#instead of resonate with the label and idea I don’t have interest in these things nor experience these attractions | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mercifullymad · 1 year

Note

Hi there! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for beginner readings about Sanism, anti psychiatry, etc? I've only recently been introduced to these ideas, but they really resonate with me and I'd love to learn more.

Hello, thank you for asking! I'm more than happy to share a list of readings I've found useful and/or important, and glad that you're interested in learning more!

Before I get into the list, one note: I identify as a mad liberationist, rooted in the principles of the Mad Pride movement and the academic (in)discipline of Mad Studies. So I don't have any recommendations that come from a strict anti-psychiatry stance, as I don’t root myself in the anti-psychiatry moment and I simply haven't read much in that tradition. Instead, my readings are mostly rooted in Mad Studies, Mad Pride, the psychiatric survivor/consumer/(ex-)patient movement, Critical Disability Studies, Disability Justice, and Crip Studies.

Without further ado, here are my recommendations (I encourage anyone else to add on in the comments/reblogs—I certainly have not read everything)!

Articles:

Mad Studies – What It Is and Why You Should Care:

“Mad Studies is an area of education, scholarship, and analysis about the experiences, history, culture, political organising, narratives, writings and most importantly, the PEOPLE who identify as: Mad; psychiatric survivors; consumers; service users; mentally ill; patients, neuro-diverse; inmates; disabled -to name a few of the “identity labels” our community may choose to use.”

Mad Studies Network – Shared Principles: From the same website as the above article. The website has many great articles and reading recommendations even though it hasn’t been updated for a couple years.

“We aim to work towards making and preserving space for mad people’s knowledges and histories within the academy and within [mental health] services.”

Mad and Queer Studies: Interconnections and Tensions:

“Mad and Queer Studies have lot of common ground – especially in terms of challenging existing binaries (for example, gay/straight and mad/sane); subverting negative connotations of Queer/Mad; and critiquing prevailing normativities (ways of being ‘normal’).”

A Psychiatric Survivor Studies Manifesto: A critique of Mad Studies and identifying as mad, instead suggesting identification as a psychiatric survivor and psychiatric survivor studies. A good read, especially as someone new to this area exploring your options for self-identification!

“Psychiatric survivors are those who have sought help and have not found it, psychiatric survivors have varying levels of belief in a separation of mind and body. Psychiatric survivors are not reducible to a single category but instead are a force to be reckoned with who have (often dysfunctionally) shut down major oppressive institutions and forced change within medicine multiple times over.”

Against Self Advocacy Part 2: Maddening Autistic Self-Advocacy: From the same writer as the above article.

“Like it or not, mad and anti-psychiatry politics do inform and are part of the history of Autistic politics.”

“The Autistic meltdown, when our bodies rebel because of sensory overload, the issues related to social impairment---many of these things have more similarity with mad politics … But those similarities have intentionally been quieted so as not to make Autistic bodies seem rebellious.”

Mad People Of Colour: A Manifesto:

“We cannot separate our experiences of racialization, madness, and other oppressions. … White people’s experiences of psychiatry are not ‘like colonialism’. Colonialism is like colonialism… Ask yourself whether your goal as a mad activist is to regain the white middle-class privilege you lost when you were psychiatrized.”

Trans Activists, Don’t Throw Mad People Under the Bus!: Article on the shared history and aims of trans and mad people.

“We know that the various psychiatric diagnoses for trans people have not been based in sensitive listening or in any kind of scientific knowledge of etiology, that on the contrary they have been nothing but arbitrary and punitive vehicles for imposing normative expectations of how a person ought to be. We know that psychiatrists and psychologists don’t listen to us, or our communities, don’t know about us, or our communities, and don’t help us, or our communities. Why would we assume things are any different for all the other kinds of people psychiatrists assert dominion over?”

The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health: This article is far from perfect in its analysis, but I think it’s still worth reading for its observations about how the internet structurally reinforces stringent diagnostic categories.

“The danger lies in how we enforce and contextualize these [diagnostic] categories. ... If we cannot commune with each other, relate to each other, love each other, argue with each other, without feeling that we are irreconcilably different because of something endemic to our psyches (you have ADHD, I have BPD, we are not the same), we lessen the chance that we will be able to build actual solidarity, and fight against the structures that cause us all to feel so mentally ill.”

An Introduction to Anti-Black Sanism: Unlike the other articles, this one is an academic article, but it’s too important to leave out.

“The historical and ongoing set of aggressions visited on Black/African people in the Global North is both anti-Black racism and a specific kind of sanism, and we have named this suffering, this particularly perilous mix of oppressions, anti-Black Sanism.”

“Anti-Black Sanism provides a framework that names the injustice, the pain, and seeks to address the historic discrimination, continued overrepresentation of Black/African-identified individuals in the mental health system… Anti-Black Sanism also allows us to join with others in de-centering whiteness in mental health as well as in the ex-patient, survivor, disability, and mad movements.”

The Next Generation of the Mad Movement in New York City Looks Like This:

“Peter Stastny finishes the first panel. As the elder of the group, he’s the self-chosen, pragmatic voice of “What works and what doesn’t work”, having been around and active since the 1980s and watched so many progressive mental health projects become defunded or co-opted or simply slip into obscurity. It’s obvious he wants this project to have a different fate.”

Help-Seeking: Where’s the Help? (tw self-harm and suicide)

“In the context of mental health, particularly intense mental distress associated with self-harm and suicide, asking for help might not only result in the absence of care, it might result in punishment and harm. … Emphasis on seeking [help] ignores not only the availability of help but crucially, the deep pain and frustration of calling for help and having nobody come.”

Un-care-able (tw self-harm and suicide)

“Stigma’ is too general, too mild a word for what is happening here. This is rejection, it is a casting out, it is the designation of ‘un-care-able’. In a sleight of hand so swift as to be both bewildering and dazzling, the more a person who self-harms needs care, the more they prove themselves to be both undeserving of it and unfit for it. Here pain is not evidence of need, and thus a prompt for care – instead, it is the signal for abandonment.”

Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker: Focused on neurodivergence, but a very good and important read for anyone interested in learning more about non-normative bodyminds.

“A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.

In terms of discourse, research, and policy, the pathology paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people not being normal,’’ whereas the neurodiversity paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people being oppressed, marginalized, and/or poorly served and poorly accommodated by the prevailing culture?’’”

Books:

Unfortunately, I don't have many beginner book recommendations, although this depends on how you’re defining "beginner." If you're new to Mad Studies but not new to reading dense texts about Literary Studies, then La Marr Jurelle Bruce's "How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind" or Therí Pickens' "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" would be great beginner texts. If you’re well-versed in the study of rhetoric, then other academic books like Margaret Price’s “Mad At School” and M. Remi Yergeau’s “Authoring Autism” can also serve as introductions. But if "beginner" means written for the general public as opposed to an academic audience, then these are the only recs I've got:

Robert McRuer's "Mad in America”: A history of psychiatry care and the psychiatry industry in the U.S. written for a general audience. Great for contextualizing and historicizing the development of U.S. psychiatry.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice”: This book does a great job explicitly connecting the Mad Pride and psychiatric survivor movement to broader disability organizing and issues. It is a great recounting of organizing efforts from both Disability Justice and the psychiatric survivor moment, grounded in Piepzna-Samarasinha’s long involvement in both.

Eli Clare’s “Brilliant Imperfection”: An extremely insightful overview of and meditation on the politics of “cure” for physically disabled, chronically ill, and mad people. Also some of my favorite writing on the utilities and harms of diagnosis.

[Textbooks] “Mad Matters” and “The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies”: It can be hard to get copies of these books without academic access (or spending a lot of money), but if you can somehow get them, they contain a lot of useful information and history.

[Can’t personally vouch for] James Davies’ “Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis” and “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm than Good”: I have not read either of these books, but they are written for a general audience, so probably very explanatory/introductory in their explanation, which might be good if you are coming to this with no prior knowledge. Jamies Davies is probably the most anti-psychiatry-aligned author on this list, too, if you’re specifically looking for writing rooted in that stance. The books seem to be focused critiques of the contemporary psychiatric industry (rather than focusing on the experiences/organizing/culture of mad people, as most of my other recs do).

Finally, I would also suggest checking out collectives/orgs like Project LETS (lots of great posts on their instagram about sanism and mad pride), the Institute for the Development of the Human Arts (IDHA), Recovery in the Bin, the #StopSIM collective, and country or region-specific Mad Pride groups, Hearing Voices groups, and Alternatives to Suicide Groups. So much of this knowledge is created and spread through social networks and transient social media posts rather than in articles and books.

#hope this helps & that something in this list resonates with u!#mad studies #mad pride #psychiatric survivor #disability studies #neurodivergence #disability justice #my readings

112 notes · View notes

wonder-womans-ex · 3 years

Text

Curtain Call

Act One, Scene Five

Sirius knows he’s petty. Extremely so. Petty enough to send the elevator all the way down to the ground floor so that Remus has to either take the stairs or wait, at least.

What Remus said is still wheeling in his mind. Remus kissed someone else. It hurts, yeah, but he’ll put on his brave face. He’ll move on.

The thing that hurts most—the thing he can’t ignore or get over—is that he’s not sure whether he’s more upset that Remus cheated, more upset that Remus dumped him, or more upset that Remus didn’t give him the chance to break it off. Remus should have owned up to it, and he should have given Sirius that choice. It’s like he said when before he left the staff room—maybe he would have ended things, maybe he wouldn’t have.

He should have at least had the option to break Remus’s heart like Remus broke his, but instead Remus just broke his twice.

Sure enough, Remus is five minutes late to the seminar, and Sirius knows that Lily’s pissed. What he doesn’t know is whether she’s pissed at Remus, or if she’s figured out that Sirius is the reason behind the delay and is pissed at him. She seems the type to just know these things.

He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining her glare in his direction when she says, “We’ll start in a minute or two; John will be back by then with the papers we need for today’s lecture,” but he decides to ignore it. After all, if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s ignoring his problems.

Well, and running away from them. It depends on the day and what mood he’s in.

He also doesn’t miss the fact that when Remus does return, he pulls the classic ‘take one and pass it on’ instead of handing out the papers one by one. It’s probably so that he doesn’t have to look Sirius in the face.

When the stack reaches him, Sirius has to reach back a whole row of seats to get to the next person. He almost tips over in his chair, but manages to save himself a sore tailbone—and a whole lot of embarrassment—at the last minute.

The page is split into five sections: theme, topic, setting, characters, and story objective. He remembers, vaguely, learning some of this in grade seven, but that’s where his memory blanks. (What the everloving fuck is a story objective?)

Apparently he’s about to find out.

Lily claps her hands together in an incredibly teacher-like way. If he didn’t know better, he would have a hard time believing this is the same woman who so aggressively played matchmaker (or maybe she was actually trying to drive them further away from each other; thinking back on it, Sirius can’t actually tell) only a few minutes before. “Well,” she says, addressing the room at large, “who can tell me what a theme is?”

There are a few raised hands, and she calls on the boy just behind Sirius, with chocolate-brown hair and more freckles than he can count. “It’s what the story is about. But like, in an abstract way.”

“Very good.” Lily takes a whiteboard marker out of her jeans pocket. Turning to the board, she draws a T-table, labeling one side theme and the other topic. Under the first heading, she writes abstract, and, across from it, concrete.

“Theme and topic are often confused, because they’re both what a story is about. But—what’s your name?”

“Benjy. Benjy Fenwick,” says the freckled boy.

“But Benjy here has hit the nail on the head. The difference between theme and topic is that a theme is abstract—a concept, or an idea, or a feeling—while a topic is concrete—such as a person, place, thing, or event….”

Sirius begins to zone out. Absentmindedly, he grabs a pencil and begins sketching on the smooth, polished wood of his desk. A circle, an oval, a line here and there, some shading—slowly, his doodle begins to take shape. By the time Lily says, “Now, who can give me some examples of a good story theme?” and people start calling out their answers, he’s perfected the glint in his anime-style eye.

“One last one. How about you, by the back, with the Blue Jays shirt?”

(Of course she’s pretending she doesn’t know his name. Lucky him—he’s always wanted to be demoted back to ‘hey, you.’)

His head jerks up. “Uh, relationships,” he says, because he’s a walking cliche and, yes, of course that’s the only thing on his mind. Why wouldn’t it be?

“There’s an interesting one.” She adds it to the board, right underneath hardship, pressing hard enough that the nib of the pen squeaks. “It could technically be counted as a topic, too, but it works well as a theme.”

There’s a pause as she looks around, seemingly searching for a suitable place to put her pen. Finally, she gives up, tucking it behind her ear.

“What I want everyone to do now is think carefully about what theme they want to write about. You can pick as many as you want, and you can add more later, but it’s easiest to focus on just two or three. You can pick one of the ones we came up with here, or it can be something totally different, but make sure it’s something that speaks to you.”

Her words resonate in Sirius’s mind. Something that speaks to him? He starts to write, his large printing cramped in the tiny box, and he gets halfway through the second C before he erases it again. He has to think for a minute. He doesn’t want to write about success, not when there’s so little of it in his life right now, but he doesn’t want to write about something dark, like suffering, either.

Loss, he puts down with finality. On second thought, he adds healing. And then, just because he feels like it, friendship.

The clock on the wall says they have twelve more minutes before they’re finished; he wonders what else they’ll do before the class ends. Right now, the only sound in the room is the quiet scratching of pencils—soothing, he must admit, even though he personally prefers the excitement of applause—and it seems as though he’s the only one who’s finished.

He lets himself look around, his eyes flickering from the clock to the whiteboard to the person sitting to his left. They dart to the door at the other side of the hall, and forward to where Remus is... staring right back at him.

The two lock eyes for a good fifteen seconds before Remus lowers his gaze to the floor. It’s not much of a victory, Sirius knows, but it’s a victory nonetheless.

So why doesn’t it feel like one?

There’s not time to burrow any deeper into his own thoughts, however, because Lily is writing once more on the board. Unfortunately for him, he can’t see what she’s written—even when she turns around—because her head is in the way.

“I assume most of you have your themes, and even if you don’t, you can always come back to it. Right now, we’re going to move onto topic—surprise surprise, also what the story is about, but this time on a more concrete scale. Let’s take Romeo and Juliet, for instance, because I’m fairly sure it’s a story we all know. Does anyone have any idea what the topic is?”

Silence.

Sirius, usually the self-aware one in any situation (but apparently not this one), knows there are two possible reasons as to why he raises his hand. Unfortunately, he does not know which of them it is. The first is simple—he’s confident has the answer, and he wants to share it. The second is both a little more complex and a little more likely, and that is that he doesn’t know what the answer is and maybe, just maybe, he wants to prove to Remus he’s not afraid to take risks.

Either way, his tentative “Love?” is declared—spoiler alert—incorrect.

“Wrong,” Lily says. “Love is a theme, not a topic. Try again.”

Well, he wasn’t expecting a second chance. (It seems he only ever gets them when he’s unprepared.) (Maybe there’s a lesson in that.)

“Um… people in love?” If the first answer wasn’t right, this one won’t be either. He knows that. But it is, frankly, all he can come up with.

“Ding-a-ling-a-ling,” Lily deadpans, which actually sounds a little funny in that accent of hers. He’s not going to mention that, though, because he’s on pretty thin ice already where she’s concerned. “Correct. Yes, maybe they sound like basically the same thing, but they’re not. The way I like to put it is this: if you can draw a picture of it, chances are it’s the topic. If you can’t, chances are it’s the theme.” After a moment, she adds, “I probably should have said that at the beginning. Whatever.”

This causes Remus’s lips to twitch up into a smile. In fact, it’s only just now that Sirius realizes he’s watching Remus at all—he could have sworn he stopped—and he forces himself to look away.

But he really can’t deny it any longer. He really can’t deny that that little smile, happy and pure with just a hint of mischief, still makes his heart pound and his brain turn to mush. He really can’t deny that despite everything—despite the breakup, and the recent confession, and the promises made late at night that he’s getting over this, he really is…

He’s still in desperate, painful, middle-grade YA novel love with Remus/John/does-it-really-matter-what-his-name-is Lupin.

#wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #lily evans #remus x sirius #muggle au #university au #I really hate this chapter but whatever #it needed to be published

28 notes · View notes

mintvender · 3 years

Text

Chocolate Cosmos

HaremAu!

Warning: None

Word Count: 1.2k

A/n: On the occasion of the blog reaching 100 followers, I hastily wrote a little moment-in-between piece to celebrate our achievement. Thank you everyone who have supported the blog throughout this 3 months, I am truly thankful for all of your effort in supporting me!!! Let me know if you like these little pieces. I might fo more if it gets enough attention—send in some ideas for inspo~ Enjoy 🌿

Masterlist

They told me that those feelings will eventually fade away.

They encouraged me to let go and forget those memories.

They forced us to part ways.

Why? As a child, I couldn’t understand the reason for their actions. Even as a young adult, who has inherited the family’s business, I still have yet to sympathise with their justifications.

However, as I retire from my childhood, I did understand one thing. My lovely parents, who have been all but understanding, didn’t do what they did for my benefit, but theirs.

What even made it worse was that I was never prepared for the new life that had entered mine. Moments before that, I didn’t have enough time to get over the thought of leaving my home for an unknown world. So of course, being forced to adapt to their lifestyle was harder than they all made it sound but it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened.

I remembered curling into myself in those sleepless nights, terrified by the echoes of the mansion after the maids have dropped me off after my lessons. Though, it was nothing compared to the aching feeling clenching my heart.

Luckily, I knew the reason for it.

I subconsciously lifted my heavy mood at the memory, while sensing how freaked out my servants looked, gaping at me.

However, I didn’t care. The servants have already been informed of their master’s uniqueness, either by the head butler or gossips floating around the city.

Turning my head, I picked up the rusty necklace hanging on the stand, feeling the familiar weight rested on my palm. Grazing over the metal, my heart was filled with longing.

How have you been, N/n?

Despite the unimpressive embedment of the dull rocks, along with the poor excuse of a metal choice, I still find myself admiring every little detail of the pendant. After all, it was the first and only present that I received from them.

Letting out a bitter smile, I shoved the necklace into one of the drawers before drawing my attention back to the servants.

“ Anything interesting?”

Aside from the horrible start, the lessons have made my process to inheritance a lot more accessible, not that taking over the business was difficult. One of the lessons that I resonated most with was the significance of displayed confidence during a conversation. As long as I am confident—even better, arrogant, the conversation shall sway in my direction.

And it seems that the lesson has also affected both my reputation and persona as well. Anyhow, it’s better this way. At least I didn’t have to bother with relatives complaining about me when they knew that I paid them no mind.

However, the younger relatives seemed to not be as educated as the elder ones and like to meddle with my business. At least my life is not tasteless with their presence constantly pestering me.

In some ways, I was thankful that my parents didn’t have other offspring. That would make my goal to become successful more complicated.

Soon, N/n. We would be able to unite again. Maybe, become finances like we had in the past.

Some may ask what is the reason behind my ambition. I necessarily wouldn’t label it as ambition but instead a tool that happened to be within my possession. Of course, I wouldn’t say that out loud and would just dismiss the question with a smile.

Ah, may I also add that one of the few consequences of my lessons was the extreme focus on my own self, and not others? Though, when people questioned my mentality, I too to some extent, agree with them but isn’t it human nature to experience greed in their lifetime? As a result, I figured to experience this feeling in my youth, where I still have the power and energy to deal with whatever mess I have created.

“ A message from the nation of Corea has arrived.”

Perking up in interest, I looked up to stare at the piece of paper placed on the table. “ I heard that Corea had been revolutionized. What was it? The L/N dynasty now,” I said, my tongue not used to the surname.

“ Yes, master. I heard that a group of rebels managed to push down the gates and successfully took over the palace.”

Rolling my eyes, I retorted, “ Of course they did. If they didn’t then they wouldn’t have a chance to enter my earshot.”

“ Yes, of course, master,” the servant hurriedly agreed.

Smirking slightly at his cowered stance, I slowly picked up the letter. “ Such terrible handwriting,” I degraded after scanning through the letter.

I rested my head on my palm, thinking of an outline, “ They want us to trade with their country. A possibility of becoming a vassal to connect the two nations.”

“ What will you do, master?”

Glaring at the servant, I growled, “ Let me think, brat! Youngsters these days!!!...It would be a waste to not partner with such a potential party but their future is uncertain. Who knows if the current Empress/Emperor could even do a decent job. Come to think of it, any particular trait of this person?”

“ I heard that this person has personally executed the previous emperor in front of the previous crown prince.”

I winced, “ Tyrannical.”

“ However, the monarch did allow ministers from the previous dynasty to join their court.”

I scrunch my face, “ Thoughtless! A person this unpredictable can’t be easily meddled with. Whatever, ignore this letter. Mov—”

Scrambling from his spot, the servant shakily interrupted my speech, “ Please rethink, master! Doing that to the imperial family, nevertheless the Empress/Emperor, is considered disrespect. Not only that, it will worsen the bond between two nations! Our business coul—”

“ I get it, I get it. But, don’t you dare to interrupt me again!” I said, making sure to make him understand, “ I’ll write a letter back to them. What’s the current monarch’s name?”

“ M—”

“ I won’t address them by their name, I just want to know for extra precautions,” I tiredly reasoned.

The servant begrudgingly nodded, “ The current Empress/Emperor of Corea is L/N Y/N.”

Jotting down the name, I took a moment to memorize the name. Noticing something was wrong, I tried to look between the lines for a possible answer. The name was oddly similar to… N/n.

Involuntarily gasping at the connection, I grabbed the paper and brought it close to my face to examine the name, making sure that I have not hallucinated.

“ What was their name?”

“ It’s L/N Y/N, master.”

Widening my eyes, I quickly set the paper down before picking up another page, “ Change of mind. We will be accepting this invitation.”

Gasping at the unexpected outcome, all the servants gawked at their master’s busied stance. In their entire career, they have never witnessed a moment of the master taking back his words.

Swiftly scribbling down phrases, I felt my heart speeding up at the thought of meeting them again.

Even if there might be the smallest chance of it being them, I will never let this thread of hope go.

“ When will this letter arrive in Corea?”

Snapping out of his dazed state, the servant clumsily replied, “ If everything goes smoothly, I would say approximately half a month.”

I nodded, finding the answer surprisingly pleasant.

I’ve spent years waiting for them that half a month seems like nothing.

“ We shall depart to Corea a month from now.”

#bts #bts Jin #bts seokjin #bts scenarios #bts imagines #jin x reader #jin x you #jin x yn #bts fanfic #reader insert #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #kpop x y/n #harem au #bts harem au #mintvender #100 followers celebration 🍾

12 notes · View notes

thatbanjobusiness · 3 years

Text

I want to briefly talk bluegrass fashion.

I appreciate and enjoy bluegrass from its roots to its present. I think creative growth over the decades has allowed for incredible and diverse music. Whether it’s disco influenced jamming, rock-bluegrass fusions, or classical music inspiration, there’s cool stuff to be had anywhere in the timeline. That said, one thing I wish contemporary bluegrass bands did more of was take fashion tips from the first generation bands.

In the 1920s, barn dance type radio programs featuring hillbilly music and rural style entertainment became popular. Some of these radio shows like the WLS National Barn Dance and WSM Grand Ole Opry had stage shows where you could watch the program in person. Costuming and presentation of the performing cast tended to be rough rube depictions, even caricatures, of rural people. George D. Hay, who founded and hosted the Grand Ole Opry, himself named the bands things like “The Gully Jumpers” and “The Possum Hunters.”

But when Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys auditioned and were made members of the Grand Ole Opry in October 1939, Monroe detested this rough presentation that could quickly engender degrading opinions of hillbilly stereotypes. He opted instead to dress in a more classy manner. His band came out in white shirts, ties, jodhpurs, and boots.

This is something Bill Monroe bragged about even as the decades went on. For Monroe, it was important to dress well and in dignity when you got onstage. You respect yourself and you respect audiences when you come out in your best.

By the mid-1940s Bill Monroe’s band had accumulated a number of musical features that today our ears would recognize as bluegrass. It’s interesting to notice that bandmembers who left Monroe and went on to do their own bluegrass music often... took with them some of Bill’s ideas about stage presentation. Flatt & Scruggs, when they left Monroe and started their own band, are sometimes seen in early images wearing jodhpurs.

Early bluegrass bands on occasion might have had an “exception” to the rule. At the very least, you see this in Flatt & Scruggs in the late 1940s and first half of the 1950s. But I believe what they were doing reflected a trend that existed in the broader hillbilly music industry. I’d like investigate that more later to understand better. Unlike today’s concerts that involve music and only music, in those times, comedy was a more expected part of a show. White banjo performers, prior to bluegrass, were essentially all comedians; and in ensembles, someone (as I’ve often seen, the bass player) might take a comedy role. So you could’ve gotten a well-dressed band... and then the bassist dressed in comic rube garb.

That said, each first generation bluegrass band ended up creating their own unique presentation. It’s variation around a theme: dress up nice to respect audiences and put your best foot forward. How you present yourself onstage has impact. Audiences aren’t coming out to see some tattered everyday person; they’re coming out here to listen to music stars.

And so you see bands and acts coordinating their outfits in classy ways like...

(The 1958 screencap above doesn’t 100% evoke this, but I’ve noticed Flatt & Scruggs in the mid-50s through mid-60s would often do a 2-2-2 coordination. Everyone would wear hats. The band leaders would wear matching jackets and string ties. Two band members would wear the same collared shirts and the same string ties as the leaders. The last two band members, who were a duet and comedy team, would wear vests or different hats or some other distinguishing marker. Everyone’s clothes would carry the same overall color theme. Very well-thought out wardrobe presentation.)

SEE? EVERYONE IS DRESSED UP AND LOOKS GOOD.

You can tell they’re an act. You can tell they’re professional. You can tell, the second they step up to perform, they mean business. It helps elevate them into STARS.

As new generations took up bluegrass, the social context of how to dress changed. The Folk Revival of the 1960s brought many Northerners, urban people, and hippies into the bluegrass world. I haven’t read up as much on this part of bluegrass history, but I believe it was starting here that new bluegrass ensembles quit thinking about dressing up to be onstage. I’ve certainly seen photos of the early bluegrass festivals of the late 60s and 70s, and some second generation bluegrass groups would wear extremely casual things onstage. Other groups would coordinate by wearing the same collared shirt, which meant they were matching, but also (to me) making less of a “statement.”

It makes sense. First generation bluegrass performers were seeking to dress to impress and get away from crappy hillbilly stereotypes. Later generations of bluegrass performers might not have been from the South or a country lifestyle at all, and would feel more inclined to try to evoke a “working class” vibe by wearing everyday or ragged clothing. Today, I feel many bands do this to evoke their own form of an authentic stage presentation.

This means that today, many groups wear rather casual clothing. I feel I see this especially in jamgrass. And for the record, these are all VERY talented, well-known ensembles; I’m not comparing pros to locals or something.

And they’re dressed better here than what I’ve seen for bands at concerts.

I think it’s ironic that Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, sought to escape tattered clothing that actual country people wouldn’t wear on the fields, let alone onstage... only to have bluegrass musicians half a century later revert to costuming concepts Monroe had rejected. Today’s clothes of course aren’t the torn-up straw hat and single-strapped overalls of the early Opry, but it’s the same idea: dress down to look “country.” I don’t think there’s any objective disrespect to bluegrass’s history to dress like that, but I do think there’s a point that everyday clothes don’t make as much of an impression for your band.

Now of course not all groups have gone this route. In any generation of bluegrass, you still see bands that dressed more “traditionally.” But it’s certainly been a trend��since at least the 70s—to see bluegrass groups, either at the local or professional level, wearing everyday clothes. Get jeans, maybe some flannel, and you’re good to go. I see it oh-so-often now.

It doesn’t resonate as much to me. I get the point of their presentation, trying to evoke a casual non-mainstream working class image, but I feel there’s other ways you can set a vibe for your ensemble that doesn’t come off as lazy, everyday, or unnoticeable.

I’d be much more interested seeing:

YEAH!!!!! YOU GO RHONDA VINCENT AND THE RAGE!

I think it’s interesting to see this mindset about proper bluegrass performance attire recur in interviews. I’ve watched a number of 2000s and 2010s interviews for first and early second generation bluegrass performers, and one common thing the old-timers complain about is how people don’t dress up anymore. They feel it doesn’t respect the audience or make a good impression for the ensemble. How you present yourself onstage is half of the performance; it can be an effective means of enhancing a show when you do it well.

And I’ve seen it in conversations with people like Steve Martin, showing how in the 2010s, there’s still negative “hillbilly” images to butt against:

INTERVIEWER: Does it bother you that quite possibly the most famous banjo song in pop culture is "Dueling Banjos" from "Deliverance"?

MARTIN: It doesn't bother me at all. Actually I might argue with that because another most famous song would be the theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies" or "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," the song from "Bonnie and Clyde." So there are a couple of 'most famous' banjo songs.

INTERVIEWER: But still… the theme song from "The Beverly Hillbillies"?

MARTIN: It's just something we have to face. And everything changes. That's why I always wear a suit and tie when I play bluegrass.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel like you're helping changing the face of bluegrass?

MARTIN: I don't know. That's what I do when I go on stage. I don't make hillbilly jokes or things like that. I'm just playing it as the person I am, not pretending to be anything else. The band I play with, we all dress in suits and ties.

One of my favorite contemporary bands also has one of my favorite wardrobes. What they choose to wear is a huge element of their stage presentation, amplifies their show powerfully, and contributes to the entire vibe of their music product. Good costuming can be part of marketing, and they market themselves spectacularly.

The Dead South almost marries the best of both worlds between “dress up” and “dress as the everyday man.” Their clothes aren’t “formal” in the sense of suits and ties. There’s more casualness to it. At the same time, what they wear—blatantly Southern and Western gear that matches with variation across the band—isn’t something everyday Joe or Janet would put on to go to Walmart. It’s got a little more of a “period” feel to it while also being modern enough to feel authentic. Altogether, it makes them classy without being formally classy.

It’s perfect for them. This is a “controversially” bluegrass band who knows that, while they play string band music, its creative reach extends beyond what you’d expect of something labeled “bluegrass.” They have called themselves “a rock band without a drummer, a bluegrass band without a fiddler.” Elsewhere, they’ve marketed themselves as “a gold rush vibing four-piece acoustic set from Saskatchewan [that] infuse[s] the genre's traditional trappings with an air of frontier recklessness, whiskey breakfasts and grizzled tin-pan showmanship.” This is a band I’ve always said plays to a “degenerate” image, songs filled with cowboy shootouts, barfights, gun-wielding robberies, alcoholic nights, and more.

And doesn’t their wardrobe evoke that spotlessly? There is CLASS and INTENTION with how they present themselves, to the point the band almost always stands in that order left-to-right, and has used their unique wardrobe choices for album covers and stage design.

Check out how the stage’s stained glass window lights behind them evoke both images from their songs, and have the tie, beard, skull, string tie theme on them. Every band member stands in front of his respective window.

That is *WAY* cooler, more effective, more impacting, more resonating, more memorable, more vibing, than simply tossing on my latest t-shirt.

(And yes, the last photos are from when I went to their concert last year. One of the best concerts I’ve EVER been to, and it’s because they knew how to put on a SHOW.)

Performance entails everything from the sounds you make to the personality you evoke to the clothes you wear. It’s why I prefer the first generation bluegrass bands’ approach to “dress well” over some modern string band trends. And again, bands like The Dead South show alternate ways you can dress up and rock out.

#long post #that banjo business #thatbanjobusiness #Country Music History #Haddock Deep Dives #General Banjo Business #The Dead South #Bill Monroe #daddy boi billiam #Flatt & Scruggs #bluegrass #first gen bluegrass

27 notes · View notes

schraubd · 3 years

Text

ACES Wild

Last we encountered the "Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies" (ACES), they were pushing fabricated evidence and wild screeds against "critical race theory" in a failed attempt to derail the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum after it was reformed in accord with tremendous efforts by a range of California Jewish (and non-Jewish) organizations.

Now they're back in action, and this time their target is California's new draft Mathematical Framework. What horrors are contained inside? Let's look!

The first draft of the California Mathematics Framework is out for review, and it includes as a resource "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," a guide that labels teaching practices like "addressing mistakes" and "focus on the right answer" as "white supremacy culture."

This is critical race theory.

This is discrimination.

(Is this "critical race theory"? Nope, not going to get sucked into that).

Unfortunately, as was the case in the ESMC debacle, we are given only the thinnest possible citations to the primary sources for the alleged offending content. The link to the CMF draft goes to a website offering a thirteen chapter document, all in separate documents, comprised of hundreds of page, with no indication of where in the morass the "Pathway" document is included. The link to the Pathway itself, for its part, goes to a site that contains five separate documents, again totaling hundreds of pages, with nary a clue as to where this language about "addressing mistakes" might be found. All of this, I suppose, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Well, I may not be a math expert, but I have gotten familiar enough with the strategies of ACES and its friends to know better than to accept what they say on faith. So I went in search of this resource and this language, to see if it is as scary and offensive as they say.

I want to begin with some good news: unlike the Ethnic Studies case, ACES and its allies do not appear to have completely fabricated the inclusion of the putatively offensive material. Congratulations, ACES! This is a big step forward for you as an organization, and you should give yourself a hearty pat on the back.

Alas, if we ask for more than "not fabricated" and stretch all the way out to "not abjectly misleading", things get dimmer.

Start with the CMF draft. From what I can tell, the section they refer to (where the Pathway document is "included as a resource") is on page 44 of chapter two (lines 1010-13). Here, in its totality, is what's included:

Other resources for teaching mathematics with a social justice perspective include... The five strides of Equitable Math.org: https://ift.tt/3qNG3O2

That's it (The website "Equitablemath.org" is titled "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction"). It is mentioned, unadorned, in the "other resources" conclusion -- and as far as I can tell, nowhere else. Wowzers. I can feel the racial divisiveness cracking up from here.

One thing I'll observe on this is that often times one hears critics of "critical race theory" (or whatever random buzzword they're using today to connote "scary left-wing idea with a vaguely identity-politics kick") say that their problem isn't that the idea is included, but only that its indoctrinated -- it's not one perspective of many, it's the only perspective on offer. This protestation was always rather thin -- the many many bills banning "critical race theory" are decidedly not about ensuring viewpoint diversity -- and one sees just how hollow it is here. The raw, unadorned inclusion of the Equitable Math resource -- as part of a broader whole, not even quoted from directly -- is too much for these people to tolerate. This is not about ideological heterodoxy. This is about censoring ideas, full stop.

But maybe Equitable Math is such an awful or inane document that it would be wrong to include it, even as one resource among many. The way it's described, after all, makes it sound like Equitable Math is a group of hippies saying "2+2 = 4 is the white man's answer, man! Fight the power!" Is that what's happening? Is this a fever dream of post-modernism where nothing is true and everything is permitted?

Once again, I had to dig for myself to figure out where this content was so I could see it in context. The answer appears to be the first document on the site, titled "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics", on pages 65-68. Do they deny that there are such things as "right" answers in math? No: "Of course, most math problems have correct answers," but there are math problems (particularly word problems, but also data analysis) that can be interpreted in different ways that yield different "right" conclusions, and students and teachers should be attentive to that possibility. Do they say one should never "address mistakes"? No again, but mistakes should not simply be called out flatly but rather used as "opportunities for learning" with an emphasis on building on what the student does understand to lead them to recognize what they misapprehend.

I don't teach math, obviously, but there are many occasions where I'll say "such-and-such is the doctrinally correct answer -- but if we look at the problem from this other vantage, doesn't this other position become more plausible?" So when the Equitable Math site suggests, as an alternative to obsessive focus on the one correct answer, classroom activities like " Using a set of data, analyze it in multiple ways to draw different conclusions" -- well, that doesn't seem weird to me. Certainly, as someone who is also trained as a social scientist, I can say confidently that it's quite valuable to anyone who has seen how the same dataset can be deployed by different people with different priors to support different agendas.

Even more than that, the suggestions around "addressing mistakes" resonate with how I try to teach in my classrooms. Sometimes my students say something wrong. When they do so, for the most part I don't say "bzzzt" and move on, instead I try to guide them to the correct answer by having them unpack their own thinking. There's a lot of "I see what you mean by [X], but suppose ..." and ask questions which hone in on the problems or misunderstandings latent in what they're saying. And eventually they get there, hopefully without feeling like they've just been put inside an Iron Maiden for daring speak up.

Admittedly, I've never thought of what I'm doing as "dismantling White supremacy" -- I just viewed it as good pedagogy. But then again, that's kind of what I've always thought when asked about such subjects -- we act as if there's this deep magic to fostering equity and inclusion in the classroom, when really it's employing the basic strategies of being a good teacher, one of which is declining to engage in a measuring contest where you prove you know more than the student does. Obviously I know more than the student does. I don't need to prove anything. So if they say something wrong, I do not gleefully pounce on them for it, I do my best to build on what they do know to get them to a position of right. Is that so outrageous?

Finally, ACES in its tweet identifies one other area of crazy-lefty-craziness in this resource: "the incorporation of 'Ethnomathematics'". What does that mean? They don't say, correctly surmising that fevered imaginations will produce something far worse than anything they might quote. So I'll do the quoting for them (this comes from page 8):

Center Ethnomathematics:

• Recognize the ways that communities of color engage in mathematics and problem solving in their everyday lives.

• Teach that mathematics can help solve problems affecting students’ communities. Model the use of math as a solution to their immediate problems, needs, or desires.

• Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.

• Teach the value of math as both an abstract concept and as a useful everyday tool.

• Expose students to examples of people who have used math as resistance. Provide learning opportunities that use math as resistance.

I know, I know -- we're all going to pitch a fit about challenging "capitalist views". But apart from that, this seems ... very normal? We all know, to the point of cliche, that a barrier to getting kids interested in math is that they fail to see how it's useful to them or "in the real world". So they advise that math be taught in a way that resonates with real world experience. And likewise, sometimes, for some people "in the real world", math can feel like an enemy (think "am I just a statistic to you?"). So figure out ways to name that and challenge that. For the most part, "ethnomathematics" just reads as a particular social justice gloss on "being a good teacher", as applied to teaching in diverse communities.

Now perhaps one disagrees with these concepts as pedagogical best practice. I'm not a math teacher, I'm not going to claim direct experience here. But that goes back to the intensity of the backlash -- that these ideas need to be banned, that they are outright dangerous and unacceptable and neo-racism. Can that be right? Surely, these ideas are not so outlandish that we should pitch a fit about their being (deep breath) single elements of an 80 page document which is itself part of a five part series being incorporated as a single "see also" bullet point in the second chapter of a thirteen chapter model state framework. Seriously? That's where we're landing? That's what's going to drive us into a valley of racial division and despair?

It's wild. The people engaged in this obsessive crusade to make Everest size mountains over backyard anthills are nothing short of wild.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/39P79OA

#academia #education #math #racism

7 notes · View notes

autumnblogs · 3 years

Text

Day 44: Preoccupied about the same things as Trolls, revisited

Welcome back y’all! Before we get into this, I want to talk about the Condesce/Meenah as a parallel character to Mom Lalonde/Roxy. You can read a bit about @mmmmalo‘s takes on Openbound, and why they think that Meenah is symbolically Roxy’s Doppelganger here.

I want to call attention to some specific similarities between them, and while I think it’s a bit of a stretch, Homestuck draws parallels between characters all the time.

Both the Condesce and Mom Lalonde are matriarch figures estranged from their potential offspring by dire circumstances and servitude to a patriarchal authority and his time-spanning plan - for the Condesce, that’s English obviously, but for Mom Lalonde, that’s Grandpa Harley - servitude to his design renders her a wreck of an alcoholic forced to endure the end of days with no means to stop them from happening, living with a daughter who wants nothing to do her.

Both Meenah and Roxy are rebels against a repressive order, inclined to shirk their assigned Role in service to someone else’s master plan, but ultimately, through some roundabout means or another, give service to it anyway (for Meenah, scratching the game, and ultimately ending up English’s glorified slave for eons in the end; for Roxy, at first refusing to play Sburb in hopes of spiting the Batterwitch, but ultimately ending up playing into her schemes anyway).

They are both rebellious spirits who are repeatedly forced to participate in Paradox Space’s Alpha Timeline all but against their will by hegemonic forces, slaves to a system that they exist in perpetual rebellion against, and by the end of the comic, they both get to help strike a decisive blow against the ultimate foe. Unfortunately, unlike Roxy, Meenah is ultimately the kind of person who chooses at practically every occasion to continue cycles of abuse instead of breaking them. There is ultimately no possibility of reconciliation between these estranged sisters.

So, I see a lot of the Alpha Kids in the four Alpha Trolls who appear in this flash. As the Faux Heroic Himbo, the parallel between Rufioh and Jake is obvious. I don’t think that it’s fair to characterize Jake’s relationship with Dirk as being “cheating on Jane,” though that’s probably how Jane feels about the whole situation; I’ve always gotten the impression she feels entitled to him.

More after the break.

The imagery here is an obvious parallel between Jake and Dirk’s big damn kiss, and Rufioh and Horuss’s - but between Rufioh’s bravado and general obliviousness, and Horuss’s clear triangular parallel with Dirk and Equius, we should expect that the situation is switched here - Dirk = Horuss, Rufioh = Jake.

While it could easily just be a bit of extraneous characterization, I’m inclined to regard Rufioh’s characterization of the women in his life as “Dolls” especially because of his symbolic proximity to Lord English. (He is at best one degree of separation from him, as Jake English’s Alpha Troll Doppelganger) - and the fact that Puppets and Dolls are pretty much synonymous with each other in terms of the way that English interacts with them.

More extremely obvious parallels.

Both of the Zahhaks have hangups about dating down the Hemospectrum, and as long as we’re examining Dirk through the lens of the Zahhaks, allow me to speculate; I think that part of the reason Dirk chooses not to directly identify with the label of gay is less aloofly progressive futurism, and more that he is uncomfortable with his own sexuality.

As a guy who repeatedly appeals to reactionary ideals and rhetorical devices like “Western Civilization,” “Reason,” “Logic,” maybe there is a degree to which we can read Horuss and Equius’ self-repression through the haemospectrum into Dirk suffering from internalized Homophobia.

This is a real long shot, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Dirk is a bit of a bottom. Maybe his desire in building up Jake into a powerful counterpart, like English’s desire to transform Jake into a powerful rival, is built out of a desire to be Oedipally usurped by a former pupil - to have his Eromenos turn the tables, and become the Erastes in turn, in power-dynamic terms.

In Classical Civilization, homosexual relations weren’t unheard of, and were pretty reasonably common, but it was seen as shameful to bottom, especially for someone of a lower social standing than you were (Julius Caesar was mocked as the Queen of Bithynia when it was rumored that he bottomed for Nicomedes IV, which was a serious attack on his political career).

Wild speculative tangent over.

Now this is interesting; Meenah is unwittingly drawing a parralel between Damara and Vriska. The main commonality between them is that, like Vriska (and also like Rose, and also like Jane - who is the fourth and final character in this particular set) her spite and resentment is used as the vector for English’s manipulation of their setting.

Like Vriska, Damara deliberately sabotages the ability of her session members to win, helping to create a powerful foe who forces a session to be scratched.

Like Rose, Damara descends into nihilistic substance abuse to cope with feelings of emptiness.

Like Jane, Damara’s actual feelings of emptiness come about as a result of feelings of rejection in relation to betrayal from within her close friendship circle.

Ironically, while Damara’s reaction is far worse than Jane’s, her anger is actually probably far more understandable - Jane is not entitled to Jake.

The situation between Horuss and Rufioh is also similar to what will resolve between Jake and Dirk shortly - they are just basically incompatible, or at least they will be until both parties do some work on themselves, but a combination of an oblivious party who can’t stop talking about himself, and social timidity on the part of the other prevents the situation from resolving amicably.

“As Long As I Know That I Am Free”

Sometimes, encountering our ancestors doesn’t have to be a source of tension, anxiety, expectation, and fear. Porrim models parental love for Kanaya in a way that, unusually for ancestors in Homestuck, is purely beneficial for her younger counterpart.

It’s okay to identify with roles and identities that have been corrupted or hegemonized by our culture. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about being a man, or about being a woman, as long as our embodiment of those roles is emancipatory to us.

Kanaya can still be a Mom, if that’s what she wants to be. Violence and money aren’t the only form that power can take.

Sometimes, learning the right lessons is just a matter of pausing for a second and being critical of all narratives; deciding for ourselves what we want to be. It’s the lesson that Porrim has to teach Kanaya.

This is just objectively true.

Aranea positions Rufioh as both a foil to Cronus, and to herself, further strengthening the Jake as Rufioh parallels.

What I think is really interesting about all this, is if we want to read the other three trolls as Jake, Dirk, and Jane, that makes Meenah the Roxy of this group! And while Roxy has never been vicious or deliberately cruel, there’s a certain resonance between her persistent hassling of Jane, her meddling in the Jake English Sweepstakes, and the disaster that it provokes, and Meenah’s bullying - I even early on in my first readthrough took a disliking to Roxy because of what I viewed as exactly that - bullying her counterparts, assertively trying to get them to behave the way she wanted.

https://homestuck.com/story/5401

Oh man, where to even begin with Karkat riding off into the Penis Sunset. Like, the Sun in relation to Dave is persistently an icon of Bro’s surveillance of him, and then there’s his burgeoning affection for Karkat (he mentions story time with Karkat in the third Openbound suggesting that he actually took Karkat up on his offer to read through trashy Troll Romance).

Like, there’s probably something in Dave’s troubled psyche that’s on display here but damn if I know what it is. Maybe he’s ruminating on the fact that Bro would probably not be too accepting of his relationship with Karkat, hence the juxtaposition of the symbol of Bro’s hostility with the imagery of Karkat riding a dick?

https://homestuck.com/story/5404

I don’t really need to explicate much on what Rose is trying to say, I think but just in case, here’s a little rundown of what she’s trying to explain.

The apple is a symbol of an irreducible idea. Many ideas are reducible - as molecules are reducible to atoms, and atoms are reducible to quarks and stuff, so are ideas reducible to increasingly more abstracted and basic units.

The closer to notionally irreducible a thing becomes, the more difficult it becomes to express an idea, until at last, that which is truly irreducible resolves, and reveals to us the true, intrinsic nature of reality. For every complex idea, we can refer to more fundamental ideas, until at last, we arrive at an idea, which when probed, responds back simply, “It just does that.”

This, I think, is that to which we ought to give the name of God; that force so fundamental that it truly does just do that.

In the world of Homestuck, Symbols, and with them, Rituals - stories! Are manifestations of the primeval and irreducible ideas. Everything else is a universe in orbit around the Divine - the Aspects themselves, perhaps, or something more fundamental than the Aspects even.

What makes reducing these stories to the irreducible principles that they allude to so difficult is that you’re effectively trying to explain the electromagnetic force by comparing it to rubber bands, when in fact, the electromagnetic force is what makes the rubber bands behave that way in the first place.

As a Ritual, Rose’s drinking is pretty similar to John’s Dad roleplaying - an attempt at unity with Her Mom. Another empty signifier.

https://homestuck.com/story/5405

Dave is already really embracing his new role as the actually most sincere and straightforward member of the party. Lovin’ it.

It’s kind of nice that Aradia and Vriska are getting along now. That’s gratifying for personal reasons.

Ah yeah, I forgot that was ever addressed officially.

https://homestuck.com/story/5435

The man

HASS the ring.

https://homestuck.com/story/5440

And with the depressingly empty Void session established via a single flash, we shall conclude for the evening.

Tomorrow, we’ll get to know our little villain.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, Alive, and a little Annoyed that I wasted a couple hours playing the Outriders Demo this afternoon. Seriously, what an aesthetically bleak and kind of mediocre-looking class-based cover shooter.

#liveblogging #commentary #pederasty mention #richard feynman

9 notes · View notes

hoochy-coo · 3 years

Note

“I’ve noticed that she’s been going for a more stripped down sound to focus on the rawness of her lyrics and I think that’s unfortunately working against her. Imo this shows that the GP isn’t listening to Billie for her lyrics, unlike Olivia who is now known for that exact thing.”

This is in interesting point that you bring up. Do you think this same type of idea could relate to Lana and, to an extent, Lorde with their recent shift in their music lately? I’ve seen a lot of their fans ranting about how underwhelmed and boring their new music is compared to their older work but honestly I think it’s because it’s more mature and lyrically driven. I also think that although people have complained, Lorde and Lana have cult like fan bases so they don’t really need to worry about their work not being positively received that much and won’t have to worry about longevity (Lana is still chugging after 10 years since her debut). I think with Lana it’s also a little difficult to gage whether people are just criticizing her music because of the ‘Question for the Culture’ controversy or because they genuinely don’t like it. To me, Lana is really reaching her prime musically in terms of lyrics and maturity also her vocals are so clear and powerful as she’s gone through her growth. To bring it back to Billie, I think she’s alright with her lyrics, but her voice/singing style lacks the quirks that Lana and Lorde have that make them able to have minimalistic production but still have dynamic and amazing songs. (Side note: I love Lana’s pacing when it comes to her melodies, like dragging out certain words, sentences, and also how she plays with tempo changes even if they can kinda sound messy at first since we’re not used to it in pop music).

I think Lana and Lorde have musically evolved past the scope of mainstream, pop music and the radio. They’ve successfully broken into the alt route and are well-respected by the audience and the critics alike. Not unlike Billie, Lana del Rey started off as an overnight commercial success and was boxed in as pop act with some indie influences. People obviously saw that she was sonically referencing genres outside of pop (hip-hop, blues, jazz, folk) but they weren’t sure what to make of it since her label heavily pushed her as a pop artist. In that sense, critics perceived her as phoney since her music was overproduced and polished but “hollow.” Imo Billie has followed the same meteoric rise. It’s selling and resonating with the right audience that the label is targeting, but the critics are skeptical of her artistry. Lorde was a rare exception because she straddled that very line between mainstream and indie. She had a sleeper indie hit that turned viral radio hit. It didn’t seem like she had a whole machine behind her that was trying to package or manufacture her. On top of that, Lorde has always been lyrically mature and wrote about ‘mature’ topics that fell outside of the usual grouping of topics that’s currently popular in pop music atm (love, drugs, sad girl, sex). Even when she did, she explored it in a way that didn’t seem juvenile. Imo Lana had a very slow but steady rebrand to get to the place where she is now, but I’d argue that she had to completely ditch whatever image she had at the beginning and traded it in for ‘authenticity’ that resonates more with the critics/alt-community. Lana eased into it with UV but stripped down to her shell with Honeymoon, which flopped commercially but paved the way for her more nuanced releases. Billie is understandably not there yet because she’s only just about to enter her second era. You could also argue that Billie is going with the trend instead of setting it. Yes, no other pop girl is doing what she’s doing but she’s heavily borrowing from trap/hip-hop, which is inarguably the biggest genre on the market atm. It’s not new and there’s not much to really explore, whereas Lorde and Lana has reached a point where they’re fearlessly experimenting with different things to push their music forward. Again, I wouldn’t say that’s really Billie’s fault. She’s still trapped in that ‘pop’ mould and her label isn’t going to allow her to put out a, let’s say, ‘COTCC,’ because well, what is that going to look like for sales and radio plays?

(And yes, I completely agree with you that Lana has mastered pacing and melody.)

#ask #answer #Billie eilish #Lana del Rey #music #Lorde

5 notes · View notes

animegenork · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on Ivan Chapter 5

And so, here we are. I’m finally doing this.

As a disclaimer: I’m very very very very very very late, and I know that. But I also needed to finish the chapter before having official thoughts on it. (Because that makes sense.)

And now, I can.

I made a Google Doc to write down my reactions each day I played, as I am free 2 play and needed to keep track of this stuff. So here is the entirety of the mess that is my reacting to this chapter. (I’m putting all this under the cut so those who don’t care don’t gotta deal with this.)

TL;DR: Eloise and Ivan both fucked up. Eloise didn’t trust Ivan enough and ended up breaking Ivan’s trust. Now they’re at a bit of a stalemate because valid feeling vs. valid feeling = hella heated argument. [You’ll have to actually read to get the full story behind this.]

There we are. This was about 11 pages in Google Doc form. I had a lot of thoughts about this chapter.

I’m probably going to reference a couple things from this post I did where I dove into Ivan’s head a little bit. If you want to know more, take a read. I, uh... I ended up being really accurate, and I’m still freaked out.

To be clear, I bounced back and forth throughout this chapter on how I felt about Eloise and Ivan’s actions and words. And let me make a defining statement about my stance:

Eloise and Ivan both fucked up.

They did. Don’t try to convince me otherwise.

Eloise

I made a post once wondering why people were mad about Eloise being jealous. Because let’s face it: jealousy exists. I can tell you a story of a coworker of mine whose ex-girlfriend would consistently harangue him about our other coworker simply because she existed in the same room as him. Jealousy is some powerful shit.

Fans of otome games may not like it or want to deal with the past lovers/jealousy trope, but honestly it’s necessary. Romance ain’t a perfect science, and the more obstacles you have to go through to be with the one you love, the better it’ll be. But this post isn’t about that.

I understand Eloise a lot here. She’s met this Constance, who meant the WORLD to Ivan, and she knows how (seemingly) perfect she is. HELL, I WOULD BE INSECURE TOO. Eloise is insecure; she wonders if perhaps she can ever measure up to this past lover that Ivan had. She’s starting to experience feelings she may not quite understand, and that’s perfectly okay.

However, she kinda went about it all wrong.

Okay, sure. If I heard about my crush going and seeing his past lover during the day (risking life and limb to do so), I’d be a little suspicious. Maybe the “stalker” or “obsessed” thought would cross my mind. BUT if I remembered that Ivan was clinging to humanity AND realized that letting someone go who means the world to you is incredibly difficult, I would probably be more rational than Eloise. Honestly, Ivan’s big mistake here is letting Eloise find out about this outings because they poisoned her mind a bit.

Now, she could have asked him, “Okay, but why follow her?” Because that would have made more sense than doing the exact thing she was (mentally) calling him out for. But no. She did the same thing. And she found she was unable to hate this woman who, now remarried, used to completely hold Ivan’s heart.

What really ticks me off is that she did this because she didn’t believe him when he said he doesn’t feel the same way about Constance as he used to. She didn’t trust him enough to take him at his word. I mean, he’s a vampire, so I guess fully trusting him is off the table, even though she was fully admiring his shirtless form like 6 seconds ago (I mean, so was I), but anyway.

In the end, Ivan gets mad (UNDERSTANDABLY), and they argue because Eloise has somehow become a little obsessed with this Constance idea. Do you remember what I said about my coworker? His ex was ALSO obsessed with the idea of someone else in his life. It’s a pretty valid concern, and honestly, considering the way I argue with people, I don’t think Eloise’s freak out during the argument is completely unjustified. When you’re insecure, you are trying your DAMNEDEST to prove that there is merit to your worries.

I really sympathized with Eloise at the end of the chapter. She was convinced she’d ruined whatever it is she has with Ivan and that she should’ve kept her big mouth shut. This is exactly how I feel at the end of really bad arguments.

Poor Eloise. She’s never been in a relationship, right? So of course things would go wrong in the first one. But that doesn’t mean she needs to lose hope!

Ivan

I might get rant-y here. Only because some things people have said have PISSED. ME. OFF. Especially in relation to what I now know. (I’m not about to address the claim that Ivan needs a straitjacket now, but it might come in the future, if my newly-acquired knowledge of the definition of psychopathy has anything to say about it.)

Okay, so. Ivan definitely could have been a little clearer when he explained his relationship with Constance. He certainly could have clarified his exact reasons for going to the Village during the day. But with the bits and pieces I gathered, it was... I don’t know, obvious? When you care for someone as much as Ivan cared for Constance, you’re going to wonder how they’re faring after your sudden disappearance. It’s a thing in fiction where if X Character disappears, they wonder how life back home is going.

That might just be me over analyzing character motivations again. Sorry. (It’s an English/Creative Writing major thing.)

Still, this boy trusted that Eloise would give him space after he dug into this painful wound of his. He trusted that she wouldn’t ask anymore until he was ready to go back to poking it. But instead, she went and investigated on her own. Not only does that speak of her not trusting him, but now, how can he trust her when she did this?

I wanna note that before shit hit the fan (i.e. the argument), Ivan was perfectly content with Eloise visiting him. He was ecstatic that she would come to him so early in the night. When she gave him the plant, he BEAMED! He told her that he didn’t think he deserved to care for something like a plant! HE TOLD HER THAT THE FACT THAT SHE GAVE IT TO HIM MADE IT MORE BEAUTIFUL!

Have I mentioned I was sobbing at this part?

I’m not about to go into the nuances of the Chalice-vampire bond, because not much has been explained about it. However, Eloise did, in fact, say something that was very like Constance (all flower-knowledgeable and such), and the fact that that BRIEF tidbit clued her in to Eloise’s actions is interesting. So, yeah. He gets mad that Eloise went to see Constance in person, because that is, in fact, an invasion of his privacy in many ways. It’s like if I went to see my boyfriend’s ex in person just because he gave me a name. (I don’t have a boyfriend, and I wouldn’t do that. Just by the way.) But before that...

You know what I didn’t see in people’s reactions to Chapter 5? How worried Ivan was about us. He saw that Eloise wasn’t acting like herself. And he asked THREE TIMES (count ‘em in my reactions above, he asked THREE TIMES) if she was okay. The THIRD time, he said, “Did I do something wrong?”

I want someone to explain to me how in the fucking world this clues us in to him not caring about us. But anyway.

This concern, in fact, comes up when Ivan starts yelling at Eloise about being reckless. Because she was. Going too far from Ivan fucks with the Chalice bond, AND she did it during the day (and nearly got burnt real bad), AND there’s a murderer on the loose, AND Vlad could’ve found out. What I think a lot of people looked past was that there was concern behind Ivan’s anger. Anger based on concern is a helluva drug, and Ivan was high on that.

So, Eloise broke Ivan’s trust and endangered herself while doing it. And people are mad at Ivan? Okay. Cool. Good to know.

You know what was really crazy about all of this? A lot of the things Ivan said in this chapter really resonated with the post I linked above. I didn’t actually know Ivan didn’t take change (which had fucked him over in the past) well, but he directly said so. I didn’t actually know for sure that Ivan saw Constance as the embodiment of what he’d lost when he turned vamp, BUT HE ACTUALLY SAID IT (the part labeled, “OH MY GOD. OH. MY. GOD.”). I only vaguely understood that Ivan had a hard time coping with his transformation and feared that he was gonna ruin his relationship with Eloise. And yet! I ended up hitting the nail right on the head! I can’t tell if this means I’m magical or that I’m too good at diving into character’s heads.

The best part is that Ivan is the one to call an end to the shouting match. I’m kinda glad he kissed her, first of all, because there were some logical fallacies and circular arguing going on PLUS all of the emotions both were feeling PLUS the Chalice bond fucking them up a bit, SO it kinda served to tell him, “We gotta stop.” He basically says (and this is a paraphrase), “Okay, you go chill, and I’ll stay here and chill, because we’re both very angry and should probably calm down.” RATIONAL IVAN.

I’m really, REALLY confused why people are bashing him left and right (and I WOULD bring up the straitjacket thing again BUT).

[Side Note: I think at the beginning of Chapter 6, he ended up going out anyway because after an argument like THAT, how do you NOT get stuck in your own head and need to leave?]

Final Thoughts

This could all be bullshit. Even the parts where I directly quote what the English version of this chapter gave me. I could be going in too deep for the sake of defending Ivan. But what the Moonlight Lovers fandom needs to remember is that nobody ever said Ivan’s route was going to be easy. I got my fluff. I got some damn good fluff in this chapter, too. I NEVER expected things to NOT go to shit for the sake of the overarching plot. I expected it. That’s the point of this game, for God’s sake: things go to shit because of [PLOT].

There are two main things I think some people may have forgotten.

1. Eloise is allowed to be jealous. I’m sorry the past-lover-jealousy trope isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I, personally, find it realistic. Maybe she went about it in the wrong way (although we got some hefty dramarama), but I empathize. I’m hecka insecure; I would be acting very similarly to her.

2. Ivan does, in fact, have a point. He has multiple, actually. I don’t blame him for going further into the “so I would go out to see her-” thing, because how does one properly explain something like that to someone who doesn’t know them that well?!?! Plus, his concern is very clear throughout this chapter, so treating him like he has no emotions/doesn’t give a damn about Eloise is pretty fucking stupid. Perhaps he’s acting rather selfishly most of the time, but do you think Vlad and Bel were entirely selfless 24/7? HELL, I’D BE SELFISH TOO. LOOK HOW FUCKED UP HIS LIFE HAS GOTTEN SINCE HE BECAME A VAMP.

I didn’t really ever plan on doing this post, not until I saw people giving Ivan a lot of shit. Frankly, I’m giving him some shit as well. Considering how close in age Eloise and Ivan are, I’m really not surprised shit hit the fan in this chapter, especially with the decisions both of them made.

But then, I still enjoyed it.

So, yeah. I actually enjoyed this chapter. I was tossed back and forth between empathizing with Eloise and Ivan so much that my conclusion - that both of them had a point and both of them had valid feelings and reactions - was not one I thought I’d make when I went in.

And if anybody else actually happened to find merit in this chapter, don’t be afraid to say so. Hell, you can DM me and tell me EXACTLY why you found merit with it. I don’t mind.

Final Final Thoughts

This is a stupid random thought, but. When did Eloise and Ivan become parts of my psyche incarnate??? Like I empathized with them WAYYYYYY too much. Was this chapter written specifically for me? For a real person who’s felt many of these things before?

Beemoov, did you specifically write Ivan’s route for me? As flattered as I am, this is kinda weird. I didn’t expect to see myself so much in the MC of this game, but here we are.

I’m just bullshitting please no one roast me for having a huge ego it’s just that the coincidence was too uncanny

#moonlight lovers #ml ivan #ml ivan chapter 5 #ml eloise #they both fucked up and i stand by this statement #i'm back on my bullshit sorry #but also not sorry #i stand by everything i said #ivan stans unite #gen rambling again #but not really #this is not rambling in the least #i'm tired now #i crawled into too many character's heads the past few days

10 notes · View notes

tayerroos · 4 years

Text

Patchwork Tales: Book 1

A “9" roleplay compendium. Read on AO3 Chapter: 5 [First] [Back] [You Are Here] [Next] Warnings for this chapter: None

#Book 1 #Chapter 5 #Patchwork Tales #Fanfiction #Shane Acker's 9 #9 RP

4 notes · View notes

jacisjournal · 4 years

Text

Journal Entry 1 [September 15, 2020]

For the first group assignment, we were randomly grouped and tasked to read 3 articles that will serve as an introduction to the class. My group mates are Aletha Payawal, Arnold Manuel, and Miguel Lukban. First and foremost, I chose Tumblr as my preferred medium for journaling because it allows longer texts to be posted, without having the need for separate threads and whatnot. Furthermore, it is better than posting on other social media sites because it allows you to italicize, bold, strike-through, and whatnot, allowing you to better emphasize your point or show changes in your thoughts. As for my thoughts about the readings, the first problem I encountered was the definition for communication for development and development communication, which I found very hard to understand. However, my group mates really helped me understand it further, although not completely.

Moving on, in Quebral’s Development Communication Primer, she states that

[t]here is less reliance nowadays on central government as the orchestrator of development. Instead, the focus is on the capacity of communities and individuals to set their goals and work towards them in a manner that does not damage the environment or destroy natural resources (6)

I would want to strongly challenge this thought because although it is true that there is now less reliance on the central government, as seen in our own country, it is not because the people no longer need them to develop on their own but rather, it is because the government does nothing to help the development of the country. The central government, especially that of developing countries, should be more present because the sole purpose of the government is to protect the interests of the people and develop the country.

I would also like to note down the fact that we can really reflect on the state of our country through the readings. One of the more striking ideas in the primer is that discussion through communication media should be a basic feature of a democracy. To quote,

[t]here must be a marketplace where ideas and opinions on public issues may be heard, answered or exchanged. Out of the discussion, group opinion emerges. For this to happen, there has to be freedom of information, expression and assembly. These are the three freedoms most related to the communication part of the development communication equation (11)

With the recent Anti-Terrorism Bill, the shutting down of the country’s biggest broadcast company, and the continuous threats to one of the most reliable and unbiased news website, it is clear that we don’t have any of what Quebral states as a “basic feature of a democracy”. Even as I write this for the purpose of a class, I cannot hide the fact that I am a bit scared as I can be unjustly labeled as a “terrorist” within the new law. Another thing that really resonated with me is how urban opinion is passed off as urban opinion (11), which is true, but should not be. It is saddening to realize that we, as a country, are discriminatory against everyone who do not look, or even sound like us. We need to understand that the peripheries, the provinces and the rural communities, are just as important as the center. Which leads me to another insight on the thought of community radio stations to stimulate dialogue in rural communities (15). I think that only having one community radio station might not be the way to educate the people, as it can be a good way for the highest bidder to send propaganda. What they need are several news stations where they can effectively verify information. However, this would not be possible if we keep treating the peripheries as someone below the center, making the problem arrive at a full circle. On the other hand, the first thing I noticed in Chaterjee’s article named Development Communication: Communication for or of Development? is how he emphasizes that “all development requires some kind of behaviour change on the part of stakeholders” (1). This reminds me of how Servaes in Terms and Definitions in Communication for Development and Social Change said that compromise should be made, and not competition (10). However, Chatterjee also states that each stakeholder has a different objective, and in our case, the stakeholders are against each other’s objectives (as seen in the fight between the government and unbiased media outlets), so how will we develop if there is no compromise and just all competition? Considering everything, it is obvious that I enjoyed Quebral’s Primer the most, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, I do understand the importance of the other two articles, because all the articles complemented each other in a way that it deepens your understanding of the terms and issues stated. This was an excellent introduction reading.

2 notes · View notes

theonceoverthinker · 5 years

Text

A Tumultuous Embrace (2/5) (Golden Hook)

Summary: Captain Hook and Rumplestiltskin have wronged many a man in their days as villains, so many in fact that they’ve unknowingly overlapped on more than one occasion. What are they going to do when two of those cases want revenge and know exactly how to best take it? Now trapped together in a beyond compromising position, will Killian and Rumple be able to work together to fight against impossible odds and get home, or will their lingering hatred of each other prove to be their shared doom as they literally go down together? Chapter 1

AO3 Fanfiction.net

Dynamics Featured: Golden Hook

Content Warning: Guns (They’re not fired off, but they are present)

A/N: Thank you to all who read the last chapter! I've been really excited to release this small MC. I love forced proximity premises and plot lines and who makes for better characters to force together than Rumple and Killian, am I fucking right?! XD In that vein, I really tried to be careful when writing both Rumple and Killian so that they were a balance as to how reasonable, petty, and sympathetic they would be in relation to each other. I hope I did a good job, but if not, let me know, okay?

This is the whump heavy chapter! Well...maybe discomfort is the better word for it, you know? There's no graphic violence, BUT it leans on whump, so I still wanted to label it accordingly.

Tagging @sherlockianwhovian, @killian-whump, @justsomewhump, @black-wolf066, @therooksshiningknight, @wyntereyez, @darkpoisonouslove, and @z-aliada. If you do (Or don’t, I promise I won’t be offended) want to be tagged in upcoming chapters of this fic, please let me know!

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

CHAPTER 2: A TUMULTUOUS AWAKENING

The first thing that greeted Killian in his journey back to consciousness was a pressing, splitting headache.

He personally preferred a kiss from Emma, but he’d take being alive for the moment as acceptable.

His life had certainly produced far worse ways to wake up.

Killian gingerly opened his eyes, and with that opening came the return of a torturous heap of memories.

Horace and Jasper had attacked him. And they’d actually gotten the jump on him.

At least that solved one mystery.

Was it bad that his first instinct was to be embarrassed about losing to them?

Either way, the annoyingly still present headache that plagued him wouldn’t let him focus on that matter with any significant level of attention.

So Killian attempted to soothe it.

Killian moved to bring his right hand up to his forehead, but was stopped.

Something had a hold on his arm.

He then attempted to move him arm downwards to escape what had been holding him in place, only to stop upon feeling a tugging sensation in his left elbow.

Were they connected?

In a third attempt to move his arms, Killian discovered that the answer to that inquiry was a disappointing ‘yes.’

What was going on here?

Without moving his head, Killian looked around. While his view was limited, the chrome lining of the walls told him that the building was industrial in nature. It reminded him of the local cannery.

And the only place that hosted buildings like those was the docks.

Great. Not only had no one seen him be taken, but now no one was likely in the vicinity to hear his cries for help, should he give them -- and given that he had a feeling that with his assailants likely close by, he shouldn’t.

Well, that solved another mystery, or at least part of one, for even though he knew what building he was in, what he needed to learn was where exactly his body was.

Killian felt around a bit before coming to his conclusion.

He was bound, but by no means in an ordinary position.

While his left forearm was out in the open, albeit without his hook -- much to Killian’s frustration -- everything from his left elbow and up was clenched tightly, unable to move. Attached to his left elbow was his right hand. He had a bit more freedom there, namely in his elbow, but not by much.

And it soon resonated with him that between his body and limbs, there was something else.

It was something soft.

It was something warm.

It was something LIVING.

Killian made another, this time more cautious, move backwards, only nudging his head as opposed to his entire body. He released a sigh of relief when the movement was successful, but the sigh died in his throat upon seeing the sight in front of him.

There were few things Killian Jones ever expected to wake up to these days.

At the very bottom of that list, there resided the possibility of ever waking up in Rumplestiltskin’s arms.

But lo and behold, that’s where he was, holding his enemy cheek-to-cheek even tighter than he often held his own wife.

Immediately forgetting what had happened mere moments ago, Killian -- who had only just held back from letting out a surprised shout -- made a sharp move to recoil himself from the unwanted embrace, but was met by a just as immediate blowback as he and Rumple slammed back into each other.

NO…

Killian ignored his better judgment and made another attempt to pull away, but was foiled yet again, and just like last time, their torsos all but clapped when they met once more.

A stinging sensation reverberated through Killian’s body, but as his circumstances -- like Rumple’s body a mere moment ago -- hit him, he could hardly find it in him to care.

They were completely, immovably, almost impossibly stuck together.

Killian listened for any signs of Horace and Jasper’s presence -- nervous that his reckless instinctual movements may have alerted them to the fact that he was awake -- but thankfully, the room they were in remained quiet. Had they been present, Killian had no doubt that they’d likely be laughing their asses off.

Had Horace and Jasper been in their situations, Killian knew he would be.

Once his fears over Horace and Jasper were momentarily put at ease, Killian’s heart sank. Truly, they were stuck together, and at least until Rumple woke up, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Now that the immediate adrenaline of his discovery had worn off -- or at least part of it, Killian could feel a set of hands bound against the back of his jacket, confirming fears that rivaled Horace and Jasper’s appearance -- that similarly to how Killian was bound to Rumple, Rumple was bound to him. The only difference between their nearly mirrored positions was that because of his lack of a left hand, Killian was instead bound by his left elbow.

But even that light luxury came with a price. The distance between one’s wrist and elbow was great and the result was that their bodies were pushed even closer together than they would’ve had Killian had both hands.

Just another reason to hate his crocodile…the crocodile he was now bound to in a manner that was inherently intimate.

And wait...was that DROOL oozing over his right cheek?

Killian was getting another headache, but for a completely different reason.

For whatever torture Horace and Jasper had intended for him, they’d definitely succeeded.

But that begged the question: Given that this was likely but the first step of said torture, what else did they have in store for them?

If there was one thing Killian knew for sure, it was that he was not eager to find out, and even less eager to deal with it with Rumplestiltskin of all people quite literally by his side.

And just as Killian had given his enemy another thought, from his right side, he heard a soft groan.

It seemed like Rumple was about to wake up.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()

The last time that Rumple had been shushed as he woke up, it was by his wife in their bedroom as she cradled their son in her arms. It made for a memory that would likely rank in Rumple’s top five for the most pleasant moments in his life.

This time, it would make for one of the LEAST pleasant moments.

Rumple didn’t know how to react when he woke up only to see Captain Hook, quite literally right in his face, staring back at him, and shushing him all the while.

Well, that wasn’t true -- his anger set in quickly enough.

After barely a beat passed, Rumple attempted to push his enemy away, only to discover two unwelcome surprises.

The first was that he could barely move his hands.

The second was that the little that his hands could move only proceeded to push the two of them closer together.

And they were already far too close to each other for Rumple’s liking, all but nose-to-nose and apparently completely unable to do a thing about it.

Rumple had a million questions to ask, but settled on the most general of them.

“What the hell is going on?” he hissed, firmly, yet quietly. He wanted to scream his demand for information, but he had a feeling that whatever was going on, if Hook was trying to protect him of all people, and especially given their position, it was probably in his best interest to listen...for now, at least.

Hook bit his lip.

“I don’t know,” Hook whispered, his lips disgustingly close to Rumple’s ear. Rumple attempted to jerk his head back in response, but to little payoff. Hook, apparently resigned to their situation, proceeded. “I was attacked on my way home from work earlier. The kidnappers knocked me out and apparently brought me here. I just woke up to this fresh torture.” Rumple could immediately hear the repulsed confusion in his fellow captive’s voice.

At the very least, Rumple took comfort in the fact that Hook found this position to be just as miserable as he did.

That said, that comfort amounted to little more than a hill of beans.

“I’ve no idea what they want with you, though,” Hook continued. His eyes then bulged, as if he realized something. “Can you use your magic to get us out of here?”

If Rumple had any agency over his hands, he’d hit himself for having not thought of that first.

Focused on their freedom, Rumple attempted to summon a force field between them, only to be crushed when he felt nothing happen.

Determined, Rumple tried another spell, annoyed to see that once again, it was a moot effort.

And then he tried another.

And another.

He was about to try again, but he stopped upon feeling a very familiar patch of leather around his wrist just below his bindings.

“I can’t,” Rumple growled. “Whoever captured us managed to get that magic confining cuff on me.”

“That’s just great,” Hook muttered, his voiced laced with sarcasm. “Can you see anything that can help us on your end?” All I see in front of me is a wall.”

Rumple looked around, trying to make sense of where they were. He recognized the building as one that he owned, though the property sat abandoned after the previous lender passed away last year.

Apparently, someone -- someone with a bone to pick with Hook -- had decided to turn it into their playpen.

There was a desk across the way, and a dark truck backed into some otherwise free space beside it.

Suddenly, Rumple was able to make something out from the side of the truck.

There, in a grey and red logo along the center was a logo for ‘Horace and Jasper’s Discount Chimney Cleanings.’

And immediately, something clicked.

It wasn’t only Hook who these kidnappers had a problem with.

Rumple turned back to Hook, though given their proximity, it wasn’t as much a turn as it was a shift. Despite his efforts to make space between them, his nose hit Hook’s forehead.

“Can you back up a bit?”

“You know for a fact that I can’t,” Hook snarled. The two exchanged frustrated looks, but Hook’s soon partially dissolved into a curious one. “Anyway, what did you find out?” he whispered, clearly savy to the fact that Rumple had discovered something.

“Who captured us,” Rumple said, careful to keep his voice low.

“Yeah, Horace and Jasper.”

Rumple’s brow furrowed. “You know them?”

“Aye,” Hook said. “And you do as well?”

“Yes.”

“So why are they coming after you?” As he spoke, there was a nastiness in Hook’s tone, as if he expected the worst of stories from Rumple about how’d he’d come into contact with their captors.

Whether or not that was the case, Hook was hardly one to talk.

“Me? Why are they coming after YOU?”

Hook rolled his eyes. “Let me guess,” he grit. “They were victims of one of your deals?”

“And let ME guess: They were victims of your plunderings?”

The two of them glared at each other.

It was just Rumple’s luck that of everyone in this town, the one person he had to be bound to was the most insufferable, hypocritical, pain in the ASS around.

“I can only imagine the kind of scheme you pulled.”

Rumple scoffed. “And I can’t imagine your encounter with them was any nobler than mine.”

But before they could continue, another voice spoke up.

“Well, look at who’s finally awake?”

Horace’s voice had frozen their argument in its tracks. With much bumping and pain along the way, Rumple and Hook turned their heads towards the truck side of the room, their cheeks now pressed together like a sole to a shoe.

But they couldn’t get too angry about that at the moment, for in front of them were two very familiar men with two very familiar types of weapons in hand.

A gun was pointed at the both of them and Rumple knew that they’d definitely use them if given a reason to.

He only hoped Hook knew that too.

“Didn’t think either of you would see us again, did you?” Jasper gloated, cackling under is breath.

“I’d have thought you two smart enough not to try,” Hook shot back, any fear that he may have had hidden like a master magician as he boldly kept his ground.

Damnit, he really was a reckless bastard, wasn’t he?

Not that Rumple could fully blame him -- though he wasn’t about to absolve him for it either.

Fortunately, or at least as fortunately as things could be given everything else, neither man shot their gun. If anything, the comment had amused them.

“You two think you’re so smart compared to us, don’t ya?” Jasper snickered. “Well, if we’re so dumb, how do you figure we all got here?”

“Trickery,” Rumple answered without missing a beat. Despite himself, he couldn’t ignore the opportunity to take his captors down a peg any better than Hook could. He wouldn’t give Horace and Jasper that satisfaction. “I know from experience that without the intelligence to back it up, it’s little more than the coward’s excuse for cleverness.”

“Maybe so,” Jasper continued, twirling his gun before turning it back to them.

“But there’s no denying its effectiveness,” Horace finished, eyeing his and Hook’s bodies as they clenched within their restraints. “By the way, do you like what we set up for you? Seeing as how you both had us locked up for so long,” Horace elaborated, “seems only fair to us that we pay you back in kind. And you even get a friend with you, just like Jasper and I had each other back in those filthy, blasted cells. But I have to admit, you two are far closer than we could ever be.” Horace and Jasper started laughing.

Rumple felt Hook’s hand ball up into a tight fist behind him and he could see him gritting his teeth from out of the corner of his eyes.

In truth, Rumple was doing the exact same thing.

“And now that you have us locked up, what are you going to do?” Rumple asked.

“Well, we figured we’d clean the slate, and why not start with cleaning you two out of our lives entirely.” Horace gestured towards the waterview on the other side of a nearby window.

“You’re going to throw us into the ocean,” Rumple said. It was more of a statement than a question.

Horace smirked. “Everybody back in our world knew sooner or later, you’d be each other’s downfall. Jasper and I -- we thought in addition to bringing that day nearer, we’d make that literal on top of it.”

“You’ll never get away with this,” Hook growled. “Emma will stop you.”

“Assuming she finds you before you take your little one-way trip,” Jasper heckled. “But I assure you, she won’t and neither will anyone else for that matter.”

“Then if she can’t, WE will!” Hook insisted.

Immediately, Horace and Jasper barked out in laughter.

“I doubt that,” Horace mocked. “We know you two. You and that ‘dearie’ beside you couldn’t get along if your lives depended on it and considering where you are and what’s about to happen soon enough, that’s unlikely to change now.”

Rumple and Hook stayed silent. There were questions on Rumple’s mind, and he was sure the same could be said for Hook -- Why not just throw them off the docks now and get it over with, Why tell them anything, Why keep their mouths ungagged -- those were just a few of them. However, he and likely Hook knew that any premature prompting would deprive them of time they could put towards figuring a way out of this. And so they stayed as quiet as mice, naught for heavy breaths labored through the physical strain of balancing and supporting each other thanks to their binds.

Horace and Jasper smirked.

“See?” Jasper gloated. “You two would die before working together.”

Hmm. They seemed to take their silence as less of a means of giving themselves a stay of execution and more as a symbol of resignation.

That could work to his and Hook’s advantage.

Rumple hated Hook, and Hook hated Rumple. Those were as much facts as that of the sky being blue. But more than either of them hated each other, they loved their families. For them, they could work together.

Horace and Jasper didn’t think much of that love, and for that, they would lose.

He once more studied Hook out of the corner of his eye, only to see Hook doing the same to him.

There was a look in his eyes, telling Rumple that he had also realized their ace in the hole too.

Horace, with his gun still pointed at them, looked at his watch. “Jasper, let’s get back to the front. The sooner the cannery’s manager takes off for the night, the sooner we can give these two their one way cruise.”

Well, solved another mystery of their kidnapping.

Jasper nodded. “Good idea, Horace.” He then looked at Rumple and Hook. “And don’t either of you get to screaming,” Jasper said, gesturing towards his and Horace’s guns. “Because I promise, you won’t live long enough to save yourself from anything but a watery grave if you do.”

“But feel free to bicker all you want,” Hoarce implored, cackling as he started to walk away. “It’ll be more fun for us -- like listening to music on the radio, but so, so much sweeter.” Jasper joined in their laughter and as his and Horace’s forms disappeared, so did the sounds of their footsteps.

When they were at last out of sight, Hook moved onto his back and turned to Rumple. Both of them gave the other a look, silently communicating their plan to keep quiet as they discussed their next steps.

“What are we going to do?” Rumple asked.

Hook bit the inside of his cheek. “Tight spot, but one I don’t doubt we can get out of. They’re not the smartest of men.”

“You have no idea.”

“Trust me,” Hook smirked, “I do.”

Rumple decided it was best to drop the matter. They likely had little time as it stood and bickering was not a way he wanted to waste it with. “So how can we outsmart them this time? I don’t know about you, but I’ve no interest in taking a dip in the ocean.”

A worrying smile that reeked of a plan emerging grew on Hook’s face. “Well, you might want to change your mind on that one,” he said. “Because if we want to get free, we’re gonna have to let them do just that.”

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Killian knew as soon as he thought up his plan, Rumple would likely object.

He’d be lying if he said that fact didn’t give him even a tiny bit of satisfaction.

“Are you insane?” Rumple nearly shouted. If it weren’t for the fact that their in-fighting was exactly what Horace and Jasper were expecting from them, he’d almost be worried.

Still, Killian wasn’t about to risk an encore.

“Shush!” he hissed.

Rumple rolled his eyes, but complied all the same.

“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Killian stated.

“There’s a difference between ‘not easy’ and impossible and that is impossible!” This time, Rumple had the courtesy to hiss his complaints rather than outright shout them. “How do you propose we swim? In case you forgot, neither of us has our arms!”

“ONE of us has half an arm. And as an experienced swimmer, I can tell you that swimming is mostly kicking, anyways.”

“You’re going to get us killed.” Rumple grit.

Killian shot him a pointed look. “Do you have a better plan?”

Rumple waffled as he worked for solutions. “Bribe them? Threaten them?”

His brow was up before Rumple could even finish his miserable excuses for ideas. “If they cared about a bribe, they’d have given us a ransom and they’ll kill us long before any kind of threat sustains itself. Rumple,” Killian sighed, sucking in his pride as much as he could, “if we don’t do this, we’re gonna die. We owe all of them -- Emma, Henry, Belle, Gideon -- better than that.”

Emma and Henry -- while a lump couldn’t help itself but form in his throat at the prospect of them worrying for his safety or him never getting the chance to see them again, he pushed it aside.

No. He’d make it home. He’d hug his family again. He’d kiss his wife and ruffle his stepson’s hair. He’d live a full life with them and the town he had grown to be part of.

He’d make it so, no matter what.

As Killian waited for Rumple’s response, he realized he’d forgotten for a moment that Rumple was immortal. Even if he died, Rumple wouldn’t. Still Killian hoped that the message he was attempting to convey would be enough to sway him. After all, even if he didn’t die, without Killian’s and his magic’s help, Rumple would be trapped under his weight for God knows how long.

Killian could tell Rumple was looking for some other plan -- ANY other plan, but was failing. If not for the fact that this issue affected him quite directly too, he’d probably take some amusement in that.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Killian continued, “I promise I’ll keep you safe. I’ve a family to get home to and for Belle and Gideon’s sake, I want you to get back to yours.”

Rumple sighed, his disbelief in what he was agreeing to so agonizingly apparent on his face that it almost hurt Killian to watch. “How far will we have to swim?”

“If we can handle the current, hopefully, just to the beach,” Killian approximated after a moment of thought. “Then we can find help at a nearby house.”

The response was immediate and about as predictable as predictable could be.

“And if we can’t handle the current?”

Killian took a deep breath. “We either land in the woods or we flow outside Storybrooke. Either way’s better than dying.”

“We’re gonna die,” Rumple groaned.

For as best as he could in their situation, Killian shrugged. “Better to go out fighting than not.”

Rumple sighed. “Fine. Then what’s our plan for once we’re submerged?”

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Horace and Jasper had awful laughs. They were so disjointed, lacking any kind of rhythm or charm. It was worse when added to the fact the latter of the two had he and Hook in his clutches, forcing them to endure the subsequent rustling of his hands around their waists as he did it, making the whole experience that much more uncomfortable -- as if this whole atrocity wasn’t bad enough already.

Rumple knew he shouldn’t be focusing on things like that right before he and Hook plunged off the side of a dock while tied together as closely as two enemies could ever hate to be, but given that...well, he and Hook were about to be plunged off the side of a dock while tied together as closely as two enemies could ever hate to be, he figured the distraction could relieve him of some of the heart-thumping panic.

It didn’t, but it was better than nothing.

It was better than thinking about the freezing water that would soon surround their bodies.

It was better than entertaining the idea that they wouldn’t be able to swim fast enough to beat the current, or even stop themselves from drowning.

And it was better than thinking about how if this failed, he could very well spend far too many of his immortal days, if not the rest of them, at the bottom of the ocean with only Hook’s deceased corpse and the occasional school of fish for company.

Most anything was better than that.

The docks were freezing. Rumple was almost never here at night, and as he stood there in the grasp of one enemy and forcibly hugged by another, he knew it was for good reason. There was an extra level of eeriness that the docks had when added to the already unsettling darkness that this time of night was most famous for, and was further complemented by the creaky wood beneath him and the ebony water below them.

Just how the hell were they going to swim out of that water? It looked dark enough to prevent those with even the most heightened of senses from seeing their hands in front of their faces.

And in just a matter of moments, they’d need to navigate those same waters without the use of a large portion of their limbs.

This plan of Hook’s had better damn well work...

As to keep the two of them quiet while Jasper kept them in place, Horace’s gun remained, as it had since the two of them were forced out of the building five minutes ago, aimed directly at their temples, keeping Rumple even more alert.

“You two best take a nice, deep breath,” Horace mocked, “because it’s gonna be your last.”

Hook stared at Rumple and he gave him a noticeably pointed stare. It looked to be reassuring, but was definitely by no means fearless.

And why wouldn’t it be?

They were about to take a dunk in the ocean...and there was no promise they’d get the chance to ever dry off.

Their plan may have had legs to stand on -- or swim on -- but it didn’t have arms.

Jasper seemed able to read Rumple’s fear like a book. He leaned in close to them, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

“We promise, you won’t be wet for long once you get to Hell,” he said, a mocking tone in his voice.

Rumple could see Hook stifling an annoyed snort, as if to say ‘been there, done that.’

A large part of Rumple wished he had that kind of bravery. He thought back to what -- or rather, who -- had inspired that bravery in him before.

Rumple stared down at the ocean once more, now with a new resolve.

It was still terrifying, but as he forced himself to look, he thought of Belle and Gideon. He thought of how if he didn’t do this, he’d miss his son’s first steps, his first words, and every other moment that would help him grow into a man. He thought of Belle and how much he’d regret not getting home to her, leaving them both with a final interaction that amounted to what felt now to be the pettiest of arguments, and missing the chance for them to grow old together.

With all that in mind, though he was still scared out of his wits, Rumple made a vow.

He’d make it home to Belle and Gideon -- no matter what he’d have to face...or who he’d have to work with to make it so.

“So,” Horace started, laughter bubbling like a brook underneath him, “before you two...take a dive...any last words?” Jasper joined in and the two beamed as they began to shift the two of them ever closer to the edge of the docks.

Rumple REALLY hated that laugh of theirs.

“You won’t get away with this.” Rumple and Hook eyed each other as they took their last deep breaths. It wasn’t that shocking that they’d say something along the lines of a similar sentiment, but to say the same thing was nonetheless surprising.

With any luck, that would be a good sign for their immediate future.

“We just did.”

That seemed to be all the prompt that was needed for Horace’s plan to take its final action.

He gave Jasper an affirmative nod and with that. Jasper shoved the two of them off of the docks and into the sea.

Of the many things that scared Rumple, nothing was as uniquely petrifying as falling. It wasn’t his biggest fear by any means, but as he and Hook cascaded down with the wind hitting their faces like bricks, unable to move anything but their legs, Rumple felt utterly horrified.

He released the breath he had been holding, and Hook was quick to silently scold him for it.

Quickly, Rumple took another one just before the pair hit the water.

The ocean hit him first with a force close to what one feels when they punch glass with their fists, but as if those fists encompassed their whole body. Then, the feeling changed and only the pure coldness of the water could be felt.

Rumple didn’t let himself feel out the new environment for long. Now that Horace and Jasper’s plan had been completed, now was the time to enact theirs.

He looked to Hook for the next step forward -- or rather, kick forward. Hook nudged them downward and outwards from where they’d fallen. He explained it before back in the building after they’d agreed to his plan -- the safest way of surviving both the ocean and their assailants’ guns would be if Jasper and Horace thought they were truly dead, and once they were far enough out so that their captors wouldn’t see them, they’d resurface and start swimming for the beach.

He desperately hoped Hook was truly right in his assumption, because if he wasn’t and they didn’t make it through this ordeal alive, he actually WOULD make his afterlife Hell.

Rumple felt Hook’s free arm circling by his back and a soft touch by his leg reminded him to start kicking. Hook’s eyes pointed him in the direction they were supposed to go and Rumple reluctantly followed. After about two minutes of nonstop and frantic kicking, partnered with his continuously dwindling supply of oxygen, Rumple began to feel woozy.

As if on cue, Hook looked to him and quickly directed they swim upwards.

It was a tough trip up and Rumple had questioned for a moment if he’d even make it, but in the end, he did.

Immediately Rumple started breathing heavily and Hook was doing the same beside him. Unconsciously, he leaned his head on Hook’s chest.

Hook not only let him, but leaned his own head against the side of Rumple’s. Rumple could only contribute both actions to a mutual sense of exhaustion.

If there was one thing they could likely agree on, it was that it had been a long fucking day.

Rumple shuddered as a haze of chilliness formed a cocoon around them. It may have been summer, but Storybrooke’s Maine-bound water in the middle of the night was cold no matter the season. Because of that, the water was treacherous for reasons far beyond its current and density.

That wasn’t to say that they weren’t issues at all -- the pull of the ocean told Rumple as much.

They needed to get out of here.

“W-we need to start swimming out to the beach,” Hook said, clearly reaching the same conclusion he did.

All Rumple could do was nod after pushing his head off of Hook.

Rumple started kicking a beat after Hook did.

By Hook’s estimation, the safest part of the beach they could land on was about three hundred feet out from the water when aligned to how far they swam out to and about thirteen hundred feet north of where they currently were. They could follow the current for the thirteen hundred or so feet, but once they were parallel to the beach, they’d need to fight to escape it to reach the shore.

Well, they’d accomplished harder tasks.

The current, for the few moments they could ride it, was a godsend. Rumple’s legs felt more like jelly than bone and his rigidly trapped body fared no better in the cold water. He felt like, had they not been in life-threatening danger, he could pass out on the spot. Hook seemed to feel the same. Even though he was keeping an eye out for the point where they needed to leave the current, the tension that had been in his shoulders since this nightmare of theirs had begun was lessened for a moment and he allowed for a soft groan to leave his lips between pants and gasps for air.

Rumple couldn’t see the beach, so all he could go by to have any idea of where they needed to go were the glimmers of street lamps and lights from inside people’s homes and Hook’s navigational skills.

Looks like there WERE uses for pirates.

“It’s time!” Hook shouted, pushing them against the current, with Rumple immediately following.

The current that had blessed them until but a moment ago retaliated against their attempt for freedom with the brutality of a fireball to the face. They were making progress, but the progress was poor at best as the current continued to try to pull them back into it.

“Go faster,” Hook commanded.

Rumple tried -- Zeus knows he did. Even as he felt his feet’s productivity slipping, he kicked at the water like a paddle against a ping pong.

But try as he and Hook may, he could feel that their efforts to fight off the current weren’t enough. They were getting caught in it and drifting farther and faster away from the beach.

Hook seemed determined to not give up, but before they could make another try, Rumple noticed something.

That something just happened to be a giant rock that they were now set to directly collide with.

He shouted to get Hook’s attention, but Hook didn’t seem to pay him mind as he tried to make a break for the beach once more. Rumple even tried to help him just to have some chance of escaping the boulder’s impact.

But it didn’t work.

All it took was one unluckily timed wave to send their heads hurdling towards the rocks.

And their bodies rushing into the rocks was the last thing Rumple saw that night.

#ouat #killian jones #rumple #Rumplestiltskin #golden hook #once upon a time #fanfiction #cw: guns #tw: guns #whump #or whump adjacent at least

34 notes · View notes

brooklynislandgirl · 5 years

Note

✸ Tell us about any NPCs on your blog. Who are they to your muse? What do they contribute to your blog?

Munday Munday! || -

Etienne Devereaux || EMT- New York

Etienne is a Euthanatos Mage, part of Beth’s former {or current, depending on verse} cabal. He was born in the bayous of Louisiana, as what some people might consider ‘poor white trash’. He was raised by his grandmother until the age of 12 when she died a long, slow, lingering death after falling down the stairs of their rickety home. Etienne was traumatised by the incident, and later, during college where he was studying to become a doctor, his avatar awakened and reminded him of how terribly powerless he felt unable to save the woman who was his only family. He dropped out and moved to the biggest city a bus ticket could get him, and went to work as a paramedic. He eventually met Beth and then the rest of the Latch Key Saints, and formed a new family with them.Etienne is often Beth’s favourite partner in crime/companion, the most non-judgemental person she knows.~*~

Father Vincent Dafaux, SJ || Catholic Priest- New YorkVincent is a Celestial Chorus Mage, founder of the Latch Key Saints. They are a cabal of disparate Traditions working together to help the Five Burroughs stave off the contributing factors of despair and disbelief: poverty, homelessness, abuse, sickness, drug-abuse, domestic violence, etc. He believes in a vision that even the smallest act of kindness and charity, preformed as a duty to your fellow man, can help elevate them to a better state, and that eventually enough such acts can ennoble even the dimmest spirit.He’s Beth’s confessor and leader, and he’s vastly amused sometimes by her ideas of sin. He’s banned her from the confessional for six months, until she has something to ACTUALLY atone for.

~*~

Dmitri Woźniak || Conspiracy Theorist, Black Market Importer/Exporter- New York

Dmitri attended the same group grief counselling that Beth did, and has always believed that her brother’s death wasn’t an ‘accident’. He also felt that she was a little too naive for her own good so he tends to watch out for her. When she needs supplies for her clinic that she can’t get legally, he provides…for a price.

Jimmy “Bag of Donuts” Riley || Longshoreman, Pack Leader -Sept of the Green, New YorkEveryone has a cousin Jimmy.Somewhere along the family tree.

Beth’s cousin Jimmy is a longshoreman who works for the NY Port Authority {Brooklyn Port Authority Marine Terminal comprising the Brooklyn Piers and Red Hook Container Terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn}. He’s mild mannered, with the family’s predilection toward sarcasm, and proud of the Irish blood running through his veins.

And…so what if Jimmy drinks a little too much and picks a fight now and again…What isn’t common knowledge is that Jimmy also happens to be leader of “Nine Waves”, a pack comprised entirely of Fianna Garou. He’s not thrilled that his cousins are caern-raiders {doesn’t matter that Beth’s never actually raided a caern a day in her life}, but she is family. He keeps her up-to-date on where not to be and when not to be there. He makes sure she respects Garou law and doesn’t get into too much trouble where the other werewolves are concerned.

Sebastion Phoenix || Bartender, Cultist of Ecstasy -New York

Sebastion was born and raised in New York. Given up for adoption at birth, he spent his life in and out of foster homes. He was always able to use his magic, though in his younger years it wasn’t very strong or very refined, and this often got him into trouble. He was quickly labelled a troubled kid and was more than willing to play up to the label the adults had stuck him with. His troublesome nature actually helped him stay under the Technocracy’s radar because he was never in one foster home long enough to be found. Sebastion was a smart kid but was completely untrained. He tended to use his magic to help him shoplift which led to bigger things, like stealing cars and B&E. At sixteen he ran away from his foster home and, using his larceny skills, made himself a life on the streets. He squirrelled away the money he made, and generally kept himself under the radar as much as possible but he got caught after a job went south. He was given an assignment that involved a little B&E on a mage’s home, not that he’d known at the time. That mage turned out to be an older Cultist who immediately recognised his potential and took him under wing instead of handing him over to the police. Sebastion was a fast learner and the Ecstastics’ ethos fit well with his view of life. He traded B&E for a job as a bartender at Dante’s Inferno, a known mage safe-house hidden behind the front of a popular night club. His mentor trained him both in magic and in the mundane affairs of running the club, signing it all over to him when he turned 21. Once the club was in his name, Sebastion’s mentor left New York. Sebastion began work on the club, changing it to suit his desires, and the club’s popularity only grew. Sebastion is a hedonist who believes in living life to the fullest. He enjoys exploring all aspects of what that means but is particularly fond of exploring pleasure and pain in sex. The club still fronts as a mainstream club but for those who have interest, there are private floors dedicated to exploring taboos or kinks of all sorts. He also continues to maintain the club as a safe haven for mages and works with others to keep the place well secured. He has never been known to turn any mage who requests haven away. Because Dante’s is the primary haven, most mages who come to New York will have met him. Sebastion is easy going, charismatic, and generally likeable. He is more than willing to teach his magick and his beliefs but never pushes them on the unwilling. Consent is the rule of his actions.

Sebastion views Beth as a grail of sorts, and he continually offers her temptation when he calls on her to help tend the various club kids, junkies, and wounded mages that make their invariable way to the Inferno. In return for her services, he often repays her with ‘donations’ to her clinic, or helping one of her Sleeper pet-projects back onto their feet. And he always accepts her refusal to succumb to him with gracious smiles and a resonant laugh.

Count Aloysius Flyte of the Duchy of the Delta Crescent, Kingdom of the Willows, Sluagh grump of the Seelie Court || The Long Finger Man

“Why did you come here to my attic and disturb my rest? Are you here to find something from long ago? Be careful you don’t open something you can’t close….Oh. You have questions about the Prodigal then. I hope for your sake that you brought more than your curiosity to barter with. Yes, that will do nicely. Very nicely indeed. Tut-tut. Pour the tea and mind that cup, it has a chip in it.”

She isn’t sure he’s even real, the Long Finger Man. But he’s real enough that she respects his advice and his aid, and maybe fears the old Fae more than she’ll let on. She lets him retain his rooms in her clinic, and for her graciousness, Aloysius keeps an eye out for her when she’s busy, and strangely, there is no vampire presence in her ward.

New Orleans is a part of the Kingdom of the Willows, and the Capital of the Duchy of the Delta Crescent. It is currently under the control of the Unseelie Duchess Lisette Levay of House Balor, and one of Aloysius’ chief rivals. The self Stylised “Voodoo Queen” holds court in a freehold called the “Spirit Hall” south of the City, within the Swamp. He’s pleased now that she has to contend with the little Verbena witch, her Husband the Incarna, and several new friends.Due to the high presence of Cold Iron for some reason, the local Fae suspect that New Orleans acts as the headquarters of an active group of Dauntain. Levay also holds contact to several other unsavoury supernatural forces, like Black Spiral Dancers, and the Followers of Set.This means Aloysius is more than content to protect the Witch’s properties and occasionally slips her JUST enough information to ruin Levay’s nefarious plans.

#Mahalo!Pumpkin <333 #The Turtle Speaks|Mun Answered Asks #ronmanmob

2 notes · View notes

nia-nita · 5 years

Text

Warning: a long ass essay about my thoughts on love

When it comes to love I’m a romantic. I love the idea of knowing and supporting each other, the closeness you can have with another person. How you can share your thoughts with each other without fearing they will judge you, or the moments of intimacy where you feel safe and nothing bad in the world can touch you.

But the love I see around me isn’t the love I want. The love I see in the marriages of my closest are restricting, forcing both parties into a strict role based on their genders. And they’re okay with that. The women in the relationship see nothing wrong being the only ones to cook, to clean, to look after the children with no thanks. They say that’s how it’s right when I challenge them to reconsider and confront their men so that they would play a more active part in the family.

It isn’t the love I want, nor life. I want someone who loves me for who I am, not because I fulfill a certain role in their life. I’ve never been really what you would call “womanly”. I’m not a good cook, my room is more often than not something you would call organized chaos and I don’t feel the desire to ever have kids. I’m what people would call a failure of what it means to be a woman.

Other women though says it’s just a faze, that I will find a man who I want to have kids with but sometimes it’s scary just how intently they want me to follow the traditional gender role of being a mother.

My grandpa lives in a different country than I so I rarely get to see him. He has remarried after he and my grandmother divorced years ago and I’ve seen him and his wife fewer times than the fingers I have on my hands. Yet one summer years ago when I visited them, the conversation had turned into kids and I mentioned not wanting any, my grandfather's wife got an almost scary look on her face and said slowly and forcefully, “you will get kids one day, won’t you?” and I had to stutteringly say yes.

It shook me to the core and not for the first time I thought, is this the only way I can find love? By sacrificing myself and my wants so I can become the woman men want?

I have reflected on my sexuality for years, wondering if I’m straight... or bisexual. I have a sexual attraction towards men but in an attempt to not immediately label myself as the standard straight, I have thought about if it’s possible if I might like women as well.

So far it has always come to that I have a preference for men but I’m always hesitant to label myself straight right after in case some internal homophobia is clouding my decision. That’s why I call myself straight... for now...

The key point however when I’ve imagined myself with a man or woman, is that I have thought about them sexually, specifically if I would feel okay if another woman shared the bed with me and a man and that might have been a false approach. In that scenario, I always imagined I’d feel insecure and would constantly compare myself to the other woman, afraid that they wouldn’t want me anymore and that they would dump me in favor of being only them.

I should have perhaps thought about the life I would have with them instead.

I’m an idealistic person and when I get taken by this new romantic hero of the book or comic or movie I’ve read or seen, I always imagined that is the kind of person I want to share my life with. But as I’ve said earlier, the marriages around me are nothing like the ones in the books and it feels like I’ve resigned myself to a loveless life.

Now there have been instances where I’ve have been attracted to a guy in real life and more often than not they still seem like the type that expects me to be the only one to take care of the home.

Now, what's interesting though is that while most of the infatuations for the men I have is mostly sexual, the infatuation towards some women resonates more deeply inside me. The women I get infatuated with are strong and I get the sense that as long as I’m with this woman, I feel safe which is what my perfect love interest in my head is like. The thing is though that my sexual preference still belongs to the men and I have a hard time imagining being intimate with another woman.

I’ve read up on other sexualities including asexuality and I’ve found out that the asexuals have a term for this crush/not crush which is “squish”. What I’ve understood what it means is that the person feels this crush-like feeling about another person but more like in, “I want to be friends with this person” rather than “I want to be in a relationship with them” and that’s what I’ve determined what I was feeling too.

But is this kind of platonic relationship enough for me? I’ve tried to search for stories about same-sex relationships where one partner is straight and the one post I found was that while the straight person loved his same-sex partner he sometimes felt that something was missing as he couldn’t get the same kind of sexual gratification as he would have with the opposite sex due to his sexuality.

I have no real conclusion to this long-ass essay as I’m still trying to figure myself out. I’ve considered the option that if a woman ever approached me about entering a relationship, that I would give it at least a try but I’m concerned if it’s even ethical doing that in case it looks like I’m just leading them on and lying to us both...

For now, I just try to live my life, read romance novels and see what happens next...

#nia's essay on love #this is more for venting and to clear my thoughts #it's an awful read but i suppose it might be an interesting case study as well

1 note · View note

ruminativerabbi · 6 years

Text

Preparing for the End

And so we finally come to the end of our festival season. Not quite, but almost! Shemini Atzeret, the next-to-last stop on the holiday bus line, looms before us in all its mysterious opacity and then, finally, we get to Simchat Torah…the last stop of all before it’s all finally really over and the “real” year really begins with all of its tasks and challenges.

All of our Jewish festivals have features that are to some degree out of sync with the modern world, but Simchat Torah is in some ways the most egregiously out of step with the values moderns espouse and which we teach our children to esteem. In a world that values efficiency, Simchat Torah is about doing something—in this case, pondering the text of the Torah and mining in its quarries for new meaning and renewed inspiration—in a way that couldn’t possibly be less efficient: by reading it aloud slowly and precisely, over and over and over, year in and year out. In a world that values speedy attention to pressing matters, we could not possibly do our pondering more ponderously…or more laboriously. And, of course, we don’t just read the text out loud, we chant it according to a set of musical notes that, because they are not actually written in the scroll, must be memorized in advance. It’s true that those signs serve as a kind of bare-bones punctuation system, but what they really do is make it impossible to race through the text at breakneck speed even for the most accomplished reader. Instead, each word is sung out, thus of necessity separately pronounced and individually presented to the congregation for its ruminative contemplation. Most Americans, of course, are done being read to when they learn how to read in first or second grade. But shul-Jews are never done…and we never quite finish either: as soon as we get to the last few lines of the Torah, we open a different scroll to the very first column and start reading again. Again.

We train our students in school to read as quickly as possible. I remember occasionally having to read several hundred pages from one class to the next in college and graduate school, which, since I was generally taking at least four or five courses at once, meant having to develop the skill not only of reading at top speed but also somehow of retaining all, or at least most, of the insane number of pages I was attempting to read at once. I took notes, obviously. But even that had to be done according to a streamlined system that didn’t impede my progress too dramatically. The key was to find the right balance between volume and comprehension: reading without recalling content was useless, but not getting through the reading assignment before the next class was not a very good plan either! In the end, I learned how to read very quickly, which skill I retain to this day. And I remember most of what I read too. So there’s that!

But there’s reading and there’s reading…and to participate in the annual reading of the Torah requires learning to read extremely slowly, carefully, and deliberately. It requires being open to insights hiding behind the details of a confusing narrative or a complex exposition of details regarding some abstruse area of law. Mostly, it requires a level of humility that no professor in grad school sees any point of attempting to instill in his or her students: listening week in and week out to the weekly lesson, on the other hand, requires bringing a level of surrender to the enterprise that stems directly from knowing that the same text read this week will be read aloud next year (and the year after that as well), yet knowing that none of us will ever truly get to the point at which we’re done learning, at which we’ve simply managed to squeeze all the juice there is to have from that particular orange, at which there is simply no point to review the same text again again. The bottom line is that you can’t read Scripture too slowly, too deeply, or too carefully! But who in our modern world wants to do anything slowly at all?

This much I know from shul and from study. But how surprised was I to learn just recently that I’m not alone—that Jews are not alone—in their devotion to the art of the slow read.

As far as I can tell, the earliest non-Jewish author to write positively about the experience of reading slowly was, of all people, Friedrich Nietzsche, who described himself in the introduction to his The Dawn of Day as a “teacher of slow reading.” Okay, that was in 1887, but he was only the first of many who argued that the relentless emphasis on reading quickly has had a peculiarly negative effect on Western public culture. In 1978, James Sire published How to Read Slowly, a call-to-arms in which he invited Americans to learn how to read thoughtfully, not racing to get any specific book finished but instead using the experience of reading as a kind of internal gateway to ruminative speculation about the world through the medium of the written word. In 2009, his work was followed by John Miedema’s Slow Reading, an interesting book in which the author finds traces of encouragement to read slowly in classical sources and then moves slowly forward to find similar kinds of ideas in works from later centuries as well. Then came Thomas Newkirk’s 2012 book, The Art of Slow Reading, And then came David Mikics’ Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

Mikics comes closest to what Jews mean by reading slow. He identifies slow reading with intensive, thoughtfully ruminative reading and approvingly cites Walt Whitman, who wrote that “reading is not a half-sleep, but, in the highest sense, a gymnast’s struggle…Not the book so much needs to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does.” That’s pretty much why we read the Torah over and over in shul: not because the book needs to be read but because the kahal needs to be read to…and through the experience of being read to and thus obliged to consider word by word an ancient text, and to do that same thing over and over without being bored or irritated—that is what we mean by the book being a door to step through into the world behind the world, into the space that Plato labelled “the world of ideas” but which Jewish people know as the world behind the great parochet that separates the day-to-day world of human goings-on from the larger picture of the human enterprise, the one in which we participate willingly not because we can or because we must, but because we wish to see ourselves as willing witnesses to God’s presence in history, and as harbingers, each of us, of the redemption promised by the very scroll we read so deeply and thoughtfully year after year after year.

David Mikics is a professor of English at the University of Houston. I have used and enjoyed his edition of Emerson’s essays since the book came out in 2012; when I’ve occasionally discussed Ralph Waldo Emerson in these weekly letters, I’ve almost always been relying on the text Mikics published and on his thoughtful introductions and notes. In his book, he distinguishes slow reading from its partners in insight, “close reading” (a term coined at Harvard more than half a century earlier by Professor Reuben Brower) and “deep reading” (a term coined by Sven Bikerts, the author best known for his Gutenberg Elegies, the subtitle of which, “The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,” tells you most of what you need to know about this thesis). Mikics book is very worthwhile…and worth reading slowly and carefully.

Much of what he writes will be challenging for all who care deeply about the fate of the written word in the digital age. But large sections of the book—written in an engaging, very appealing style—will be resonant in a special way for Jewish readers. We are the original slow readers! And Simchat Torah is our annual festival devoted to the celebration of that very concept. So, as we prepare for the final days of our holiday season, I encourage you all to focus on the larger enterprise in play: the celebration of slow, intensive, deep, close reading that is the hallmark of the way Jews relate to the sacred text. Each word, after all, is a gateway to the world behind the world, to the sacred space in which the knowledge of God, for all it comes to us dressed up in language, is not language or anything like language…but an amalgam of hope, faith, courage, and dreamy optimism. The bottom line: you really can’t read too slowly…and Simchat Torah is our annual opportunity to pay public homage to that quintessentially Jewish idea.

#Simchat Torah #slow reading #David Mikics

7 notes · View notes