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anakinisvaderisanakin · 3 years

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Binary Sunset (AU post RotS, Beru Lars gets an unexpected visit and has to make a tough choice regarding her nephew)

“Who are you?”

Beru reared back, attempting to put as much distance as possible between herself whomever this thing was, staring her down with cold dead eyes.

“I have come for my son,” the figure said, its voice deep and monotone and distinctly male.

Glancing behind herself into the sleeping quarters of the homestead, she saw that the infant child was still asleep in his cradle. She made sure not to give away his location, but when she turned her attention back to the intruder, her heart was already sinking. He had not moved. In fact, he might have been taken for a statue, had it not been for the loud wheezing breaths of a respiratory device of some kind. The man bore a cape, as black as the uniform full body suit and armour covering him. It danced in the twilight wind, as the two suns glowed behind him like red orbs. Their intense heat seemed insignificant, compared to the burning hatred Beru could feel from the man’s covered eyes.

“I don’t know your son.”

“Is that so.”

His mask gave nothing away, stoic, resembling a human skull. His words seemed a statement, rather than a question, as if he was making a mental note of her defensiveness. Tall, broad shouldered, menacing. Beru hoped she came off as genuine, but when he took a step towards her, she felt the primal urge to run inside, grab the child and flee.

“There is a child in your sleeping quarters,” said the man, after a long, chilling silence despite the sunlight still spilling in orange hues over the sand dunes. “He is not yours.”

“He is!” Beru heard herself growl, shocked by how possessive she had become of the little one in such a short span of time. “He is mine!”

“He is not. You may have taken him in as next of kin, but he is not yours to claim.”

Beru clenched her jaw, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder at the cradle. He was still blissfully unaware, swept in a soft duvet as he cooed in his sleep. Even over the persisting hissing of the intruder’s breathing, she focused on the child.

Luke. Precious little Luke, destined for so much more than life as a poor moisture farmer. Face set hard, Beru made sure to place herself in the middle of the doorway, just outside the threshold. She would not back down, whatever that decision would entail. The ex-Jedi who had delivered him might have grander plans, plans this stranger might be involved with, but she wanted the boy safe. On Tatooine, if he was taught to fend for himself, to steer clear of Jawas, Tusken raiders and womp rats, he might become an ordinary young man some day. Without the mystical sorcery his father had fallen prey to luring him in.

“He is mine. We have adopted him, we are his only living relatives. He has no one else.”

Beru hoped she sounded genuine to the menace, hoped she was appealing to some sort of sympathy or compassion behind the threatening visage. When he spoke, his tone was even deeper than before, a rumble rivalling that of any fully grown krayt dragon.

“Do not lie to me,” he warned, and moved so suddenly Beru couldn’t help but gasp in mixed horror and startlement.

But all he did was raise one arm, letting the open palm hover midair, facing the woman’s face. She blinked, confusion seeping in - and then her head exploded from within. She flinched, as a sharp pain ground its way into her temples. The ache travelled down her spine, a loud ringing in her ears overpowering any senses as her vision went bright white - shutting out both the mysterious visitor and the binary sunset. She whimpered, her own hands flying up to cover her ears. She wanted to scream, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes as she thought what felt like an ice pick being drilled right through her brain.

And then, it was gone. As if it had never been there to begin with. Unable to control her sobs, her legs gave out beneath her and she sank to the ground. She panted, terrified of the man before her, of the agonizing headache returning. She could not explain it, but there was no doubt in her mind that the two were connected. The stranger had hurt her without laying a finger on her, if he was able to do that, what else was he capable of? If she had been wary before, now she was terrified.

“I - I am… not lying,” she managed to whisper, voice hoarse and unsteady.

“No. You are not.”

Surprisingly, the man agreed as he let his hand fall to his side. A wave of relief washed over Beru, but she was not prepared to build her hopes up that he may show her mercy and leave her and Luke alone. Luke needed to stay here, for his own safety. The Jedi had promised her he would keep them safe, and she had promised to love Luke as her own son. That meant defending him as if he were.

“You are not lying. You know only what Kenobi has taught you.”

Beru wiped her face with her sleeve as best she could, hoisting herself into an upright position with one hand pressed to the clay wall by her side. She clung to it for support, but through her watery eyes she saw that the stranger seemed more resolute, his stance more determined. She trembled, but stood her ground.

“I won’t speak of it. Not to you. Not to anyone. He warned us of strangers.”

“Kenobi is a liar and a traitor to the Empire, as are all Jedi. Would it be beneath an attempted murderer to lie?”

The stranger’s voice bore the same, mechanical character but it was sharper now, like a bark. Beru felt the hatred from before had returned, but didn’t seem to be directed at her. The way the man said ‘Kenobi’ revealed everything about whom the loathing was aimed at.

“I don’t understand,” the woman shook her head, cold sweat still soaking her forehead and she wiped her brow with her sleeve.

“He told you the child has no living relatives, did he not?”

Beru’s eyes widened, before suspicion crept back in. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, willing herself to restrain herself from shedding any more tears. Even though she was still breathless, still shivering, still afraid.

“I never said it was him,” she settled for, as her retort.

“I am warning you to play along, or I may need to apply different methods to assure your complacency,” was the reply, and the man raised his hand again.

The threat was enough, and Beru shook her head vehemently, arms coming up to shield herself from another head splitting, intrusive mental assault. What she had assumed before was true, he had been controlling whatever power had tormented her senses. How? Why? Nothing made sense, but she believed him and that was enough.

“You are wiser than most. Fetch the child.”

“What?” the woman croaked, all the blood draining from her face as the intent behind the demand hit her.

“Fetch. The. Child,” he repeated, this time using his raised arm to point his finger at the doorway.

Only a sliver of pink and orange sunlight remained on the horizon. Owen wouldn’t be back in several hours. Beru hesitated, unwilling to comply, but found she could not resist. She could either obey, or protest and get herself killed. The stranger would take Luke away either way, she already knew that.

Stubborn tears welled back up in her eyes, blurring her vision as she slipped back into the primary living area of their homestead. Passing through another low doorway, she approached the cradle cautiously. She didn’t want to wake the child, didn't want to frighten him. Hushing him, or perhaps herself and her own soft sniffles, she picked the little bundle up. Beru made sure Luke was neatly wrapped in his duvet as she cradled him to her chest, rocking her arms gently when it seemed he might wake up. She breathed a sigh of relief when he settled back down, cooing and letting out a soft snore. Swallowing hard, Beru kept her head low and kept her gaze steady on the blonde tuft of hair on Luke’s head where it stuck out from underneath his pajamas.

Not until she had crossed the threshold, relying solely on her periphery and memory, did she tear her eyes away from the infant. The intruder hadn’t moved an inch, the now chilly, crisp air biting at Beru’s tears streaked cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was soft but defiant.

“If you want him, you’ll have to go through me first.”

“It would be foolish of you to presume I wouldn’t,” he simply stated, his tone matter of fact.

“He’s my boy.”

Once again, Beru hoped he had a heart somewhere behind the exterior facade of menace. Beyond those strange, terrifying powers he had displayed.

“He is not. The child belongs with his father,” said the man.

“The child’s father is dead. So is his mother. I and Owen are the only family he has left, he has no one else. He means nothing to you, whoever you are. He means the world to me.”

“Then, we have something in common,” stated the stranger, and it took Beru a tad too long to understand what he meant.

“I… don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. Not Kenobi, not you,” she felt the weight of realization as something began to dawn on her, but refused to voice it and see it confirmed.

The man shifted then, stalking closer with a couple of long strides. As he moved closer, Beru tipped her head back, staring up at his frightening stature but unwilling to turn away, for fear of what he might do if she lost an ounce of focus. He seemed much more focused on the bundle in her arms, however, and she instinctively held the child closer to her body for protection. The man was huge, towering over her, looming like a hungering predator ready to strike. The lenses of the mask he wore were a deep, crimson red, she noticed now. The colour filled her with dread, entrancing as she watched him peer in what could have come across as stunned silence at the peacefully slumbering infant. One the man’s large, gloved hands came up to reach for the boy, and Beru almost yelped in fear.

But instead of harming Luke with just a look, Beru was shocked to see the man touch the infant’s chubby little cheek with an unearned, unexpected tenderness. It was just a simple, gentle graze of fingertips, and a smile pulled at the corners of the child’s lips. He was still asleep, but he cooed something intelligible, one tiny hand reaching for the stranger’s index finger. The stranger seemed cautious, and Beru almost believed he was concerned, maybe even scared of accidentally hurting the boy.

“Kenobi would rather have you believe the child’s parents had perished,” said the stranger, but his attention was still single handedly on the infant.

“Where else would they be? Kenobi told us the Jedi order had been executed, framed for high treason. He told us Anakin Skywalker died with the rest of his kind.”

“They were not framed, they were the instigators. But I am not here to discuss politics that may result in your immediate execution, and neither should you.”

The threatening note to the man’s voice was back, and Beru pinched her lips tightly together. She knew by now that Luke’s life had never been on the line, not given how carefully the stranger was interacting with the sleeping form. Her life, however, was still in mortal peril - and perhaps Owen’s was, too.

“The fact still stands,” Beru dared to say, bracing herself. “That Anakin is dead, and Luke has no one but us.”

“Luke…”

The name was said so gently, so softly that Beru almost thought she had imagined it. Despite the harsh diction, the flat delivery seemed so genuine and heart felt. Gaze darting between the intruder’s mask, and Luke’s pleased expression as the man let him close his little fist around his finger, the suspicion only grew stronger in its persistence.

“Yes. Luke. His mother named him before she died, Kenobi said. Unless that was another lie,” the woman trailed off.

“She did believe you were a boy,” mused the man, almost wistful as he seemed to be speaking directly to the small child.

Still, the words left an impression. A cold, gnawing sensation settled at the pit of Beru’s belly; clawing its way up into her chest cavity where it remained, desperately grinding from the inside as if attempting to force itself out. There was something eerie and uncanny about the stranger, something distinctly familiar. Familiar, yet foreign. Known, yet unknown. She peered down at the infant in her arms, the love she had developed for the little boy overpowering, overwhelming her. Then, she ignored the alarm bells at the back of her mind, the voices screaming at her to resist the urge. Instead, she slowly held the baby out in front of her, face set hard and throat tight as a lump settled at the base. The ball of tears rose, until her eyes were once more brimming with tears.

The stranger eyed her with what could only be perplexed confusion, as if he was in disbelief that she would entrust him with the child. She remained motionless, as he seemed to be weighing his options. Then, with stilted, jerky motions, he lifted both arms. He reached for the bundle, and with caution as if the boy was made of glass, as if he were so fragile he might break at the simplest touch, the stranger accepted him. The scene was ridiculous; a man looking like the reaper himself had come straight from a galactic battlefield while shielding the very icon of innocence in his grasp.

“You said his Anakin isn’t dead. If he’s alive, then where is he?” Beru said, and the calm, collected manner in which she delivered those words surprised even her.

The stranger said nothing, but he did look at her.

A long, pregnant silence fell as the darkness of night finally settled over the farm, and the Lars’ homestead. Beru wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, blinking back the tears pooling in her eyes. She had wanted him to say it, to verbally verify and confirm what she suspected. It was impossible to deny, as she studied the wonder and amazement with which the stranger regarded Luke. What surprised her most, though, was when he hid the child close against his chest, and held her gaze. She felt his stare burning into her soul, his presence no less imposing than it had been when he first appeared.

Beru found she couldn’t speak. She had nothing to say, and even if she did, it would have made no difference. She understood, and took a step back as she nodded at him, encouraging him with a mournful smile. He was dangerous, that much she could tell. The stranger was vicious, ruthless, and cruel. But he held a tremendous fondness for this child, and in that, Beru could see herself. In that, Beru found the strength to acknowledge that the stranger was, in fact, no stranger at all. Even as he turned his back, cape billowing behind him while he began to trudge through the sand in a direction only he knew where it might lead, Beru was certain that the man would keep Luke safe.

As the man grew smaller in the distance, Beru allowed herself to weep again, watching her nephew disappear into the ice cold desert night. Still, something nagged at her compelled her to make a bargain in turn. Not that she had anything to offer, but she was convinced the man who was not a stranger would be inclined to agree.

“Promise me Luke will be safe with you!”

The intruder halted. Sand whirled around his boots, starlight bouncing off the man’s domed helmet as a gleaming beacon of hope in the darkness. She sensed an odd, reluctant sort of foreboding but stood her ground. He did not speak, but he didn’t have to. She knew the answer and she knew he would not have come this far if he didn’t have the intention to keep the boy out of harm’s way. She didn’t know the man well, never had, but she knew Luke. Shutting her eyes, Beru accepted the silence as the confirmation she had been looking for. She had been left alive, living to tell the tale. She knew he had come to kill her, she didn’t understand how, but somehow it was clear. Somehow, Luke would be okay. The man needed the infant, more than the infant needed him. It was the next right thing to do.

“Thank you, Anakin.”

Beru couldn’t be certain, but something told her Luke had a better chance at the kind of life he was meant for in the hands of his father.

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You all knew where this was going, haha. I did intend to post this as another installment of Mask of Death but I’m not sure I should throw a non-canon compliant chapter in there as all others have been as compliant as fanfics can be. Let me know whether I should make an exception for this one or not!

I’m a sucker for dad!Vader and baby!Luke.

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yubsie · 3 years

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Something in the Air

Summary: Hera has her own ways of knowing how Kanan is feeling. Or, five times Kanan's pheromones were a problem and one time they weren't.

Notes: Okay. So this one actually seems like I should explain myself.Victory's Price casually mentioned Hera detecting human pheromones in the middle of a Zoom meeting. This has certain implications. And then Rogue Podron screamed "Fanfic prompt! Yubsie!" in the middle of an episode.Never underestimate my willingness to write fanfiction on a dare.

Rating: T

AO3 Link: Should you prefer

1. Attraction

Hera knew that Kanan was attracted to her when she invited him on board. She thought she knew what she was getting herself into.

She wasn’t quite ready for him being attracted to her when all the air circulated within the ship. Maybe she could improve the filters in the life support system. She hadn’t really thought about human pheromones when she was setting the standard parameters.

The flirting was one thing. It was entertaining enough some days, even if she had far too much work to do

It was the realization that he was still attracted to her when he wasn’t flirting that was going to drive her up the wall. They were just supposed to be eating breakfast. The basic porridge accompanied by their vastly different mugs of caf might just be the least sensual meal imaginable.

And yet, every pheromone screamed that he was thinking about her.

She wanted to say something. But what could he do? It wasn’t like he had conscious control over any of this. She could send him to take a shower, but that wouldn’t help for long.

The fact that he wasn’t flirting meant he was trying to avoid turning mealtime into an awkward situation. He couldn’t help that every pore betrayed where his true attention lay right now.

“We’ve got a job today.” Hera took another bite of the porridge. Maybe if she just focused on how incredibly beige the cooked grain was it would get both of them back down to a sensible level.

“What are we looking at?”

“Imperial fuel delivery. Should be enough to keep us flying for a few standard months and still pass on plenty to my contact.” And, of course, the further advantage of making life just a little bit more complicated for the Empire. A delivery that made this much of a difference for them was barely a rounding error to the Empire as a whole, but they were particular about these sorts of things. The local despot would still have some accounting to do for this. It might slow him down a bit.

“We hitting them in orbit?”

Hera shook her head. “We’ll be taking the Phantom down. They’ll be vulnerable in transit.”

In open air. She hadn’t planned it for this reason, but she was going to take advantage. Set the scrubbers to run an extra cycle

2. Discomfort

There weren’t many good places for a clandestine meeting on this planet—none of their usual seedy cantinas or crowded marketplaces. The spaceport wasn’t the bustling sort of place where they could do a drop in passing.

But the Empire did so like building its museums. They had a vested interest in spreading around their particular version of history. The local populace was encouraged to visit to learn the splendor of their overlords. And conveniently enough for people who were barely scraping by as a very small rebel cell, admission was free of charge for all to come learn.

She didn’t need to pick up the pheromones to know that Kanan was uncomfortable. She’d done her best to arrange the meeting as far from any Empire Day-related exhibits as she could but... it wasn’t that big a museum. He hadn’t said much when the date crept by last month, but it troubled him enough to know this was a bad idea. Who in the galaxy didn’t have their share of scars if they were old enough to remember that time?

“If you’re not feeling well, I can do this one on my own.” Having a crewmate had definitely made a lot of things go smoother, but she’d done missions on her own before. She could get out of this situation if she had to.

“No, I want to have your back. I’ll be okay.”

Every subtle signal in the atmosphere said otherwise. She was getting used to ignoring every indication that he was attracted to her. That managed to fade into generic background radiation for their lives. This feeling wasn’t just new, it was more intense. “Look, I can read you too.” She didn’t know how often he actually used the Force for that. Certainly it had been months since she’d seen him do anything flashy, but pheromones only told her so much.

Kanan sighed. “I’m not saying I like it here. But I’m not going to leave you hanging.”

“Then I’m going to need you to actually focus.” It wasn’t the first time she wished she could just send him to take a long shower. That was an even less practical solution than usual

“Let’s just get in and out.”

Hera scanned the room again, looking for the most boring exhibit possible. There had to be something full of dull economic numbers instead of numbers that turned painful events into dry figures.

The glorious cabbage industry of this planet was just what she needed. She rested a hand on his elbow and pointed him over. As an added bonus, it wasn’t very popular.

“Don’t look at any of this. Just look at me.” Maybe she could get him back to being attracted to her. That seemed to be more or less his default state. Change the balance of the feelings. “Talk to me. About anything.”

3. Anger

The seedy cantinas had problems of their own, but she was used to them. She wouldn’t have needed pheromones to be on guard against the men in these places. She knew what they saw her as. She could handle them, she’d handled them plenty of times.

It was nice to have someone else along with her though. Sitting at a table and discussing podracing while waiting for the contact to approach was a definite improvement over sitting at the bar and fending off advances.

“It’s all about having the engines perfectly in tune.” It wasn’t Kanan’s preferred form of entertainment, but he was managing to say something that sounded like he actually paid attention and wasn’t just choosing a topic of conversation that sounded innocuous to prying ears.

He was wrong, but that was perfectly acceptable in a cover story. She wasn’t going to let him just keep being wrong, though. It wouldn’t look good, for one thing. “It’s about the pilot. Give a novice too much machine and they won’t be able to handle it.”

The two humans who approached weren’t interested in subtlety. “I like a girl who knows her racing.”

Hera suppressed a sigh. This might be the usual setting for meeting their contacts, but these situations were always going to be annoying. “Not interested.” She’d been dealing with this her entire adult life and for a few years before that. Every Twi’lek girl was warned about it from a young age.

She didn’t need the stink in the air to tell her what brought them over to this table. Just eyes to see the way they both leered. “Come on sweetheart, you can do better than him.”

“Not interested.” Telling them he wasn’t along like that would only make them more persistent.

“Ah, come on. We all know you girls are just looking for the right man. Place like this, you’re looking at him.”

She was ready for most of what she faced in a cantina like this. But she suddenly realized this hadn’t happened since Kanan had joined the crew. She suddenly detected a set of pheromones behind her that she’d never felt from Kanan before.

She’d experienced Kanan irritated plenty of times. But never angry.

“I’m just here for a drink. Which I have.” She rested a hand on Kanan’s arm. She didn’t think he’d do anything rash but.... this was new. Very new.

“I’ll get you a drink.”

Like she was ever going to take a drink from a strange man in a seedy cantina. Twi’lek girls were taught about that one from the time they could speak. They had to be.

She was used to it. Kanan wasn’t. “The lady has her drink.” She could see his hand twitch into a fist from the corner of her eye.

She should have prepared him better for this. Made a plan. Because right now, what she was sensing in the air was enough to make her want to punch someone. That would just mean leaving without the information. She kept her hand on her drink (just good sense) and pulled closer to Kanan. “I’ve got this,” she whispered.

They were particularly irritating, but she just needed to fend them off until their contact showed. That meant making sure she and Kanan weren’t the ones the bartender wanted gone. She’d need to get another drink eventually just to make it worth the owner’s while, but she’d navigated this situation countless times.

“You’re really picking him? There’s better quality humans all over this place.”

It shouldn’t matter if she was picking Kanan or picking to sit and drink in peace. But she needed them gone.

The sense of anger wasn’t going down. Maybe she could solve two problems at once. She slipped into Kanan’s lap, draping herself over him in an altogether familiar way. She felt the ripple of surprise through his entire body at the move. “I really am.”

Kanan pulled her drink closer to them. Very thoughtful. And she could be pretty sure he wasn’t about to start any barfights with her sitting on top of him.

“If you don’t mind, we’re busy.”

There were other pheromones in play now, but maybe she didn’t mind those ones so much after all.

4. Fear

They spent so much time getting into fights in dark alleys. It was one of the true constants of their relationship, from the very beginning. It should almost start to feel routine.

All they could do was duck. Fire. Duck again. Get another shot off.

Hera would have preferred the handoff go smooth, but a lot of things happened that didn’t necessarily align with her preferences. She could still keep the situation under something resembling control. Or at least she could keep her head.

The actual job was already done; that should count as a win. They didn’t have any suspicious packages on them. By all rights, they shouldn’t even be the interesting targets right now.

And yet. They were the ones getting shot at.

“I don’t think these guys like us, Spectre One.” They didn’t look like they were Empire. Not directly, anyway. So maybe they’d personally annoyed them somehow.

“Getting that impression, Spectre Two.” Kanan rolled behind a large trash bin and kept firing back.

They needed to find a way out of here. Hera backed as far behind cover as she could manage and pulled out her commlink. “Chop, we need a pickup five minutes ago!”

Chopper warbled some rude comments about the nature of linear time, but she trusted him to get over there as fast as actually possible.

Meanwhile, their opponents kept closing in. Did they just want them dead, was that what this was about?

Bounty hunters would want them alive. There weren’t any specific bounties on them last any of their seedier contacts had heard, but the Empire would always pay to get their hands on rebels. People who couldn’t cut it up against the big name targets might want to go to this much trouble.

Or they could have just stolen the cargo and gotten a much easier payday. Their plan didn’t make a lot of sense, and yet it was still making things incredibly difficult. “Persistent.”

They could analyze the motivations once they survived this.

A blaster bolt flew way too close to of her lekku and she had to dive on top of Kanan to avoid it. For all the flirting she never had to worry about him taking anything the wrong way in a fire fight. They both knew where they stood when they were in mortal peril. Everything got simpler then.

So she wasn’t expecting any pheromone spikes, no matter how cozy they’d just gotten. He did have some sense of the right moment and this was about as far as it could get from that.

They’d had plenty of time to get used to being around each other since Kanan first came on board. Kanan attracted was just a reality now.

Kanan afraid was brand new. “I’m okay. We’re both okay.”

She moved quickly, shooting back at their charming pursuers. She tried to push everything else out of her mind.

Chopper needed to hurry up.

5. Attraction, Again

The seedy cantinas were never a particularly pleasant experience, but at least they were familiar. Hera knew what they were getting into, knew the dangers and how to blend in.

These fancier events were foreign territory for both of them. The people who attended them were just as dangerous as the ones at the seedy cantinas, but they sparkled. They would still kill you if you were in their way, but they were never quite so honest as just a blaster in a back alley.

At least in the seedy cantinas, she got to wear comfortable clothes. She belonged in a flightsuit. Too bad that would make it look like she was some sort of rebel interloper here to cause trouble at the party.

Which was ridiculous; she was just a rebel interloper here to collect an intelligence drop at the party.

Fancy people at fancy parties wore slinky dresses. And if they were rebel interlopers, they tried to make sure the length could tear free to get her knees available to run in an emergency.

She could tell that Kanan was uncomfortable before he even made it out of his cabin. At least that made two of them. They’d had to borrow the formalwear from their contact. It was the right look, even if they were going to feel ridiculous the entire time.

And then he actually saw her and the pheromones became overwhelming.

“You look...” The way that men looked at her at the fancy parties would be the same as at the seedy cantinas. But coming from Kanan, she knew it was all genuine.

It was still going to be incredibly distracting. More so than from anyone else. “Like I wandered off from somewhere else.”

“I’m just saying. I’d never ask you to wear this getup, but you pull it off .” The look in his eyes finished that sentence just fine.

“You don’t look half bad yourself, you know.” Was that as distracting in the Force as the scent of human pheromones in the air were for her?

Could she even really blame it on the pheromones when she would have been interested anyway? There was more than one reason to want out of these ridiculous outfits right now.

“Trust me, no one is going to be looking at me.” Which was, of course, part of the plan. Keep every nefarious eye on her while Kanan actually took care of the handoff. She wasn’t above exploiting those exasperating tendencies wherever she went. It was a good plan. She just wanted it to be over with.

“And that is why I need you to focus .” If only so she could focus.

She was fully prepared to ditch these ridiculous shoes if she had to. Boots weren’t going to fit this look at all. Until this actually went south, she had Kanan playing the gallant escort, helping her up the step while she wrangled the skirt.

She assumed the way that he flexed his fingers after letting go was meant to be some part of the act. Kriff, that man could make it hard to focus on a job. How was he going to get anything done if he was projecting such an overwhelming feeling into the atmosphere?

The Force probably could do that. You certainly didn’t hear stories about the great Jedi getting distracted from their mission by a pretty face or a set of legs. They must train for it.

She, on the other hand, hadn’t. Especially not for tuning out attraction from someone she actually did feel the same toward.

“Focusing. Thinking about nothing but boring things. TPS Reports. The colour beige. That terrible holoseries Zeb loves. X-Wing fuel consumption rates.”

Not exactly sweet nothings, but having him whisper irritation in her ear was the most thoughtful thing he could have done in the moment. Endearing, but she could work with that.

And One Time They Weren't

The job had not gone well. By any stretch of the imagination. It was going to be one hell of a debriefing to work out all the specific ways it had gone wrong because she couldn’t just write “everything” in her report and call it a day. It was accurate, but it wasn’t useful.

The intel was bad. The Empire was ready for them. Their contact wasn’t where they were supposed to be. Even the weather had suddenly turned against them. Someone not her was going to have to figure out the particulars of how all of that had managed to happen at once.

For now, she just needed the kids to stop fighting. Bad enough that they were crawling through the mud trying to get back to the Ghost, it didn’t need to happen with a soundtrack. It probably wasn’t anything any of them had done that was behind all this. The mission had been doomed going in.

“You didn’t have to tackle me into the mud puddle!” Zeb did look quite the fright with his fur standing on end. She was going to have to give him first dibs on the shower, he was worse off than the rest of them.

“I could tell Sabine’s bomb was going off too soon, you’re welcome for keeping you from getting blown up!” Ezra said.

“I told you to get clear!” Sabine yelled.

Hera pinched the bridge of her nose. “All of you stop. We got through it. That’s what matters.” Not asking the kids to help with the report, that was for sure. She didn’t need their theories on who’s specific fault it was. “Go get cleaned up.”

It was going to be a pain to get the seats clean again, but she needed to get them in the air and out of here before any more company showed up. If the kids didn’t stop squabbling soon, she would set them to scrubbing it down. Or possibly the entire ship. With toothbrushes.

At least their unexpected company didn’t seem to have friends in the air to continue their ridiculous day. A few clever moves later and they were safely off the planet. Zeb was going to be in the shower for a while. Ezra and Sabine were going to be fighting for a while and Chopper would probably wade into the fray. She was just going to stay right here until they worked it out and it was her turn for the shower. No sense tromping mud anywhere else on the ship.

She felt the flicker of air as the cockpit door slid open. She didn’t need any other senses to realize who it was. For one thing, there was no accompanying argument.

Kanan slid into the co-pilot’s seat. “Well, that was a day.”

That about covered it.

There was always that standard background radiation of her life. It had been a long time since she’d actually needed pheromones to pick up on Kanan’s moods. But she still noticed them every now and then. And right now, she couldn’t help laughing. “Really? Even now?”

They were exhausted. They were covered in mud. They had bruises in places they were both going to question in the morning. The kids were at each other’s throats.

And yet, he was still actively attracted to her in this specific moment.

Apparently that was a challenge, because he decided he didn’t need to be collapsed in the seat after all. Not when kissing was an option. “Every moment you’re around.”

#star wars rebels #fanfiction #kanera #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #the wookieepedia entry on pheromones wasn't as scary as you'd think #it was like two paragraphs #and absolutely useless for this fic

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rocksandrobots · 4 years

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Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 6 - The Beach

Saturday had come and Varian and the rest of his new friends were all crowded in Wasabi's car. Wasabi had precisely enough room to fit six people, though perhaps a bit uncomfortably. He and Varian rode in the front seat, with Varian carrying Ruddiger in his carrying cage, while Hiro, Gogo, Honey Lemon, and Fred were squished together in the back seat. The robot, Baymax, was folded up inside his battery pack and tucked away in the trunk to make room.

Apparently today was a holiday and they were all heading to the beach. Well in truth the actual holiday was on Monday, but Americans spent the whole weekend in celebration. Said holiday was Memorial Day and was meant to honor warriors who fell in battle. However, despite this somber origin, most considered the weekend to be the official start of summer and would mark the occasion with picnics, parties, and public swimming.

For Varian and his friends though, this was the end of spring break. Starting on Tuesday, the university they now all attended would open back up and the summer semester would begin. The thought of which sent Varian's stomach churning with butterflies. He'd never been to school before and didn't know what to expect. He was filled with anxious excitement and to calm his nerves he looked out the car window to admire the scenery.

He'd been in this strange new world for a week now but he'd had little chance to admire it. For the past five days he'd been busy studying for his entrance exams for college. Passing the 'graduation' test in particular was important for gaining admittance into the school and Varian had to do some serious cramming to prepare for it. Squeezing twelve years worth of educational knowledge into his brain in less than a week.

Fortunately Varian was very good at memorizing facts and all his new friends were on hand to help him. On Monday, Hiro had helped him gather up the study materials he'd needed and told him what to expect. Wasabi gave him practice tests throughout the week and helped him pinpoint the areas he was weakest in. He was pretty good with math and grasped most of the science quickly, with Wasabi being on hand to fill in the gaps, but he needed help in other less familiar subjects.

Gogo had swung by on Tuesday and spent the whole day giving Varian a crash course in Social Studies, which was a combination of history, geography, and civics.

Varian took a special interest in America's founding and it's chosen form of government, which was unlike anything he had heard of before. They had no king nor royalty of any kind. In fact the country was founded by people who committed treason and fought a war to overthrow their ruler, and who then put into place a democracy made up of elected representatives instead. It most closely resembled the government of ancient Rome, before Julius Caesar had taken over, but was expanded upon to encompass a vast kingdom, larger than even most empires.

Varian had already thought San Fansokyo was an impressively large city, but was completely flabbergasted to know that not only was it not the largest city in the country, it wasn't even the biggest within its own providence; and there were fifty of these states that stretched across the continent from coast to coast with similarly massive metropolises in each.

It was mind boggling and it took him sometime to wrap his brain around the concept. And that was just the tip of the iceberg, he also had to catch up with some four hundred odd years worth of world events on top of that. But Gogo was a patient teacher and she carefully broke down everything into manageable chunks, giving him timelines, charts, and maps for him to refer back to. By the end of the day he had perhaps learned more in those eight hours spent with her than he had in his whole sixteen years.

On Wednesday, Fred had showed up to help Varian practice for the writing portion of the tests. He would have to complete two essays on any given subject for each of the two exams. Fred himself had actually completed one of the same tests, the S.A.T, just a few months ago and knew what the graders were looking for when it came to such essays.

Mainly, they just wanted to know if Varian could follow the basic guidelines of writing; paragraphs and sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and his overall ability to form an argument on paper. All things Varian felt pretty comfortable with, but it was nevertheless a good refresher of those basics. Essay writing and thesis statements were apparently expected of any student attending higher education and he would have to write many during the course of his studies.

Thursday, Honey Lemon stopped by to help Varian with Language Arts. Both tests would cover reading comprehension and even more grammar. Once again Varian was pretty comfortable with those two subjects, especially given the writing practice from the day before, and so they finished pretty quickly. Even with Honey Lemon adding in extra information about various important books and plays that had been written in the past four centuries, just in case any of them made it into the reading part of the exam. Though Shakespeare was still deemed the most influential even in this modern age. A fact which disappointed Varian; he personally thought Marlowe to be superior to the bard.

"You don't even like Romeo and Juliet?" Honey Lemon asked aghast, "But it's sooo romantic."

"But it's sooo stupid," Varian mockingly admonished with a laugh. Which in turn made Honey Lemon give him a not-so-serious pout.

"Look, what was stopping them from just leaving together in the first place?" Varian explained his point.

Honey Lemon opened her mouth to retort back but just as soon closed it again; she had never considered that question before. She screwed up her mouth in thought as she searched for a better answer.

"Weeelll, sometimes it's hard to leave the only home you've ever known. Isn't that why you want to get back to your world?" She asked him.

Varian just stared at her for a moment, thinking of an answer to give that didn't allow him to explain his past in detail. Finally he said, "I wanna get back because my dad is there. I couldn’t care less about Corona itself."

"You don't care at all?"

"It's just a bunch of buildings." He mumbled with a shrug, then he added, more assuredly, "What matters is the people in your life."

"I guess," She replied, "all I know is that I had a hard enough time just leaving Sacramento. Even though it's only an hour and a half away and I can still see my family whenever. I can't imagine what it's like to be lost in a whole other world."

Varian ignored her attempts to sympathize, not because he didn't appreciate the effort, but because he was ready to move on from the conversation. Instead he shut his eyes tightly and tilted his head back, trying to recall some of the new information he had recently learned. "Sacramento; that's the capital of California, right?"

"Yeah. But don't worry, no one actually memorizes all fifty states and their capitals. I only know like twenty or so." She admitted.

"Oh, good." Varian breathed in relief. Soon both he and Honey Lemon were just giggling, happy to relieve the tension in the room.

"Oooh, you know what? I brought my make-up bag with me!" Honey Lemon suddenly exclaimed, and just like that all previous talk about literature and writing gave away to other subjects, mostly chemistry.

Honey Lemon made her own cosmetics. It was a passion of hers to find new, safe, and 'biodegradable' chemical compounds to replace some of the more toxic stuff on the market.

"And absolutely no animal testing." She added in all seriousness.

She even sold her wares over the internet, shipping them to customers as they ordered them, as a means of making money on the side.

She poured out the contents of a rather large tote bag onto the floor and walked Varian through each item, what it was for, and how she had made it. Varian listened intently and even tried some of the stuff himself.

He found he didn’t care much for lipstick nor cakey foundation, the texture was off putting to him. He also didn’t like anything with a heavy perfume. However, he did like the eyeliner and the black fingernail polish he had previously bought. He was still fascinated by the concept of synthesized polymers.

They were both sitting on the floor, makeup strewn everywhere, laughing over nothing in particular, when Wasabi came home from his part-time job. Honey Lemon was in the middle of applying mascara to Varian’s eyes and he was trying his best not to blink but failing at it, which only sent both of them into more fits of giggles. Meanwhile, unnoticed by them both, Ruddgier had gotten into the powered blush and was making a mess in another corner of the room.

“I thought you two were studying.” Wasabi said with a hint of annoyance to his voice. He was tired from work and none too happy to find makeup scattered about his dorm room.

“Sorry,” Honey Lemon tried to say through her laughter, “but we finished early and I’d promise to teach Varian how to paint his nails.” Varian held up his hand to show Wasabi his newly painted nails as a way of response.

“That’s nice.” Wasabi replied back in a sarcastic tone. “Did you also teach the raccoon how to put on foundation?”

That’s when they both finally noticed Ruddiger. Varian got onto his pet and went to clean up the mess, effectively ending the study/make-up session.

The next day, Wasabi gave him two final practice tests and then it was time for him to take the real thing. He met Professor Granville at the school and, alongside a few other hopeful students, took the two tests.

The first test, the S.A.T., went smoothly, but he wouldn’t know his actual scores until his answer sheet and essay were sent off to be graded. The graduation test however was taken over the computer and it took several hours to complete with a few breaks between parts. He felt he could have finished sooner had he had the chance to take the test using a pencil and paper instead, as he found the mouse and keyboard awkward. But the positive thing about using the new technology was that he got his scores back sooner. He managed to pass all the parts, even with him just barely scraping by on the Social Studies section. His official certification would come in the mail, the professor told him, but for all intents and purposes he now had a high school diploma.

Which was apparently a big deal in this world. Earning a diploma was considered to be something of a rite of passage. Obtaining one meant you were ready to start entering the adult world and with it you could gain full time employment or seek higher education, like college. According to his friends, he should’ve been extra proud of this accomplishment since gaining a high school diploma at his age, while not unheard of, was unusual, and he had done it in less than a week when most took years to achieve it.

To signify just how important this was, all his new friends threw him a party at the Lucky Cat. Even Aunt Cass had pitched in and made him a special dinner. It was something called ‘sushi’ and she typically prepared it for celebrations like this one; having cooked similar dinners for both Tadashi and Hiro when they had graduated high school as well.

Varian was appreciative of her efforts, though he didn’t quite know what to make of the food itself. The ‘sushi’ consisted mostly of rice topped with raw fish wrapped in seaweed. The taste wasn’t bad but the texture of the uncooked seafood was weird to Varian. Fortunately, not everything was raw. There were different kinds to be had and Varian was able to pick out some that he did enjoy; ones stuffed with crab, egg, or just veggies. He especially liked the ‘dessert sushi’ made with tropical fruit.

He’d just finished recalling last night, when Wasabi loudly proclaimed, “We're here!”

There were whoops and joyous yells in response from the various passengers and Varian looked out the front windshield to see the familiar blue streak that was the ocean just up ahead. Wasabi parked the car in the designated parking lot and then they all piled out of said vehicle and made their way down to the beachfront.

The sandy beach was tucked in between two rocky cliffs and you had to walk down a wooden stairway to get to it. As he made his way down the stairwell, Varian could look out and see the expanse of dark blue ocean and lighter blue sky go on forever. It didn't look much different from Corona's coast. What did look different were the inhabitants. Corona's coastline was usually deserted save for the ports and the occasional fishing boat off in the distance, but here the beach was a mass of half naked bodies and swarms of vacationers enjoying the summer sun. Spread out along the sandy tolls were towels, blankets, folding chairs, and umbrellas of all sizes with scantily clad people lounging upon or underneath.

Varian tried to remember Gogo's words from a week ago, about how this was deemed normal and not to bring himself to attention by starring. But everywhere Varian looked he was met with the sight of a lovely lady's long legs or a handsome lad's toned chest. Not looking was very much like asking a small child in a pastry shop to hold their nose and ignore the sweet smells of pies and cakes surrounding them. Fortunately, he was able to keep his composure long enough for them to reach the shore and find a spot to set up camp for the day; managing not to hold his gaze for too long on any one person or thing.

They had brought a variety of towels and folding chairs of their own, along with a large parasol and ice chest full of food and drink for the day. Varian and Wasabi had spent that morning making sandwiches for everyone; tuna fish salad, sliced cucumbers with butter, jam mixed with a spread made from ground nuts, and some sort of mystery meat called 'baloney' paired with cheese. Varian couldn't figure out if said baloney was made from ham or chicken, as it didn't really taste like either, though it also didn't taste bad per-say. They also stored small bags of crispy fried potatoes, individually wrapped miniature cakes, and bottles of some sort of fizzy drink called 'soda' in the chest as well. Varian found the carbonated sugary drink to be odd but surprisingly tasty.

While everyone was setting up Hiro unpacked Baymax from his portable charger, the robot inflated to full size again before stepping out, and Varian released Ruddiger from his carrier. The raccoon was grateful to be let out of the small cage at last and promptly snuggled up on one of the folding chairs under the sun to catnap. Varian didn't think the leash necessary as there really wasn't any place for his pet to run off to.

Once done with setting up, the gang then proceeded to unpack the various toys and games they had brought along as well. There was a game you played with a net, like tennis, only you used your hands to pass a 'volleyball' over said net instead of a racket and you didn't want the larger ball to touch the ground at any point. They also brought a flat discus called a 'frisbee' which you threw from person to person. Gogo had with her a flat wooden board used to ride the waves that broke along the shore. Which she let Varian and her other friends try out for themselves.

Varian however was not very good at any of these new sports. While he was fairly athletic, capable of running, climbing, and whatnot, he had never been the best at coordination. More often than not he'd simply trip and fall in his efforts to keep up with the ball or maintain his balance on the surfboard.

Instead Varian found himself wandering off occasionally to try and strike up conversations with new people. He'd hadn't had a lot of social interaction while growing up, especially with others his age, and he wanted some practice before he started school in a few days. Hopefully to ease the awkwardness of being dumped in a world that he knew next to nothing about.

However every time he'd smile at a pretty girl or make eye contact with a cute boy his age, his efforts to make small talk were sabotaged by some mishap or other. Either his own clumsiness would get in the way or he'd put his foot in mouth, as the saying goes. One particularly unfortunate incident involved him getting beaned in the back of the head from a misthrown volleyball while trying to chat up a couple of vacationing teens. Fortunately, his embarrassing failures at flirting would be followed by one of his new friends trying to engage him with some other activity so he was never left alone with his awkwardness for long.

Swimming, sand castle building, more games; like 'chicken', where you tried to push one person off another person's shoulders into the water, or 'Marco Polo' where one person had to find the others with their eyes closed, using the ancient explorer's name as a call and response, digging for seashells, and other similar actives were to be had to pass the time away.

Finally, the sun started to hang low in the sky and they all headed back to the car. They were wet, tired and covered in sand. They tried to knock the irritating substance off their shoes and things before all squeezing back into the ill fitting vehicle in order to head back home. They all sat on towels so as not to get the seats wet and their bathing suits and cover up clothes all clung to them dripping with sea water.

Varian sat again in the front seat, only this time Honey Lemon had asked to hold Ruddiger on the ride back. She, Gogo, Fred, and Hiro were all fast asleep in the backseat with Baymax once again tucked away in his battery case. Wasabi had the radio on in order to keep himself awake as he drove (and to drown out Honey Lemon's snoring if he was being honest). The music that filtered out of the speakers was called 'classical' music, which just meant it was mostly orchestral music from ages past. To Varian it sounded very modern and sophisticated to his ears, like chamber music played for royal courts, not the more rustic folk music he grew up on.

Right now a gentle suite with piano and strings was playing and it along with the steady motion of the car moving was beginning to lull Varian to sleep as well. He looked out again at the houses and scenery that passed by and thought of the day's events and the fun he had had as his eyes grew heavy. This world was so much more inviting and nicer than his own, it was a shame he'd have to leave it soon, but his Dad needed him and that was that. And with that final resolve Varian drifted off to dreamland.

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#varian #tangled the series #BH6 the series #Hiro Hamada #Honey lemon #ruddiger #Wasabi #GoGo #Fred Frederickson IV #rapunzel's tangled adventure

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aaluminiumas · 3 years

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Sapphire

He had seen her at her worst.

In fact, Crocodile barely remembered the moment she started working for him: after years of affiliation and partnership balancing on the verge of a more intimate relationship, the memory practically erased the event that brought the woman to the threshold of his luxurious office packed with sumptuous bric-a-bracs she never considered useful. As a chain smoker, he had a guillotine cigar cutter incrusted with gems just as bright as those in his rings. Ivory statuettes and figurines stood upon multiple shelves showing off ancient books. A huge elephant leg-shaped urn in the corner of the office made him look like a huge fan of safari that worked as a perfect disguise to those who didn’t know the man at all. The best rugs covered the floor that slightly creaked at the steps and smelled wood. A bar across his desk contained the most expensive beverages: Crocodile himself preferred strong drinks but the guests he welcomed could relish the flavor of the eminent champagne, wine, liqueur, port, cognac, gin, whiskey and whatever else their heart desired.

Nico Robin was mentally put in the row of wines, undeniably red. Cunning and intoxicating, she provoked slow reaction: once yielded into her hands, the drinker would not be able to forego her influence. One couldn’t get enough of her until she used her outstanding skills and bring them into action. She always waited for the right moment, parsed the situation, made the decision and hit quickly – hit so hard into the head that left the man dumbfounded and thunderstruck. Crocodile was by no means a careless one, or so he thought; that’s why he believed that Nico Robin, no matter how skillful, gifted and extraordinary she was claimed to be, wielded no power to finagle the information she needed. She could not double cross him – definitely not.

“Nico Robin,” the man drawled, his pale fingers tapping at the rim of the whiskey tumbler. “What brings you here?”

Of course he had gleaned a few details about her: he was aware of the schemes she contrived and accomplished; he learnt everything about the organizations she breached in and disrupted from the inside. Using his position, he spent quite a while in the archives of the Marines to find out more facts about the girl who fled from ablaze Ohara two decades ago. She was no longer a child he saw on the wanted posters. There was no fear on the pale face; he spotted no consternation in the azure eyes of the weeping girl; he clearly saw a mature woman whose sangfroid could easily surpass his. Unlike many others before her, Nico Robin was not afraid of notorious Sir Crocodile.

“Work,” came a dry simple reply.

Crocodile’s golden eyes veered to look at the woman standing opposite him – the lack of intonation that would reveal her real intentions caused him to peruse her visage in attempt to pry into her mind.

Tall, slender, unbending, the female was intently staring at the man sitting in the armchair. Her black hair, two inches lower her ears, exposed the jawline and the fine neck with visible tendons. For a moment he thought that such a woman deserved a necklace with a sapphire to rest in the dimple between the collarbones.

“What do you expect from the job?” the man drawled idly, in a lackadaisical voice. For some vague reason, he felt ill at ease: quiet and motionless, distant and composed, Nico Robin intrigued him. This woman must’ve seen enough to learn the basics and burnish her deadly skills: although jockeying for her place in the sun, she wouldn’t resort to blatant flattery or beautiful lies.

“Precision and accuracy,” came the dry reply.

Precision and accuracy. Indeed. She didn’t want less from a man so notorious – and she didn’t even try to flatter him by ingratiating smiles and servile behavior which intrigued him even more. Crocodile realized that he finally found someone smart enough to rely upon while contriving schemes and cons, but on the other hand the man knew she saw though him predicting his ensuing actions and upcoming decisions.

Unsettling. Crocodile loathed being in the position of his own employee, scrutinized and examined by the superior.

…Miss All Sunday had been working for Sir Crocodile for years before the idea of building up an empire moulded and fortified in his mind. The whole notion seemed particularly tempting: a man with connections and acquaintances, Crocodile knew how to work out the kinks making the plan impeccable by perfecting the smallest details. He had already observed violations on the part of his fellow ‘colleagues’, especially Doflamingo. Even though he practically staged a coup, the leader of the Donquixote Family didn’t come under a tidal wave of criticism – the government connived at the odious crimes he committed. Would an organization disguised by a casino ever beat it? Hardly.

Crocodile learnt the details from the incumbent King of Dress Rosa himself – Nico Robin, highly intelligent, didn’t go into hiding and accompanied her boss to the private parties knowing how much that particular Donquixote nettled him. The sandman, suspicious, industrious and quiet until his plan accomplished and goals reached, detested Doflamingo’s braggadocio. With a glass of exquisite wine in hand, the new King of Dress Rosa boasted whenever he felt right – which meant constantly.

In fact, Doflamingo’s lengthy soliloquy Crocodile tended to disregard, pushed her to contribute to the empire prospect: unlike her boss, Robin imbibed his words like a sponge. The woman offered the level system and the nicknames – while it may seem odd to some, her boss found it ‘charming’. That’s what he said – probably stating it to be a hallmark of the organization from now on.

Mr. 0 he became.

Ms. All Sunday she was.

Ms. All Sunday was allowed to play by ear.

In all honesty, she held no illusions as to what he was going to do to her when she was no longer needed: Robin fully comprehended his intentions and ulterior motives. Even though she managed to become irreplaceable, she knew she had to run amok as soon as she got the chance. For now, the devoted subordinate chose to simply enjoy the wide range of entertainments the rigorous man had to offer – though she never relinquished the hold of her graceful hand on the business.

Unsettling. Sir Crocodile didn’t like that either.

In a way, she enthralled, entranced him – and the realization gnawed at the man especially when she sat up on the bed, adjusted her short dark hair and stood up to grab her clothes and leave. It wasn’t their first time together; neither of them even remembered what drew them so close that they were ready to push the boundaries and forget about subordination. After all, they both cherished their loneliness but got fed up with it – stressed, abandoned and injured, they found another benefit of working in tow to avoid the emotional toll.

“Where are you going? He asked in a low voice not even looking at the woman beside him but nonetheless smoking his cigar.

“To work, I gather,” she replied calmly and, stark naked, stood up to approach the curtains.

“Stay.”

It didn’t sound like an order at all – albeit said in the same commanding tone, it resembled a simple request. She did suspect a gambit in it, a ruse to pry into her thoughts, but something inside her bludgeoned her to obey.

They didn’t talk that morning. Sir Crocodile kept smoking his cigar, Robin lay next to him, swarthy and flexible, ready to retaliate in case of danger. Although she knew she was allowed to leave the chamber unharmed, she couldn’t impel herself to do it – and to lose the warmth she longed for too long.

It may have been forged. It may have been a trick to keep her near but it was still nice to maintain the illusion of being taken care of. Idle, neglectful, egoistic to a fault, Crocodile probably didn’t even think about that he – deliberately or not – supplied her with something she craved for.

“Why didn’t you go that day? I didn’t detain you.”

“You didn’t banish me either.”

He hummed and didn’t respond – no answer came to his mind, only a picture of the inflexible young woman with short dark hair. The more peculiar it was to watch her grow and develop – and finally come across her new wanted poster: the almond eyes narrowed, long strands slightly disheveled. She was still enthralling – and he might have welcomed her back if she asked nicely. Nico Robin – Ms. All Sunday – was extremely smart: her ideas always served the right purpose.

Crocodile glanced at one of the rings he was wearing. Sapphire. He gave the necklace to her. She put it on once or twice but he never knew whether it was an act of courtesy, genuine fear, sheer respect or mocking.

Maybe he should pay her a visit?..

#one piece #OP #baroque works #sir crocodile #crocodile #nico robin #sir crocodile x nico robin #crocodile x robin #miss all sunday

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zamancollective · 5 years

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Nationalist Mythologies and the False Friendship of Nostalgia

By Mirushe Zylali

Additional Writing by Sophie Levy

What is a mythology?

Through mythology, one locates oneself within history and creates a sense of continuity between the past, present, and future.

The impulse to place oneself in a historical continuum is understandable, especially within postcolonial contexts. For Europeans, myths provide a basis of identity for the nation-state. For Euro-colonized peoples, a desire to return to a pre-colonial body politic often becomes integral to liberation movements, and later, becomes a method of garnering mass popular support for a burgeoning post-imperialist nation-state. Postcolonial mythologies are often manifestations of an emotionally-tinged hunger for a life that does not ache of colonialism.

Mythology has a vital role in legitimizing the construction of modern ethnonationalist states and their respective languages, cultures, and propaganda systems. When “British India” was cleaved in two, Pakistan adopted an alphabetic script based on Arabic, while India adopted a script based on Sanskrit, though similarities abound between spoken dialects in the subcontinent’s northern regions. To this day, India’s far-right Hindu nationalists are working to incorporate more words derived from Vedic Sanskrit into modern Hindi, while nationalist Pakistanis do the same with Islamic terminology derived from Arabic.

In his construction of the Albanian nation-state, Enver Hoxha outlawed religion and claimed that modern Albanians descended from ancient Illyrian tribes. Modern Turks assert that they are heirs to the Ottoman Empire established by Byzantine tribes over 700 years ago. During WWII, German Nazis even claimed to be descended from Aryans, somehow also insisting upon their origins in the lost city of Atlantis, and repurposed the swastika, a Hindu symbol, to this aim. Later in the twentieth century, Iranian nationalist groups would adopt a link to this “superior” Aryan race in order to incite violence against ethnic minorities within Iran, such as Jews and Kurds. Saddam Hussein insisted upon modern Iraqis’ link to the people and culture of ancient Babylonia in building his autocratic government - just as the Pahlavi Shahs of Iran belabored their connection to Darius’ pre-Islamic empire.

Evidently, it has been a nation-building tactic of autocratic regimes across Europe and Asia to emphasize links between a current population and an ancient culture or mythology. Here, I take time to deconstruct why this method is somewhat futile.

Iraqis, for instance, cannot claim direct historical continuity with Babylonia because its religion-and the way of life it spurred- has not been maintained since the fall of Babylon in 539. Since then, cultural diffusion, conquest, and the shifting borders of empires have made Iraq a thoroughly Arab nation-state, notwithstanding the presence of non-Arab ethnic minorities.

Victors often write what history survives. What records exist of the processes of the Persian and Arab conquerors who altered the culture of ancient Mesopotamia? One could infer that those attempting to keep up the ‘old ways’ would have been brutalized or disenfranchised by their new conquerors. Neither the ethnic composition nor the historical legacy of ancient life in present-day Iraq is continuous with those who live there today, and the recovery of such a culture would be nearly impossible. But why would anyone want to undertake such a task in the first place?

the Eagle of Saladin - often used as a symbol of Ba’athist ideology.

Let us follow the logic of this desire for belonging. A branch of my mother’s family hails from Al-Andalus. What would an ‘un-exiling’ of ourselves look like? With very few Spanish Jews left in Spain, and others having fled to places such as Turkey, Greece, the Americas, the Balkans, and Morocco, which of them can lay a true claim to the “authentic” ancestry that would provide a basis for such a social movement? Do I learn from the Jews of Tangier, Fez, and southern Spain, who would have fallen within the borders of the Umayyad Empire? No. Their cultures, changed by hundreds of years of innovation, diffusion, and empire, may barely resemble our ancestors’ shared Andalusian moment. I can enjoy camaraderie with them for what we share, but to claim a singular flashpoint of origin for all of us, thus suggesting that we share a contemporary ‘sameness’ and deny such unique facets of our respective cultures would do a deep disservice to all of us.

Often intentionally, mythos functions to create ‘out’ groups and ‘Others’, consolidating power for the in-group as they build a new state. The Other can even be transformed into an inhuman creature. The Kurd, at times racialized as white for the purposes of the Iraqi, Syrian, or Turkish imagination, becomes a foreign interloper, even as Muslim Kurds may discriminate against Ezidis, Kurdish Jews, and Kurdish Christians for similar reasons. Within the imagination of the previously-colonized subject, the Jew can stand in as a figure of corrupting European influence, or the Jew can stand in as the backward Other not yet converted to the dominant religion or way of life of whichever empire. The same goes for Christians in southwestern Asia who maintain knowledge of spoken and written Coptic or Syriac. Often, by the logic of Muslim Arab in-groups, Arab Jews aren’t not Arabs. Rather, they just aren’t the right type of Arab. It is difficult to build a pluralistic nationalist movement; just look at the Ba’athist party.

European Zionists explored the idea of land-bound, Jewish nationalism as early as the 1800s. The Haskalah, or “Jewish Enlightenment” that began in the eighteenth century, had already kick-started the initiative to revitalize Hebrew as the lingua franca of the Jewish world. Zionists then harnessed Hebrew’s potential for Jewish unification in their development of a formalized national consciousness.

It is not a coincidence that Zionism’s genesis resembles that of other European nationalisms. Today, its proponents often overlook the fact that Zionists thinkers and leaders formed pragmatic alliances with European colonialists in an effort to solve the Jewish Question or gain a reputation as a “modernized” people. Though a historical and religious Jewish connection to Israel/Palestine cannot be denied, Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was just as willing to establish a “Jewish Nation-State” in what is modern-day Ghana or Argentina. He was desperate to secure any place to use as a safe haven for Jews. Even as he cast Jews as Oriental Others in the eyes of gentile Europeans, he was playing by the rules of Western colonialists as if he were one of them.

Zionism, then, is a complicated nationalism in that it has to reconcile an orientalized, ancient Jewish mythology with a “modernized” European character. This cognitive dissonance within the Zionist national consciousness has visibly influenced the vocabulary of mainstream modern Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. On one hand, Hebrew’s newfound role in early Zionist settlements as a more broadly and colloquially-spoken language represents the revival of an ancient language, culture, and peoplehood. It centralized a scattered nation in the name of a mythologized history, repurposing the words of a holy language for use in secular contexts - paralleling the incorporation of Qur’anic vocabulary into Modern Standard Arabic.

Yet, if modern Hebrew is meant to be “authentic,” why is the word for tea ‘teh’ and not ‘shai’ as it is in other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic? Why is the word for banana ‘banana’ and not ‘muuza’ as it would be in Arabic? In the same vein, why does the mode of Hebrew pronunciation taught in Israeli schools sideline the guttural sounds of quf, ayin, and het originally spoken by Jews in ancient Tiberias, opting instead for a more European flair?

Most of the loanwords that exist in Modern Hebrew come from Germanic languages. Of course, it is understandable that the introduction of vocabulary not previously existent in biblical or rabbinic Hebrew could be pulled from English, which was already a lingua franca during Hebrew’s revival in a nationalist context. However, such influence does call for further inquiry where existing, foundational verbiage with Semitic origins was discarded and replaced with European terminology.

These small details in the modern Hebraic lexicon reveal much about the sentiments and convictions of European Zionist nation-builders. Firstly, the disposal of selected nouns with Semitic roots arguably reflects a latent desire to separate this artificially monolithic conception of the “Jewish people” from southwestern Asian languages- languages perceived to not be Jewish. The same goes for the systematic labeling of Mizrahi accents as “incorrect” in professional contexts in Israel. Yemeni immigrants, for instance, have faced and continue to face ridicule and discrimination because of their accents. Ironically, however, Yemenite Jews are generally thought to pronounce liturgical Hebrew most similarly to the ancient Tiberian inflection. Does this mean that all Jews who are not Yemenite have “inauthentic” pronunciations? Of course not. What it does mean is that Arabic, for example, is not an un-Jewish language. The accent that many Mizrahim are discriminated against for having is not a “corruption” of anything.

Secondly, modern Hebrew’s European loanwords and inflection indicate that Zionist leaders seeking to revitalize Hebrew as a “universal” language for Jews heavily prioritized the comfort of Ashkenazi Jews in their adjustment to life in the Holy Land. Of course, learning Hebrew was still very difficult for Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim (read: women) who hadn’t been exposed to the study of rabbinic or biblical Hebrew in the heder, but leaders like Ben Yehuda clearly geared this ancient Semitic language to be as accessible to Europeans as possible in its revival. Had there been a genuine effort to make Hebrew a language for Jewish ‘olim hailing from across the globe, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian-speaking Mizrahim would have been consulted much more.

Lastly, Hebrew’s Germanic loanwords and smoothed-out modern pronunciation made it a more palatable language in the eyes of European colonialists, with whom Israel’s founding parties sought to form pragmatic alliances. The more similar Hebrew could be to European languages while still retaining its own mythologized, ancient character, the more British proponents of settler-colonialism could perhaps be willing to lend a hand to Jewish settlers. And so goes the balancing act between the orientalized nostalgia and modern European appeal of Hebrew.

"Vote for the Zionist list (No. 6), all who believe in the rebirth of our land through Hebrew labor." From the Zionist List in Russia, 1917

Zionists are quick to point out that since a majority of Israelis are Mizrahim, the growth of the Yishuv and Israel’s eventual establishment could not have been functionally settler-colonialist in character, to which I say: What is the Turkish, Iraqi, Persian, and Syrian treatment of Kurds? What is the North African Arab treatment of Imazighen? These, too, are essentially colonial projects which seek to supplant indigenous peoples by relying on idealized ancient mythologies and constructions of “authenticity”. A common source of discomfort for progressive critics of Zionism is the prevalence of conservative viewpoints held by Mizrahi Jews inside and outside of Israel, but the idea of colonized peoples colonizing other peoples should not be a revolutionary or difficult one to reconcile and accept.

Israel may not have taken on the character of a settler-colonial project had the Zionists of old integrated with Palestinian and Samaritan society. Palestinians’ apprehensive or negative reactions to early European Zionist settlers were understandable, considering Zionist collaboration with British Imperial forces. The reactionary right-wing politics of the majority of Mizrahim in Israel is, too, understandable considering their alternatives. The State of Israel has always propped itself up on the rejection and effective demonization of Arabness, so racism against Mizrahim based on accent, physical features, or culture resembling that of gentile Arabs comes as no surprise. Rather than facing social immobility and expendability as a source of cheap labor, conservative Israeli Mizrahim align themselves with Israel’s hybrid mythologized / Europeanized national consciousness, rejecting Arabness because doing so simply benefits their survival in a state established by European Zionists.

Mizrahim live in a time of nesting doll diasporas. In their 2019 song “Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman,” the Yemeni-Israeli sisters of the band A-WA lament a common traumatic thread connecting Mizrahi families in Israel:

“I came to you fleeing

You saw me as primitive.

I came to you as a last resort.”

What does decolonization look like, in a literal sense? Mizrahim living in Israel cannot go back to the countries which initially tried to stamp them out. Why would the current generation want to learn their grandparents’ forgotten Arabic, Darija, Turkish, or Farsi - or dig up their grandparents’ buried memories? To do so is like pressing one’s tongue against a tooth stripped of enamel. Many Israelis are also of mixed heritage. An Israeli friend’s family hosts Tunisian, Arab Iraqi, and Syrian-Turkish Jews. Which nation-state should she return to? For which mythology should she feel nostalgia? People have always migrated. Issues arise when territorial and cultural dominance- not pluralism- becomes the collective goal of populations.

Discarding nationalist mythologies altogether can help afford modern populations some clarity. Mizrahi liberation is inextricably linked with Palestinian liberation, Kurdish liberation, Yazidi liberation, and all other liberations of oppressed indigenous peoples and ethnoreligious minorities. Even within the construct of ‘Mizrahi’ as a label for MENA Jews, Arab Iraqi Jews may hold harmful attitudes towards Kurdish Jews hailing from within Iraqi borders. My close friend, who is a Kurdish Jew, recounts to me the almost Ba’athist undertones of a conversation she had with an Arab Iraqi Jew, whose nostalgia for Iraq was based on a desire for inclusion within Arab supremacist power structures. Nostalgia is a reactionary, false friend. Seeking acceptance within the monolithic ideologies of Pan-Arabism, Pan-Turkism, Pan-Iranism or Zionism is not a solution in the long term, nor is clinging to conservatism under nationalist governments.

Ceding space or resources to other colonized peoples does not mean that there will be insufficient space or resources for you. It is the overlap of these spaces that becomes a vital standpoint for reconciliation. Solidarity begins with truthfully baring the histories witnessed by multiple populations, and remaining able to acknowledge them simultaneously. The nation-state’s mythology does not allow for admission to the atrocities of the Farhud; the Algerian War of Independence; Deir Yassin; the Aleppo Riots. It is up to the people to shift their collective consciousness toward empathy and mutual recognition.

Mirushe Zylali is a junior at Mount Holyoke College double majoring in Studio Art and Religion. Through poetry, nonfiction work, and printmaking, they are interested in examining who remains within cultural memory, and how the Other is constructed in service of the nationalism of post-colonial states.

#mirushe zylali #sophie levy #nonfiction & opinion

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ssromanogers · 5 years

Text

Survival of the Fittest

To: Chrissy @xo-stardust720

From: Terri @mylifeisloki

Note: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! <33

It was nothing like they said it would be in the movies. The zombies didn’t just appear, people didn’t get sick in droves, there was time for preparation. Natasha could remember the first time she’d seen a report on the news about the strange illness that was presenting with death-like symptoms and grotesque skin lesions; it had seemed so far away from where she was healthy and protected in a skyscraper in New York City. Surely some illness that was probably mutated or poorly treated in some developing country couldn’t touch her at home.

But as the days went on, there were more cases reported in that first country, then another, then another. The Virus was getting worse; those who were sick would decay to the point where they visually resembled a corpse– and then continue ‘living’ in some sense of the word anyway. No one wanted to use it, but ‘zombie’ seemed like the most accurate word. Soon enough, the first case in London was reported on the 11 o’clock news and the UN made a drastic decision to halt all air traffic. With all planes grounded and people beginning to panic, local governments started to lightly suggest that those who were still healthy made provisions for themselves should the disease spread to the United States.

Some listened. Natasha had gone to the store and bought up as much canned food as she could, stockpiling a few first aid kits and a couple of cases of water so she was ready in the event that she had to remain indoors for an indeterminate length of time. But there were others who thought it was a stupid hoax, or that their distance from the initial outbreak would mean they were safe in the long run. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way things happened.

The very first case in the United States was in Detroit. Once the sickness was identified, the whole city went on lockdown until they could be sure that it wasn’t spreading, but the damage had already been done. One by one, cities and eventually states fell to The Virus and people finally started to pay attention. There were stories of angry mobs pushing their way into hospitals thinking they would be safe there, and stories of people being killed at the first sign of illness whether it was confirmed to be The Virus or not.

The horror that came along with this now very nearby threat were the stories that those who were afflicted were likely to attack if you startled them. People were taking up arms, the news said. Guns were more prevalent than ever and violence as a whole was off the charts.

Natasha saw the writing on the wall and quit her job in favor of staying right where she was, in her apartment, safe.

The world pretty much went to shit after that. She watched the number of casualties get higher and higher as time went on; some people were confirmed dead, others were just missing. Either way, The Virus was spreading so fast that if they were out there, it would get them soon enough.

For six weeks, Natasha managed to stay safe and sound in her apartment. She lived off the canned food she’d bought, which she rationed as much as she could, and spent her downtime either watching the news or reading or just doing exercise so she was ready when the time came to actually go back out there. New York didn’t look like it used to; she could see from her window that the once lively streets were desolate and grey. Even on sunny mornings, there was an overwhelming darkness over everything and at least one or two walkers just wandering about looking for food or a cure or… something. They were dangerous, that much she knew.

It had started with what they thought was an airborne virus, but apparently changed into something like rabies; it was transmitted through a bite, not in the air. It was with that knowledge that Natasha was able to breathe just a little easier.

Two months in, Natasha realized that she had to get out there and move. There were rumors, mostly things she heard whispered in the halls between the handful of survivors around her, that the army was sweeping the city to evacuate anyone who might have survived thus far. But they wouldn’t continue forever. There were limited resources. If the survivors dwindled, they’d stop risking more lives to come in and look for more. Natasha figured her best bet was to make her way into one of the outer boroughs, maybe to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. If there was no way to get out with the army’s help, then at least she could probably find a less populated area to settle in for a while. Manhattan just wasn’t the way to go given just how many people lived there– or had lived there.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but Natasha had never been the type to delay when something simply had to be done. She packed her necessities, dressed in jeans and layers, tied her hair back, armed herself with the pistol she kept in her closet and the knife she kept in her bedside table, and headed out. The city outside her door was almost unrecognizable. She knew the stores, but so many windows had been broken and she saw not one familiar face. All she hoped for right now was a calm trip into Brooklyn.

She opted for the Brooklyn Bridge to avoid spending any time in Queens, where the streets were too unfamiliar and too narrow for her to feel safe. Brooklyn had more options, she figured, and she had at least spent some time there in the recent past. She might be able to negotiate her way around. Besides, there were places in Brooklyn that felt like suburbs– she could definitely find somewhere safe to stay if she played her cards right. The problem was that she didn’t know exactly how long she had to just hunker down and wait. What if this was life from now on?

Not that she had the time to actually think about things like that.

She traveled unhindered and unbothered through Bryant Park. It was still strange for there to be no sounds around her– no children playing even though it was a sunny day, no one playing music, no shouting from the street. The city had never been so quiet and it was unnerving .

It took her a very tense fifteen minutes to walk from her apartment to the intersection where she could stare up at the Empire State Building. It looked different now; monolithic, almost. With no tourists taking pictures and no tour buses stopping by and no business people rushing about, the place was practically deserted.

Practically.

Standing on the other side of the intersection was a walker who looked very intent upon coming after Natasha for its next meal. Natasha put her back against a wall and tried to stay quiet in the hopes that he would change direction and leave her be, but it was already heading her way. The creaking, groaning, choking sound it made as it came closer only heightened her fear, but what else could she do? She couldn’t outrun the thing and still make it a safe distance away without bumping into another one or even attracting a few with heavy footsteps like that.

She’d have to kill it.

Stepping out, she took her knife in hand and braced herself for a moment before carefully moving around the thing and towards its back. It wasn’t moving very fast anyway, so she was able to touch the thing’s shoulder and drive the knife into the back of its skull. It fell and hit the ground with a sick sound that made bile rise in Natasha’s throat. So that was how it felt to kill something, even if that thing wasn’t really a person. Natasha used a strip of fabric she’d tied around her waist to wipe her blade and moved on, seeking shelter in the narrow alleyways on the other side of the main street.

At least that walker had been alone. Natasha couldn’t imagine what it would be like to find a group of them, but that was exactly what she found when she made the mistake of cutting through Madison Square Park. The 23rd Street station was right at the far side and to her horror, there were walkers pouring out of it at a rate that screamed ‘danger’. She had to get out of there before–

They saw her. Natasha pulled her knife immediately and made quick work of the two out in front, but she knew she was at a disadvantage here. They were coming quick and it just wasn’t realistic to think that she could kill them all fast enough that the ones still coming couldn’t overtake her. She stabbed and slashed and did what she could, but she wasn’t a warrior. She wasn’t strong enough for any of this.

With more than twenty walkers coming at her, she made the somewhat ill-fated decision to run. It was more than enough noise to entice them, which meant that by the time she found herself at the lobby to some fancy-schmancy hotel, they were on her heels and ready to grab her. Natasha slipped inside and managed to lock the doors, but the walkers behind her piled up against the glass until she could see clear cracks forming– she had to get out of there. And since there was no way to know whether or not there were other walkers in the hotel itself, she had to explore with caution.

She elected to take the stairs. Getting stuck in an elevator at this point was nothing more than a death sentence. Three flights up, she wandered into the hallway and glanced both ways before venturing to the left in search of safety. She was struck again by the fact that she was entirely alone; it felt like there was not another living soul in this place. Three more flights and she was wandering down an identical hallway when she heard a distinct banging sound coming from the far end. Frowning to herself, she readied her knife and quietly made her way towards it.

It might not have been wise, but if something was in the hotel with her, she had to know.

Eventually, she located a small utility closet that was shaking as something pressed up against the inside. The movements were too insistent and too wooden to be anything else but a walker, so Natasha braced herself and opened the door as she jumped to the side. Out came what presumably used to be a guest of the hotel. It was still wearing the remains of a silk robe with wisps of blonde hair sticking to its skull. Natasha killed it before she could keep thinking about what it used to be and carefully plucked the white key card from the pocket of the thing’s robe just in case she couldn’t pick the lock of a room for herself.

Continuing up, she found nothing else until she arrived on the thirtieth floor and heard what sounded like groaning coming from the door right beside the stairs.

Staff room. Natasha pressed her ear against it and frowned. There had to be at least three or four of them in there, all trying their best to get out. A quick examination of the handle revealed that it was locked; someone must have sealed it when all this started. It was a cruel way to die.

Tired as she was, Natasha forced herself up another five floors and finally deemed herself safe enough to choose a room. She’d boarded up the doors that led to the stairs with wood from desks and end tables she’d deemed strong enough to be of use and found a room with the door left ajar. With the door locked behind her, she was safe and slipped right into the big, fluffy bed to sleep.

The next day, after something like 15 hours of rest, Natasha decided to explore her current floor and find everything she needed. This was a five star hotel; they had to have plenty of toiletries and the like laying around for the guests. Sure enough, she found a supply closet and stocked up on soap, shampoo, toothpaste, razors, and anything else she could carry. Coming back to her room meant that she could strip down and step into a (admittedly lukewarm) shower and just stand there while the water washed away weeks of dirt and grime and sweat and tears.

Freshly bathed and wrapped in a fluffy robe, Natasha finally ventured out to the balcony and looked down. Thirty five floors up, the city almostlooked normal. One could almost mistake the moving pieces on the ground for actual people instead of the monsters they were.

She gave herself three days to re-energize before making her way up the next fifteen floors to the penthouse and, once she’d left her things in her room, the roof. But there were no helicopters to be seen, no sign of any efforts by the army to get people out. She waited the majority of two days on that roof and there was no one other than what looked like a single private plane flying way too far to the left to see her. She waved her arms anyway, but there was no point.

Two weeks in, Natasha knew she was one of the lucky ones. She’d managed to find herself a spot where there was food in the form of the vending machines and some canned goods in the kitchen, and there was plenty of soap and water to bathe. She even had a soft bed to sleep in, as she’d nabbed the presidential suite on the top floor. But it wouldn’t last. Walkers were pushing at the doors on the bottom every day; she’d ventured down more than once to see them with their scarred, broken faces swarming at the glass doors keeping her safe. They wouldn’t hold forever and she had to be ready to leave whenever they finally broke.

It took exactly two weeks and four days for them to break in. The minute the glass broke downstairs, Natasha was out of bed and grabbing her bag to get the hell out of there. Thanks to the security cameras she’d rewired, she had plenty of advance notice. She’d managed to arm herself with a couple of sharp knives and a nightstick, but she was loathe to use the pistol stuffed into the side of her bag. It would attract them, surely. Loud noises tended to get their attention more than anything else.

Having already formed a plan, she sought out the (thoroughly tested) employee elevator and took it all the way down to the basement so she could use the employee entrance to get out. That hotel was taken now; it would take more than just one person to fight through the horde of walkers making their way through it. Unfortunately, finding another shelter was not as simple as Natasha had hoped. She still had food in her bag and as many toiletries as she dared to carry, but it felt like the rest of the city was overrun.

Every store she passed was either empty or crawling with walkers, every restaurant was useless this long after the Virus had begun, and there were no humans anywhere! Where had they all gone? Was this Natasha’s punishment for being so isolated before this all happened?

Walking down Broadway wasn’t anything like it used to be. The lights were all out; the whole city felt dead and dark even as the sun began to rise. She kept walking and stayed close to the buildings, keeping her eye out for anything moving on the street. The walkers weren’t exactly subtle, so she was confident that she’d be able to spot one before it got too close to her and hopefully take it by surprise. She hadn’t pulled her gun yet, but she was close. It took a lot less effort than it did to penetrate their skulls with a knife or bash it in with her nightstick.

By the time she hit Union Square, she’d killed seven walkers and her arm was throbbing from the effort of it all. She wanted to find somewhere to stop for the night, but it seemed like there weren’t any options that didn’t churn her stomach in a bad way. She had to go with her gut here and so, she glanced around to make sure there weren’t any walkers to be seen– at least for now –and bashed in one of the windows of the Barnes and Noble nearby. The sound was deafening in the silence around her and Natasha wondered if it had been a bad decision, but the warmth provided by the inside of the store and the fact that she was able to push a few things in front of the window in order to make sure she was secure for the moment relaxed her a little bit. She immediately wandered upstairs to where it was warm and quiet, but she didn’t find the same comfort there that she once had.

Maybe that was because it was almost too quiet. Maybe it was because she felt like she hadn’t spoken to anyone in… Had it really been almost three months? Standing by the window, she could see the walkers already swarming the area and she knew she wasn’t really safe. That noise had attracted more than she was entirely ready to face and there was nothing she could do about that other than hope they got impatient and left. Of course, Natasha had never been the type to hope without reason– and she had no reason to think they would leave.

She hadn’t even settled in by the time they broke through her makeshift barrier and wandered into the store. This time, Natasha didn’t have a plan. All she could do was grab her things and head towards the front door– but she couldn’t get through. They were everywhere, clawing at her and nearly biting and it was enough to make her pull her gun and start shooting as she ran out the front doors and into the park across the street.

From where she hid in the greenery of Union Square Park, she could see more coming. They went towards the sound, not towards her current location, and they swarmed there. Natasha wished she had a grenade or something– she could take a bunch of them out at one time.

Sans grenade, all she could do was watch them gather in the bookstore and search for the food that was no longer there. The whole thing was disgusting; everything from the smell of dead flesh to the sick, wet sounds they made. Natasha only stayed a few more minutes before heading through Union Square Park. She’d escaped, but it was getting dark.

Most of the lights in the park were dim or completely out, so Natasha grabbed her flashlight and peered through the darkness as much as she could. At this point, the light might attract some, but she’d rather see them coming than not see them at all. As she made her way towards the now defunct holiday market at the end of the park, she came across one or two who dared venture up to her and both were taken out with her knife as usual. In the market itself, she glanced around for any signs of ‘life’, whatever that meant, and chose one of the booths that had been selling plushies to settle down for the night.

Instead of opening the little door at the back and risking its integrity, she hopped over the counter and began considering what she had to work with in order to make herself comfortable.

She was considering the big plush bears hanging over the booth when a hand reached out and grabbed her ankle from underneath the counter. She went down immediately and began struggling as the walker clawed at her leg in an effort to pull her closer. All of a sudden, desperation set in and Natasha began hacking at the walker’s arm to get it off her, taking chunks of skin and muscle and eventually bone off until she was able to get away. The thing was still trying to drag itself after her and Natasha panicked, pulling her knife so she could plunge it into the thing’s eye socket and kill it once and for all.

In the aftermath, while she dragged the remains of her latest kill out of the booth, she thought about how her life had come to this point. She supposed it all had to do with The Virus, but maybe it was more than that. Natasha had isolated herself to the point where she didn’t have a single other person to talk to during this whole thing.

Well. She did have one person, but he’d never answered. In the back of her mind, she just hoped Clint and his family were okay because if they weren’t… she honestly wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. It would be too much of a distraction right now.

Hunkering down in the stall was easy after that. Natasha gathered as many plush toys as she could and piled them up so she had something soft to sleep on, pulled one of the ratty bits of fabric underneath the counter over her for warmth, and tried to rest. There were sounds outside the booth, so she kept her knife at the ready just in case a walker managed to make its way over the counter, but none did. She got a couple of fitful hours of rest before the sun rose and a new day began.

Unfortunately, most of the walkers were still outside the booth. For a while, Natasha stood there, out of arm’s reach, and glared at them. She knew it wasn’t their fault, but that didn’t matter. She had so much anger just building up inside her and she had no outlet — Or did she?

Natasha picked up her nightstick and weighed it in her hand for a moment. There were six walkers milling about on the other side of the counter. She could take them. She could.

And she did. Natasha didn’t know where the inner strength came from, but she bashed in the head of every walker threatening her safety and hit them a few more times just to be sure. At the end of it, she was covered in blood and panting heavily at the ground in front of her- and the pieces of the now macerated corpses she’d struck down. So this was who she was now.

Later that day, she found herself standing outside the School of the Arts at NYU and patiently tried exactly three doors until she got inside. She dispatched three walkers who looked strangely like college students and found her way to the dance studio, which was abandoned save for a muffled groaning on the other side of a closet door. And against her better judgement, Natasha set her things down and plucked a record off the shelf without even knowing if the player would actually work. In the complete silence that had been suffocating her for days, soft music began to play and Natasha’s whole body relaxed.

She closed her eyes and twirled around, completely losing herself to the music and the familiarity of her movements. It was rote, it was something she knew better than herself. And it was something that transcended all the terrible things that had happened to the world recently.

She stayed there quite some time, until the food she had was nearly running out. Just as the sun was setting one evening, she headed down Broadway a little further and made a quick decision to seek out refuge at St. Patrick’s. Surely if there were some survivors, they were probably also inside the church as it was something of a fortress. The doors were definitely sturdy enough to keep the walkers out. But approaching the church itself was more of a hazard that Natasha had anticipated. She was alone one minute and surrounded by other people the next. If she hadn’t been so aware that she had several large guns pointed at her, she might have just been happy to see other human beings.

“State your business.”

Natasha frowned. “What’s it look like? I’m looking for shelter for the night.”

“Are you armed?”

Was this guy kidding? Natasha rolled her eyes and indicated the knife and nightstick hanging from her belt. “Of course I’m armed. Do I look stupid?”

Slowly, the guns were lowered just a little bit and the man who’d spoken before came forward. “You don’t look stupid, honey. I bet we could come to an arrangement about tonight.”

Natasha’s stomach immediately knotted. So this was what disaster did to people; she had hoped they’d rise above, but apparently not. “And who might you be?”

“Lester,” he said with a skeevy smile. “But everyone ‘round here calls me ‘Bullseye’.”

“Well, Lester ,” Natasha said smoothly. “I’d rather sleep next to a walker than sleep next to you. So either let me stay in the church until morning on my own , or I’ll just be on my way.”

He soured immediately. Lester’s big hand clamped down on Natasha’s upper arm and she hissed as he pulled her closer. “I should tie you to a pole and let them have you,” he growled. “You’d be lucky to stay with us. You’d be lucky to stay with me .”

Natasha glanced around at the others– there were a couple of women and a few more men, but none looked particularly offended by what Lester was doing at the moment. He was clearly in some kind of leader position, but why? What did he have on them?

“I said I’d be on my way,” she repeated, tugging at his ironclad hold on her arm.

“I think I’ll keep you here.”

It didn’t take nearly as much effort as she would have liked for Lester to pull her past the barricades and into the church. Inside, the pews had been moved to make way for what looked like a tent city for the homeless– there were cots and blankets and food . Natasha’s mouth watered just from the smell of whatever canned something or other someone was making off in the corner. But she wasn’t offered food; that would mean her hosts actually gave a shit about her. Instead, she was plopped down on a heavy metal cot and handcuffed (they must have had an officer around somewhere) to the frame.

“You can’t actually think this is going to get you anywhere,” she deadpanned.

Lester leaned in real close, to the point where Natasha could practically feel his stubble against her cheek. “It’s going to get me everywhere. See you tonight, honey.”

Natasha rolled her eyes again and laid down on the bed with her hand still cuffed to the frame over her head. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but then neither was sleeping on a pile of old, cold stuffed animals with walkers just a couple of feet away. At least she was warm and safe, and there was a good chance she’d be able to get some food on the way out.

For now, however, she was going to rest.

Natasha woke up to Lester sitting on the bed beside her with his hand on her stomach and a creepy smile on his face. She grimaced and wiggled a little bit to get him off her.

“Aw, come on. And here I was coming to give you something to eat.”

All of a sudden, her attention was brought to the tray he’d set down on the bed. There was an unopened bottle of water, a piece of bread, and a bowl of what looked like vegetable soup. It smelled absolutely heavenly, but if he honestly thought it was going to get her to open her legs for him, he was dead wrong.

Natasha gave him a look. “Thanks,” she said graciously. “Think I can have my hand back so I can eat?”

Lester chuckled and pulled back so he could unlock the handcuff and give her a little freedom. Natasha rubbed her wrist as she sat up and accepted the food all while trying not to look too eager for it– even though she definitely was. She was starving and it had been so long since she’d last had a decent meal; this didn’t exactly make her feel warm inside like going over to Clint’s for Sunday dinner, but it was good enough.

And then the nonsense started.

Suffice it to say that Natasha could at least defend herself, so when Lester did something a little uncouth, she reacted by shoving her knee into his groin as hard as she could, punching him hard in the face, and bolting away from him. She got away with a twisted ankle and a nasty wound from a bullet grazing her upper arm; honestly, it could have been a lot worse given the whole tone in that place.

And despite her injuries, she struggled down Centre Street until she reached the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, where she found a place to collapse for just a moment. She’d managed to avoid most of the walkers on the way, only taking out one or two in her frustration and anger.

The best word she could think of to describe the bridge the next morning amidst foggy weather and grey skies was ‘haunting’. She walked as far to the right as possible while walkers wondered this way and that, but most of them couldn’t get over the gate to present much of a problem to her. She threw three into the icy water below them and walked as fast as she could in the hopes that Brooklyn would bring less crowded streets and a more secure option for shelter– hopefully one that didn’t include some creepy guy trying to sleep with her.

But by the time she arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at last, the sun was going down and it looked deserted. …Actually, it looked a little toodeserted. There weren’t any walkers.

Peering around carefully, she slipped into a narrow opening in the gate and made her way into one of the abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the property. She’d spend the night there, then make her way towards the water and attempt to find a boat she might be able to commandeer, not that she had much experience with sailing. She’d figure it out like she figured everything else out.

Locked away in some dark corner of the building she’d chosen, Natasha began to think about what her next steps would be if the boat option didn’t work out. Death was all around her. Apparently the survivors were apt to a state of lawlessness thanks to the current state of the world and it wasn’t exactly a place she wanted to be. She didn’t like not knowing what to expect from the world, even though the world had surprised her more than once in the recent past.

The next day, she decided to stay right where she was because she was safe. She hadn’t heard a single walker nearby and no one had attempted to get into her little shack, so she’d be crazy to complain. Besides, it was getting cold out there. She wouldn’t survive sleeping on the streets at this point; she couldn’t risk that. A quick look out the window told her that it was snowing as well. No, she had to stay. She had to hunker down here and hope that the food and water she had on her would last.

It turned out to be a good call, because the light dusting turned into a real blizzard and the snow began to form large piles all around her. Natasha searched until she found an old blanket to wrap around her shoulders and made the best fire she could given the circumstances, but she was still cold. It had to be below freezing and there was no insulation in the building she’d chosen, which had probably been a garage or something like that.

The snow lasted for twelve hours and even when it stopped, the temperature remained frigid and unforgiving. This might be it for her; trapped inside because outside was dangerous because of the elements, not the walkers. She was going to die of hypothermia or frostbite or…well, something a lot worse.

Late one night, Natasha was awoken by the distinct creak of the large door opening. Her fire was still smoldering beside her, so her position was given away, and she immediately had a knife in her hand. Even if it wasn’t a walker, it was someone . As she’d learned, other survivors could be as much of a danger as the zombies themselves.

“Hello?”

Natasha frowned. If this guy was looking to harm her, he wasn’t very good at the subtle thing.

“Hey, I know someone’s in here. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Knitting her brows together, she crept out from her hiding space with her knife still in hand and hidden just behind her. The man in question was bundled up in a thick jacket and a scarf. He looked big and warm and Natasha shivered just thinking about burying herself in a jacket like that one.

“What do you want?” She asked as she came into view. “Don’t come any closer.”

The guy put his hands up to show that he wasn’t armed. “I’m just– I was just coming to see who was staying here. It’s getting cold out. I figured I might be able to help.”

Natasha wasn’t sure if he could trust him, but the way he spoke told her that he wasn’t lying to get her closer to him. Maybe he did want to help.

“I’m cold,” she said slowly. “Do you have another jacket like that one?”

The man smiled a little bit and unzipped his jacket so he could hold it out for her without question. “I run warm,” he assured her. “And my name’s Steve. What’s yours?”

“Natasha,” she answered as she moved closer and quickly grabbed the garment. She wasn’t nearly sure enough of her own fate right now to refuse a gift like that one.

Steve shook his head in disbelief. “You’re the first survivor I’ve met,” he said. “Sorry, I feel like I’m staring. I’m just so glad to see someone else with a heart beat.”

The coat was so warm. Natasha wrapped it around herself and huddled in, briefly glancing back towards the pathetic fire she had going. She had been so cold for so long that it felt like she’d never be warm enough again. Considering the man in front of her a second time, Natasha pressed her lips together for a moment and tried to ignore that they were chapped and dry.

“I’ve got a better way we can both stay warm.”

Steve blinked. “Oh, we don’t have to– I mean, I’m fine, I’ll just–”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Just come over here and lay with me,” she said. Her voice was still trembling just a little bit thanks to the cold. It would just be easier if he lent her his body heat for a while. “What? You don’t find nearly blue skin and dry lips appealing?”

Steve huffed out a laugh and for the first time in ages and ages, Natasha really smiled. Together, they headed over to where she’d been sleeping and Steve laid down, awkwardly opening his arms to her. Body heat was the way to go, but it hadn’t actually skipped Natasha’s notice that Steve was one handsome stranger.

She got down on the floor and gave him a look before turning around and putting her back to his big, broad, warm chest. Steve went ahead and apologized before putting his arm around her waist for additional warmth. It was heaven as far as Natasha was concerned, even if he was a complete stranger. He seemed genuine and sweet– and to be honest, she was really happy to just have some company. The solo life hadn’t been great so far when she didn’t even have people to talk to at work.

“So, how long have you been on your own?”

Steve shifted uncomfortably. “About six weeks. I, uh… I lost my best friend and it’s been just me ever since.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” It wasn’t hard to empathize with him over that. For all she knew, Clint was laying in a ditch somewhere, or wandering aimlessly with a horde of walkers. “But you’re staying here?”

“Yeah, over in the main building. I figured it was the safest place to be.”

“Until this whole thing blows over?”

“Until…” He sighed. “I don’t know, really. I keep thinking about what will happen if it doesn’t blow over. I mean, I’ve heard there are other survivors, but—”

“You’ve heard?” Natasha frowned. “How?”

“I’ve got a radio set up. Can’t seem to make contact on my end, but I can hear other people. So there are others. They’re even talking about how some people might be immune.”

So there were other survivors out there, somewhere. Natasha found herself feeling hopeful for just a second. Maybe Steve came with more than just good news- maybe he was a sign of good things to come.

When the sun came out, they made a break for the main building so they had access to the food and water and other supplies that Steve had there. He said he had training in this sort of thing, just surviving on very little and finding his own food. Natasha didn’t question him, especially when he presented her with an actual box of snack cakes. She hadn’t had anything sweet in a long time, so she devoured two on the spot and groaned just because chocolate .

Weeks passed.

Steve and Natasha found an easy rhythm with one another. The cold didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so they did what they could to insulate themselves and block out the frigid air. Steve would go out every morning and see if there was anything to scavenge in the vicinity of the Navy Yard while Natasha prepared a sad breakfast, and then most afternoons were spent either playing chess or reading (and re-reading) the few books lying around.

One of Natasha’s favorite pastimes, however, was watching Steve work out. The guy had boundless energy, or so it seemed, and he’d drop to the floor and do push ups until he was actually sweating despite how cold it was all the time. Natasha liked to imagine cuddling up with him right after that, while his skin was still hot to the touch and his eyes were bluer than ever.

Obviously it was a stupid thing to even consider what she was thinking about for so many reasons– the risk of pregnancy had never been more of an actual risk, for one. But it had been nearly two months since they’d met and they were sharing more casual touches every day. They still spooned at night and Natasha found herself burying her face in Steve’s neck more often than not by the time they woke up. She’d listen to his heartbeat for a few seconds before moving just because she liked the reminder that he was alive .

“Listen, we need to talk about what our next steps should be.”

Steve spoke up while they were eating ‘lunch’ in the form of canned vegetables and crackers he’d taken from a store a few blocks away. Natasha knew they couldn’t stay there forever, but who was she kidding? This was the best set-up she’d had and she was hesitant about moving on. Besides, what if Steve didn’t want to stick with her?

“I figured we could move into South Brooklyn,” he continued. “It’s way less populated there and we wouldn’t have to deal with the fences and quite so many barriers, you know? We could be a little less on edge. I think it’s our best bet.” He took another bite of his food. “Besides, the snow is melting little by little. We should head out before another storm hits.”

“South Brooklyn,” she repeated. “And you’re sure about this?”

Steve nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It feels right.”

Natasha wasn’t entirely certain whether or not she was supposed to trust him, but she did. She trusted him entirely and felt that he would make a good decision for the both of them, which was something she didn’t even bother attempting to rectify in her own head.

And so, she agreed and they set out for the other end of Brooklyn just two days later, once they’d packed up the necessities. Traveling with Steve was definitely different than traveling alone. For one thing, he was armed. He had a couple of pistols as well as a bat and an axe that he proudly handed over to Natasha so she could protect herself as well. They watched each other’s backs as they walked to Prospect Park and headed through in the hopes that the larger spaces would mean less walkers to deal with.

But as they headed into Flatbush a couple of days later, things changed. Brooklyn was densely populated just like Manhattan; it was understood that they would eventually run into a neighborhood that was more difficult to get through. It just wasn’t understood that they wouldn’t be entirely ready for it. They weren’t. Oh, they definitely weren’t ready for it.

All of a sudden, they were taking out walkers left and right, slashing and beating and even shooting a few because they couldn’t avoid it. They made their way down the main avenue as quickly as possible, moving from Flatbush to a less populated area further south. Steve said there was a mall near the highway that they could probably find shelter in before they headed even further into the practically suburban area nearby, so they headed that way and used the parking lot entrances to get into the mall itself.

There were walkers everywhere .

Natasha could see them gathered behind the gates of some of the stores where people tried to keep themselves safe. She could see them milling about the mall itself, clearly unable to find their way out. As they neared the staircase and glanced down, she could see masses of them gathered on the first floor and a chill went down her spine.

“We have to leave.”

Steve nodded and they turned to run, but there were already walkers gathering in front of the entrance they’d used thanks to a nearby department store that had been housing them just moments earlier. They didn’t have much of a choice other than to fight their way through and hopefully come out unharmed on the other side. Natasha began swinging the bat at the walkers near her while Steve went at them with one of the thick knives he kept hanging on his belt. It was a losing battle, they were being swarmed and clawed at and pushed and pulled and–

All of a sudden, Steve was down . Natasha felt panic rise in her chest and she immediately went towards him, knocking off a few walkers before she pulled a knife and stabbed the walker on top of him right in the head. There was blood everywhere, but she pulled him up and they bolted for the door, shoving walkers aside as they went.

There was silence between them all the way out of the parking garage, but their battle didn’t stop there. Outside the mall itself, there were lines and lines of cars stopped on a smaller sidestreet and inside them, walkers clawing desperately at the windows. So. These were the people trying to leave before it got worse. They’d been stuck there since it started.

Natasha approached the car and moved to bash in the window, but Steve’s hand caught the tip of the bat.

“Don’t.”

Natasha frowned. “Why not?”

“They were people once too. Doesn’t seem right to kill them unless you have to.”

Lowering her bat, Natasha stared at Steve in disbelief. They weren’t people anymore. They were just— monsters. If they left them alive, they’d kill anyone they could if they got out. They had a right to kill them and keep the world as safe as possible, didn’t they?

But Steve reached out to touch her arm and Natasha just stayed quiet. What a gentle soul. She wondered what he would do or how he would react if he knew that she’d killed any she happened to come across whether they were an immediate danger or not.

“Come on, we’re pretty close,” he said warmly.

Natasha smiled, but all of a sudden a walker came up behind Steve and grabbed him, pulling him back and opening its rotten jaw to take a bite. Steve cried out and struggled, but he was only able to dislodge the walker at first. The same walker rebounded and grabbed Steve from the front, holding onto his shirt and snapping his teeth–

Until Natasha came up behind it and decapitated the damn thing with a single swing of her axe.

As the body fell, Steve stared at it and Natasha stared at Steve.

“Let’s find a place,” she said decidedly.

They walked in a somewhat comfortable silence for a few blocks until they landed in an area that felt as ‘small-town’ as Brooklyn possibly could. With tree-lined blocks and no life to speak of, it felt like… home. But Natasha had a mission here, so she chose a street off to the side and crouched down to pick the lock on the door. Steve didn’t comment.

Once they got inside, she locked the door and they did a quick sweep. Like most homes in the area, it was abandoned and entirely empty. The kitchen was stocked, though, so they would have plenty for a while. Back in the living room, Steve dropped his bag and let out a long sigh.

“This is good,” he said. “Looks like we’ll be safe here for awhi-”

Natasha cut him off with both arms tight around his neck and her lips against his. Enough of this. Enough. She had to stand on her toes to reach him, but it was worth it to have his warmth around her, especially as he wrapped his arms around her waist and picked her up. She refused to actually let him speak at this point. Natasha deepened their kiss to the point where it felt like she was trying to soak up a little bit of his soul and Steve (thankfully) moved back until he could land with a huff on the sofa behind them.

Straddling his lap with ease, Natasha began removing articles of clothing with their lips still together. Her jacket went, then the sweater she had on underneath. Leaning backwards, she let Steve kiss her neck while she pulled her boots off and tossed them aside, then kissed along his neck in turn while she unbuttoned her next shirt. Steve only took control after that, flipping them over and removing his own layers while he sucked on her bottom lip.

It was eager, she wasn’t going to lie. The whole thing felt so fast and desperate that Natasha seriously thought she wasn’t going to have enough time to admire his body. She’d seen enough to know that she wanted to spend time touching him, maybe even biting his abs or resting her hands on his stomach while she rode him. Sue her, right? She was only human.

But this wasn’t about lust and it wasn’t about desire and it wasn’t about anything other than the fact that they were alive, Steve was alive and they were together. That was all that mattered right now. By the time he got his clothes off, Natasha had wriggled out of all her layers and pulled off the bra she’d been wearing for way too long now. She wasn’t going to lie about that either; they were both washed, but there was still some unpleasantness that came with wearing the same clothes, washed or not, for days on end.

It didn’t seem that either of them cared. When her bare chest was finally pressed against his, Natasha let out an audible groan and found his lips again, biting down on his lower lip to drag him closer while her hands worked on his jeans. The idea that they might have to stop for lack of a condom wasn’t even something she could fathom right now, meaning that she shoved his jeans down and got hers off enough that they hung uselessly from one leg. Her intention was too clear to be mistaken and Steve followed her cues without question.

Natasha arched her back as he pressed into her at last, rocking his hips hard in tight movements that were neither measured nor hindered by anything as pedestrian as polite manners or the like. It was messy and kind of rough, but so, so good. Natasha wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world at the moment, not after so many weeks of wanting him– which followed weeks and weeks of extremely minimal human contact.

“Come on,” she urged him. “Come on, harder.”

Steve grunted as he tried to obey her, eventually slamming in and rolling his hips while he was buried deep inside her. Natasha cried out immediately and as her nails dug into the meat of his shoulders, she tried her best to rock her hips against him in turn. It was pure bliss, just the best thing she’d felt in a long time, probably even longer than she’d been traveling the city on her own.

His hand came down to hold her hip and Natasha hiked that leg around his waist as he continued to move, his thrusts going from long and deep and pointed to the kind of frenzied movements that told her he was going to come. She didn’t care. She couldn’t even begin to care that he was going to come inside her because she wanted to feel him. She wanted to feel every drop, every little twitch of his cock, every inch of him as he crested that peak and came down from it.

Steve came with a strangled sound he hid in the curve of her neck. Natasha petted his hair as his hips twitched and he empted himself inside her, his arms moving to encircle her waist entirely. He was still panting as he dragged his lips over her breasts and back up to her lips, where he bestowed upon her a series of soft, sweet kisses she didn’t ever want to stop.

“Wow,” he breathed. “Wow.”

Natasha’s eyes were closed and she smiled widely even as Steve let his head fall to her shoulders again. She hadn’t actually finished, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about that either. It felt so unbelievably satisfying just to have a warm body on top of her.

Steve pulled out, but remained close and let Natasha trace over the muscles on his chest for a while. The house was quiet other than their shared breathing and she quite liked it if only because it felt semi-normal. But if she was being honest, she knew that she liked Steve more than she should have. They’d spent too much time together for her to deny it.

“So, where did that come from?” He asked eventually.

Natasha shrugged and laid her hand flat on his chest, just over his heart. “It was a long time coming,” she admitted. “At least on my end.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, mine too,” he said quickly.

Comfortable silence fell between them.

“You didn’t–”

“That’s okay.”

Steve gave her a dubious look. “It’s never really okay,” he said firmly. “Or so I’ve been told.”

Natasha rolled her eyes at him and smiled. “You wanna do something about it?”

“You gonna judge me if I do?”

“Really depends on what you’ve got in mind.”

The look on his face was something she’d never seen before; he looked dangerous and boyish at the same time, like he was about to cause some mischief. It was more amusing than anything else, to be honest. It wasn’t like she was scared of what he might do– and when he slid off the couch in favor of kneeling between her legs, she didn’t dare question him.

It was all too easy to arch her back and tangle her fingers in his overgrown hair– Natasha missed this. She missed the wave of good feelings, but even more than that she missed the company of another person. She might push people away on an emotional level, but the physical stuff was totally different. Sex was something she thoroughly enjoyed and it was only made better by the fact that Steve was pretty much her rock right now.

The fact that he was really putting himself into this only urged her on and Natasha pointed her toes as she hooked her legs over his shoulders and tried to draw him in even more than that. Steve was fucking— he was fucking good at this. She supposed she shouldn’t have been shocked, but he was so goddamn pure half the time. Why was someone as seemingly innocent as Steve so good at this?

“Ohh my God,” she groaned eventually. “Steve, what are you doing to me?”

Steve pulled his mouth off her for a moment and glanced up. “Good things,” he told her confidently. “Real good things, just relax.”

Natasha let her head fall back as he resumed his ministrations and tried to give herself over to what he was doing. Breathing hard, she was hit with a sudden shiver as she came with a muffled moan and tightened her thighs around his head. Steve didn’t pull away, though. No, he lapped at her until she was trembling and finally pushing him away with both feet on his shoulders.

Not even sure what to do with herself, she laid back on the couch and laughed deliriously as Steve crawled over her again.

“Don’t judge me, but I think– just laying with you like this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.”

“I can’t judge you without judging myself,” she laughed softly. “Just stay like this for a while.”

“Hey.” Steve left a kiss on the side of her neck while Natasha traced up and down his back with the tips of her fingers. “I’ve got nowhere else to be.“

After that, things changed subtly between them. They still talked about anything and everything while they lived their day to day lives in the new world, but Natasha got to share a bed with someone who really cared about her. She got to lose herself in Steve’s lips and Steve’s hands and Steve’s big, warm arms just for a little normalcy every day. She got to know for sure that even if the world had gone to shit, he was there with her. They hadn’t said the big ‘L’ word yet, but that was okay. Maybe it felt too risky in a world wherein their lives could be snuffed out in an sudden moment or one of them could contract The Virus and turn. It was understood; they didn’t have to say anything to one another.

All that really mattered was that Natasha would always have Steve’s back…

-hunting for food,

–scavenging for medical supplies,

—taking out whatever walkers were putting them in danger,

—-trying their best to make a nice dinner out of whatever food scraps they found even though neither of them could cook

…and he would have hers.

#romanogers #captasha #capwidow #fanfic #submission

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androgyne-acolyte · 5 years

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The Radical Queer Gospel

(My first try at a sermon, for Pride Sunday 2019. You can also listen on Soundcloud.)

Why do we need a Pride Sunday? Especially in June? [Note: our local Pride festival is held in July.]

Because there is still a great lie that queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians can’t get along.

I’ve had people on the internet tell me that my decision to go into ministry as a genderqueer person is worthless, because “the belief system of some two-thousand-year-old desert tribe didn’t care about being nice to gay people”. We routinely get messages telling us our church sign is wrong.

Anyone can spout talking points about this; but wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. [cf. Matthew 11:19]

I’m going to tell you about Jesus today; how he lived, and what he taught. For me, there is something powerfully relatable about the shape of Jesus’ life; not just as a person of faith, but as a queer person. I want to talk about how Jesus’ story resembles, in many ways, nothing so much as a queer life — with all the upheaval, scandal, and confounding of expectations that implies.

I’m certainly not saying that Jesus was gay, or trans, or intersex. Queer is a more expansive term than that, and is a much more immediately transgressive term; it’s a term, quite honestly, that is still very much connected to its origins as a term of abuse. While it can refer to anyone who experiences homophobia or transphobia, it carries with it a connotation of a way of being that goes against the grain; a state of being not quite one thing and not quite another.

But, fair warning: its use is sometimes quite contentious, even discouraged, within the wider LGBTQ+ community, especially when used by people who would not consider themselves “queer”. I’m using it today, however, because I’m speaking from my own point of view.

Jesus is born as an ordinary peasant, the son of a teenage mother and a carpenter — you know the story. He lives under military occupation by the Roman Empire, which has annexed all the best land; demands punitive taxes to build palaces in fortified seaport towns; has taken over the Jerusalem Temple, hiring and firing high priests at will, and doesn’t hesitate to violently crush any sign of dissent.

But as Jesus grows up, he starts to realize that he is called to be something different, something that will disturb the very fabric of the society that he lives in. He finds community through John the Baptist, a strange, wild figure who has quite a following, mostly among the more downtrodden parts of society — and through John he gets initiated into a new kind of life, a new way of being.

Then, Jesus begins to get noticed. Imagine the young Jesus, certainly no older than I am now, speaking in the synagogues all across the countryside of Galilee. And when he gets to his hometown of Nazareth, he stands in front of all his family and friends and begins to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives … to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” … The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21)

This reads, to me, like a coming-out narrative. Because Jesus immediately follows up this seemingly empowering message with a bunch of uncomfortable truths that they don’t want to hear — namely, by citing the story of the prophet Elijah to make the point that God works from the margins of society, and plants the seeds of prophecy and change from the bottom up. “No prophet is accepted in their own country,” declares Jesus — and the congregation who had just minutes before said “Wow! This kid is going places! Joseph, isn’t this your son?” turn around and try to run him out of town.

There is something else here that the gospels aren’t quite obvious about. Jesus is giving up his place in the family structure that bound Judean culture together; striking out on his own, all the way to the raggedy edge — to share his message of healing and justice and resilience in the face of Roman occupation with those whom his people would have considered foreigners and outcasts.

It’s almost certain that Joseph assumed that Jesus would come of age and take on his father’s trade, inheriting his tools and going to work as a day labourer in Roman construction projects. All of a sudden, that’s not going to happen — because Jesus has fallen in with a very strange crowd; he’s been influenced by these people, and has come back home full of uncanny zeal and radical ideas.

I can imagine all too well the sight of Mary grieving for the image of the son she loved, who she assumed would grow up, settle down, and have children of his own — but all of a sudden he’s someone different; someone or something that can’t quite be contained. I can imagine this all too well because my own mother, my own father, have both gone through this.

But as it turns out, Jesus had discovered — he had understood, had even begun to embody — a kind of love that had never been thought possible; a kind of love that was so radical and so powerful that a lot of folks outright rejected it. The people in power certainly weren’t into it.

This is a kind of story that should absolutely resonate with queer folks like me, because we have a very similar experience — with and through each other. The dawning realization that we are meant for a different kind of life; something which not everyone can understand, but which we suddenly realize is beautiful. That moment when you see someone else, in person or in the media, who embodies an indescribable feeling that you have kept tucked away inside of you for your entire life.

Isn’t it possible that those ordinary semi-literate fishermen, Peter and Andrew and James and John, had a similar experience — seeing something in Jesus that was so powerful, so compelling, that they couldn’t help but respond when he said “follow me”?

We queer people know a kind of love that wrenches us out of the closet and into the sunlight; a kind of love that makes us feel beautiful and strong and valued in a way that no other love has before; a love that opens our hearts to weep at the injustices done to our queer siblings, our trans siblings, our Two-Spirit siblings throughout history;

A love that can make us fearless, so that no catcalling, no misgendering, no homophobic preaching, no gay-bashing, no parental rejection can dissuade us from living out the kind of love to which we are called; the ways of being that upset cultural assumptions and power structures that most of us take as fact.

The love that took root in Jesus’ movement was one that breached walls and broke down borders; that reached across ancient religious schisms — such as the one between the Judeans and the Samaritans, who wouldn’t even speak to each other; that uplifted and empowered women; that extended all the way to the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts — who would have been considered not only foreign, but ritually unacceptable as a person! — to heal and unify and plant the seeds of distributive justice through small, beautiful, subversive actions. And it didn’t stop there.

Near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, some of the Roman-backed chief priests and elders come up to Jesus and start questioning him. But he takes the wind out of their sails by telling them a parable:

“What do you think? A man had two sons [keep in mind that in a lot of Bible stories, the second son is the underdog who comes out on top]; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the [sex workers] are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matthew 21:28-31)

(Look at it this way; at least no one can accuse me of not being Bible-based.)

That passage is a proverbial smoking gun; of all the sayings in the Gospels, it’s the one that is still immediately subversive to us today. But it’s true, Jesus explains, because there’s one thing that the most stigmatized, most down-and-out people in society have that the respectable folks who actually obey the traffic laws and run the Temple don’t — and that is, a thirst for hope and meaning and healing, and a reason to imagine that another world is possible.

So, I’ll say it right now: I am not going into ministry to uphold the stability of the mainline church in its current form. I am going into ministry in the hope that I can help make the church into a refuge, where everyone has the opportunity and the tools to heal and thrive and care for one another; where this transformative divine love is as present and as accessible as the air we breathe.

I believe that I am called, among other things, to be a minister to and for my queer and trans siblings, for my radical siblings; to be an instrument of disorientation and reorientation and renewal and healing for the wounds that the church at large has inflicted by confusing white heteronormative Western social conventions with the actual, radical teachings of christianity.

Because how many queer and transgender children have been turned away, just like Jesus was run out of his hometown, by parents and communities and churches who don’t understand them?

I think what Jesus says to his own people later on in the Gospel of Matthew is something he might say to my radical queer siblings, and to the church that has historically rejected them, today:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children [— your queer and trans and non-binary children —] together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.” (Matthew 23:37-38)

Because the great tragedy here is that that vital, transcendent love should have been the church’s stock in trade all along. We, the church, have the capacity and the knowledge to reach back to our radical, counter-cultural roots and throw people a lifeline of meaning and hope and healing in a tempest-tossed world — but in the eyes of far too many, we are still at best a bastion of the status quo.

I’ve connected with some wonderful radical theological people through the internet; one particular person, by the name of Jane Nichols — a remarkable lesbian trans woman who just completed her master’s degree in theology — says it better than I ever could:

[O]ur stance towards exclusionary theology should not be ‘well, actually, if we look in the Bible, we can see that it never actually forbids being gay,’ but instead, ‘how dare [we] presume to limit God’s love? What blasphemous arrogance could have possibly led [us] to where [we ended up]? When did [we] start worshipping [our] own image in place of the Divine?’ (Jane Nichols, Tumblr post, May 2019)

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

Where I have found the Holy Spirit alive and well and pushing the envelope is on the margins of almost every sphere. Most immediately, I encounter it in the deep insight and vulnerability of the women clergy members in my life — and most recently, I have seen it spring to life in the passion and brilliance and vision of the lesbian and queer women clergy with whom I was privileged to commune on the sidelines of the former Maritime Conference.

By the way — Jesus’ story is hardly the only one that’s relatable to queer and trans people like us. The Bible is replete with stories of transformation, of coming into new identity and purpose, even gender-ambiguity, if you know where — and how — to look.

Yes, queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians, followers of Jesus, can and should get along. Yes, queer people can be Christian, and Christians can be queer; and yes, we can and should learn from one another!

Because we have a remarkable common ground — a remarkable birthright:

We are called to go against the grain; to challenge the basic patterns in which our societies operate, and to embrace a new and powerful kind of love;

a love that reshapes the way we think about ourselves, a love that beckons us to healing and renewal, a love that calls us to take action and cry out for justice, a love that is itself a radical way of being; a love that is potentially more beautiful and more life-giving than the power structures of this world are ready to understand.

Amen.

June 2, 2019 — St. Andrew’s United Church, Halifax

#tamsin writes #tamsin sermonizes #queer christianity #transgender christians #anti-oppressive christianity #reclaiming christianity #rethinking theology #uccan #uccan pride #long post

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quranreadalong · 6 years

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SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: MOSES’ EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, PART 2

Now back to the exile. Jerusalem is literally a pile of rubble and thousands of Jews have been taken miserably into Babylon. The issue with any sort of religion with a patron god is that the god’s power relies on his cult center. Without Jerusalem and its temple, the Jewish religion was lost. The Jews of the ruling class, now exiled, were forced to confront an enormous shift in their worldview and the very structure of their religion. At least it produced some bangin’ Biblical angsty poetry.

The sudden societal collapse naturally caused the exiled Jews to seek some meaning in the brutality they had experienced for no real reason. As they were people living in ancient times, the obvious explanation was that their god had abandoned them because they’d upset him (by worshiping other gods). This is why you have verses in the Bible making sense of the catastrophe like this:

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein, Because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other gods, whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers.

And so the narrative had a clear moral message for its endpoint: Jerusalem had been destroyed because its people had forsaken Yahweh. The exile was a punishment. Rather than stew in misery, the Jews then set about creating a history leading up to this point, describing the rise and fall of themselves as a people, starting at the beginning of humanity itself. This work would replace the temple as the central part of the Jewish faith--something that the Jews could cling to no matter where they were. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, arranged if not written in this period, are meant to be a history. One that would form the cornerstone of a Jewish Religion 2.0, a better, more monotheistic, more unified belief system.

One thing to keep in mind is that this flurry of activity to shape Judaism into a cohesive, codified, monotheistic religion occurred both during the exile and after it. So the actual endpoint of the story, completed after the exiles returned to Jerusalem, was returning to Yahweh’s favor. (In fact many scholars believe that the final version of the current Torah wasn’t completed until the first century BC, though the vast majority of it was kept the same). But they still had to link the whole narrative together into a cohesive whole. I’ll talk more about that process tomorrow in a terribly dry post but for now we’re gonna talk about the situation of the Jews themselves!

The exile lasted quite a long time, but it wasn’t an eternity. Two or three generations of Jews had been born in exile, but there were still exilic Jews around who had been born in Jerusalem. And they weren’t all kept as slaves or anything; many of them lived quite normal lives... just in an unhappy exile. So there was time to do things like, uhh write lots of religious stories and make a monotheistic religion I guess, they didn’t have the internet then so they couldn’t just develop crippling depression and do nothing all day, you see. They wrote a lot of stuff, but they didn’t finish all their work during the exile. Because the exile ended.

See, the Neo-Babylonians peaked early. The empire was running into religious problems by the 550s BC, with the people of Babylon feeling as though their ruler was neglecting their patron god Marduk. Making matters worse, the king at the time was Nabonidus, who may have had an Assyrian background oddly enough (basically nothing is known of how he came to overthrow his predecessor, a Babylonian prince by blood, or even who he was; his mother is named but not his father). Weirdly little is known about the guy but the surviving records say that his own people greatly disliked him and thought he was a shitty king because he was too busy being an archaeologist to rule (really). He was so unpopular that the people of Babylon were beginning to warm to Nabonidus’ arch rival, Cyrus of Persia, helped along by a very strong Persian propaganda campaign. It seems as though when Cyrus inevitably moved to conquer the city of Babylon, there was little resistance. Babylon then became a part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, as did its former territories, including Judah. And here is where our friends’ fortunes changed.

Cyrus, you see, believed himself to be Great, and has gone down in history as such (largely thanks to the Jews we’ve been talking about). An avid follower of Zoroastrianism, he believed that it was his destiny to conquer as much of the world as possible in order to defend it from the forces of evil in some world-ending event. To accomplish this as efficiently as possible, he combined outright conquest with a policy of making friends and winning hearts and minds, as seen in Babylon. He observed the fact that the former ruling class of Judah was just sort of sitting there in Babylon waiting for someone to send them home, and thought hey, if I send these people back and rebuild their temple they’ll really like me! And so he allowed the exilic Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple there in 539 BC, which immortalized him in the Bible. Of all the foreign empires mentioned by the Torah, the Persians are presented in by far the most positive light, never declared evil and rarely even criticized. This is probably due to some combination of genuine gratitude... and also the fact that Judah was now a client state of the Achaemenids, and sought to maintain favor with them. The Book of Ezra states:

Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD, the God of heaven, given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

And so many of the Jews who had been taken into exile, along with their children and grandchildren, returned to rebuild Jerusalem. As the former upper-class, they were given favored status by the Persians and again treated as the rulers of the Jews. Upon returning home, the exilic Jews began refashioning Jewish society to fit the mold they had created in Babylon, and over time Judaism would come to resemble the religion we know, an exclusively monotheistic religion with a sacred text (which was still being compiled at the time) and clear mythological eras, beginning with the well-known story of Adam. The lower-class people who had never left Judah in the first place would be told to just get used to it; as the centuries went by, those few who resisted would essentially be reduced to nothing or else cast out of the religion.

The work on the Torah continued apace, but for our purposes, the story is really about Moses and where he came from in all this mess. The questions that no one can really answer but are worth looking at anyway: where does the story of Moses fit into all this? Or rather, more accurately, what was the origin of the stories that became Exodus, which were glued together into one linear narrative? Who was Moses to the Jews before the exile, and how did his story change afterwards? Given the lack of actual written records, can we even guess as to what the predecessor texts of the first five books of the Bible looked like? If not, can we at least identify later additions to them?

All this and more deeply confusing Biblical textual history--tomorrow!!

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

#historylesson #taha #surah 20 #quranreadalong

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lilahiswriting · 3 years

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Judy Chicago and the Dinner Party

“So women are at the beginning of building a language, and not all women are conscious of it,” said Judy Chicago when talking about her biggest feminist piece, The Dinner Party (1979). Born Judith Sylvia Cohen in 1939 in Chicago, Illinois, Chicago is considered the primary catalyst for feminist art and art education in the United States. She is known for her large-scale installations and for examining the roles of women in culture and society. Judy Chicago’s political impact, although controversial, was fundamental for the artistic and social liberation of women.

Chicago is an amazing example of inheriting the best of your parents. Her father was very involved in the Communist Party and imparted much of his liberal beliefs in regards to women and workers’ rights into his daughter. Her mother, a dancer and a lover of the arts, instilled this passion in her children. After earning an MFA at UCLA and a series of identity crises that landed her the name Judy Chicago, she became an art professor, hoping to teach women the skills needed to express the female perspective in their work.

Influenced by Gerda Lerner, a women’s historian, Chicago was convinced that women who were unaware and ignorant of women’s history would continue to struggle independently and collectively. This is what drove her to create The Dinner Party, considered Chicago’s masterpiece and in permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum. It consists of a large triangle (48” x 43” x 36”) that holds 39 place settings. Each sitting commemorates a historical female figure, like artists, activists, martyrs, and even mythological goddesses. Their names are embroidered in the table runners, which are stitched in a style and technique that matches the woman’s time. The piece sits over the “Heritage Floor” made of porcelain tile, where the names of 998 other women are also engraved.

Each side of the triangle, chosen to represent equality, honors thirteen women: Wing I honors women from Prehistory to the Roman Empire; Wing II, women from the beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation and Wing III from the American Revolution to feminism. Sojourner Truth, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe are among the most symbolic guests. However, the most intriguing part of the installation is what sits on those placemats: hand-painted ceramic plates that represent each woman. Either their cultures, their body of work, or, for most of them, brightly colored, elaborately styled vulvas. The 39 plates start flat and begin to emerge in higher relief toward the end of the chronology, meant to represent modern women's increasing independence and equality. Besides the plates, ceramic cutlery and chalice, and a napkin with an embroidered gold edge were also in each sitting.

The main impression of The Dinner Party is its resemblance to the Last Supper, an event where there were only men, especially since each side of the triangle sits as many women as the number of attendees: 13. However, thirteen is also comparable to the number of a traditional witches’ coven. The concept of a dinner party exclusively of women also plays on the idea that women have been doing the cooking through history and inverts the roles, making them the guests of honor. Also, Chicago decides to celebrate traditionally female arts, such as textiles (weaving, sewing and embroidery) and china painting, which have been framed as crafts or domestic art, instead of capitalizing from the more culturally valued, male-dominated fine arts.[2]

Chicago pays tribute to notable women who are often forgotten, as well as those who have fought for women's rights. The Dinner Party is supposed to honor, express gratitude and inspire, more than it is supposed to convey a specific message. The installation teaches about women’s struggles for power and equality in a patriarchal society. It explores the possibility of a meeting between all these powerful women and how that might have changed the course of human history. However, by presenting the powerful women of the past to the women of the present, Chicago plays with the possibility of this meeting happening now and changing the future of humankind forever.

The reception of this piece was extremely controversial, most notably for the lack of representation for women of color, Sojourner Truth being the only African American with a seat at the table. The overwhelming number of genitals was also interpreted as limiting women to their anatomy, on top of the trans-exclusionary impression that it may have. Other critiques come from the fact that the piece was a result of the assistance of over 400 volunteers, mainly women, and what this means for workers’ rights, especially women workers.

It premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and despite much resistance from the art world, it toured 16 venues in 6 countries, reaching over 15 million people. It was eventually stored, and since 2007, has been on permanent exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Despite how monumental of an installation The Dinner Party is, the immeasurable impact it had on feminism, and how to this day it’s considered the starting point for feminist art history, Chicago didn’t stop there. She created banners and timelines that accompany the installation, and a three-book publication to provide background information on each woman and their lives, plus the process of making the work.

For the limitless contributions Judy Chicago has given the art world as a pioneering artist, educator and activist, her work is not featured in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Art Institute of Chicago, further widening the gap between male and female artists. However, she has continued to work to get out of the controversies The Dinner Party created for her, exploring different directions in her art and broadening her subject matters. Through her non-profit foundation and her everyday work with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and other institutions, Judy Chicago continues to educate and revolutionize the art world.

Chicago, Judy. 2007. The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. London: Merrell

Felder, D. G., & Rosen, D. 2005. Fifty Jewish women who changed the world. Citadel Press Books.

Jones, Amelia. 2005. The "Sexual Politics" of The Dinner Party. Berkeley: University of California Press

Lippard, Lucy. April 1980. "Judy Chicago's Dinner Party". Art in America 68

Martucci-Fink, B. and Martucci-Fink, G., 2020. Welcome to "The Dinner Party". ArtPop Talk Podcast.

“The Dinner Party". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Brooklyn Museum.

#art #2021

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czqy · 7 years

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going home (prologue)

very loosely based off the prompt “my country’s going through some issues so i’m here in hiding and you’re a civilian who lives in the same apartment complex as me” which I got at the same time as my previous multichaptered fic so. this has been a long time coming.

Keith, prince of the Galra Empire, has been sent to Earth for his safety, where he will attend the Galaxy Garrison. Initially, all he wants is to just get through school and go back home as soon as he can. This proves to be difficult and his plans soon change, throwing him into a position he never could’ve imagined.

* this is the only time I’ll be posting a chapter in full, after this I’ll only be providing links.

prologue | chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

AO3 | FF.net

“You can’t just send me away!”

“Keith, honey, please. You—”

“No! I am the Galran prince! How can I still be the prince if I’m on another planet? This is my home!” Keith stood up, clenched his hands into fists and glared at his mother.

She sighed, sat down on Keith’s bed, and patted the spot beside her. “Sit.” After a moment of silence Keith relented and sat down. “Do you think I want you to go? I know it’s hard to comprehend, but it’s also for your safety. Hey, don’t scoff at me. When General Zarkon first told me of this I was furious too, and I told him this was the safest place for any Galra to be. But you know how it is, he’s in charge, and whatever he says goes. It might not be so bad, I hear you can learn how to fly at the Galaxy Garrison, isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to do?”

Keith nodded, but kept his head down. When his mum pulled him into a hug, he buried his head into her shoulder.

“How long will I be gone?”

“I don’t know sweetie, but it won’t be forever. Cheer up, okay? We still have some time to go.”

The next day, Zarkon made a public announcement. It was done in front of a massive crowd, as well as broadcast across the whole of the Galra Empire so Keith had to be dressed suitably. His royal attire was reserved for formal events, so he only got to wear it a few times every year. It was a very impressive outfit, briefly based off the armour of the highest ranking officers in their army. The biggest difference was in the colours, he had mostly brilliant dark purples and deep maroons to represent his status. While the chest emblem for some officers and soldiers glowed a purple colour, and while some didn’t glow at all, his had a bright yellow candescence. His royal cape was also a maroon colour, but with a navy blue underlining. Keith did enjoy wearing the outfit, even though it usually meant he had to attend long and boring events.

Keith sat with his mother and watched Zarkon tell the crowd in front of them how “Crown Prince Keithen will be sent to Earth for his safety, so that he can return after the war to a new era of peace and prosperity, and oversee our empire without any interruptions”. Keith felt incredibly unamused and probably would’ve shown that fact were it not for his mother glaring at him every few doboshes. When the speech was over, a ceremony was held where Keith had to endure countless members of the Galra Empire approaching him and wishing him a safe trip, while also assuring him they will continue to dedicate their lives to the empire while he was gone. Keith shook every single one of their hands and thanked them for their devotion in response, no matter whether he actually meant it or not. By the end of the whole thing, he just wanted to go back to his room and stay there until the day he had to leave.

Fortunately, it quietened down within the next few days. Business resumed as usual and Keith spent most of his days either training, practising the universal language used on Earth, or reading up on Earthly customs. He had also visited the druids to receive his supply of Quintessence.

Quintessence was basically the reason as to why the war started, and it was so important that even as royalty Keith could not gain access to it. Needless to say, he was quite excited to have some in his possession.

“Now, Your Highness, this isn’t something to be fooled around with, do you understand?”

Keith nodded, saw that the druids were waiting for a verbal response and grunted out a “yes I understand”. He then held out his arm so he could be shown how to use it.

“Apply a few drops onto a section of your body, and then rub it in with a circular motion. When there is no visible yellow left, you should start to feel your body surge with an unfamiliar energy. It may feel intrusive at first, but you’ll become accustomed to it. Then, and I trust that you’ve been practising, you need to shapeshift into a human. You should find it a lot easier than usual, Quintessence amplifies your abilities. Try it now.”

Because a druid had applied Quintessence while explaining how it worked, Keith could already feel a tingling sensation course through his body. He then took a deep breath in and imagined the arm of a human, how different their skin colour was and how they had furless arms. He tried focusing the energy into that section of his arm and watched as it slowly transformed into something resembling the image in his mind.

The druids nodded and commended him. Still amazed, Keith kept his eyes on his now-human arm and asked why he’s taking what he thought was so little Quintessence with him. After all, no one knew how long he would be gone.

“Quintessence goes a long way, Your Highness; so long as you do not actively try to shift back into your natural form and maintain a basic focus on holding your shift, one application can last up to a few days. Be sure to only apply the bare minimum required though, because while you do not need to use a lot at once, you still do have a limited supply. Rest assured, however, that we will find a way to provide you with more should you run out.”

Keith headed back to his room with his bag of Quintessence and decided to keep his human arm for now. The sight was unusual for him, even though he had seen countless images of humans while honing his skill. It was different seeing something on a picture or through a video and seeing it on yourself. He wondered what he would look like fully as a human, and whether he would fit in without any trouble.

The night before Keith left he decided to go to the observatory deck and look at the stars. Strangely, he hadn’t really gone anywhere since he learnt he would be going to Earth. It felt like desertion, so he had barely even left the castle. The deck was different though, it was open to all inhabitants of the castle, but Keith found that no one went there as much as he did and it became his special place. He first stumbled upon it as a child, playing hide-and-seek with one of the servants. He was trying to find the servant and ran into the room which had massive glass panes all around and an entire view of the city. He never found the servant that round, but he decided discovering this room was worth losing all the hide-and-seek games in the world. On the left he could see the castle gardens, as well as many of the residential buildings that had purple-red lights at night. Facing forward he had the widest outlook of the city, and from the highest point. As a child, he enjoyed standing there and pretending he was emperor, looking down and watching over his empire and people. The right side was his favourite, there was no infrastructure and it had the clearest view of the night sky. Even as the years went by, when buildings changed and the whole city became more military-like the right side remained untouched, and the view was as clear as ever.

Tonight it was still empty as usual, and Keith was appreciative for the solitude. This time, unlike many previous times, he made sure to take in every view, and with as much detail as he could. He wanted to have a clear image of his home in mind while he was gone. As he stood over the city, he reminisced what it was like just ten years ago, how the empire had seemed then. Right then and there, he vowed to make sure it would return to that state when he ruled.

Moving to the right side, Keith was suddenly overcome with a wave of emotions. Over the past week or so he hadn’t properly given his situation any thought, choosing to bury it under work and training. Now that he was alone and looking at the vast sky all those feelings seemed to bubble over. He felt anger towards Zarkon for sending him away from his home, sadness for being forced to leave the only place he’s ever known, and just… defeated. He did not want to leave his home, or his people, and especially not his mum. It felt like abandonment and the last thing he wanted was to feel as if he had not properly fulfilled his role.

Wiping away a few stray tears, Keith told himself that there was nothing he could do besides make the best out of his circumstances. He would go to Earth, do whatever he had to do there, then come back home and start taking back the empire. He also decided to commit as many stars and constellations as he could see into memory, because even though the planets may be different some of the stars were bound to be the same. He would still be under the same sky no matter how far away he was.

The day Keith left for Earth was an uneventful one, much to Keith’s relief. He packed in the morning, including the bag of Quintessence and some human clothes the druids supplied, then went about his day as he usually would. Only towards night were things different from usual. After dinner with his mother, they walked to the hangars together, where they found General Zarkon and a few druids waiting.

“Prince Keithen, the coordinates for your pod have been set for Earth, and you should expect to arrive at the Galaxy Garrison within a few varga. When you do, the pod will automatically set a course to return here. I wish you the very best for your journey and stay. Please excuse myself for the abruptness but I must take leave as there is urgent business to attend to.” General Zarkon bowed, and swiftly walked off with the druids following. Keith was quite surprised he showed up to send him off, but was not amazed that he left as soon as he could. Once they were out of eyeshot, Keith turned to his mum.

“So, I—”

“Don’t be too upset when you’re on Earth okay? Try to make some friends, or at least be friendly, I don’t want you to be alone the whole time. Make sure you take care of yourself too, exercise, and the food may taste weird but please remember to eat, I cannot stand the thought of not knowing whether you are being healthy or not.” Keith’s mother suddenly could not stop talking and Keith was unsure whether to stay silent or cut her off.

“Mum! I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Okay. One last thing. Two last things. Can you show me what you look like as a human? We can check that you’ll be able to shapeshift back as well.” It was an odd request and Keith wanted to ask questions but it was his mother, and it was also the last time he was going to see her for who knows how long so he agreed wordlessly.

Keith took out a vial of Quintessence, applied a few drops to exposed areas—his head, neck, hands—and rubbed it in. This time he was thrown off balance as it took effect. His vision blurred, and it felt like he was being pricked by needles. Still, he forced himself to focus and shift. It took a little longer than he remembered, possibly due to the larger scale, but he still did it. When he was done, he lifted his head and saw that his mum was close to tears.

Immediately he surged forward and pulled her into a hug. “I’ll be okay. Please don’t cry, and don’t worry about me, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you remember that sheet I gave you during dinner? It’s of a bunch of stars and constellations I found, so that way if you’re missing me you can go to the observatory deck and watch them. I’ll be doing it on Earth too, so, really, it won’t be so bad.”

They pulled apart and Keith’s mum ruffled his hair. “No, I’m fine, it was just that… You look good like this, honey. And the stars idea is brilliant too, I’ll be sure to do that. Now let’s see you transform back, shall we?”

Last time Keith had just let the Quintessence wear off, so he didn’t know what it’d be like to shift back before it could happen, nor how much effort it would take. He decided to drop his focus first, and saw that immediately a portion of him returned to Galra form. When he then pictured his appearance, all his natural features came back. It barely took any time, and was a lot easier than transforming into a human. Keith’s mum watched him, looking proud.

“Here is the last thing I need to give to you, and then it’ll be time to leave.” She pulled out something from inside her robe and handed it over to Keith. He took it and saw that it was completely wrapped up, but had the shape of a dagger. He then recognised it as his mother’s personal blade.

“Why are you giving this to me? It’s yours.”

“It wouldn’t be fair if I had a way to remember my son and he had no way to remember me, would it?” She smiled and hugged him once more.

This time, they pulled apart because they heard footsteps approaching. It was odd, since Keith’s pod was the only one scheduled to leave the hangar, and no others were supposed to be entering. They both immediately turned their heads to the direction where the sound was coming from and saw two suited creatures being escorted, as well as another being dragged along the floor.

The warmth shown to Keith by his mother was suddenly replaced with a cold demeanour. When she turned back to Keith, however, her eyes softened.

“I better go check this out. Stay safe, okay? I love you always, and I’ll see you soon.” With that, and with a kiss on the forehead, Keith’s mother strode off, in a way only an Empress could. A part of Keith was glad he would be getting away from royal affairs and being part of a war, but he knew that was a selfish notion, and felt guilty for thinking it.

Keith made sure his bags were all set and loaded before climbing into the pod and turning it on. He felt the same exhilarating rush he always did when a pod blasted off but it didn’t last long. The fact he was not going to be home for a long time sunk in, and he felt overcome with dread. He turned his head around as far as he could to watch his planet grow smaller and smaller, before setting his sights forward on what was to come.

#klance #keith #klance fanfic #klance fanfiction #vld keith #voltron legendary defender #wowclunawrites

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lamus-dworski · 7 years

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because you are so knowledgeable on polish history and lore, i was wondering - do you know any details of what life was like for poles in the 1850s? (sorry if this seems random, i just can't find any information about that time period really)

This is in fact an extremely broad topic because the Polish people lived under 3 entirely different Partitions back then. There could’ve been also huge differences even within different regions of each of the Partitions

Naturally, life was also very different for various social classes (peasants, townspeople, intelligentsia, and so on). Let’s take the peasants - the most numerous social class back then - as a quick example.

Let’s say, the peasants living under the Austrian rule had a different life, worries and opportunities in the areas around Kraków, in the eastern ‘Kresy’ or in the highlands inside that Partition. In comparison to the other two Partitions, life was relatively easy in the political terms over there, and just like in the rest of the Austrian empire most of the ethnic groups were rather left alone (for example, free to move around or free to use their languages and continue their cultural traditions). On the other hand the Austrian authorities didn’t focus on developing or funding new infrastructure in that region and therefore the people suffered poverty much greater than in the other Partitions. It was so bad that towards the end of that century the region of Galicja was said to be the poorest in the whole Europe.

Then, there was much more of oppression in the other two Partitions, like law restrictions and the cultural Germanization / Russification that affected all the social classes. For the said example of the peasants, it meant that there were phases when they couldn’t move freely around, their culture and language were restricted or even their family members taken away, or they couldn’t find a job speaking their own language only (depending on what particular region and timeline are we taking into account). However, the 1850s were relatively calm in those matters.

1850s were the times when the Austrian and Prussian parts had already abolished the serfdom (it’s after the period of People’s Spring); while in the Russian part there was still a form of the payments and peasants were still organizing protests (it was fully abolished there only in 1860s and replaced by a land tax). For all the Partitions that meant a phase of huge changes in the agriculture and laws, different for each of the regions. People welcomed those changes with curiosity and a relief after the decades of the serfdom. Thanks to the abolition the rural culture in all of the parts received more freedom. For example, that was the time when the folk clothing started changing and receiving a form we know nowadays (after a better access to different materials, and without restrictions - among other things the old laws of serfdom were limiting the ‘looks’ of the people).

The Prussian part altogether had the most opportunities job-wise (but many only after receiving the education in German - for the people who spoke the Polish language only there were just less-paid simple jobs). Lots of areas being urbanized much quicker in that Partition led to the peasants developing a slightly different culture, much more resembling the culture of the townspeople than in the other Partitions. There was also the best access to schools out of all the Partitions. Not many offered classes in Polish but there were still many small rural schools where the peasants could learn how to read and receive a very basic education (Polish was banned only in the later decades what eventually led to numerous school strikes in Prussia in the late 19th century).

In the Russian part there were much more opportunities for a higher education (for example, Russians were investing a lot in building of high schools and universities in big cities like Warsaw), but all of the classes were in Russian. Russian had become an ‘official academic language’ already after the uprisings of 1830s, and many topics were banned. The basic level of education still suffered, and many people couldn’t read or write in those rural regions which weren’t allowed to organize primary schools on their own. Another problem was also that a vast majority of the state-funded primary schools offered teaching the cyrilic script only (everything else was ‘undeground’).

In the Austrian part the Poles were free to organize schools and universities by themselves and in Polish, but as I mentioned above there was almost no state funds for them. Everything in this matter was developing extremely slow, and there was never enough schools for everyone who wanted to receive any form of education (while a lot of people wanted to, because that Partition was the most open border-wise). It was a bit better in the cities and towns, but the rural areas had a high level of analphabetism - depending on a source, even higher than in the Russian part.

Because of those kinds of factors, the daily life of the Polish people back then differed a lot between the regions where they lived. All of those things were affecting their living conditions and the way they worked or celebrated.

As you could see with those few examples, it’s very hard to answer your question in short. I looked around the internet quickly but (unfortunately) there’s indeed not much in English that would describe the 1850s in details. If you could give me an information which one of the Partitions interests you the most, I could maybe narrow my search or give a more detailed answer.

Does someone know any good book or article about that time period in English?

#Anonymous #reply post #1850s #partitions #partitions of poland #so much to write #but at the same time we don't know that much about the daily life during that paricular period #much more was written in the later era of positivism #history #polish history

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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If I had to characterize the current international situation using only one word, the word “chaos” would be a pretty decent choice (albeit not the only one). Chaos in the Ukraine, chaos in Venezuela, chaos everywhere the Empire is involved in any capacity and, of course, chaos inside the US. But you wouldn’t know that listening to the talking heads and other “experts” who serve roughly the same function for the Empire as the orchestra did on the Titanic: to distract from the developing disaster(s) for a long as possible.

I decided to turn to the undisputed expert on social and political collapse, Dmitry Orlov whom I have always admired for his very logical, non-ideological, comparative analyses of the collapse of the USSR and the US. The fact that his detractors have to resort to crude and, frankly, stupid ad hominems further convinces me that Dmitry’s views need to be widely shared. Dmitry very kindly agreed to reply to my questions in some detail, for which I am most grateful. I hope that you will find this interview as interesting as I did.

…

Here I have to digress to explain the difference between a proper empire and the USSR. A proper empire functions as a wealth pump that sucks wealth out of its imperial possessions, be they overseas, as in the case of the British Empire, or part of the periphery, as in the case of the Russian Empire. The latter inherited the traditions of the Mongol Empire that predated it. The Mongol term “tamga” was often used to indicate the annual tribute to be collected from newly conquered tribes as the Russian Empire expanded east. (Many of these tribes were previously Mongol subjects who understood the meaning of the term.)

Here is the key point: the USSR was not a normal empire at all. Instead of functioning as a wealth pump that pumped wealth from the periphery to the imperial center, it functioned as a revolutionary incubator, exploiting the resources of the core (Russia) and exporting them to the periphery to build socialism, with the further goal of fomenting global communist revolution. The various ethnic groups that were grossly overrepresented among the Bolsheviks were all from the periphery—the Jewish Pale, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltics—and they thought nothing of sacrificing Mother Russia on the altar of world revolution.

…

Thus, the image of the USSR as a typical empire is simply wrong. The right mental image of the USSR is that of a prostrate, emaciated sow (Russia) being suckled by 14 fat, greedy piglets (the other Soviet Socialist Republics). For all his numerous failings, Boris Yeltsin did one thing right: he dismantled the USSR (although the way he went about it was beyond incompetent and verged on treason).

If you are in need of an explanation for why Russia is now resurgent, increasingly prosperous and able to invest vast sums in hypersonic weapons systems and in modernized infrastructure for its people, this is it: the 14 piglets had been sent off to root for themselves. This bit of perspective, by the way, puts paid to the rank idiocy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard”: his theory that Russia wants to be an empire but cannot do so without the Ukraine shatters on contact with the realization that Russia hasn’t been an empire for over a century now and has no need or desire to become one again.

…

After some amount of effort by NATO instructors to train the Ukrainians, the instructors gave up. The Ukrainians simply laughed in their faces because it was clear to them that the instructors did not know how to fight at all. It was then decided that the “road map” for Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO should be set aside because the Ukrainians are just too crazy for sedate and sedentary NATO. The trainers were then replaced with CIA types who simply collected intelligence on how to fight a high-intensity ground war without air support—something that no NATO force would ever consider doing. Under such conditions NATO forces would automatically retreat or, failing that, surrender.

…

Now the fight is between Poroshenko and a comedian named Vladimir Zelensky. The only difference between Poroshenko and Zelensky, or any of the other 30+ people who appeared on the ballot, is that Poroshenko has already stolen his billions while his contestants have not had a chance to do so yet, the only reason to run for president, or any elected office, in the Ukraine, being to put oneself in a position to do some major thieving.

…

The platforms of all the 30+ candidates were identical, but this makes no difference in a country that has surrendered its sovereignty. In terms of foreign relations and strategic considerations, the Ukraine is run from the US embassy in Kiev. In terms of its internal functioning, the main prerogative of everyone in power, the president included, is thievery. Their idea is to get their cut and flee the country before the whole thing blows up.

It remains to be seen whether the second round of elections will also be an outright fraud and what happens as a result. There are many alternatives, but none of them resemble any sort of exercise in democracy. To be sure, what is meant by “democracy” in this case is simply the ability to execute orders issued from Washington; inability to do so would make Ukraine an “authoritarian regime” or a “dictatorship” and subject to “regime change.” But short of that, nothing matters.

…

None of this matters, because we don’t know which of the two is the US State Department’s pick. Depending on which one it is, and regardless of the results of any elections or lawsuits, a giant foot will come out of the sky and stomp on the head of the other one. Of course, it will all be made to look highly democratic for the sake of appearances. The leadership of the EU will oblige with some golf claps while choking back vomit and the world will move on.

…

The Saker: What about the EU and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe? Where is the EU heading in your opinion?

Dmitry Orlov: The EU has a number of major problems. It isn’t fiscally or monetarily healthy. As a whole, or as its constituent nations, it is no longer capable of the exercise of its full sovereignty, having surrendered it to the US. But the US is no longer able to maintain control, because it is internally conflicted to the point of becoming incoherent in its pronouncements. Overall, the structure looks like a matryoshka doll. You have the US, as a sort of cracked outer shell. Inside of it is NATO, which is an occupying force across most of Europe right up to the Russian border. It would be useless against Russia, but it can pose a credible threat of violence against the occupied populations. Inside of NATO is the EU—a political talking shop plus a sprawling bureaucracy that spews forth reams upon reams of rules and regulations.

Since none of this military/political superstructure is actually structural without the key ingredient of US hegemony, we shouldn’t expect it to perform particularly well. It will continue as a talking shop while various national governments attempt to reclaim their sovereignty. British referendum voters have certainly tried to prod their government in that direction, and in response their government has been experimenting with various methods of rolling over and playing dead, but a different government might actually try to execute the will of the people. On the other hand, the governments of Hungary and Italy have made some headway in the direction of reasserting their sovereignty, with public support.

…

What may speed things up is that Europe, along with the US, appear to be heading into a recession/depression. One effect of that will be that all the East European guest workers working in the west will be forced to head back home. Another will be that EU’s subsidies to its recent eastern acquisitions—Poland and the Baltics especially—are likely to be reduced substantially or to go away altogether. The influx of returning economic migrants combined with the lack of financial support are likely to spell the demise of certain national elites which have been feasting on Western largesse in return for a bit of Russophobia.

We can imagine that this swirling tide of humanity, ejected from Western Europe, will head east, slosh against the Great Wall of Russia, and flood back into the west, but now armed with Ukrainian weapons and knowhow and entertaining thoughts of plunder rather than employment. There they will fight it out with newcomers from Middle East and Africa while the natives take to their beds, hope for the best and think good thoughts about gender neutrality and other such worthy causes.

These old European nations are all aging out, not just in terms of demographics but in terms of the maximum age allotted by nature to any given ethnos. Ethnoi (plural of “ethnos”) generally only last about a thousand years, and at the end of their lifecycle they tend to exhibit certain telltale trends: they stop breeding well and they become sexually depraved and generally decadent in their tastes. These trends are on full display already. Here’s a particularly absurd example: French birth certificates no longer contain entries for father and mother but for parent1 and parent2. Perhaps the invading barbarians will see this and die laughing; but what if they don’t?

…

What will spark the next round of Western European ethnogenesis is impossible to predict, but we can be sure that at some point a mutant strain of zealots will arrive on the scene, with a dampened instinct for self-preservation but an unslakable thirst for mayhem, glory and death, and then it will be off to the races again.

…

It is true that there isn’t much debate within Russia about foreign policy. Putin’s popularity has waned somewhat, although he is still far more popular than any national leader in the West. The pension reform did hurt him somewhat, but he recovered by pushing through a raft of measures designed to ease the transition. In particular, all the benefits currently enjoyed by retirees, such as reduced public transit fees and reduced property taxes, will be extended to those nearing retirement age.

It is becoming clear that Putin, although he is still very active in both domestic and international politics, is coasting toward retirement. His major thrust in domestic politics seems to be in maintaining very strict discipline within the government in pushing through his list of priorities. How he intends to effect the transition to the post-Putin era remains a mystery, but what recently took place in Kazakhstan may offer some clues. If so, we should expect a strong emphasis on continuity, with Putin maintaining some measure of control over national politics as a senior statesman.

…

The Saker: You recently wrote an article titled “Is the USS Ship of Fools Taking on Water?” in which you discuss the high level of stupidity in modern US politics? I have a simple question for you: do you think the Empire can survive Trump and, if so, for how long?

Dmitry Orlov: I think that the American empire is very much over already, but it hasn’t been put to any sort of serious stress test yet, and so nobody realizes that this is the case. Some event will come along which will leave the power center utterly humiliated and unable to countenance this humiliation and make adjustments. Things will go downhill from there as everyone in government in media does their best to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. My hope is that the US military personnel currently scattered throughout the planet will not be simply abandoned once the money runs out, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that is what happens.

The Saker: Lastly, a similar but fundamentally different question: can the US (as opposed to the Empire) survive Trump and, if so, how? Will there be a civil war? A military coup? Insurrection? Strikes? A US version of the Yellow Vests?

Dmitry Orlov: The US, as some set of institutions that serves the interests of some dwindling number of people, is likely to continue functioning for quite some time. The question is: who is going to be included and who isn’t? There is little doubt that retirees, as a category, have nothing to look forward to from the US: their retirements, whether public or private, have already been spent. There is little doubt that young people, who have already been bled dry by poor job prospects and ridiculous student loans, have nothing to look forward to either.

But, as I’ve said before, the US isn’t so much a country as a country club. Membership has its privileges, and members don’t care at all what life is like for those who are in the country but aren’t members of the club. The recent initiatives to let everyone in and to let non-citizens vote amply demonstrates that US citizenship, by itself, counts for absolutely nothing. The only birthright of a US citizen is to live as a bum on the street, surrounded by other bums, many of them foreigners from what Trump has termed “shithole countries.”

It will be interesting to see how public and government workers, as a group, react to the realization that the retirements they have been promised no longer exist; perhaps that will tip the entire system into a defunct state. And once the fracking bubble is over and another third of the population finds that it can no longer afford to drive, that might force through some sort of reset as well. But then the entire system of militarized police is designed to crush any sort of rebellion, and most people know that. Given the choice between certain death and just sitting on the sidewalk doing drugs, most people will choose the latter.

…

At this rate, when the end of the US finally arrives, most of the people won’t be in a position to notice while the rest won’t be capable of absorbing that sort of upsetting information and will choose to ignore it. Everybody wants to know how the story ends, but that sort of information probably isn’t good for anyone’s sanity. The mental climate in the US is already sick enough; why should we want to make it even sicker?

#unz review #the saker #dmitry orlov #interview #russia #ukraine

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