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devilfic · 5 months

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❝small favor❞

V. the christmas special.

parts: previously / next plot: it's the most beautiful time of the year. pairing: mcu!peter parker x gn!reader. cw: christmas shenanigans, alcohol mentions, harry gets drunk for norman osborn related reasons, peter is a little ball of anxiety because he likes you, can I share with you what jobs I think ned and mj got after graduation. words: 8.4k.

a/n: this was gonna be a two-parter but I thought. no. so instead it's just super long :D

Peter has started visiting more.

There were the surprise visits on weekends. Something was just too important to wait a week, and too important to give you a call, and you liked that he made a note of bringing you food for the trouble. Then he was popping in on Wednesday nights—sometimes Friday mornings—because he'd forgotten to tell you this or he just couldn't wait to tell you that.

And he has texting you more, too. Not super serious things either, and after a few days of it, you had worked the fight or flight reaction to his ringtone out of your system. At some point, you had started feeling like this was becoming... a genuine friendship.

"I mean... I... yeah. We talked about it, didn't we?" Peter stops pouring, brownie batter dribbling off the lip of the bowl, "Friends. I- I think of you as a friend. If you think of me... as a friend."

You gnaw on your pen as you study him. It's another weekend surprise visit, and this time he's brought you boxed brookie batter as an olive branch. You'd actually been busy this time, and so you'd put him to work baking it while you made your vacation list, "It's just... crazy. I mean, we went from being strangers to only seeing each other once a week—purely professionally—and now you bake me things. And we hang out."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing! It's just weird," he continues to pour as you talk, "I used to see you as this unattainable hero. I couldn't believe you trusted me, felt comfortable enough to tell me your name, to care enough that even EDITH knows who I am. And now we're friends."

Peter's nose scrunches at that, and you've never wished more than now that you could see the rest of his face. He starts placing balls of cookie dough in the batter, "You talk about me like I'm Beyoncé or something."

"You're the Beyoncé of superheroes."

"Hey, that is not true. That title goes to Captain Marvel."

"Not to me."

"Well, of course not to you. You're my biggest fan."

"Wow, demoted to a fan already."

Peter slides the pan into the oven, "You know what I mean. You're biased."

"You're starting to sound like Jameson now."

He kicks the oven door closed and hops up onto the kitchen counter next to you, nudging your knee with his knee, "Oh, you haven't heard my Jameson impression. Watch this." Peter clears his throat, clenches his fist, and shakes it in the air, "Spider-Man is a menace and should be charged with domestic terrorism!"

You giggle, "Do more."

"5G isn't giving your kids cancer, it's Spider-Man leaving his webs all over the city!"

"More!"

"Spider-Man is laying eggs in our city's sewers so that one day, all his freaky spider children will rise up and take over New York!"

"Please, keep going."

Peter groans. You see his head tilt toward the notepad in your lap, "How's the vacation going? Or vacation planning, I guess."

You sigh. Your list to pack kept getting longer, and yet, anytime you tried to focus on what to bring, you would just remember something else you needed to do before leaving New York. "How do you think, based on my utter lack of excitement?"

Peter raises a brow, "Whaaat? You're not excited for Miami?"

"I was, but... everything in the world is happening at the same time. Jameson wants me to get two more articles out before I leave and my family wanted me in Florida three days ago. At this rate, I'm just barely going to make it there before Christmas. Not to mention..." You trail off as you look to Peter, whose mask eyes have gone comically wide in interest, "I don't want to leave you all alone."

"You know I've been Spider-Manning since I was like, 14, right?"

"Well, yeah, but- wait, 14?" Peter grimaces. You gloss over it before he can worry himself about it, "Anyway, I just worry. I mean, with Fisk turning the PR tide and God knows what he's planning, I don't wanna just fly to the other side of the country. It feels wrong."

Peter smirks, "Nah, nah. It's fine. I can take care of myself."

"Don't make me remind you about how all of this," you gesture between Peter and the oven, "started." He looks away from you, sheepish. "You know what I mean, right? Maybe I'm overestimating my worth to you, but-"

"You're definitely not. You have no idea how much you mean to me." That stuns you. It stuns both of you, clearly, if Peter's frantic peek at your face was anything to go by. His mouth gapes like a fish out of water for a moment, "I just mean that... you've made being Spidey... easier on me. It's nice knowing someone's actually on my side in this city. So yeah, it will feel really weird without you being just a swing away."

"You can still call, Peter. I won't mind."

"And when your family asks who's bothering you while you're sunbathing on the beach?"

"I mean, my little cousins will be impressed if I name drop Spider-Man."

He smiles. He kicks his feet out, heels bumping the cabinet doors beneath you while silence settles. You take this chance to examine a slight fraying on the fabric of his suit, a hole beginning to form on his upper thigh that you could just fit your pinky through. You remembered a time when his suit was made out of sweatpants and a dream.

He was 14 when he first started all of this. When you were 14, you were stressing over high school essays and alien invasions. You couldn't help but think that maybe he'd lost his youth to this thing. This thing that brought you together.

Spider-Man who, back then, was really a kid. He'd had to grow into it. You couldn't imagine having to grow into that. "Well, that's enough about my holiday plans. What about you?" Peter prepares to answer, then deflates. "What's up?"

He bites his bottom lip, "I don't... have any."

Your heart sinks, "What? Why not?"

"No, no, it's fine. I'll probably be out on patrol making sure everybody else is having a safe, criminal-free winter break."

Sliding off the counter, you come to stand in front of Peter with your arms folded, "Absolutely not."

"Okay, before you say anything-"

"It's Christmas, Peter! You're supposed to take time off! Be with friends and family. If you never take a break, you'll wear yourself out."

"Just hear me out-"

"No! I won't have it. You're not the only hero in New York. You're taking Christmas off. I don't care if I have to stuff you in a carry-on and take you with me but you will not be working-"

One hand clamps around the back of your head and the other silences you, turning your complaints into mush, "If you would let me finish..." you huff indignantly against his hand, "you'd know that a friend of mine is throwing a Christmas party and I was invited. There. I have plans."

Your face softens. "Really?" You ask, but the sound is muffled and it comes out more like, "Will-ee?"

Peter laughs, hand slipping from your mouth, "Really. I'll at least take a few hours off. Maybe more if I fall into a food coma."

Peter's other hand is still cradling your head, but you don't bring it to his attention. "You promise? I won't have to fly back early and check up on you, will I? 'Cause I'll do it."

"I wouldn't stop you." You glower, making Peter's mask eyes squint with amusement, "I promise."

"Sometimes I think you like making me worry over you."

"Would you believe me if I said that I'm just this awful all the time?"

"Yes, but that would make me worry even more."

The hand at your neck gently curls around the side of your throat, Peter's thumb angling your chin up to his own. The brush of it makes you tremble just slightly.

Was he trying to make you dissolve into a puddle?

"I'll be okay. Just... come back to the city, will ya? Don't fall in love with Miami."

You place one of your hands over the hand on your throat. The other hovers somewhere near his knee on the countertop, unsure of yourself. When you admire his exposed mouth, you think of Peter. Parker.

You remember you hadn't actually talked about that since it happened. It was Peter's intention to skirt around Parker, regardless of how certain you were that they were the same person. It was all in jest, sure, but some small part of you (some incredibly small, minuscule, microscopic part of you) wondered if your reporter brain just fit the two pieces together because it wanted them to fit.

Perhaps he wasn't Peter Parker. Perhaps this really was all a coincidence, and perhaps aliens didn't fall from the sky and gods didn't save the world.

You wouldn't push him on it. You wouldn't look into it either, because reporter brain be damned. You cared more about the Peter you knew than the Peter you didn't.

You smile up at him, "How could I? Miami doesn't have you."

"Nice to see you could finally make it, kiddo." Jillian is grinning at you when you arrive, her baby tucked at her hip and her wife entertaining the little monster over her shoulder. She sees the winded look on your face and immediately motions you over, pressing a hand to your cheek, "Did you crawl out of a snowdrift? You're freezing!"

You lean into it, chasing the warmth in hopes that it would restore some feeling to your skin, "The storm's getting awful out there."

"Came outta nowhere, didn't it?" Jillian's wife snorts, booping the baby's nose. "We almost didn't risk coming with the little one, it was so bad."

Said little one looks perfectly warm wrapped up in her blanket, an envious sight as you shiver and shuck off your coat to hang. You would offer the kid a boop on the nose yourself, but with your fingers frozen solid around your offering—a plate of sugar cookies—you don't want to make her cry. You give her a smile instead.

"Oh, and would you believe it?" Jillian whispers, sidling up to you, primed for gossip, "We've got a real treat here tonight. Take a wild guess who decided to show up."

"Jonah's wife?"

Jillian cackles, "God no. The stalker."

As soon as she says the name, your eyes zero in on him.

He's wearing that plaid shirt again, but the collar and cuffs are all that peek out from underneath a wrinkly blue sweater. His hair is free and gelled back, revealing his nervous expression more clearly. Nursing a cup of apple cider, he just barely looks like he wants to be here. But then he catches your eye across the room.

And he waves.

"Oh my," Jillian teases, "you must've left quite the impression if he came all this way just to see you."

"He did not come just to see me." You reply in a hushed tone, but she laughs at you all the same.

"Sure. And that's not him heading over right now, even though he's been hugging the wall all night."

You jerk your head to where Parker was standing, and, sure enough, he's pursuing you.

You part from Jillian before she can get the chance to embarrass you (she accepts your cookies as payment), and so you all but jog to meet him halfway.

He doesn't get the chance to be polite before you're interrogating him, "Where did you go?"

"Uh... What?"

"At the gala. When I ran back inside the ballroom, I couldn't find you anywhere."

Peter's eyes slowly widen, "You went back inside?"

"Answer the question, please."

"Wh- I... I was there. You didn't see me?"

"No, I didn't."

"It got crazy after Fisk rushed the stage. I got swept up in the crowd. You must've missed me."

"Really? 'Cause I was with the crowd, you know. In front of the building? Where Fisk was giving his big speech about how he saved the day? I didn't see you anywhere."

Peter blinks, then gasps as if he'd just remembered something important, "You know what? That's right. I went to go find Harry. I wanted to make sure he was alright, and then I couldn't find you in the crowd so I just assumed... I'm sorry for leaving you back there all alone." You watch as he fumbles for something convincing, "I texted Spider-Man about it, though. He said you were safe."

You fold your arms, "...Is that all he said about me?"

"Well, that. And something about your conspiracy theory?"

"Conspiracy theory."

The topic change gets some of the tension in Peter's shoulders melting away, replaced with a smile faint enough to not pass as overtly smug. He waits for one of your co-workers to move out of earshot before continuing, "You think... I'm Spider-Man."

Your jaw tightens. You know that anyone would draw the same conclusions you did after that night. You also know that no matter how logical your reasoning is, you sound highly illogical when you admit to it out loud. If you brought up the same accusation to Jillian or Jameson, they'd both laugh you out of the office.

You have to stand your ground, though. If there was one thing you were learning about Peter, it was that he was easy to fluster, "And if I do?"

"I'm flattered, really, but I don't really have the hand-eye coordination."

You know it's bullshit. He should know you know it's bullshit. If it hadn't been for his quick thinking, you and Harry would've been trampled under the masses at the gala. It's bullshit and he's waiting for his checkmate that will never come.

You do not give it a second thought. You toss your phone at Peter's head.

And he catches it. Of course he does. He stops it mere inches from his face.

If anyone saw you try to give him a concussion, they don't come over to question you on it. "Can you..." Peter starts after a breath, a bit dazed, "...can you stop trying to hit me?"

You go to defend yourself because, at the very least, you hadn't meant to try to punch Peter—which meant it didn't count—when someone barrels right into you.

And, to prove you right twice in a row, Peter is quick to catch you. He scoops you up into his arms before you end up a reporter pancake on the floor. One of your co-workers, already blitzed off spiked eggnog, had bumped you on their way to the drinks table for what looked like the umpteenth time tonight, and didn't have enough marbles to apologize before bumping someone else.

Peter is careful in how he holds you. There's that unmistakable strength behind his grip, but also... he was gentle. He felt safe.

You don't make to escape just yet, all your bravado knocked right out of you. "Jesus, you okay?" His eyes dart over to your co-worker and a scowl turns his expression sour, "Jonah should put a cap on the drinks."

You feel more than embarrassed stumbling to your feet, even more so when Peter still coddles you after you're standing upright. "I'm fine. Thanks." Peter's looking at you, brows drawn together, with so much concern it makes that second thought from earlier come in hot with a sizable topping of shame, "Talk about instant karma."

Then it's gone. Peter laughs and... it sounds just like your Peter. Undeniably. You can't help but give in. For a fleeting moment, the question of secret identities has melted away and it's just the two of you, giggling about something silly.

You're ashamed enough to apologize for throwing your phone at his head when the laughter dies down. You succeed in stealing it back and lead him over to the windows, far away from any more drunken disasters, "It's alright. I've had worse thrown at me before."

You raise an eyebrow, "Oh? Like what?"

His voice catches in his throat at first, "A... carton of expired milk. High school bully, Flash Thompson. We were both on the same academic decathlon team but he never gave up on his dream of professional baseball."

"Flash Thompson? You mean, Silicon Valley, MIT grad, tech startup millionaire Flash Thompson?"

Peter winces, "The one and only."

You frown at the distant look on Peter's face, aware of some regret there at the mention of Flash. "You and Harry went to ESU together, right? Is that where you always wanted to go?"

Peter shakes his head, but a smile comes to his face regardless, "MIT was my first choice, actually. But... even with a scholarship, I just couldn't imagine leaving New York behind. So I stayed. Went to ESU. Helped my Aunt May with the mortgage on her first house since my... my uncle passed. And now I'm selling pictures of Spider-Man to pay my rent."

You can't help the way you soften. "I'm so sorry about your uncle, Peter. Your Aunt May is lucky to have you around."

His eyelids flutter closed for a breath, and his smile grows wider. If it were even possible. "I'm lucky to have her."

You stand there together in silence after that, but it feels more comfortable than before. All the scrutiny and speculation you'd come in with had faded away, and now you were left wondering more about Peter. His hopes, his dreams, his life before all of this. What would it have been like if he'd gone to MIT? Where would you be? Or Spider-Man?

Peter's eyes peel open, "So, what about you?"

"Oh. Well, I took a shine to my school newspaper. After... everything in 2012, I knew the world would never be the same. So I had dreams of becoming a journalist, covering the street, being the first on the scene. Took my ass to college on part-time jobs and a dream, and interned at nearly every newspaper in the city before Jameson gave me a shot here. As much as I can't stand the way he talks about Spidey... he's not that bad of a guy. All things considered."

Peter agrees, "He did hire you, so..."

"Yeah, well," you lean your cheek against the window, glass cooling your blush, "At least Spidey doesn't hold it against me... but, I have to ask: why the Bugle? I mean, with photos like yours, you should be fighting off every publication in the city. Instead you turn in these... absolute masterpieces, freelancing, for a guy who can't even give you due credit, and you only stop by for a paycheck."

Peter looks to the window, the wind howling over a crooner's cover of Santa Baby. The storm was still raging on outside, and you dreaded the thought of having to walk through it to get back home. The taxis wouldn't have much luck either from the looks of it. "I... like my job, but it's not what I wanna do forever. I don't care about fame or Pulitzer prizes. It's always been about taking care of me and my Aunt May, and Jameson is a lot of things but he's always understood that. He pays me enough that I can have a place of my own and a little leftover for my aunt, and he doesn't ask questions.

"I don't need to be seen. And that's the whole point, isn't it?" His expression gradually warms as he recalls something, "It's not who's behind the lens that matters, but who's in front of it."

Your expression warms too, "I can see why Spidey likes you."

A notification disturbs the moment. Raising a finger at Peter, you check the latest notification... and your stomach drops.

Peter takes a step forward, sensing the change in atmosphere, "What? What is it?"

"My flight's been cancelled. I was leaving tomorrow for Miami but the storm..."

"Oh. Man, I'm sorry."

"I should've left sooner, I should've left when my family..." You lose the motivation to even finish your sentence, feeling exhausted all at once, "It doesn't matter anymore. I'm stuck here for Christmas."

Peter stuffs his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his feet as he searches for something to say. You're about to tell him not to worry about it when he speaks up, "You know," he starts, the uncertainty in his voice giving you pause, "it's no... Miami, but my aunt throws this Christmas party every year? For Christmas Eve. We invite a few friends over for dinner. She'd love it if you came."

"Oh, Peter, that's sweet but... I don't really want to intrude on a friend thing-"

"No, no, it's okay! Anyone can come. It'll just be my aunt, some of her co-workers from F.E.A.S.T., a few of my friends, my ex-girlfriend-"

"Your- what?"

"Oh. Well, I mean, we were friends before we dated. Well... technically? She sort of just... hung around me and Ned in high school and then we started dating for a while but then we broke up in university. But we stayed friends. Became better friends, actually. So, she's my ex but also a really good friend. I promise it's not weird or anything. She's super cool about it. And I am too! Her name's MJ. I think you'll like her."

You stare at Peter. You think you see a bead of sweat twinkle on his forehead underneath the Christmas lights above.

He insists that you're welcome to come, and staying home alone for Christmas would be pretty hypocritical after your argument with Spider-Man.

Spider-Man.

"...and Spider-Man will be there."

Spider-Man?

You abruptly lock eyes with Peter. "Spider-Man?"

Peter's smile is tight-lipped, "Yeah." His voice cracks. "I mean, he's just stopping by real quick, but I invited him. He might not come. But... he also might."

Was this the friend of his throwing a Christmas party? Why in the world would Peter (Parker) invite you to the same party Spider-Man would be at, unless he could stand in the same room as him at the exact same time? There'd be no other way to convince you otherwise, and you'd be forced to accept that they really were two completely different people.

Yeah, right.

You'd go to this party and suss it out for yourself.

And it wouldn't hurt, would it? Peter was nice, if not the most awkward person you've ever met. To offer you a place at his aunt's Christmas dinner not long after hurling an object at his head was a sign of true Christmas spirit. You could learn a thing or two from him, "Okay. You've convinced me. What's your number? You can text me the address."

Peter blanks for a moment, "Um... yeah, um..." You watch him flounder, growing increasingly suspicious, "Can I see your phone?"

You drop your phone in his hand. His fingers move quickly across the keyboard before returning it to you. Peter Parker is now in your contacts. You check the number against Spidey's but there isn't a match. "Thanks," you glance at his wobbly smile, "I sent you a text."

Peter gestures behind him, "Oh, cool, awesome. Will you excuse me for a sec? I gotta use the restroom." And he doesn't wait for you to affirm before he's rushing down the hall and out of sight.

A full minute passes before you receive a text back from Peter.

15 Amfan Ave Forest Hills, NY 11375 7pm :) Hope you can make it! He never shuts up about you *I *shut

Hm.

So... I hear you're throwing things at people now Who told you that? You lose one phone, then you try to bludgeon an innocent man with another. I should lock you up and throw away the key I wasn't trying to bludgeon him, because I knew he'd be perfectly *fine*. And he helped me prove a point Which was... That the chances of him being you are more likely than either of you would have me to believe Could it be that you just have a thing for attractive, masked men? That is That is irrelevant to the conversation HA you so do Literally nothing to do with anything I just said It's okay. The mask makes it really easy to project one's ideal man onto me. Or so I've learned through Twitter I'm not projecting *anything* onto you Do you picture Ryan Reynolds when you talk to me? It's okay if you do Peter, shut up Maybe someone more boyish like Timothy chalet Timothee Chalet Timothee Chalamett I'd say you just like hearing yourself talk but this is a textual conversation I like that we can talk like this :) I like it too :) What about Tom Holland? We've got the same jaw If you think me accusing you of being Parker is me projecting a handsome man onto you, I can only assume you think he's hot. Which means I can assume you have a thing for him. Because I can also make things up Like Batman and Clark Kent? Are you saying Parker is the Clark Kent in our fictional relationship? More like Superman and Jimmy Olsen And you're my Lois Lane? ... Goodnight, Peter

Aunt May's home is beautiful. There's a lovingly sculpted garden out front that has since given into the snow, but you can tell it's a sight in the spring. For now, the Christmas garland lining the doorframe—wrapped in a rope of rainbow lights—brightens up the porch. As does the collection of little striped sweater-wearing gnomes gathered around the front door.

There's a commotion of voices behind it as you approach. You shift your plate into one hand, pressing the doorbell with the other, and the voices get louder. You swallow down your nerves when the door is ripped open by a stranger.

The stranger in question is staring out into the dark at you like they weren't expecting you. Your eyes quickly dart to the plaque beside the door and see a bold "15" emblazoned there. Nope. This is the house.

Their eyes zero in on the plate in your hand. Smiling, they open the door wide and step back, "Sweet! Peter said you'd bring dessert."

You kick the snow off your boots before stepping inside. The stranger shuts the door behind you before any more of the cold could get in. "It's peppermint bark," you explain, returning a smile of your own, "but I hear May's making a cake."

"May and Peter. May's great with everything but the oven- don't tell her I said that. I'm Ned, by the way." Ned holds his hand out for a shake.

Ned is really talkative, you find out. He holds your peppermint bark as you undo your boots and coat at the door, rattling off about how Peter and he had been friends at Midtown. He tells you about his job as a cybersecurity specialist, a job he'd naturally floated toward after graduating from MIT, and how he'd stayed with the Parkers for a few months after moving back to New York. It's how he knows that the downstairs bathroom door won't close unless you lift up when you shut it. You only remember about half of what he says by the time you get to the living room.

There are considerably fewer people than you expected, one of which makes his way over the minute you catch his eye.

"Hey," Harry grins. Unlike the nice suit he'd worn to the gala, he's dressed down in jeans and an ugly sweater with "I've been naughty" printed in big letters across the front, looking a lot less tense than when you'd first seen him, "Fancy seeing you here."

"I could say the same." You can't help but ask, "Don't the Osborns host Christmas Eve at Oscorp tower every year?"

Harry's good mood fizzles out right before your eyes. You feel pretty awful about it. "Uh, yeah. Norman does. But it's more business than anything, so I dipped. I'd rather be here watching Pete fuck up a perfectly good cake."

"I heard that!" Peter's voice calls from a room away.

Harry's good mood returns, "Well, it's good to see you at the annual Parker holiday celebration. And I'll forgive you for poking into my family business if you hand over those treats."

Bashful, you let Ned pass the plate into your hands before passing it to Harry, "Sorry. Reporter brain."

Harry's nose scrunches up, "Don't apologize. Unless these taste like ass."

"I promise they taste better than ass."

"Good enough," he backs away, turning his head to shout down the hall, "Peter! Get in here already!"

When the redhead is immersed in a game of UNO, you turn to Ned, "And that doesn't... feel weird? Having Harry Osborn at family dinner?"

"There are weirder things about Peter. Speak of the devil."

The ugly sweater is the first thing you notice. A companion to Harry's, it is nearly the exact same design, except for the "I've been nice" where the "I've been naughty" had been. He's dusting his hands of something when he comes around the corner. His eyes soften when he sees you with Ned, "Hey, you came." He says in a much too gentle voice. Harry and his opponents nearly drown him out with their cheers and boos.

Unlike at the office party, you notice, Peter's hair isn't tamed by hat nor hair gel. Instead, it curls incessantly around his flushed cheeks. He looked like a damn Keebler elf. It was frustratingly adorable. "Of course. I heard there'd be cake."

"How is that cake, Peter?" Ned pulls on a piece of the ugly sweater as he walks by, and you realize that some of the red had been singed. You follow Peter's frantic gaze from the hole to you.

"This was unrelated to the cake."

"You burned something else?"

"No! One of the stockings fell into the fireplace and I-" Peter trails off as you begin to smile, "you don't get to laugh at me if you didn't bring sweets."

"I did! Harry stole them." You nod over to the coffee table where the group is devouring your peppermint bark with reckless abandon. At least you knew they didn't taste like ass. Peter rushes over to steal the plate before they could polish off the last handful, much to their protest.

"Dinner's almost ready, I swear. You've met Ned, uh, Harry..." Peter scans the group, using his free hand to point out people, "...that's Yolanda, Katie, Lexie, Eduardo: all May's friends. May's in the kitchen but I'd stay out of her way until the ham comes out unharmed."

You notice that out of everyone gathered in the house, he does not mention his ex-girlfriend. "And MJ?"

You wait for an answer. Instead, something heavy shakes the house from above. It doesn't sound like it came from outside, but rather somewhere in the house. Not quite above your head. Weirdly enough, only you seem to be concerned about it.

Peter just glances at the ceiling, "And MJ."

MJ is tossing an empty storage bin to the side when you crawl up through the floor behind Peter. She's crouched on the balls of her feet, shoulders slouched, the sharp bones of her back poking through her tight graphic tee. Her head snaps toward you both when she hears you grunt up the last rung of the ladder. Her eyes narrow on you, then Peter, "I can't find it."

Peter offers you a hand to hoist you further into the attic, "Did you check the-"

"Yes. And I checked the one next to it. And the one next to that."

You look at Peter for an explanation, but he doesn't provide you with one. He walks over to where MJ has now fallen back on her ass, rifling through one of the bins. His mouth twists to the side. "Maybe she meant the box next to her old CDs?"

"There's like 15 boxes in here, Peter."

Off to the side of the room, where MJ was currently facing the mysterious dilemma, were about nine—not 15—storage bins in disarray. Two were off to the side, emptied of their contents: there were piles of men's clothes, women's clothes, baby blankets, and more. The third box that MJ was poring over had Halloween decorations in it.

"Well, you're getting close." Peter encourages.

The way MJ grumbles resentfully has you squirming. As time ticked on, your presence unannounced, you were starting to feel like an intruder. You clear your throat and MJ looks over at you for the second time, "Maybe I could help?" You offer.

At this, MJ brightens. "Finally! Someone cares about my plight. I don't know you, do I?"

You crawl over to where MJ is sitting and Peter gestures to you, "MJ, I told you about the reporter from the Bugle, right?" You give your name for good measure, and MJ's eyebrows raise. She gives a quick, indecipherable look to Peter. He returns it. Then she examines you.

After a moment, she dusts her hand off on her khakis and holds it out for you to shake, "Michelle Jones. Call me MJ." You repeat her nickname warmly. "Peter never shuts up about you."

Peter chokes on his spit.

"He... he does?"

MJ continues shaking your hand for longer than necessary, smiling secretively now, "Oh, yeah. He's got your blog bookmarked too. Post notifs for your Twitter, the works." You cut your eyes to Peter, appalled that he'd ratted you out to someone else, but MJ is quick, "I figured it out on my own ages ago."

"Is it really that obvious it's me?"

"No." And she smiles wider.

Peter is about to cut in with something when a woman's voice rings out, shrill and clear despite two layers of flooring in between you. He's needed with the ham. He looks between you and MJ, reluctant, "Look, if you can't find it-"

"We will." MJ's reply is confident, leaving no room for failure. You feel a little pressure applied to "we".

Peter nods. He mouths an apology at you and skitters out of the attic.

Left alone with MJ, you notice that she is staring at you now. You feel like you've been left alone with an oracle, prepared for your innermost being to be laid bare before you: past, present, and future. She looks like the type to know what makes people tick.

"What are you looking for?" You try to break the silence, though your voice comes out meeker than you'd have liked.

She doesn't look away from you as her fingers grip the container in between her legs, "Uncle Ben's favorite Christmas sweater. All I know is it has a reindeer holding a beer on the front."

Reinbeer. You almost laugh at it. You imagine it would tickle an uncle pink too. "Then I'll get to looking."

You've only just crawled over to a bin of your own when MJ asks you outright, "You like Peter, right?"

Your hand stills as it pries the top off. You feel her eyes burning into your back. "He's... nice, yeah."

You can hear how unimpressed she is with that, "I don't know if it's obvious, but Peter isn't exactly popular." You think that's kind of a cruel thing to say about someone you consider a friend, but MJ keeps going, "All he had was Ned back at Midtown. And me, eventually. I've known him since high school and he's made maybe a handful of friends, maybe less. The last time he invited someone new to Christmas dinner was Harry."

And that had been at least a few years, judging by how long Harry had been away at Oxford.

But why was she telling you this?

"He likes you." You yelp when you realize MJ's voice has gotten close. You turn, and she's kneeling behind you with no interest in your fear. "But do you like him?"

In her hands is a faded, toy Iron Man mask. "I... I think he's nice. I mean kind," you correct yourself when MJ frowns, "but I... I don't really know him. I mean, I don't think I do. I've only actually spoken to him twice and one of those times, there was a gun involved. Everything I know about him is through his pictures and Spidey, and I trust Spidey. So, I trust Peter."

"And Spider-Man?"

"What?"

"Do you like Spider-Man?"

You swallow. Like didn't really sum up how you felt about him. He was a hero, an inspiration, a friend, and also... yeah, you felt something more there too.

You think about why she would ask. Why it would have anything to do with you liking Peter or not. You look at her and it feels like she hasn't really asked you that different of a question at all. Your answer is much more definitive this time, "I do. I like him more than I know what to do with."

MJ leans back on her haunches. She appraises you, "He's pretty great, isn't he?" Her tone is considerably softer.

"Yeah. He really is." You smile.

MJ hands the mask to you and you take it, admiring the chips in its paint and the lovingly worn edges. She scoots between you and the bin you'd been looking into and pops the lid off. Almost immediately, she swears in relief. Sitting folded on top is the most gaudy sweater you've ever seen. A deformed reindeer is embroidered on the front, and sure enough, holds a can of beer in its hoof. When MJ shakes it out, little specks of dust fly everywhere.

This, too, she hands to you. You look at her in bewilderment. "You'll wanna make a good first impression with May," she advises, "just be prepared for the water works."

And there are water works.

May throws her arms around your neck and just about sobs her thanks to you, squishing the sweater between your chests. You note that she smells like candy canes. When she draws back, her glasses are all askew, "And I'm so glad you could make it! Peter wouldn't shut up about you. Isn't that right, Petey?"

Peter's eye twitches. "I'm gonna set the table. Ned, you wanna set the table?" And he scoots past you and May without waiting for a response.

"Don't mind him, he gets testy when he's cooking. Did Petey give you the tour?" You shake your head and May kisses her teeth in Peter's direction, "Okay, this is the kitchen, around the corner here is the dining room. You've seen the living room and the attic. The bathroom is by the front door, and the bedrooms are upstairs. If someone's in the bathroom down here, do not use the bathroom by the stairs. That's Ned's favorite when he gets bubbly guts, and he will get bubbly guts."

Ned complains under his breath as he walks by.

"If you need somewhere to get away from the festivities for a bit, backyard's that way and my room's upstairs, first door to the left. All good?" She pets your shoulder. Then, she looks down at the sweater still in your hands and takes it from you, tenderly. "I'm gonna go change into this and then dinner is served. Help yourself to anything, okay?"

May leaves you in the kitchen with that. Around the corner, Peter and Ned are fussing over where to put the ham and sides. Around the other corner, Harry is drunkenly singing Christmas carols with Yolanda. MJ watches on from the corner of the room, recording on her phone. She catches your eye and mouths, "For blackmail."

You peek into the dining room and Peter is worrying over one of the chairs. You can hear Ned scold him, "Sit next to them. You don't wanna talk over the ham. It'll kill the mood."

"But how do I... subtly get them to sit in this chair and not next to MJ or something?"

"Tell MJ not to sit next to them."

"But what if-" You jolt a little when Peter suddenly spots you eavesdropping. He straightens up with a death grip on the chair he'd been messing with, "Hey! Hi. This is your chair by the way." And he tops it all off with a smile.

It's warm in May's home.

You don't even register the cold at first. You do register Harry's frenzy, the way he grabs far more napkins than he needs to, pressing them to your stomach where the majority of his spilled drink had gone. When you finally do comprehend what just happened, you place your hands over his, "How long have you been plotting your revenge?"

Harry is red-faced. He lets you hold the napkins there while May rushes to find a towel, "Sorry. I wasn't looking where I was- sorry."

You don't get to dwell on the déjà vu of it all. May is ushering you up the stairs with a beach towel pressed to your front, muttering about how she'll have to put Harry on ginger ale for the rest of the night. She guides you into what you're certain is Peter's old bedroom.

It's been cleaned out, and most of his personal belongings must be at his own place, but there are still old posters on the wall, and a calendar dated in April, two years ago. His bed is ruffled like he'd slept overnight. It's neat, and looks like it usually is neat, but there are traces of him everywhere, like picture frames with Peter and May and a man you don't recognize.

"Peter probably has something here you can wear. It's all stuff from college." She digs through the top drawer of his dresser, finally stopping on a sweatshirt with Empire State University in college block across the chest. "Here! You think this'll fit?"

She stretches it out and you nod, thankful, "Yeah, thank you so much, May."

She smiles, "Okay. Bathroom's across the hall if you need to wash off. I can run your shirt through a wash while you're here if you'd like. Just let me know, okay?"

May is, perhaps, the sweetest woman on earth. She leaves you with a thumbs up and shuts the door behind you, reminding you to lock it after she leaves.

Your shirt had absorbed most of the drink, and you're relatively unscathed besides some sticky residue. You wipe at your stomach with the towel she'd given you and slip Peter's sweater on. It feels... odd, wearing it. It smells like May's house with little traces of Peter.

Your eyes drift back to the picture frames.

One such frame sits on top of the dresser, a photo of Peter and the man who you assume is Uncle Ben. He holds Peter in a headlock but they're both smiling at the camera. You smile too, tracing a finger around the wooden edges.

Another picture is of Peter and MJ and Ned, standing outside of MIT with their fingers pointing at the school. Another is of Peter and MJ sharing cotton candy at Coney. Another is of Peter as a little boy, with two people flanking his side that you do not know. You realize you'd never asked about Peter's parents.

There are other photos of him around that age with May and Ben, and as you piece together what feels like an undoubtedly tragic story, you catch something outside the window.

A person. Hanging onto the side of the house.

Your heart hammers in your chest as a hand pushes the window up, and then, "Did I scare you?" Spider-Man perches on the sill with what you can imagine is a shit-eating grin.

You stomp over to the window and shove at his shoulder, but he doesn't budge in the slightest, "You almost gave me a heart attack! Were you watching me get dressed?"

The mask's eyes blow open, "What? No! I swear I just got here."

"Do you ever use the front door?"

"Not if I can help it," he crawls in, staying planted by the window, "don't tell me you're snooping through Parker's things."

"I was just... looking. At the pictures. And Harry Osborn spilled his drink all over me so I had to borrow Parker's shirt."

"Hm. ESU looks good on you."

You look up at Peter, who keeps his hands tucked behind his back, leaning against the wall by the window. "Aren't you gonna say hi to the party? Make Parker look cool?"

"Eventually. Maybe. Might just watch from afar."

"No, nuh-uh. You said you had holiday plans and that you were going to a party. That doesn't count if you're watching from afar."

Peter's head sways to the side, "I never said this was the party I was going to."

"Is there another?"

"Well... maybe. Maybe not."

"Peter-" You whine, but he cuts you off.

"I'm not a party guy! Sue me."

"Well, then Parker's got you beat two for two. Unless you're lying, since I haven't given up on my conspiracy theory."

Peter presses himself off the wall, sauntering toward you in a zig-zag. Your eyes follow him, back and forth, back and forth, until he's a step or two away. His hand reaches out to play with one of your sleeves, its seams resewn with mismatched thread, "Leaving a party as Peter Parker to come back as Spider-Man. Give Parker some credit. That's the kind of plan you come up with in high school."

You shrug, trying not to act like Peter playing with your sleeve wasn't giving you goosebumps. "You never know."

Peter nods, "Yeah, you're right. I mean, he was really excited to see you."

"Oh yeah?" You swallow.

"Yeah. Was kind of pathetic, actually."

Peter shoots a web at the ceiling and twists, catching the web between his feet so he could hang upside down. The suddenness makes you stumble back with a breathless laugh, "That's not a very nice thing to say about a friend."

"Weren't you the one who said he'd be shaking and crying if you yelled at him?"

You sigh, "I was... I was teasing you."

"Because I'm Peter Parker."

He says it matter of fact. You stare at him, "Yeah," you whisper, "that's right."

He pulls himself up the web until he's face to face with you, "Then that wouldn't be very nice to say to a friend, would it?"

"No, it wouldn't. If you were Peter Parker, I guess I'd have to apologize to you."

"Yeah? How?"

You breathe deep. Everyone is still laughing downstairs. You become hyper-aware of the fact that you hadn't locked the door. At any moment, someone could walk in and...

Peter waits, curious.

Your fingers trace the lines of his jaw, pressing into the fabric of his mask, feeling over the ridges where black lines broke red. You know what you want to do. And you also know that there is no going back if you do it.

Your fingers reach the place where the mask meets the rest of his suit. Hooking two fingers under the fabric, you pull.

Your fingernails trace over the curve of his Adam's apple as it bobs, over the jut of his chin. Peter's breath is heaving. One of his hands releases its grip on the web and you see it glide toward yours out of the corner of your eye. You just feel the skin of his bottom lip under your finger when you realize how this might look. What he might think you're trying to do.

Mask in hand, questions of his identity hanging in the air, your curiosity and his vulnerability. You release the mask, awash with worry. You want to get it out before there's any misunderstanding, but as your hand drifts back to yourself, his catches it. You would give anything to know what he's thinking right now.

Peter lets your fingers fall. Silently, he drags the mask over the tip of his nose and leaves it resting there. An invitation. "I trust you." He promises. And kisses you.

He has to stretch a little to reach you. You understand this and press closer, taking the back of his head in your hands and holding it steady for you, but you know you're trembling. You curse yourself for how much your body reacts to this, how uncool you must look, how you shake with all the excitement and terror of this. You kiss him and feel silly about how you claimed to know his lips so well before now. That was nothing.

This is everything. So many things. Each time you go back in for more, you lock away some new little detail about him.

Peter places a hand against your neck and tugs you even closer, but the momentum makes him swing a little bit so his nose bumps your chin. You're too stiff to laugh, but he does, "Sorry," his voice is raspy, "this looked cooler in my head."

You lean into him, dizzied, "Was this... did you plan for me to kiss you? When you got up there?"

"I've wanted to kiss you plenty of ways." Peter's admission is followed by a sigh. He presses a hand to your chest and nudges you back a step before he's dropping to his feet and advancing upon you once more, bumping you against the dresser as the picture frames rattle. Your fingers sneak under his mask at the back of his head so they can sink into his silky hair.

He probably kisses you a hundred more times after that. Every kiss you think might be the last, but then you feel a tug in your chest and go in for one more. An itch that no scratch can soothe.

Peter's mask starts to slip and you feel one of his hands leave your waist to fix it, but the warmth your fingers had snuggled into disappears and-

You keep your eyes screwed shut, "Peter." You gasp against his mouth. Your fingers twitch in his hair, finding no resistance.

"It's okay," he nudges your nose with his, still pressing kisses to the corner of your mouth, "it's okay."

"But-"

"Don't you wanna know if you were right?"

You squeak when his lips find the underside of your jaw, "I don't need- you don't need to-"

"You're always right," Peter interrupts you, kissing down your neck, "I was never fooling you. You're so smart, you know that?"

"Peter." You say his name with no real plans for it to do anything, letting your head fall back.

"Please." He says back. Urging.

You lift your head, heart hammering away, and meet the eyes of Peter Parker.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker scenarios #peter parker fic #peter parker fluff #peter parker #spiderman x reader #spiderman scenarios #spiderman fic #spiderman fluff #tom holland peter parker #marvel #mjwrites #if you see any mistakes in this no u didn't #this has gone through a few revisions and uh. i'm sleeby #pp; small favor

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hellomynameisbisexual · 10 months

Text

Abstract

The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons. Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality. Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims. Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation. (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.) We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns. Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings. We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis). All participants were cisgender males. Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.

The status of male bisexuality as a sexual orientation—that is, the idea that some men are sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has a controversial history (1). Although some men identify as bisexual and have sexual experiences with men and women, the extent to which this reflects an underlying bisexual orientation has been questioned. Early sex researchers Krafft-Ebing (2) and Hirschfeld (3) believed that bisexual behavior and identification occurred primarily among monosexual (i.e., either heterosexual or homosexual) men for reasons other than a bisexual orientation. For example, some homosexual men identify as bisexual, or engage in sex with women, due to social pressures that favor heterosexuality. In response to those who doubted the existence of a bisexual orientation, Kinsey proposed a quasi-continuous scale of sexual orientation, proclaiming: “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white” (ref. 4, pp. 638–639). With his scale, Kinsey demonstrated that self-reported bisexual attraction and behavior are not rare. However, because the scale relied on self-reports, results could not provide definitive evidence for bisexual orientation. For example, surveys have shown that a large proportion of men who identify as gay or homosexual had gone through a previous and transient phase of bisexual identification (5, 6).

Other reasons why bisexual men’s self-reported sexual feelings have sometimes been questioned likely include cognitive and emotional biases of the questioners. Some heterosexual and homosexual men may find it relatively easy to understand each other’s monosexuality because both have strong sexual attraction to one sex and virtually none to the other. For this reason, these men may have more difficulty accepting bisexuality as it challenges their binary conceptualizations of sexual orientation (7). Furthermore, bisexual individuals may be mistrusted and stigmatized by both heterosexual and homosexual people, and perceived as untrustworthy, promiscuous, and unable to commit (8–10).

Self-reported measures of sexual attraction, interest, and arousal are useful and ubiquitous in sex research. When self-reports are questioned, however, other valid measures are desirable. One promising approach to empirical verification of self-reported male bisexuality as an orientation uses penile plethysmography (i.e., a strain gauge around the penis) to study genital sexual arousal patterns to erotic stimuli featuring men or women (but not both). Examples of stimuli used in these studies include videos of sexual interactions between actors or of solitary actors masturbating (11, 12). Such an approach has several advantages: It relies on physiological processes rather than self-report; it is difficult to consciously manipulate (13); and, for men, sexual arousal to attractive women or men is arguably equivalent to sexual orientation (1). This approach has been used in a handful of studies focusing on male bisexuality with mixed results. Some studies failed to provide evidence that bisexual-identified men had bisexual arousal patterns (11, 14). One other study with stringent recruitment criteria (i.e., minimum criteria for both sexual and romantic experience across sexes) found evidence for bisexual arousal (12). A recent study using less stringent recruitment criteria also found evidence that bisexual-identified men had bisexual physiological arousal patterns (15). All existing studies have been of small to modest size; the largest had 114 participants. Notably, across these studies, bisexual-identified men self-reported subjective arousal to both male and female stimuli, even in samples where their genital arousal did not reflect such a pattern.

Previous research may have not employed sufficiently rigorous statistical tests, further complicating the question of whether bisexual-identified men show bisexual physiological arousal patterns. Crucial predictions regarding bisexual orientation concern U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped) distributions, which previous studies tested via quadratic regression. However, this test may be insufficient to reliably detect U-shaped distributions (16). This is because significant quadratic regressions can occur if a linear regression changes slope over the range of the predictor, even if the sign of the slope does not change. Demonstrating U-shaped distributions without the threat of incorrect interpretation requires showing slope sign reversal from low to high values of the predictor. For example, if the left arm of the estimated regression slope is significantly positive, then the other arm needs to be significantly negative in order to result in a valid, inverse U-shaped estimate.

With the limitations of previous work in mind, the aim of this study was to examine the extent to which men who self-report bisexual orientation exhibit bisexual genital and self-reported arousal patterns. Our study is unique with respect to its large sample and its employment of a version of Simonsohn’s (16) “two-lines” test of U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped) distributions. Data included 606 male participants (with 474 remaining for genital analyses and 588 remaining for self-reported analyses following exclusions) (Materials and Methods) from American, Canadian, and British studies that collected data on men’s self-reported Kinsey scores and their genital and self-reported arousal to male and female erotic stimuli and to neutral stimuli (e.g., footage of landscapes and wildlife). These studies were conducted over the course of approximately two decades, from the years 2000 to 2019. Kinsey scores range from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 3 (equal attraction to both sexes) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). Scores of 0 and 6 are usually considered monosexual, and 1 to 5 nonmonosexual. Scores of 2 to 4 are generally accepted to comprise the bisexual range of the Kinsey scale (17).

This study focuses only on male sexual orientation, despite the equal scientific importance of understanding female sexual orientation, for several related reasons. The question of whether bisexual arousal patterns exist has been less controversial about women than men (1). Historically, there was no parallel debate about female sexual orientation to that between skeptics [e.g., Krafft-Ebing (2) and Hirschfeld (3)] and proponents (e.g., Kinsey) (4) of the validity of male bisexuality. Recent scientific developments have supported important and potentially relevant differences in the expression of male and female sexual orientation. In laboratory research, the large majority of women exhibit similar subjective and physiological sexual arousal to both male and female stimuli, despite heterosexual identification (18, 19). Furthermore, the idea that female sexuality is especially “fluid” with respect to gender, with some women situationally attracted to men or women depending on circumstances, has been well-established (20). Male, but not female, self-reported sexual orientation shows a bimodal distribution (21), supporting the idea that male bisexuality is relatively uncommon whereas female bisexuality is less so. Thus, converging lines of evidence suggest that there are important differences in the expression of male and female sexual orientation, perhaps especially bisexuality. Consequently, research exploring the validity of bisexual identification–and especially research comparing the genital response of bisexual and monosexual persons–has been pursued more vigorously for male than for female sexual orientation. The men cumulatively studied in the research on male sexual orientation have been aggregated to comprise the large sample used in the present study.

Results

Fig. 1 presents participants’ ipsatized (i.e., standardized within subjects across erotic and neutral stimuli) genital and self-reported arousal to female and male stimuli across the Kinsey scale, in within-subject SDs. Only participants who produced adequate arousal for our main analyses were included. The figure shows that the relative response to female and male stimuli closely tracked the Kinsey scale, on the whole. The difference in genital arousal to females minus males correlated strongly with the Kinsey scale (r[472] = 0.838, 95% CI [0.809, 0.863], P < 0.0001). The analogous correlation of self-reported arousal with the Kinsey scale was also strong (r[586] = 0.916, 95% CI [0.902, 0.928], P < 0.0001).

Exclusively heterosexual and homosexual men (who have Kinsey scores of 0 and 6, respectively) showed larger mean differences in their arousal to male and female stimuli compared with men who have intermediate Kinsey scores (i.e., scores of 1 to 5). Although this pattern is consistent with the possibility that intermediate Kinsey scores are associated with relatively bisexual arousal patterns, it is also consistent with an alternative explanation. It would be possible to create the mean arousal scores of men with Kinsey scores 1 to 5 (which appear relatively bisexual) by mixing men with arousal patterns similar to the means for Kinsey 0 (exclusively heterosexual) with those similar to Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual). Therefore, simply averaging each Kinsey group’s responses to male and to female stimuli can in principle produce misleading results. Thus, results depicted in Fig. 1 by themselves cannot provide conclusive evidence that men who report bisexual attractions have a more bisexual arousal pattern than monosexual men.

Two alternative analyses can provide more definitive evidence (11, 12). Both rely on variables depicted or derived from those in Fig. 2: responses to the more-arousing sex and responses to the less-arousing sex. These variables were determined empirically for each individual. Men have relatively bisexual arousal patterns if 1) their responses to their less arousing sex exceeds that of other men, and 2) the difference between their responses to their more and to their less arousing sex is less than that of other men.

The first criterion for bisexual arousal patterns is demonstrated by considering that men with a bisexual arousal pattern should show more arousal to male stimuli compared with heterosexual men and more arousal to female stimuli compared with homosexual men. Heterosexual men’s less-arousing sex will usually be “male” and homosexual men’s “female.” (Measurement error may prevent this generalization from always being true.) Thus, the first criterion is that bisexual men should show more arousal to erotic stimuli depicting their (empirically defined) less-arousing sex, compared with homosexual and heterosexual men. The second criterion is demonstrated by considering that men with a bisexual arousal pattern should show an especially small unsigned difference between their arousal to male and female stimuli, compared with heterosexual and homosexual men. This difference is equivalent to that between responses to the more arousing sex minus responses to the less arousing sex.

We henceforth refer to the two key dependent variables as Minimum Arousal (i.e., responses to the less arousing sex) and Absolute Arousal Difference (i.e., the unsigned value of the difference between arousal to female stimuli and arousal to male stimuli). The two dependent variables derived from Fig. 2 were almost perfectly negatively correlated with each other: for genital arousal, r = −0.976 and for self-reported arousal, r = −0.944. This strong correspondence is partly an artifact of standardizing within participants using only three scores (i.e., average arousal to male, to female, and to neutral stimuli), especially when two of the scores tend to be similar to each other and different from the third score. Because Minimum Arousal and the Absolute Arousal Difference are not generally so highly correlated (for example, for the unstandardized data we analyzed subsequently, their correlation for genital arousal was r[474] = −0.028), and because they are conceptually distinct, we have retained both variables in our main analyses.

In addition, we created a composite variable using Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference, by standardizing both across participants, changing the sign of the Absolute Arousal Difference and then taking their average. We refer to this variable as the Bisexual Arousal Composite, and men with a relatively bisexual arousal pattern should have high scores on it. Although the composite was almost entirely redundant with Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference—as the latter are with each other—for the ipsatized data, we retained all three variables because in some subsequent analyses using untransformed data, they were much less highly correlated.

If men who self-report Kinsey scores in the bisexual range indeed have relatively bisexual arousal patterns, then both Minimum Arousal and the Bisexual Arousal Composite should show an inverted U-shaped distribution across the Kinsey range (i.e., men who self-identify as 0 [exclusively heterosexual] and 6 [exclusively homosexual] should have the lowest scores for these variables; men in intermediate groups should have greater values, with the peak resting at a Kinsey score of 3); the Absolute Arousal Difference should show a U-shaped distribution (i.e., exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual men should have lower values than bisexual-identified men). Conversely, if men who indicate that they are relatively bisexual have monosexual arousal patterns in actuality, then the values for these three variables should be evenly distributed across the Kinsey scale, and we should have a flat, horizontal line, rather than a U-shaped distribution. A rigorous demonstration that bisexual men have relatively bisexual arousal patterns requires a change of sign of regression slopes across the Kinsey scale. The method proposed by Simonsohn (16), the two-lines test, requires establishing that, for some break point on the predictor variable, if one conducts separate regression analyses using data on either side of the point, both regression slopes are statistically significant but of opposite sign.

We modified this method as follows. Instead of using Simonsohn’s algorithm for locating one optimal break point, we conducted two sets of analyses using two different break points: 2.5 and 3.5. Our modification was motivated by both necessity and a desire to explore robustness. The middle of the Kinsey distribution is 3, and a Kinsey score of 3 signifies the greatest degree of bisexuality. As such, that score is the best guess for the inversion point of the hypothesized U-shaped and inverted U-shaped distributions. However, the Kinsey score 3 is unavailable as a break point because the break point should not include scores that actually exist in the data. The analysis with 2.5 as the break point compares the correlations between the Kinsey scores and the dependent variables in the range of Kinsey 0 to 2 with the respective correlations in the range of Kinsey 3 to 6. (Note that, because our Kinsey score variable includes only whole numbers, any break point between 2 and 3 is equivalent to a break point of 2.5; all provide exactly the same separation of points.) The analysis using the break point 3.5 compares the correlations in the Kinsey range 0 to 3 with those in the Kinsey range of 4 to 6. Examining results using two different break points in separate analyses allowed us to examine the robustness of results across them. Fig. 3 presents the regression lines comprising the two lines tests for both sets of break points, for both Standardized Minimum Genital Arousal (Fig. 3, Left) and Standardized Absolute Genital Arousal Difference (Fig. 3, Right).

Table 1 includes results of the two-lines analyses for both break points. For analyses of genital arousal, we included data from 474 men with sufficient genital responses. For analyses of self-reported arousal, we included data from 588 men who provided adequate self-reported arousal data. We present standardized correlations because the scale of the variables is more intuitively interpretable than unstandardized coefficients. All correlations were in directions consistent with more bisexual arousal tending to occur toward the middle of the Kinsey scale. The 95% CIs for all correlations excluded zero, usually by a large margin.

We conducted additional analyses to examine the degree to which our results depended on data analytic decisions. At least two such decisions for Table 1 could have influenced our results even though we had scientific justification for making those decisions and have consistently made them in past research: analyzing standardized rather than unstandardized arousal data and excluding participants with low genital responses. Neither of these decisions was required to test our hypotheses, however, and some other researchers have not made them (e.g., ref. 22). Seemingly innocuous decisions such as these can hide a lack of robustness of results had other analytic paths been taken (23).

One way to explore the robustness of results across different data analytic decisions is to conduct “multiverse analyses” in which data are analyzed with respect to all combinations of relevant decisions (24). In our case, this required three additional sets of analyses. Each used the two-lines approach, but each used different data: unstandardized arousal data for men who met our inclusion criteria for sexual response; standardized arousal data for all men regardless of degree of response; or unstandardized arousal data for all men regardless of degree of response. Each set of analyses was conducted for each of the dependent variables: Minimum Arousal, Absolute Arousal Difference, and Bisexual Arousal Composite. Furthermore, each analysis was conducted for both break points (i.e., 2.5 and 3.5), and tests with unstandardized data were repeated for the analyses of self-reported arousal. Because each analysis yielded two separate tests (for points left of the break point and for points right of it), this resulted in a total of 48 tests.

SI Appendix, Table S1 provides the results for these multiverse analyses. All results were in the direction consistent with increased bisexual arousal for more bisexual Kinsey scores. SI Appendix, Fig. S1 also presents the frequency distribution of the 36 exact probabilities for the additional analyses of genital data. Only one P value, 0.0503, exceeded the conventional statistical significance threshold, and most of the other 35 P values were much smaller. Results for the analyses of self-reported arousal were also consistent, with all P values less than 10−8. Thus, our general findings persisted regardless of the data analytic decisions we reconsidered.

Which Kinsey score was associated with the greatest degree of bisexual arousal? To answer this question, we focused on the standardized genital and self-report arousal composites, which correlated r(470) = 0.507, 95% CI (0.437, 0.572), P < 0.0001. Fig. 4 shows the mean genital and self-report bisexual composites for all Kinsey scores. Higher scores represent greater bisexuality. With respect to the genital composite, Kinsey 2’s showed the strongest evidence for bisexual arousal patterns. With respect to the self-report composite, Kinsey 3′s provided the most bisexual responses. Notably, both contrasts increased steadily to the maximum and then decreased steadily, consistent with a gradation model of sexual orientation.

How bisexual were the arousal patterns of men with bisexual Kinsey scores, compared with other men? It is possible, for example, that bisexual men’s sexual responses are only slightly (albeit statistically significantly) more bisexual than the responses of monosexual men. Or alternatively, the two groups could differ substantially. Answering this question requires a direct comparison of magnitudes of indicators of bisexual response. Two of the main dependent variables we have examined—Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference—could be especially informative. Ratios of their means comparing men with bisexual Kinsey scores to men with monosexual scores could helpfully express the answer. To be meaningfully interpreted, ratios require ratio-level measurement, with a true value of zero and interval scaling (25). For example, six inches is twice the length of three inches, but a rating of six on a seven-point Likert scale of current happiness is not meaningfully interpreted as twice a rating of three. Because the data we have primarily focused on so far have been standardized within subjects, it is unsuited to provide meaningful ratios for two reasons. First, the standardized data do not have true zeros, with zero indicating an absence of a quantity. More importantly, standardizing within subjects induces a nonlinear between-subjects transformation of the raw scores, and so the ipsatized data do not have interval-level measurement.

Fortunately, the raw genital arousal data have a ratio scale, and so we focus on these data for our final analyses. Fig. 5 presents men’s raw genital responses to their more and to their less arousing sex, by Kinsey score. The figure demonstrates that increased bisexuality toward the middle of the Kinsey range is primarily due to increased responding to the less arousing sex. (Neither a two-lines analysis nor a quadratic regression reveals significant evidence for an inverted U effect for the more arousing sex.) Kinsey scores of 0 and 6 were associated with especially low (though not zero) responding to the less arousing sex, which was one of our main indicators of bisexual response. Men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range (i.e., 2 to 4) produced 3.30 times more response to their less arousing sex compared with the (unweighted) average of men with monosexual Kinsey scores (i.e., 0 and 6). The difference between responses to the more and less arousing sex should be smaller for men with more bisexual Kinsey scores if those scores reflect men’s sexual orientations. Consistent with this prediction, men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range produced an average difference that was 0.59 times the difference of men with monosexual scores. Both ratios were markedly different from 1. Still, men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range produced, on average, penile circumference changes that were notably larger to one sex than to the other. The ratio of bisexual men’s genital arousal to their more arousing sex to genital arousal to their less arousing sex averaged 2.62; for monosexual men, it was 10.13. Note that these numbers comprise the ratio of each group’s mean arousal to the more arousing sex divided by their mean arousal to the less arousing sex. They are not the averages of each individual men’s ratios. Some individual ratios are extreme because the denominator is near zero.

In general, results suggested that bisexual men’s arousal patterns were markedly more bisexual than monosexual men’s, and that bisexual men were typically more aroused by one sex than by the other. The combination of our results and the fact that male sexual orientation is bimodally distributed (21) suggests that men with similar high degrees of sexual arousal to both men and women may be especially uncommon.

Discussion

The primary question motivating this research is whether men who identify as bisexual have sexual arousal patterns that are also relatively bisexual. Results strongly confirmed that men who report attraction to both sexes are more genitally and subjectively aroused by both sexes compared with men who report that they are attracted only to one sex.

The highly consistent evidence for bisexual arousal and orientation from the present study contrasts with inconsistent findings of the past (e.g., ref. 11 [not finding bisexual arousal] and ref. 12 [finding bisexual arousal]). For example, applying the two-lines methodology to the eight individual studies and focusing on the ipsatized genital Bisexual Arousal Composite yielded 29 relevant correlations (i.e., correlations for values on one side of either a 2.5 or 3.5 Kinsey break point, which should be statistically significant for a successful test). Only 12 of these were statistically significant, the median probability equal to 0.073. (SI Appendix, Table S2). The comparison of the inconsistent study-level results with the robust results using combined data from all studies demonstrates the increased statistical power of the latter approach.

A second factor that may have contributed to inconsistent results across individual studies is systematic differences between samples of bisexual men. Men who describe themselves as bisexual likely comprise a diverse set of men, some of whom have a bisexual arousal pattern and others who do not. Examples of the latter likely include transitional bisexual men (5, 6) and some paraphilic men who have sexual fantasies involving men but who are not sexually attracted to them (26). Past studies that did not show correspondence between bisexual self-report and bisexual genital arousal had far fewer subjects than the present analyses, and some may have included a higher proportion of men whose bisexual identification was due to reasons other than bisexual arousal. For example, it is possible that the sample of Rieger et al. (11) contained a higher proportion of transitional bisexual men than other samples. Recruitment of participants for that study included advertisements in both alternative and gay-oriented publications, and the bisexual-identified participants may have responded to the advertisement in the gay-oriented publications.

The present research represents the most systematic and extensive assessment of bisexual men’s arousal patterns to date. The data we analyzed comprise all relevant data that the coauthors had collected as of January 2019, and nearly all relevant data of which we are aware. Although we were unable to obtain data from two other studies with relevant data, their inclusion would not have altered our general conclusions even if we assume that those subsamples would not have shown significant bisexual arousal patterns (SI Appendix, Supplementary Text).

The primary limitation of this study is that participants were necessarily volunteers. Thus, the degree to which they are representative of men across the Kinsey scale is unknown. This limits confident generalization about the magnitude of our results. However, it is unclear how the basic pattern of results—greater bisexual response for men with more bisexual Kinsey scores—could be entirely an artifact of volunteer bias. Additionally, the fact that participants were volunteers sampled exclusively from a few Western countries prevents us from knowing how general the patterns we have observed are. However, we are unaware of promising theories specifying how these patterns might vary cross-culturally.

In a recent highly publicized article on genetic determinants of same-sex versus opposite-sex sex partners, there was no clear genetic gradient distinguishing persons with a high proportion of same-sex partners from those with opposite-sex partners (27). The authors asserted that, because of their negative findings, the validity of the Kinsey scale should be reconsidered. Our findings support the opposite conclusion, and we believe they are more relevant with respect to the validity of self-reported sexual orientations. When we ask men to assess themselves on the Kinsey scale, we do not mean for them to guess their underlying genotypes. Rather, we are asking them about their relative sexual feelings for women and men. Sexual arousal patterns are closely related to these feelings in men; indeed, they are detectable and likely lead to the subjective experience of attraction and desire (1). We have demonstrated that both genital and self-reported sexual arousal to male and female erotic stimuli form a gradient over the Kinsey scale, regardless of their underlying causes.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Participants comprised those of available studies known to us that included genital measures of sexual arousal in men who also reported their Kinsey scores, with four exceptions. Two studies focused on men with paraphilias (26, 28), and those data were intentionally excluded. Two other studies containing relevant data could not be included because the authors did not respond to our requests for data (14, 23). The unavailable studies comprised genital assessment data of a total of 89 men, including 23 who identified as bisexual.

Participants for the constituent studies were recruited by researchers at four sites: Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (6, 11, 12, 29), the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (18), the University of Essex in Colchester, UK (15, 30), and Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (17). Individual sample sizes and methodological differences between the studies are reported in Table 2.

Across the constituent studies, data for 606 participants were available. All participants were cisgender (i.e., no participants were transgender). Of these, 474 participants were included in our main genital arousal analyses. Of the 132 excluded participants, 96 participants were excluded for exhibiting insufficient genital arousal for meaningful analysis. In any given study of male sexual arousal, there is a proportion of low-responding participants who do not become substantially aroused to any of the stimuli (among the constituent studies, this proportion ranges between 4.95% and 26.73%): Typical self-reported reasons for low response include discomfort and disinterest in the actors or actions featured in the stimuli. We counted as low responders (and excluded from initial analyses) participants who either 1) did not exhibit an average change of at least 2 mm in penile circumference to male or female stimuli compared to a baseline value; or 2) did not produce standardized mean genital arousal to at least one erotic stimulus category that exceeded that to neutral stimuli by more than half of an SD. These criteria have been used in most of the studies included herein (6, 11, 12, 15, 17, 29). Another 36 participants were excluded from genital analyses because their data were incomplete or of poor quality (e.g., impossible values because of technical difficulties when running those participants). Regarding the self-report analyses, 12 participants were excluded from self-reported arousal analyses due to not providing self-reported data, and an additional six participants were excluded for reporting arousal scores of 0 for all stimuli. This resulted in a sample size of 588 men for self-report analyses.

Within the total sample of 606 men, 178 participants self-identified as exclusively heterosexual, 102 identified as mostly heterosexual, 46 as bisexual leaning heterosexual, 34 as bisexual, 37 as bisexual leaning homosexual, 70 as mostly homosexual, and 139 as exclusively homosexual. Note that this distribution of sexual identities is not representative of the overall population. Homosexual- and bisexual-identified men were over-sampled because the focus of the component studies was typically on sexual orientation variation. This nonrepresentative sampling increased statistical power to detect differences in arousal patterns in different regions of the Kinsey scale. The average age was 28.63 y (SD = 9.03). Data for educational attainment were available for 359 participants and were coded as 1 (no high school), 2 (some high school), 3 (high school diploma), 4 (some college), 5 (college graduate), and 6 (postgraduate student or degree). The average level of educational attainment was 4.76 (SD = 0.85), and the most common response was “college graduate” (n = 133). Data for ethnicity were available for 502 participants. Of these, 326 (64.94%) were White/Caucasian, 60 (11.95%) were Black, 42 (8.37%) were Asian, 29 (5.78%) were Hispanic/Latino, and 45 (8.96%) reported other. Distributions of age, ethnicity, and educational attainment by sexual orientation are reported in Table 3.

Measures.

Sexual orientation.

Participants reported their sexual orientation using the seven-point Kinsey scale (4) ranging from 0 (exclusive heterosexual orientation) to 6 (exclusive homosexual orientation), with 3 representing bisexual orientation with equal attraction to men and women. In most studies, the prompt for the scale was worded such that it framed sexual orientation as one’s relative attraction to men versus women. However, two of the included studies (11, 12) (n = 203, or 33% of the overall sample) framed sexual orientation as one’s relative frequency of sexually fantasizing about men versus women.

Genital arousal.

Each study assessed changes in the penile circumference of participants when viewing erotic stimuli, with increases in circumference denoting increased genital arousal (31). The majority of the data were collected using an indium/gallium strain gauge connected to either an MP150 or an MP100 data acquisition unit alongside AcqKnowledge software. Data from Rieger et al. (11) were collected using a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge. Chivers et al. (18) used the Limestone hardware and software and a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge.

Subjective arousal.

Participants subjectively reported their arousal to male and female erotic stimuli and to neutral stimuli following each stimulus. The particular range of each study’s subjective arousal measure varied (e.g., an 11-point scale was used in Jabbour et al. (29) whereas a seven-point scale was used in Rieger et al. (11)). Thus, all subjective ratings for arousal to male stimuli and arousal to female stimuli were rescaled as proportions of the maximum possible response.

Procedure.

In each constituent study, participants privately viewed various erotic video clips while a penile strain gauge was used to measure changes in the circumference of the penis. Most of the studies utilized 3-min clips; Rieger et al. (11) used 2-min clips, and Chivers et al. (18) used 90-s clips. Neutral stimuli (e.g., footage of landscapes and wildlife) were included in each paradigm to assess a baseline level of arousal. Erotic stimuli were presented in random order; these included either a male stimulus (depending on the study, either male–male sexual acts or one male masturbating) or female stimulus (female–female sexual acts or one female masturbating). During or after each stimulus, participants provided a subjective arousal rating. If participants were still aroused before the presentation of the next sexual stimulus (e.g., if their penile circumference exceeded the previously assessed baseline by 2 mm), they were instructed via intercom to perform a distracting task (e.g., “in your head, count all of the multiples of 9”) until they returned to their baseline level and the next stimulus began. After each session, participants were debriefed and compensated for their time.

Data Analysis.

Each individual’s raw genital responses to appropriate stimuli were averaged to provide three values: average arousal (i.e., penile circumference) to neutral stimuli, to male stimuli, and to female stimuli. Raw genital measures were in units of millimeters. Analogously, self-reported ratings were averaged to provide the same three values, in units of proportion of maximum possible ratings. These values were used to produce all subsequent metrics.

For the main analyses, genital and self-reported arousal scores were standardized within participants, using each participant’s average arousal scores for male, female, and neutral erotic stimuli. This practice, also called ipsatizing, is useful to remove unwanted sources of variation, including those attributable to penis size and general responsiveness (32). Each man’s standardized arousal to male and to female stimuli was then transformed by subtracting arousal to neutral stimuli.

The primary analyses in Table 1 comprised a version of the two-lines test (16). The rationale of the test is that, if the relation between two variables is U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped), there must be a point on the predictor range, xC, such that the regression line using values below xC has an opposite sign of the regression line using values above xC. Our analysis diverged from that outlined by Simonsohn in two ways. First, we presented Pearson correlations rather than unstandardized regression coefficients to make it easier for the reader to assess the magnitude of line slopes. Second, instead of allowing Simonsohn’s algorithm to find the ideal break point, xC, we present results for two different break points, one on either side of the midpoint of the Kinsey scale. (One must not use a value for xC that exists in the data, and thus 3 could not be used.) This meant that, for both tests, the middle of the Kinsey scale provided the most bisexual scores on the dependent variables as well as an examination of the robustness of results.

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puresel · 9 months

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well well。。。 guess whos back it is @bpdgender ！！ she is here to ask for a small little favor a PROMO :3 ~

she uses she/he/hir ++ neos !! (main being ー doll/it/priest) she is nonhuman please do not refer to her as a human she randomly goes into 3rd person (while it isn't often and most of the time this one speaks in 1st person BLEHH!!! :PP) ⸺ she hopes we can be friends / if we were moots on @bpdgender . . . be friends again !!!~ tag (ask to be removed) 、、@the-astropaws @puriette @aquariium-ediits @bloomidol @hauntingidol @mothrly @scholartism @lovesse @delusielle @yourdarlingness @animatronicthing @carnificaprince

#🍷︶◞ promo post 〜 ( ཫ . ᵔ )#xenogender #mogai blog #mogai coin #mogai coining #mogai #mogai gender #mogai flag #mogai safe #xeno flag #xenogender blog #flag coining #mogai label

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driftward · 6 months

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Title: Z. Vauban, “On the Applicability of a Crystal of Light as a Biological Monitoring System,” The Arcanist Papers, vol. 29, pp. 137-257, Fourth Umbral, 1582. Characters: Zoissette Vauban, Y'shtola Rhul, Thancred Waters, Klynt Gohtawyn Rating: Teen Summary: Zoissette does her best to make sure Y'shtola is taken care of after her encounter with Zenos Notes: StB period, shortly after Zeno's attack on Rhalgr's reach. This started as two separate works, one of which was an FFXIV Write Entry.

She looked so frail.

It was startling. Zoissette had gotten so used to her strength. From how tall she held her head, to how sure she was in herself, and how her confidence was usually imbued in every ilm of herself, her power obvious in her posture, her self-assuredness present in every gesture. Even when she was soft, gentle smiles and warm touches, she was still strong.

She was Y'shtola.

And now she was lying in the infirmary, her skin pale, her body still, her breathing deep and labored, her eyes unopening.

Zoissette's fingers twitched, and she found herself unable to stop herself from replaying the memory in her mind. Garlean soldiers everywhere as she crested the path to see Y'shtola fallen, and that monster standing over her.

She had tried to fend him off, but to no avail. Her mind had scattered, and she very nearly followed it in the ensuing fight. She still had no idea what had convinced him to move off. The advantage was his, and he could have pressed for a terrible victory.

Instead, he and his forces withdrew, leaving her and hers to pick up the shattered pieces of what was left of the resistance.

And in this small room, it felt as though there were the shards of her heart.

She wondered if this would forever be her fate. To always be the one left standing when those she loved and cared about around her fell, when those she was trying to keep from harm were still, somehow, the ones to absorb it.

She shook her head. She could feel sorry for herself later.

Krile was elsewhere, asleep, for now. They had done all that they could for Y'shtola. The rest, as they so often said, was up to her. As Zoissette surveyed the room, she saw Thancred as he sat in a chair next to his long time friend, resting his head on his hands, still awake. He looked behind him at Zoissette as she finally entered the rest of the way. She was still nursing her own injuries, but found herself unwilling to stay away.

"Ah," he said, starting to stand up. "You may have my chair, if you wish. I was just going."

The polite part of her would have thanked him quietly and bid him good night.

"No you were not," said Zoissette as she moved to the other side of the bed, her eyes tracing over Y'shtola's injuries.

"...I suppose I wasn't," he replied, settling back into his chair.

Zoissette looked at Y'shtola with a practiced eye. She was no chirurgeon, but she was a Nymian scholar, with many summers of practice behind her. She knew what to look for, and what could be done, and as near as she could tell, Krile and the others had done all that they could, and had done it well, at that.

She felt that she could do more.

She wished she could call upon Foxglove, but that was no longer an option.

Instead, the words of a handmaid from a lifetime ago whispered in her.

She clumsily hefted her grimoire to a side table to get it out of the way. Her left arm was still healing, but that was of no matter to her.

Though it did remind her of one of her an early misadventure where Y'shtola had needed to look after her afterwards. She smiled thinly at the memory.

Well. She would try to return the favor.

"I am going to be attempting a bit of hedge magickry," she said quietly to Thancred. "It will not be pleasant."

Thancred shifted in his seat, and looked up at her darkly from under his bangs. After a moment, he dipped his head to nod, just once.

"What do you need from me?"

Through hell and hells. Good man.

"Do not let me fall on her if I lose myself," said Zoissette, reaching a hand out towards Y'shtola.

Thancred stood up on the other side of the bed, and got near, ready to act.

"I am beginning," she said, as she closed her eyes, and gently touched Y'shtola's shoulder.

Hedge magicks were any of a number of informal practices practiced throughout all lands. Minor magicks, capable of no great miracles, but nevertheless a means to an ends for many people. They were, of course, considered heresy in Zoissette's homeland, but a minor heresy oft overlooked. A cantrip to starting a fire was simply too useful to punish, for example, or the simple gust of wind a wandering mummer might use to add flourish to his performance.

Or a medicine woman providing succor to those who could not spare the time to wait for a proper conjurer or chirurgeon to arrive from the Holy See.

Zoissette had learned hers from one such woman, her handmaid, Lavender, who hailed from Gridania. She had been taught the basics of sympathetic magicks, of how to ask for the land's grace, and hear the whispers of elements through the world.

She was not very good at it. It leaned greatly on intuition and feel, and Zoissette far preferred logic and the cold certainty of encoded symbols, but without Foxglove, her preferred approach was far diminished.

So she reached for that oldest of tools, and she reached out to attempt a connection with Y'shtola. Often, reaching out like this was slow and meticulous, as the aether had to be convinced to pass through the boundaries between beings. A connection, spiritual, emotional, as well as the physical of the touch, so that living aether could wax and wane and flow across that boundary between healer and patient. Zoissette was surprised, then, at how smoothly the boundary between them thinned, the aether beginning to flow nearly immediately.

A testament to how bad Y'shtola's injuries were, she surmised, that her body was so ready to cross the barrier, but she could not spare the effort to speculate further. What would come next would require all of her attention.

She gently reached through the weaves of life to find the injuries in Y'shtola's body.

And she did. She could feel them as she went along. Trickles in her veins, cold at first, but then warmer as she delved deeper. Her breathing quickened, as the heat turned to spikes, slivers scraping themselves along her insides, as she took some of Y'shtola's aether and pain into herself. The nature of the healing of sympathetic magic was to shift aether between the injured and the healthy, to convince damaged humors that their home was here rather than there, and replacing it with healthy, fresh aether that did not carry the memory of the wound. It was slow healing, and rarely complete for but the mildest of wounds, but it could convince a body otherwise lost that it had a chance to recover, and speed already tended injuries along.

Even as the practitioner had to take on that pain themselves. It had to be done slowly, drawing it out, giving themselves a chance to soothe fouled humors. Shifting still aethers to flow, and soothing angry ones to calm, before allowing them to settle once more. It was a risk. Many were the hedge mage that saved a life only to be overwhelmed and lose their own as instead of healing and soothing, they simply recreated the wounds in themselves wholesale.

Zoissette felt the cold blade in her chest, and for a brief moment, she was Y'shtola, in those last moments, feeling the desperation, the need to protect others, the knowledge that she would not hold but for every second that she did not fold was another second for her friends and allies, staring up at the face of that monster, wondering in awe at such puissant strength, wondering whence he got such power, but refusing to yield willingly before it -

And then the shattering, and the parting of her breath from her chest, and falling into unconsciousness, and a final thought, that she had done what she could.

You have to let go.

She knew she had to let go.

She was aware that her teeth were clenched tight enough that she could feel it in her jaw all the way down through her neck. She was still touching Y'shtola, her hand was still on Y'shtola's shoulder, she just had to pull away.

It was like trying to roll away a boulder, her arm shaking as she pulled back, one aching ilm at a time. Maintaining touch, but no longer lost in the work. She held onto the aether, stilling the humors, felt the energy trying to bring them both into the abyss, but she would not let it. She sucked air between her clenched teeth, bore down, and focused.

She was back. She still had to let go. But she would do what she started out to do before she did. Carefully. If done too fast, the aether and humors would snap back to what they last knew, and very well could make both of them worse.

"Zoissette?"

Thancred's voice was rough, and he was still near, but he hadn't interceded yet.

"I am still here," she managed to grind out. "Just... takes... time."

He did not respond, but she could sense him nearby. Alert, tense, but not interfering yet.

Good.

She proceeded forward once more, more carefully this time. She felt her way through with invisible energies, flowing through Y'shtola, unknotting twisted muscle and clearing damaged tissue. She pushed her feelings through troubled aether and smoothed it out, calmed it. She replaced rotted humors with clear, cool fresh ones.

It was all minor. Hedge magick could not perform miracles.

But it could provide succor.

At last, satisfied that she had done all that she could, she cried out and let go. She felt the world spin as she did so, falling, falling.

Zoissette was in the infirmary. She was on the ground. She was holding her good hand to her chest. She was sucking for air between clenched teeth. She had been stabbed in the chest.

No she had not.

She had not.

She was Zoissette.

There was a shadow over her, and she looked up.

Thancred.

He knelt next to her, a frown on his face.

"That was damn foolish," he chastised.

Zoissette just nodded, and clenched her eyes shut.

"Did not expect - did not expect such a - deep connection - not so fast. Normally... much more difficult. She - she was - she is - very hurt."

Must have been closer to the aetherial sea than any of them had thought, but she did not say that out loud. She swallowed.

"Nature - of sympathetic - magicks."

"I'm aware," he said quietly. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

"You think me unfamiliar with hedge mages?" he said.

Oh.

Worldly Master Waters. Of course she would not need to explain further to him. He had almost certainly met any number of practitioners of esoteric arts in his travels. So she just nodded, and pressed her hand to her chest.

She would be feeling that pain for a while.

"Do I need to get Krile?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. All of our energy should be - should be on Y'shtola. I shall be fine."

She felt him pulling on her arm, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

"All the same, I think you should be returning to your own bed."

She looked over at Y'shtola, and he sighed. "I promise she'll be looked after."

Zoissette hesitated, and then nodded. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "I'm going to tell Klynt about this."

Zoissette groaned, and that got a faint smile out of him.

She hesitated before leaving, to watch the swell and fall of Y'shtola's breast, noticing how much smoother and easier it seemed to be now. And it may have been her imagination, but it seemed there was a bit more color to her face.

Well, she hurt like the hells, and would be carrying that for a while. But she had not told a lie. She would be fine.

Reluctantly, she sloughed off to her own bed. And hoped that it would be devoid of dreams.

~*~

They would be leaving soon. The Alliance would dig in and hold the line, and the Vanguard of Light would make for Doma, to hopefully open a new front against the Garlean empire, free a nation, and in so doing, relieve pressure on Ala Mhigo.

She should have been researching. Learning everything she could about the culture she would be seeing soon, and developing stratagems that could help them win the day.

Her heart was not in it.

Instead, her heart was here, in an infirmary under a banner of war, her eyes closed, and the rise and fall of her chest slower than it should have been.

Zoissette set her codex on the nightstand next to where Y'sthola yet lay unconscious. She could not go to Doma. Not like this. Not with things the way they were.

But that was where the mission was. She could not stay. Nor could she let herself remain distracted. Her lack of focus had cost the Alliance one battle, and dearly, at that.

Pen scribbled forms on paper, enchanted inks forming intricate geometry.

She could not remain here, not in person. But she could stay connected. It would not be easy. The distances would be great, too far for linkpearls, too far for most magics.

But Zoissette had tools at her disposal that most did not.

The spine of her codex had a fine filigree of metal inlaid through it, ending in a spiral on the top of the book. Into that spiral, Zoissette carefully inlaid one of the crystals of light which she bore.

It was a risk, she knew. With the elemental circle missing its member, the blessing of light would be incomplete, and she might find herself once more at the mercy of an Ascian bent on her doom.

But this war seemed more a matter of men than a matter for the paragons of eld, and anyroad, she had faced the Ascians before, and would face them again. If she had to do so as merely herself, then so be it.

The crystal's light glowed softly as it came to hover in the middle of the spiral. Light flowed like liquid from the crystal, into the spiral, down the spine of her codex, and then it lit the geometries, powering her spell. The other crystals of light resonated with it. One of them, she placed into a second codex that had been prepared in ways similar to the first. That codex would allow her to share aether and cast enchantments across the distance. Another, she placed into a pocket, where she could monitor it more easily. It did not have the same capabilities as her codex, but it would allow her to check in quickly, and could be used for simpler matters, such as communication.

The rest she tucked away. The blessing of light at half strength, for now. With the two crystals she had employed, she could, in a pinch, put them back into service as part of the blessing.

The last would stay here with Y'shtola.

A risk.

But she was worth it. And if the crystal of light, fought and bled for, was so precious, then how much more precious was this life it would help her guard?

And if her decisions caused her downfall, well. She trusted Klynt and Nyx and others aside. Someone else would see to the work. They would get the job done.

At last, a test. She focused, and shifted into the space between, traveling as far away from Ala Mhigo as she knew, arriving at the Limsa Lominsa aetheryte. Quickly she made her way to her quarters there, which were kept in her name, even as she was away. Privileges of her former life in the Maelstrom, and an affordance from a grateful Admiral.

And in that room, where she had lived for a short time as her journey took her from adventurer to Warrior of Light, she tested her codex. The crystal of light was aligned, her preparations total, and she sought out its sibling through the distance.

The connection was made. She tested it with a simple healing spell, and felt it touch Y'shtola, despite the distance. She could sense the familiarity of that connection, from crystal to crystal, between her and her friend.

Too far for linkpearl, so once she was done, she gathered up her energy, and shifted through the aetherial sea once more, to arrive at the aetheryte in Rhalgr's Reach and rushing to Y'shtola's side.

The spell had left its mark.

She had been successful.

She sagged in relief, nearly weeping, a weight not quite lifting from her shoulders, but resettling into a way that she could carry it.

Now. Now, she could leave this place, and do the job demanded of her.

They would set sail soon, and she would go with them, as now she knew she could leave an important part of herself behind.

She went to sleep that night, restful. To prepare for the journey ahead.

~*~

Klynt was sitting on Zoissette.

Well, sort of sitting, sort of lying.

Sort of lying, sort of having to keep shifting to maintain her locks and holds.

Klynt had Zoissette pinned neatly beneath her in her hammock, where she could get up to no further trouble.

Zoissette wiggled a bit under her. "Get off, Klynt."

"No."

Zoissette was the sort of person who did not handle being idle for long periods of time very well. Oh, sure, she had a soldier's discipline about things like standing watch or keeping a lookout, and she could be occupied for bells with the right book. But she was a woman wound up with the kind of energy that could only be let loose by trying to find some way to be helpful (annoying), or sticking her nose in places she should not be (obnoxious), or by climbing up the ship's rigging, getting to the top of the yardarm, declaring herself queen of all she surveyed, and promptly diving into the drink (entertaining, but also exasperating).

Captain Carvallain had been amused, but he had a ship to run. So he had asked Klynt to intervene, and she had.

Zoissette was still for now, staring at the ceiling, all limp noodle arms and legs, but Klynt had been fooled by that act once. So even as Klynt carefully picked her way through a trashy romance novel, she kept one eye on the canny Elezen, looking for any sign of possible mischief.

A glint of light caught Klynt's eye, coming from one of Zoissette's many pockets, and she felt Zoissette stiffen. She shifted her weight, prepared for yet another bout of strenuous activity to keep the woman pinned.

"Klynt, off," said Zoissette, in a tone of voice some small part of Klynt vaguely recognized as danger.

"Are ye gonna be-"

Zoissette somehow twisted under her, and Klynt learned several things in rapid succession.

One, apparently, Zoissette had been pulling her punches more than she had thought.

Two, the Elezen was willing to fight dirty.

Three, there was no space or time for three, as a loud clap thundered very specifically on her left side, and the same ear was roaring pain, and the ship felt as though it had dumped itself sideways and was now in freefall just before she hit the deck. Zoissette was free, and so was she, and they were both out of the hammock, and she clawed up a hand, intent on grappling Zoissette to the deck-

She got a kick to the soft spot in her armpit for her efforts that drove her whole arm cold, followed by a knee to the solar plexus. Zoissette rolled off her, and Klynt was just as fast to get up, roaring, ducking her head, tackling Zoissette to th-

Zoissette had rolled with it, and now Klynt became aware of an almost oppressive freezing miasma rolling off the woman's very essence, choking the air somehow. Or maybe that was just her imagination from the impressive throat chop Zoissette had managed to drive the full force of her roll into. It may've collapsed the windpipe of a lesser woman. As it was, there was a moment of black, and Klynt was gasping, and she felt a strong kick to the side of her knee as Zoissette got back up again.

Klynt rolled to what was now her one good knee, hand to her throat, gasping. She felt the tide retreat, and looked up just in time to see Zoissette with a glowing crystal in her hand, sprinting for the door, and somehow the most galling part was that Zoissette was not running -from- her. She was just running -to- somewhere, Klynt now completely ignored.

And then she was gone.

Klynt took a few moments to get her bearings. A small part of her wondered what just happened. That was not Zoissette she had fought. That was some kind of otherworldly thing, all lightning-snap-fast kraken tentacles and deep ocean void and promises that there was enough space in the depths for two.

A larger part of her felt the storm rise in her chest. She had not been nearly diligent enough, and Zoissette had caught her unawares, and that was on her but the consequences were absolutely going to be on that damnable Elezen's head once she caught back up to her. Klynt growled as she came to her feet, and stormed out after where Zoissette had gone, too angry to notice that the deckhands were already frightened by the time she got out there.

She spun on the bosun. "Where the -hells- did she go," she snarled, and they just shook their head slightly and pointed to the hatch that led to the cargo area, currently having been left open.

She stalked over. She would have charged, but that kick to the knee had hurt and she was going to walk it off before she shoved her boot right up Zoissette's ass. Klynt spilled into the lower decks, past crew members who were still hugging the wall in the wake of Zoissette's path, until she was in one of the void spaces where nobody hardly ever went.

She could see a hatch that had been left part way open, and she nearly pulled it off its hinges. Whatever state she found Zoissette in, she was going to make it worse for the trouble. She stomped over the threshold.

The storm inside of her breast rumbled, and then held, suddenly still in that moment before the torrents could be unleashed and hell be wrought. Its energies did not fade, but they shifted, turning to tight arcs that lanced into her limbs and locked them into the static that laid in the air just so, promising ill omens to those on the ground.

Zoissette was crouched in a corner. Here, in the deepest, darkest, and coldest part of the ship. A place where nobody went. And she was curled up in on herself, her hands cupping the light of a crystal, her shoulders shaking. The hold was filled with the soft sound of her sobbing.

The storm died out into rains inside Klynt. She approached Zoissette slowly, carefully, wary, reaching a trembling hand out. She did not know what this was, she did not understand what was going on, but fury had been replaced with worry, and it was her duty as a friend to find out more.

"...Zoey?" she said, softly, and Zoissette turned towards her slowly, all ugly sobbing, her face wet with tears and snot running down it already in the short time she had been down here. She saw Klynt, and she hiccoughed, and she was laughing around the tears, her face was split near in two with her smile, and she was rocking back and forth, unable to contain herself.

It took her several tries to say the words in a way that Klynt could understand, but she kept trying until she did, and Klynt managed to tease the words out from the noise and the blubbering.

"She's awake."

And the clouds pulled back and the waters receded and the rains flooded the low places and Klynt collapsed, wrapping herself around her friend, hugging her tight, even as she said those words several more times, and now Klynt understood.

"She's awake. She's awake. She's awake."

#final fantasy xiv #zoissette vauban #y'shtola rhul #thancred waters #klynt gohtawyn #a campfire tale #heart tending #202311-15 #biot writes

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kshery-j · 7 months

Text

Choosing an FPV Drone Frame for Racing or Freestyle: Part Three

Frame Materials

Frames for Three Inches and Above: The primary material used in most frames with sizes of three inches and above is carbon fiber plates. These plates are complemented with aluminum standoffs, screws, and other accessories to create a complete frame. Carbon fiber is favored for its lightweight and robust characteristics, making it an ideal choice for racing drone frames. Some frames may also incorporate CNC-machined aluminum components for specific sections of the frame.

Frame Screws: Racing drone frames commonly use screws of the two highest strength grades: 10.9 and 12.9. These grades of screws are chosen for their superior strength and reliability, ensuring that the frame components remain securely fastened.

Frames for Drones Measuring Three Inches and Below: Frames designed for smaller drones measuring three inches and below often incorporate carbon plates as the primary structural component. Some frames utilize softer materials with high deformability for the main structure. Alternatively, high-strength plastics like polypropylene (PP) may serve as the primary frame material. This choice of materials is influenced by the lower forces experienced by small aircraft, owing to their reduced weight and lower flight speeds.

Incorporating different materials for frame components, depending on the frame's size and purpose, ensures optimal performance and durability, making it essential to make informed choices for your racing or freestyle drone.

#fpv #racingdrone #racing #fpv racing drone #frame

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theculturedmarxist · 10 months

Text

From New International, Vol.VIII No.9, October 1942, pp.278-281. Transcribed by Ted Crawford. Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

The following document by no means deals with working class policy in Palestine as such. Neither is it intended to describe the economic conditions and problems of its growth. The discussion is limited to those topics relating to institutions which are supported by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish labor movement in Palestine in its aspiration to create a Jewish or partly Jewish state. Expressing my fullest agreement with the aim of those striving for the creation of a Jewish homeland, it is nevertheless my contention that a long range perspective will prove the present policies in Palestine erroneous and only capable of giving the Jews an immediate advantage at the sacrifice of their class positions. But the sacrifice of class positions is never in the interest of any minority, for only the social revolution can in the last analysis provide favorable ground for the solution of the national question. In this sense, Zionism must be subordinated to socialism.

Those who search in this thesis for a confirmation or criticism of Zionism will be disappointed. Its sole purpose is to dispel any illusions that the pioneering role, whatever its virtues might otherwise be, has anything in common with internationalism. In my bid for brevity and condensation, I have given whatever background is needed sketchily, since factual material can easily be gathered from other publications.

I – National Land Policy in Palestine

1. At the close of the First World War, 140 Arab land owners owned one-seventh of the area of Palestine. Most agricultural enterprise was conducted under a semi-feudal latifundia system. The Arab peasant, the majority of the population, was directly exploited in this state of serfdom since an external capitalist market for goods thus produced had not as yet been created.

2. Jewish mass immigration into Palestine meant the immigration of capitalism as well. Jewish capital sought returns not only in the industrial enterprise of the cities, but also in land by more rational exploitation. The Arab land holder, through the price obtained in a sale of part of his land to Jews, invested sums on the capitalization of their remaining land. In the extension of the capitalist market into all spheres of Palestinian economy, many Arab fellahin (small peasants) were turned into wage laborers, in addition to the Jewish immigrants.

3. The purpose of Jewish National Funds [1] is to facilitate the settlement of incoming Jews. In undertaking investments felt to be too risky by private capital, Jewish National Funds economically fulfill a pioneering role for private capital to follow. They operate along strictly national lines. Through prevention of speculation, joint-purchase schemes, etc., they attempt to create the conditions most favorable for the acquisition and cultivation of land by Jews, regardless whether by national or private capital.

4. Still considerable sections of the Jewish bourgeoisie in Palestine oppose the national land policy. This, on the one hand, because national capital often proves inconvenient for private enterprise, on the other because Jewish National Fund land harbors and other national funds encourage “dangerous” experiments for it in so far as they demonstrate the superfluousness of the private capitalist. (Contrary to popular belief in radical circles, Jews, not Arabs, are faced by the danger of exclusion from industry.) Nonetheless national ownership of land, although desirable, in and of itself changes nothing fundamental in the economy as long as a capitalist market remains; all that is changed is the share of surplus value accruing to the landlord.

5. Jewish National Funds are progressive to the same degree to which a capitalist economy marks a gain over the outmoded feudal relations of production. They fulfill the objective need for a capitalist economy. As part of the capitalist system, as part of the status quo, as part of the general impotency of the bourgeoisie to carry out that program that marked it as progressive in its infancy, national funds can be no solution to colonization needs, to the agrarian problem, and to the evils caused by capitalism anywhere.

6. National funds, made to function as part of capitalism and in no way designated to oppose that system, therefore naturally lend uncompromising support to British and American “democratic” capitalism which is still in a position to tolerate its already circumscribed economic activities. This even more so since they aim to set up a JEWISH economy in opposition to an ARAB economy in Palestine and are still hopeful of help in this from the Allied powers.

7. Even from the viewpoint of colonization, national funds have always lagged behind needs. Rising land prices, British imposed restrictions, the fact that the Arab land owners will not voluntarily, as a class, allow themselves to be bought out of their privileges, and the elimination of large sections of world Jewry from the contributing lists, all go to prove that Palestine cannot be bought.

8. Rejecting the very idea of the possibility of the attainment of Zionism as long as the barrier of capitalism exists, we cannot possibly support an institution functioning to build capitalism while it in no way aids the development of the subjective factors of class struggle. We cannot risk the spreading of the reformist illusion that capitalism can build Palestine for the Jewish people.

II – The Rentability of the Kibbutzim

9. The kibbutzim (collective settlements) are by no means a unique feature of Palestine; neither are they socialism. The risk of private investments, on the one hand, and the growth of cities on the background of an undeveloped agriculture, on the other, have forged the kibbutz as the instrument of capitalist development in agriculture. The abundance of steady labor (within the kibbutz), an economy of collectivized consumption and the absence of any large agricultural trusts have all combined to make them the most rentable of the various types of settlement. (For statistics on the yearly surpluses of kibbutzim see Weitzman, Rupin, etc.)

10. Yet the kibbutz is the creation of the Jewish working class. Unable to compete against cheaper Arab labor in the Jewish settlements, the first chalutzim banded together into a state of forced communism, since otherwise they would have perished. Soon these groups, with outside help, started their own enterprises on the same basis, the kibbutz now serving as a base (in the same way as the fella, working his paviel, wage-labor in the colonies merely serves as an additional source of income) from which to enter as wage labor in the colonies left to the Arabs meanwhile (see Point 23).

11. An integral part of present capitalist Palestine and not the prototype of the new society, the kibbutz movement nevertheless exerts a strong leftward influence over the whole yishuv. And this, because of the backwardness of the Palestinian labor movement. Instead of guiding the class struggle against the Palestinian and British bourgeoisie, they stand in the forefront as an instrument of national labor policy. One hundred per cent Jewish labor and a society on the eve of its transformation into socialism, do not go hand in hand. Further, with the growing industrialization of the country, the center of gravity will shift to the cities. As finance capital gains a stranglehold on agriculture, so the kibbutz declines in importance; as the relative number of workers engaged in agriculture decreases, so its weight in the ensuing revolutionary conflict is lightened. The development of a normal class struggle will, in addition to dispelling national illusions, permanently destroy the idea of “building socialism” in the same way as the utopian concepts of Owenism gave way to the more realistic program of Chartism.

12. In spite of the verbal insistence upon class struggle by a considerable section of the Palestinian kibbutz movement, they cannot transform the capitalist society into a socialist society. The industrial proletariat has failed in organizing collectives, victim to the greater strength of private capital in the city. It is in aiding the city workers in the political organization of the peasants and supplying the revolutionary city in time of crisis with necessary food that the importance of the kibbutz will probably enter, but in a subordinate role.

13. These collective settlements are, then, not the transition into socialism, but the product of every aspect of the backwardness of the country, mixed with an adulterated, imported western socialism. After the socialist revolution, though, the kibbutz might well become one of the cornerstones of the emerging socialist society. Otherwise through a continuous development of capitalism, as already in the city, kibbutziut will be crushed by the stronger capitalists, economically, and superceded by forms of more militant class warfare, politically. The kibbutz is therefore, more accurately to be labeled collectivist than socialist.

III – The Chalutz [3] Movement and Its Background

14. The dominant character of the Jewish youth movement anywhere is chalutziut. As the expression of Jewish youth from those social strata whose free social and economic development was stifled, it led youth to seek escape from a dismal future through lofty ideals, all of which were to be realized through Zionism in the creation of the social form of a kibbutz. The very essence of this movement is escape in preparation for its own ideal society. Hence little can be expected from this group in the way of socialist political action.

15. Ideologically kibbutziut is a revolt against abstractions, a revolt not against the capitalist character of the intellectual but against all form of intellectualism, a revolt not against private individualist capitalist forms of huckstering, capitalist forms of profit sharing, etc., but against all manifestations of individual life itself, and thus it is for collective consumption, collective artistic expression, etc. (all outmoded in our highly industrialized society). Therefore, while naturally, internal compromises had to be reached, externally, the chalutz movement is the object of the play of forces larger than itself. It is the living example of a philosophy that is to instigate action without a corresponding action that leads automatically to a realization of the above philosophical thought.

16. The “socialism” of this movement (and there are sectors which are definitely non-socialist because of the purely economic need for kibbutzim) lies in a process of self-realization” in which the individual realizes the “necessity of becoming a wage laborer” for himself, culminating in the transformation of “middle class Jews into workers in the only possible place, Palestine, the historic Jewish homeland.” With this goes the desire to “live socialistically,” i.e., sharing in one’s community on a collective basis. This cannot be socialism since it goes on as part of capitalism. Acceptance and rejection of a thing are both determined by the existence of the thing. The background or “thing,” capitalism, still determines the action. The group rejects outside capitalism, lives its own “socialism” within, and does not care to be disturbed by the “degenerate outside.”

17. But it is necessary to accept capitalism while it exists; this is certainly better than rejecting it consciously while unconsciously one is forced to accept it. Therefore, only conscious revolutionary action under capitalism will bring us nearer to socialism. We see the inevitable iron will of forces toward proletarianization; the subjective factor is class struggle, and thus objective conditions have to be exploited to further this class struggle.

18. The natural self-realization lies in the subjective need of class struggle which, because of its universality, becomes objective. A “Religion of Labor” (A.D. Gordon) is only for those whose life work in the form of wage labor is not a normal aspect. Otherwise it is nothing but the petty bourgeoisie counterpart of the bourgeois glorification of all labor, and thus fits beautifully into the capitalist upbuilding of Palestine. Such labor is needed.

IV – Jewish and Arab Labor

19. About 55 per cent of Palestinian Arabs are fellahin, while about 20 per cent are engaged in industry and transportation. The former include about 17 per cent who constitute an agricultural proletariat in a broader sense. The remaining layers consist of land owners, professionals and merchants. The city proletariat is in the most unskilled and lowly paid positions. Jewish immigration here has resulted in the doubling of the real wages of Arab workers and the provision of new fields of employment in the Jewish plantations and building industries primarily.

20. The Jewish working class, with few exceptions, strives toward a penetration of rural as well as urban economy. This policy is manifested in Kibbush Haavoda (conquest of labor: Arab industry by Jews) aimed at the progressive expulsion of Arabs from positions created by the influx of Jewish capital. Not only the Jewish working class believes that it can thus gain firm roots in the country. The Jewish bourgeoisie, sometimes at the sacrifice of profit, in the interest of a Jewish dominated Palestine, occasionally supports Conquest of Labor.

21. Jewish-Arab labor relations are further complicated by the existing wage differentials between the “European” Jew and the “Oriental” Arab, the seasonal character of Arab help in the pardessim (orange plantations), the high organization and class-consciousness of the Jewish proletariat, which stands in contradiction (not only to the development of the objective conditions of class struggle as shown above) to the low degree of Arab organization and class-consciousness and the firmness of national unity on both sides.

22. Somewhat favoring an early understanding are the absence of an aristocratic, purely Jewish labor crust, an already partially achieved Jewish penetration of many spheres of industry, the rise of Arab wages toward closer approximation to that of the Jews, and a resulting awakening of Arab class-consciousness with the development of the country.

23. The degree to which Jewish labor is successful in its competition against cheaper Arab labor depends in the last analysis on the general conditions of the labor market (secondary factors not being excluded). In time of economic crisis Jewish workers, who in the preceding era had flocked into the more highly paid construction and factory jobs in the city, are thrown back on agriculture as a sole means of support; the policy of Conquest of Labor is taken up with renewed vigor in order to vacate the Arabs from those positions left open to them previously. But Jews are only partially successful in “reconquering” those fields, and their wages are forced down to par or only little above that of the Arabs. Depression always has a leveling effect on wages, and the national aspirations and higher organization of the Jewish workers are effective solely within the law of wages.

24. Extensive expansion of capital has its limitations. At a stage the organic composition of capital is changed and with it the intensity of exploitation. This results in the formation of a relative surplus population which acts as a constant depressor of wages down to a minimum. This minimum is today set by the mass of unorganized Arabs. Through their pressure, Jews in the long run will be forced down to the Arab standards of living, or they will be faced with an eventual exclusion from industry except for a few privileged positions. Despite the procrastinating drive of Jewish national unity, rapid industrialization, the efforts of the histadrut, the kibbutz in economizing expenses, the somewhat greater wage equalization, etc., a general wage leveling cannot be prevented. This will either cause greater workers’ solidarity or separate the two nationalities into one which supplies the reservoir for the masses of toilers, and another which occupies the privileged positions.

25. Is the Jewish working class sincere in its desire to participate in the productive process as a healthy working class? Then it cannot circumvent the problem of organizing Arab labor. It is only by raising the Arab wage minimums that Jewish wages can be maintained. Despite wage discrepancies and other political difficulties, this organization must proceed with a view toward joint unionism, unless unions are to become another tool with which national rivalry can be conducted more effectively around the present privileged position of the Jewish working class.

26. One Jewish-Arab union exists in the field of transportation (government-controlled transportation). Both Jewish and Arab wages are on par here, and all efforts to raise them effectively were blocked by the Palestine administration. Yet this union is an historic example of things to come. [4] In agriculture also a fertile field for joint organization exists. Instead, the histadrut concentrated on improving the conditions of only Jewish workers by establishing free dwellings for them and encouraging and otherwise aiding early settlement for more effective competition.

V – Class Versus National Interests

27. The support of the above mentioned institutions, Jewish National Fund, Foundation Fund, Kibbutziut, Chalutziut, Conquest of Labor, separate unions for Jews and Arabs (we have mentioned only those generally incorporated into the program of the Jewish labor movement) are supported “in the interest of immediate colonization beneficial to all classes alike at the present stage of development in Palestine.” In the interest of immediate immigration, the mandate was supported. To absorb incoming refugees, Jewish national funds are supported, the Conquest of Labor and the Kibbutz raised to an ideal. For fear of Arab domination, even labor Zionists reject a constituent assembly based on popular suffrage in Palestine.

This is the ugly face of politics “in the interests of all classes.” It helps the bourgeoisie, certainly; for practical bourgeois politics such a program is necessary. Also we recognize the fait accompli; we recognize the limited achievements. Ours is a revolutionary socialist criticism of these limitations. Capitalism, in line with its uneven development, cannot build Palestine, much less help the working class.

29. The colonization policy is basically on the wrong track because its point of departure is the identity of interests between bourgeoisie and proletariat, however limited this may be to the upbuilding period. It is therefore necessary to formulate clearly why the interest of capital and labor are never identical [5], regardless of the truism that:

... capital presupposes wage-labor and wage-labor presupposes capital; one is a necessary condition for the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence ...

Capital can only increase when it is exchanged for labor-power, when it calls wage-labor into existence. Wage-labor can only be exchanged for capital by augmenting capital and strengthening the power whose slave it is. An increase of capital is therefore an increase of the proletariat, that is, of the laboring class....

So long as the wage-laborer remains a wage-laborer, his lot in life is dependent upon capital. That is the exact meaning of the famous community of interests between capital and labor ...

30. Since the growth of capital is of aid to the working class only in as far as it provides the objective conditions for its emancipation, an internationalist program must make for speediest Jewish-Arab working class unity. National funds as instruments of national policy stand in the way. Our program must provide for the solution of the whole agrarian problem and, therefore, call for a division of land to those who till it, regardless or whether Jew or Arab. We stand for the socialization of all industry through the seizure of political power by the working class, and not alone for the abolition of private ownership of land and communist forms of living within our collective as called for by the statutes of the kvutzat. It is necessary to guard ourselves against all such (and other) Utopian and pseudo-socialist ideological contortions. Our main task is to stand on the forefront of the class struggle and our fund raising, agricultural, educational and labor policy must be directed toward those ends. Yet all the existing institutions could have great values were their content to change. In a socialist society, doubtless, these institutions, result of the just and sincere aspiration of the Jewish people, could reach full blossom.

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Notes

1. The most important are the Jewish National Fund, exclusively devoted to land purchase, and the Foundation Fund, to directly aid settlement.

2. It has been stated by Granovsky, the land expert of JNF, that some of its money has actually been turned over to private institutions. Further, they cannot solve the problem of agricultural credit.

3. Pioneer. Those going to Palestine to take part in the colonization task.

4. According to some sources whose accuracy I have been unable to check, this union has been rendered completely ineffective by the combined efforts of reactionary Jews, Arabs, the administration and the Stalinists.

5. Wage Labor and Capital, by Karl Marx.

#historical interest #israel #palestine #zionism #jewish nationalism #class analysis

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random-thought-depository · 2 years

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"Mostly settled, complex hunter-gatherers exploiting an abundant range of resources, some Natufian settlements were small and temporary, but others reached 1000 m^2 with about 150 residents. Over time, settlements expanded into different areas, shaped by population growth, local ecology, and climatic perturbations. Trade in exotic stone such as obsidian developed, with some indication of regional cultural differentiation, but with no persuasive evidence of social ranking as found among some other complex hunter-gatherers…

Skeletal remains have been recovered of more than 400 Natufians. One female of 35-40 years from Nahal Oren apparently died of a blow to the head (Ferembach, 1959, p. 67). Three small samples also indicate the presence of violence, sometimes deadly. One of seven individuals, an unsexed adult, from around 10000 BC, had two healed and one unhealed cranial fractures, possibly the cause of death (Webb & Edwards, 2002). A reexamination of 17 individuals from around 9100 BC, found an embedded lunate point with no signs of healing in a vertebra of a mature adult male. Two others among the five adult males had healed cranial trauma (Bocquentin & Bar Yosef, 2004). In another study, 5 of 30 adult male skulls (16.7 percent) and 3 of 15 adult females (20 percent) had healed trauma, though only 1 of 487 upper limbs had a fracture (Eshed, Gopher, Pinhasi & Hershkovitz, 2010, pp. 125,127). Conflict violence? Yes. But Bar-Yosef, who has called for a deliberate effort to de-pacify the past (2010a), considering all that is known about Natufians, concludes that there is no evidence supporting the interpretation of war, just personal violence (2010b, p. 72). LeBlanc (2010, p. 41) posits three possible indicators of warfare among people such as the Natufian: settlements on defendable sites, deadly skeletal trauma, and specialized or stockpiled weapons, yet even this champion of de-pacification does not cite any instances. In contrast to the European Mesolithic, there is no evidence of war among Natufians. … Compared to the Natufian, PPNA population is denser, and with larger settlements of commonly 150-300 people. Evenly spaced villages cluster in favorable lowland environments near rivers, and are abandoned after a few centuries. A hierarchy of settlement sizes is apparent, down to small seasonal sites, with storage and cultic constructions in the larger ones. They are not in defendable locations, and without any indication of surrounding ditches or walls. Except by distance between major centers, there are no major cultural breaks. All areas are marked by convergence in technologies, and are linked in trade of exotic materials such as salt, bitumen, sea shells, and above all, obsidian, coming from multiple sources… Nothing in the construction or distribution of settlements suggests the presence of war.

A few of the largest sites appear to be nodes in trade networks, and probably cultic centers (Belfer-Cohen & Goring Morris, 2011, p. 213). Evidence for communal production and distribution, and for collective ceremonialism, is a persistent characteristic of the early Near East. My argument is that they are part of a peace system, resolving potential conflict and avoiding war. At the very start of the PPNA around 9650 BC, Wadi Faynan 16 in Jordan has a large public structure with complex internal structure (Mithen, Finlayson, Smith, Jenkins, Najjar, and Maricevic, 2011). The purpose is not obvious, but a ritual center seems likely. A more clear-cut (and amazing) ritual center is Gobekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, centrally located on high ground visible for miles around, from 9130-8650 BC (Mithen, Finlayson, Smith, Jenkins, Najjar & Maricevic, 2011, pg. 360). It seems to have been free-standing, without accompanying settlement. No settlement remains have been found, and its monumental construction suggests a massive work commitment from populations throughout the surrounding area, leading to the inference that it was a means of creating a shared identity and culture at the very transition to the Neolithic (Schmidt, 2010, 253-254).

Jericho in Jordan is the best known settlement of the PPNA, reaching 500 inhabitants. After some centuries, the people of Jericho constructed a wall and a central tower, which was often taken as the earliest evidence of warfare, unique of its milieu (Roper, 1975, pp. 304-306). Bar Yosef (1986) reanalyzed those constructions, and found them unsuited for defense, and more likely for protection against flooding and mudflows, an interpretation that has been widely accepted. Over 500 burials at Jericho have been recovered from all periods (including PPNB), with some multiple burials. One burial that has 30 individuals lacks any sign of violence, which suggests that they died in an epidemic (Rollefson, 2010, p. 62). LeBlanc (2010, p. 45) mentions "a few … healed skull fractures" from Jericho and one other site, without elaboration.

Another huge, long-inhabited and very well-investigated PPNA site is Abu Hureyra in Syria. On a terrace above a flood plain, there are no signs of walls or towers. With up to 3,000 inhabitants in clearly planned structures, there must have been some form of authority. Yet there is no sign of social hierarchy - which suggests an alternative to standard evolutionary models that connect authority to chiefs. Authority may be vested in village councils of elders or lineage representatives, who live as others do. Recognized authority can be a precondition for peace. At Abu Hureyra, remains of approximately 162 individuals include multiple burials but they have no signs of violence. Disease seems likely. Points are found in a few burials, but their positioning suggests they are grave offerings, along with other objects… One young man, however, has an embedded point that was clearly lethal. "This is the only evidence that we have found for death by violence" (Moore et al., 2000, p. 288).

From the Southern Levant, several small sites spanning PPNA and PPNB yield 34 skulls for osteological analysis. One has a healed cranial fracture (Eshed, Gopher, Pinhasi, & Hershkovitz 2010, pp. 123, 127, 129). That is the paltry sum of evidence for war in the Levantine PPNA. The PPNA lasted for only 1,100 years, but that much time was more than enough in Europe for clear signs of war to emerge among Neolithic people.

This absence of evidence gains significance in contrast to the earliest Neolithic in the northern Tigris area, northern Iraq. … The Late Round House Horizon seems to develop out of the local Epipaleolithic Zarzian. Considerable differences exist on dates. Goring-Morris et al. (2009, pp. 210,212) go for calibrated 9750-8750, making it contemporary with the PPNA of the Levant. Village sites are located on the ecotone between floodplains and the Taurus. Two sites are important for evidence of war, the smaller and earlier Qermez Dere, and the nearby and later but overlapping Nemrik 9.

Qermez Dere is on high ground, with panoramic views of all approaches, and is protected on three sides by a steep drop. There are a few mace-heads, which may or may not be weapons of war. More significantly, it has a "spectacular development of projectile points" without any evident changes in hunting. Many points have broken tips, and may have "impacted with the settlement" (Watkins, 1992, pp. 68-69; Watkins, Baird, & Betts, 1989, p. 19). Nemrik 9 is bounded by steep wadis. It has mace heads, but also has skeletons with associated points (and no other grave goods) (Kozlowsky, 1989, pp. 25-28). One male skull contained two points, a second skeleton had a point in the pelvic area, and a third had a broken point next to a broken arm. These points are of a type that is unusual locally, suggested that attackers had come from some distance (Rollefson, 2010, p. 63). This convergence of different kinds of evidence supports the inference of war, the earliest in the Near East. Why war first appeared here is anyone's guess. Later firsts in the evolution from this same area are associated with the long-distance trade in Anatolian obsidian, as later routes went right through this area. But obsidian was rare at Qermez Dere (Watkins et al., 1989, pg. 22) and not mentioned at Nemrik 9 (Kozlowsky, 1989, pp. 27-28). … The second phase of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, PPNB, laster longer, 8500-6400 cal BC. This was the early Holocene climatic optimum, especially favorable to cultivation - "a time of plenty as conditions improved from one year to the next" (Goring-Morris & Belfar-Cohen, 2011, p. 202). Cultivation shifted from earlier local experimentation to heavy reliance on cereals. Domesticated animal herds increased, use of wild resources declined, and the population exploded. Villages grew in size and stayed put for many centuries - still regularly spaced and with smaller settlements grading out from larger - and populations colonized formerly marginal areas. With northern and southern variations, some long-settled locations were abandoned, possibly due to changing water tables (Bar-Yosef, 2011, p. 182; Goring-Morris et al., 2009, pp. 212-214). Within this panorama, a new phenomenon of "mega-sites" approaching urban proportions developed and spread, transforming the social landscape, expanding "on an almost 'unlimited' scale in terms of food resources, due to the presence of various ungulates … and the availability of arable lands" (Gebel, 2004, p. 4).

Across a mosaic of locally specific adaptations, a deeply entwined interaction sphere of exchange and cultural convergence developed that extended past the old PPNA areas to include Anatolia and Cyprus (Asouti, 2006; Goring-Morris & Belfar-Cohen, 2011, pg. 202). Still, no fortifications or territorial separations are noted, at least until (possibly) the end, even though the presence of war is sometimes assumed (eg., Gebel, 2004, p. 9). In contrast, major ritual centers - consistent with the generally pronounced cultic orientation of PPNB remains - developed between major population centers, especially in the Northern Levant and southern Anatolia, which imply social cooperation across large areas. Gobekli Tepe, which began in the late PPNA, continued on, but other centers such as Nevali Cori and Cayonu became more common in the PPNB, often between settlements, often on high ground visible for miles around…

Roper's (1975, pp. 311-312) pioneering study of signs of war in the Near East finds nothing for a millennium after the questionable early wall of Jericho, the original mega-site, but some possibilities from the late seventh millenium. Extensively quoting Kenyon's report, the first ten PPNB occupation levels have no hint of a wall, but Phase XII and XIII trenches found massive stone slabs sloping up on top of fill, which Kenyon interpreted as defensive. Not likely. The structure was built in the midst of domestic units. The land behind it was filled in to its top, with house structures then built right up to the edge. Everything looks like a terrace, not a defensive wall. Besides that, for this key case, the extensive skeletal collection from PPNB Jericho does not display signs of violence, and multiple burials could be from epidemics.

Beidha (Southern Levant) level IV c. 6900-6600 BC is another candidate for war. Beidha was burned, with some culturally new elements found after, yet there are also continuities. With no clear signs of fortifications or any violence in skeletal remains, war remains nothing more than a possibility (Roper, 1975, pp. 312-313). Ras Shamra (Northern Levant) c. 6436 BC, possibly an early seaport, has a surrounding glacis of stone slabs over dirt, but that could be to prevent inundations (Roper, 1975, pp. 313-314). In Turkey Mellaart (1975, p. 90 ff) had interpreted Catalhuyuk joined structures with roof entrances as defensive - a point that seems destined to interminable debate - and a similar interpretation has been offered for aceramic Haclilar c. 7040 BC. Roper (1975, p. 316) notes the doubts, and considering all four sites, concludes that "there is no conclusive evidence … that warfare was feared or practiced, though it is likely." These four sites are frequently noted as evidence of Near Eastern warfare. It is not much of a record.

Post-Roper's-survey, Ghwair I, a smaller site from southern Jordan (Southern Levant, as are other PPNB sites to follow), 6800-6300 BC, has one infant with elaborate grave goods, and an elderly female with a point embedded inside her jaw (Simmon & Najjar, 2006, p. 90). At late PPNB Basta in Jordan, of 29 skulls, five had healed minor cranial fractures (Schultz, Berner & Schmidt-Schultz, 2004, p. 260). Another boy was killed by a blow to the head (Rollefson, 2010, p. 63). The violence at both those sites would be consistent with pronounced internal hierarchy. Late PPNB Ba'ja, a small site in mega-site times, is on a terrance in nearly vertical sandstone formations, approachable only through a steep and narrow passage. It certainly could be called defendable, and in that quality is noted as unique within its time. But from photographs, Ba'ja's terrace seems to be the only habitable ground in the vicinity, at least with access to water. No traces of contemporary settlements have been found anywhere around them (Bienert & Gebel, 2004, pp. 119-121, 135; Gebel & Bienert 1997, pp. 223, 229).

Ba'ja, Basta, and Beidha are not far apart, and this confluence of inconclusive clues makes it a promising area to look for concrete evidence of war. Yet as it stands, there is really nothing in any of those sites that even probably support the conclusion that war was present. The mega-sites should be able to raise a few hundred fighting men, and the effects of fighting at that scale most likely would be seen. On the contrary, in the north Jordan valley from the PPNB through the Pottery Neolithic, the countryside was spotted with small settlements in flat ground near water without any defensive characteristics (Roper, 1975, pg. 31). In sum, there is no persuasive evidence of war in the PPNB from the Southern Levant to Anatolia. Kuijt and Goring-Morris (2002, pg. 421) sum up the record for the entire Levant Pre-Pottery Neolithic, both A and B. They note the "near-total absence of evidence for interpersonal or intercommunity aggression in the PPN." Starting with the Natufian in 13100 BC, the close of the PPN around 6400 BC makes 6700 years in the Southern Levant without any good evidence of war. … The end of the PPNB, often called "collapse," included abandonment of many long-settled sites, and was close to and quite possibly related to the major climatic reversal and aridity in the eastern Mediterranean, known as the "8200 cal yr BP event" (Clare, 2010, pp. 15-17; Rollefson, Simmons, & Kafafi, 1992, p. 468; Weninger et al., 2006). The Pottery Neolithic, 6400-4500 cal BC (Goring-Morris et al. 2009:190), post-8.2 K cal BC, is marked most obviously by the development and immediate spread of pottery. It also saw a shift to smaller settlements, the digging of wells, more reliance on pastoralism, and sharp differentiation of local cultures. With climate-forced competition, invested labor in wells and livestock, and cultural differentiation, one might expect the emergence of warfare.

But war is not apparent in the record of the Southern Levant PN. Roper (1975, p. 317) notes settlements are small, on low, watered land. There is no sign of fortifications in the sixth millennium after the questionable wall at PNNB Jericho. Archaeological excavation in the Southern Levant has been intense in recent decades, as more real estate is developed (Rowan & Golden, 2009, p. 2). But 35 years after Roper, the evidence has not changed.

'Ain Ghazal was a central Jordan mega-site and major ritual center that was not abandoned with the PPNB "collapse." Occupied from 7250-5000 BC, no walls are indicated until Pottery Neolithic times (5500-5000 BC), when "stone enclosure walls abound … but just what these features enclosed is difficult to determine" (Rollefson et al., 1992, pg. 450). As these walls are found throughout the settlement, it is hard to see anything that suggests a defensive purpose (Rollefson, 1997). Differential burial of 112 skeletons suggests two classes of people, perhaps "a two-tiered 'patron-client' population" (Rollefson et al., 1992, p. 463). One of the "trash burials" has a thin flint blade, snapped at both sides, going through the skull (Rollefson, 2010, p. 63). it could be a killing, except "it is not entirely clear if this was intentional or rather the result of post-depositional processes (Kuijt & Goring-Morris, 2002, p. 422). What 'Ain Ghazal may be indicating is some form of hierarchy in a ritual-oriented central place, and increasing control as an alternative to warfare even in tough times for subsistence.

Although Clare (2010, pp. 18-19, 20, 23) takes a generally hawkish position in interpreting evidence for war, and points out a few possible indicators which are "to say the least, ambiguous," he recognizes a total absence of any "obvious fortification structures," a general reduction (with local variations) of tool-weapons of knives and arrowheads without any increase in sling ammunition, and concludes "harmonious times for the southern Levant might even be suggested, at least during the PN, and this is indeed the picture that is beginning to emerge." Clare suggests that climatically driven hard times may have led to new forms of cooperation.

The issue of maces is fully joined in the Pottery Neolithic Southern Levant (Rosenberg, 2010, pp. 210-211, 214). Many maceheads are found, but they are small (most under 5 cm diameter) and with very thin shaft holes (most 10-15 mm, some down to 6 mm). These maces could not "withstand a serious blow." He concludes, "most early maceheads were never used in combat." Rosenberg speculates on possible ritual uses. A reasonable interpretation is that they were symbols of authority. This does not necessarily imply a social ranking or "chiefs." It could be the authority of a community, represented by elders and wise people, perhaps with cultic backing (Kuijt & Goring-Morris, 2002, pp. 420-423). As noted previously, recognized authority is a way of regulating conflict, and could be central to avoiding war. Maces may be part of a system of peace. Adding the PPN to what came before in the Southern Levant, that makes 8600 years without signs of war.

Yet across the northern Near East, evidence for war is substantial in the Pottery Neolithic. Around the northern Tigris, close to Qermez Dere at the border between mountains and plains, is seventh millennium Tell Maghzaliyah. Several centuries after it was first occupied, a major defensive wall was raised, possibly with one or more towers (Bader, 1993, pp. 64-66). This is the earliest known fortification in Mesopotamia (Munchaev, 1993, p. 250), and may be the earliest in the Near East. Maghzaliyah appears to be of different cultural tradition than Qermez Dere, with some Anatolian affinities, and its people had a thousand times more obsidian (Watkins et al., 1989, p. 22). This is the debouchment where Anatolian trade comes down to the plains. Maghzaliyah could be a node in what would become (if it was not already) an enduring system of long-distance trade routes in Anatolian obsidian (Healey, 2007, pp. 262-263), certainly the most important exotic good in the Neolithic (Yellin et al., 1996, p. 366). Cross-culturally, different aspects of trade control are often critical issues in practices of war (see Ferguson, 1999, pp. 414-415). A linkage is suggested in this case, since erection of the wall coincided with a dramatic shift from obsidian to flint, suggesting that somebody was cutting into the flow of trade from Anatolia (Bader, 1993, p. 66).

Turning to Anatolia itself, the origin of Neolithic ways is still poorly understood. In central Anatolia, clear indicators of a Neolithic way of life appear near the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between 7400-7100 cal BC. Settlements remain small and sporadic until about 6500, around the start of the PN, with level 6 at Catalhuyuk - which as noted early is perennially debated as an exemplar of war. A significant development for this chapter's interest in peace is that communal ritual centers disappear from Anatolia over the PN, with religious practices moving into domestic contexts (Ergogu, 2009, 129). If major ritual centers had unified scattered people, their decline could make war more likely. Yet the painted representations at Catalhuyuk do not suggest war. There are life scenes of hunting, of domesticated plants and animals, and of vultures picking flesh from headless bodies - but no portrayals of war (Erdogu, 2009, pp. 133-135). The vulture scenes could stand as a warning against it. They may have had reason to worry. War was on the way.

A case has been made (Ozdogan, 2011) and challenged (Asouti, 2009; Thissen, 2010) that climatic deterioration associated with the 8200 cal K BP event drove late Neolithic subsistence shifts within Anatolia, and the spread of domestication from there to the Balkans. Consistent with that line of thinking, Clare et al. (2008, pp. 71-77) discuss four Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic sites in the densely settled Lake District (Pisidia) of the south-western Anatolian plateau: Hacilar, Kurucay Hoyuk, Hoyucek Hoyuk, and Bademagaci Hoyuk. Between them are multiple indicators of war: major conflagrations, some with unburied bodies, some with a subsequent hiatus or replacement by another group, fortifications with walls and towers, and large numbers sling missiles. During (2011, pp. 72-73) questions the defensive interpretation of structures at Hacilar and Kurucay (and elsewhere) and argues that the postulated signs of war postdate 6000 BC, centuries too late to be linked to the 82 cal K event. These are valid points. The most compelling evidence of war at Hacilar (II) is dated to 5600 BC (Roper, 1975, pg. 321).

Signs of war in other Anatolian sites also date to the early sixth millennium. Domuztepe of the Halaf culture has a pit (5700-5600 BC) with 40 possible victims of violence (Erdal, 2012, p. 2). Guvercinkaya, 5210-4810 BC, was built on top of a steep rock outcropping. During (2011, pg. 75) emphasizes that a nearby contemporary settlement was not fortified, but that would be consistent with fortifications on trade nodes. Down from the highlands on the coast, between Anatolia and Cyprus, the port settlement of Ras Shamra was destroyed by fire around 5234 BC. An apparent defensive wall went up somewhat later, possibly associated with the arrival of Halafians, a people originating in Northern Mesopotamia (Akkermans 2000), who seem to have brought war along with them (Roper, 1975, p. 318). The Halafian culture is not well-understood, but they had an unusual immersion in obsidian commerce. "They apparently engaged in directionally controlled, nonreciprocal, extensive trade which seems to have been more structured and more intensive (e.g., imported obsidian comprising three-fourths or more of the chipped stone industry) than we might expect in a tribal society" (Watson & LeBlanc, 1990, pp. 137).

While climatic deterioration may be related to this widespread pattern of war, a much stronger causal connection appears to involve key nodes of the trans-Anatolian obsidian trade. Obsidian from Anatolia was found all over the Near East. Pisidia was not a center of obsidian production, which came from Central Anatolia (Clare, Rohling, Weninger, & Hilpert, 2008, p. 82). Sources of critical goods usually do not control trade, those at passage bottlenecks do. Ozdogan (2011, p. 55) notes final Neolithic "turmoil" in Anatolia, and that for the first time, there appears to be a monopolization of trade patterns. Monopolization is the key link between war and trade.

On the Turkish coast, Mersin XX was destroyed and then reoccupied by the Halafians. A similar sequence occured at Chagar Bazar in northern Syria, and level 8 of Sakce Gozu. Below the mountains but close by, Ras Shamra Vb, also on the coast, and basal Tell Halaf (c. 5837 BC) appear to be "fortified Halafian settlements." "It is significant that all the sites that exhibit destruction or have fortifications are located on the east-west overland trade route (or subsidiary connections to this route)" (from Nineveh in northern Iraq through the Northern Levant, to Mersin, and up through the Taurus). "One may hypotheize that the Halafians wanted and took control of a portion of this great trade route" (Roper, 1975. pp. 323-325). Sixth millennium Halaf may be the first cultural group to expand via war. … The Anatolian trade network and accompanying warfare continued through the Chalcolithic (4500-3300 BC), with (probable) fortifications at Cadir Hoyuk and Kurucay level 6 (During 2011, p. 75). The Early Bronze Age Anatolia trade network included a wide array of materials and products. It expanded to reach from the northern edge of Mesopotamia to the Aegean and Greece (including Troy), and was characterized by centralized urban centers with massive fortifications (Sahoglu, 2005, pp. 339-341). "Signs of systematic violence become ever more pervasive in Anatolia during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1200 BC), starting especially in the EBA (ca. 3000-2000)" (Erdal, 2012, p. 2).

Considering this record against all the other records examined here leads to a major conclusion: by the early sixth millennium, along the trade corridors of Anatolia, the Western world's first widespread, enduring social system of war had begun. The inclusion of Troy serves to extend that point: this is the start of a system of war that flows down in a river of blood to our present.

On the Turkish coast around 4300 BC, Mersin was a true fort or citadel with firing ports, offsets covering turns in the walls, a protected gateway and tower, and possible barracks for specialized soldiers (cf. During, 2011, pp. 74-75). After about a century, Mersin was destroyed, and the site occupied by Ubadian people (Roper, 1975, pp. 328-329). At the eastern end of the Northern Levant, even more dramatic developments ensuded in the Late Chalcolithic.

In northeast Syria, close to the earlier Tell Maghzaliyah and Qermez Dere, Tell Brak and Hamoukar were emerging as urban centers by 4200 BC. Each was a major entrepot for northern obsidian (Khalidi, Graute, & Boucetta, 2009; Oates, 1982, p. 62). … Findings at Brak particularly (but the less excavated Hamoukar looks similar), have upended conventional notions of southern Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities, preceding known southern developments by several centuries…

Surrounding Tell Brak were massive fortifications, with towers, gates, and guardhouses (Oates et al. 2007, p. 588-589). Four mass graves have been found from 3800 to 3600. The two best known suggest a simultaneous internment of hundreds, with demographic patterns and casual disposal suggesting purposeful killing rather than an epidemic. Based on several factors - such as the absence of peri-mortem skeletal trauma and the formidability of defenses - researchers speculate that this represents internal violence rather than attacks from the outside (McMahon, Soltysiak, & Weber, 2011). That is not far-fetched, given Gilgamesh's oppression of his own people to build his massive walls (Garder & Maier, 1985, pp. 57, 67), and the possibility that local food production was stressed by cooling and increased aridity (McMahon et al., 2011, p. 217). Hamoukar, however, was attacked by outsiders. Recent excavations indicate that around 3500 BC, a massive bombardment by thousands of sling bullets weakened its 10-foot high wall, which then collapsed in a conflagration. Subsequent levels were dominated by Uruk pottery, suggesting the south had conquered the northern trade portal to Mesopotamia (Bower, 2008; University of Chicage, 2005)." - R. Brian Ferguson, "The Prehistory of War and Peace in Europe and the Near East," (from War Peace and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views).

#history #prehistory #deep history #war #copied cause relevant to my Blindsight vampire fanfiction lol #deciding whether to set it in the PPN or the PN or the Copper Age #and how to portray the humans #tempting in this context to interpret a lot of those Natufians with skeletal trauma as vampire victims #‟no clear evidence of war but lots of people with fight injuries‟ sounds like what you might see in a prey species

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Heyy ;) JSHK is heartbreaking isn’t it? As for me I cried 4 times over the manga (which is a miracle because I NEVER CRY THAT MUCH IN A SERIES), sooo have you cried over some chapters?

Oh I've cried soo many times for this series, it's kind of hard to count. Though I can't say it's a rare or uncommon thing for me... I'm honestly quick to cry over the littlest things. 9.9; So it's not surprising for me, that I've cried multiple times. I get choked up easily too... ah, I'm very emotional, and just tend to respond to 'emotional cues' easily. If the movie is playing sad music, and wants me to be sad, I will be sad... I can't really resist that.

But while it's not hard to get me to cry, I will say that JSHK is unique in that, I think it makes me feel a very deep sense of agony... Since making me cry is very easy to do, I don't think of it as an actual testament to whether or not the scene was good, or well written, and I can shake it off and just move on easily enough. It's different when the sadness feels like it sinks into my bones... makes me writhe and twist... And ah, sometimes it just flat out stings more, instead of just making me weepy — hurting my jaw, throat, palms...

I'll list some specific chapters... I think I'll also break it up between things that made me cry on first read vs. rereads.

yosh... ikimashou!

FIRST READ

Vol 1 / Ch 1: Hanako-san of the Bathroom

This is actually more of an 'honorable mention', since I wasn't full blown weeping or anything. But I had a lump in my throat and got wet-eyed over it, which feels notable, just starting off.

I remember being really surprised that we get into Nene's head like this... I wasn't expecting it-? It feels very brutal, honestly, to watch her reflect on her shallowness like this. Having to realize this 'crush' was more of a self-serving fantasy, than anything, and she wasn't really thinking about who Teru was as a person... This is a foible I think many people go through, more than they're willing to admit. More than they can even recognize...? So it was pretty surprising to see it laid out like this, at the start of the manga. A premonition of what was to come... (this manga surprising me again and again!)

Vol 2 / Ch 7: The Misaki Stairs (Part 4)

Now this... is a testament to how 'contained' a narrative can be, yet how much I can be enveloped in the feelings of it. I think Yako isn't a very central character, and I don't especially favor her or anything, but I like her introduction. I like her circumstance...

The childish writing of young Yako, who seems very new to the world, and unused to deep interaction with humans. I honestly love this sort of 'interspecies' relationship... along with age gap (lol) ; it provides a contrast I enjoy. I like that Yako is being taught how to read and write by Misaki... simply tasteful. Praise to Iro-sensei.

I feel my heart sink, alongside Nene's, once we get to these entries...

And by the time we get to the yorishiro memory itself, I can't help crying. I cry a little almost every time I really immerse into reading these chapters... The Yako who is hunched over, saying, I want Misaki to yell at me again really gives me chills... I understand what she is feeling here. Wanting your love back at all costs... ahhh. :'I

Vol 4 / Ch 4: The Little Mermaid (Part 2)

a small, choked up feeling, a small cry. but a cry nonetheless... the visual of their pinkie promise gets to me. Nene's sparkly eyes... for this whole scene, her horns are droopy because of being wet, and it gives her an innocent quality. like a dumbo rat... baby girl

Vol 12 / Ch 58: The End of a Dream (Part 3)

the closing chapter of the PP arc... an arc lasting several volumes, sending one through a roller-coaster of emotions-!! my first read of PP made my heart race, doki doki. I was actually mostly psyched up by it, very excited by the events. Not so weepy. Buut, it's only appropriate that the closing chapter is what gets to me.

this panel honestly shakes me to my core. knowing that Tsukasa is metaphorically the moon... and that Nene is the one saying this... something about it feels like an omen. I think it's a good omen, and yet, it frightens me deeply anyways. I feel like I have great reason to be afraid lol... like, oh, god, the moon IS closer than it's ever been, isn't it... (dread)

ugh, trying to not post every panel from this scene... but Nene is so pristine and angelic and well meaning in this all. her end of it is SO SINCERE... up here, in the clouds together, whirling all about... declaring her dreams... sigh. It's not fair it's like this all loads into a gun to hurt her for the Severance...

(I feel like it's around here that I really am falling for her, as a character... *sigh* *touches screen...*)

Vol 17 / Ch 81: The Red House (Part 6)

I'm sure this isn't a surprise by now, but, yeah... this one really tore me apart. by this point, my feefees for Tsukasa had incubated long enough that it was really devastating to learn so much about his child psyche. (it's getting so real for my crushes on the girlies by now.)

it's devastating that Tsukasa is capable of feeling this. meanwhile, earlier... this scene.

it always hurts to get to the confrontation... it never stops hurting. it'll hurt forever, I'm sure.

I've also struggled with chronic illness and disability as well. so... ah, I understand what Amane is going through here, profoundly. At your gd limit... just, can't keep doing this... yeah

would you believe that my wife would lick my tears, early in our relationship...? I was once a very miserable, depressed, lonely person. I used to think no one would ever love me, and that I cried so often it was annoying. At times, when overwhelmed by our early interactions (they were so amazing, and I felt so lowly and undeserving) I would just break down. she'd just kiss and lick my tears and eyes...

In general I just have a lot of personal reasons to be sentimental about the gestures / dialogue throughout this chapter.

a panel for the ages... cementing Tsukasa's role as an angelic, wish-granter. I LOVE YOU BAYBEEEE-!! love you forever.

Vol 18 / Ch 89: Oni (Part 2)

Now, let it be known... I love.... LOVE-!! Everything about Hakubo and Sumire's story... I feel so much for each of them, their circumstance, it's soo painful! I pretty much always feel the 'drop' as I read these chapters, but this is the one that got me upon first seeing it.

it's the helplessness of Hakubo... the way he just doesn't know what to do, the way his inhumane treatment by humans has made him never consider that he can love, the way he can't make decisions on his own. He wishes to be commanded... it's all he knows. Why won't she just tell me to save her...?

The way he describes not feeling anger, sadness, or hatred / alongside the panels of him getting hunted down by humans… Only left with the sense of regret that he should have done something for her, that night. Ahh... it's incredibly beautiful and painful... thank you AidaIro for this perfect blend of beautiful visuals and painful prose </3...

Vol 20 / Ch 101: Omen (Part 1)

For our final entry in this category, it's a record breaker. the mere sight of this living Tsukasa made tears well up in my eyes.

it's too much for me… this specific age of Tsukasa, in canon, has been so elusive and rare. We've only had a peek at him through a Hell of Mirrors illust. and that is still his corpse... the LIVING, breathing, pre-shinjuu boy, is divine to be met with. I really couldn't believe we could see him now.

now that I know he is singing 'Over the Rainbow', there's no saving meeee...

REREADS

Vol 2 / Ch 8: The Confession Tree

ok. this is one of those things where, I know I'm not gonna make a lot of sense as I explain... since this is a raw, kinnie-brain thing, but my disclaimer is that i'm self aware about how unreasonable this is-!! ok.

when I first read through this chapter, I was still in my 'getting to know her' phase, with Nene... thus, I was endeared by her romantic heart, but wasn't (for lack of a better term) in love with her. I think I experienced this chapter more like 'an audience member'.

after coming to terms with Being Amane... this chapter is very difficult for me. It's gone from me feeling like an audience member, to feeling like an active participant — like, responsible for hurting her.

I failed such an innocent girlie. it is hard to cope with. sometimes I feel like she should never forgive me for this...

metatextually, it's like, when I was first reading this manga, I didn't think I would care so much about her / much like, I think Amane is not aware at all how much he is going to be heaving and crying over his feelings for Nene, so many volumes later... We don't know how special this girl is, yet.

I've cried over this scene and have fallen into a terrible depression for like, weeks, over it, LOL.. these things, you just have to take my word for it, that it's part of being Amane. It's hard to forgive your own carelessness.

Vol 9 / Ch 45: Picture Perfect (Part 5)

oooh. what can be said... it both makes me emotional that Tsukasa looks so lovely here / and that Tsukasa is allowed to have full page spreads, as the focal point...

having just dropped the telescope. stiff-legged, shirt billowing... she is a captivating specimen.

dazzling... gorgeous... and so earnestly experiencing the pretty sky, the shooting stars — eagerly turning to amane to announce this! ahh... that after all these years, tsukasa can have a moment like this with amane... hurts me so.

Vol 10 / Ch 50: Picture Perfect (Part 10)

my first reads of PP felt thrilling... I was so excited to see how far this manga could go. and for an arc to last so long, it was very captivating. I suppose though, this is another one of those things that has steadily weighed heavier on me as I connected more and more with Amane.

The expression here... it's the weight of everything coming crashing down on him, in real time, I think. Again, he was not... prepared for how much Nene was going to mean to him. He's spent so long not caring about who lives, dies. He's becoming unraveled by this all...

and this framing of Nene... it twists a knife in my heart. combined with how it echoes the way Amane is starstruck from Tsukasa in the earlier chapter... sighhhh!

Vol 11 / Ch 51: Perfect Empty Ideals

It just hurts so mmmbad-!!! man I can't be deep about it all, this just makes me SAD-!!!!!! I LOVE YOU GIRL!!! SORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Vol 14 / Ch 66: Sumire (Part 1)

After learning everything about Hakubo and Sumire's lives, this vignette is very heart-wrenching. This is the cave they took refuge from the rain, once, that their final moments are then in.

Such a beautiful ship... such beautiful drawings... again thank you AidaIro-sensei...

Vol 16 / Ch 78: The Red House (Part 3)

This chapter was of course VERY PAINFUL!! when I first read it, but I think by now it's settled into my gut heavier than ever before. And basically all of the Red House arc scenes related to the Yugi rend me apart... I can't push the image limit any more in this post though, so I'll just represent it with this. But just know all of it makes me roll around in my grave...

What could Tsukasa have felt in this moment, learning about Amane's imminent death... Knowing how much Tsukasa loves Amane, I think a future without him was just pointless. I get the impression he was spending all his time running off and procuring Amane presents, now that Amane has become too sick to play with him.

Sometimes I'm in such awe, still, that we learned Tsukasa would come to Amane's bedside and provide him little gifts. As much as his little 3 year old self was capable of... and, he's capable of feeling lowly/worthless, and like Amane hates him… urgh-!! *commits seppuku*

Anyways I hope this list... well, conveys that I'm emotional and unstable LOL... (nah, but really, I hope it was interesting!) Here's to more crying over this manga, again and again!

#☀️#💬

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julietwiskey1 · 1 year

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Merida vs Fiona who would win?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AxGXZOLn-U0&pp=ygUXZmlvbmEgZmlnaHRzIHJvYmluIGhvb2Q%3D

So I will assume that they are compelled to fight for some reason, and that will explain all OOC reactions as I cant actually seeing them fight. Also that Fiona will retain her human form and not have the advantages of being an ogre because she was shown as human in the youtube video.

Merida and Fiona are very different characters when it comes to fighting. Merida is a horseback archer. She has great mobility and and immense skill will a bow on par with those of myth and legend. But she is not much of an up close and personal kind of fighter, it was never an interest of her or anything she was taught.

Fiona is shown to be a competent martial artist, able to take on a gang of men single handily and defeating them one by one without aid. But most importantly for this fight she has the matrix level ability to dodge arrows shot at her from close range.

Scenario #1: Gladiatorial Combat

When I think of two different characters forced to fight I think of some sort of gladiatorial combat. Where both are placed in a small arena and forced to fight for sport.

The lack of mobility will either force Merida to attempt to evade on foot (I assume she does not have a horse here), or to stand and try to shoot Fiona with her bow. Her best bet is to try and force Fiona back until she can wear her down and get a lucky hit with her bow.

For Fiona she will want to get in close range with Merida. Get rid of the range advantage and allow her to use her martials arts abilities. Because she can dodge arrows and has physics defying movement she can get in close.

This scenario favors Fiona. I would say more times then not she beats Merida easily.

Scenario #2: Battle Royale

Another type of common fight for this is more of the battle royale situation. Where the contestants are placed in a large area and have to find and attack the other. For us it will just be the two of them fighting in a wooded area.

Fiona has to find Merida first and preferably take her by surprise. Due to her poor situational awareness and low mobility over long distances she is more likely going to be reacting to an attack though.

Merida will be able to use her horse and bow to great advantage here. With some tracking skill she can blitz Fiona often, and if she misses she will be out of range before Fiona can attack her. With lots of short encounters she can wait for Fiona to not spot her in time or to fail to dodge an arrow.

This scenario heavily favors Merida. Fiona would have to either set up a trap to win or get very lucky.

Conclusion:

Who will win is heavily dependent on the circumstance of the fight. When I picture a question like this I typically think of it as scenario #1. So I would say that Fiona is the likely victor.

But in all honesty I think the two together would make a wonderful team more then enemies. They would get along very well and understand what the other has went through and would feel no need to fight the other.

#wiskey answers #anon #merida #brave #fiona #shrek #cartoon character battle #im kinda loving the idea of fiona being a mentor to merida #a friend figure that knows what she is going through

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gangrenados · 2 years

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what if you had twins that size or one small twin and one big ass twin, with it being fictional we can have any size baby we want with him, would that mean that regular birth control not work with him like the pill and all those... would he even fit a condom

Babies: think irl might happen if one of the twins squeeze the other one, so the less favored twin (due the fact that they can't get all the space, oxygen and nutrients) they don't grow as much as the other twin.

However, this might cause the less favored twin some problems when it comes to their development but I don't what are the possibilities of that tbh, but it might happen.

Dick size: Jason is a big guy and adding my headcanon about the out I'll say he's above average. To be honest, at first sight, I think Jason's pp would be intimidating.

Yk it's the kind of dick that makes you wonder how the fuck it will fit.

It's not monstrous, sure it's above the size and girth of an average dick but it's not grotesquely huge. It's just a little bit big.

It will make you feel full for sure.

But even then, he would fit in a condom.

Birth control: I'm not sure about the birth control thing tbh, Jason's fertility it's insane but I think with a higher dose you'll be able to avoid any unwanted pregnancy.

However, considering how strong plan b is I think you won't need a higher dose of that one.

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devilfic · 2 months

Text

❝small favor❞

VI. growing pains.

parts: previously plot: you and peter are getting used to each other, but there are growing pains. pairing: mcu!peter parker x gn!reader. cw: mentions of several injuries, mildly suggestive content, hurt/comfort, peter being a problematic vigilante boyfriend (not telling you he got his ass kicked). words: 5k.

a/n: something a little shorter and sweeter (after the pain, of course).

You lift your head, heart hammering away, and meet the eyes of Peter Parker.

He fits him perfectly. The curls, his lips. But now there are eyes that fill in the gap, honey-color eyes that speak to that soothing feeling he gives you. He's leaning his forehead against yours now, looking up into your own eyes. You've thought about this exact moment happening before, but you had never gotten around to what you would say when it finally did.

Peter's thumb brushes up against your hip—having sneaked underneath the hem of his sweater during your reverie—and it jolts you back, "Well, come on," he nervously laughs, "don't leave me hangin'."

You take a handful of his hair in your grip, passing the silky strands between your fingertips and recalling the first night you'd ever felt them, "Why now?"

Peter's nose scrunches up, "I told you. I was never fooling you."

You shut your eyes, stretching your neck forward to brush your nose against his, "No, but... why right now? Why like this?

"It might be obvious but I really, really like you. I... I just kept thinking that I really wanted to tell you, because you're this smart, ambitious, funny—amazing at baking, by the way—person that I didn't want to miss out on, but you don't really know Peter Parker. You know Spidey. You know Spider-Man. And that's a lot to live up to which is weird to say because it's... also me? And eventually, the more comfortable I got with you, the more the lines started to blur together. But I just worried that if I dragged it out any longer, I might set you up for disappointment and I just... wanted you to see me. Really see me. At least once, before I told you. Does that make sense?"

And you do see him. You're seeing everything you imagined and more mystery yet. The pictures in this room could only tell a fraction of the story of Peter Parker, your time with Spider-Man telling another. You let the little voice in your head that drives your curiosity get excited at unraveling it. Just this once. "I told you at the gala, didn't I? That if anyone in that room was you, Peter Parker would be it."

You hear a low grumble in Peter's throat, "Mm, yeah. Yeah, you did say that. You also said that... I'd be shaking and crying if you yelled at me-"

"That's irrelevant."

"You say that whenever I'm right."

"I say that whenever it's irrelevant."

"Yeah, but you do have a thing for me, right?" Peter smiles, taking your cheek in his hand. The bliss on his face knocks you right out of whack. The dresser digs into your back as you try not to get lightheaded just looking at him.

It's so unfamiliar to put a face—a whole face—to Spidey, and now you can see it all. Every wrinkle, every flutter of his eyelashes, every brow-furrow. Everything, everything.

Your lips part to tease him, but Peter's door suddenly shakes under three firm knocks.

"Hey. Is Harry. You okay?" Harry Osborn is slurring over his words, and you can tell he's got his mouth pressed up against the door because it sounds a little muffled when he speaks, "I'm really sorry."

Peter's shoulders had tensed at the knocks, pulling you closer to his body for the fraction of a second when neither of you knew it was Harry. But once he recognizes the voice, his mouth drops to your shoulder to muffle his laughing. You press your face into his hair to stifle your own, barely able to choke out a sincere, "It's no biggie, Harry. Really!"

"Ya sure? I feel really awful about it. May's... May said I stained the tablecloth too."

"I'm so sure, Harry."

"I can buy you a new shirt. As many-" He pauses to hiccup, "-as many as you want."

"You really don't have to!"

A few seconds later, Harry mumbles, "Are you mad at me?"

You whisper to Peter who is biting his bottom lip to keep from giving himself away, "Is he always like this when he's drunk?"

"After the tequila mellows out," Peter snickers, "he won't let it go until he makes it up to you, you know."

Through the door, you can hear Harry say something like "you really are mad at me" to himself. "Seriously, it's not a big deal, Harry. Look, I've already got a new sweater on and everything!"

You kind of hear Harry's question, but you notice Peter's reaction first. He stiffens, tilts his head toward the door, inhales deep.

The door barely cracks open a hair before Peter's webbed it shut.

The look Peter gives you tells you everything you need to know: Harry doesn't know.

Your mouth falls open as you slip from between Peter and the dresser and rush over to the door. You slip two fingers between the web and the door frame, testing the strength, and the lack of give is impressive. "Uh, sorry Har! I'm not decent right now."

"But you... you said... a new sweater-"

"Yeah, but..." You glance over at Peter for help which ends up being the absolute wrong thing to do. You'd taken your eyes off him during the mere second it took to reach the door, and now he's half naked standing in a pool of red and blue and frantically pulling a shirt over his naked stomach. You stare at the ridges of his abdomen as they flex, and even a little longer after Peter pulls a "You Compute Me <3" t-shirt down over it. He gestures vaguely at you, even as his cheeks go pink watching your eyes dart to his boxers and back up to his face, "...it got on my pants too?"

You hear Harry whine a little, thumping his forehead against the door, "I'm really sorry."

"If you think about it, it's kind of like payback. I spill my drink on you, you spill your drink on me. We're even now." You peek at Peter who's now bent over digging through his drawer for a pair of shorts and force yourself to keep your thoughts elsewhere.

"I'll buy you new pants, too. I'll buy you so many pants."

"The stain isn't even that bad! I'm just spot-cleaning it, really. You can go back to the party."

"Oh... well, I was gonna, but I can't find Pete."

You open your mouth to dig up some reassuring lie when Peter presses himself into your back, snatches the webbing off the door frame, and opens it to reveal a flustered looking Harry on the other side.

Whatever embarrassment he felt over the whole drink ordeal washes away instantaneously. He frowns, blinks, stands upright at once. He stares between you and Peter.

Peter is the first one to say something, "Hey... man. Hey. I'm here. You found me."

Harry raises a finger to point accusingly at you two, but nothing comes out of his mouth for a bit. Like he'd forgotten to say what he was thinking out loud, "Have you been here the whole time?"

You look at Peter. His right hand rests on the small of your back like an awkward prom date, and when he meets your gaze, a nervous laugh tumbles out of his mouth, "Yes... yeah."

Harry's eyes narrow, "Why'd you change clothes?"

"Hot flash."

Both you and Harry give Peter a bewildered look this time. How he'd kept his secret identity a secret this long was truly a plot armor miracle.

"I can take a hint, you know," Harry's demeanor deflates, even though he sounds less sad and more disappointed, "I just wish you guys would've told me you were dating earlier. I know I've been gone but I still wanna be in your life, Pete."

Your heart softens at that. You feel kind of terrible about how clumsily you've all stumbled into this moment. You feel Peter stiffen and swoop in to save him, "No! You've got it all wrong, we're not dating. We just... kissed. For the first time, actually. That's why I didn't let you in at first. It was... you know."

You watch Harry process it for a moment. Then, as if all transgressions had been forgiven, he smiles. With a deep bellow the whole house can hear, Harry turns to yell down the hallway, "That's 20, Leeds! I called it!" He gives you both a fleeting goodbye, throws in a "congrats", and runs downstairs.

You let the door quietly glide shut. Peter runs a hand through his hair, letting out a rough exhale. "So, Harry, one of your best friends since college, doesn't know you're Spider-Man? But I do?"

"It's complicated." Peter groans, "I didn't tell anyone at first. Not MJ, not Ned, not even May. Then it all just kinda happened. With Harry, though... it's not that I don't trust him, I just don't know how to bring it up."

You watch him take a seat on the edge of his bed, dropping his chin in his hand to look at you. You press your back to the door, "Bet him 20 bucks you couldn't crawl on the ceiling?"

Peter snickers, "Nah. I'd bet him 80."

"Speaking of: you wouldn't happen to know anything about that 20 Harry was talking about, would you?"

Peter's cheeks go pink and he drops his head in his hands.

Boldly, you press off the door and saunter over to him, dropping to your knees at his feet and resting your folded arm on one of his legs. He peeks through his fingers to look at you and then quickly closes them again. You tug his chin toward you and his hands have no choice but to fall away, revealing his wobbly, embarrassed smile and the blush that had spread up to his hairline, "Parker." Is all you say.

He tries to hold out and bless him, he's really cute when he tries, but he turns to mush after holding your stare for too long, "The guys thought it'd be funny to make a bet on when I'd... give in."

"Give in? To what?"

Peter wails and throws himself back on the bed dramatically, flopping like a fish. You crawl up onto the bed beside him with a shit-eating grin. He tries to throw his arm over his eyes but you pin his wrist beside his head while he debates between looking at you head-on and staring up at the top bunk, "Hey, don't hide from me," you whine, "tell me."

Peter grumbles something sarcastic under his breath but it hitches when you throw a leg over him, straddling his lower half and blocking his view of the box-spring. You think his pupils blow a bit wider, "To you," Peter's voice is tender now, careful and vulnerable, "I... kind of told everyone I wanted to make a good impression on you. Or a better impression than the last two. And Harry's been teasing me about it all day so I thought I'd just spite him for it and... and then I... put on the suit. And something stupid happens to me when I'm around you, but if I hadn't, I don't know if I would have had the courage to kiss you."

You slip a hand up Peter's chest, "If it makes you feel better," you lean down to peck his lips, "it was a damn good kiss."

"Yeah?" Peter's voice pitches up a little, cracking on the word.

"I've gotta tell the Web-Blog about it now. Full disclosure."

Before you can even giggle about it, Peter has you flipped on your back, pressing his mouth to yours in a dizzying kiss that shuts you right up.

You have not heard from Peter in 12 hours.

For normal couples, 12 hours without speaking wasn't the end of the world. Jobs, family, friends, alone time; it was reasonable—healthy even—for normal couples. 12 hours was nothing.

But you and Peter were not normal, and 12 hours for you was four days in normal couple time.

It had started the night before. Peter had promised he'd swing by for your usual debrief, a little later than usual due to where he'd be patrolling, and you had reassured him it was fine. You'd made tea and prepped the couch for the possible (inevitable) sleep-over, and waited. And waited. At some point, you'd passed out exhausted on the couch thinking that he might swoop in around three a.m. with snacks and an apology, only to wake up hours later to sunrise and nothing. No one. Cold tea and a couch only you slept on.

You'd shot off a text (well-concealed concern, of course) hoping he'd gotten some well-earned sleep after patrol, dancing around the missed date. It was fine, you were sure. It was only eight in the morning and he didn't have a tight schedule like you.

But by the afternoon, there is no response to your text.

You just about gnaw your fingernails off before Jameson recommends you take a walk to gather your bearings, or "you're shaking like my wife's teacup poodle off half a shot of espresso, go somewhere I can't see you."

Halfway down the block and no less nervous than when you left, you call the only person you know who might be of help, "Hey, Ned. Are you busy by any chance?"

"Nah, you caught me on my lunch break. What's up?"

You press your back to a storefront window, letting the city pass you by, "It's Pete. He was supposed to come by last night for our weekly debrief but he didn't show. No text, no call, nothing. And he always does his best to let me know if he can't make it."

"Hm, that's weird. Did you try calling him?"

"I... texted him? Assumed he was just too tired last night and slept off patrol at his place. But it's been a few hours and he still hasn't responded. I didn't wanna seem like a clingy partner if he was just busy but I'm getting worried. You haven't heard from him, have you?"

You can hear Ned's computer chair squeak on the other end as if he'd shot up in his chair. "That's... not like Peter."

Your stomach turns to lead, "Ned, you don't think-"

"Hold on." You hear rapid typing on Ned's end, "I traced his phone back to his apartment." You would ask how he managed to do that so quickly, especially at work, but you supposed you'd rather not know, "He's there for sure. Or his phone is, at least. Log shows he definitely took it with him on patrol."

You frown, "Really?"

"It showed him returning home at one this morning. It's still on. Last location ping was half an hour ago. Doesn't seem like he's used it, though. No calls sent out, no texts either."

"You're scary good at this, Ned."

You can hear the pride in Ned's tone as he types some more, "Look, I'm gonna give him a call and see if he picks up. If he doesn't, I'll head over to his place and see what's going on for myself. I'll let you know if I get anything out of him, alright?"

"Alright. Good. Be careful."

"Hey."

"Hm?" You bite hard into your bottom lip.

"Don't pull an Aunt May on me."

"What's an Aunt May?"

"The whole pretending you're not freaking out when you really are freaking out thing. Classic May."

"Can you blame me, Ned? I'm... I'm new to this. I don't know the protocol for dating a-" You bring a hand up to your mouth to muffle the rest of your sentence, "-vigilante. I don't know what's too much or- or..."

"If it helps, I hear there's no protocol at all. Pretty disorganized system, if you ask me. Many a couple left asunder." You choke on a little laugh, "It's gonna be okay, okay? Peter likes you a lot. It's probably nothing. Don't stress yourself out. I'll talk to you later."

The phone clicks. You feel like you should be surrounded by silence after that but the city bustles about you as if you're not even there. It's overstimulating, but you don't think you'll find much refuge back at the Bugle either.

And you would go, you would if you could. You'd be meeting Ned halfway if you knew where Peter lived but it was embarrassing. You hadn't worked up the courage to ask and Peter had never invited you over, and so now you're stuck on a street corner twiddling your thumbs wondering if your boyfriend might be hurt or worse while you mull over being too forward.

You wait five minutes, but no updates from Ned. 10, and nothing still. A half hour passes and you think you might actually vibrate through the floor with worry when you get a single text from Ned. It's an address.

Jameson hadn't been too happy when you took the rest of the afternoon off, but you'd promised to edit a particularly scathing piece about Spider-Man in exchange and, well, he couldn't say no to that.

As you knocked on the door of apartment 215, you could hear quarreling voices behind it come to a halt. Then, unmistakably, your boyfriend asks, "Who is that?" Your saliva gets stuck in your throat. You have to force down a swallow, the pressure building in your nose and behind your eyes as footsteps draw near to the front door. You hated that this would be the first time you stepped foot into Peter's place: unplanned, uninvited.

Ned is the one to open the door. His disappointment is palpable but very clearly not aimed at you. He blocks the doorway, dropping his voice to a whisper, "I know it's a lot to ask, but please don't panic. Not yet."

What no one had seemed to tell Ned in his 20+ years of living is that prefacing something with "don't panic" often had the opposite effect. Your heart rate spikes. It stutters when Peter calls out your name weakly.

All the swirling fear you'd been bracing for hits you at once. Peter is curled up on his two-seater—a cramped, dingy thing—looking like death itself. He hadn't even taken off the suit fully, the upper half bunched up at his waist like he'd only had the energy to get it down that far. His chest and torso are littered with fresh scars, some more ghastly than others, few hastily covered in a concoction of ointments and bandages that sit in a pile by the couch.

You rush past Ned and collapse on your knees beside it, "Peter?"

He winces. His face is bruised, mottled around the eyes and mouth and nose. His hand shakes as you reach for it.

You turn to Ned, "What happened?"

"Fisk happened," his best friend grumbles, "a lot of Fisk happened, apparently."

You remembered what he'd said about patrol last night. He was over in Hell's Kitchen, checking on some suspicious activity by the rail yard. Your heart jumps in your throat. "Fisk was there?"

Peter lets out a shuttering breath, "Overseeing transport."

You glare at him with more heat than he probably deserves right now, but you're beginning to tremble with rage and you've nowhere to put it, "Did you know Fisk was there?" Peter does not answer. He doesn't even bother to look at you anymore. "Peter."

"I had a chance," he coughs, spit dribbling from the corner of his lip that you quickly blot away with your sleeve, "to catch him in the act."

"He could've killed you!"

Peter can't argue that. You want him to; you want him to tell you that it wasn't so much of a close call. It'd put your mind at ease, keeping every other possible scenario at bay. He can't even do that.

You hover a hand over his cheek but can't bring yourself to touch him, afraid to irritate the bruises there. "I'm taking you to a hospital."

"You can't." Peter and Ned's voices ring out in unison.

"Then we'll take you to... to somewhere. The Avengers facility, some top-secret resort on an island I don't know the name of. Something. Peter, you could've died."

"And I'll heal," you watch Peter press himself up on his elbows, but he wobbles under his own weight and drops back down into the cushions, "it's just gonna take a while."

"Tell him he's being ridiculous, Ned."

Ned frowns from the hallway, arms crossed over his chest, "He is. But he's not going to leave the city. I've... tried."

You bite your lip, "Then what if we get someone down here instead? They come to Peter."

You see the cogs turning in Peter's brain, trying to strum up some kind of excuse, but you're already stealing his phone from the coffee table and scrolling for her contact before Peter can stop you. If you weren't so worried about his health, you'd have hesitated before dialing her number. You jump up from the floor and to your horror, Peter tries to follow you.

He stumbles—of course he does, he's barely able to stand upright—and at the very moment he reaches for your arm, the phone picks up, "Peter? It's been a while. How are you?"

"This isn't Peter, this is... this is a friend of Peter's," Peter's fingers still on your elbow, his chest pressed to your side, and you can feel him struggling to keep his weight off you to stand. Both you and Ned force him down onto his bed. "Listen, I'm sorry to bother you, but he got hurt really bad last night and we could use any help we can get. Is it possible you could send someone over? Anyone who can help?"

"Um," Pepper Potts sounds stunned, "is Peter there? Can I talk to him first?"

You reluctantly hold out the phone to your boyfriend, daring him to ignore the determined look in your eyes. And, to his credit, he does try.

"He's recovering quickly, though it won't be as quick of a turnaround as he's used to. Make sure he takes these every six hours and keep an eye on his liquids," Dr. Said places a bottle in your hand, her tone just barely betraying the exhaustion she feels after working on Peter for hours, "I would recommend no heroing until he's fully recovered, but this isn't my first rodeo."

You wonder how many heroes Dr. Said has fixed up in her time. Pepper had said she'd send over an "expert", though she'd never had the pleasure of working on Peter.

You walk her to the door and lock it behind her when she leaves, and it's only then that you realize the sun has begun to set, the buildings across the street reflecting fleeting sunrays through Peter's living room window. You're careful maneuvering throughout the place: shutting blinds, flipping on lamps, picking up his suit and discarding it in the laundry bin. It's only one room—Peter's apartment—so he watches you the whole time.

You're thinking about what to say now that it's just the two of you (Ned had gone back to work after his lunch break ended), but Peter beats you to it, "I won that," you look at Peter sitting up in bed, then follow his finger to a shelf above his desk scattered with trophies, "at my middle school mathletes competition. The one next to it was for 2nd place at our science fair; I would've won first but the soda dispenser on my ice cream float machine malfunctioned and sprayed root beer in the principal's eye."

You snort, "Pity. You kept the trophy but not the machine?"

"I kept it! It's probably in May's attic buried under my basketball participation trophies." Peter smiles for the first time since you'd gotten here. He pats the bed beside him.

As you crawl into Peter's bed, he tells you about everything else; his rug is from a garage sale (and no, those weren't bloodstains, just a freak accident with tomato paste), he'd had his bed since college but splurged on a new mattress with graduation money, he paid a little less on rent now in exchange for letting the landlord's daughter take his bike to work sometimes (swinging was faster anyway).

The little details end up not being very little. There's so much of him here, packed into this tiny one-bedroom. The half-baked Spidey gadgets scattered across his desk and the science beakers in the kitchen sink... it's so much more than what you imagined.

You curl into Peter, laying flat on your side as he tucks his arm underneath your head. He must've run out of things to point at because it's silent between you both for a good while. The sun has fully set by the time he speaks again, "I wanted this to go differently."

"This?" You mumble.

"This. You coming over for the first time. I would've liked to have... don't know, vacuumed. Changed my sheets. Washed the blood out of my suit," you both laugh at that, "I would've made you dinner. I've got tons of recipes saved on my phone."

"Oh yeah? What would you have made me?"

"Ugh, there was this uh... this pasta chip thing? You boil pasta noodles, season 'em, throw 'em in the air fryer and they come out all crunchy. I would've borrowed May's fryer and went to town."

"That sounds really good actually."

"Yeah, I gotta-" Peter reaches for his phone on the windowsill but stretches himself too hard. You sit up a little to press your hand to his shoulder, worrying over his irritated stitches, and he sinks back into the headboard in defeat, "I gotta show you. Sometime."

Peter is avoiding your eyes but you can see the swirling pools of shame and embarrassment in his. While Dr. Said had worked on his injuries, he had said next to nothing. Just stared at the ceiling, or at her, or at you. It was unnerving. He never passed up an opportunity to joke—especially at his own expense—and yet... "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

Peter winces at your question. Still refusing to look at you, the arm around you tightens and loosens. You brush your fingers against his bandaged cheek and for a second, he instinctively bumps into it. "I didn't want to worry you."

"And Ned? MJ? May? You couldn't tell them either?"

"I... I just needed to sleep it off."

"Pete," You nearly growl his name, enough for him to actually look you in the eyes this time, "don't bullshit me. Not after today."

Peter swallows. He believes your threat unsaid, and buckles, "I'm sorry."

The tightness in your frown softens, "Why?"

Peter laughs but you can tell there's very little humor in it. A defense mechanism, maybe, or his feelings are just that absurd, "I never set out to tell anyone that I was Spider-Man. I mean, I thought about it all the time but it all just kind of... happened. Before May, before Ned, before... Tony, it was just me. If I beat up a bad guy, it was between me and whoever managed to catch it online. If I saved a little old lady, it was between me and her. If I got hurt, it was just me. I learned to handle that."

You think back to what Peter said, about how he'd been Spider-Man since he'd started high school. Imagining a younger Peter—the Peter in those family pictures at May's—beaten to a pulp most nights makes you sick to your stomach. "But you've had Ned, and MJ and May for years. Don't you-" You don't get the chance to finish your question. The look Peter gives you is your answer.

"I love them but they're not... they didn't sign up for this. I did. When I fuck up, it's me. It's just me. It has to be."

"And the other heroes? I'm sure the others would help."

"The others have bigger fish to fry than me," Peter chuckles, "and I swore I would take care of New York. It's my home. So that's what I'm going to do, even if I have to do it alone."

"But you're not alone." You take his free hand in yours, fingers intertwining despite the splint on one finger. "Pete, I'm not asking you to let me out in the field with you in a dollar store knock-off of your suit, I'm asking that you just tell me—tell us when you need help. If things get dicey, say something. I'd rather know than find you in a ditch somewhere because you were too-" and you want to say proud, but you fear it'll burn the wrong way, "-too worried about us worrying. We're here for you. I'm here for you. I care so much about you that I think my heart might explode."

"Whoa, hey," Peter's eyes prickle with tears as he laughs, releasing your hand to cup your cheek, "telling me that kinda proves my point, you know that right?"

You can't help but smile, "I can't help it. You do crazy things to my feelings, Parker."

Peter draws you in for a kiss, then two. Your shoulders sag with the weight of the day and you try your best not to lean into his bruised shoulder. "I'm sorry. I should've sucked it up and said something. Ignoring you was a jackass move."

"Yeah. It was."

"I'm really sorry."

"I forgive you."

Peter's eyelashes flutter open but he keeps your noses pressed against each other, "You wanna sleep over?"

You raise an eyebrow, even as your heart accelerates, "Easy there, tiger. Make me dinner first."

Peter wiggles his injured hand against your cheek, "Uh, chef's on sabbatical. Will takeout suffice?"

You press a kiss to his nose. "Sounds good to me, handsome."

#peter parker x reader #peter parker scenarios #peter parker fic #peter parker fluff #peter parker #spiderman x reader #spiderman scenarios #spiderman fic #spiderman fluff #spider-man #tom holland spiderman #marvel #mjwrites #pp; small favor

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changingplumbob · 2 months

Text

York Household: Chapter 9, Part 6

Back at home while Deanna does university work Paris invites a friend over to have a heart to heart.

The Yorks are Italian so if you see them using words that don't look like English it's Italian, or what google assures me is Italian. Caro/Cara: Dear Buongiorno: Good morning Piccolo: Little one Tesoro: Treasure Nonno: Grandfather Nonna: Grandmother Si: Yes Grazie: Thank you Per Favore: Please Buon Compleanno: Happy Birthday

Following their date Deanna goes and begins refining her presentation. Paris however, calls up a friend.

…

Noe: So what did you need to talk about and why aren’t you talking to Deanna

Paris: You know I’m not the brightest. I need to sort through my thoughts and I need to do it with someone that isn’t wanting me to come up with a specific answer

Noe: A sounding board? I can do that

Paris: Lately I’ve been wondering who I am… and that lead me to wondering what Deanna sees in me

Noe: Really not seeing why you shouldn’t be asking her

Paris: Because she’ll brush me off. But you know how we met

Noe: Yeah you were staring at her in class teary eyed cause what’s his face called you PP because Paris Pearl

Paris: *sarcastically* Thanks for the reminder

Noe: I’m just saying I remember

Paris: But she came over, wanted to cheer me up and make me smile. I love her for that. Then when I told her my parents had died she did everything she could to bring me into your friend group and this family so I wouldn’t be alone

Noe: You say that like it’s a problem

Paris: I think… I think she sees me as a princess who needed saving. Someone who couldn’t help themselves, so she helped. And I’m grateful, really, but I worry she doesn’t know who I am beyond that. I’m worried I don’t know either

Noe: I’m not a relationship expert but you sound like you’re thinking of breaking up because of what you’re assuming she’s thinking. Paris, you can’t know what someone else is thinking

Paris: Maybe not but I know I need to figure out who I am. What I like or don’t like. And…

Noe: And what?

Paris: *sadly* And I have the awful feeling I can’t do that if I stay here

Noe: Oh…

Paris: Watcher it sounds worse saying it out loud

Noe: Hey, hey. No it doesn’t. I mean…

Paris: See why I didn’t choose to talk to Reece about it either

Noe: Yeah, they’re thick as thieves. Are you sure you can’t figure it out here? You’ve got a neat set up and sims that care about you

Paris: A bird can’t learn to fly if it stays in the nest

Noe: And you say you’re not bright

Paris: *laughs awkwardly* Maybe I am more than I think. Just another reason to... go

Noe: Look, you’re my friend. I want you happy. I want De happy to but if you feel like you need to leave it's better to do it now than five years down the line… just have a plan before you make the leap okay

Outside Deanna is doing her best to sort the board out. She’s hoping if she works in the sun she can tan but I have my doubts. Slowly the board begins to look more organised. She finishes, or thinks it’s finished, just before she needs to leave for her afternoon classes. Time to learn!

Paris scours the internet for information. She has some money left from her parents, enough to travel somewhere for a bit. To learn to take care of herself. To learn what she can do. She finds a small town in France that is hiring seasonal workers. Accommodation is included and they get weekends off. Deanna was right about her being creative, surely she could explore that there.

Paris: Aaron?

Aaron: Yes Paris? Are you okay? You look pale. Not Deanna pale but still

Paris: I just wanted to say thank you. For everything you’ve done for me

Aaron: Of course. Deanna loves you and I’m always happy to help others

Paris: Seriously. You gave me time away from that horrible foster home, even springing me out early. And you’ve let me stay here and be part of your family. I need you to know I'm grateful

Aaron: I’m sure your parents would want someone looking out for you

Paris: But I wonder if they... would want me looking out for me

Aaron: Sorry you’ve lost me

Paris: I’m leaving. Leaving here and… leaving Deanna

Aaron says something Italian that Paris can’t follow and she looks down ashamedly.

Paris: I’m sorry. I just… I need to… *cries*

Aaron: *sighs* Paris, it’s okay

Paris: *sniffles* What?

Aaron: *softly* Calista and I were serious when we agreed to be your temporary guardians. You lost your parents, far younger than anyone should have to. They’re not here to guide you but Calista and I promised to do our best. Neither of us knew what to do after high school, who we were. It took traveling outside our comfort zone to find out. I understand the need to go search for yourself. I'm sorry if you feel like you can't do it with Deanna. I do love my daughter so... can I ask one thing? Por favore, tell Deanna yourself

Paris: Oh I left a note-

Aaron: No Paris. Let me be a parent on this, for you and her. You’ve been part of each other’s lives for years. As afraid as you are of telling her, you’ll hurt more if you don’t. Talk to her, explain, you’ll have less regrets. And if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that you parents wouldn’t want you gathering regrets at your age

Paris sniffles and nods. Before she can head back inside Aaron pulls her into a hug.

Aaron: *softly* your parents would be proud of you for doing the brave thing, being honest and taking a risk

Paris: *sobbing softly* I miss them so much

Aaron: I know. But you'll find them in you as you find yourself, I know from experience

Paris lets go and heads back to the side cottage. Aaron looks after her feeling torn. He likes her, and part of him wanted to convince her to stay to stop Deanna being hurt. But he needs to think about what’s best for both girls, as a lawyer he takes being her temporary guardian seriously.

Joey: What you doing out here

Aaron: Huh? Oh, Joey. I’m glad you’re here. Can you stay for dinner

Joey: Ma just said she had more knitting for me, Devin's going to make me a plate back home

Aaron: Please. I have a feeling Deanna’s going to want to see you

After a long few hours of lectures and note taking Deanna gets home and heads for her part of the property.

Paris: You’re here

Deanna: It is my house

Paris: Look I need to… this probably won’t be easy to hear

Deanna: Don’t tell me you’re pregnant

Paris: What? No De, I’m not pregnant. I’m trying to be serious

Deanna: I’m listening

Paris: I need to go. To go find out who I am. So I’m leaving. My bags are packed and my flight is booked.

Deanna: Wait you’re just going on a trip? Did you think it would be hard for me to hear because I’m stuck with study? Relax baby. The internet exists, it’ll be easy enough to stay in touch

Paris: Babe... De... We won’t be staying in touch

Deanna: Wait *softly* what are you saying?

Paris: I’ve had some doubts for a while, that you love me for what I am, a sim that needed help, more than who I am

Deanna: What? That’s not true

Paris: Then name one thing you love about me that doesn’t have to do with how I look, or you looking after me

Deanna: You can’t just put me on the spot and expect an answer! What if I asked you that about me? Could you answer?

Paris: Yes. *softly* I love how kindhearted you are, you like to help everyone. You were so proud of getting Reece and Samir talking again. You’re clever. You look at mechanical marvels and figure out how they work and how to take them apart. There is no answer for why you love me because I don’t even know who I am *sniffles* I need to go find it and I need to learn how to be independent

Deanna: *sniffles* I don’t get a say in it?

Paris: It’s for the best. In the long run... it will be for the best

Deanna: Baby don’t say that!

Deanna: I love you and you love me *sniffles* There’s no reason to abandon that

Paris: I’m sure you think that, I thought that, for a long time *sniffles* But I’m going De, you'll be okay and I... I need this

Deanna: You... break my heart while I'm struggling though university and expect me to carry on? How can I be okay?

Paris: *sniffles* I know you will carry on because you’re surrounded by love. That just... it can’t include me anymore. Your pa understands. I hope with time you’ll be able to understand to

Deanna: You’ve talked to my pa about this? *softly* How long have you been planning to abandon me?

Paris: I only told him this afternoon. I had left you a note but he said I needed to tell you in person. As much as this conversation hurts it’s one we needed to have rather than me vanishing

Deanna: You may be right about that *sniffles* but that’s the only thing you’re right about

Deanna: I love you. But if you think you need something out there that I can’t give you then it is probably best you leave

Deflated Deanna turns away from Paris and heads to the main house, tears forming in her eyes. Sensing the perfect moment to be evil Kelly appears in front of Paris.

Kelly: Hey you. You know I never liked you right

Paris: Yes Kelly, I know that

Kelly: And... I’m glad you’re leaving. In fact, I hope that you die in a car crash just like your parents in the forever save. Although they’ll probably be so embarrassed that they had such a boar for a daughter that they'll refuse to talk to you

Paris: Woah

Kelly: Leave before I fill your bags with things they will throw you in prison for trying to fly with. If you EVER try to mess with my sister again I will find a way to kill you slowly. I’ve always wanted to see what cutting flesh is like *whispers* and they will never find you

Paris: I’m leaving. Bye Kelly

Kelly: Unsafe travels

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#sims 4 #the sims #the sims 4 #simblr #My sims #ChangingPlumbobStorytime #R0901 #ParisPearl #DeannaYork #AaronYork #KellyYork #JoeyYork

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