cant wait for people on this website to stop talking about this trial because I havent seen this many horrible takes since before the most toxic users migrated to twitter

24 — HEARTACHES :★︎:

how.

whereas you, the victim, became the artist responsible of tracing your lover’s figure as you continuously flickered your persistent glare to the canvas, your boyfriend..

and back.

of course, only a sharp pierce of an eye was enough to send shivers down riki’s spine, hesitantly holding the bouquet of flowers upon his lap with a sigh. a pout. a apologetic look in his eyes that spoke ‘I’m sorry my dear girlfriend please forgive me.’

it turns out you both felt guilty for making each other worried, feeling nothing but sadness pour over your heads, ms. kim’s ridiculous solution having to be the umbrella to stop it.

although, you wouldn’t consider it ‘ridiculous,’ no,

rather hilarious; if you were honest.

hilarious that you and your boyfriend were now stuck painting portraits of each other, finding it quite odd how it was presumed to make one beam. smile. possibly hop with happiness after earning back forgiveness.

but why is it that now you were feeling the opposite?

why is it that now you wanted to punch riki’s face for his idiotic behavior? his foolish acts? his ability to smirk and act like absolutely nothing had happened?

“why do you look so mad?” riki asks you, innocence filling his voice as the two of you finally met eyes. he’s, once again, holding back the truth while in the process of playing stupid, tiny giggles falling from his lips.

you drag your brush off the canvas, a long sigh to escape as you hold back urges of beating his ass. “you wanna ask me that again?” you counter coldly, cocking a brow that resulted in his stiffened body.

an arrow shoots through your boyfriend’s chest, his figure growing hesitant upon the stool as he immediately shakes his head. it makes you secretly giggle at his stupidity, returning to your painting with a smile almost enough for him to catch.

“..just don’t move again, okay?” your voice softens, capturing the way riki’s face lightens as you lower your gaze. “I’m too tired to play with you right now.” you groan, a yawn trailing behind.

you didn’t think these type of solutions were supposed to make the atmosphere cold, ..or typically occur at two in the morning.

you even found it odd how riki wasn’t falling asleep on the job.

in fact,

he just seemed like himself.

idiotic..stupid….

…

yeah just those.

but riki, surprisingly, obeys with a nod of a head, holding his posture just perfectly with his side profile on display. you almost catch yourself to fond over the sight, averting eyes as you could’ve sworn the male caught you melt on the spot.

you also could’ve sworn a chuckle had left his lips just then, unnoticed of his teasing acts to return the moment you place your eyes upon his figure once more. only to find him smirking at you.

he’s pulling another one of his stupid poses again, just enough for you to angrily shout his name across the room.

“ki!” you scowl, his laughter to bloom as he made fun of your warm cheeks. “you think this is a joke??” you threaten, watching him laugh his ass off, completely disregarding your words as he continuously pulls the most unpleasant things.

next thing you know he’s doing all sorts of corny poses, just to see you fluster.

“why can’t you paint me like this, huh?” he dramatically runs his fingers through his hair, flashing a cocky grin in your direction. “or! or….” he then pulls a serious expression, throwing a leg over the other while tipping his hand under his chin. “what about this?”

but you continue to remain still, a disappearance of words. flushed cheeks. dropped jaws that lingered more than of riki’s surprise. he’s almost shocked he hadn’t made you lose your sanity yet.

“you’re right, too cheesy.” a sigh slips, a sharp inhale to tail. “—oh, wait.” he stops, now raising his arm to flex his bicep. you could already see the invisible sparkles. “now we’re talking.”

but it’s just enough to tick your anger off, almost coming unnoticed as he continues to cluelessly laugh like a child.

“or how about th…”

but with words left unfinished, riki doesn’t take notice of the way you storm into his presence.

the way you pull into his arms.

and the way the warmth of your fingers greet his wrists as you instinctively grab hold of his two hands,

“move one more time.”

..only to still.

and at that moment did riki search your alluring eyes with his, swearing his heart paced faster into your touch, your voice, and the lips that tore himself in half each time he glanced at it.

and maybe by now you’d release.

by now, you’d probably be running behind the easel and continue painting the cheeks that had you struggle, whilst he’d resume his task of looking pretty.

by now, you guys would probably be detached and have broken the painfully awkward eye contact that occurred out of nowhere.

but,

why couldn’t you let go?

“w-what are you…”

why couldn’t he break free,

“ki,”

when all that distracts was the beauty in your eyes.

“huh—yes??”

the eyes that are pierced into his red colored ears and his perfectly placed moles.

moles you’ve practically grown familiar with ever since middle school,

and the moles you have now brushed your thumb across.

“y/n?”

moles that eventually lead you to pull your lover’s face just inches closer to yours, your dancing fingers that cup his pink cheeks creating a familiar warmth between two.

a warmth you missed.

“I….”

and by then you’d wish you had let go,

“I’m about to do..”

but something tells you not too.

“..something really stupid right now.”

there,

stands two figures.

a kiss.

a kiss ever so soft that could only be captured against the rays of light that illuminate perfectly upon each other’s features. features that drag you two closer by second, affection within.

a kiss so charming, lips to connect as you feel yourself fall into his touch, the internal giggles creating nothing but smiles that are shared between pecks. and you ask yourself why you’re doing this.

it’s almost that now, you’d wonder if this was what your past self would’ve wanted for you both. that if you saw yourself creating memories with him, the tears he’s once caused would vanish, right?

as if you hadn’t cried over him at all.

that maybe if you stayed beside him throughout middle school, would you both still be in this position? placed under each other’s touch after spending years coping through the disappearance of his presence?

would he still care?

the curtains shifted through the half opened windows, the invitation of wind running through strands of hair as the moon revealed itself behind the trees. the trees that rustled as the rain poured itself through.

however, if you looked the opposite direction, the other windows that sit right across the room are left shut, but are also very revealing from behind. the behind that leads to the hallways, but also the entrance of the outside.

rows of glass line across the wooden walls, printed stains to cover. a barrier rests between two different areas, two different atmospheres.

but,

upon those windows….

leaves an untouched curtain.

a untouched curtain that’s given the smallest movement,

enough movement to reveal a sight one’s never wanted to see.

but also enough movement to shatter one’s heart.

because right behind those very windows,

stands a boy.

a boy that had once searched the fields, sorrowful eyes glaring through the window with overlapping breaths. heavy ones.

a boy that’s completely soaked, a sigh, an exhale, a breath of disappointment to escape as he eases into the view.

a boy that has now turned away, his trudging footsteps marking the hallway, an umbrella out of reach.

an umbrella that was unable to hover, but to only vanish upon his grip through the pouring weather. away from his grasp, far from his fingers.

an umbrella that was unable to capture the rain that drenches him full, droplets rolling down his cheeks.

an umbrella that was unable to bring the safety,

the light he had hoped to find.

“did you hear that?”

an umbrella…

“hear what?”

.

“nevermind.”

that broke jungwon apart.

◦ synopsis middle school years were difficult for you. After you finally moved away from your supposedly old bully, an unexpected surprise begans to follow

-

© reniqt — all rights reserved

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Now that the Johnny vs Amber case is done, i have to ask something, but first let me say this, i used to be a Johnny's fan, a long time ago, after the allegations i stopped being his fan, and when he came forward i just couldn't see the appeal anymore, so I've moved on. But I'm happy for him, and i hope to God that this case actually help abuse victims (male or female) to seek help. And i hope both of them, get the mental help they need(and i hope she pays for what she did).

Now my question is, why on earth couldn't people just watch this case, like a normal person? Why the fan edits? Why so many jokes about Amber? Why couldn't people see both of them as human? Yes, including Amber. Again I'm happy for him, but people need to learn how to be impartial when we are talking about people that we don't personally know. Stop with this fantasy land that Depp is a angel and Amber is the devil, stop diagnosing her with mental disorders like psychopath or narcissist because you don't like her. Yes, she apparently was the abuser, but that doesn't give you the justification to use your internalized misogyny against her or any other woman who are currently defending themselves on a cort, against their abusers. I'm already seeing people using this case to dismiss every single accusation of abuse, there's people who are already saying that whenever someone comes forward, we should ask the abuser if they abused their partner. Honey, a abusive person, it's not a cartoon characters, they don't yell at the world "I LIKE TO HIT MY PARTNER", they can hide themselves pretty well. Amber could/can easily hide on her small white woman frame, she can easily use the white woman tears and fragility and hide from the world. Just like Johnny can hide himself using his charismatic persona, his fans and his money. We all can hide, asking the accused if they did it or not, is not going to solve anything. What we can do, when something like this happens is to be impartial as we can, unless is someone close to you, you can only speculate, you can't know the full truth. Johnny won this case, and i hope that this inspire men to create their own safe space, to talk about their stories, i hope that this makes it easier for men to be more open about their lives and seek help. And i truly hope that he get to live his life, and i hope that she gets the help she needs (i actually wishes for people who emotionally and physically abuses their spouses to pay for what they did, and get help, is not normal to abuse people, i hope they get proper help and change their behavior, maybe I'm just optimistic 🤷)

But because this whole thing was treated like a true crime YouTube series, we all know that people will use this to disregard abuse victims, because of how this case was treated and because Amber lied about her story. Again I'm happy for Johnny, but this case, is not a excuse for people to disregard other victims.

Anyways, I'm sorry if this is confusing, i just wanted to get this out of my chest. And if you are a Amber fan or a Johnny fan, please don't send me death threats, i don't know why some fan does this when we just mention their desire.

P.s, maybe i will delete this if i change my mind, maybe i won't, i don't know, but this is what I think about this situation right now.

Dear General, just talk to your wife!

Let it be said: any male hero who interferes in his partner’s reproductive ability without her permission and/or knowledge is usually immediately cancelled in my eyes. That is certainly the case for any piece of media set in modern times. Fantasy/historical heroes get a bit of leeway depending on the cultural context, although not always. But the thing is, just as there are no blanket excuses, there are also no blanket condemnations. And you know what?

I do have to give Xiao Qi a get-out-of-immediate-cancellation card in this case! But not before examining his motivations and all mitigating circumstances. To be clear, I’m up to episode 37 at the moment.

So prepare yourself for Five Reasons Xiao Qi Is Very Much Not Cancelled (But He Certainly Deserves A Very Stern Talking To And Then Maybe A Hug).

To recap: Xiao Qi was told that Awu’s health is fragile and while she is able to get pregnant, any pregnancy is very risky and a considerable danger to her life. Upon hearing this he is visibly moved; three months later, when Awu comes back from the temple, there is a re-do wedding at the Yuzhang Manor, during which Xiao Qi announces that Wang Xuan is going to be the only woman in his life. At some point – either at the temple or after the wedding – Awu starts taking medicine prescribed by the Imperial Physician. The medicine, as Auntie Xu later discovers, is actually a tonic, which can be used to prevent conception. Eventually, though, after a year or two of continuous use, it will render a woman infertile for life. As of episode 37 (41 if I choose to trust the raws) Awu does not know what is going on.

And now onto the list!

1. The man is probably the most panicked he has ever been in his life and his mental state is not that great at the moment.

The first thing to remember is that this whole ‘let’s make Awu infertile’ decision is not taken in a void. It is not a case of an isolated event; the choice comes at an end of a veritable Trauma Conga Line. The exact timeline is very muddled, but in the last few months (up to a year) Awu has been: kidnapped, rescued, attacked by assasins, forced to deal with a rebelling city and then a siege, sent straight into a murderous conspiracy and then recruited to deal with a coup… and only then she was put in the very centre of a second coup courtesy of Daddy Wang. Which caused her to lose her child and her mother on the same day. And let’s not forget all the broken illusions about her family and her first love. That’s a lot to deal with and she is pure steel with a spine of titanium, there is no doubt as to that. But she is not the only one who’s had a really hard year.

From the kidnapping onwards Xiao Qi has been with Awu on this road; more often that not away from her physically, true, but from the moment he declared her his wife who will share his life and death…? He’s been in 100%. And being the strong, dependable, ride or die guy has taken its toll, one way or another.

It is quite noticeable that with every Big Damn Heroes moment he pulls off he gets more and more affected. The bridge rescue and its aftermath? Cool as a cucumber; the guilt and responsibility is certainly there, no fear though. Breaking of Huizhou siege? He’s proud as hell of her accomplishments, but he really came at the very last moment – she was getting ready to be killed rather than taken hostage. And there is this noticeable undertone of relief there. The Red Wedding? By then he is panicking. Hard. Which he readily admits, so it’s not pure conjecture. This man, who has never been afraid of attacking armies and not really afraid of death either, is scared as f***. Mind you, it’s not like he’s ever had anyone to be really scared for before; his soldiers are a different case altogether. And this time he was late, which makes for a really fertile soil for various ‘what-ifs’ during those two days when Awu is unconscious. He was late despite basically pulling off a miracle and risking entering the capital with only 10 000 troops.

And then and only then Daddy Wang pulls out all the stops. Two days of watching his unconscious wife is nothing compared to what happens then. First she runs into the middle of opposing forces, completely disregarding any danger to herself. For him (and her father, but that is beside the point)! I am sure that Song Huaien relayed her words to Xiao Qi once the dust settled. Then... Princess Jinmin dies and Awu starts bleeding.

After… After he claims responsibility for Princess Jinmin’s death. There is no doubt he is feeling doubly, triply responsible for the miscarriage. He can’t really help his wife. And he is grieving for their child. Not only for Awu’s sake, but for his own too.

It all culminates with the Imperial Physician telling Xiao Qi that there is another battle to be fought, one which Awu will probably enter with minimal hesitation and in which he is not going to be able to pull a Big Damn Heroes rescue. So in that moment he clutches at his heart… And – at least I think that’s the moment - takes a split-second decision: NOT AGAIN. Everything after that? He’s only holding to a chosen course.

2. He is feeling guilty as all hell and is overcompensating hard.

Xiao Qi is the epitome of a hyper-responsible hero. And not in the ‘Woe is me, everything is my fault!’ way that brooding heroes tend to veer to. No empty anguish or dramatic self-flagellation there! He is very matter of fact about both his responsibility and perceived guilt. Soldiers die under his command? He will honour their memory and take care of their families. Awu gets kidnapped by his personal enemy? He will admit his guilt without any excuses and offer recompense. Princess Jinmin becomes a victim of a stand-off that he did not even provoke? He will take the blame and then redeem himself by swearing an oath that he will not fail to protect Awu. And he takes his oaths very, very seriously, otherwise the Ma family would have a Really Big Problem.

All that responsibility comes from both his own character and the force of habit. Nobody ever worries about me, he says. To his soldiers he is the strong, infallible one and so he keeps this facade intact despite knowing it’s a load of bull.

So this hyper-responsible man has unwittingly sent his wife into danger, into battle (!) three times already (kidnapping, rebellion in Huizhou, Zilu’s coup) and was part of the reason she entered the fourth one. And while she has acquitted herself brilliantly every time, she paid a very steep price for saving him/the Empire. In his mind, he owes it to her and to Princess Jinmin for it to never ever happen again. And so he is not going to send her into the battle of childbirth for anything under the sun! The thing is, Awu is brave as hell and would enter it willingly in a blink of an eye. So he is arranging things so that she can never do that in the first place.

3. Xiao Qi is trying to spare Awu from mental and emotional anguish. It’s a pattern and one wildly spiraling out of control.

It’s really, really starting to show that Xiao Qi is used to being regarded as the infallible one, the one who must always find a solution and save as many people as he can. And while it is not a problem in Ningshuo, when he needs to tell Awu the truth about her father (and still he hesitates!), it tends to come through quite strongly in moments of stress and/or danger. Which is understandable, I think. In Ningshuo the stakes are not as high, everybody is safe and they are in the middle of Xiao Qi’s fortress, the very centre of his power. If there is any place he feels safe and at home, it’s right there. The capital is a wholly different kettle of fish; even on his first visit Xiao Qi is – quite reasonably – wary and on guard. For him the capital is behind enemy lines. So he reverts to his Infallible General mindset more and more: he keeps telling Awu things, but not all of them (money) and not always immediately (Hulans asking for a bride). Which is really stupid of him since Awu is in many areas just as smart - if not smarter - than him.

It’s not only the Infallible General mindset, though. In fact, that is the least of the problems there. By this point the panic is really setting in and so is the guilt. There is one more thing, though. Xiao Qi has this tendency towards self-deprecation. He does not wallow in it, but the undercurrent of his perceived social inferiority emerges from time to time, moreso in the capital. And it does factor in his behaviour; I sense that he has this need to keep deserving her. Coupled with devotion, it pushes him into a very touching, but also potentially dangerous single-mindedness.

Saving Daddy Wang by kneeling all night long clearly shows that Xiao Qi will stop at nothing to spare Awu’s heart, life and health. Personal pride? Enmity towards Daddy Wang? Political expedience? Disregarded completely. So what’s a year or two of lying if it means Awu lives? He’s set himself a Goal: protect Awu, just as he promised before Princess Jinmin’s grave. And it’s really been blinding him since.

Notice that he did not tell her about saving Daddy Wang either. She had to find out from His Imperial Spudness! True, it all worked out fine then, but whatever his reasons, he still did not tell her. And yes, I get that his reasons were really noble, but! But it is still a pattern, one that I hope she will break him out of rather sooner than later.

4. He is making a great sacrifice too; hear me out! And he does not leave himself an out.

This is the kind of argument that launches a flaming discussion, so please, be gentle. Anyway, we are not going to speak of whether any man has the right to make unilateral decisions about his wife’s body, that’s neither here nor there in this case, since it does not really enter into consideration in the drama itself.

What is clearly very important in the drama is the idea of family lines. The Wang and Xie families are all about this idea of legacy and bloodlines. Bloodlines are Important: propagating the bloodline is Wang Su’s main duty and both families fight over whose blood will sit on the throne. This clan mentality is clearly a Very Serious Business. Admittedly, Xiao Qi is an outsider to the clan-based society of upper classes. But even though his primary social group consists of his brothers-in-arms, he is very acutely attuned to the idea of family being the most important thing. It shows in many aspects of his life: in the care he gives to his soldiers’ families, in the consideration he gives Awu when she encounters another heartbreaking truth about her relatives and in the way he seems to take for granted that she will not stop caring for Daddy Wang no matter what. Also, he clearly likes kids, the mysterious shadow child gave us this much.

So it is not out of the realm of possibility that he would really like to have a child of his own. And why wouldn’t he? Awu may have trouble bearing him children, but there is nothing stopping him from taking a concubine or a dozen for this very purpose. Any other man in this drama would have (maybe except Zilu…?). And the society would not judge him, especially if the truth about Awu’s condition came out. It really is not a monogamistic society. Moreover, since Daddy Wang is not in the picture any more, nobody can even try to force Xiao Qi to keep to one bed (or poison his concubine…), not with his current position and power.

And what is the very first thing he does after Awu comes home? He declares – in public and with great pomp! - that Awu will be his only woman, thus staking his honor and reputation on all his children being hers. Which with the tonic in play means that there will be no children. It is a decision he takes very deliberately and in direct response to the previous events and the Wangs’ fall from grace. In fact, I wager this whole monogamy clause is a way not only to quell the rumours and stop any scheming families in their tracks, but also to keep things fair as much as it is even possible. Awu will not have children, well, neither will he.  

5. He is setting himself up and preemptively hogging all the guilt and blame.

The short yet very poignant exchange with Pang Gui in episode 37 makes it clear that Xiao Qi knows quite well he is going to be found out sooner or later. Sure, he would rather that Pang Gui kept mum about everything, but in reality he leaves it wholly up to his judgment. Which tells me that Xiao Qi is not willing to ‘kill’ for this secret. In fact, it might suit his plans if it were to come out… though not at the moment. Maybe after the requisite year or two, once Awu is no longer in any danger. Relying on what we know about his character, I think he is wholly prepared for the truth to eventually come out and then to take all the blame. And I mean ALL the blame. As in: Awu will have no reason to blame herself for her fragile health and thus inability to bear children, if it’s actually Xiao Qi’s fault. He will have gotten her infertile, so her actual ability to give birth safely will be immaterial. She will put all her anger on him and not on herself, and anger he can take, it’s her getting quiet that he can’t cope with. And to hell with what it does to their marriage, she will be alive. Is it stupid, stupid thinking? Sure. But quite probable when you’re dealing with a man this hyper-responsible and clearly unused to family dynamics.

And that’s that. Do I think he is being a single-minded fool? Sure. The man is not perfect after all! Does he need to talk to Awu? Of course, but I get where his unwillingness to do just that comes from. Is it going to bite him in the ass really, really hard? Oooooh, is it! But Xiao Qi is not cancelled and if Awu forgives him, then so should we all.

MINORITY REPORT

People who are interested in being honest, true to themselves and to others, eager to learn truth about things (scientific, historical, etc) and acquire knowledge, please keep reading. Everyone else, carry on with your daily activities; this article will clearly not impact on you in any positive way.

There has been a growing concern during the last few years that people have a tendency to “save the tree and burn the forest”; this is a mentality of gross generalizations, over-simplistic attitudes towards right and wrong, and superficial ideological bubbles that do not take into account reality. When historical truth is no longer convenient, when people forget the right use of words and terms and come up with the trendy, politically correct speech while disregarding the established definitions, then watch out: Big Brother is about (the 1984 George Orwell concept).

Minorities’ rights

There is a large number of people who tend to be sympathetic towards any groups, just because they are labelled as a minority. Instead of examining what they stand for and who they truly are (given a historical perspective), they moralize on their behalf and fiercely try to protect them, with a simplistic and gullible attitude. Let’s try and ask some basic questions:

Are their rights more/less important than anyone else’s?

We should be talking about human rights, and not minorities’ rights. If these groups are human groups, then they have some rights; these rights are protected by United Nations and various Constitutions, and political assemblies worldwide, and any proven violation is condemned. Why should any human group have more (or less) rights than any other group?

Are the minorities always correct?

Of course not. Whoever believes this tends to be extremely naïve. For example, amidst the minorities hide some rather loathsome groups (or individuals), such as Nazis, KKK, international terrorists (like Isil/Isis/Daesh, Al-Qaeda etc). And what about the minority groups of suicide cults, slavery rings, drug-dealers, “black market” merchants (of weapons, substances, toxins, organs etc)? What about serial killers or pedophiles? As you can see, membership in a minority group doesn’t automatically make you correct in all things. 

Issue of historical guilt

What is trendy or fashionable doesn’t make it necessarily better or right. Nowadays it is not trendy or fashionable to expose certain historical facts because certain groups feel discomfort. This is not new; in fact, it has been an issue with history and with science since the very beginning. When Galileo showed the Earth is round and spins around itself, it caused certain “waves”; people even demanded his death. We still have the Flat Earth Society despite scientific evidence of the contrary. With regards to history and warfare, you will not find any parties that are not guilty. In fact, nearly every nation in the world has committed atrocities, vandalism, slavery, aggressive occupation and its army/warriors raping innocent victims etc. In the history of Mankind there are very few true innocents. 

If we do not acknowledge such occurrences as inherent in human nature and as potential threats for everyone, we are doomed to repeat them in the future. Fascism and Nazism is not only a German thing; Slavery isn’t just a “white thing”; Colonialism isn’t just a British thing. We need to address the issues, recognize and study what makes these happen, and confront them. We must all stand united against this, and not devolve into group mentality and us against the others. We need to challenge our own mindset and free ourselves from pre-conceived ideas. Minorities get overly sensitive when people criticize certain behaviors or the past. And yet, how can one hope to be free from prejudice, when one refuses to see the truth, opting to be part of the herd? 

What is Racism?

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”

“The belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.”

[Oxford Dictionary]

“policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”.

Also:

“harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races”.

[Cambridge University]

So as you can see, racism doesn’t have to do with minorities specifically. Minority groups can also be racist to majority groups, or some nations/people claim to be superior or “God’s chosen” while this is blatantly racist and, by definition, a harmful and unfair behavior. On a final note, just because certain groups have been persecuted historically, this doesn’t justify them to persecute others while claiming to be victims of racism, as this would be hypocrisy.

What is Discrimination? How is it different to Prejudice?

1. “The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability.”

2. “Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another”.

Usually people tend to forget the second definition, and over time, discrimination becomes something negative. What about, “a discriminative mind is a mark of wisdom?” Should you not pick and choose according to preference? Are all things the same? Obviously not. Prejudice, on the other hand, is always negative. It is wrong in so many ways to be prejudiced against people of any group; this doesn’t just apply to minorities. However, that doesn’t mean that a person cannot choose what he/she prefers. Preference is an act of freedom. 

Some groups seem to imply that if a person says that he/she is heterosexual, that it means that they are homophobic. I hate prejudice; I support equal rights. I also fully support the second definition of discrimination; I do this all the time. I choose what I like to eat, where to hang out and who to have sex with. I have specific gender preferences; my choices don’t make me phobic of the other minority groups (another wrong use of the word phobic, meaning fear of something. Not wanting to have sex with specific types of peoples doesn’t mean I fear them, it simply means that I don’t like it and I prefer something else). I also choose what to read, what to reject, what kinds of music or movies to watch and so on. I’m sure you do all that too. So remember to use the words correctly.

What is antisemitism?

Semitic groups have been known to spread to a vast region in the Eastern Mediterranean all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Examples are: the Canaanites, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Chaldeans that settled the Mesopotamian South where the Euphrates empties into the Gulf (from the tribe Kaldu – a Semitic tribe from the Amorites), the Jebusites, the Jewish tribes, the Arameans, and many more. So to pick just one of them and say it is the only Semitic group is doing disservice to the rest and is also appropriating people’s ethnic background. 

Also, just because several of these groups were historically persecuted (Jews, Palestinians, small minorities in Iraq and Syria, etc) doesn’t give them immunity from blame when they are the ones committing crimes of racism or persecution. It has become a common thing in certain places from the Levant that one cannot bring about anything in discussion relating history or politics, from fear of offending their sensibilities. This has to stop. People should be freely discussing their opinions, and with the right evidence, they should be able to accept new data. Believing that people from minorities have indemnity from scrutiny is a naïve and socially dangerous stance.

Stereotyping and Reverse Pendulum Mentality

Protect battered mothers / women (but not battered fathers / men?)

Protect raped females (but what about raped males?)

Protect a specific group of a certain ethnic background while turning a blind eye towards other groups of different backgrounds whose rights are violated.

A child goes first (but what about elderly, mentally ill etc which are categories often neglected?)

Homophobic is a bad thing (and not heterophobic?)

A group or groups of different gender definitions must be protected (but shouldn’t all people’s choices on this matter be protected, no matter what?)

It is common, when society realizes that the rights of a certain minority have been violated (ie in the case of persecution, slavery, racist hostility and even killings because of that like the pogroms against Jews and other races), that society goes overboard and through overprotecting, refuse even the slightest of blame, even in documented cases. And yet, there have been plenty of people belonging to minority groups who were guilty of various crimes, including slavery, discrimination or collaborating with the enemy (and all these have been documented also). Minorities can easily become oppressors and they have done so, from ancient to modern times, as any student of history can testify.

Politically correct

We need to see some definitions of this; in the past, I used to pay a lot of notice and try to accommodate to that standard. Not so much now, and I will explain why.

“The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” [Oxford dictionary]

“Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated” [Merriam-Webster]

“Someone who is politically correct believes that language and actions that could be offensive to others, especially those relating to sex and race, should be avoided.” [Cambridge University]

So look again the above definitions and note the words ‘perceived’ in the first, ‘conforming to a belief’ in the second, and ‘believes’ in the third. All these are subjective, thus arbitrary. If one wishes to be well-behaved, then by all means, one should take into account the sensibilities of others over various issues. However, in matters of spirituality, philosophy, history or science, one should care more about the objective truth and less about how people feel about certain aspects of the truth.

     Examples include some of the following:

How many people died in a genocide (numbers differ according to which side you ask);

Is a certain behavior sign/symptom of mental illness (again, the psychiatrists will often tell a different story compared to members of various groups);

Are all people equal? (This often gets mistranslated as an inflammatory comment, aiming to annoy others meaning that they don’t deserve equal opportunities and rights. I am talking about people being equal in skills, IQ, innate abilities etc. Anyone who believes they are equal, must believe in that the humans are a race of robots coming from the same factory and production line.)

Thought Police vs Right to Free Speech

Seeking to prevent possible injustices before they even occur… seems pro-active and good, doesn’t it? Has anyone watched the film, Minority Report? If no, watch it. What about, Fahrenheit 451? Another excellent film (a bit old but a masterpiece). Do you believe in freedom? Can you say what you think without fear? Ask yourself if you should double-guess yourself every time you need to say or write something. People around you are a varied lot; many will not agree with what you say or do. Should you be made to feel intimidated by that? I don’t think so. You have a right to believe what you want and also your freedom of speech is safeguarded by the constitution.

Cultural Appropriation

A touchy subject for a lot of people. “Closed religions”? Kabbalah, deities, voodoo, Hindu beliefs, Native Indian spirit animals etc… the list goes on and on. Are we serious here? I mean, who makes these things up? Wake up people! There is NO closed religion. If a spiritual person or a person with respect approaches a concept or a deity/spirit and that deity/spirit accepts them, then it’s not up to the people to judge badly and condemn this approach! I can (and do) use whatever I want; my judgement is all I need, and that makes me a free man. Please, do not bend to such criticism; learn to think for yourselves. Learn, and experience things directly, if possible. You are born Free, like me. Do not bend to slave mentalities.

Constitutional Rights

Lastly, a bit of the obvious. Surely you are aware that any constitution of a country where there’s democracy and not a totalitarian regime safeguards certain freedoms. One of them is the right to think, speak, write and believe freely. Read up on your rights! Don’t take for granted what other people want you to believe; research yourself and then put them in their place. Protect those rights. People died to establish and to protect them in the past; now you got the ball, it’s your call.

The Longest Day in Chang’an: the TV series vs the original book by Ma Boyong.

1. The main intrigue, it’s goal and the mastermind behind it are changed in the dorama. The book’s version is more logical and simple, while the changes in the adaptation mostly aim to surprise the viewers with unexpected turns, sometimes at the expense of logic.

2. Li Bi in the series is 100% whitewashed. Li Bi in the book is one of the protagonists, yes, - but he is absolutely not a good person, in contrast with Zhang Xiaojing. I love Li Bi in the adaptation! But I still prefer Li Bi from the book - because not often a guy with a very questionable morality gets to be a protagonist, and also because I find his storyline more interesting and well-rounded when it comes to character development. (Also he gets to finish the case himself, as opposed to the TV version!)

3. The screenwriters rewrote some characters completely (Yao Runeng, Wen Ran, Cen Shen). They expanded many characters’ storylines, enhanced motivations, added more drama - they did a great job with that. But I have mixed feelings about changes they introduced to female characters - why does EVERY woman in the show have to be in love, even when it’s absolutely unnecessary for the plot?!

4. The book ends on a downer note, especially considering the afterword where Ma Boyong reminds the reader of the sad things to come - the increasing pressure on the Crown Prince, the corruption, the decline of the state, the An Lushan rebellion (which could have been avoided if the book protagonists had failed their task).

In contrast, the TV series’ ending is more positive - to a point that it could even venture into an AU territory where the An Lushan rebellion never starts.

Spoilers below. Please don’t read if you haven’t finished the series or if you intend to read the book (which I highly recommend).

1. In the original book the masterminds and Longbo’s accomplices are He Zhizhang and his adoptive son He Dong. They wanted to kill Emperor Xuanzong and put the Crown Prince (who was unaware of their plans) on the throne, while making the Right Chancellor the scapegoat for the explosion. They saw where the situation in the Empire was going, and devised this plan to avoid the imminent catastrophe. 

In the series Xu Bin just wanted to become a chancellor very badly, so he somehow calculated EVERYTHING - in hopes that the Emperor will reward him with this post. He was smart enough to predict even Zhang Xiaojing’s desperate determination and uncanny luck in stopping the explosion - yet he couldn’t guess that the Emperor won’t give this position to a relative nobody just for saving him, and will be very suspicious of Xu Bin (quite reasonably)? Also, like the Emperor, I also find it very hard to believe that Xu Bin is the real mastermind behind this plan. 

Xu Bin was one of my favorite characters - until this final turn.

2. Li Bi in the book is very different from Li Bi in the series:

He is very self-centered and cold-hearted, doesn’t hesitate to lie and doesn’t care about people of Chang’an or about anyone at all, only about the Crown Prince (whom he is utterly devoted yet still doesn’t listen to).

He intentionally shocks He Zhizhang with the news of his friend’s death to get him out of the way of the investigation.

When He Zhizhang refuses to help him free Zhang Xiaojing, Li Bi poisons him and steals his token of authority (He Zhizhang falls into a coma and dies soon after the events of the book).

He approves of Zhang Xiaojing killing his agent but says that cutting off a finger was a stupid sentimentality: if he were in Zhang Xiaojing's shoes he would kill without remorse since the end justifies the means.

He arrests poet Cen Shen - in order to execute him as a scapegoat if the terrorists succeed.

He arrests Wen Ran who was just saved from the well only only because she is somehow related to Zhang Xiaojing. (In the book Wen Ran is an innocent girl, not Longbo’s accomplice.)

Even knowing that the Right Chancellor is not the one who organized the explosion, Li Bi almost orders the guards to kill him - because he wants the Right Chancellor out of the Crown Prince’s way. (Only the thought that killing the Right Chancellor may be too risky since the Emperor’s death hasn’t been proved yet stops him.)

He uses Yao Runeng (who in the book is a young and honest guard from a simple family) as bait to lure out the spy. As a result Yao Runeng is almost killed and left with broken spine - paralyzed for life.

He intends to find out and expose the truth - but only if the mastermind is not the Crown Prince.

In the end Zhang Xiaojing punches Li Bi in the face - for caring only for politics and for disregarding human lives.

In the book Li Bi finishes the investigation himself, together with Zhang Xiaojing. No sudden poets playing great detectives! Why was that even needed in the adaptation, why did He Zhizhang put Li Bi to sleep? To protect from what?! WTF?! Li Bi worked so hard - and then Cen Shen, who was a comic relief 90% of the screentime, stole his thunder!

The only explanation I see is that the Crown Prince was indeed the mastermind behind the plot. The Crown Prince, Longbo and Xu Bin are all connected through Lingwu: Longbo buried in Lingwu his comrades and lived there, the Crown Prince has a palace in Ligwu and implements there his tax policies invented by Xu Bin, also historically in 12 years in Ligwu the Crown Prince will declare himself emperor. He Zhizhang understood this so decided to get Li Bi out of the investigation in order to prevent him from finding out the truth and to protect him from the Crown Prince. But still - in this case putting Li Bi to sleep is equal to admitting to him that the Crown Prince is guilty...

May be, it’s a revenge for Li Bi poisoning He Zhizhang in the book? :D Idk, it’s a strange episode.

Also it’s a pity that in the series all the ship-tease between Li Bi and the Crown Prince was cut out. In the book these two are simply obsessed with each other. And Ma Boyong even called them “CP” (which is the Chinese slang for “couple” or “pairing”) in one of his posts. The book is absolutely not a BL, of course, but it’s difficult not to see the Crown Prince and Li Bi as a romantic couple.

3.What I like in the TV adaptation about the female characters in comparison to the book:

The amount of female characters in the series is increased (even Yuchang switched gender), and they all get more screentime and more character development. (Only the wife of the Crown Prince - Lady Wei - was cut out.)

Tanqi became the 3rd protagonist and is much better than in the book due to more screentime and the expanded storyline. I love Tanqi in the dorama, she is perfect! (Why isn’t she on the posters though? It’s so unfair! Is it a marketing thing - two guys sell better then two guys and a woman?)

Wen Ran is not a passive victim but an active player with her own agenda.

What I dislike:

Half of all the recurring female characters in the dorama are in love with Zhang Xiaojing! Why?! What’s this adolescent harem fantasy?! The trope when every woman falls in love with the protagonist is so outdated! Also in case of Wen Ran and Xu Hezi it does nothing for the plot.

Does Wen Ran have not enough motivation to do what she does in the dorama without being in love with Zhang Xiaojing?! He is already her father’s friend, basically the only living member of her family, and her savior. Are her romantic feelings for Zhang Xiaojing that necessary? It’s even creepy - because of their age difference, and because she is like a daughter to him.

Xu Hezi immediately falls in love with Zhang Xiaojing after he saves her brother despite seeing him for like 3 sec. Apparently, love is a form of gratitude. Again - is Xu Hezi’s gratitude not enough for her to save Zhang Xiaojing later? Does she HAVE to be in love to help the savior of her brother? Otherwise she wouldn’t have helped him or what?!

Ugh.

Another thing I hated is that almost all more or less notable female characters are in love, and often love is their main motivation. It’s like an essential purpose of a female character is to bring romance into the plot. And if there is no suitable love interest - oh, let’s just make her fall in love with the protagonist!

Tanqi - check. Actually, I enjoyed the blooming of their mutual romantic feelings with Zhang Xiaojing. It almost follows the book (although in the book Tanqi’s feelings are one-sided). I like that in the end Tanqi didn’t ride with Zhang Xiaojing into the sunset and chose her own path instead. As for their flirting - will it become smth serious in the future or not - who knows? (But I do ship them - they would make a great couple!)

Wen Ran - check. (In the book there is a hint at romance between her and Yao Runeng.)

Xu Hezi - check. (No romantic feelings in the book.)

Courtesan Li Xiang-xiang - check. Another victim of Zhang Xiaojing's irresistible charm. (Li Xiang-xiang doesn’t exist in the book.)

Wang Yunxiu - check. In the book she is only sympathetic to Yuan Zai, no romance. (Also in the book she is a good-natured although spoiled rich girl, not a designated hate-target, like in the TV series. And she saves Wen Ran. Thrice.)

Ding Tong’er - check. But she gets better.

Yang Taizhen - check.

Yuchang - check. Instead of a dangerous and independent male assassin of the book, in the dorama we got a dangerous female assassin who is yandere for Longbo.

The prostitute with ulcers on her face - finally! The ONLY more or less notable female character who is not in love!

4.The TV series’ ending is much more optimistic.

In the book the animosity between the Crown Prince and the Right Chancellor hasn’t reached the critical level - they are political rivals rather than enemies; the Emperor isn’t a paranoid tyrant who mistreats his son; he doesn’t plan to retire and to leave the country to the Right Chancellor. 

In the end of the book the explosion impact was minimized, and the Emperor was saved. However, these events worsened the relationship between the Crown Prince and the Right Chancellor to a point of no return (especially since the Right Chancellor understood that he was the designated scapegoat for the explosion, and since Li Bi almost killed the Right Chancellor).

In the afterword Ma Boyong reminds the reader that in the next years the Crown Prince will suffer from the mistreatment by his father, the Right Chancellor will initiate intrigue after intrigue in an attempt to eliminate the Crown Prince, and will relentlessly pursue and kill his friends and supporters. The constant stress will damage the Crown Prince’s health. The Right Chancellor’s death will change nothing - he’ll be replaced by Yang Guozhong (Yang Taizhen’s cousin) who will also be corrupt, and hostile to the Crown Prince. The state will be weakened, and then the An Lushan rebellion will begin, so nothing good awaits the Tang Empire in the future.

As for the main characters:

Zhang Xiaojing is shaken because he had to kill Longbo and many others, and because of how many innocents had to suffer due to political ambitions. He despises Li Bi for his moral insensitivity and punches him in the face for caring only about politics instead of people.

Li Bi learns that everything he did during the course of the book for the sake of his beloved Crown Prince was in fact against the Crown Prince’s benefit. He is heartbroken and decides to withdraw from politics.

Tanqi is in love with Zhang Xiaojing, but it’s one-sided (although Li Bi proposes to free her and to marry her to Zhang Xiaojing, Zhang Xiaojing doesn’t seem to care).

Also Yao Runeng is left paralyzed for life, Yis “the Persian Prince” is crippled and won’t be able to walk (let alone to climb the walls), Xu Bin is killed by the spy. Yuan Zai switched sides in a perfect moment and saved Zhang Xiaojing who then saved the Emperor, so Yuan Zai will get a boost for his career. At least Wen Ran is alive and well.

The ending of the TV adaptation is much more positive:

The three main characters - Zhang Xiaojing, Li Bi and Tanqi - part on friendly terms.

The Crown Prince in the dorama is a more capable person than in the book. He even managed to build his power base in Lingwu (that’s where he’ll proclaim himself the emperor in 12 years). The Crown Prince understood that the Emperor is using him and the Right Chancellor to counterbalance each other, so it’s useless to fight the Right Chancellor - he’ll never be punished: the dorama makes it painfully clear by showing how the Emperor helps the Crown Prince to burn the evidences against the Right Chancellor by pushing them deeper into the fire.

Even if the Crown Prince somehow manages to push for the Right Chancellor demotion that would mean that the Crown Prince became too powerful - a threat for the paranoid Emperor who himself came to power after a series of coups and made his father a “Retired Emperor”.

So instead the Crown Prince chooses to prove his loyalty to the Emperor. Imo, he has two options: either this - or a coup to depose his father. 

It seems the trust between the father and the son is somewhat restored. If the Emperor trusts the Crown Prince more and the Right Chancellor less, then the Crown Prince will be able to implement his tax reform, and the Tang Empire won’t be weakened by corrupt and all-powerful chancellors, so An Lushan won’t be able to rebel.

Plus Tanqi now can influence the Emperor through Yang Taizhen.

As for Yuan Zai, as opposed to the book, in the series he made Li Bi and Tanqi his enemies - meaning that now he is also the enemy of the Crown Prince and Yang Taizhen. Hopefully, he killed his career for good and won’t be able to become yet another corrupt chancellor, like in history.

How ATEEZ would be as yanderes?

San Version

Sadistic, manipulative, stalker

A man of mysteries not because he’s completely closed off to the people around him but because he ensures that much is known about him yet everyone questions whether what is known is truth or lies. He can also appear and disappear to any location within the blink of an eye, like a ghost with a known but unconfirmed story to its existence. All who know him love him, all who see him wish to be with him, he’s considered to be an ethereal being who can cast spells on all who come to be in his presence with just a single glance into your eyes.Those who’ve heard him speak say he has a voice like smooth silk, skin clear and glowing like fresh honey all paired with a glare as poisonous as a vicious viper in his eyes coupled with an aura of a strong bear. 

He’s quick to make correct calculations of things that can happen which causes him to be picky of the places he chooses to be at and he can read people like open books with large print. With these abilities he chooses well who he decides to have by his side and keep or who to avoid and toss away like rotten trash. Many don’t understand his abilities so they see him as a cold-hearted puppeteer who toys with those who fall for his charms until he no longer sees any use for them. What they don’t realize is that they aren’t completely wrong, he will use and abuse as much as he sees fit when he likes and how he likes but those who are his victims never comes to realize it because San is a master of manipulation and deception. He can make anyone who’s been used by him feel as though he’s merely just asked a favor of them that they complied to, they all end up coming to his aid and defense whenever needed because they’ve been brainwashed to the point of servitude and gratification for being chosen ones of the man of many mysteries.

With such a practice perfected, San will have no trouble using it to his advantage when he finds a special someone that he wants to keep by his side more-so than the rest. When he finds his darling, he will butter them up in the best ways that he knows how and he’ll watch with pleasure as they fall for the same charms and get caught up in the same spells as all the rest who’ve come to know him have. No matter how badly he treats them, no matter how much he abuses them, neglects them, and uses them for his own personal gain, San’s darling will always come crawling to him, begging him to let them stay by his side, they’ll always admit their undying love for him and never spare the chance to remind him that they were nothing before he came into their lives so they are eternally grateful to him for saving them because they’ve been brainwashed into the same sense of insanity as all the rest of his close companions and acquaintances.

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San silently walked on the other side of the small river that separated him from the major crowds that gathered in the side-streets across the bridge to listen to the live bands and dance during the holiday festivities that made up the duration of the weekend in its entirety. Lanterns and lights adorned every shop and restaurant, every walkway, rail and street lamp.They lit up the dark night sky and, otherwise, emptied streets besides the crowds.These festivities weren’t anything of importance or interest to the lone man, the only curiosity ever springing to him coming from those observed that were deemed easy targets to add to his collection of brainwashed puppets who could serve him well for one reason or another at some point in time.

Stopping in his place to observe such people, he found many within the vast hoards but one, one, particular being stood out more than the rest. A peculiar being with a white glass in their hands, fancily dressed, an ever present smile on their face, dazed eyes as though they’d already had one too many to drink, their figure leaning against the guard rails preventing any person from falling into the choppy waters of the river below. This person, they caught his attention the most.              A feeling unbeknownst to San sprung within him, a feeling of desire that had never once been present in his life until now. San knew this feeling wasn’t one similar to the rest that he’s experienced, a simple use and toss from you wouldn’t be enough to please so what was it that is needed to calm the new emotions within?                      

A curiosity arose within him that had never once appeared when analyzing the people he observed. What’s so special about this one person that would get him so riled up as he has become now? Intuition was all for not in this instance, which only served the desire to claim this person as one of his own.

San was never one to make immediate approaches. Choosing to lean against the rail on his side of the river, he regarded you in every way a person could possibly be regarded; every move you made was noticed and analyzed, with each step and stumble he calculated what was to come next from your being, he could tell when you’d head over to the bar stands to order another drink, he could tell when you’d stumble and nearly knock yourself to the floor or fall into another person’s path. Sloppy and incoherent when speaking to others and seemingly having no familial or passive relations with any of the other participants in the crowd, the lone male knew it’d be easy to slip into the hoard and make his way to you to take you into his embrace and guide you back to his home without so much as a single interruption from any other being around.

With a sly smile formed on his lips and his eyes creased but locked on your form, San began to make his way across the nearby bridge to meet with you on the other side, a predatory intent building in his stomach like such as one that forms when a hungry wolfs finds a pretty lamb to chomp its teeth into. He couldn’t wait, he couldn’t wait for the fun to begin once he’d have you in his embrace and cast under his spells. He couldn’t wait to string you up and play with you as he has with anyone else unfortunate enough to cross paths or find their ways, unbeknownst to them, into his line of sight and mind of interest but what he couldn’t wait for most of all was to see where these new feelings and desires that have sprung within him would lead him during his journey of leading you into life’s pathway of darkness. 

With every step made, an ever-growing impatience fed the figurative fire that burned his soul and controlled his mind. Each step led him into a further trance of his own insanity, the very insanity that permitted him to use and abuse those around him as though their lives meant nothing without having any remorse for doing so. With each step closer to you, he could sense the coming suffering that your mind, body and soul shall experience while in the hands of your new puppeteer, the master who’ll train you to bid to his every whim with complete disregard for your own well-being. With each step made closer to attaining his new ‘toy’, San could sense the fun he’ll have, the hell he’ll raise, the despair he’ll earn from you and the rewards he’ll gain once he has sucked every ounce of your own free will from you.                       

What makes it all the more enticing to have you as his new plaything as soon as possible is what new situations and outcomes will come from this ‘relationship’.        San has managed to calculate and control every move made, every word said, and every thought sprung within he himself and his ‘comrades’ but, with the unknown desires present, the feelings and desires that you’ve caused him to have, not even he can determine exactly what shall happen once he has you behind closed doors.       Oh how he can’t wait to have you.

He can’t wait, he can’t wait, he can’t wait!!!!!!

~Savie

January's New Releases

2021 told 2020 to hold it's beer and what a month January has been! Publishing YA also came out swinging with a slew of new books (many already bestsellers) in what we hope will be another banner year for BIPOC stories. Click below to find books for your TBR list. 

Week of January 5th

The Life I’m In by Sharon G. Flake Scholastic Inc

My feet are heavy as stones when I walk up the block wondering why I can’t find my old self.

In The Skin I’m In, readers saw into the life of Maleeka Madison, a teen who suffered from the ridicule she received because of her dark skin color. For decades fans have wanted to know the fate of the bully who made Maleeka’s life miserable, Char.

Now in Sharon Flake’s latest and unflinching novel, The Life I’m In, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully. Turned out of the only home she has known, Char boards a bus to nowhere where she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking. Much is revealed behind the complex system of men who take advantage of vulnerable teens in the underbelly of society. While Char might be frightened, she remains strong and determined to bring herself and her fellow victims out of the dark and back into the light, reminding us why compassion is a powerful cure to the ills of the world.

Sharon Flake’s bestselling, Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel The Skin I’m In was a game changer when it was first published more than twenty years ago. It redefined young adult literature by presenting characters, voices, and real-world experiences that had not been fully seen. Now Flake offers readers another timely and radical story of a girl on the brink and how her choices will lead her to either fall, or fly. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant Balzer + Bray

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader.

When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she’s excited to finally let her stories shine. But when she goes to her first workshop, the words are just…gone. Fortunately, Caroline has a solution: Tessa just needs to find some inspiration in a real-life love story of her own. And she’s ready with a list of romance novel-inspired steps to a happily ever after. Nico, the brooding artist who looks like he walked out of one of Tessa’s stories, is cast as the perfect Prince Charming.

But as Tessa checks each item off Caroline’s list, she gets further and further away from herself. She risks losing everything she cares about—including the surprising bond she develops with sweet Sam, who lives across the street. She’s well on her way to having her own real-life love story, but is it the one she wants, after all?

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite Inkyard Press

ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH? When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind–why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?–Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected–one that will change everything all over again.

Roman and Jewel by Dana L. Davis Inkyard Press

If Romeo and Juliet got the Hamilton treatment…who would play the leads? This vividly funny, honest, and charming romantic novel by Dana L. Davis is the story of a girl who thinks she has what it takes…and the world thinks so, too.

Jerzie Jhames will do anything to land the lead role in Broadway’s hottest new show, Roman and Jewel, a Romeo and Juliet inspired hip-hopera featuring a diverse cast and modern twists on the play. But her hopes are crushed when she learns mega-star Cinny won the lead…and Jerzie is her understudy.

Falling for male lead Zeppelin Reid is a terrible idea–especially once Jerzie learns Cinny wants him for herself. Star-crossed love always ends badly. But when a video of Jerzie and Zepp practicing goes viral and the entire world weighs in on who should play Jewel, Jerzie learns that while the price of fame is high, friendship, family, and love are priceless.

The Awakening of Malcom X by Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, Malcolm drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken — emerging from prison more than just Malcolm Little: Now, he is Malcolm X.

Here is an intimate look at Malcolm X’s young adult years. While this book chronologically follows X: A Novel, it can be read as a stand-alone historical novel that invites larger discussions on black power, prison reform, and civil rights.

When You Look Like Us by Pamela N. Harris HarperCollins

When you look like us—brown skin, brown eyes, black braids or fades—people think you’re trouble. No one looks twice at a missing black girl from the projects because she must’ve brought whatever happened to her upon herself. I, Jay Murphy, can admit that, for a minute, I thought my sister, Nicole, got too caught up with her boyfriend—a drug dealer—and his friends.

But she’s been gone too long now.

If I hadn’t hung up on her that night, she’d be spending time with our grandma. If I was a better brother, she’d be finishing senior year instead of being another name on a missing persons list. It’s time to step up and do what the Newport News police department won’t.

Week of January 12th

Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne Crown Books for Young Readers

She looks me hard in my eyes & my knees lock into tree trunks My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing They stare straight back hot daggers. I remember things will never be the same. I remember things.

With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.

The Meet-Cute Project by Rhiannon Richardson Simon & Schuster

Mia’s friends love rom-coms. Mia hates them. They’re silly, contrived, and not at all realistic. Besides, there are more important things to worry about—like how to handle living with her bridezilla sister, Sam, who’s never appreciated Mia, and surviving junior year juggling every school club offered and acing all of her classes.

So when Mia is tasked with finding a date to her sister’s wedding, her options are practically nonexistent.

Mia’s friends, however, have an idea. It’s a little crazy, a little out there, and a lot inspired by the movies they love that Mia begrudgingly watches too.

Mia just needs a meet-cute.

Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0) by Angie Thomas Balzer + Bray

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.

Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father.

Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can’t just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink Feiwel and Friends

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. A passionate follower of WEB. Du Bois, he believes that black people should rise up to claim their place as equals.

Sixteen-year-old Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family’s financial situation is in turmoil. Also, as a loyal follower of Booker T. Washington, she believes, through education and tolerance, that black people should rise slowly and without forced conflict.

Though they’ve attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can’t turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon.

But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.

Week of January 19th

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela Cinco Puntos Press

Out of nowhere, a lady comes up to Anamaría and says she’s her, from the future. But Anamaría’s thirteen, she knows better than to talk to some weirdo stranger. Girls need to be careful, especially in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—it’s the 90’s and fear is overtaking her beloved city as cases of kidnapped girls and women become alarmingly common. This thirty-year-old “future” lady doesn’t seem to be dangerous but she won’t stop bothering her, switching between cheesy Hallmark advice about being kind to yourself, and some mysterious talk about saving a girl.

Anamaría definitely doesn’t need any saving, she’s doing just fine. She works hard at her strict, grade-obsessed middle school—so hard that she hardly gets any sleep; so hard that the stress makes her snap not just at mean girls but even her own (few) friends; so hard that when she does sleep she dreams about dying—but she just wants to do the best she can so she can grow up to be successful. Maybe Thirty’s right, maybe she’s not supposed to be so exhausted with her life, but how can she ask for help when her city is mourning the much bigger tragedy of its stolen girls?

This thought-provoking, moving verse novel will lead adult and young adult readers alike to vital discussions on important topics—like dealing with depression and how to recognize this in yourself and others—through the accessible voice of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall Atheneum/Dlouhy

Things can change in a second:

The second Frankie Green gets that scholarship letter, he has his ticket out of Jamaica.

The second his longtime crush, Leah, asks him on a date, he’s in trouble.

The second his father gets shot, suddenly nothing else matters.

And the second Frankie joins his uncle’s gang in exchange for paying for his father’s medical bills, there’s no going back…or is there?

As Frankie does things he never thought he’d be capable of, he’s forced to confront the truth of the family and future he was born into—and the ones he wants to build for himself.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo Dutton Books for Young Readers

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur HarperCollins

Told in prose, poetry, and illustration, this heartrending story weaves Kiran’s and Sahaara’s timelines together, showing a teenage Kiran and, later, her high school–aged daughter, Sahaara.

Kiran is a young Punjabi Sikh woman who becomes pregnant after being sexually assaulted by her fiancé’s brother. When her fiancé and family don’t believe her, she flees her home in India to Canada, where she plans to raise the child as a single mother. For Kiran, living undocumented means constant anxiety over finances, work, safety, and whether she’ll be deported back to the dangers that await her in Punjab.

Eighteen years later, Kiran’s daughter, Sahaara, is desperate to help her mother, who has been arrested and is facing deportation. In the aftermath, Kiran reveals the truth about Sahaara’s conception. Horrified, Sahaara encourages Kiran to speak out against the man who raped her—who’s now a popular political figure in Punjab. Sahaara must find the best way to support her mother while also dealing with the revelation about her parents.

We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya #2) by Hafsah Faizal Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The battle on Sharr is over. The dark forest has fallen. Altair may be captive, but Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah are bound for Sultan’s Keep, determined to finish the plan he set in motion: restoring the hearts of the Sisters of Old to the minarets of each caliphate, and finally returning magic to all of Arawiya. But they are low on resources and allies alike, and the kingdom teems with fear of the Lion of the Night’s return.

As the zumra plots to overthrow the kingdom’s darkest threat, Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood. He must learn to hone his power into a weapon, to wield not only against the Lion but against his father, trapped under the Lion’s control. Zafira battles a very different darkness festering in her through her bond with the Jawarat—a darkness that hums with voices, pushing her to the brink of her sanity and to the edge of a chaos she dare not unleash. In spite of the darkness enclosing ever faster, Nasir and Zafira find themselves falling into a love they can’t stand to lose…but time is running out to achieve their ends, and if order is to be restored, drastic sacrifices will have to be made.

Lush and striking, hopeful and devastating, We Free the Stars is the masterful conclusion to the Sands of Arawiya duology by New York Times–bestselling author Hafsah Faizal.

Week of January 26th

Written in Starlight (Woven in Moonlight #2) by Isabel Ibañez Page Street Kids

If the jungle wants you, it will have you…

Catalina Quiroga is a Condesa without a country. She’s lost the Inkasisa throne, the loyalty of her people, and her best friend. Banished to the perilous Yanu Jungle, Catalina knows her chances of survival are slim, but that won’t stop her from trying to escape. It’s her duty to reclaim the throne.

When Manuel, the son of her former general, rescues Catalina from a jaguar, a plan forms. Deep in the jungle, the city of gold is hidden, home to the fierce Illari people, who she could strike an alliance with.

But the elusive Illari are fighting a battle of their own—a mysterious blight is corrupting the jungle, laying waste to everything they hold dear. As a seer, Catalina should be able to help, but her ability to read the future in the stars is as feeble as her survival instincts. While searching for the Illari, Catalina must reckon with her duty and her heart to find her true calling, which could be the key to stopping the corruption before it destroys the jungle completely.

The Knockout by Sajni Patel Flux

If seventeen-year-old Kareena Thakkar is going to alienate herself from the entire Indian community, she might as well do it gloriously. She’s landed the chance of a lifetime, an invitation to the US Muay Thai Open, which could lead to a spot on the first-ever Olympic team. If only her sport wasn’t seen as something too rough for girls, something she’s afraid to share with anyone outside of her family. Despite pleasing her parents, exceling at school, and making plans to get her family out of debt, Kareena’s never felt quite Indian enough, and her training is only making it worse.

Which is inconvenient, since she’s starting to fall for Amit Patel, who just might be the world’s most perfect Indian. Admitting her feelings for Amit will cost Kareena more than just her pride–she’ll have to face his parents’ disapproval, battle her own insecurities, and remain focused for the big fight. Kareena’s bid for the Olympics could very well make history–if she has the courage to go for it.

Wings of Ebony (Wings of Ebony #1) by J. Elle Denene Millner Books/Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders.

Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.

Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴠɪʟ'ꜱ ᴛᴡᴏ ꜰᴀᴄᴇꜱ | ᴊᴏɴᴀᴛʜᴏɴ ᴊᴏᴇꜱᴛᴀʀ x ᴍᴇᴅɪᴄ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ | Yakuza!AU [𝕁𝕁𝔹𝔸] One-Shot

Here’s the next one~ one more left~! I’m so sorry it took so long for this to come out! ;; I’ve been a touch distracted and busy with work... but here’s the Medic’s perspective and first meeting with Jonathon~! I hope you guys enjoy this and thank you all so much for the support for this AU! ;;

**WARNING: There is going to be a lot of mention of torture and bodily harm within these stories in this AU so please, if you are uncomfortable with the subject or have a weak stomach DO NOT READ.

TW;

» » Admin Ko

»»————-　♔　————-««

“P-Please!”

A pained and anguished filled cry encompassed the room as the splatter of blood stained the usually pristine white walls of the medic bay. The looming figure overhead merely gave the trembling and adrenaline filled individual a look of disinterest as a gloved hand expertly dove forth into the warm innards of the breathing victim. 

Cold icy blue eyes bore deeply into pained and frightened ones as a slow tug of the small intestine began to unravel before the strapped down victim.

“If you hadn’t been incompetent this wouldn’t have even happened in the first place. What I gave you was simple, yet you choose to become greedy. You dragged more of my men down with you than I would’ve liked...and for that, I applaud you on your persuasive efforts. Let me further give to your pit of selfish and disgusting desire. I hope my presence is enough to suffice.”

There was no reply, rather the sound of retching and other coughs being the response given as the living traitor was shown his innards. The unforgiving blue hue of Jonathon Joestar merely watched in faint amusement as the man tried to beg for his pathetic life before he finally set the mess of entrails on top of the cut open male.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll soon understand why you’ve been blessed with my presence.” 

»»————-　♔　————-««

She supposed her parents would be highly disappointed in her. Despite having dropped out of medical school halfway, she found that her skills and knowledge had not completely gone to waste. Trekking through the bright fluorescent hallways, she couldn’t help but wonder how she had found herself employed under the Joestar syndicate-- that was if it was even considered employment to her. 

It had happened on a whim, that much she was sure of; unless they had been watching her, then she wasn’t too sure. But one thing she knew for a fact was that the meeting of Jonathon Joestar had most definitely been premeditated. 

It was supposed to be a normal day for her. One where she searched desperately for a job willing to hire her with the skill set she acquired from years of medical school. Seated at a quaint cafe, she had assumed it would be another one of those days she was accustomed to. 

She should’ve paid attention to the stillness of the shop and the lack of customers that usually populated the area, but it had already been too late. Having been absorbed deeply into the clutches of her laptop, she failed to see the large male that seated himself across from her. Piercing oceanic eyes analyzing every inch of her being while she searched.

It was only when he made a noise that she brought her attention up to him. Bewildered (e/c) quickly getting engulfed in the sea of blue as a polite and gentle smile graced his features.

“(y/n). (Y/n), (l/n)...correct?”

A jolt of terror ran through her spine at his words. Despite the kindred smile he gave, the tone of his voice told her otherwise as she felt fear seize her. A feeling of adrenaline quickly washing over as she stiffly pressed her back against the once seemingly comfortable cafe chair. 

“Ah! Apologies, I hadn’t meant to frighten you... I just...hm, I was told you’re in need of employment?”

“...I...am..why? And how did you know what I looked like?”

“Minor details Ms. (l/n). What I’m here to do is to offer you a job. One that will not only use the skills you’ve so painstakingly acquired, but also will provide you a good standing in my line of work. Of course we can provide you housing and protection as well-- though of course we’ll go into detail about those if you choose to accept.”

The blatant disregard to her questions only further fueled the unease that quelled within her stomach as she shifted to gently close her laptop. A desire to flee so imminent that she almost missed the knowing look on the other’s face. 

Steeling herself, she went to delicately pack her laptop away before directing her attention back to the mysterious male, her bag now lain against her leg as she mentally prepared herself to bolt if she absolutely had to.

“Look Mr....”

“Jonathon. Jonathon Joestar, but if it helps to calm you I also go by JoJo.”

“Mr. Jonathon...I appreciate the offer, but it’s...very odd don’t you think? The suddenness of this all and the impeccable timing to what I need? I would prefer the whole truth than to give you my trust so...willingly.”

“Of course, I completely understand. Ever the observant one Ms. (L/N). I’ll cut straight to the point. I’d like for you to be a part of the Joestar medical team. We’re not a completely...clean business, but we are a business nonetheless. Your job is simple, you’ll tend to those injured-- granted you may see things that are...morally questionable, but if you were to join us and pledge loyalty, then I assure you: no harm comes to those who have directly been recruited by me.”

A fear unparalleled to any other she’s felt shot straight through her mind as the color drained from her face. The first instinct was to vehemently will the thoughts that plagued her mind, but with the calm and unwavering gaze Jonathon held she couldn’t help but feel that every assumption coming from his statement was ultimately true.

The morning’s breakfast hurriedly returning up her esophagus as she frantically searched about, and was immensely grateful for the trashcan that was given to her, albeit from the person she wished hadn’t said the very words that triggered her gag reflex. 

“I apologize, it must be a lot to take in, but please consider it. I won’t make you do anything morally wrong to you. All I ask is for your assistance in helping my family and men.”

“...w...why me? I’m just a drop out student. A student.”

“Because, Ms. (l/n). Students can become the professor in due time. Students who have the creativity and questions that have yet to be answered rather than a professional.”

“I...I don’t understand completely...”

“Let’s put it this way. I want to help shape you into a skilled and feared doctor. One who will test and learn any techniques to her heart desires to help the needy. Of course...I’ll give you time to digest everything, but please don’t think you’ll be able to escape my sights. After all...like it or not we do have some similar goals.”

With that, the male stood, a flash of another supposedly gentle smile directed at her before he made his way to the door. A predatory grace to his step as he let out a cheery little hum.

The student, sat dumbfounded in her chair as the adrenaline not only ran high throughout her body, but the words he had spoken were thrown about in her head. Questions clanging against one another as she felt her focus become weary.

Yet with all the questions bouncing about, there was one that stood prominently to her.

“What goals do I have that line up with his?”

Nesta:A fae with a human heart part 12

Alright let's get into what I think is a key factor in what is happneing to Nesta and Cassian's relationship, Whicb is that Nesta was born human. and even though she turned fae doesn't mean she still doesn't want to keep that human side of her, Remember the library scene in ACOWAR when Nesta says that they don't respect any of their values or traditions. I think this may also play a factor. You see when you have a lot of differences and grew up in two seprate ways it takes compromise and balance to keep the relationship going. My hugest problem is that everyone is trying to push Nesta to accept the fae side of herself and let go of Her more human side, which Nesta never wants to lose. She loved being human. Sure she didn't have the best circumstance, but her choices were at least somewhat hers and she could be made a name for herself but as a fae she feels stuck. like an outsider looking in. She's struggled to accept her fae side more than Elain and Feyre have because she has a hard time adjusting to new circumstances. it happens to a lot of people.

And believe it or not, Nesta has lost nearly all her comnections to the human lands. The place where she grew up and thought she would grow old in. It really hurt her to lose that and now she tries to find whatever connection she can hold onto. Hence her choice of apartment, possibly talking to the citzens of the night court who don't have it that easy, her books,her right to chose who she loses her virginity to, and last but not least the solstice gift.

Now Nesta has already stated that they don't celebrate holidays in the human lands and Nesta no matter how much people want to perceive her as such doesn't strike me as a materialistic type. I think rejecting the gift was about way more than the fact that Cassian hadn't been talking to her, maybe she found it as another way of disregarding her values and traditions.or maybe she was also reluctant to take it because there were so many around her that still had nothing at all. She didn't know Cassian had spent months searching for it. How could she possibly know that? and she may have even accepted it, if he had not given it to her in private. Now I knkw Nesta is a private person. However Nesta is already questioning if Cassian feels ashamed of his feelings for her. And giving it to her in private might have worsened those feelings. We also don’t know who told the IC about Nesta having sex in the first place. That’s a private and personal thing. Another reason Nesta may have been sleeping with people is because she was feeling numb. She was searching for something, anything to make her feel better. To evoke any feeling she could. Remember how in Nesta’s apartment she was looking at the check to try to evoke her shame emotion, because all she felt on rare occasions was her anger. What if sleeping with all the males was another way she was trying to evoke her shame??Also she also states that she would drink herself to sleep at night to avoid the nightmares. Nightmares that are probably so horrific that it caused her to not sleep much at all. If at all. So yeah I can see why overall she rejected his gift and even if those factors weren’t there it’s within Nesta’s basic rights to reject Cassian’s advances. it’s not bitchy. It’s a basic right one of very few she still has. Now let’s get to another point that I’m going to make, the mating bond is not helping them. Yes Cassian thinks it’s this beautiful thing but that’s not the case with most mating bonds. To Nesta she observes everything. She observed how all these woman despite if they wanted to be with their mate or not felt pressured by their societal views to accept their bond to further their line (aka Rhysand’s parents, Tamlin’s parents, and the lady of the autumn court) Even Elain is being pressured to accept hers despite her and Lucien hardly having anything in common and both not being each other’s type. Why would Nesta think her bond was any different?? There’s very few examples of any of them accepting it for love. Therefore reminding her of what she went through with Tomas in the human lands. Now we know Cassian isn’t Tomas, but people tend to forget that for a while at least Nesta deluded herself into thinking he cared about her. Only to find out that he was a monster when he refused to go help her save Feyre and when he sexually assaulted her (He was also abusive. hence Nesta not liking when people touch her and how Feyre said Nesta flinched from peoples touch) So of course any relationship she’s goes in going forward she’s going to be cautious about and why wouldn’t she??She hasn’t had the worst experience with men and them taking things from her, Hence the fierce loyalty she has for respecting others choices no matter how stupid they may be. And I would also like to bring up a section of Wings and Embers, a section that led up to most of what happened between Nesta and Cassian. There was one line after Nesta and Cassian had questioned if someone had hurt Nesta because he saw the fear on her face. She asks if it would change his opinion of her if someone had, make him treat her differently. (She doesn’t want anyone to feel sympathy towards her remember that Nesta hates it when people fake liking her) and he tells her that he would shatter every bone in their body. Which she proceeds to respond with you hardly know me why would you do that for me and he tells her he would do it for anyone. It was that sincerity that made her see him differently. Sure it also drove her crazy because it reminded her of her own faults, but that does tend to happen. And then she thinks about how Cassian sees her. All of her. The side that she tends to hide people where most human men only saw her body. She also tells Cassian that men had been pawing at her since she had been fourteen. Remember how she said that some of her words are barbed with truth, this proves that a lot of it was how men would do that to her. Would only look at her body and not be intrigued by anything else about her like you know her mind. Or the huge amount of love that she has that she hides from people to avoid getting hurt. That’s where the mating bond complicates things for them. And makes her have to question nearly everything because there’s a major difference between someone listing after you and someone loving you. love is more about just loving someone for the good parts of them or the sides you want to see. It’s about accepting that there’s parts of a person you’re not going to like. And finding ways to coexist with them. Also remember that courting is such a huge thing when it comes to Nesta’s traditions and Cassian had revealed that he hadn’t even tried to court her. Therefore presenting another issue. I think she felt rushed like things between her and Cassian were going too fast too soon. Nesta with everything she’s been through it’s understandable that she would want a relationship to take its time to develop and that’s a perfectly reasonable expectation. Especially from an SA victim. Sometimes things take time to develop. Maybe she wants to have an actual relationship before getting into anything super serious. Like a mating bond where they’re bound for life. you know like marriage, kids, etc. And as much as I love Nessian, they hardly know each other. Yes they know each other better than most and that’s important but Cassian doesn’t know everything about Nesta and Nesta doesn’t know everything about Cassian. They need time, understanding, and patience to make their relationship work. That’s why rushing them or pressuring them into accepting the bond isn’t helping matters. And what if Nesta doesn’t want a mate but a husband instead?? She wants everything to be for love, she wants to accept the love from Cassian but like most she’s scared of it not working out because their differences and all the obstacles standing in their way. Not to mention they have a lot to deal with as individuals before they could ever be together. And that’s perfectly okay, They’re immortal, they have time, and then we get to the part where Nesta probably gave up hope for her and Cassian. The scene where he told her that her sisters loved her and he couldn’t imagine why. Not only is that so cruel to say after everything Nesta has been through and all she did to protect him and others, but it was not only the part of about her sisters but the I can’t imagine why part. Nesta remembers everything people say to her. You don’t think the I can’t imagine why made her reevaluate everything and think that Cassian didn’t love her. Made her think that she had deluded herself into thinking that he did and made her also think that the only reason he was trying was the obligation towards the mating bond. That’s why the void entering her eyes was so important. That was Nesta completely giving up on herself. And feeling like there was not only no hope for her and Cassian, but for herself. Now I know Cassian didn’t really think about what he was saying, because of his anger at the situation. But that’s what hurt them the most. That’s why Nesta is so pissed and she has every right to be. And then after that he wants her to open up to him and talk to him, Hence her snort, because not only did he just insult her and basically made her think she was unlovable, but because he doesn’t know what it’s like to blame yourself for nearly everything (as far as she knows) including your fathers death, what happened to your sisters. And he also doesn’t know what it’s like to die inside over and over again.To feel like your losing yourself as you turn into something else. (Her human side vanishing in favor of her fae side) so she lets go of her humanity completely that night. Flips off her switch as some of my Vampire Diaries fans would say, because the pain became too much. Too unbearable. Hence the more self destructive behavior and not caring what happens to her. Because I firmly believe that that was the night Nesta killed a part of herself and became death itself. Hence the symbolism of Nesta’s power being death because she has died in several different ways. And I firmly believe that ACOSF will be about her journey back to herself and I can’t wait for it. I can’t wait for Nesta to find herself again, and learn to love her life and herself again. Because It’s what I want the most from her, and it will be truly beautiful to see.

After this post, I’m not going to discuss this anymore because ever since I’ve been involved, my mental health has gone out the window and I physically cannot take the strain anymore. I’ve never been one to be triggered by much, but this has really taken the cake and I think that says a lot about the situation as a whole. 

I am in now way, shape or form questioning the truthfulness of what has come forward about Alex Hooch, but I find it quite unsettling that KJ has been made the highlight of the situation when he wasn’t the person behind any of it. Now, I know this fan went to Legends concert specifically for KJ and I truly and deeply understand as to why she brought KJ into it in the first place. But to continue to go on and on and on, to go from saying this isn’t about KJ to now say it is about KJ. I just don’t understand. 

The girl has stated multiple times that KJ was not aware what was or what had taken place and she truly believes he genuinely has/had no idea until it has been brought to light. But people seem to be forgetting that KJ is not the person in the wrong. Alex Hooch is the man that r*ped this woman, he is the one who carried out his horrific crime, yet KJ and his entire family are the ones receiving death threats? Do you know how cruel that is? 

A post was released last night after being in contact with KJ’s father, stating that KJ is in a very dark and unsettling mental state, but yet that somehow doesn’t matter, because once again, that’s still not good enough as to why KJ is currently silent about everything. But as a fan who can see both sides to the situation and as someone who suffers with their own mental health, as well as having lost someone because of it, I beg you to please take this seriously. 

No one is trying to say KJ is a victim, but you must see that his friendship to someone he thought he could trust, has suddenly been destroyed. KJ has to go through a process of grief for a former friend- someone who still walks the streets and has done so for the past year without a care in the world. Alex Hooch took advantage of his friendship with KJ to lure a woman into his circle and then abused her. Could you imagine being in KJ’s shoes and having to face up to such a thing? 

Male mental health is such a serious matter, it’s also such a stigmatized and disregarded matter, but it is so incredibly serious. Please, remember that KJ is a person, he is a person with feelings and emotions. He may be a celebrity, but celebrities can hurt too. Stop assuming KJ doesn’t care or that he knew something, for once, just take into consideration the type of impact this could have on him. Please, show compassion.

We can fight for this woman so she gets justice, but don’t forget that KJ is human. 

The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity

https://ift.tt/2GXXppR

This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 2.

Most male monsters in fiction are made by women. Or, at least, it’s women who tend to get the disproportionate share of the blame when their creations turn out to be significantly less than civilized (perhaps because, historically, most of them were written by men). The most famous examples of murderer-moulding mothers are probably Norma Bates, Cersei Lannister, Olivia Soprano and, of course, Mrs. McAllister (momma raised a real little trap-setting psycho there). In real life, too, serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Dennis Nilsen were all brutalized or disappointed by their mothers to such an extent that to some people the link between their formative maternal experiences and their misdeeds seems as tight and as strong as a steel cable.

This isn’t the case with Amazon’s The Boys, where it’s bad or inadequate fathers who provide male characters with the bulk of their nefarious neuroses and murderous motivations. Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) inherited and internalized his father’s cowed outlook on the world to the point where he almost didn’t fight back when Vought tried to brush his girlfriend’s death in an A-Train wreck under the carpet. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) was raised under the fast fists and hot temper of his old-school, tough-guy dad, whose mantra seems to have been kick first and don’t ask questions later, unless the question is: “Do you want me to fucking kick you some more?” “John” a.k.a Homelander (Antony Starr) doesn’t have a father in the conventional sense – as far as we know – but he was treated coldly, cruelly and dispassionately by his scientist ‘dad’, Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). So to what extent have failed father figures forged the monsters who sit upon the show’s chessboard? What else is missing from their lives? And what could prove the key to their salvations?

The previously mentioned The Sopranos is a ripe comparison, being that it also deals with familial legacies, internecine struggles, and toxic masculinity. The hallmark HBO show took the bold step of sending its proto-typical alpha-male mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) to a shrink to deal with his panic attacks and baseline depression. His sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Braco), teased out the revelation that the root of his anguish and anxieties was his own mother, the irascible and melodramatic Livia (Nancy Marchand), who in the first season shifted her life-long modus operandi from trying to kill his spirit to literally trying to kill him. It’s not hard to trace a direct line from that callous maternal influence to Tony’s behavior, and its internal and external consequences (especially when you’re dealing with Melfi’s favoured Freudian approach, for which parental trauma is its raison d’etre). But as the series – and Tony’s therapy – progressed it became clear not only that Tony’s life was richer and darker than his mother’s input allowed for, but also that Livia herself wasn’t the two-dimensional, havoc-wreaking demigod of Tony’s fears and imagination. 

She, too, had been a victim of sorts; a slave to poverty and discrimination (on grounds of both race and gender); in thrall to a violent, charismatic criminal, a man who thought nothing of throwing men a beating, chopping off their pinkies or shooting them dead; a man who was out with one of his many mistresses on the night that she miscarried a baby and needed him by her side. Tony, his son, takes these revelations and buries them, as deep as they’ll go, partly because Tony’s world is a man’s world and men get a pass, but mainly to avoid the bright bulb of introspection from falling upon his own, very similar behavior. His mother gets the blame, but who really made Tony? 

The world of The Boys is, to an extent, a man’s one, too, except that the boys here don’t get a pass. Given its title, it’s a surprisingly feminist show for one that is also, on the surface at least, a testosterone-fuelled superhero show (albeit one that takes an anti-superhero stance). The female characters are strong, but not inhumanly, infallibly strong like some of the Marvel heroes they parody. They’re flawed, human, and fascinating. They kick ass, they fuck up, but they’re never one-note or scapegoats. Of course there are bad women and mothers out there in the real world, and we shouldn’t shy away from imagining or creating those kinds of stories, but what we’ve seen on TV and film over the last decade or so is the steady opening up of a multiplicity of perspectives that’s been busy enriching our cultural currency. We should roll with that for a while. There’s a lot of lost ground to catch up on. 

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TV

The Boys Season 2 Succeeds By Allowing Its Female Characters to Shine

By Lacy Baugher

TV

The Boys Season 3: What to Expect

By Lacy Baugher

Perhaps much of the appeal of stories about bad mothers relies on our preconceptions of motherhood and the expectations that have always been laid upon women to be not just good mothers, but perfect ones. A bad mother stands out more than a bad father because for much of human history it’s been almost impossible to be classed as a bad father.        

Let’s take Butcher. Without his own father’s brutality he mightn’t have been capable of becoming the effective, remorseless killing-machine we know and love, but, on the other hand, without his father’s brutality, he mightn’t felt the urge to pursue his vendetta in the first place. He might have been more like an immediately post-A-Train Hughie. But here’s the rub, because, arguably, a world with Homelanders needs Butchers, and plenty of them. There’s a weird and tragic duality at play here. Homelander is who he is largely because of his own failed father, so really the two men are destroying each other, and the world around them, because of their daddy issues.  

Butcher himself is a flawed father figure. He uses a grief-wracked Hughie as a pawn to pursue his own vendetta against The Seven, showing the same sort of callous disregard Homelander might show an underling. But through Butcher’s influence Hughie learns to be (or is forced to become) bold, assertive, even brutal; the sort of son his own father could never have let him be; wouldn’t have known how to kindle. In time, almost despite himself, Butcher comes to care about Hughie, albeit not always in a conventionally paternal way. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) tells Butcher early on this season that Hughie is his ‘pit canary’; if something bad happens to Hughie, then Butcher will know he’s gone too far. So if Butcher can be said to be the kind of father that Hughie never had, then Hughie, in turn, can be said to be the conscience that Butcher long forsook in favor of bloodshed.  

For better and worse the men in The Boys are made by their fathers, but that only tells half the story. Their fathers, and they themselves, are aided in their osmotic, Franken-Freudian fuck-ups by the sometimes literal, sometimes figurative absence of a mother figure. Hughie’s mother? – MIA; Butcher’s mother? – passive; Homelander’s mother? – accidentally hugged to death by a young Homelander (she was a scientist Homelander had thought of as a mother, not his biological mother). 

The lack of a maternal presence bleeds most noticeably into Hughie’s and Homelander’s lives. Hughie is insecure and desperate for attachment. His romance with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is sweet, but carries a mild undercurrent of mommy issues. What Hughie really seems to want from Starlight is words of encouragement, validation, co-dependency and a tuck-in at bedtime. Even though their relationship is sexual, there’s something charmingly chaste about it at the same time. 

It would be impossible, though, to trump Homelander’s mommy issues, manifested as they are by a fierce predilection for suckling, and a fondness for warm titty milk. Homelander may be peerlessly physically strong, but of all the show’s characters – and this is perhaps something of an understatement – he’s the most psychologically fragile.

Dr. Vogelbaum laments that the lack of a mother in Homelander’s life made him aggressive and full of hate. Putting aside for a moment this rather idealized notion of women and motherhood, if we assume that in Homelander’s case the observation is correct – and that Homelander is also on some level aware of how he’s been warped by this absence (the roots of his fetish surely can’t have escaped him) – then it’s interesting that he would choose to rob his own son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), of the loving maternal influence of which he himself was deprived. 

By stealing Ryan away from his mother near the end of season two – by fracturing their bond and their reality – he risks making Ryan as miserable as he was as a child; worse, in truth, because Homelander never had a loving mother to miss. While The Boys deals very well with its female characters, it hasn’t yet explored motherhood in any great depth, except to show the consequences to fatherhood when it’s absent. Season 3 may very well add some texture by exploring in flashback form Stormfront’s (Aya Cash) relationship with her now-departed daughter, or by bringing Hughie’s mother into the fold, now that we know she isn’t dead.

While Homelander’s actions vis a vis Ryan are fuelled by his malignant, myopic selfishness, and his screaming God complex, the evolution of his feelings towards the boy hinted at a capacity for redemption. As hellish as the family unit Stormfront manipulates Homelander into creating – Nazi eugenicist mother, psychopathic father, and kidnapped child – the experience of being in that family seems to soften something in him, at least for a short while. He appears receptive to and empathetic towards Ryan’s fears, and even appears not to relish the idea of Stormfront filling his head with racist propaganda. Just for a moment, salvation seems possible.

Ultimately, though, no one can allow Homelander to guide Ryan’s destiny, potential for change notwithstanding. Ryan is too powerful and volatile to risk Homelander stamping his skewed outlook upon his soul. Ironically, the act of saving his mother from Stormfront propels Ryan along the same trajectory as his father – both have now killed their mothers. I wonder if Ryan, like Dexter before him, will be born in blood, the splatter pattern arranging itself into the shape of Homelander’s cape. 

Butcher isn’t Ryan’s father, but his fealty to his dead wife and her cast-iron concept of family helps raise him from the swamp of his primal urges, resulting in him doing the right thing by both her and the boy who is the son of his greatest enemy. Clearly Butcher isn’t his own father either, his selflessness here indicating an encouraging break from the poor way he was parented. 

Perhaps The Boys isn’t trying to communicate anything about solely fatherhood or solely motherhood but rather family itself; its power to make someone belong; its power to save. The family Homelander experienced was predicated on a falsehood, but he liked the feel of it nonetheless, and it threatened to humanise him. Butcher has a family now, too – his friends, The Boys, the people around him who would die for him, and vice versa – and a surrogate son in Hughie. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon), whatever faint promise of romance swirls around them, have found for now a joyous familial bond, like brother and sister. And Mother’s Milk is now back in the bosom of his estranged family, a moment that must rank among the series most touching. 

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All Happy families, then? For now. But Homelander might have something to say about that in season three.  

The post The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Kate Zambreno’s Heroines is a hard book to read. Every page is a reckoning with the unbearable phallocentrism of Writing as An Institution, and for the reader who’s also a marginalised, struggling writer and/or female, it’s a memory trigger. There’s a thread running through Heroines that memory-work is political. That the literary canon is “a memory campaign that verges on propaganda, that the books remembered are the only ones worth reading.” It’s impossible to review the book dispassionately. Zambreno’s style invites personal recollection; it’s affecting, and in order to get what she’s doing with this book one has to be able to feel it.

Heroines is part literary criticism, part literary history, part memoir, part feminist polemic. In its form and in its writing, Heroines is what the author is trying to rescue and reclaim: to use Zambreno’s favourite words, it's messy, girly, and excessive. It’s also sharp, finely-structured, and meticulously (voraciously) researched. Heroines grew out of Zambreno’s blog, Frances Farmer is My Sister, or more precisely, the blog grew out of ideas for a book. In an interview with The Rumpus, Zambreno talks about her earlier plans to write a fictionalised notebook titled “Mad Wife”—and is comprised of many things, but is most clearly made up of equal parts rage and reflection.

Zambreno began blogging after her partner took up a university job in Akron, Ohio, and the early sections of Heroines record much of what Zambreno finds stultifying and destabilising about being The Wife in a new place: “I have become used to wearing, it seems, the constant pose of the foreigner.” Like Helene Cixous in “Coming to Writing”, Zambreno begins to form an invisible community—communing with the women writers and the “mad wives of modernism”—a community borne out of invention, yes, but also need. The brutal honesty with which Zambreno recognises her particular condition—“I am realising you become a wife, despite the mutual attempt at an egalitarian partnership, once you agree to move for him”—is both disruptive and comforting to the reader. Here is a truth alongside other truths and someone is finally speaking it, but here is the truth and we must now face it.

At the end of reading Heroines, I had accumulated about 17 pages of handwritten notes. Heroines brought into clear view for me names that had only circulated vaguely around my head from an undergraduate survey course in Modernism in Literature. Perhaps my professors had mentioned Zelda Fitzgerald and Vivien(ne) Eliot’s writing, but then why didn’t I remember any of it? The result is that I read the early sections of Heroines with a kind of numb shock. As Maggie Nelson writes in her blurb for the book, “if you didn’t know much [about the “wives” of modernism], your mouth will fall open in enraged amazement.” Vivien(ne) and Tom’s troubled and troubling marriage; Vivien(ne)’s writing cast aside, T.S. Eliot the writer winning the Nobel Prize a year after her death—after he left her, after he hid in bathrooms allowing his secretaries to calm his “mad” wife, after using her lines, her typing services, and disregarding her worth as her writer. Vivien(ne) with her female maladies, staining the bedsheet red. Zambreno tells us of what Vivien(ne)’s brother said to Michael Hastings, the British playwright who wrote Tom & Viv: “Viv’s sanitary towels always put a man off.”

Dear reader, I read that and saw red.

These “wives” of modernism didn’t just suffer at the hands of various men, including their husbands, but were also negated or ignored, made invisible or an object of derision by other women, particularly women writers like Virginia Woolf who had to slay their own demons both in life and on the page. Woolf, who so memorably and wittily describes Vivien(ne) as “this bag of ferrets … Tom wears around his neck”. Zambreno writes: “I think of Viv as the mad double Virginia both identifies with and wants to disassociate herself from.” And this is perhaps also something that infuses Elizabeth Hardwick’s critical writings of other women writers.

Hardwick’s essay on Zelda Fitzgerald in Seduction and Betrayal is curiously committed to omitting the recognition of gender and patriarchal norms; she talks of Zelda and Scott as being twins, and how “only one of the twins is the real artist”, seemingly complacent in her acceptance of the accepted notion that F. Scott Fitzgerald was the real artist while his wife was merely mildly talented, but more of a dilettante. It seems like a neverending senseless loop, this question of artistry, genius, and legitimacy: only a real artist like F. Scott Fitzgerald would be acclaimed; thus, because F. Scott is acclaimed, he is the real artist. Nowhere in this interrogation does Hardwick devote much attention to how phallocentrism structures the creative output of men and women, and how it structures how those works are received. As Zambreno points out, even while Hardwick seems sympathetic to Zelda’s situation, she seems keen to distance herself from that kind of “mess”, to render a particular form of female experience as sick, perhaps, and dysfunctional, and therefore something to be pitied but not common or predictable or in any way relatable.

But then I think of Linda Wagner-Martin’s biography of Zelda, and how she writes that “Zelda’s crack-up gave [Scott] both alibi and cover.” If men’s wives are officially mad—diagnosis confirms it!—then men are never to blame. Badly-behaving, outright misogynist husbands can be forgiven, excused, comforted, and indulged. But as Zambreno points out through all her meticulous research of these ignored and sidelined women, all Zelda wanted to do was whatever she needed to do at the time: write, using her own life—herself—as the material. This made the Real Writer of the marriage, the husband, really, really angry. Scott tells Zelda, “You were going crazy and calling it genius.” Hardwick seems to buy this assessment in her essay. Zambreno explains: “In a way, Hardwick’s essay reads as an elaborate defense of the supreme rights of (male) artist.” Wagner-Martin, in her biography: “The irony of the Scott-Zelda relationship from the start, however, was that Scott regularly usurped Zelda’s story.”

Heroines is thus also a meditation on writing and the act of creation: whose lives count as “material”, and who gets to use and shape the material into the story? Whose hand guides the words? When it’s women who are mining their own lives for both material and meaning, it’s all-too easily seen as easy, lazy, unreflective, unworthy work. “The self-portrait, as written by a woman, is read as somehow dangerous and indulgent,” Zambreno writes, and asks, “Why is self-expression, the relentless self-portrait, not a potentially legitimate form of art?” For me, these questions bring up attendant questions about writing and accountability, about how the need to create can be an almost-parasitical hunger that feeds on people’s lives, even (or perhaps especially) their own.

Zambreno takes exception to Toril Moi’s aversion to a certain type of women’s confessional writing in Sexual/Textual Politics, where Moi dismisses it as a kind of “narcisstic delving into one’s own self”. Yet these are questions that trouble me, and I can’t oppose them as clearly as Zambreno does, to see all objection to narcissism (or even the use of the term narcissism) as a form of censorship that attempts to silence women’s writing. Clearly the fact of sexism structures how writing and publishing operate as an institution, and Zambreno certainly makes a fine case about just how openly and covertly patriarchy attempts to silence women’s voices that do not fit its image of “good woman”.

But I also wonder about the dangers of looking inward, the idea of the self that might harden and become its own kind of hegemony. The danger when one starts to believe that one’s condition doesn’t reveal a particular human condition, but is the human condition. Can looking inward feed upon itself so thoroughly that it, does, in fact, become a form of narcissism? Where you’re so attuned to your own pain that you’re unable to recognise the pain of others, or worse, imagine that your pain is the pain of others?

I recognise that a big part of Zambreno’s project in Heroines is its effort of reclamation: as such, she tells the stories of the neglected, abandoned, derided writers and writer-wives of literary history in order to project a different, erased history. As such, her perspective is clear and focus is sharp: these women are rescued from formerly patriarchal narratives and given new forms of being in the pages of Heroines. Still, all of these women are white, and most of them come from a background with roots in bourgeois respectability, and so I recognise that while another story is being told, the whole story is, perhaps, still unclear.

Heroines is a record of how these women were wronged, and it’s a necessary intervention into both literary history and criticism, but we don’t hear anything about how these women may have used their class and social position and their whiteness in order to get ahead, how they may have exploited other people, people who were economically, politically, and socially positioned as middle and upper class white women’s lesser others. (I think of Toni Morrison’s 1989 interview in Time magazine, quoted in Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman, where Morrison talks about the old-boys network and the “shared bounty of class.” Although many of the women writers Zambreno writes about were often deprived of independent income, and some even fell into poverty, I still wonder about the class networks and social connections that may have worked in their favour, even when patriarchy stood in the way.)

As such, these women tend to come off uniformly victimised, wholly victims of patriarchy and nothing else. And while I recognise Zambreno’s need to record instances of “girl-on-girl” crime, it also makes me somewhat uncomfortable—as though all writing by women, then, is somehow necessarily above criticism. This is a grey and complex area, obviously, but I can’t help but wonder if this lets women writers off the hook a little too easily. Criticism from other women critics can often stem from internalised sexism, no doubt, but other forms of criticism take to task certain forms of confessional writing by women writers because it stays silent on issues of race, class, and sexuality, or worse, considers those issues unimportant in relation to one’s own work. Zambreno writes:

"This idea that one must control oneself and stop being so FULL of self remains a dominating theory around mental illness, and, perhaps tellingly, around other patriarchal laws and narratives, including the ones governing and disciplining literature."

This is certainly true, but I would rather not see it as an either/or option: either write, FULL of self, or suppress the self and suffer. The problem of writing the self is that the self can become all-encompassing, preventing the writer from hearing the stories of others. Being full of self can work as a form of self-care and self-preservation, and this is necessary, but sometimes the self needs to be shattered open into recognising and accepting other possibilities. So there is a danger, perhaps, in not interrogating statements like “The subaltern condition of being a literary wife,” when literary wives may at least get a stab at writing and giving voice to their thoughts on the page, while the true subaltern (may speak, write, shout, scream) and remain unheard by ears that are trained only to listen to the voice of the self or voices that sound similar to the self. There is a form of power in writing, despite how it’s received—and perhaps this is a power that is all too conveniently ignored by those of us who do write.

And Zambreno does exhort her girl readers/writers to write—“to write and refuse erasure while we’re living at least”—and is ecstatic about the proliferation of Tumblrs, blogs, and Livejournals by girls and young women that are at turns “emo, promiscuous, gorgeous, dizzying, jarring, irreverent, cinephilic, consumed, consuming, wanting, wiity, violent, self-loathing or self-doubting”, to quote just some of her adjectives, I’m also wondering about the attendant tyranny of these forms of social media and blog platforms that demand and require the personal. If we’re writing on the internet we’re using some if not most of this technology, and all of us are daily exhorted to share, divulge, like, favourite, promote, or take a gpoy or a selfie.

While it’s true that many subvert the rules of engagement on social media and blog platforms—by posting deliberately unappealing selfies, for example, or selfies of the ungroomed self—the internet is also run by corporations who try to exploit, in increasingly covert and “creative” ways, users’ personal information. And the young, pretty, wayward girl is now profitable data in a still (still!) sexist society. So much of girls’ writing online, like in the case of Marie Calloway, is (still!) used against them. One thinks about the problem of encouraging girls to write and also to be responsible and accountable to themselves and to each other; the problem of how to use oneself and one’s loved ones as material or content with care in a culture of increased surveillance, especially when the technology we use for writing and performing is also the technology that enables the surveillance and scrutiny.

In her earlier works of fiction O Fallen Angel and Green Girl, Zambreno gave us devastating yet finely-wrought portraits of girls in distress—portraits of acute suffering, where the girl in question (Maggie in O Fallen Angel, Ruth in Green Girl) is unable to consider the world outside of her because she is, in some ways, trapped inside. This, I think, is a testament to Zambreno’s intelligence and artistry—and a cultivated sense of empathy—and also a searing portrait of the fractious and unstable female self and its relation to mental illness. An important theme in Heroines is the institutionalisation and medicalisation of women—how the same misogyny that brings about or catalyses the splits in self in the female subject is the same misogyny that is applied to treat and “cure” it, and it is in these passages that Zambreno is particularly acute, sensitive, and moving. As she points out, language is itself complicit: “I’ve always found the language of borderline personality diagnosis, a label assigned to women almost entirely, compelling in that it’s an identity disorder which is defined almost exclusively by not actually having an identity.” Zambreno writes about always having had a “tremendous fear of being institutionalised”—and relates this to how works and canonised:

"(She was institutionalized, as Mad Woman, as Bad Wife, and he was institutionalized, as the Great American Author.)"

Institutionalisation is also a memory campaign, where the man-artist is generalised and the woman-artist individualised. I’d like to think of Heroines as a cure for this wilful, institutionalised amnesia. It’s a book that has lodged itself in my mind and likely to stay there for a long time, despite, or maybe even because of some of my problems with certain sections of the book. It seems fitting to let Zambreno have the last word:

"Fuck the canon. Fuck the boys with their big books."

storytime

I hope writing this will be therapeutic. Rambling may help against this occassional stifling feeling. It may be a satisfying outlet. Sometimes I wish people connected knew or cared to know my side, but over the years I have been too afraid of the embarassment from attracting attention to the matter. It is a taboo topic after all. Well, for years I have tried not to acknowledge that I am a victim of abuse. Not the physical kind but certainly mental and emotional. Everyone goes through bad relationships and breakups, that's how I rationalized what I went through. The fact it still has an impact even three plus years after it ended signifies that it is important. I shouldn’t undermine myself. This is the first time I’m writing about this relationship. I am aware as the teller that bias is inevitable. However I believe in the importance of presenting the situation as honestly as I can. Perceived bias would only serve to invalidate. I implore you evaluate any biases you may carry as well entering this story.

It all began in sophomore year of undergraduate. At the time almost everyone in my friend group was taking dreadful organic chemistry. As was necessary, we all spent a lot of time with each other in class, study groups, and office hours, so expectedly we grew closer. I didn’t know her well initially but I became attracted to a girl in the friend group. Certainly her looks played a part but I also liked the polished manner she conducted herself with. She always kept herself somewhat distanced in the group which made her mysterious and made me want to know her better. During the months of this crush, I worked to get closer and we did. I decided to tell her I liked her after having dinner with her. To which she rejected. With dissapointment I accepted her decision. Later that night we were all in the student center, studying. I was at a separate table and she asked to speak with me outside. I went and we talked more about “us” and I used this opportunity to make another case for myself. Finally she said “okay I’ll give it a try”. The visceral reaction I had still haunts me to this day. It was intense. It was my gut firing to me “this is wrong”. I wonder where it came from but I really wished I followed my gut that night. 

This relationship was over two years long so I’ll have to generalize. The relationship started off extremely rocky as she didn’t take me seriously in the beginning, need I remind you she was giving me a try. For another reason she was also a year older and expressed that because of her culture, having a man who is older was preferable. I felt more like a plaything and I was shamefully insecure. I didn’t believe she actually cared about me. Hearing about guys she actually had crushes on made me envious of what they received so easily. In particular I leaned there was a guy she liked who bore the same name as me and was also one year younger despite her insistence age was a factor with me. Moreover there were guys who liked her despite knowing she was in a relationship with me and one guy that was actually infatuated with her. Soon I learned he was even telling her “I love you” but she still texted, called, and met up with him while dating me those early months. I had entered the relationship wanting to respect her space. That was the first time I felt compelled to put my foot down and made her cut out that guy. Once the precedence was set, my insecurity lead to cut ties with any other guy who was perceivably a threat. There were others who were legitimately flirting with her. And others that in retrospect were not necessary to cut out. I am at fault for making her do that. Its unhealthy and it’s not something I would do now. It continued because it was mutual. From the beginning she made me cut out female friends unless she trusted them personally. Early on, neither of us believed in each other. About two months in I learned the only reason she agreed to date me that night was to get closer to the friends who were closest to me. She didn’t really care about me at first as I suspected, however now she was “about the relationship”. Learning I was being used obviously led my trust to suffer but I kept with it.

After years of reflecting, I know without a doubt what she wanted the most was control. I had to play servant or exactly whatever she wanted me to be regardless of how that made me feel. If I ever made changes to myself of my own volition, she would get angry. Her anger was expressed by treating me coldly and indifferently. This was highly effective as I really wanted the relationship to work and it hurt me. The changes I am talking about include things like if I get a new cologne without confiding with her. If I tried to lose weight. Once we were with a group of friends at a dance so I started dancing but she expressed disgust and shot me down; I never did that again. Whenever I deviated too much from her expectations, she’d take issue. Thus she was highly unsupportive and made sure my confidence was low enough so she could have her way. Low confidence has always been a problem of mine.

Medical school began in the first year of the relationship and rapidly I matured. I realized if I wanted to make this work in the long-term, I had to trust her. I was successful in actually no longer caring if her friends were male. I believed she had the sense that if she was leading a guy on she would do the right thing. Jealousy was always a problem in previous relationships so this was a huge accomplishment for me and I was proud of it. I thought, I’ll give her trust and the time for her to come around. Of course it was never applied to me. Despite acknowledging she had a jealousy issue that she “wanted to fix”, the difference is I actually worked and did it. It got to the point where I was scared to make any female friends that first year of medical school and guilt was trained into me. There was even a close long-time mutual friend who lost her mother that year, and did not have many friends besides me. I wanted to support her but my ex took issue with that. I even had to do a few meetings secretly because I believed I should be there. Ultimately my ex proposed it was either her or cut ties with that friend. This was the essence of why I wanted to become a doctor, to help people. I am ashamed I chose the latter. 

Here comes my stubborn hopefulness. If anything bias would work against me because throughout the relationship I always blamed myself. I believed her and valued her thoughts more than anyone elses. I believed she was too good for me as she made sure I was aware. Therefore every criticism I took to heart. For instance, early on she criticized my wardrobe so I began binge shopping, spending maybe even a thousand dollars to feel like I was good enough for her. Those early days of cutting out the guys that wanted to be with her, made me feel like cutting out my long-time female friends was justified. Of course it was certainly not. But I foolishly believed it would help her like me. I wanted her to focus on me. I did not want to feel insignificant next to her any longer. I wonder why she had to treat me with such disregard.

I’ve said alot but it was the fights that brought hell on earth. She admitted later, to the benefit of my closure, that she purposely picked frequent fights with me. It went like this. I would do something hardly worth anything more than a quick reprimand. For example, crack a slightly insensitive joke. Respond to a text not “loving” enough. Anything she could find as ammunition she would instantly target and drag it out. She’d get angry and criticize me until I began reacting negatively. I would be incredulous because for me the reasons were never nearly as important as not damaging the relationship with the fights. The moment I responded negatively, she would clam up and give me the cold treatment for hours or even days. Again I was so vulnerable to that old feeling of indifference. This move would infuriate me to no end. Repeated cycles of this would push me to my wits end, leading to explosive, never physical, but verbal fights to get a reaction out of her. Once she pushes me to that point, she’s set. She can use it against me to get off easy while I blame myself afterwards for exploding. Her truth is that she was never ever at fault, exemplifed by the single digit times she has ever apologized to me in a 2+ year relationship. Whether she actually believed she was faultless, I do not know. I’m not sure which one would be worse. Many of the comments made by me in those high anger states were derogatory and really mean. I am responsible for that and I hate what I was at that point in life. 

Despite this I worked in vain to keep the peace. These fights were happening multiple times every week, for over a year. Almost always provoked by her, with no exaggeration. The toll this takes on a person mentally is really hard to describe, and made me a colder person I had to recover from. I begged her every fight, “please stop getting angry over the little things”, “It is messing me up, let’s work to keep the peace in the relationship”. She’d verbally acknowledge my side, quickly follow always with the incessant word “but”, and state her case and demands. I need to emphasize that the very next week she’d again target some other small issue, expertly apply cold treatment until I exploded, apologize to her for both things, and begged her to stop picking fights. Repeat. For this reason I never started fights with her because my priority was keeping as much peace as there could be. Clearly it can be seen how this behavior enacts control. She knew exactly what would make me tick and she exercised this ability loosely and irrespective of how I was feeling as a medical student. Never would she adjust to me or care if I was happy. I was like a servant. I worked hard in medical school just to make time for her.

If she ever needed something more potent for control than picking fights with me, it would be breaking up with me. They’d always come unannounced if her stress peaked. Immediately she’d give up. I guess the relationship never meant anything to her in those moments. I, the dumb sucker, would fight to get her back. If she agreed it came with new terms and conditions. This happened 8 or 9 times in the relationship, always in this fashion. In retrospect I was far weaker than I am now and in addition to no control in this relationship, I barely had any over myself. My life was dominated worshipping this girl. My only request was to “please stop attacking me”. No one knew what was going on because a requirement of hers was to never talk about our problems with others, especially not those we mutually knew. I was alone in this. Of course I know why the abuse remaining hidden was so important to her. 

 I went on a medical trip end of first year of medical school with study abroad. I had lost a lot of friends by that point. There I found people who were so incredibly supportive and made me feel valued. It built my confidence back up. Listening to the opinions of these new friends gave me the realization that this situation would never get better. I reflected on how there were many times that she would get mad if I was cheerful and in a better mood than her. This is a glaring red flag as it means my happiness had no place in the relationship. On that trip, I was enjoying myself while she wasn’t so she threatened to break up with me. I asked her to forgive me. Two days later during a call, she picked another fight. I had it this time. With the support of my trip buddies, a rediscovery of who I was as a person, and a flight away from her, I, for the first time, truly stood up for myself and ended it. After that we didn’t talk for about 4-5 months. 

One of my biggest regrets is reconnecting with her. This moment is actually silly and depressingly absurd. I have a headphone that can make calls with a button. One day I accidentally pressed the wrong edge of a button and it activated FB messenger voice call, and for some unknown damn reason it was calling her. I hung up in quite literally a second hoping she didn’t get any notification. Soon after she texted me asking “you called’? That really unsettled me.  I thought she had moved on, why was she still so attentive to me? Isn’t a break-up what she wanted for so long? I waited a few weeks but gave in and reached out to her. I could have not done that. It was a mix of returning back to medical school, losing that social support, and being stressed and lonely. She was very much for meeting up again. During that meeting hopeful me was in full force. Hoping she learned her lesson we could give it another try. It was because in retrospect I did love her. The good times were nice, but the bad times were just so frequent it overshadowed anything positive. During that meeting she said she would do things differently. A quick damper came after we expressed a desire to restart that I found out she was hooking up with one of the male friends I trusted her to hang out with during first year of medical school. I never dug for any information. We had been broken up so it was fine. But it brought up negative thoughts about how she may have been taking advantage of my trust during the relationship since I never asked for details. Who knows. It’s fine to expect sexual activity when single, but it doesn’t have to mean trust can’t be damaged. She also didn’t want to cut ties with him if we started dating again. So at this point I sobered up and I said this wouldn’t work and decided we should not try to salvage this. Then for the first time, she chased me. 

She kept apologizing and trying to get me back. It may have been my well trained low ego, but that really touched me. I kept persistent but eventually her promises were so great, that finally I agreed, hopeful for a new start to a better relationship. Once that happened it was all over. The day it happened, she switched to “well I’m going to do all this for you, what are you going to do for me?” She went back to criticizing, and cold treatment in only a few days. She then broke up with me out of the blue and completely cut ties with me in under a week.

It was all over so fast, I was so angry and so confused. I soon realized this was revenge for breaking up with her, an act she had utilized on me so many times without a thought. Once she had control back, she made the move of ending things on her terms. I had learned during those months after I broke up with her, she felt depressed and couldn’t sleep. I do not believe it's because she cared about me but that I got the better of her. In the end, I don’t think she ever loved me as compared to the control and what she invested in the relationship. She had the completely random opportunity to end things with her the victor and she was successful. I hope you can sleep well with yourself now.

That is one aspect. What affects me more frequently nowadays is my sadness towards the lost friend group, the trust of other friends I’ve sacrificed, and the thought of friends I was prevented to ever make. After the breakup the friend group sided with her. One of the members is my ex's best friend so of course would support her no matter what the truth was. Even a year after the breakup, I knew this friend was still saying malicious comments about me to people I knew. My ex is lucky. I was a goner. The guy side deferred to the ladies running the group and essentially all let me go. This is despite the great irony that I knew she hated many of the current group members, at least while we were dating. Yet she is celebrated and I am excluded. It feels incredibly unfair to go through all this and have no one from the group even nod in the direction of my side. If they knew, would anything change? Or am I just a nuisance? They’re probably all fine without me so I should stay away. The point has been made as to why I would want to maintain friends like that anyways. Fair point. I do really care about connections with people, sometimes too much. Anyways, these thoughts are probably why for years I barely told my story. Well for my own sake, this is my story. 

PS. I am now in an amazing, healthy relationship with a girl who treats me the right way. She is so good to me that at first I was like, isn't this relationship going too smoothly? Being in a healthy relationship has really helped me reflect on the wrong delusions with the aforementioned. I now know I am capable and deserve to be in a loving relationship. She makes me happy and I am in a much better place. Hope would not exist without her. 

Neglect In The Spotlight: What the Framing Britney Spears Documentary tells us about the Right Way & The Wrong Way to Help Someone You Care About

The recent New York Times documentary, “Framing Britney Spears;” is notable for bringing attention to the issue of Conservatorship Abuse by highlighting the legal and personal battles of superstar and pop icon Britney Spears; whose recent battle against her father for legal/medical/ and financial conservatship of her body, mind, Art, and estate, has recently taken center stage; thanks to many of the star’s sometimes overzealous fans who have taken a personal interest in their favorite pop idol’s personal affairs.

For those of us who grew up with the Pop Icon, her massive stardom and (frankly justified) public meltdowns shaped our view not only of the Artist Britney Spears, but also of celebrity itself. That’s why it’s not surprising that the “Free Britney” movement (a movement that believes that Britney Spears should have sole control over her conservatship, so that she can manage her own financial and personal affairs) is so popular with people in their twenties and thirties, people who like me, who grew up during the days of tabloid celebrity culture; and believe that Britney got a bum break by being dragged through the mud by ex boyfriends, the press, and the tabloids; simply for being a woman who was not only talented, beautiful, and sexy but also absurdly famous.

To watch, in retrospect, how horrifically this young woman was treated simply for being outstanding amongst her peers; is disturbing, to say the least... But is also seared into our collective minds as part of her superstardom. We see the paparazzi tabloid culture of the early 2000’s as part of the myth and mystery of this particular celebrity’s story, as well as an intrical part of celebrity itself. We, as society, see it as a trade off: They build you up just to break you down, but that’s the price of being rich and famous. You could argue that the same thing happened to stars as diverse as Marilyn Monroe to Shelley Duvall; and the press does seem particularly cruel to female stars who have lost their “shimmer,” either by reality or perception.

Feminist journalists and philosophers have pointed out that Britney’s story, in some ways, is a common to the female experience; women who are successful and powerful, and seemingly in control of their sexuality; tend to attract the judgement of society; as well as the disdain of men, and the jealousy of other women. The virgin/whore complex, or paradigm; won’t allow such women to be virgins and seductresses, mothers and businesswomen, performers and emotional Artists with something to say. What Britney, like so many other women is most guilty of... Is just trying to live her life; in spite of the unfair judgements, criticism, envy, jealousy, and disdain of others.

That’s why I think the documentary does a good job of holding the press accountable for its smear-campaign against its number one teen pop starlet. It does a great job of holding society responsible for the many sexist double-standards that we hold male and female celebrities apart; and I think it does a decent job of illustrating the genuine concern that many Britney Spears fans have for their favorite female artist.

Where I think the documentary falters, though, is its framing of the “#FreeBritney” movement as being entirely benign, benevolent, and helpful. Though I’m sure many of the people featured in the documentary genuinely care about Miss Spears’ health, happiness, and welfare; and believe that they are genuinely fighting for the rights of someone who is highly competent and capable; there are still others who have used evidence of Britney Spears’ past mental health struggles, nearly a decade ago, as evidence to the contrary.

While no one can ever know or understand the very personal and private struggles, feelings, or thoughts of someone else. Especially someone whose life experiences are as exceptional as Britney Spears’, I would argue that many both inside and outside of the #FreeBritney movement, are currently doing more harm than good.

The backlash of the documentary isn’t that more people are seeing Britney Spears as a competent grown woman who capable of taking care of her own affairs... But rather there are many who are using the documentary to push the once popular perception that there’s something so wrong with the star’s mental health, because of the seemingly stress-induced nervous breakdown she had in her twenties, that it justifies why she was placed in a conservatship in the first place.

If we can use our empathy and compassion to put ourselves into her shoes for a moment: How would you like complete strangers asking you if you’re “ok?” How would you like people on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram commenting that they are “concerned” for your mental health?

To anyone of us that has been the victim of a Narcissistic smear-campaign; we can understand her pain on a smaller-scale, but not on the world-scale on which she finds herself. To anyone who has battled trauma or depression; or faced other mental health struggles, themselves; we know for a fact this is not the right way to advocate for someone who might be struggling; and yet casual disdain and disregard for “tabloid celebrities” feelings, is something we’ve all grown far too comfortable with and accustomed too.

I personally think that Britney Spears learned how to silence the “haters” a long time ago... She probably knows that a certain amount of criticism or speculation is the price she paid of fame... But at the same time, no matter how rich and famous someone is; it can’t completely block out such outrageous speculation. No amount of fame can silence thoughts that everyone thinks you’re “crazy” just because your whole life is out there for the world to see; and no amount of money can block out feelings of being isolated or misunderstood. Especially when those feelings are coming from your so-called “fans” and “supporters.”

Those of us who were initially concerned for her conservatship situation are now concerned that this speculation about the Star’s health is only piling onto an image of “instability” that she has been trying to shake off since she was in her twenties.

Just a quick look at Britney’s Instagram can tell you how many people are only interested in the spectacle of concern, of feigning concern, rather than showing actual concern.

The documentary opens and closes with a good argument: The Britney Spears Conservatship is unfair, because she is has proven herself to be healthy and highly competent. It also makes a fair argument that Spears’ father, Jaime Spears, and several other members of the stars family (including lawyers and doctors hired by allegedly abusive family members) don’t have the star’s best interests at heart. I think that, in many ways, even beyond the documentary... is obvious.

The truth is, none of us know what Britney Spears’ personal financial, medical, or mental health situation really is; and that’s why none of us can speculate as to whether or not she’s competent enough to handle her own affairs. Our speculation is just that speculation; we know that she might not be in an ideal situation, but it’s not for us to judge what an ideal situation would be. The world we know, the image we perceive of her, as she so eloquently put in one of her Instagram posts; is just on the other side of the camera’s lens. But does that make us powerless to help someone who we perceive as being potentially medically neglected or financially abused? I’d say the answer is no.

The way we help people like Britney Spears, and people in the same kind of situation that the Britney Spears documentary depicts, isn’t by speculating about their competency or mental health; but creating safe spaces in which they can tell their own stories.

We advocate for others by creating the conditions in which they can advocate for themselves; and we write articles and essays like this, with the hope that the messages of self-advocacy and support will spread far and wide enough that they will find themselves into the Star’s private circle. So that those closest to the victim/survivor, can help support her, and advocate for what’s best for their loved one.

I know it makes me a hypocrite to pile on like this, because it does sound like I’m also offering my two-cents about what’s best for Britney, someone I’ve never even met, or could ever hope to meet... But the fact is this issue affects me personally because I had to advocate, in the past, for a loved one who was in the same kind of situation that the Britney Spears documentary depicts. My loved one was being financially abused and medically neglected, and I had to legally intervene; in order to make sure my loved one was both receiving proper medical care and control of their own finances. I’ve also had friends who were in similar situations, who died due to medical neglect, after being placed on the wrong psychiatric medications.

Therefore, I understand both as an advocate and as a victim; the harm of neglect and abuse. Neglect, in particular, can be as subtle as pretending to advocate for a victim’s health and best interests; but giving them either the wrong medication, the wrong dosage, or even the wrong diagnosis. This is particularly common in women, as women are likely to be diagnosed with mood disorders that require medication. Therefore, if Britney Spears is experiencing some kind of medical abuse or neglect, then that can be very dangerous.

It’s only because I have some experience in this field, as a nurse and as a family member of someone who was in a similar situation, that I feel comfortable offering any comment at all; but I’m humble enough to understand that I know absolutely nothing about Britney Spears’ personal situation, from the outside looking in.

I believe the best way to advocate for any and all victims of abuse and neglect is simply to give them the freedom and space to tell their own stories, so that they can be their own best advocates, that’s how we can #FreeBritneySpears and many others. Not by assuming we know what’s best for them, based on our own limited experiences; but by giving them the support, dignity, and respect that they deserve and require to make healthy decisions and live their own best lives.

- Neglect Kills

Tory Lanez Ordered To Stay Away From Meg Thee Stallion After Her NY Times Op-Ed About Protecting Black Women Drops

Tory Lanez has been ordered to stay far away from Megan Thee Stallion after he was indicted on felony assault charges. Deets on that, plus how Meg is flourishing inside…

New updates are trickling in surrounding the shooting scandal that involved Tory Lanez and Megan Thee Stallion.

A judge told Tory Lanez he better stay far away from Megan Thee Stallion (at least 100 yards) after he was indicted on felony assault charges that could possibly land him in prison for a maximum of 22 years. He better not try to contact her either. He attended a hearing in L.A. County via phone. It was supposed to be the Canadian singer’s arraignment, but his attorney, Shawn Holley, requested a continuance. Since the continuance was granted, he did not have to enter a plea.

According to reports, Tory’s bail was set at $190,000 and he was ordered to turn in any guns he may own.

After the indictment, the Canadian artist hopped on social media to respond: 

will ... and the truth will come to the light ... I have all faith in God to show that ... love to all my fans and people that have stayed true to me & know my heart ... a charge is not a conviction . If you have supported me or meg thru this , I genuinely appreciate u .

— Tory Lanez (@torylanez) October 9, 2020

The hearing comes on the same day Meg’s op-ed in the New York Times was released where she boldly addressed why Black women need to be protected and why she’s not afraid of criticism. The Houston Hottie is adamant that saying "protect Black women" should NOT be a controversial topic. She also  addressed the shooting scandal with Tory, confirming they were never in a relationship and she explained why she initially decided to keep quiet about the incident:

"Despite this and despite the way so many have embraced messages about racial justice this year, Black women are still constantly disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life.

”I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man. After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him. We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place.

”My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself and my friends. Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment. The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted."

Meg - who landed her own TIME magazine cover recently - talked about calling out Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron during her “Saturday Night Live” debut for his mishandling of the case involving EMT Breonna Taylor:

”I recently used the stage at “Saturday Night Live” to harshly rebuke Kentucky’s attorney general, Daniel Cameron, for his appalling conduct in denying Breonna Taylor and her family justice. I anticipated some backlash: Anyone who follows the lead of Congressman John Lewis, the late civil rights giant, and makes “good trouble, necessary trouble,” runs the risk of being attacked by those comfortable with the status quo.

”But you know what? I’m not afraid of criticism. We live in a country where we have the freedom to criticize elected officials. And it’s ridiculous that some people think the simple phrase “Protect Black women” is controversial. We deserve to be protected as human beings. And we are entitled to our anger about a laundry list of mistreatment and neglect that we suffer.

And that’s on PERIOD.

The “Savage” rapper talked about the obsession with black women’s bodies and how folks always want to dictate what woman should and shouldn’t wear. Meg has experienced the judgement first hand.

”If we dress in fitted clothing, our curves become a topic of conversation not only on social media, but also in the workplace. The fact that Serena Williams, the greatest athlete in any sport ever, had to defend herself for wearing a bodysuit at the 2018 French Open is proof positive of how misguided the obsession with Black women’s bodies is.”

”I would know. I’ve received quite a bit of attention for appearance as well as my talent. I choose my own clothing. Let me repeat: I choose what I wear, not because I am trying to appeal to men, but because I am showing pride in my appearance, and a positive body image is central to who I am as a woman and a performer. I value compliments from women far more than from men. But the remarks about how I choose to present myself have often been judgmental and cruel, with many assuming that I’m dressing and performing for the male gaze. When women choose to capitalize on our sexuality, to reclaim our own power, like I have, we are vilified and disrespected.”

Check it: 

        View this post on Instagram

                  I will never bite my tongue, I will never allow anyone to silence me, I will never be scared to stand up for myself and others, and I DAMN SURE WILL NEVER BE SCARED TO BE MY TRUE AUTHENTIC STRONG BLACK SELF thank you @nytopinion for the platform and thank you to all the beautiful women involved

A post shared by Hot Girl Meg (@theestallion) on Oct 13, 2020 at 9:01am PDT

You can read her full op-ed piece here. Do you agree or disagree?

On the flip side...

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                  THE SITE IS BACK WORKING HOTTIES !!!! Apply now link in my bio #dontstopscholarship

A post shared by Hot Girl Meg (@theestallion) on Oct 8, 2020 at 8:18pm PDT

The college-girl-turned-rapper hasn't forgot about her college hotties. She recently announced her $10,000 "Don't Stop" scholarship that will be awarded to two hotties pursuing a degree in any field. Peep the deets above.

The "Don't Stop" raptress also has a denim line for the tall hotties dropping November 18th:

        View this post on Instagram

                  Nov 18th my collection with @fashionnova for ALL shapes and sizes launches Tall hotties stand up

A post shared by Hot Girl Meg (@theestallion) on Oct 7, 2020 at 5:38pm PDT

Keep makin' em mad Meg!

  Photo: Shutterstock

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