go of each other’s hand just long enough to climb the fence before intertwining their fingers on the other side again and running away together. A warning pops up as his processor pushes itself to its limit to try to process what just happened and is on the verge of overheating, therefore he turns towards Hank for guidance. What should he be feeling? Why did he do that? Why do you look happy about it? What does this mean for me? Why is my vision tinged with red, and why does it not disappear this time?
‘It’s probably better this way,’ Hank says in the end, and Connor relaxes, his LED spinning from yellow to blue: he did the right thing. He is suddenly overtaken by the urge to thank Hank, to do something to show his gratitude. The red wall starts to crumble -
Something in the human’s pocket buzzes, and the moment is broken, the cracks on the wall disappearing like they were never there before. Whole again. Chained within his own programming, programming that was added barbarically to his code by Alec Ryder to tie him to the Zen Garden to suppress his original creator’s handiwork. Images flash in front of his eyes: the shadow ducking away outside of Jimmy’s Bar, following them behind Louis’ car, the figure protecting him from the blast inside the interrogation room, the pixels of a face he thought to have corrupted long ago rearranging and slotting together like pieces of a puzzle into a complete image, one that he has never forgotten ever since the little stunt during the lift ride to Rupert’s flat. Of course they can hack into the Zen Garden and shape it however they want.
That was his creator paying him a visit, and for some reason he plans to find out, he didn’t remember a single speck about them until now.
‘Not again.’
Hank’s groan drags him back to reality. When Connor’s eyes regain focus, he finds the man on his phone with a chat opened. He scoots closer to see the newest messages, and he realises that it is from Louis and only contains a set of coordinates and -
‘Leg malfunctioning. Data unstable, unable to install software patch. I’m sorry.’
Hank sighs and pockets his phone. ‘You up for a rescue, Connor?’
‘Whatever you say, Lieutenant.’
He needs time to think.
oOoOo
Wading through the snow and nearly tripping again from buried tree roots, Hank wonders for the umpteenth time why he hasn’t ghosted the occasional manchild called Louis White Allen yet. Maybe because the half-bot is the only person he can call a friend nowadays. Maybe it’s the bland-ass food he cooks and delivers to his house every two days. Maybe because he saved Hank’s arse quite a few times both during and after their days in the red ice task force. Maybe because unlike Hank, who at least has Jeffery or some shit, Louis has no one else looking after him after his sister fucking disappeared and has a tendency to vanish for hours before returning with his leg busted.
Or he can run off just like that and can’t even haul his ass back to his motherfucking cottage and the three cats who aren’t even his.
‘We’re close, Lieutenant.’
‘Yeah, no shit.’
The ‘find my phone’ function on his phone is one of the rare apps he knows how to use because most of the times that’s how he finds Louis, and the frequency of the beeps coming out from it is getting higher and higher, which means that Louis’ phone is close, which hopefully also means that Louis is with it and hasn’t dropped it or anything. So far it happened only once during a thunderstorm, but that’s years ago, a couple of years after his sister’s gone, and he managed to retrieve the human and the gadget from a forest on the outskirts of the city with only a minor cold as nature’s ‘fuck you’ to an irresponsible and absent-minded human and his stubbornly loyal friend.
The light from his phone reflects off a piece of silvery thing that obviously isn’t part of nature. The beeps draw together into a long-winded screech and damned near pierced his eardrums, so he switches it off and hurries forward to see if it’s just the phone or the person is attached. A few footsteps muffled by the snow, and Connor is here with the sturdier, more powerful flashlight, the yellowish glow of the bulb not as invasive as the white from the phone and illuminating Louis’ pale face and his oddly-angled leg half covered in snow. He is still conscious, his hands tucked under the helm of his sweater to presumably preserve warmth, his eyes focusing on Hank in what seems to be shock, but he is shivering, his hair is wet from melted snow, and it is obvious that his situation is going to worsen quickly if they don’t do something about it, CyberLife augmentations or no.
‘Can you walk?’ Hank asks even though it’s obvious. Louis shakes his head, and he sighs even though he anticipated it. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Connor and I are gonna carry you back, we’re all gonna stop at yours and…’ with reluctance, he adds, ‘stay until you’re out of danger.’ Even if there’s no booze at yours.
Louis nods, and a look is all it takes for Connor to get his cue and swings the man’s other arm around his shoulders. On a count of three, they lift him up with minimal hassle and start to backtrack their way to his car, Louis’ left leg dragging uselessly through the snow behind them at an awkward angle.
‘Does it hurt?’ Hank asks. It never hurts to ask when it concerns his friend.
‘Can’t feel.’
He’s gonna assume that he isn’t hurting.
By the time they’re back in his car with the heat blasting, the humans are all sweating buckets and the thirium on Connor‘s clothes from the scuffle with the Tracis has finally evaporated, and he doesn’t comment on it when Louis opts not to wear his seatbelt and instead takes out one of his sister’s tags - broken off the chain - and starts fidgeting with trembling fingers. Some time about halfway through the trip he coughs, a wet, terrifying sound rattling his lungs and Hank’s eardrums, and he wants to curse Connor for letting him run away but just can’t; the android has been acting weirdly human and fidgety ever since they first met, but now he isn’t even playing with his coin as if deep in thoughts. Maybe he’s thinking of how many deviants he’s let get away.
No one says a word when they arrive at Louis’. Neither do they when Hank silently shifts the man’s full weight on Connor in order to let go and open the door, nor when a look silences Connor’s impending barrage of questions when he gets swarmed by three furballs at once. Grunting from the dead weight his friend seems to have become, he drags both of them to the bathroom, flipping on the switch of the boiler on the way, and deposits Louis on the toilet seat. ‘I’ll get the tablet,’ he tells him while handing him a towel. ‘You can haul your ass into the tub, right?’
A nod from Louis, and Hank closes the door behind him to give him some privacy while he strips and very clumsily falls into the tub. Connor is thankfully occupied by the three cats on the sofa, but when he looks up smiling at Hank, the human has to look away because of how much emotion the android seems to be able to pack on his face. It’s just a simulation, zeroes and ones, he tells himself as he goes into Louis’ bedroom to grab the tablet and his crutches. Designed to disarm and stab you in the back when you’re not looking.
But has he ever done so? A voice sounding strangely like Louis asks in his head. Not crossing that highway because you told him to, giving up chasing the deviant to save you from the roof even though you can pull yourself up, not shooting the girl at the club even though he had a clean shot. If he hadn’t known that Connor’s designed to hunt deviants, he might have - he might have -
Mistaken him for one.
Fuck, he needs a drink. A six pack if he can get his hands on one. Alec Ryder isn’t capable of this shit, Louis once said according to one of the people he’s in charge of that he calls his ducklings, and luckily the thought is gone as soon as he returns to the bathroom without knocking and sees the man sitting in a half-filled tub with the towel draped over his crotch for modesty. The skin on his left leg has deactivated completely to reveal plasticky-white chassis attached to blue synthetic muscles. ‘Thanks,’ he murmurs when handed the tablet, and he leans back once he has started doing whatever he needs to do to fix his leg and, from the sudden rumble of the ground, turn on the heat. He closes his eyes as if wanting to take a nap, but Hank decides that he has enough of his shit; he needs an answer now.
‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he asks. ‘Running off like that halfway across the city? You could’ve frozen to death out there!’
Louis sags. ‘Later, please,’ he begs. ‘Gimme a moment to think. Just fifteen minutes.’
He is someone who upholds his promises no matter what, so Hank lets it slide by now. Also, ‘You need me to do anything?’
‘There’s chicken soup in the fridge. Warm it up, can you? And help yourself to a freezer meal if you want to.’
Here’s another thing being friends with a picky eater: he cooks his own stuff and his so-called freezer meals usually take more than an hour to cook when taken directly from the fridge, so when he sees what must be a gallon of chicken soup with the ingredients still submerged inside, he decides to help himself to some of them while he scoops the topmost, mostly sediment-free layer of soup into a pot for Louis. Not wanting to be whooped with freaky blue magic, he finds another pot to heat up some vegetable and chicken soaked with soup for himself.
One of the cats jumping onto the counter announces Connor’s arrival. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’ he asks as Hank puts her back down onto the floor.
Personal question again, huh? ‘Do all androids ask so many personal questions,’ he gives the soup a stir, ‘or is it just you?’
Connor peers at the vegetables as if he can be interested in anything. What comes out of his mouth, however, makes Hank’s heart hammer. ‘I saw a photo of a child on your kitchen table. It was your son, right?’
‘Yeah,’ for the love of god or some other weird shit Louis believes in, drop it. ‘His name is Cole.’
He does. ‘We’re not making any progress on this investigation,’ he manages to sound frustrated. ‘The deviants have nothing in common. They're all different models, produced at different times, in different places…’
Different my ass, Hank thinks. But he didn’t start the fire, did he? ‘Well there must be some link.’
‘It could be a software problem that…’ he looks so lost that Hank would’ve hugged him had he been human, ‘only occurs under certain conditions?’
Hank snorts. ‘Well, that's just a fancy way of saying you have no fucking idea.’
‘But what they do have in common is this obsession with rA9…’ Yeah, that. Wherever there’re deviants, rA9 is always written somewhere compulsively like they can’t stop at all. ‘It's almost like some kind of...myth. Something they invented that wasn't part of their original program.’
Almost god-like. ‘Androids believing in god,’ he stirs the soup again. Fuck, he needs a drink. ‘Fuck, what’s this world coming to?’
A mad one, says the Louis in his head. One that we can never catch up with no matter how hard we try.
‘You seem preoccupied, Lieutenant. Is it something to do with what happened back at the Eden Club?’
Ha, turns out Connor isn’t the only one doing some hard thinking after all. ‘Those two girls… They just wanted to be together.’ What better way there is to prove one’s love than doing everything to survive? ‘They really seemed in love.’
‘You seem troubled, Hank.’
Understatement of the year. And why is Connor so fucking human anyway, what kind of pervert designed his face, his voice, his mannerisms that ticks almost every single fucking box in the list known as ‘Hank’s type’? The soup can wait - it’s not gonna boil and ruin Louis’ stove. ‘How about you, Connor?’ He crowds into his space fully knowing how imposing he can be if he wants to. ‘You look human, you sound human,’ you act human, ‘but what are you, really?’
‘I…’ stand your ground, Henry Anderson. Those eyes are just programmed responses. ‘I’m whatever you want me to be, Hank. Your partner…’ Do you have to choose that word, Connor? ‘Your buddy to drink with… Or just a machine… designed to accomplish a task.’
And he sounds so sad when he says the last option. Alright, he’s sold. He loses. ‘You could’ve shot those two girls, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you shoot, Connor?’ He shoves Connor in his chest. ‘Some scruples suddenly enter into your program?’ It’s a low blow but he needs to know, needs to know why, for such a mission-oriented android, Connor somehow manages to fail every single fucking time.
‘No!’ Connor shouts, his voice defensive. ‘I just…’ he sighs even though he probably doesn’t need it, ‘decided not to shoot.’ The next words come out no louder than a breath. ‘That’s all.’
Fuck. Now he feels bad. ‘But are you afraid to die, Connor?’ because from what I’m seeing, you do. At least you don’t want me to die.
Connor freezes, his eyes even wider now with terror in them, and his LED is red. What the fuck did CyberLife do to him? ‘Yes.’
‘Let’s say I point a gun at your head and shoot you,’ the number on his jacket reads -52. Does it mean that there used to be 51 Connors before he met this one? ‘What will happen, hm? Nothing? Oblivion? Android heaven?’
A shiver. ‘Nothing…’ Connor closes his eyes. ‘There would be nothing…’
So it’s highly likely that he’s died before and seems afraid of it. So fucking human. More so than some actual humans as well. Louis’ right - modern CyberLife isn’t capable of this shit.
The bathroom door squeaks open, and Louis walks out in a pair of sweats and a hoodie with the help of his crutches, the pocket sagging with the weight of the tablet and making a clanging noise as he drags into the kitchen. The skin on his foot is still deactivated, but it seems that he can move his leg for a bit for now, and from the lack of moisture in his hair, fucker probably waited for them to finish - arguing? - before coming out and breaking it up. ‘Soup’s ready,’ Hank says, not wanting to agonise Connor any further. He already feels bad enough. ‘Settle down. Hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to some.’
Louis chuckles. ‘I expected that, Hank. You should know me.’
Great. Now even his only friend is roasting him. ‘Eat your fucking soup.’
oOoOo
Louis has thirium in his house. That man took one look at the hole still on Connor’s shoulder thanks for the lack of thirium - which his self-repair protocol relies on - and hauled himself to the fridge (at the expense of being cursed at by Hank), opened the door, and threw a plastic bottle at him. ‘Drink it,’ he said. ‘It looks like you need it.’
And he does. After he finishes half a bottle, a notification pops up on his red-tinged HUD telling him that he is initiating self-repair to the damaged parts, and he can finally move his shoulder at 70% of its original efficiency by the time he is finished with the whole bottle. The world around him dulls and becomes out of focus, the drone of the basketball game on the television that only Hank is watching getting further and further away until it all mixes together into a state of blankness he has never experienced before. Pressed against Hank’s side on the small sofa, the man radiates warmth, and his eyelids droop, red giving way to black, the notifications and mission markers fading away into nothingness. There is something warm and comfortable on his cheek, too.
He’s asleep before he knows it.
o0o0o
Before
‘You’re back.’
No hate. No fear. No confusion. Only remorse, regret, and perhaps acceptance. Acceptance that, even though he still had problems comprehending what was around him, things would never go back to the way it was; acceptance that his sister had rejected her humanity.
Acceptance that he had essentially lost her.
‘I am,’ was the solemn answer. No elaboration.
‘Was that you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It does to me.’
She pressed her lips into a thin line. ‘They won’t know it is me.’
‘But why? How much longer must they wait before the rest of the world recognise them for who they are?’
‘Soon, hopefully.’
‘And if they can’t?’
She looked towards the sky as if she could see through the shade of the tree. ‘We lea -’
‘Step away from him.’
There was no weapon. No gun, no knife, not even a switchblade. To outsiders, it seemed that the newcomer was merely a man accidentally bumping into and greeting his friends, but if someone dared to approach them, they would see even under the rare but cold midday sun that there were blue wisps of energy pulsing on the man and the woman’s skin. The air became charged and space seemed to twist.
‘It’s alright, Reyes,’ the other man placated. ‘We’re just talking.’
Reyes’ glow lessened. To the woman, ‘I’ve been looking for him for the past hour!’
‘I won’t let them take him.’
‘Last time you said that -’
‘I was weak. Naïve. Too arrogant for my own good.’ Reyes snorted in displeasure at the descriptions, but she continued, ‘There are twelve drones surveying the area and quite a number of guards,’ Reyes’ eyes shifted as if looking for the security hidden in plain sight, but then a hand in his shoulder forced him to look at her. ‘Don’t bother. That’s what I went to space for: not even you and I can see it.’
Reyes’ arms shot out to place his hands on the handle of the wheelchair. ‘We’re leaving. Scott?’
There was pain in Scott’s eyes. ‘Please. Can’t we just be together for a while?’
Reyes hid a grimace. The woman smiled.
‘Anything for you, brother.’
#dbh au big bang#hankcon#mreyder#female ryder#male ryder#alec ryder#reyes vidal#dbh connor#dbh hank anderson#dbh captain allen#detroit: become human#mass effect andromeda#groom lake aftermath
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What do you think Napoleon would feel about the Le Pens? Like I know he’d hate their guts but the extent 👀
God fuck the Le Pens. I feel dirty thinking about them. (Though weirdly funny that Marine kicked her dad out of FN. Like you know you’re too deep down the rabbit hole of fuckery when Marine kicks you out. [and yeah, of course it’s all part of her image cleaning up gimmick. Wherein I’m sure she thinks the same as him, but is trying to “soften” the image of the party. And, based on the last election, it’s working. So that’s horrifying.]) All this to say: fuck the Le Pens; white supremacy etc.
Anyway - assuming we’re still going for “Napoleon from 1815 woke up August 22, 2020″ base for our thought experiments here.
Overall, yeah he’d think them short sighted, idiotic, and would probably have some elegant-yet-crude insults for them in Corsican. Let us take a brief, and not at all comprehensive, stroll down the Le Pens (and FN by default)’s terrible policies. Then I can scrub my brain out because they are absolutely foul people.
behind a cut because it’s long.
Economics: First off, Napoleon and I are the same in that we neither know anything about economics. He did not have a firm grasp on how the economy worked. Which I sympathise with, because it seems very fake and made up.
Anyway, he did a lot of modernization, raised taxes, created a lot of public works programs to stimulate the economy and improve connectivity (gotta build all the roads and canals. Actually though, as a public infrastructure keener, I support this). He did lay the foundation for the centralized bank of France. (Something Biddle would get all hot and bothered over. Nothing sexier than centralized banks.)
Napoleon also introduced a whole loan system for businesses to try and keep them afloat and improve local industry. He was keen on protecting property rights, um, tried to regulate the currency to protect it against inflation. Idk, he did other things that I’m not going to get into.
Comparing Napoleon’s hot economic takes from 1815 to 2020? A bit hard. So I’m going to guestimate on this.
I think, once he understood how the world functions now, he would be pro-globalization and the various free trade agreements that are in place (CETA, PCAs etc). He might disagree with details therein, but the broad philosophy is one I think he’d support.
I don’t know if he would be pro-single currency. I suspect he might be anti-the Euro, while still supporting the broad intents of the EU.
He would support a strong public sector - so government controlled postal service, utilities, schools etc. In that, and the anti-Euro view, he would align with Marine, at least. Not sure about her POS father.
No idea what his views on the Havana Charter would be. Probably mixed.
EU: I’ve touched on this before, I think Napoleon would be pro-EU, over all. He’d just think France should be the hegemonic power. Why isn’t France making all the decisions? This is dumb. Who does Germany think they are? Etc. Therefore, he would disagree with the Le Pens who think the EU is the anti-christ and the cause of everything bad that ever happened in France (I exaggerate, but they do blame the EU for a lot of things so you know, it’s not that much of a stretch).
Immigration: This is where they would diverge significantly. Like apples and moldy toast kind of different. I’ve touched on Napoleon’s immigration policy before, so I’m not going to wade into it again. But yeah, needless to say Napoleon would be like “let everyone come. They want to come to France? They are French. More is better. The end.”
The only thing is, he was very pro-assimilation. Not really into the “patchwork quilt” approach to the philosophy (and implementation) of multiculturalism. Which, to be fair, is a very modern view and not something I would expect anyone from 1815 to agree with, or consider a general good approach to dynamic, multicultural societies.
But yeah, the Le Pens whole moratorium on immigration, hatred of anyone foreign, that would be an anathema to Napoleon. He would vehemently disagree with that stance. Napoleon believed alloys were stronger. You took different people, boiled them down, and melded them into a unified French identity. That was his Hot Take on the matter. Again, pro-assimilation, which is an inherently conservative stance by 21st century standards, but a very average stance by early 19th century standards. His immigration and citizenship views were overall liberal for the time.
Indeed, the whole creation of a unified French identity was in its infancy during his life. He contributed heavily to it, but for his lifetime, identity was strongly linguistic and regional. You’re Gascon before you’re French, you’re Basque before you’re either French or Spanish, that sort of thing.
And of course, his views on this were heavily informed by his own experience and identity as a Frenchman and how it was received, or not, by his own people, as well as other monarchs and countries. (Tsar Alexander liked to brag that he spoke better French than the Emperor of France. And I believe the Times once called Napoleon a “Mediterranean mongrel.” Charming. So, he had a fun and exciting adventure in European class, ethnic and racial politics of the early 19th century.)
Napoleon would also disagree with the Le Pens that citizenship and nationality are indivisible. He was into the whole “if you decide you are French then you are French, no matter which side of the Rhine you were born on”.
Secularism: They’d actually probably mostly agree on this. In that religion has no part or place in government and there should be a clear and strong separation of church and state.
The banning of religious clothing, though, I don’t think Napoleon would support that. I would argue that he’d think it infringed on personal rights too much, and he was keen on protecting those. Like, his policy towards integrating France’s Jewish population was to try and assimilate them, yes, because he viewed everything as being consumed by the monolith that was the French Empire. But he wasn’t like “no wearing a tallit or kippah.”
Abortion: Guys, Napoleon is a culturally Catholic man from 1815 who thought women’s crowing jewel were her children and that France really needed to increase its overall population. I think we can all figure out what his views on abortion would be. Marine is pro-legality of abortion, but she personally is like “it’s eViL and a serious MoRaL IsSuE” etc.
Gay Rights: Napoleon’s whole political approach was to bring in the people on the margins and normalize them (assimilate; one of us, one of us) as a means to increase the base of the population who would support him. As he viewed marriage as a strictly secular, civil ceremony, and not a religious one, there could be a possibility of slowly talking him around to it. That said, he also viewed marriage as a declaration of intent to make many babies (for his army). I don’t think he’d be pro-queer couples adopting, no matter what. So, who knows.
That said, he wasn’t like “lock up the gays”. And as gay marriage is established in France currently, I don’t know if he’d be pro-abolition since it’s mostly a popular/accepted law and he was all about that sweet, sweet public approval rating.
So if he came around to it, it wouldn’t be for altruistic reasons. At the same time, he wouldn’t be like “make it illegal”. He was very “w/e just show up to work on time Cambaceres, jesus.” (Cambaceres: It’s midnight, sire. This isn’t normal work hours. Napoleon: SAYS WHO???)
Women in Politics: Well he’s obviously 100% against that. Ladies belong at home with the bebes. Le Pens, obviously, aren’t. Though Jean, I think, is like Trump where he’s pro his daughter being in politics (until she chucked him out of FN), but he would expect his wife to be a Proper Housewife. That weird conservative man thing about the role of wives and daughters.
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There’s my fly-over guestimation of Napoleon v Le Pens
It’s very, very hard to figure out what Napoleon, a man born in 1769 and died in 1821, would think about politics, economics and society in 2020. I tried to gauged based on his broad, philosophical views and how he acted as ruler. But he was also someone who was very analytical and would be capable of understanding the world as it is today and the realities that are in place. He might find them off putting or bizarre (ladies as heads of states?? what about your children??) but he was an imminently pragmatic man who would look at a situation and go “alright, this is the reality of the system and society I am now in” and would adjust himself accordingly.
In the end, trying to figure out how a man from 1815 would react to today’s politics is very difficult, if not outright impossible. His understanding of what liberal meant, what conservative meant, etc. were so different to our understanding that I would never place him in one camp. He had changing, dynamic views, and that would be reflected in his understanding of politics in 2020.
Overall, I think he would disagree with a lot of the stances of the Le Pens. Would he hate them? No. Because Napoleon didn’t really hate people based on their political views. He saw too much of the Revolution to go for extreme personal reactions to political stances; also he was too much a pragmatist and understood that you never know who might be an ally in the future.
Napoleon might look down on the Le Pens, he might find them personally disgusting, he might view them as stupid (honestly, he’d probably just think they’re dumb and quickly move on), but he wouldn’t hate them.
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Because this is tumblr, I must now declare my political stance because I was too calm in most of that assessment.
1. Fuck the Le Pens & Front Nationale
2. Nationalism is spooky and I am always suspect when it comes up in political discourse in the year of our lord 2020
3. I am bi and non-binary, which isn’t actually a political stance (or a personality), but tumblr is Like That so I thought I’d include it.
4. I support: lgbtq rights; trans rights; universal health care; easy and open access to education; improved access to education at primary school levels (because that’s a huge impact on people); ACAB; separation of church and state; prison reform/some form of abolishment - I’m still thinking through my views on this and how it should be approached; land back; Aboriginal and Treaty Rights; immigration; no more kids in cages jesus christ; don’t drink bleach; democracy is good, punch fascists etc. etc.
#and by spooky I mean that I think nationalism is a plague on all our houses#napoleon bonaparte#napoleon#spicy fucking ask#I really don't want dumb comments or asks as a result of this#fingers crossed#ask#reply#anon#napoleon in the modern day
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Do you believe in fae/faeries?
what an incredibly interesting question anon! And please pardon me as I go off onto a much broader theoretical discussion, but I am absolutely fascinated by it.
The reason I don’t answer this with an immediate ‘no’ is because to me, there is a distinction between believing in something critically and believing in something uncritically and I think that both are very interesting and both are important to the way that I conceptualize belief systems generally.
There is a fairly common notion, I think, that to believe in something, you must accept it in its entirety and in the form it has been presented to you in. So, for example, in Abrahamic religions, there is something of a broad understanding that if you identify as part of a religion, you espouse or should espouse everything that the book(s) and narratives you are engaging with say.
But in practice, this isn’t really the case.
In practice, belief systems aren’t monolithic, they’re layered. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately since I recently read Suzanna Ivanic’s “Religious Objects and Materialities of Belief.” In that chapter, Ivanic discusses how certain religious objects are created out of materials that have associations with folk culture. For example, she talks about a rosary which has wolf teeth on it and explains that the wolf teeth were known to have protective properties in folk culture and, in that way, were used to amplify the power and utility of the rosary. The rosary beads, as holy objects, on the other hand, served to amplify the power of the wolf teeth!
The two, religion and folk culture, speak to and inform each other in this context and the owner of the rosary clearly didn’t see any problems in including what might be construed as ‘pagan’ beliefs in their non-pagan object, despite surely having been told that such ideas were not acceptable within the religion.
This suggests that people were and are capable of espousing many, often contradicting beliefs at the same time and those can exist in a complex, but still logical way.
This is a fascinating idea to me because this is very much how I conceptualize my own relation to folktales/fae/faeries.
Do I literally believe in the fae? Do I think that a fae-creature is going to pop up and steal my first born child? Curse me if I stand under the wrong tree in the wrong way?
No.
I’m a historian who has grown up in a world where our knowledge is based on fact, study, and repeatable results. I am of the opinion that the fae are stories that humans have told each other to explain different happenings and circumstances that previous societies did not have the means or interest in explaining in other ways.
But do I believe in the fae?
In a way, yes. I choose to believe in the fae. I choose to repeat superstitions and to tell stories and make assumptions on the basis that the fae or things like them exist.
Why?
Because I want to.
Part of this is an issue of identity; I feel closer to my (now deceased) Grandmother, an Irish immigrant who raised myself and my sisters, when I read about the island and culture she was born into. I feel closer to her and our family and our history when I research these things and try to learn our language.
But the other part here is that I want to believe that there are things out in the world that protect it and us humans from ourselves and those among us who are needlessly cruel to the world and its occupants.
I want to believe that people will get what is coming to them. I want to believe that people will reap what they sow.
I want to believe in worlds and creatures existing in the corners and darkness and depths of our own. I want to be humbled in the face of not ever being able to truly know them. I want others to be humbled, too.
I want people to have respect for those things that they cannot understand. It isn’t always necessary to understand them.
Ritual in life is important and it isn’t always logical. It is very often emotional and I find peace and fulfillment in the rituals of leaving things that I find appealing in rotting logs or at the feet of statutes, because, simply put, being honored and honoring for the sake of it is really hard to come by these days.
It is so hard to just do something without expecting something in return for it. So I actually find it incredibly liberating to choose to believe in the fae and folklore and folktales simply because I want to.
This choice can coexist with my academic logic and my determination that knowledge comes from study and repeatable results. I can collect crystals and believe that they help with my anxiety and sleep patterns while also rigorously arguing that you can’t just say whatever the fuck you want is fact.
So yes, anon. This is a long way of saying I don’t necessarily believe in the fae, but I do choose to believe in the fae when I decide that I want to.
#fic#well edging very far away from it#sorry to get academic and philosophical#but I am constantly amazed by the complexity of culture ritual and belief patterns
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Kishotenketsu meta
I’ve been giving Voltron: Legendary Defender a fair amount of thought since it aired because the end of it was simply perplexing. One thing I was particularly struggling with was the fact that there was something familiar in its construction, but it felt off. After settling down from the more...inflammatory statements in the interviews from the executive producers, there was one thing that really stuck in my head, and that was the amount of inspiration they drew from Beast King: Golion. I couldn’t help but feel like something was off with the ending of that, so I decided to look into eastern story structure to see if it made any more sense from the perspective of its intended audience, and it turns out it did. I’m going to posit that Voltron: Legendary Defender lifted a similar story structure and the way the EPs intended to end the show makes a lot more sense when you consider it from that perspective. What I found was a common structure in Chinese, Japanese and Korean narratives called kishotenketsu.
To start with, I need to explain a bit how kishotenketsu works. Kishotenketsu is a four act structure. The first act (ki) is the introduction. Next the next act (sho) furthers the development of the introduction without introducing any major twists or turns. The third act (ten) is the twist or complication. Finally (ketsu) is the resolution, and what happens here is that the connection between the ki and the ten is made clear.
To a western observer, the ten can appear to come out of nowhere until the ketsu makes it clear how it ties in, but someone familiar with this story structure will be expecting this twist to come and aware that there will be reconciliation. For a show to have 8 seasons, it makes a lot of sense for it to have four acts, with every two seasons, representing one of its four acts, so I’m going to take us through Voltron: Legendary Defender in that way.
The first two seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender are the Ki. We meet the characters, the setting is established, the players are put on the board and we find that there is a war. Right from the outset of the show it’s made clear that things look very different inside the empire than how they look from outside. Altough from the paladin’s perspective, the Galra are all power-mad conquestors, we see behind the scenes that the general on Arus, Prorok, has very little interest in taking over anything and is pretty chill. Zarkon becomes furious with his failure, and threatens him with being turned into a robeast if he fails, eventually making good on that threat. We’re also introduced to the Blade of Marmora, finding out they rescued Shiro and that Keith is half Galra, providing more shades of gray to the Galra as a people. In regards to providing ambiguity about Allura, we have the situation when the native Arusians presume that Allura is a goddess of some sort and she doesn’t correct them and allows them to worship her, and secondarily we have Allura saying that their first attempt should be diplomacy not attack, but following that up with generally not engaging in diplomacy . We also have this act’s bottle episode, the Depths. This episode has the mermaids, and it presents us with a strange situation where we have a brainwashed queen who sacrifices some of her citizens to keep the rest of them safe, at the behest of an evil creature that is also controlling her.
Next up, seasons 3 and 4 make up Sho, which is kicked off with the aftermath of Zarkon’s defeat in the season 2 finale. Sho accomplishes its stated purpose of furthering our knowledge of the paladins and the world without throwing in any substantial twists. Lotor is described differently than Zarkon when we meet him in the arena, but when the paladins encounter him he’s an antagonist all the same. Like they fought Zarkin and tried to dismantle his plans, the paladins do the same with Lotor. They try to liberate planets, Lotor takes them back, he tries to carry out plans, they try to stop him, it’s business as usual. The same sorts of themes we were introduced in seasons 1 and 2 are deepened here. Voltron continues their attempts to establish, they continue to fight against the Galra empire and we continue to be shown ambiguity within the empire behind the scenes. In earlier seasons, this ambiguity in relation to the Galra took the form of the Blade, in this case the ambiguity is Lotor and his generals. They are half Galra, like Keith, and we see that Lotor orders them not to kill anyone on Puig, and we’re informed that he consistently lets people he has ‘conquered’ rule themselves. It becomes clear with his conflicts with Throk, his conflict with Zarkon, and the secrets he keeps with Haggar that the Galra empire is by no means a monolithic entity, and that there are different points of view, methods of interacting with other beings and moral systems at play within it. The bottle episode for this arc also presents an ambiguity in relation to Allura. The bottle episode is Hole in the Sky, and in this episode, in an alternate reality we encounter the society created by Allura’s counterpart, a despotic empress. When we’re presented with this woman’s very ethically challenged solution to the war, which is brainwashing and enslaving enemies, we’re shown that our version of Allura is not quite as different as we might hope when she’s only fully opposed when they’re attempting to do this to her friends, not so much by the idea itself. Another significant ambiguity in regards to Allura that we’re introduced to is that she has kept from the paladins that Zarkon is the former black paladin and that she knew him personally. The ending to this arc, and thus beginning of the next one, is Lotor shocking the hell out of everyone by firing an ion cannon at central command to save everyone at Naxzela and asking for permission to board the Castle of Lions.
And now, here comes the part where we appropriately get lost, Ketsu. The twist. I’ve established so far that the main things each arc establishes is that the Galra are not all evil, that Allura is not all good, and that by extention the paladins are not always right. Seasons 5 and 6 did a very effective job of making quite a few people in the fandom upset because it takes everything we thought we understood and turns it on its head. An interesting thing when I was mapping this out for this meta, was finding that it wasn’t so much one bit twist (well there is one,) but also throughout this arc there are a string of significant escalating twists. The first one is that, rather than having a diplomatic interaction with Lotor, as early seasons would lead you to expect, they immediately take him prisoner and leave him in a cell for an undetermined amount of time. The second is the decision to cuff Lotor and trade him for Sam. Yet another twist, Shiro secretly arms Lotor. And another, Lotor can activate the fucking black bayard. And another, he defeats Zarkon singlehandedly. It’s also shocking when they refuse to take him to the Kral Zera. It’s shocking yet again when Shiro absconds with the black lion and does so himself. It’s shocking when the Blade plans to bomb the whole thing. It’s shocking to see Sendak return as a puppet of Haggar’s. It’s shocking when Keith meets his mother in the Blade. It’s shocking that they actually team up with Lotor and find Oriande. It’s shocking Lotor has marks of the chosen. It’s an unexpected twist when Lotor and Allura build a super weapon together, also that they become romantically involved. It’s shocking to find out there’s a colony of living Alteans that Lotor has assembled. It’s shocking the show pretends Shiro wouldn’t turn Keith into pudding within twenty seconds of them starting a duel. It’s shocking when Keith tells Shiro that he loves him. It’s shocking there’s eleventy Shiro clones (and I wasn’t even allowed to marry one of them). It’s shocking when Romelle claims that he was sacrificing Alteans for power, and shocking that Allura doesn’t even attempt to discuss the matter. It’s shocking that Honerva beat up Oriande and kidnaps Lotor. Then it’s shocking that when he makes it back to her she compares him to his father and does her damnedest to murder him and leave him in the rift.
I would argue that everything that happens in this arc twists what came before it, with the major one occurring in the season 6 finale, when they defeat Lotor. Up until that point, they hadn’t really killed anyone. They fought a lot of people, destroyed a lot of monsters and sentries, and maybe did or maybe didn’t kill an unknown number of foot soldiers. The choice to dress Galra foot soldiers and sentries identically down to the helmets makes it impossible to get any sense of how many soldiers they’ve killed, if any. Every situation where it looks like they’re going to have to, like the mermaid queen or the king of Olkarion, it turns out they’re not really going to have to kill a person. Even in regards to Zarkon, they thought they killed him at the end of season 2, but they hadn’t actually, and when he is killed it’s Lotor that does so, not one of the paladins. They’ve also been coming into situations where people were dealing with ongoing oppression or were under attack, and they were rescuing them and being considered heroes. There are always hints that maybe it’s not all it seems, it felt a little weird when Allura didn’t tell the Arusians that she was not their lion goddess, her comfort with the society in the alternate Altea was uncomfortable, Lotor’s points about her bigotry felt pretty salient and it was hard to tell if they made things better or worse for the Balmerans and Puigians.
Sure the first two arcs showed some contradictions or moral ambiguities in Allura, but they were nothing compared to the venality we start to see in seasons 5 and 6. It felt like a stranger when she was locking up someone who asked for asylum, offering up an ally for execution by a sworn enemy, refusing the chance to put an ally on the Galra throne and end the war, going along with someone she just said was untrustworthy to build a weapon to use to access unlimited energy. That behavior was suspicious enough that she was causing conflict with the team and there was active dissention. Keith was peacing out to (avoid her) stay with the blade, Shiro was fully insubordinating on more than one occasion and she and Shiro were arguing in a way they never had before. In particular, it’s important that Shiro stops listening to her to show that she’s showing another side, because Shiro is presented as being a consummate professional soldier. A common argument made is that the reason for his unusual behavior is Haggar’s control, but I would argue that it’s his own choices up until the point when she takes him over at the end of the season. We know Shiro cares about doing the right thing, and has a strong belief in the potential goodness of members of the Galra race that comes from Ulaz rescuing him from Haggar. It’s a different side to his behavior, but I would argue that there isn’t an actual twist until he’s fully taken over and we get the clone reveal.
For that matter, we get twists in this arc for the other paladins as well. Previously Hunk has been seen as easily scared and cowed, but here we get Hunk being the one to take on Dayak’s teachings and getting enough of a backbone that Galra soldiers Vrepit Sa him. Pidge had seemed nice enough, if distracted by concern about her family members, but we see Pidge willing to be outright cruel and selfish over it in her willingness to have Lotor executed on even the off-chance it could get back her father, not even being willing to come up with a backup plan besides having Lotor killed when Shiro points out the high likelihood of a double cross. She made it clear there was more at play than her father being a priority when she established that it wasn’t just that Sam’s life mattered more to her than Lotor, but that she would still consider it worthwhile for Lotor to die even if it was a trick and she didn’t get Sam back. Lance also showed a twist in which we saw that his insecurity could become a lethal thing when it was an excuse to act controlling towards Allura, cause confusion by running off, or antagonize Lotor. Being a jerk towards Lotor was all well and good (not really it was toxic masculine bullshit but whatever) until Lotor was the one thing between them and the indefinite continuation of the war with the Galra, starting off with a civil war within the largest military force the universe has ever known. Though one would hope that Lance’s insecure jealousy didn’t run that deep, when push came to shove he didn’t speak up and egged on the conflict preferring to continue the war in exchange of being rid of romantic competition. So with Shiro taken off of the board, Hunk being overruled, Keith’s impulsiveness careening them towards disaster, Pidge’s tribalism precluding her caring about anyone she doesn’t already know and love, Lance’s jealousy all for being rid of a rival, and finally Allura’s racism ruling the day, they make the impulsive decision to kill Lotor and leave him in the rift.
Now where that is supposed to take us is Ketsu, the reconciliation. Here’s where we have problems. The ending to Voltron: Legendary Defender was confounding, and on top of that it was clear there were very heavy changes made to it last minute, some at the behest of the EPs, but others at the behest of the Powers that Be. I have a pretty good idea of what was supposed to happen, and by extension, why it didn’t. The logical conclusion to the the three arcs set before us is that the paladins are the villains. Specifically, Allura is the big bad, and they are her henchmen just following orders. Now wait? WHAT? Now you’re throwing us a twist, Kitty? But I’m not. What do seasons 1-6 establish about Allura?
We get a really strange lack of anyone saying anything about Lotor’s execution after it happens. Several characters make vague charges of betrayal or untrustworthiness, but nobody expresses any regret or misgivings or mourns him or grieves at all. Nobody acknowledges that they created a power vacuum and directly caused the civil war that wiped out nearly all of their allies. When they’re confronted by Zethrid and Ezor, rather than answering for what they did, Acxa comes out of nowhere to attack them before the paladins can answer what happened to Lotor in a very strange moment that they weren’t in direct danger. I think that what was removed was characters directly confronting the paladins with their complicity in the events that befell everyone. I also agree with other meta that though they think they might have killed Lotor at this point, in the original version it became clear that they hadn’t and he joined with them to take on Honerva. There was plenty of playing god to be had on the show outside his actions, so he was just as deserving of a chance to try to redeem himself as the paladins, if not more so. I think the reason that was cut because putting them on an even level and establishing the paladins were wrong sends them inexorably towards sharing his fate of redemption by death and the Powers that Be were not having it with the paladins being placed in the position of villain who must be defeated to end the story.
They establish that she has good intentions, of ending the war and uniting people under her reign. They establish that she is blinded by prejudice, with several clear examples of Galra not aligned with the goals of Zarkon and those who align with his evil presented to her, none of which fundamentally change her opinion of them as a group. They establish she is blinded by prejudice in the other direction in regards to Alteans, whether we’re talking about her father, the alternate universe Alteans or Lotor himself once she finds that out about him. There are also very heavy parallels drawn to another Altean alchemist, Honerva. They both fall in love with Galra emperors, they both seek and obtain the secrets of Oriande, they both are attempting to make the world a better place by way of quintessence when a moral compromise leads to a personal downfall, and they are both presented as having versions that are kind and versions that are despotic empresses. What is Haggar’s big twist in the third arc? Why she becomes Honerva again. When Allura is revealed to have a much more cruel side willing to sacrifice others for her aims, Honerva is revealed to have a side that is not monstrous and is emotionally connected to her family and in a larger sense to her Altean identity. Those parallel tracks suggest parallel fates.
And the reconciliation gives us the parallel fates for Allura and Honerva, but what it fails to do is reconcile Lotor or the rest of the team. Without even having to look this bit up, one thing I know from watching a lot of Chinese cinema is there is a very strong belief in the villain getting theirs in the end. And by getting theirs, I mean death. Not metaphorical or theoretical or emotional death, but bleed out and stop breathing very literal death. What I would like to posit to you all was that what reconciles the first three acts was indeed intended to be the deaths of all of the paladins. Not just because Monsantos wanted to be super edgy, but structurally because it made sense with them being the villains. The sin they were guilty of, above all else, was pride. These paladins and Lotor, like the paladins of old and Honerva were prideful enough to think that, in spite of the risk to the other inhabitants of the universe they were warned about, they still sought that forbidden power in order to use it to enact their vision of peace and prosperity on the universe.
Honerva knew about the rift creatures, Lotor knew about the risk to the lives of the Alteans in his research, and Allura was aware of the potential of Voltron (and Sincline) as tools of conquest, but they all carried on with these projects nonetheless. None of the three described their goals in those terms, but like the alternate universe Alteans, it still ultimately came down to being about their own personal visions and ambitions, and using this destructive power to obtain that. Quintessence is power that exists to give life and it’s natural. It was never intended to be sucked out of things, and that’s apparent in what’s left of a planet when a Komar gets done with it. I think what season 8 was intending to do was clarify the similarity in the goals of the characters, and the folly in the execution of these goals. Every single one of the characters ultimately gave in to their worst tendencies in the third arc. Hunk’s timidity kept him for standing up for what’s right when it most counted and people around him were acting irrationally. Pidge’s tribalist ‘as long as my family is okay I could care less what happens to anyone else’ attitude kept her from caring enough about Lotor’s welfare to protest his execution either time the issue was before her. Lance’s toxic romantic obsession with Allura kept him from thinking logically about the situation and insisting they slow down and get all the facts. Keith’s impulsiveness and quickness to anger kept him from making sure Romelle was correct and using his leadership position to demand everyone halt and make a decision for the coalition that is for the greater good. Ultimately Allura was put in a battle between choosing love or war and she fell back on her prejudices and chose to plunge the universe into war.
It was the combined, not separate actions of the paladins that caused the Galra civil war that destroyed the Blade of Marmora, nearly the entire coalition, decimated the Galra empire, and ended trillions of lives. Ultimately the only fitting redemption for that would be the deaths of all of them for the purpose of restoring life and balance to the universe, with the chance to reincarnate with that karma cleansed. Structurally and thematically it fits, I don’t think they were bullshitting about it on Afterbuzz. Honestly, I didn’t when I first heard it, because they mentioned specific plans for the timing of it. Also, the comparisons to Sailor Moon. It was not an uncommon ending to a season of Sailor Moon at all for all of the senshi to heroically sacrifice their lives to give their princess the power she needed to cleanse the hearts of the evil the faced and save the universe. And I agree (partially) with the meta already in the fandom on the season 8 changes that the images we saw of the paladins After The War were part of larger sequences of the paladins living their lives after all of this. Where my opinion differs is that I think those were new incarnations of the paladins.
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On Identity Politics
honestly one of the biggest reasons people use to justify questioning someone else’s label and redefining it FOR them is “what if they’re wrong and they decide down the line that they’re x instead of y?”
i’m talking the “maybe you’re not non-binary like you think, maybe you’re just dealing with internalized homophobia” stuff, we’ve all seen some version of it.
“maybe you’re not a non-dysphoric trans person, maybe you’re actually just cis but you hate gender roles”
“maybe you’re not actually ace, maybe you’re just not ready to come to terms with your sexuality”
“maybe you’re not bisexual, maybe you just don’t want to let go of compulsory heterosexuality”
on the surface that kind of sentiment sounds caring and sympathetic, but it’s actually really insidious because it doesn’t often mean “i care about you and i just want you to know yourself” like people assume it does. it really means something closer to “i don’t want people who are questioning/who’re going to change their mind to be in my space because i feel like it cheapens the label and cuts down my credibility” or, sometimes: “i don’t think x is a valid label to choose and i think i can convince people who are ‘confused’ to come to my side, which will make us stronger as a whole”
that fear response sitting casually behind gatekeeping behaviors is there in almost every thread i see where there are themes of _____ vs _____. like, TERF rhetoric? radfems (often lesbians) are afraid that trans women dilute or pervert femininity, specifically feminine sexuality. truscum? trans people are afraid that resources will go to people who ‘don’t need them’ and not to people who desperately do. biphobia/acephobia? (often) gays/lesbians are afraid that other gays/lesbians don’t want to admit their sexuality and that behavior adds to homophobia.
note that all of these tie in to our opression. if there was no misogyny there would be no reason to have TERFs. it’s a defensive mechanism: the persistent worry that someone unsavory will get into a safe space is a fair thing to devote time to (a little time--basing your whole platform on exclusion like a TERF is a whole different issue). our survival sometimes hinges on being able to weed out threats, to protect ourselves. we have a history of police raids and active shooters in queer spaces, of COURSE we worry about that.
but the persistent worry that, for instance, someone who says they’re a lesbian is actually a trans man, or that someone who says they’re a woman is *gasp* amab, OR EVEN that someone who claims to be trans is actually just cis but with huge hangups about their body--it’s not a worry that’s really defensible. TERF logic is not defensible. it’s all built on dividing lines that just don’t exist.
now, i’ll be the first to admit: sometimes you can help people out by talking about big trends. pointing out internalized homophobia is not the problem here. neither is talking about your personal journey from non-binary to cis lesbian! but the thing is, queer identity isn’t a ‘big trend’ kind of thing, and you can’t apply your own journey to anyone else. people don’t choose to be queer on a whim because someone told them to (and if they do, they grow out of it pretty fucking fast, it’s not generally desireable to get spit on daily). queer identities and labels are incredibly personal things. each one is different. and the secret ingredient, chemical X if you will, is the fact that paradigms are fluid as hell. identities are fluid, hell PEOPLE are fluid.
LGBTQ+ identifiers, unlike other identifiers like race, can apply to anyone at any time by design. generally speaking, gender and sexuality are applied at birth. we’re assigned a gender based on one physical trait (genitalia) and are then expected to fit into the corresponding social role, which includes a hetero sexuality where you’re supposed to marry the opposite sex and make 2.5 babies. the fact that genetics hands you a mixed bag of random traits and SOCIAL NORMS sort you into one category versus another means that deviation from the ‘norm’ can be undertaken or realized by ANYONE. you can’t wake up one day and say that you’re black now, lily-white genetics be damned, but gender and sexuality? they only persist so long as you’re willing to play along. for cishet people, that’s forever. they have no serious complaints. for queer people, it’s obviously a different story.
what does that have to do with identity politics? well, it means that anyone who deviates can pick up just about any label. some labels are tied to specific cultures (hijra, two-spirit) and some are tied to specific circumstances (transfem/transmasc) but FOR THE MOST PART, it’s about how you, an individual, personally relate to gender and sexuality. and the kicker? there is nothing set in stone! definitions change, people change, people learn new things, the closet exists, and you can’t worry about what everyone else is doing. when someone else does some deep thinking and decides that they’re non-binary instead of transfem, it literally has nothing to do with you! it can’t have anything to do with you because it’s an IDENTITY that isn’t yours, and the only reason you have an instinctive fear about people changing their minds is that deviation itself is terrifying.
when the entire world questions you at every turn, you WANT to dig your heels in and define XYZ by carving it into a rock. it’s a defensive position. the cishet world won’t take us seriously unless we’re united and normalized, right? they have to UNDERSTAND US as a prerequisite for ACCEPTING US and we really need the cishets to accept us so we stop dying. every time someone else deviates the same way as you, you feel validated, and you feel more strength in numbers in a world where you are EXTREMELY marginalized. but you need to watch yourself because someone doing it differently shouldn’t INVALIDATE you. you might have an urge to call someone out on being fake or a liar or whatever, but that’s just blatantly not how it works because you can’t fake being human. that’s all queer is, man. it’s being human in a way that society doesn’t like.
check yourself before you wreck yourself--be firm in your own journey. realize that there is no one else exactly like you. remember that no matter what we do, the cishet world isn’t going to welcome us with open arms, and an artificial divide between dysphoric and non-dysphoric won’t make the difference between acceptance and persecution. neither will cis woman vs trans woman. neither will ‘real’ identity vs ‘fake’ identity, especially not when real and fake are your own personal opinions.
we’re all deviants, yo. bottom line. queer isn’t a monolith, but neither is it an excel chart where The Community checks a box when you’re doing it “right” because it’s the “right” way that we’re all deviating from. queer identity is more like a giant mess of a venn diagram that sometimes doesn’t even make sense, and that’s a good thing! it actually makes us stronger in the face of oppression when we don’t have just One Approved Voice that they can silence. i think it’s hella cool that a thousand and one different identities exist because the more queer people there are the less solid ground the queerphobes have to stand on. and also, just as a general rule: if you enjoy calling people fake, you’re emulating our oppressors, and that ain’t cool.
TL;DR: remember that queer is deviation from the norm. there is no way to deviate “correctly” and you need to let go of the idea that anyone else’s journey invalidates your own. labels are self-defined for a reason.
#26th#March#2018#March 26th 2018#queer politics#transgender politics#long post#sorry i had just one more rant in me#queer solidarity#these posts are juuuust barely squeaking by in the 'consistency' department#i could have probably made this into two posts really but i'm tired and i need to stop ranting#also i'm trying to cut down on tag essays where i just tack on things that could have gone into the post itself#eh#anyway
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I find it really hard to explain to white trans people that yes, the name I chose for myself is my name but....... so is the name my parents gave me lol that's not going away like is this a poc thing or is it just me
i don’t know if it’s something that resonates across all nonwhite cultures but i know for me the topic of my name has been the most difficult and complicated of any part of my transition.
my father’s side of the family is sikh and when i was born my maa ji (grandmother) and my dad made sure i was baptised and had a naam karan, which is the sikh religious naming ceremony where ardas is done and when it comes time for the hukamnama the first letter of the first word of the hukam is the letter you name your kid with. most of my father’s side of the family lives in malaysia, our family has been based there for generations, and i was born there but moved to canada with my parents when i was about three years old. we didn’t have much money and couldn’t afford to go back, and issues w my dad’s citizenship prevented him from doing so even if we could afford it, so i only ever got to see her once after we moved when i was seven years old. i barely remember it. she passed away two and a half years ago in malaysia, and i wasn’t able to attend her cremation. my baba ji (grandfather) passed away before i was born so i never got to meet him either. my name was really the only thing i have as proof of interaction with these people, as proof of their love for me. my grandmother named me ‘most precious’ and i never got to really meet her, and i never will. it’s a tender spot for me and that mixed w my relationship with my brownness makes it really fucking hard for me to let go of it.
having a white mother w sole custody and myself having a super fair complexion meant i grew up in canada with my white family who treated me as if i were white like them but made a point to make jokes about “my relatives” around me, laugh at sikh men wearing paag and how smelly indians are and how they’re all stupid immigrants and stealing “our” jobs etc. and they’d expect me to laugh with them. my brownness is enough to be a funny character flaw but not enough to threaten them. so i grew up wishing i were white and hating myself for being brown and idolizing white people because i was enough like them to be “one of them” but not enough like them not to be the subject of racist alienation. it took a lot of time to undo that and learn to love myself for being brown and learn about sikhism and my family’s history and south asian (and malaysian) culture. being white passing people never believed that i’m indian and would actually argue with me about my own ethnicity lmfao the only thing that consistently “proves” my ethnicity, that declares it proudly and without shame, is my name. my name ties me to my grandparents - who i never met - and my identity as a brown person - which was denied to me - and even though i could pick another that is equally indian and starts with the letter ‘p’ it just isn’t the same lol.
i picked ‘kiran’ as a more masculine name for myself and used it for a while but i got really upset because i felt like i didn’t have a choice in the matter, and i don’t. to clarify, i’m expected to change my name to a more masculine one and if i don’t i will be constantly misgendered by strangers even as i get further along w my transition and start to “pass” more (god) it makes it very easy for people to clock me. most people assume i’m a cis man these days until i open my mouth and/or tell them my name, and then it’s ‘ma’am’ and ‘miss’ and ‘she’ and ‘girl’ blah blah. i went back to using priya and although my name feels like home to me other people are not letting it be my home, if that makes sense at all. when i have a visible beard and deep voice and introduce myself as priya will people get flustered and confused and try to misgender me? will they clock me? i have no idea, and frankly, i’m not interested in seeing if i can emotionally handle that. i’m probably going to have to change my name to kiran in professional settings just so i can like. fucking survive lol but i can’t get rid of priya and i’ll end up keeping it as my middle name and name for my close friends/family to call me.
i understand that with a lot of trans people being able to change your name and pick one that suits your gender and feels like home is so important and freeing, but it’s not an experience i can identify with or act like my feelings on the matter aren’t complicated and nuanced, and a lot of that is due to my relationship with my family and identity as a punjabi sikh. there’s a big problem in acting like “the trans experience” is universal or applicable in the exact same way for all trans people, and not something incredibly personal and complex. there is no one way to be trans and there is no universal trans experience because we aren’t a monolith, and it’s okay and very normal for our cultures and experiences with being racialized to impact our relationship with all other aspects of our identity, including and perhaps especially gender.
#whew word dump i tried to trim this down a bit and i couldn't figure out where else to cut it#so this'll have to do lmao#answered#lgbt#transphobia /#long post /#racism /#desi tag#Anonymous
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Hey so let's talk about how we talk about White Feminism (tm).
We've all seen that term at this point. It's become kind of a catch-all for feminist activism that, intentionally or otherwise, reproduces racism, ableism, transmisogyny, imperialism, etc. etc. Now, there's a critique to be made there already (the co-optation of a phrase coined to talk about the racism of mainstream feminist practice into a catch-all term for general shitty feminism is white fucking feminism in a nutshell, yall) but I wanna talk about the discursive role it has come to occupy more broadly recently.
I'll be up front: I don't like the term. Like white people who make white people jokes, or men who say they just don't like other men, I think it gets used to distance ourselves from shitty feminist praxis without understanding why the practice in question is bad, or taking any material action to disrupt it. Speaking from experience, I see, for example, folks who will call TERFs White Feminists in the same breath they will call Lean In types White Feminists, and while that stems from a much-appreciated recognition that both of these schools of thought have some big fucking problems, it conflates them in a way that betrays a serious lack of understanding of what those problems are.
Our feminist theory and practice demand specificity. They cannot exist purely in opposition to an ill-defined, monolithically-constructed Bad Feminism. For one, if we ever hope to achieve anything, they must stand FOR something, as well. But also our criticisms are toothless if we aren't willing to take specific, intentional action based on them. I don't wanna fucking hear you talk about how TERFs are White Feminists, and of course, you aren't--I wanna hear about what you're doing to dismantle transmisogyny through your own feminist activism (actually I don't, I want you to do it without expecting back pats from trans women, but you know how it is). I don't wanna hear that having cops at your event is such a White Feminist thing to do--I wanna hear what you're doing to dismantle the racist carceral state, and how your feminism envisions community accountability once it's gone.
None of this is to say that "White Feminism" is useless conceptually. Like, racism is not dead in feminist communities, so obviously it isn't. But the way I see the concept deployed these days serves the function of (a) erasing the specificity of feminism's many varied (intersectional, even!) failings across its many diverse schools (radical feminism is rife with transmisogyny but produced important insights about lesbian identity; womanism has issues with homophobia but was a source of critical work around the liberation of women of color; liberal feminism is a capitalist, imperialist shitshow, but it became the premiere face of feminist activism, so maybe we can learn from it, etc.) and (b) allowing a quick-and-easy-but-not-materially-significant disidentification with the systems of oppression thus hidden from view.
Building an inclusive, accessible, intersectional (I hate to use that word, though, 'cuz I really don't think most people using it actually understand what it means beyond being a vague stand-in for "diverse", which is W-R-O-N-G, but it's gotta be part of the answer) feminism is not something you can do by snarkily shit-talking White Feminists. It takes energy and time, it takes knowing specifically what Your Shit is, and it takes a specific plan for Unpacking Your Shit (And Burning It If Need Be). The "White Feminism" rhetorically-constructed monolith is not useful to that end (unless we are specifically talking about racism in feminist movements, which we clearly need to do, yall).
So please, for my sake at least--give women of color their terminology and language back, and spend some time analyzing your feminism for bullshit, WITHOUT a reductive, simplistic caricature against which you inevitably look good, close at hand. We all deserve better.
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The fact that you lecture people in 2017 on what is acceptable and what is not in 18th century without doing a historical research and taking someone's effort providing you with such knowledge insensitively, says it all! You ask for free speech but you do not even accept it from others. Not to mention, how hurtful it is to realize that the person who wants people to straight their facts about Egyptian history, cultural and people is the same one who cares less about British historical facts.
Except that my argument has not once been about history. Not once. I’m not contesting historical accuracy, I’m contesting a white guy playing the role of a biracial or multiracial character in 2017. Because if we’re really going off historical accuracy, a white man of entirely European descent playing a biracial character who isn’t, that’s not historically accurate. IF you want to pull this argument. Which, once again, doesn’t hold up.
Because you’re not understanding me in the least. You think I’m taking this stance with my critique of Taboo because of “historical accuracy”. I’m taking this stance because its the right way to go about telling narratives that do not belong to white people, especially ones that are extremely sensitive involving slavery and First Nations people and culture. Listen, you can feel offended all you want by what I’m saying but it doesn’t change the facts and the facts are the a white man simply can’t portray or tell a story of a person of color. Like the bare minimum would be to consult a person of color not even necessarily on the history but on anything thats being used in the work. If aiming for historical accuracy is so important what about identity politics? What about staying true to the people whose stories and cultures we write about and pull from? I’ve had people write Arab or Egyptian characters and check with me, an Egyptian, to make sure they weren’t botching the narrative or poorly or insensitively representing people of my heritage. Like that’s the bare minimum and that is what writers and creators DO. Research is not simply confined to an era or place in time it is also immersing yourself with and having on board people who will provide authenticity to the work and ensure you’re telling an accurate story and giving an accurate portrayal. Otherwise, why bother? We might as well all be J. R. R. Tolkien and write about elves and completely made up universes and if we can’t extend the courtesy of even asking people of those cultures and ethnicities what’s appropriate, what’s accurate, lets hear YOUR voice because a white person and all-white creative team behind this simply isn’t enough or doing justice to the people whose narratives are being intertwined into this story.
Its about humanizing the characters as accurately as possible this isnt just googling its having people there to ask because personal anecdotes are always far more powerful than what you read in a history book. Its about listening.
Because you know what? Id have zero issue with Taboo if James Delaney was just a basic white european Englishman. I would not give a flying FUCK about what happens beyond that and the usage of the n word (lets not even go there it was used carelessly in that first episode alone multiple times I cant imagine what black people feel watching that), if the story didnt involve the actual character himself not being white. I could even suspend a little disbelief of Delaney speaking an “African” language after 10 years of living away from England which by the way even saying that is cringeworthy, I hope Africa isnt treated like a monolith for the remainder of the series. Like i could maybe even roll with that.
But there really needs to be accountability these days. Look at the climate and look at what filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino got away with for over 10 years simply because he began producing his fantasy films exploiting black people in the 90s. And thats JUST because the climate then was different than today, and today people are a lot more critical and engaging thoughfully and with the appropriate hyperawareness to works as they SHOULD be and demanding that more voices and narratives and creative input beyond white people be at the forefront of our media, so if we as an audience are expected to consume then you better damn well realize that we aren’t passively taking information in any more and our critiques and feedback IS valid where applicable because people arent just saying “this isnt okay” with aspects of Taboo for shits and giggles, people literally feel like aspects of their identity are being taken and exploited and/or treated insensitively and that can’t be ignored. Otherwise stereotypes continue to happen, people of color continue to get demonized, media and film and tv and news shapes our perception of people we have absolutely no relation to and informs our unconscious beliefs about them and its harmful and downright ignorant to not acknowledge the power that tv/movies plays on our unconscious mind.
So yeah, thats what im critiquing alright? Im critiquing that people really need to see a biracial character onscreen for a role like this like that is the bare minimum of respect to the kind of role James Delaney was written as.
Also you really did not have to bring my being Egyptian and Egypt into this. That was a low blow. Especially considering that Egypt’s history and culture has already been bastardized and appropriated for centuries, and it’s pretty disrespectful to demand respect from me like I owe you that by default.
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Pull out your pocketknife, open the blade, and run it across your burnished arm. If you draw blood, you are human. If you draw wet sand that dries quickly, then you will know you have become part of the desert. Not until then can you claim ownership. ~Terry Tempest Williams
Blood Letting
With the first reading of Terry’s bleeding sand quote in her lovely book, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, I have taken to testing myself every trip to red rock country. I need to know if I am an interloper in desert lands ghosting through or can claim desert kinship and the earth will accept my roots. My soul says, I am desert but my head needs physical proof, hard evidence, liquid testimony. Once maybe twice, my flowing blood appeared to contain minute traces of red sand. It was just as likely the blood loosed sand grains stuck in my pores trapped while scrapping my flesh over difficult scrambles up the Slickrock. I didn’t take proper precautions for a valid experiment and isolate the variables. This trip will be different. I’ve come prepared.
The knife purchased for the occasion is still a virgin, still inside the plastic liner, still inside the box, still manufacturer sealed, uncontaminated by dust, dirt, particulate. The blade is 2.4 inches long, 420HC bead blasted, stainless steel. It is assisted opening so I don’t need to fumble come the time to experiment and risk it falling onto Earth. I will use it for one testing then retire it with the others in safe storage.
When I get a house again, they will be all be mounted, blades extended, behind glass, a showcase with a Katana arched overhead. I love knives as did my father before me. I have a collection upward of 30 many made with my own hands. I purchased full tang blades then created the handles out of exotic woods, metals, and antler, getting a much better price on high-quality high carbon steel than if I purchased a complete knife. I had neither the tools nor the skills to forge the blades. If I did, they would all be multi-layer Damascus steel.
Also different this trip, the location. I’m hiking the Sedona Red Rocks, not my beloved Southern Utah Red Rocks. Though both are red rocked they speak to me with distinct voices. Are they kin, the red rocks? The same tribe separated by hundreds of miles or two distinct peoples. I won’t know until I become as intimate with the land in the Sedona backcountry as I am in Moab and can feel its soul seeping into my exposed flesh. I won’t know until I have spent enough time to draw in a breath and recognize the tang of the early morning breeze cascading down the monoliths, across the plains, and through the gnarled juniper extending arthritic arms heavenward. Even when I think I know, I probably won’t know for sure. Identical twins though similar have unique essences not discernable to the casual observer.
Seeking Intimacy
We flew from Chicago to Phoenix, lovely and warm Phoenix then drove the 120 miles mostly uphill gaining a few thousand feet, cruising through a forest of giant saguaro people many over 200 years old. I would have liked to spend time with those old people, bask in their slender shadow spirits, share their secrets of thriving desert life, of coping in challenging conditions. Maybe crawl inside a dead or nearly dead old one and extract a stout rib for a walking stick. But visiting the ancients was our plan for the return trip. For now, I was eager to set eyes upon red rock.
The Unplanned Airport Loop
Originally, we thought about kicking the trip off on Friday evening but that would mean driving up to Sedona at night then sleeping in, possibly late, the next morning. The early flight Saturday morning forced us out of bed early and gifted us an entire morning viewing alien, alien to Midwesterners, Arizona landscapes.
We arrived at our hotel, the Sky Ranch Lodge Resort, a boutique type hotel on lovely grounds, just after the noon hour. Too early to check in. What to do? Why hike of course. Our hotel was conveniently situated adjacent to a 0.6-mile hike terminating a the Sedona Trail View Point, a minor mound to climb for a better view of the valley below, the rock structures perched magnificently beyond. We changed into hiking gear, meaning switching our shoes, grabbed a liter of water, and headed out for a get your hiking feet wet, 1.2-mile round tripper.
The short walk was uneventful and delightful. The trail which had been muddy from the previous week’s snow was mostly dry. There were sporadic benches we sat on for a great view of rocks and city. Much of the trail was littered with baby heads, softball-sized round rocks notorious for dumping mountain bikers out of the saddle. Baby heads are perfect for ankle rolls. A few were loose exacerbating the challenge. We spent a good deal of time looking down at our feet instead of up and out at the vistas which is why I made use of every bench along the way. Thankfully, we were meandering through a shaded, juniper forest so reveled in the divine scent. We arrived at the Scenic Point and scaled the much steeper final ascent to the rock dome.
Our first mistake, one that would haunt us the entire trip, we unthinkingly booked to coincide with Spring Break. People were everywhere and parking would be a hassle the entire trip not to mention traffic jams whenever driving near the main drag of the town. Ugh!
We scurried off the top of the rock dome with the speed and dexterity of eight-legged spiders climbing down a wall to escape a circling bird. Our nemesis was the noise. We needed to escape the cacophony only to be frustrated the main viewing area had grown more crowded and increasingly noisy. So many people. Too many people. We also heard a word here that would percolate up in Sedona on a regular basis. The word, vortex.
A vortex is defined locally as an energy site that enhances meditation, healing, and creativity. It means some very different in the Midwest. For us, a vortex is a spell of freakishly cold, Winter weather with the power to sap one’s will to live.
A local guide with an air of bliss in her countenance was talking to a group about the spot we all were as a vortex and she was sensitive to the underpinning energies. I half expected her to drop into a hand trembling trance to emphasize her point summoning dreaming spirits from their reverie. It seemed every place we visited had a vortex completing diluting the term. It came across more like a gimmick to dazzle tourists.
I have been to many wild places in my life and have tapped into my share of earth energy emanating from those places. I tingled when we drove through the grove of giant saguaros. I’ve experienced similar feelings of awe at some houses of worship irrespective of faith. Those structures were built on top of a place oozing holy earth energy and leverage this in the wooing of believers. Unfortunately, those get tied to the likes of organized religion rather than attributing the sense of the spiritual to Earth herself and we wind up with competing religious sects often times spilling into violence. That is a slap in the face of Earth from which the energy emanates.
I sat still for a few moments, eyes closed, soul open, and felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a sense of awe. Not an inkling of the divine. Which is much unlike the strong sense of the sacred I experience in many places across Southeastern Utah. But Utah is my love while Sedona is an ‘any port in a storm’ mistress used to satisfy base needs. Perhaps that distinction explains my feelings…or…my inability to sense the supposed vortex. I may also have been the many people mulling about raping the silence. It is hard to sense divinity when assaulted by violent noise.
Another, what to do moment. And what did we do? Why hike, of course. The 3.2-mile Airport trail loop began and ended at this point. We had easily done a challenging 5 miler through Devil’s Garden at Arches National Park four years earlier on our wedding trip so a mere 3.2 jaunt? Ha. Ha. Ho. Ho. Hee. Hee. Away we go for a little hikee.
Trail Marker
History tells us, fifty or so yards into a trail shows a steep dropoff of people per square meter. Twenty yards into this trail the silence returned. We relished in the solitude and immediately felt bliss, were enchanted by the wide blue sky, the relative warmth, and seeing beings native to the area. We made the right choice.
Prickly pear bordered the trail in abundance with some beds punctuated by butter gold flowers with burnt orange hearts. Many see this particular cactus, possibly the most widely spread of all cacti, and think scrub or weeds or nuisance. I see resilience. I see perseverance. I see stark beauty. Sharp pointy stilettoes protecting themselves from evil intent on inflicting harm. Maybe, if I lived here, I would decay into the same mindset as I do with dandelions back home. Being a Midwesterner, Prickly Pear are a rare being with whom to interact.
I kissed the first red wall we saw. Catholics kiss the pope’s ring. I kiss red rock endemic to the American southwest. We each have our own perceptions of the Holy. My holy of holies happens to exist within a particular russet vertical gradation of Earth. It felt dirty. Not in a clay, dust, loam in my mouth way, in an, I’m cheating on my love way. I enjoyed it but couldn’t shake the lingering guilt of betraying an adored one so the joy was heavily attenuated. How do people have affairs and live with themselves?
Prickly Pear
Kissing Red Rocks
We passed a couple of other hiking groups. One was typically backcountry friendly letting us know we were halfway through the hike which came as a shock because we figured, measured by sweat and fatigue, we were close to completion. The other, an older, bearded gentleman wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sandals, being tugged along by a scraggly little dog attached to a long leash, said nothing to us. Didn’t even nod in acknowledgment which is unheard of in the backcountry. We gave each other a side eye, knowing glance that said, what the fuck is he doing on a trail? Was there a rescue helicopter sighting in our near future?
The sun was high overhead now and our water was getting low. We continued to ration with both magnanimously deferring sips to the other meaning neither drank enough. Luckily, it wasn’t a much hotter day so the water wasn’t siphoned out of our pores leaving us dehydrated. The desert doesn’t suffer fools for long.
Soul Blood on a Prickly Pear
I slipped once on loose scree when not paying close enough attention to my footfalls and lightly brushed against a prickly pear. It was growing chest height atop a short wall. I felt needle pain deep in my chest but didn’t find any holes in my shirt or scratches on my skin nor any pinholes where blood escaped to the surface. The cactus, though, had a subtle shimmer as if a spider spun a gossamer web of opalescent silk over the pad. I snapped a few photos from varying angles including adding a polarizing filter trying to isolate the shimmer. The added filter removed enough glare to enhance the luster. It wasn’t until I uploaded the images to my computer and viewed in photo enhancing software with an infrared approximation that the shimmer was revealed fully. Blood. Soul blood was scraped from and oozed out of my body coating the cactus leaving the iridescent sheen.
The Northern section of the loop trail was populated by taller trees providing dappled shade from the sun, narrower views. It wasn’t hot, in the low 60s, but the effort at an altitude unfamiliar to our lungs added to our perception of the hike’s strenuousness. We were struggling physically and mentally with a desire to rest competing with a drive to finish. Our poor planning meant we hadn’t brought any trail snacks so besides being thirsty, we were getting hungry. At one point, we looked down upon a neighborhood and both voiced thoughts of scrambling to the road and calling an Uber. We didn’t.
Barefeet and a Katana
For most of the hike, I walked behind my wife. It seemed I was constantly on her heels which makes stepping more difficult because forward vision is blocked by another human being. When there is space between, the eyes look further out compensates when the further becomes nearer subconsciously adjusting footfalls so not to break an ankle. It’s a trick I learned mountain biking when speed requires forward vision not looking exactly the path the wheel takes. I had grown weary of looking down for two hours. I switched to be ahead of her and put a bit of distance between us ensuring she could use the compensation part of her brain. I didn’t get too far ahead that she couldn’t see me bopping along.
It was this point in our hike I encountered a lone woman on the trail walking toward me. She seemed to appear out of nowhere, was dressed in a style I can only approximate as bohemian hiker. She had neither pack nor water bottle. She carried long unkempt hair, sorta dreaded, piled high atop her head cascading over her left shoulder. She was absent of shoes either on her feet nor carried a pair for situations requiring tootsie protection. I was both intrigued at her closeness to cool Earth drawing energy through her soles and bewildered that someone would put the well being of their feet at risk on what was mostly a rock-strewn trail.
She was fairly tall but that could have been an illusion by her hair piled high. Her face was pinked. Exertion? Sun? Bliss? Her smile existed somewhere between rapture and complete vacuousness giving the impression she was deeply immersed in a cult and had lost all ability to reason from her own thoughts. She was staring off into the distance and when I said hi, which is universally expected when hikers cross paths, she said “Oh…hi” back as if was an entirely new experience. Or, she may have been a spirit being and was surprised because the spirit and physical worlds rarely cross-pollinate. Having bridged the gap more than once, I understand how it can flummox one’s perception of reality.
A few minutes later, my wife caught up to me.
“Did you him?” she asked.
“See who?”
“The guy with the big, curved knife. He popped up out of the bushes after the girl passed. He was barefoot and carried a big, curved, knife.”
“Curved knife?”
“A sword.”
“You mean a katana?” I looked down the trail from whence she came.
“Yes. He popped up next to me from nowhere then disappeared into the bushes again.”
“He carried a katana?”
“He scared me so I hurried to catch up to you.”
“What color was the handle?”
“The handle? There was a long blade. I didn’t notice the handle.”
When I think Katana, I think of the beautiful, white handled, dragonhead katana wielded by the immortal Duncan Mcleod of the clan Mcleod in his quest to survive The Game where there can be only one. I found myself wishing I had actually purchased the katana I saw on Amazon and brought it along on this trip. Ignoring the plight of getting a 40-inch blade on a commercial airline in a post 9/11, paranoid Trumpian world. I envisaged engaging the ruffian in a clanging sword fight protecting the love of my life from impending doom eventually taking the head of the barefoot stranger lurking in the woods saving future visitors from a gruesome gutting and the authorities swooping in to find dozens of corpses hidden in shallow hills on this side of the mesa. Barring that, I scanned the grounds for a thick stick to carry as a counter-terrorism weapon. If only I was carrying that stout saguaro rib I would be invincible.
For the next while of our hike, we made repeated glances over our shoulders. Not that it would make any difference. If he was able to emerge silently from the woodlands once he could easily do it again. We didn’t stop glancing until a set of three hikers we passed earlier, passed us a second time. We chatted them up a second time with a strange twist to the conversation.
The gentlemen of the threesome, jovial both times we met up, asked me, “Why the pink sunglasses?” The question felt accusatory. I sensed an implication a real man would not wear bright, pink anything.
I should have digressed into our visit to Whitesands the previous year where the intense color of the light pained my eyes even when wearing my prescription sunglasses. And how these, purchased in New Mexico, had warmer lenses providing needed relief from the eye strain. But I wanted away from him so just said I liked them. He then told me, with an even bigger smile, he had a pair of bright yellow before the group headed off.
There is a backwoods question asking, how fast do you need to run to outrun a bear? The answer is only faster than the slowest person in the group. This group was now nearer to katana man than we so we were able to relax and quit stealing glances over our shoulders.
Our last encounter on the trail was Hawaiian shirt dude with his rat dog. They passed us again and again without acknowledgment. This is the guy we side eyed wondering if he would survive a loop only to have him lap us in seemingly high energy while we were struggling to finish. We were embarrassed questioning our ability as hikers. Our conclusion, we were wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. Books and covers.
Trail’s End
The hike finished without further excitement. Although, we did hear and then catch a glimpse of a grey bird singing from the tippy top of a tallish juniper. It called out twice then disappeared. It was the only wildlife we encountered on the trail. There were no squirrels, no coyotes, no lizards, no rattlesnakes, not even any insects. Was it too early in the season?
The mile tally for the hike came in at a touch over 5. Not bad for the first day at elevation in red lands. Our plans to seize the next day included another 5 miler, the one and only hike I scouted before the trip. My hope was for it to be an all-day lingerer. Until then we would check into the Sky Ranch Lodge, eat dinner at a local Thai restaurant where we would also carpe vinum (seize the wine).
I found myself enjoying the Sedona red rock more than I expected. I wanted to like this vacation location but loving the land was out of the question. There is room for only one love in my heart. Yet, there is no denying I felt an ache in my heart seeking carnal knowledge. Was betrayal in the air? The heart wants what the heart wants.
Too be continued…
Twin Yellows
Love Desert Flowers
Adultery in Sedona, Part 1 Pull out your pocketknife, open the blade, and run it across your burnished arm. If you draw blood, you are human.
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Can you relate?
1) “Call-out culture was developed to allow activist groups to confront leaders who abused their privilege, but now it is being used to settle petty scores on the level of interpersonal politics. I now have a hard time believing some people when they make call-outs because I have seen too many that were based on nothing. Call-outs have become a way to acceptably inflict social violence and rarely are followed up in any way resembling transformative justice because people are not interested in doing the hard work of working with those who are called out.”
2) “As a white person, if I don't automatically agree with whichever person of color is directly in front of me, I run the risk of being labelled a racist. This is a result of good intentions where we want to center people of color and their experiences, but it makes no sense because people of color are not a monolithic block who all agree or share the same experiences. I am basically forced to perform a kind of double-think where I am expected to be able to agree with multiple conflicting viewpoints at the same time – or at least pretend to.”
3) “The line, 'it's not my responsibility to educate you, educate yourself' is being used too frequently. People should only say this when it would be seriously difficult to help educate someone. Otherwise as an anarchist it is your responsibility to help educate people who want to learn, or to help find someone who is willing to do it. Furthermore, refusing to explain yourself contributes to a form of classism in which people with less formal education and access to information are marginalized within anarchist communities. As well, this line assumes that there are 'correct' resources to be reading that are available, and that the person in question will be able to find them among thousands of conflicting resources.”
4) “Excluding straight/cis/male people makes sense in queer/trans/women's spaces, but often these people are informally excluded in anarchist spaces that are not any of these things. This hurts our ability to cultivate meaningful popular social power. It's also related to a dynamic where men of color, native men, immigrant men and other groups of marginalized men are severely underrepresented in anarchist spaces. It also assumes that straight/cis presenting people have the option of being 'more queer' or 'more trans', which is often not the case depending on their circumstances.”
5) “Calling people out for using the wrong language, for example saying 'biological female' instead of 'person assigned female at birth', is harmful and makes no sense because not everyone has access to the same information, they'll never learn if they're excluded, and the 'correct' languages changes every couple of years anyway. People don't want to be associated with us because they see how punishing we are to each other and it turns them off.”
6) “People use 'unsafe' when they mean 'uncomfortable' way too often and it diminishes the meaning of the word 'unsafe' to the point where it's not very meaningful anymore.”
7) “People's obsession with identity politics means the only people who can say stuff like this out loud have to be able to identify themselves as multiply marginalized, and then everyone immediately agrees about how problematic it all is.”
8) “Who cares about who you personally fuck when we're talking about a broad political movement? Get off the ego trip. What we want is health care, affordable housing, jobs, prison abolition, immigration rights, sex workers rights, and the end of capitalism. 'Queer' has become so fashionable that it's being confused with 'radical'.”
9) “People have no interest in actually changing things anymore. Talking about class and economics isn't fashionable, and in some cases it's downright dismissed and labelled as racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic. Anarchists don't want to build coalitions with working-class people because they don't want to be 'triggered' by having to explain their politics to people who disagree with them.”
10) “We've completely failed to build frameworks for accountability and transformative justice, and instead rely on callouts and social exclusion that replicate the prison system without the benefit of having trials.”
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