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wifeylouis · 4 years

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Louis Tomlinson writes queer love songs about the queer experience.

Louis is a prolific songwriter who has penned most of the iconic One Direction songs and has written on every single one of the songs from his debut album Walls. LGBT+ fans have always resonanted with Louis’ song writing and most of us have picked up on the very obvious queer coding. Many people seem to dismiss Louis’ outcries about his sexuality through his songs and I’m here to bring back the attention to all the gay anthems Louis has given us!

Before someone brings up the fact that Liam Payne has written on these songs too, in his own words, he focused more on melodies and Louis on the actual lyrics!

In One Direction:

1. Strong

I'm sorry if I say, "I need you" But I don't care, I'm not scared of love 'Cause when I'm not with you I'm weaker Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong That you make me strong?

Here Louis talks about not being scared of loving his partner and asks them if it's so wrong for them to be in love and to need each other. A very common thing gay people are told is that it’s wrong for us to love our significant other. Louis is trying to make his lover realise that it’s okay for them to do so, and that there's nothing to be afraid of.

Think of how much Love that's been wasted

People always Trying to escape it Move on to stop their heart breaking But there's nothing I'm running from You make me strong

Many older gay people have remained in the closet all their lives and have tried to “escape” from their truths and from who they really are, because they have been (and still are) afraid of rejection or the heartbreak they might face if they were out.

Specially back when things were even worse for the community, gay people would remain in straight marriages and even have children - take the example of Philip Schofield, the british presenter who only came out as gay this year after 27 years of marriage.

Louis, on the other hand, says that he isn’t ashamed of who he is and he isn’t running away from his true self. He knows who he loves and is proud of himself.

2. Alive

My mother told me I should go and get some therapy I asked the doctor, "can you find out what is wrong with me?

Here louis refers to how families and society often tell us that being gay is something that needs to be fixed. The “doctor” could be a reference to conversion therapy that many gay people in homophobic religious families are forced to go through. If you grow up around that mindset, you might really wonder if something is wrong with you.

She said, "hey, it's alright Does it make you feel alive? Don't look back Live your life Even if it's only for tonight" She said, "hey, it's alright If it makes you feel alive"

So the doctor tells him that it’s okay to be himself and to live his truth, love who he loves, because all that matters is doing what truly makes him “feel alive” which is being himself.

I whispered something in her ear that I just can't repeat She said, "okay" but she was worried what her friends will think She's going crazy Can't contain it She asked me, "what should I do, oh?"

Those of us who have been in a closet have at some point worried about our friends finding out, I know that I have been careful of being with another girl if there was a chance my friends would find out about it. We all know the theory that if you replace the girl in Alive with a man, the song changes its meaning. It clearly becomes a song about a guy hooking up with another man at the same party, and him worrying about what his friends would think about him being with another guy. Louis is telling him what the doctor told him: that it’ll be alright, and that he needs to do what makes him feel alive! To be who he is and to live his truth freely. I love this theory for the song because it makes so much sense!

3. Through the dark

You tell me that you're sad and lost your way You tell me that your tears are here to stay But I know you're only hiding And I just wanna see you

Here he's probably referring to a lover or a friend who was maybe afraid to accept themselves. This song reminds of Taylor Swift’s "Seven" where she sings about a friend who will no longer have to be in the closet if they leave their homophobic home and come live with her. Louis is telling a friend, who has lost their way trying to find themselves, that their true self is still there, hiding under that blanket of shame and self hatred.

You tell me that you're hurt and you're in pain And I can see your head is held in shame, But I just wanna see you smile again See you smile again

The theme of “hiding” and “shame” are obvious references to internalised homophobia and Louis is telling his friend or lover that he wants to see them happy, wants them to accept who they are. Throughout the song he reminds them that he will always be there for them and that he will support them and love them regardless of what society might say. He just wants them to be happy and to be themselves.

4. Ready to run

There's a moment when you finally realize There's no way you can change the rolling tide

All of us have had that moment when we realised we were queer, for some of us it happened at a young age and for some of us later on in life. But that moment of realisation and coming to terms with our sexuality is a shared experience for the entire community. Louis talks about that moment, about realising who he is and not wanting to change it because the truth is there and he’s accepted it.

There will always be the kind that criticize But I know, yes I know we'll be alright

As LGBT+, we face a lot of criticism from society and Louis talks about how he doesn't care about who stands against him and his lover, he knows they’ll be alright because he believes in their love.

5. End of the day

All I know at the end of the day is you want what you want and you say what you say And you'll follow your heart even though it'll break Sometimes All I know at the end of the day is love who you love There ain't no other way If there's something I've learnt from a million mistakes You're the one that I want at the end of the day

A wlw anthem! Louis really does love his sapphics and this song was easily claimed by his wlw fans. He again talks about staying true to himself and living his truth even if he might face rejection and heartbreak, he can’t change who he is. A common phrase associated with the LGBT+ community is “Love is Love”. Louis speaks on the same theme and says that nothing can change him because he knows who he loves and there’s nothing wrong with who he loves and wants. He talks about how he's not afraid of being in love with this person and he's ready to say what he wants about his lover, because he's not ashamed of his feelings in any way or form. And he’ll follow his heart even though he might be rejected.

The priest thinks it's the devil My mum thinks it's the flu But girl it's only you

He refers to the “priest” and “mom” like he did with the “doctor” and “mother” in Alive. Religion tells us that being gay is something wrong and evil, our family tells us that it’s just a phase that we will get over, and Louis talks about these elements in many of his songs. But he knows that there’s nothing wrong with his feelings, it isn’t a phase or a trend for him, he loves who he loves and there’s no other way.

7. Home

Make a little conversation So long I've been waiting So let go of myself and feel alive

Here Louis refers to the feeling of being “alive” once again. Being who he really is makes him feel like he’s truly living. He’s finally “letting go” of himself, as in coming to terms with who he is.

So many nights I thought it over Told myself I kind of liked her But there was something missing in her eyes

Louis leaked Home even though it wasn’t a single and even tweeted a little Home emoji for it! This song was quickly claimed by LGBT+ fans as exclusively for us and we even started Project Home for it. Here he talks about how he tried to make himself believe he liked this girl, but at the end of the day he knew it wasn't right and there was something missing. Most of us have tried to make ourselves believe that maybe we’re just confused, and many of us have suffered through comp-het, or giving heterosexuality one last chance before realising that something’s wrong and this isn’t for us.

I was stumbling, looking in the dark With an empty heart But you say you feel the same Could we ever be enough? Baby we could be enough

There was a point in time where he was confused, figuring out where he fell on the spectrum, he was “stumbling” through this journey of self acceptance and he found his lover along the way. Someone who told him that they felt the same way he did. This is again a common shared experience in the LGBT+ community, finding comfort in realising that there’s other members of the community around us who are like us, we are not alone in this struggle. Finding that person who felt the same way he did, was enough for him.

I see the smile as it starts to creep in It was there, I saw it in your eyes

Referencing the missing something in the girl’s eyes from before, Louis says that he’s found it in his lover’s eyes. They’re happy, they know who they are, they’ve accepted themselves. I also made a connection here with a lyric from Louis’ song Walls where he sings “Looked you in the eyes, saw that I was lost” perhaps implying he could no longer find that “something” in his lover’s eyes, he no longer feels the same way. Louis’ songs have many easter eggs and little references to eachother, it’s amazing how he’s writing a story through his songs and no matter which album or era you pick a song from, they all link with eachother and can be written down like a cohesive story. He’s a really brilliant, smart songwriter.

In his debut album Walls:

Something to note here, Louis hasn’t used a single pronoun in the entirety of Walls. Unlike the unnecessary “girl” in awkward places that were forced into One Direction songs, Louis’ debut album is a beauty, gender neutral piece that is relatable to everyone, regardless of who are partner is.

7. Too Young

Oh, I can't believe I gave in to the pressure When they said a love like this would never last

Being LGBT+ as a regular person is hard enough, but being a gay man in the homophobic music industry is near to impossible. Louis talks about the pressure and hardships he and his lover may have faced under their label and management, considering how restrictive, abusive and controlling Sony Music is, it isn’t far-fetched to think that Louis is referring to the pressure his relationship may be under because of contracts and agreements. The industry is homophobic, the artist is a product and the listeners are the consumers, and gay men in pop music aren’t exactly seen as marketable by the executives. A “love like this” is obviously referring to queer love, and being told that it’s phase that will pass, or that it won’t last because they won’t let it last.

8. Habit

I took some time 'cause I've ran out of energy Of playing someone I heard I'm supposed to be But honestly, I don't have to choose anymore

Louis talks about being tired of playing a character, hiding his true self and being someone he isn’t because thats what hes told to do. Again, this could be a reference to that “pressure” he felt in Too Young, and also an obvious reference to a closet. All of us who have been closeted before or are in the closet right now, know that our day to day public lives feel like playing a character, acting like the person society expects us to be. Straight men don’t experience this, they don’t have to play someone else because they are exactly what society expects of them already. Louis is tired of that, and doesn’t want to choose between that pressure of the hiding and being his true self.

9. Only the brave

It's a church of burnt romances And I'm too far gone to pray

Only the Brave is the last song on Louis’ debut album, and was quickly claimed by his LGBT+ fans as a second sister to home, another gay anthem. In the track by track, he says “Love is only for the brave”. Bravery and pride are two words commonly associated with the LGBT+ community, pride is an integral part of us and we are extremely brave for being ourselves and loving who we love in a society that tells us that we are wrong for doing so. Here, Louis again brings up religion and his relationship with it. This is a recurring theme in his songs. The “burnt romances” are obviously queer romances that the “church” or all religion has killed, by telling us we are wrong or evil for being who we are. Alot of gay people have a bad relationship with religion, mostly because we are so demonised by it. “Too far gone to pray” definitely refers to how gay people are told that if they pray or if they hadn’t strayed from religion they might be able to “cure” themselves. In this case he says that he can't do that anymore, because he KNOWS who he is and doesn't need religion to tell him. He’s too far gone to turn around and try to “fix” himself, instead he doesn't need that fixing at all.

And they'll say, "I told you so Come on, when you know, you know"

Something most of us have heard when we come out of the closet, is people saying “they knew all along” and this is a reference to that. It can also be interpreted as knowing who we are when the time comes. Most of us have had our gay awakening at some point in life, when that moment comes, we realise who we were all along. Louis himself has been outed multiple times in his career, once even by The Wanted, he might be referring to how people will say that they had known all along when they find out the truth about him.

Additional:

10. Just Like You

“Twenty-five and it's all planned”

Louis announced Just Like You as a song for the fans against his label’s wishes on 11th October 2017, also known as National Coming Out Day. His LGBT+ fans knew it was another outcry from him about his sexuality, reaching out to his community through his music. Here he talks about how his entire career has been planned, perhaps referring to Too Young and Habit, playing this character because he’s been forced into it, because that’s what's written down for him by the management and labels. His fans have always picked up on certain mannerisms and things he does and says that look forced, and are probably a result of controlled media training of his body language and words.

Yeah, I feel the same as you would do Same stress, same shit to go through I'm just like you If you only knew

The “you” here is the LGBT+ community. Time and time again Louis has been alienated from his own people, and through his music he reaches out to us and tells us that he’s the same, he goes through the same troubles and hardships and faces the same societal pressure that we face when it comes to being who we are and loving who we love.

I wanna lay where she lays

This is the one of the only pronouns Louis has ever used in his solo music but his fans quickly picked up on the real meaning behind it. “She” lays next to a man, and Louis might be referring to how gay men are told that men should not lie with men, and he says that if he had it his way, he could be lying where “she” is, as in next to the man, his lover.

Louis also released a beautiful lyric video for Just Like You where he added newspaper articles about various topics ranging from Black Lives Matter, racial inequality, police brutality, feminism, sexual assault and the LGBT+. There are many easter eggs and hints to pick up on in the video including a clipping of a crossed out “What is your sex” column and using a separate clipping of the letter “S” over the word “He” to form “She”, a reference to gender neutral pronouns or the “He” that he wants to lay next to.

There are many themes that are recurring in Louis’ music, specifically religion, societal pressure, having to hide and be someone society expects him to be, being told that there’s something wrong that needs to be “cured”. All of these are a common part of the queer experience, something all of us have been through and shared with eachother. That’s why Louis’ music resonantes with gay fans, because the words he writes and sings tell a story that all of us have lived, and a straight man could’nt do that. LGBT+ artists queer code through many ways, clothing, mannerisms, art, Louis does it through songwriting. He may be in a tightly controlled, restrictive situation but he has a positive outlook on life, he is proud of who he is, he constantly reaches out to fans and his community through the only way he can, his songwriting. He’s given us many gay anthems and has helped many fans, myself included, come to terms with our sexuality and accept ourselves because his music told us that it’s okay to do so. I’m grateful to Louis for giving me that acceptance and love that all of us seek through his beautiful songs. It’s time we stop invalidating Louis’ struggles and the amount of times he has reached out to his community and tried to show us his true self.

Can’t wait for our next big gay anthem in LT2!

#louis tomlinson #girlie #this took me 2 hours #originally a thread on twt #thanks vale for telling me to post it on here lmfao #lgbt #louis tomlinson is lgbt #hes GAY #masterpost #louis tomlinson walls #POSTING FOR THE SECOND TIME

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circumstellars · 3 years

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Re: recent anti/fandom violence

In light of last weekends’ events that happened in the greater fandom environment, I realise how patient and tolerant I’ve been to antis and those who may quietly support anti behaviour, in hopes that knowing me (a neutral casual), and some of the amazing people I’ve met along the way, would change their minds and show them everything is okay. I can see now we don’t have that kind of luxury, and I’m wasting time. The word on the street is that the bullying, harassment and anti-shipper violence and book burning has gotten so prolific and dangerous, inescapable, that some adults have been doxxed and lost their livelihoods, or had their family and children harassed, and a MINOR, a 15 year old shipper in another fandom may have actually succumbed to the death threats sent to them (yes, possible suicide).

because it was never about protecting real people, real children, or real CSA survivors, many among our ranks who use fiction as a form of therapy and escapism, no - it’s always about fictional people first and their sick and twisted Christian extremist faux morality.

not to mention, one of the most incredible gifts to fandom in the last 50 years, AO3, is getting attacked left and right, from antis trying to crash the servers and bully the volunteers out of their jobs.

I know you (anti shippers) hate shipping, and villains, and having fun with imagination and reading comprehension, because you’re most likely a white, American, repressed and mentally ill kid or young adult who wasn’t taught what fiction is and how it operates in your flagging school system and that no matter what you say it’s right, but I’m done trying to reach across the aisle, educate, bring people over to a happier, more wholesome fandom. I mean we will still have that, but hateful people will simply have to rot outside our spaces. im not risking the life, comfort, safety and enjoyment of myself, or any of the good people and friends who exist near me, around me just so i can be the bigger person. I don’t even know how to process that yet another life may have been lost to sick and twisted extremists who can’t mind their business and their own spaces. Real kids are getting hurt, and real adults too. You don’t care about trauma survivors - WE ARE TRAUMA SURVIVORS.

Anyone who is an anti, has anti leanings, has supported or harassed anyone over their fictional proclivities (whatever ship that is in whatever fandom, i don’t care for what), is NOT WELCOME ON MY BLOG. You are not welcome to our server, or to speak with me either. Anti shipping propaganda is extremely homophobic, racist and sexist at its core, and if that’s how you want to live, so be it, but stay the hell away from me and my community.

this is not to say you have to like any ships or certain ships, or dynamics that make you uncomfortable to be welcome - I am specifically speaking to those who hate and spew hatred to the real people who like things they don’t. real people, with lives, loves, families and jobs - the real people getting hurt or worse.

Sorry for the long post but I needed to reaffirm what I’m about, because I do have a slow but steady growth of followers as I continue on doing my otherwise quiet giffing and reblogging, but I’m clearly too tolerant. I’m not going to continue being patient with people who would laugh on twitter or tumblr about someone in the fandom committing suicide, let alone a baby, a child. fuck you.

I’m sorry this is such a dreadful and dreary topic, but it has to be spoken about. pretending it isn’t happening will make it worse. I want people who follow me to know I will defend your right to enjoy whatever the hell you want, whether I like it or not. your life is not mine to dictate, or take.

thank you all.

#tua #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #fandom #shipping discourse #im sorry #its such a hard thing to talk about but I have to #unfollow me if you're somehow around my blog #i will now be blocking antis on sight #enough is enough #my nonsense #personal

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thetravelerwrites · 3 years

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Dr. Mael Halvorg (Finale) Lemon

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Male Part-Fae/Female Part Fae Additional Tags: Exophilia, Monster Boyfriend, Fae, Reader Insert, Genetics Content Warnings: Children, Pregnancy, Incubation, Birth, Babies, Surgery, Male Infertility, Mention of Cancer Words: 4233

The finale of @ivymemnoch‘s commission! The reader takes Dr. Halvorg on a weekend trip for his birthday and changes his life forever. Please reblog and leave feedback!

The Traveler's Masterlist

The plus sign on the stick had taken you by surprise. You don’t know why, though; you knew this was probably going to happen eventually when you decided to stop your birth control. Of course, you didn’t expect it to happen so soon, since he was still recovering and potentially wouldn’t necessarily be any more fertile than he had been before, but considering how prolific your family was, it shouldn’t have been a shock.

Three months after Maël’s surgery, his test results had been not quite normal but favorable, and he was already talking to you about perhaps finding a surrogate and in-vitro fertilization, getting your opinion and making sure you’d be okay with it. You told him to wait, perhaps, and give himself more time to allow his… swimmers… to get stronger. You hadn’t told him you were already prepared to carry his child for him. You wanted it to be a surprise. A gift.

But now, after dating for six months, there it was. Right there on the ultrasound screen: a tiny little baby belly bean, no bigger than your thumb. Whatever doubts you had were always drowned out by one sentence.

He’s going to be so happy.

You went into his office after getting home from the OBGYN, having told him you were simply going in for your normal bi-yearly check-up. He was working, like always, but he looked up when you came in and smiled.

“How’d it go?” He asked you.

“Totally normal and healthy,” You replied. The both of us.

“I’m glad to hear that,” He said, putting down his pen. “No lunch with Amai? It’s Wednesday.”

“I know,” You said. “But I wanted to spend time with you.”

His smile widened and he opened his arms. You went over and sat in his lap, giving him a kiss.

“So, you’re birthday is coming up,” You said nonchalantly.

He snorted. “I haven’t celebrated my birthday in over one hundred years.”

“All the more reason to do it now!” You insisted. “I want to take you on a weekend trip. There’s somewhere special I want you to see.”

“And what would that be?” He asked, smiling at you fondly.

“A surprise,” You said, twitching his nose. “It’s in New York, though.”

His head rocked back. “That’s a ways away. Why are we going so far?”

“You’ll see. Do you want to go? Please?” You looked up through your lashes at him, being playful, hoping you weren’t being too weird and that he didn’t suspect anything.

“Well, alright. I don’t really have much work to do right now.”

You sat up and looked at him in shock, laughing. “I totally didn’t expect you to agree!”

He hugged you close and laughed too. “Well, there’s no reason not to, I suppose. And I’ll do just about anything for you if you ask nicely enough. God, it’s been ages since I actually took an actual vacation.”

“See? Perfect timing.” You bit your lip and looked at the door slyly. “Does the door lock?”

His eyes flicked to the door and back to you, narrowing them. “Yes. But the room isn’t soundproof.”

“I can be quiet. Promise.”

You thought he’d decline and say it was inappropriate to be intimate in his office, that he’d see you after he was done working and then the two of you could play back at his massive suite. Which was now your suite as well, as you’d moved in with him about a month ago.

What you didn’t expect was him to grin sinfully at you and get up, closing the blinds. He went around to lock the door and sat on the couch on the opposite side of his desk and patted his lap. Smirking, you joined him.

Climbing into his lap slowly, straddling him, you went in for a deep, probing kiss, dragging your fingernails down his chest over his shirt. He groaned against your lips and put his hands on your legs, petting under your skirt and slip, raking his fingers against the lip of your stockings. You’d taken to wearing stockings because he rather liked them. It seemed to do a lot to turn him on, especially when they were all you were wearing. He also had a corset fetish, too, but you couldn’t wear a corset all the time, especially around the children, so stockings were a happy medium.

He kneaded your buttocks under your skirt as you reached between the two of you and unbuckled his pants, unzipped the zipper, and reached in, fondling him over his underwear. His groaned deepened and he squirmed underneath you, his head falling back onto the cushions.

You started kissing his neck, pulling up his shirt and running your hands up his back. He had large, curious scales on his back, an artifact of his fae heritage. They were a lot like pangolin scales: wide, brown, and ridged. He often wore special padded shirts, because normal shirts were shredded by the end of the day. You thought they were adorable and loved grooming them for him, which he greatly enjoyed and made him almost purr, though you could cut a finger on them if you weren’t careful.

He reached under you and pulled your panties aside, lining himself up with your entrance. You sank slowly down onto him, drawing it out, and he hissed in a breath, biting his lip to keep quiet. You began to move on him, and he moved under you, thrusting up as you thrust down. He was always a very active, enthusiastic participant during sex, even if you took the lead. One hundred years of celibacy might have had something to do with that.

He flipped your skirt up and tucked it into your waistband so that he could watch himself go into and out of you, watch your thighs flex and contract, and run his thumbs up the straps of your stockings. You pulled the tie from his white-blonde hair and shook it out of it’s neat braid, letting it fall around his shoulders so that you could play with and tug on it. His pace quickened, and you matched his rhythm, the both of you beginning to pant and moan, quickly suppressed.

There was a knock on his door. “Dr. Halvorg? I need your signature on these invoices.”

He pulled you against his shoulder, muffling your sounds of pleasure, but he didn’t stop thrusting. You bit into his shoulder to keep yourself for crying out.

“What are they for?” He called through the door, his voice remarkably even-sounding.

“For the medical equipment from Broadchurch,” The assistant said.

“No, no, we never got the product, we’re not paying that,” He said, for all the world sounding like he was sitting as his desk staring at paperwork and not railing you on his couch.

“I’m going to cum,” You whispered into his ear.

“You promised to stay quiet,” He told you just as silently.

“I can’t!” You responded desperately.

“You promised.”

“So what should I do?” The assistant said, seemingly none the wiser that you were about to explode.

“Call them and ask where our equipment is. Until they locate it, they’re not getting a penny.”

You balled up his shirt in your hands and gritted your teeth as you came, gushing on him and holding your breath to stay quiet. You made a squeak, and his hand closed on your throat.

“Shh, shh,” He hushed.

“I’ll call them back, but I don’t think they’ll be very helpful,” The assistant replied. “They haven’t responded to any of the emails. The only communication is from emails.”

“Send them an email, then. I’m busy, though, so get on with it,” He said impatiently, staring at your face as your orgasm crested and ebbed, keeping a firm grip on your neck.

“Yes, sir,” The assistant said. You heard their footsteps recede.

“Oh, fuck,” You breathed.

“You did well,” He said, allowing his breathing to go fast and shallow. God, he had amazing self restraint. “Good girl. Stay still, I’m almost there.”

His pace became frenetic and bounced you high on his lap. He let go your your throat and gripped your hips, slamming you down upon him. He grunted, getting a little red in the face as he smacked his body into you.

You felt him release inside you, pulsing against your inner walls. When he was done, he flipped you over and lay you down on the couch, watching his seed well up and out of you to drip down onto the vinyl couch. He always did that, and you weren’t sure why.

You went to the en-suite bathroom to clean yourself up and brought him a wet towel so that he could do the same. When you were both done and had straightened your clothes, you spent a few minutes making out against his desk before he sighed.

“I should help my assistant contact the supply company. He’s a bit of a pushover, the poor kid.” Maël smiled down at you. “That was nice. We should do that more often.”

“We almost got caught!” You objected.

“Hey, it was your idea,” He said, grinning. “I’m looking forward to whatever you have planned for our trip. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.”

“It definitely will be. I promise.” You kissed him one more time, lingering for a moment, before unlocking the door and letting yourself out.

Next week, Saturday morning, you took a plane out to Albany, New York, and drove a rental car to a house in Glenmont. When you stopped in the driveway, Maël looked at you with confusion and a little bit of apprehension.

“I don’t understand,” He said. “What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see,” You replied. “Come on.”

You walked him up to the front door and knocked. A young woman in her forties or fifties answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, are you Mrs. Winston?”

“Oh, yes, you must be the young woman I spoke to over the phone!” She said. “Come in, come in. He’s in the parlor.”

“Thank you so much.” You stepped into the house with Maël following. You could feel the curiosity and confusion radiating off of him.

You were led into a sitting room where a man in a wheelchair was reading a paper at a table. He was quite old, by human standards, in his mid-eighties perhaps. He was hooked up to an IV and had an oxygen cannula in his nostrils.

“Dad?” The woman said softly. “You’ve got visitors.”

The man looked up at the two of you. Despite his advanced age, he seemed completely within his faculties.

“Are you the woman I talk to?” He asked you.

“Yes, sir,” You responded. “Thank you for agreeing to see us.”

“It’s no problem,” He said. He was staring at Maël.

You pulled him forward. “Dr. Maël Halvorg,” You said to Maël. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Maël Halvorg. Robert’s son.”

Maël’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped in shock. He seemed unable to speak. You smiled at him encouragingly and nudged him forward.

He cleared his throat and held out his hand. “It’s a genuine pleasure to meet you, sir,” Maël said in a small voice. “May I sit down.”

“Please,” The man, Dr. Halvorg, said, shaking Maël’s hand and gesturing toward the chairs. You and Maël took a seat.

“Do you know who I am, sir?” Maël asked tentatively.

“I do,” Dr. Halvorg responded. “You raised my father.”

“Yes,” Maël said, smiling in relief. “I loved your father very much.”

“I know you did,” Dr. Halvorg replied. “My father spoke of a lot when I was growing up.”

“Is he… is he alive?”

“No. I’m afraid he died about eleven years ago,” Dr. Halvorg said sadly.

Maël sighed and hung his head a little. “I suspected that might be the case, but I hoped.” He looked back up at the older gentleman. “Did he grow up okay? What kind of man was he? I apologize, but I just have so many questions.”

Dr. Halvorg chuckled. “It’s no trouble. Honestly, I was hoping I might get to meet you one day.”

Maël smiled. “You were?”

“Oh, yes. May father told me so many stories about you when we kids were growing up.”

“How many children did he have?” Maël asked earnestly.

“Four sons,” Dr. Halvorg replied. “He was a great father and a brilliant man, though he said he had a rough start.”

Maël nodded. “Yes, Robert had some learning disabilities that made certain things difficult.”

“He told me that many people said he was lazy and stupid, and that you were the only one who believed he could learn. You dedicated much of your time to helping him.”

“Yes,” Maël said. “Being in school made him quite frustrated and sad, so I took him from school and taught him myself at home. He seemed to respond positively to that.”

“Indeed, he did,” Dr. Halvorg replied. “It was because of you that my dad became a teacher.”

“Robert was a teacher?” Maël asked delightedly.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Halvorg responded. “He taught children much like himself, the ones who needed special attention and care. He was well respected in his field and much loved by his students. He didn’t want to retire, in fact. It was age and illness that forced him to stop.”

Maël held a hand to his chest. “I’m so proud to hear that. Robert was always a determined boy, so I’m so pleased to learn he kept at it.”

“He struggled, I’m afraid,” Dr. Halvorg admitted. “After his mother, my grandmother, left you for his biological father, things changed quite a bit. His father was not as understanding or as patient as you had been and set him back rather badly.”

Maël frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“As far as my memory goes, he never called that man ‘father.’ As far as he was concerned, you were his dad. But his biological father insisted on wiping you out of their lives. That’s why he had to hide that.” Dr. Halvorg pointed to a picture on the mantle. “Young lady, could you kindly retrieve that?”

“Of course,” You said, standing up and going to the mantle, where there was a black-and-white photograph in a frame. It was Maël, wearing fine early twentieth century clothes, his hair cut short and wearing a flat cap. He was standing with his hands on the shoulders of a young boy, perhaps eight, wearing similar clothes. You took it and handed it to Dr. Halvorg, who gave it to Maël.

Maël stared at the picture, his eyes bright and glittering with tears. “I never thought I’d see his face again.”

“Keep that,” Dr. Halvorg said. “He’d have wanted you to.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!” Maël said. “This is yours!”

“I have digital copies,” Dr. Halvorg said dismissively. “In any case, I won’t be needing it much longer anyway. Stage four lung cancer, you see.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maël said mournfully. “Can anything be done?”

Dr. Halvorg shook his head. “I’ve lived a good life. I have children, and grandchildren, a beautiful wife, a wonderful job. The one thing I wanted was to meet my father’s father. Not that other man who did his best to tear my father down. The man who did his best to lift my father up. You. And I’ve done that. I can go now content.”

Maël’s restraint cracked, and he wept. “I appreciate that very much,” He said in a strangled whisper.

Maël and Dr. Halvorg talked for hours, recounting stories from both Robert’s childhood and adulthood. Dr. Halvorg showed Maël pictures of his siblings and children. Maël told Dr. Halvorg about his life’s work in reviving dying races. You watched the two of them interacting, and it made your heart swell with gladness. You’d never seen Maël so happy and excitable.

Finally, nearing sundown, you realized that Dr. Halvorg was becoming tired. His daughter came in to give him his evening meal and medication, and the two of you said goodbye.

“It has been an absolute joy, Dr. Halvorg,” Maël said, shaking Dr. Halvorg’s hand. “You lovely daughter has my number and my email, so please keep in touch.”

“My pleasure,” Dr. Halvorg said. “You have a nice trip back with your lady, Grandad.”

Maël laughed and teared up again. “I will.”

Outside, before you could get back in the car, Maël pulled you into a tight, warm hug.

“Thank you,” He whispered into your hair softly. “Thank you so much. I love you. I love you. I can never repay you for this.”

“What about a diamond ring and a pretty white dress?” You asked, wiping his tears and smiling up at him.

He laughed. “It’s a deal.”

Back at the hotel, he sat on the bed and stared at the photograph, pointing out little marks on Robert’s face and telling you stories about them. You listened with your head on his shoulder.

Eventually he stopped and placed the frame carefully in his suitcase.

“Are you hungry? I’m starving. Let’s order something.”

“Before we do,” You said. “I have a birthday gift for you.”

He chuckled incredulously. “Honey, I appreciate that, but honestly, there’s no possible way you could have topped what you gave me today.”

“Are you sure about that?” You asked, going to your suitcase and pulling out a small rectangular box. “Here, open it.”

The second he saw the pregnancy test, he fell to his knees, sobbing loudly, his head pressed against the floor. You knelt next to him and rubbed his back, letting him get it all out. Years of despair, pain, and sadness being released. You’re sure he was overwhelmed, so you waited in silence and lay your head against him.

“Is this real?” He choked.

“It’s real,” You assured him. “I have an ultrasound picture.”

His head popped up, tears streaming down his face. “Can I see it?”

“Of course,” You said, pulling it from your purse.

“Oh, my God,” He wept, staring at the small bean in the picture. “Oh, my God. It’s mine?”

“Yes, honey, it’s yours,” You said. “We can do a paternity test if you want, but I promise you it’s your baby.”

He stopped being able to speak and just cried. He cried for a very long time. You picked him up and laid him in the bed and ordered some food. While waiting for it, you climbed into bed and held him.

“Are you okay?” He asked after some time.

“Me? Yeah, I’m completely fine. Are you okay? You were crying pretty hard there. I’m surprised you haven’t fallen asleep. I’d be exhausted.”

“That’s not what I mean,” He said, lifting your chin so you were looking at him. “Are you okay with having a baby? I know I’ve been talking about wanting to have a child for as long as we’ve known each other, but is this what you want?”

“Yes, it is,” You told him. “I stopped my birth control months ago.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d done that,” He said.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” You said, stroking his cheek.

“You. Are. Amazing,” He breathed. “I am so happy. Happier than I have any business being, and it’s all because of you.”

“You deserve to be happy, Maël,” You said. “Don’t ever thin’ otherwise.”

He pressed his forehead against yours. “I love you.”

“I love you back.”

Yenuno and Amai we’re overjoyed to hear the good news, and the children also seemed to be happy to have a new playmate coming. Maël seemed unable to stop smiling. He took time off from work to take care of you during the worst of your morning sickness and was present for every doctor’s appointment, every ultrasound, every time you even texted him. If you asked, he’d drop anything he was doing to come and help you.

His little girl was born in the spring, and he named her Roberta. He took her everywhere with him, rarely putting her down for any reason, even keeping her on his shoulder when he was working. The joy that radiated from him was infectious, and everyone near him couldn’t help but smile at his brand new attitude.

You planned your wedding for fall that same year, and afterward, you and Maël were able to take Roberta up to New York to meet Dr. Halvorg. He passed away a few weeks later. You and Maël attended his funeral, and as Dr. Halvorg was buried in the same family plot as Robert, Maël got the chance to visit his son’s grave for the very first time.

“Hi, Robert,” He said softly, kneeling down in front of the headstone. You waited with Roberta asleep in your arms a few paces back.

“I’m sorry,” Maël said, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more when your mother took you. I wish I had fought to keep you, but I didn’t think I had any right. I just wanted to know where you had gone and if you were safe, but she told me nothing about where you were going and disappeared. I bribed the men at the train station and the docks to look through the ledgers, to try and find your name, but I never found it.

“I will always blame myself for not doing more, for not stepping in and making sure we could keep in contact. I should have taken it to the courts and let them decide, but I… I was scared they would determine I trying to hold on to something that wasn’t mine.”

Maël sniffed and wiped his eyes.

“I just wish I had one more chance,” He continued. “I wish I could have had a phone call, at the very least, to talk to you and hear your voice and tell you what I should have said back then. That it didn’t matter whose child you were biologically or legally. I was your father. You were my son. Nothing would ever change that.” His voice cracked further. “You will always be my son.”

After a moment silent tears hitting the grass where Robert lay sleeping, Maël straightened up an took a deep breath.

“I know where you are now, and I’ll come visit again, you and my grandson,” Maël said. He laughed. “I can’t believe you named your son after me. I’m honored more than I can tell you.”

Maël turned to you and opened his arms for the sleeping form of his daughter, his face wet with tears, and you passed her over.

“You have a baby sister, Robert,” He said, smiling. “I named her after you. She’s always smiling and happy. She reminds me so much of you when you were little that it’s kind of scary. I think the two of you would have been best friends. I’ll make sure she knows all about you.”

You put a hand on his back and rubbed gently. He kissed Roberta’s forehead and tiny little ear.

“We have to go now, Robert. You’re baby sister is going to wake up soon and be hungry. But I’ll come back to see you again, I swear. This time, I promise I’ll come back.”

As winter crested into spring again, Roberta was walking and had said her first word: “Daddy.”

You were still teaching at the facility, and had taken up the job permanently. Yenuno and Amai’s little girls were Roberta’s favorite playmates, though they had been warned to be careful, as Roberta developed more slowly than they did.

“Can we have another one? Please?” Maël asked one night as he watched gleefully as Roberta used her fat baby fists to shove raviolies in her mouth.

“Give me another year, but yes,” You replied.

“A year!” Maël whined. “That’s so long!”

“Don’t sass me,” You told him. “A year and no sooner. Besides, you still have more work to do. Did you get in touch with the Celtic Fae Council?”

“Yes, finally,” He replied, picking up his fork. “I didn’t realize how much red tape was involved. Genetic testing is underway. So far, there have been three men with similar blockages as mine. There are also a few women who were born missing one or both ovaries. We’re trying to trace back when this infertility spike started, but it could have been a millennium ago.” He laughed as Roberta threw a ravioli across the room. “I think she’s done, she’s just smashing them into her tray now.” He stood up and swept her up out of her seat, not even caring about the marinara stains on his shirt. “Come on, sweet pea, let’s take a bath. Eh? Eh, princess?”

He bounced her and she squealed.

You got up from your seat and came up behind him, circling him around the waist with your arms.

“You’re a good dad, honey,” You told him. “Roberta’s lucky. We both are. And so is our future children.”

He turned in your grip and kissed you. “If luck exists, you brought it with you. None of this would have happened without you. You are a miracle.”

You kissed him again and pushed him toward the bathroom. “She’s putting ravioli in your hair.”

He belly laughed and headed for the bathroom. You followed and marveled at how much had changed, wondering how it would change again. You looked forward to it.

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Buddhist Temples In Japan

It is alleged that the Muromachi interval, in which Ginkakuji was built, was an age that blended the aristocratic tradition of samurai warriors, monks and court docket nobles. The constructing was modeled after the traditional Imperial Palace from the Heian Period, but its surrounding space is simply as impressive. You may be required to take off your footwear when getting into temple buildings. Leave your footwear on the shelves on the entrance or take them with you in plastic bags supplied at some temples. If a temple has a temizuya, purify your palms and mouth in the same method you'd at a shrine and head to the altar. At some temples, you might be required to take off your sneakers earlier than entering temple buildings. When you are taking a stroll under the torii, make sure you don’t walk through in actual center, as an alternative walk through a little to the left or proper of the middle pathway. The middle of the trail is taken into account holy floor on which the god walks. Two pairs of gigantic and grimacing gods stand guard initially of the 300 meter-long approach to the temple, lined with stalls promoting an exuberant mixture of traditional crafts and gaudy souvenirs. Eiheiji Temple - Eiheiji is certainly one of Japan's most well-known temples - an lively coaching middle of Soto Zen Buddhism in Fukui Prefecture. Hanazono Shrine - a popular shrine with a energetic festival within the heart of Shinjuku. Nashinoki Shrine - small shrine on the north east facet of Kyoto Imperial Palace well-known for its fresh water spring. Sennyuji Temple - is a giant Shingon sect temple complex with imperial tombs near Tofukuji. Kiyomizu Temple - World Heritage Site - Kyoto's most popular temple particularly with younger people. This Zen temple has its own, if extra understated, beauty, with a famous Zen sand garden, meticulously cared for by the temple’s monks. 10 Finest Museums In Tokyo Art that isn't like the rest - visit the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum to not solely see, but touch and surround your self with works by this prolific Japanese artist. The Snoopy Museum positioned in Roppongi is the primary and solely approved satellite location of the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. Peanuts followers can see rare drawings, be taught the history of Charlie Brown and the gang and even get pleasure from Snoopy-related treats in the cafe. Contemporary artwork has its home right here in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; international and domestic artists are shown right here in Eastern Tokyo which has lengthy been known as the off-beat side of this metropolis. Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has generated a theory to analyse the evolution of the inside design of museums and art galleries. According to his concept, museums and artwork galleries over the previous several centuries have diverged into three classes. In reality, many truly saved cash on pricey exhibitions through the short-term closures. In the artwork world, the biggest victims of pandemic-related restrictions have been personal galleries and the up to date artists whose works they show and sell, says Tatehata. As a three way partnership between the Center for Contemporary Graphic Art and the Tyler Collection Archive, this gallery presents a wide number of art and design exhibitions focusing specifically on printmaking in contemporary art. Located within the well-known Ginza District of Tokyo, the GGG focuses largely on curating exhibitions about graphic design and typography. The gallery options numerous exhibitions on Japanese designers, as properly as design from all over the world. The GGG additionally hosts workshops and lectures presented by visiting artists and designers. Visitors are in a place to experience and study various elements of the earlier Tokyo, such as the way of life of people, Edo period structure, cultural heritage, political local weather and the industrial situation, in an interactive means. The Nezu gallery itself is well-known for having an attractive bamboo-lined entryway and an expansive conventional Japanese-style garden for museum-goers to discover. Onsen Etiquette It could probably be a scary feat for babies to wash alone without a familiar face in sight! Some places could explicitly state the standards of bringing youngsters of the other gender (e.g. under xx cm/xx age). You might always go for staying at a Japanese inn with an Onsen connected or lease out a private Onsen for the whole household to enjoy. This might be essentially the most asked question from foreigners when involves utilizing an Onsen in Japan! The cause why tattoos usually are not allowed in Onsen is that tattooed people have been traditionally linked to the Japanese underground society. By banning tattooed patrons, the Onsen services are able to shun these bathers. With so many various styles and kinds of Onsen, the place should you start? It is not only extremely enjoyable after a long day of walking or climbing, additionally it is apparently nice in your health—plus many happen to be set amongst gorgeous scenery. In a pair years, the Olympics might be held in Tokyo, Japan, which implies hundreds of thousands of foreigners will get to experience the enjoyment of the Japanese onsen, or public baths. Sainokawara is your best choice for the outdoor bathing expertise. The men's and women's baths combined cowl a staggering 500 square meters, making it one of many largest outside baths in the country. While it's potential to do a day-trip from Tokyo should you're pushed for time, we would extremely suggest a one-night keep so you possibly can loosen up and get essentially the most out of your visit. You're right here to enjoy the strategy of elongated and relaxed bathing, in any case. • As you can’t be disturbed by your cell phone or pill whereas indulging within the sizzling spring experience, bathing is a perfect opportunity for a digital detox.

While sizzling springs could be discovered wherever volcanic activity is rampant, the Japanese have had a particular affinity for the mineral waters. Onsens are plentiful across the country, and most located outdoors the city limits, that are accessible by prepare or car, making a weekend getaway affordable. When you get within the sizzling tub don’t let your small modesty towel touch the water, you’ll discover a lot of people fold it up and put on prime of their head. Some say that this might help prevent dizziness, however on the very least it serves a sanitary function. [newline]Going to an onsen is unquestionably a soothing experience and a fun cultural exercise to try however can even seem slightly bit intimidating at first. Especially because the concept of a group bath is a large taboo for most westerners. The closest a lot of us might need come to this would be after school sports or should you frequent a health club, even then, privacy remains to be considerably thought of in these situations. Whatever your trepidation’s about visiting an onsen are, this guide to onsen etiquette will be positive to alleviate a few of that. Friends of mine with smaller tattoos have gotten away with covering them with bandages or even using their small onsen towel to obscure them. For those with back tattoos, leaning against the wall while within the water has labored. A guide to experiencing Japan's sizzling springs - even if you're inked. Finest Time To Go To Japan With Kids Thanks for this record of things to do with youngsters in Tokyo. We’ve lived in Tokyo for 1-1/2 years and haven’t carried out any of these… except Robot Park. I don’t have any particular suggestions for Christmas day in Tokyo. If you are feeling an excessive amount of city time will be taxing and tiring for your family then I’d add one or each of those in. But if you’re snug with busy cities, subways, outlets, and crosswalks then I’d stick with the large three of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Otherwise, Tokyo Station is just a 15-minute journey from Maihama Station, giving access to many issues to do in the city. Lastly, when utilizing public baths in Japan, it’s customary to be nude. However, this make-your-own-noodles-by-hand expertise is by reservation solely. Reservations could be made on the official website however the interface is just in Japanese. Because of this, many international tourist households miss out on this amazing family fun expertise. If your family has hassle making your reservation in Japanese, be at liberty to reach out to us at Kids Travel Japan and we’ll set up a reservation for your liked ones for a small fee. Nearby you will discover an excellent purchasing street where you can find a unusual Japanese memento or sample some conventional snacks. Later, you and your family might be treated to a conventional calligraphy lesson. Learn to put in writing your name in Japanese (and perhaps study to say a few words!) with the help of a local instructor. There may also be the chance to visit a manga market, situated in Akihabara. Children face their own challenges when transferring to a new nation. Make positive to provide plenty of support—familiar books, toys, music, photographs of extended family and close associates, and a few favourite meals. Allow them time to get adjusted to their new surroundings, and examine out not to push them to play with children they don’t know. Japanese Competition It’s a lot more of a family centered affair than its western contemporaries. No matter where you would possibly be in Japan, you'll stumble across a Shogatsu celebration during December 31st – Janurary 1st. At night time, teams of lavishly dressed dancers called ren carry out within the streets for the viewing pleasure of all festival attendees. Gion Matsuri is Kyoto’s largest pageant and one of if not the most well-known festivals in all of Japan. Beginning as a non secular ceremony in 869, this pageant quickly turned an annual custom. Some of the notable highlights of the pageant embrace parading of moveable shrines, street meals stalls, and lots of entertainment. They are very intimate celebrations, and not just like the rowdy crowds you might have most likely witnessed with most of Tokyo’s festivities. This is one other unruly annual pageant that takes the streets of Tokyo by storm in May every year. Changing Developments In Japanese Pop Culture Whether a delicate power source should be value-laden is a crucial question. Given the essay’s definition, an object of soppy energy need not be value-laden for it to be ‘powerful’. Nonetheless, the attractiveness of a delicate power resource may be augmented by the source’s implicit values; Nye stresses potent delicate energy sources ought to hold “cultural and ideological appeal”. Certainly, these are the core beacons from which delicate power can emanate from, however, it's faulty to advance that gentle power is restricted to these three concepts. Any property which is enticing and exerts affect on another state’s actions, no matter whether or not it falls into Nye’s three categories, ought to be termed as delicate power. Learn 設計裝修 and develop expertise needed to critique types of Japanese popular media. Japan, therefore, unable to exercise energy through influencing the behaviour of different states, doesn't fulfill the second criterion of soft energy. "One of the great things about Japan is it is so multi-faceted," Payne says. "There's something for you whether you like the concept of gorgeous rock gardens in Kyoto or the newest video game." Currently, FredFlare carries a line of Japanese kitchen gadgets such as a spatula that looks like a frog and a skillet with a panda face on it. The web site also sells accessories, Japanese craft books, and other kitschy Japanese gadgets like a squirrel-shaped lint curler. The team hasn't but been to Japan to supply merchandise however has had luck with commerce shows, scouring the Web, and being approached immediately by suppliers. Besides, the exploitative enterprise practices of the idol trade agencies are applied toward each the idols and the followers. David Novak focuses on the alternative music style referred to as Japanese noise (“Japanoise”), which has thrived for the rationale that 1990s. Like Johnnys or Utada Hikaru, Japanoise was a strategy of transnational media network and cultural feedback. Fifty Five Best Excursions & Things To Do In Tokyo There are a variety of sightseeing spots and experiences, together with the snow monkey park of Jigokudani Onsen, the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and Matsumoto Castle. It supplies a variety of areas and experiences that can suit any age. We provide skilled options for any and all needs and we now have worked with many families and individuals from all around the world who required particular companies. Explore darkish alleys, cemeteries and haunted hills, tunnels and residences hiding beneath Tokyo’s tidy veneer when you learn the haunted histories of those areas. Take a moment to wander around the complicated, enjoy the grounds and small shrines scattered all through. You’ll notice that the Golden Pavilion could be very in style and there are crowds throughout. Having a take a look at who's visiting is an efficient supply of entertainment itself. On arrival you'll be met on the airport by your driver and travel by shared shuttle bus to your lodge in the Asakusa district of the city, where your tour leader shall be waiting to satisfy you within the lobby. 公司登記 convene with your group for a welcome assembly before heading out to an area restaurant for an introductory meal the proper method to begin getting to know your group. Take a tour of Kyoto with an professional local guide, enjoy the unique audience with a trainee geisha, and stroll through the gorgeous Hamarikyu Gardens, hidden within the heart of Tokyo's skyscraper district. Whenever and wherever you travel, public transportation in Asia offers you an perception of the native life and an opportunity to have a memorable experience. After lunch you’ll hop aboard a boat for a one hour excursion of Tokyo Bay. Here’s the place you’ll get amazing views of Tokyo’s skyline, with its skyscrapers, and the Rainbow Bridge. Osaka is Japans second largest metropolis, but in relation to meals, its undoubtedly the frontrunner. This pleasant port is close to Kyoto, making it a handy way to experience the charms of each destinations. Greatest Meals Markets In Tokyo If you wish to eat delicious seasonal vegetables and fruits, remember to go to this market. Here, you can purchase agriculturally licensed, prime quality vegetables and fruits, unfastened leaf tea, jams, and other goods. Even guests who don’t cook on a standard basis may have a good time at this market. Here you will discover a large quantity of merchandise bursting with historical past and nostalgia, like secondhand clothing, antiques, common items, and European trinkets. You’ll find a bit of everything in Ueno market, it’s not completely a food market because the others are however have had some great experiences through here. We love this a part of Tokyo that has so much to supply and felt it deserved a point out. As we mentioned above, the Toyosu Fish Market is the wholesale market and auction section that break up off from Tsukiji market in 2018. We booked, and loved, the night time foodie tour in Gion with them that is simply down the street from here so we wouldn’t hesitate to hitch this one subsequent time. Hakuba, a Nagano ski resort and in style winter destination, proves it has simply as much to offer in summer time, including gorgeous mountain hikes. If you’re looking to stay nearby (it’s really a great, central location), there are lots of motels and hostels close to Nishiki Market to choose from. Originally swordsmiths to royalty, the decline within the need for swords led to the household focusing their expertise on kitchen knives. That craftsmanship doesn’t come cheap; but if you’re after something special, this might be the place for you. With speciality knives and more all-round fashions, you'll find a way to choose a blade and have your initials engraved when you like. Aritsugu are the purveyors of a number of the finest knives in Japan, with a history spanning all the best way back to 1560. Opened by Fujiwara Aritsugu, the store has been handed down from technology to technology. It prides itself on its extensive selection of contemporary seafood which could be ordered and cooked on the spot. A high-profile magazine for the health and sweetness business, featuring market tendencies, business updates and new product info. It offers timely information on the health industry together with each home and overseas markets. Not only in the industries talked about above but in many others, Informa Markets Japan organises over 500 B2B occasions all over the world. Informa Markets in Japan creates international platforms for professionals in numerous industries for his or her enterprise communication. Each member of our bi-cultural gross sales, advertising, and business improvement team has extensive experience working in each the American and Japanese markets. Outsider Japan Most modern karaoke venues in Japan include numerous non-public rooms, also recognized as karaoke packing containers. Each room has a karaoke system with a large screen, microphones and a touchscreen management pad the place you select your songs, in addition to a table and cozy seating. Most main karaoke chains have a range of English language songs. The club options plenty of up to date international and Japanese pop hits, and the inexpensive drinks menu means that you can simply have a great time out within the metropolis, without having to spend so much. While any metropolis with a nightlife scene has many bars and drinking spots, Tokyo is thought for its many themed and unique bars, as nicely as many hidden, hole-in-the-wall bars. They have bars centered round artwork and images, and some the place they harbor birds that fly around freely in the bar itself. After buying, Ginza is best identified for its nightlife, which incorporates bars, lounges and nightclubs. They are sometimes small venues that appeal to a decidedly modern and mature crowd. Shops in Shibuya often keep open fairly late, so it is a great place to hit up some late evening purchasing at malls similar to Shibuya 109. Visit izakaya's Umiya or Sumire in Shibuya to enjoy these dishes. "Great expertise. Driver was very affected person and nice. Would recommend this private tour to family and friends." Take a closer have a glance at the fascinating world of sushi, extending from the ocean to your plate, throughout this 4-hour sushi-making class and a visit to the outer Tsukiji fish market. Tour one of many world’s largest seafood markets with a guide as you learn the way fish is caught, distributed, and sold. 5 Outdoor Adventures You Must Expertise In Tokyo Dating from the eighth century, the vast majority of the shrine's buildings rise out of the waters of a small bay supported only by piles. The impact at excessive tide is simply beautiful, making these buildings - including the famous Great Floating Gate (O-Torii) - seem as in the occasion that they're floating on water. Just a short ferry experience from mainland Hiroshima is the island of Miyajima, well-known the world over as Japan's Shrine Island. Covering an space of 30 square kilometers in Hiroshima Bay, Miyajima is best generally known as the house of the Itsukushima Shrine, a Shinto temple dedicated to the Princess daughters of the wind god Susanoo. Tournaments happen in Tokyo in January, May and September and Osaka in March. Geishas are one of the fascinating elements of Japan, especially if you’ve read Arthur Golden’s well-liked novel Memoirs of a Geisha about these highly-skilled girls who entertain using conventional arts. We loved our stay at Hotel Musashiya in Hakone the place our room and the public Japanese bathtub ignored Lake Ashi. Ryokans range from easy to ultra-luxurious, sometimes with non-public baths and views overlooking beautiful Japanese gardens. They are more expensive than common hotels but are well price it for the expertise. Emerald river in Middle Valley, at Autumn SeasonGo rafting on Yoshino to get a style of the emerald green rapids. Moreover, this island also boasts of entertainment culture, people songs, and emotional melodies. I am certain after learning about japan’s culture and actions; you'd be happy to search google for “how to maneuver to Japan? Japan honors the spirit of the adventure traveler and makes it an expertise, unlike some other. "I am so glad I did this tour. It was very informative, I discovered lots about totally different kinds of Japanese food. I’d prefer to thank Shaun for his great and skilled touring." Omiyage Present Purchasing By Japanese Vacationers Within The U S a hundred yen shops are such a popular and pleasant part of fashionable Japan. They’re essential dollar stores or pound outlets, and they offer an enormous range of useful items, all for a hundred yen (a little under $1 USD). Exploring these stores can feel like a treasure hunt, and you’ll often depart with way over what you had been on the lookout for. This little guy could be set to know when it is morning and adjustments its messages based mostly on various occasions of the day. It's been such success, that each single member of our family wished one, so once we went back to Japan, we got here back to a suitcase full of penguins. This just isn't fairly your odd souvenir from Japan, as it could get quite dear. However, we saw an array of cute and colourful level and shoot camera in Akihabara. The Japanese casually store here for themselves or for presents for particular occasions. Don Quijote is a famous low cost shop with places nationwide and round 30 stores in Tokyo alone. This store carries quite lots of objects starting from food, day by day objects, clothes, toys, small inside items, cosplay merchandise, and other out-of-the-ordinary items that you could only find in Japan. If you are in search of a one-of-a-kind memento from Japan, this store is highly really helpful. For buying souvenirs in Tokyo, there are numerous budget-friendly, inexpensive, and handy buying spots within the city. You can find Japan-quality gadgets that make great keepsakes and save you money! Read to study where to go shopping and what yow will discover at thirteen shops. You’ll additionally discover other merchandise that use matcha in them for flavoring. Matcha Kit Kats, matcha mochi — a ball of ice cream coated in sweetened rice dough — and matcha chocolates are just a few of the numerous delectable snacks and treats you’ll find made with matcha. You’ll discover chopsticks everywhere in the metropolis, however the most effective places to find memorable pairs shall be in retailers like Hyozaemon Chopsticks Specialty Shop. You can discover cheaper pairs at markets, restaurant provide stores in Kitchen Town, and in nearly every memento store you come throughout within the city. Retailers should think about contacting potentia patrons before they leave Japan, whereas en-route, and at their destination. Japanese Friendship Backyard While our programming is all virtual for now, we look forward to welcoming you again into the backyard to have fun with us quickly. Under the supervision of Juki Iida and Nobumasa Kitamura, development started in March 1960 and was completed on an accelerated schedule inside 4 months. Juki Iida personally scouted and chosen 580 giant granite rocks from the close by Snoqualmi Pass to insert within the backyard. It is directly connected to Otemachi Subway Station and an 8-minute stroll from JR Tokyo Station. Offering elegant and stylish ambience, each spacious room comes with a big LCD TV, a blu-ray/DVD player and a security box. Because evil spirits solely transfer in straight traces, they'll fall into the water when the particular person modifications path. More practically, these bridges pressure you to watch your step, thus making you more conscious of your environment. The Japanese have taken their love of growing things and their realization of man’s union with nature and refined them in the brilliant factor about their gardens. The function of a Japanese Garden is to current pure types and to create a tranquil beauty that leads the customer from on a daily basis life to a calm, serene, reflective communion with nature. The Portland Japanese Garden provides over 5 acres of tranquility and a tea home. The large building in the backyard is a pavilion designed by Hoji Wada of Stockton, who also designed the garden’s entrance gate. It supplies a beautiful backdrop for outside weddings, which are in style within the backyard. 15 Hottest Foods You Want To Eat In Japan Nippon -- The oldest operating Japanese restaurant in Manhattan, the primary to serve Sushi and Fugu and birthplace of the Beef Negimayaki. They tend to be stylish and costly, and are sometimes found in good hotels. Yakiniku-ya specialize in Korean-style barbecue, the place small pieces of meat are cooked on a grill on the table. Other well-liked Korean dishes similar to bibimba, reimen and chige are also often out there at a yakiniku-ya. Sukiyaki-ya focus on sukiyaki, while Shabu Shabu-ya concentrate on shabu-shabu. These forms of restaurants are also often found in massive, Western-style resorts and tend to be on the costly side. Tempura-ya focus on tempura dishes, corresponding to tendon and various tempura. Sadly Tempura Matsui’s unique chef, after which the place was named, died two years in the past, however the restaurant has been capable of preserve its Michelin star nonetheless. The restaurant industry in Japan is alleged to be extremely aggressive. This manifests itself in various ways, as business players attempt to differentiate themselves via convenience, among other means. For occasion, the opening hours of retailers are sometimes long, and many chain eating places that supply informal eating are open across the clock. Furthermore, a good deal of the market share is owned by a handful of companies. A possible consequence is that new trade players and small businesses face an uphill battle by way of competitiveness and survivability. The market is dominated by home companies, with McDonald’s being the one exception that has made it into the highest ten concerning annual revenue. According to its website, this retailer is the oldest Japanese grocery retailer in the US, open since 1907. Today, it has two outposts, one close to Grand Central and one close to the 59th and Lexington subway station. The one near Grand Central is somewhat greater, with a stand by Japanese import Omusubi Gonbei that is devoted simply to rice balls. Grab some of their rice balls or some made to order ramen from the Brooklyn Ramen outposts in each their shops. Personally, I assume these are one of the best methods to enjoy Japanese food on the cheap. In these shops, yow will discover a wide variety of Japanese food, all comparatively inexpensive and of fairly good quality. And as an additional plus, you can choose up some packaged Japanese snacks or ingredients in case you wish to try your hand at making Japanese meals at house.

#PBN-Home

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addictivegerard · 3 years

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why the prolife argument makes no sense

I think it’s hilarious how right wing “facts don’t care about your feelings” activists are almost always pro-life. The argument against abortion as an accessible form of birth control is 100% an emotional appeal, and here’s why:

1. “You have no right to kill your fetus. It’s not your body, the baby is an individual and has the right to life.”:

Of course, all embryos are human individuals, separate from their mothers. They have their own unique DNA composition, and are definitely alive. But do they deserve the right to life, which would make abortion equivalent to murder?

Pro-lifers are largely okay with IVF, an industry that throws away and destroys millions of fertilized embryos every day. In-vitro fertilization is an uncertain science, so couples are advised to fertilize multiple eggs in the labs in case the first few don’t work out. If a couple succeeds and have extra embryos left, they have the option to continue paying to store them in the lab, donate them to medical research, or destroy them.

Anti-abortion bills always have exceptions for IVF clinics. Republican, pro-life lawmakers have literally had children via IVF. If a pro-lifer ever tells you that life begins at conception and that every embryo has the right to life, know that it’s bullshit. They don’t care about an industry that kills more embryos in a day than Planned Parenthood does in a year.

2. There are two possible responses to this.

A) “Fine, let’s ban IVF.” Out of all the conservative groups in America, only one major group explicitly stands against IVF – the Catholic Church. The same organization that condemns sex before marriage, homosexuality, divorce, masturbation/porn, the use of condoms, getting drunk or high, and tattoos. At this point, I’m assuming you understand that the Church’s ideas of morality are regressive, illogical, primitive, and… make life extremely boring. IVF is a wonderful science that brings children to parents who want them all over the world and is in no way a bad thing.

B) “Fine. Maybe not at conception, but at [x] months, it’s a baby.” This is the point where most conservatives start arguing about the point up till you should be allowed to have an abortion. Two weeks? Six weeks? Three months? Unfortunately, there is no scientific way to determine when an embryo is no longer just a clump of cells and now a human being with rights.

Since pro-lifers are okay with IVF, we can assume they don’t believe in the right to life at conception. How about the heartbeat theory? At six weeks, the fetus develops a heartbeat, and proponents argue that it is the point at which the fetus is no longer simply a fetus, but a human being. However, having a heartbeat doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right to life.

Legally, if you are brain dead, you’re… dead. You no longer have the right to life, which is why organ donation is possible. All this while having a heartbeat, so that’s clearly not a viable hallmark of an individual that inherently has the right to life. So while it's true that at six weeks a baby develops (what is flimsily termed as) a heartbeat, that doesn't somehow give it rights to life that it did not have before. So far, I haven’t come across any other sensible theories as to “when” an embryo deserves the right to life. It’s a lousy concept to begin with, as blurry as the legal definition of adulthood – not all 18+ year olds are mature and nothing fundamentally changes in a person once the clock strikes midnight. Similarly, embryo development is a process. There’s really no point at which you can logically claim it’s transformed into a human being with rights.

3. Evidently, there are two extremes — life begins at conception, vs life doesn’t begin until birth.

There’s no “scientific backing” for a point in between, but you’ll never find a pro-choice advocate arguing in favor of the latter, because it’s called an extreme for a reason. The best way to deal with the abortion issue at this point is to leave the science and technicalities alone, and think about the people who are actually getting abortions.

4. “Use protection and you won’t get pregnant”:

Protection is never 100% reliable. Plus: if two people are irresponsible enough to have unprotected sex, what makes you think they’re responsible enough to have and raise children? The number of children growing up with unqualified, immature, abusive, or neglectful parents automatically disproves the theory that parenthood brings about a sense of personal responsibility. Being raised by bad parents inflicts often irreparable damage on children. Treating babies as some sort of “divine punishment” for irresponsible sex, instead of human beings who deserve a stable upbringing, is harmful on both an individual and collective scale. The data on irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive childhoods/single parent childhoods speaks for itself. In the quest to punish irresponsible parents, most of the damage is inflicted on their children, which in turn impacts the generation that will lead us forward into the future. It is in our best interests to raise as many mature, healthy, and productive young adults as possible, and while not every child born into these circumstances live lives of mental health/psychological/intimacy issues and criminal behavior, a large majority do. Growing up with bad parents is simply not ideal for an impressionable child’s wellbeing. Quality of life > quantity of life.

5. “Don’t have sex if you don’t want to have children.”:

Unhelpful, unrealistic, and telling of no real desire to solve the problem at hand. Telling people not to have sex unless they deliberately intend to have children is like telling people not to smoke, drink too much, or eat unhealthily. People will have sex. What are we going to do to make sure the sex doesn’t lead to unplanned pregnancies?

6. “Okay but what about xyz who had an abortion and has regretted it ever since?”:

Abortion is a result of unplanned and unfortunate circumstances. Whether it’s because the doctor tells you your baby will be stillborn or born with a fatal illness, or if you were raped, or if you had sex with your boyfriend during your first year of college and found yourself pregnant: these are bad situations, and no matter what you do, there’s always a chance you’ll look back and wish you’d done things differently. Kept the baby? Well, maybe you’ll find that the baby brought newfound purpose to your life. But maybe the baby added an additional financial strain to your life and forced you to quit your job, leaving you destitute and homeless with no way to feed it. Alternatively, if you got an abortion, maybe you end up being able to finish college and fulfil all your goals... or maybe you regret that decision for the rest of your life. There’s no way to guarantee that you’re making the right decision, but being informed about your options, and having options available, makes it more likely that you do. That’s why we are advocating for informed choice. Whether they eventually choose to keep the baby or have an abortion, give women the time and resources to truly evaluate their options and do what’s best for them in their own circumstances.

7. “Why kill the baby? Put it up for adoption.”:

The adoption system is known for being isolating, exploitative, and unhealthy for children growing up in it. Being adopted into a great family can create healthy, happy young adults. But far too many kids don’t get that opportunity, and pay the price for it. In 2019, 122,216 children in the US adoption system were waiting to be adopted. Young people who age-out of the foster care system without being adopted are over-represented in rates of incarceration, suicide and substance abuse.

Granted, for some kids it’s a better alternative to the families they would have grew up in, but again: it’s an unideal situation. An unideal situation that can very easily be avoided with abortion. Why would a person choose 9 months of labor, plus all the emotional labor of having to give your child away to a system that more likely than not will eat them alive, knowing they will grow up asking themselves why they weren’t good enough for their birth parents, when the person could… simply not have that baby and not invite all that pain?

8. “It doesn’t matter, no one has the right to take another life.”:

Here’s another way of looking at the abortion question: the fetus is in a position where its existence impinges on its mother’s bodily integrity, and it stays in that position until the point of viability (at which it could plausibly survive outside the mother’s body) at about 24 weeks. One person’s bodily integrity will always override another person’s right to life; this is a fundamental truth. Otherwise, we would have mandatory kidney and liver donations. People all over the world are dying due to a lack of kidneys or other organs - why should we be allowed to keep both of ours when one of them could save someone’s life?

Let’s say I caused a car accident that resulted in someone needing a kidney donation. It’s my fault they’re in that position, and I was negligent - should I be legally obligated to give mine up?

If the idea of being forced to donate one of your kidneys sounds violating, you’re closer to understanding why forcing someone to have a baby is such a barbaric thing to do. Even if the risk is small - kidney donations have a death rate of about 0.03% while childbirth is at 0.02% in the US - it’s still wrong to force something so invasive and risky onto someone against their will. Additionally, there are many complications that can arise from pregnancy short of death, just like there can be consequences to living your life with only one kidney down the line.

To summarize:

It is definitively not in anyone’s best interests to force unwilling and unprepared parents to have an unwanted child. It’s also not a good idea to get too deep into the technicalities of when an embryo is a fetus or when you’re allowed or not allowed to abort it. We need to focus on the women who are actually getting abortions. Having a baby is a huge life adjustment. Keep it, and you’re taking on an 18-year responsibility. You are responsible for another person’s wellbeing, and your life will never be the same.

In three months (about 12 weeks), a potential mother can: find out that they’re pregnant (missing periods is extremely common. A lot of women only find out they’re pregnant at two months, or 8 weeks), think about their financial, professional, social, romantic, or whatever situation and figure out what would be the best course of action, and then actually get the abortion if she chooses to. 12 weeks is enough, 12 weeks is reasonable, 12 weeks is humane. Nobody wants third-trimester abortions unless there are serious, life threatening complications.

The pro-life argument is reduced down to: well, abortion is bad! That's a little innocent baby. It didn't hurt anyone. Well, we agree: abortion is bad. It’s not a good thing, it’s not something people want to have to do. Nobody looks forward to giving or receiving an abortion, it’s physically painful and often heart-breaking. But is it as bad as forcing a woman to go through hours of excruciating, potentially life-threatening labor for a child she doesn't even want to have? Is it as bad as enforcing serious health, financial, emotional, social, and professional risks on a woman who knows she is in no way ready to give a baby the life it deserves? Is it worse than having to drop out of school with no way to feed your child? Worse than having to give your baby away to an adoption center, where they’re likely to join the hundreds of thousands of unadopted children? There are evils, and then there are greater evils. Abortion may not be ideal, but for some people, it's the best option out there. When broken down, the pro-life argument is nothing but sad, provocative videos & descriptions of surgical abortions intended to pull at your heartstrings. But they’re sometimes the best option for the mother and her unborn baby. Nobody is pro-abortion — we’re pro-choice.

#abortion #prolife #prochoice #reproductive rights #reproductive health #adoption #sex ed #okay phew #had to get this out of my system

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lassieposting · 4 years

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I adore your thoughts about deamon culture and upbringing. Something that’s always bugged me is that we don’t really get an insight into the culture and layout of heaven and hell or the non-humanness that makes angles and deamons. Please give more thoughts!!!

OH BOY, DO I

DEMON CULTURE HEADCANONS COMING RIGHT UP

[1] My personal headcanon is that devil was originally a Lilim word that basically meant “warlord” - the leader of a clan with his or her own territory - and there were thousands of them, because demons lived in warring clans. Every clan had a _devil, _and they all considered themselves the ultimate authority and were constantly fighting for power. When Lucifer staged a coup and took over one of the strongest clans in the Ninth Circle, he basically went on a conquering spree, up to the point that there is now only one devil; all the other clan leaders have bent the knee to him. There’s probably either a Lilim way of distinguishing between A Devil (a warlord) and The Devil (Lucifer, King of Hell), or it’s become sort of an archaic term used only to refer to Lucifer and another name has become commonplace for your bog-standard warlord. The word then made its way to Earth both through Lucifer himself and through other demons before he outlawed possession, and developed its modern meaning from there.

More under the cut - this is long as fuck. It’s becoming a habit.

GENETICS:

- Demons live in one of the most inhospitable, treacherous environments of any dimension in the known multiverse. They’ve been shaped by the need to survive in their habitat.

- Demons in general have a much higher heat resistance than humans, as well as far better low-light vision and enhanced speed, strength and endurance.

- Hell has different habitats the same way Earth does, though, and the demons who live in the Ninth Circle (the part of Hell we see in the show, the part where Lucifer’s palace is) would have different adaptations to the demons who’ve evolved to live in the swampy marshland of the Sixth Circle (where Maze was born).

- Demons are an R-coded species, so they have large numbers of babies, less parental care, a short gestation period and a very low survival-to-adulthood rate.

- Because their babies have such a low survival rate, demons have very little parental attachment and they don’t form family units the way humans do (i.e. child raised by biologically related caregivers, close relationship between parents and child).

CHILDHOOD:

- Baby demons are born already equipped with fantastic low-light vision, a full set of needle-sharp teeth, and the ability to get up and move around very shortly after birth. They’re not wholly independent - they don’t learn to talk or develop fine motor/dexterity skills until they’re older - but they are very much born armed and dangerous, which they need to be because…

- They can and do eat their siblings in the nest, like sharks. Cannibalism is fucking rife in Hell. A large chunk of spawn are lost in their first year to fratricide/sororicide. It’s just seen as weeding out the weaklings.

- In most clans, the spawn are raised communally in a creche run by designated nest-minders; these are usually the weakest members of the clan who would not be any use as warriors. Raising the young during their first few years of life is a fairly low-status position in society, but it does ensure that those weak demons will be fed, housed and protected - nobody wants to have to take over their job, so it’s worthwhile to keep them alive.

- Demon spawn are…little demons. A large part of why Lucifer doesn’t like children is because of extended exposure to spawn. They completely lack empathy and social skills, so they’re loud, they bite, and a large chunk of nest-minders’ time is spent separating them when they try to kill each other. They won’t develop logic, critical thinking or their (still limited) sense of empathy until they’re a lot older.

- Contrary to what some might believe, demons do have affectionate nicknames for their young - the sort of thing a warrior might call his trainee, or a nest-minder might call their favourite charge. The English equivalent would probably be kiddo or something, but they’d translate literally as “spawn” or “offspring”. There’s a sort of implication there that you care enough about this kid to see them as family; they can probably rely on you to protect them if they’re in danger.

ADOLESCENCE:

- Demons don’t have a long childhood, and mostly they learn a trade by apprenticing under a professional. A would-be warrior is trained by an experienced warrior; a kid with a talent for art might apprentice under a leathercrafter; if you’re particularly intelligent and politically savvy you might get lucky and learn from your clan’s devil, if you manage to impress them.

- A juvenile who wants to be a warrior (like Maze, for example) goes through a series of incredibly dangerous trials to become a fully-fledged adult warrior of their clan. It’s sort of like living in the Hunger Games, but, you know. Permanently.

* Around the onset of puberty, at around 10 or 11 years old, they’re given a simple weapon and some supplies and sent out into the world by themselves to find something useful to bring back to their clan, to prove that they’re worth the time and effort it will take to train them.

At this point, they have no formal training. They’ve got a decade or so of viciously scrapping with other youngsters in the creche for food, but they’re expected to get by mostly on their wits, their viciousness, and their willingness to kill to survive.

There are hundreds of things that can kill a young demon alone in Hell. Demons from other clans. Heat exhaustion. Feral hellhounds. Dehydration. Volcanic eruption. Manticore. Harpy. Dragon. There’s even a chance another kid from their own clan will panic and kill first, ask questions later.

What they bring back can be any of a number of things. Maybe some priceless gemstones that can be traded for commodities not native to their area of Hell. Maybe information about a territory ripe for overtaking. Maybe spoils taken from dead enemies from a clan yours is at war with. Whatever it is, it needs to be something the leaders of your clan will benefit from, or they might send you back out to find something better. Maze brought back Lucifer.

How impressive your gift is generally determines who you apprentice under; the kids who brought back the most impressive things will usually get sent to the clan’s top warriors.

Only 30% or so of the kids sent out into the world will come back. The ones who didn’t clearly wouldn’t have survived training, so it wouldn’t have been worth the effort to train them in the first place.

They’ll spend the next ten years or so (maybe more, maybe less) in training. Their mentor will teach them to fight with a whole load of different weapons, how to hunt, how to torture a captive, how to plan a battle, etc. The ones with leadership potential, training under the clan’s War Chief, also learn - on the DL, because nobody wants to get murdered - how to deal with your devil when they’re being an asshole, and how to bring them round to your way of thinking when their plan for a war clashes with yours.

In bigger clans, at the end of their training, each warrior’s trainees get put in an arena to fight to the death. Of each class, only the last one standing actually becomes a warrior. Despite the immense amount of lives lost in childhood, demons breed so prolifically that plenty survive to adulthood.

ADULTHOOD:

- Adult demons often wear identification marks, usually on their faces, to show whereabouts they’re from, which clan they belong to, and what rank they are if they have one. Some clans (like Maze’s) use face paint, others prefer tattoos, still others use scarification or branding. You don’t get to wear them until you’ve proved yourself, so it’s a great honour for a warrior to finally get their stripes.

- This helps establish social order - who you can and can’t flirt with, who you should and shouldn’t pick on, etc. If you’re a humble furs trader, you really don’t want to start a fight with a visiting devil over a casual insult to your work; you’ll get smoked. But fortunately for you, her face markings tell you who she is, so you keep your mouth shut.

- Demons are promiscuous as fuck and don’t really go in for monogamy. It happens occasionally, but it’s definitely not the social norm. While every demon spawn knows who their mother is, it’s very common to have multiple potential fathers.

- Demons can and do fall in love. They’re not very open about it, and there’s no way to say “I love you” in Lilim. Any demonstration of love is a demonstration of weakness, and in Hell any weakness will be used against you. Long term relationships between demons tend to look a lot like Lucifer and Maze - ride-or-die friends who hang out naked and have each other’s back against outside danger regardless of the issues they’re having with each other.

OLD AGE:

- A demon who’s too old to battle anymore but was once a mighty warrior can still command a huge amount of respect; many become advisors to the clan devil - especially if he’s young; Lucifer had to lean on very experienced older advisors as a young king consolidating his power - or train the most promising up-and-comers.

- Demons can and do grieve, but it’s usually expressed as a roaring rampage of revenge against whoever killed your ally. If something happened to Maze, for example, Lucifer wouldn’t cry or get sentimental; he’d cause so much carnage they’d be talking about it for millennia. By demon standards that would be the most touching tribute he could give her tbh.

- After someone dies, their clan usually eats them - in a world where the creatures you eat can kill you just as easily as be killed by you, meat is meat and a meal you don’t have to work for is a gift. (This is why Mom asked if humans eat their own when She first came to Earth. Hell was a horrible surprise for both of them for a variety of reasons, and this is definitely one of them.) To humans, this is horrifying; to demons, it’s not even something to bat an eyelid at.

- Devils don’t often get old. They live in a cutthroat world of power games and ambition, and everyone wants their spot. Devils get to the top by being especially cunning or vicious or physically powerful, and once the thing keeping them there starts to run down, they’re often killed and replaced by someone stronger. It’s just as common for your allies to turn on you as your enemies, so you’re watching your back constantly, never truly safe, always reading into every interaction for signs of danger. There’s a reason Lucifer doesn’t trust easy. As an angel he’s stronger than practically all demons, but Hell-forged steel can kill him; all it would take is for him to let his guard down just a little bit too much at the wrong moment.

#1billsookie #lucifer on netflix #lucifer on fox #lucifer in hell #demon culture #DO YALL KNOW HOW MANY FEELINGS I HAVE ABOUT LUCIFER + DEMON CULTURE #SO MANY #THANK U FOR ASKING IM DELIGHTED U ENJOY MY IDEAS #ALKDFHSLDKFHDLKFH #shoutout to everyone who notices the stepdevil reference #lucifer headcanons

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spaceskam · 5 years

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Make All The Madness Go Away (a buffy au)

Day 1 of Michael Guerin Week: Welcome to the party

Special thanks to @tempest-nova for giving me the idea of Michael as Spike and @michaels-blackhat for listening to me ramble for hours about it before i never brought it up again because i didn’t want to be annoying

ao3

“I didn’t say it was bad, I said it wasn’t my type of thing.”

“What do you mean? You’re the Slayer! Xena should be your queen! Oh my god, I feel like I don’t even know you!”

Liz snorted as she let Maria continue to ramble on about the cultural significance of Xena: The Warrior Princess. She could understand that having strong, powerful women in media was important, but Liz was already living that life. She didn’t want to go home and watch more of it.

Somewhere during Maria’s empowering and distracting speech, a car sped right past them and almost hit them. Liz scoffed and prepared to yell after it, but she was stopped when it slammed right into a tree. Her eyes widened.

“Shit,” Maria breathed and they shared a single look before running towards the smoking wreckage. So much for patrolling.

Liz and Maria checked the window of the backseat first, making sure there were no children before they moved to the front. The driver seemed to be conscious, haphazardly pawing at the door handle. When she tried the door, it was jammed closed, so she used a little bit of Slayer strength to rip it open. The driver spilled out and Liz caught him. He gave a bloody smile.

“Slayer, my hero,” he said, “Long time no see.”

Liz let him fall to the pavement.

“Maria,” she called, double-checking to make sure she was okay. She came around the car to stand beside her, both women staring at the laughing figure on the ground. He had long, unruly curls that were splayed around his head on the ground and was wearing all black head to toe, even down to the leather duster and combat boots. “Who are you?” Liz demanded.

He rolled over, still laughing as he dragged himself to his feet. Liz instinctively pushed Maria behind her, putting space between her and whatever this thing was who knew her.

“Oh, don’t you remember me? Wait, wait, wrong species, Slayers don’t pass on their memories. Whoops,” he chuckled, spitting blood on the ground and dusting himself off, “Oh well, perfect timing. I was indeed looking for you and your rag-tag team of hooligans.”

Liz narrowed her eyes at him. “Why would you be looking for me?”

He blinked all innocently and gave a smile. He pushed his hair to the side before gesturing to himself then doing a little twirl whenever she still didn’t seem to recognize him.

“Do they teach you anything? I would’ve thought you’d at least hear about me. Michael the Brilliant?” he asked wistfully. She still didn’t know “I know at least one book said I was possessed by the most wrathful demon God ever banished so they called me Rath. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!” Michael, apparently, whined, “I killed four Slayers and I don’t even get credit?”

Liz slowly felt for the stake in her back pocket. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Why are you in Roswell?” Liz demanded. She didn’t need to know any more about this vampire. He clearly was overconfident and that meant he needed to go. But she also needed to make sure he didn’t have others like him just floating around Roswell.

“Funnily enough, I need your assistance. Since you’re so kind to Maxwell, I figured you might extend that kindness,” he said, that charming smile on display. Liz furrowed her eyebrows even more and felt Maria grab her arm.

“You know Max?” Liz asked, refusing to show any weakness even if she was curious.

“Oh, Slayer,” Michael laughed, “I just told you I’ve killed four of you! Do you think I did that with no research? I’m almost flattered,” he hummed. However, when she didn’t respond, he grew a bit more serious. “We have been laying low for nearly five decades. I never intended to have to even go out again, but my sister is ill. The last Slayer I killed poisoned her and she has been slowly deteriorating. The only way to heal her is with the assistance of someone who has access to the Watcher’s Council. I would never seek you out otherwise, Slayer.” Oddly enough, he sounded sincere.

“And why would I help you?” she asked, looking him up and down. She gripped the stake. Sincere or not, she didn’t trust him. Especially not to do something as stupid as saving another vampire.

“Ask your boyfriend.”

In that moment, Liz quickly pulled the stake out and went to bury it in his chest. Except it didn’t. Instead, with the flick of his wrist, he had it flying across the parking lot. Liz blinked a few times and for the first time in a long time, she was scared.

“Did I forget to mention I dabble in the arts? You really should never mix the two forces. But you should've seen their faces when they tried to hang me during the trails,” Michael laughed all over again. Liz was brought a little comfort when Maria started murmuring in Latin.

Within a few minutes, Michael’s body slammed against the smoking car. He smiled. Even though Maria was holding in place, Liz made sure to keep firmly between them.

“Mm, another witch. We share blood, don’t we?” Michael said, humming as he happily relaxed in the hold Maria had on him, “I feel you, Enchantress. Your Slayers feeds you well. And how does that feel? To be more powerful than a Slayer. The Slayer. The legendary Elizabeth. The one to close the Hellmouth. You make her weak in comparison. You… Your power,” Michael let out a low chuckle, his eyes falling closed and Liz’s nose began to scrunch up in disgust, “My God, your power.”

Maria thankfully let him go before it got too weird, but he didn’t move from his place against the car.

“I’m not that powerful,” Maria said and Liz put her arm in front of her so she wouldn’t get closer.

Michael smiled, staring at her with half-lidded eyes. “But you are. I could teach you how to find it, but I’m sure you’re aware. You already hide it so well‒I couldn’t even feel it until you let me. Fuck…”

Liz looked over at Maria who seemed unsettlingly neutral about the way the demon was acting. When she looked back at him, he’d lulled his head to the side and was staring at her with those same eyes. It made her far more uncomfortable than it made Maria.

“Poor little Slayer,” he sang, letting out a teasing laugh. But then he shook it away, standing straighter. “We’re staying at an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. All the windows are blacked out, you can’t miss it. Goodbye, Slayer. Enchantress.”

With a dramatic twirl of his coat, Michael the Brilliant disappeared into the night.

“He called himself Michael the Brilliant. He said a few books refer to him as Rath, though. Have you ever heard of him?”

Liz watched as Mimi DeLuca’s face hardened. Bingo.

“Stay away from him,” Mimi said simply. Times like these, when Liz agreed full-heartedly, she actually enjoyed having a Watcher. “He’s bad news.”

“He didn’t seem that bad,” Maria said absentmindedly, clearly embarrassed by her opinion on the man. Liz honestly agreed that she should be embarrassed. Michael was sketchy at best, genuinely terrifying at worst. she didn't want any of her friends around him or his supposed sister.

"Crypto-pedia says his estimated rebirth was 1690 and his standard M.O. is luring young witches by telling them he can train them. Ironically, I think feeding on them helps him develop more powers that help him feel the power that witches radiate," Alex recited. Mimi scoffed as she leaned over his shoulder.

"They have a whole page on him? I really wish I had the internet when I was doing Watcher's schooling," she mused. However, when she turned back to them, she was serious once again. "Like I said-Maria, stay away from him. He's got over three decades of experience seducing witches."

"Also a big history of killing Slayers. Killed his first one in 1691. He was a baby when he took her down," Alex scoffed, shaking his head, "Be careful, Liz."

"We're just going to stay away from him. We'll deal with him if he approaches us but we're not going to seek him out," Mimi insisted. Liz chewed on her lip as she debated telling them what he'd said about Max. She was going to just wait and talk to Max about it first, but it was important information.

"Oh, shit," Alex cursed and for a moment she thought it was because Kyle was drooling on his textbook, but soon saw an old painting displayed on the computer screen. It was of three figures covered in blood.

The one in the front and on his knees was Michael, managing to look seductive even with his face contorted and his teeth bared. Over his shoulder stood Max so very clearly, his teeth just as on display and pure violence in his eyes despite the fact he was covered in less blood than the other two. Above both men was a nearly blindingly gorgeous woman. she was in all white, unlike Max and Michael, and blood was covering the entire front of her dress. Her face was relaxed completely, her eyes half-lidded. Just staring at a painting felt intoxicating.

And that must be his allegedly ill sister.

"Man, this Michael guy really is hot. In like a kill-me-in-my-sleep, rip-my-throat-out kinda way," Alex commented.

"Sweetie, none of what you just said is hot," Mimi said, shaking her head as she stared at the painting in distaste, "This is the Regency of the Restoration. Basically, they were so prolific in the late 1600s/early 1700s that they have paintings and songs about them. Most of them were lost. This painting... I actually think Isobel stole it."

"She did."

Everyone in the room turned to see Max standing in the doorway. His lips were pressed together in a thin line, something between dread and embarrassment scrawled across his features.

"Why are you looking into Michael and Isobel?" he asked quietly, not moving from where he was as if he was scared to get too close.

After seeing that painting, Liz was glad he kept his distance.

She knew of his past, of how he was before he got cursed with a soul. He was vile, vicious, and idolized for it. Liz would never be over the way books constantly spoke of him and said they were demonizing him while glorifying it. It was like Michael‒they did horrible things to be known. Why would you grant them that?

"Michael approached me," Liz said firmly, eying him as he neared her. She couldn't see it like Alex saw it as much as she wished she could. The idea of him covered in someone's blood made her stomach turn.

Max scowled harshly. "He did what?"

"What?" Kyle echoed as he chose now to wake up. Alex shushed him softly, but Liz never took her eyes off of Max and he never looked away from her either.

"He's in Roswell?" Max asked, seeming oblivious. Liz clenched her jaw and took a slow breath. "Why did he approach you? What did he say? Did he hurt y‒Maria, did he hurt you?" Liz was brought a little comfort by how concerned he seemed. It reminded her that he wasn't like that anymore. He had morals.

"No, he didn't. Honestly, he didn't even try," Maria informed him. Max's eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "He said his sister is sick and needs the assistance of a Slayer. Well, actually just someone who can get him the antidote for whatever the Watchers poisoned her with."

Max nodded slowly, bracing himself against the wall and his eyes turning to the floor. Liz waited patiently for him to decide what to say because she didn't really have many questions. She only had one: how did they get him to leave Roswell. She had no intention to help.

"She's sick?" Max asked, pain lacing his tone and Liz felt a bit of panic rise in her, "Sick enough that he'd approach a Slayer? No, okay, I need to go see her, did he say where they were?"

"Max, seriously? Who are these people to you? Why do you care if she's sick? It looks like you knew them back when you were... not yourself, why do you care about them no?" Liz demanded. Apparently, she had more questions than she realized.

Max squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his hand over his face. She waited. They all waited.

"They're my family," Max said simply even though there was nothing simple about what he'd just said. No one spoke. They could've heard a pin drop. "Stop looking at me like that, just... just give me a moment."

"A moment? Every other vampire that we've come across that you knew in the past, you've grown to hate them. Now these two, these vampires who were clearly the worst of them all, come back and you say they're your family?" Liz insisted. It would've been different if maybe he'd mentioned them, but he hadn't. They had never been around and Michael had said they were flying under the radar for decades. This didn't make any sense.

"Isobel was my actual, biological sister," he said, annoyance written across his face, "Our mother died during childbirth and we were basically on our own after that. Because of that, we got affiliated with the wrong people and started going to feeder's dens by the time we were 16. Obviously, that's a slippery slope and we both got turned within a few years."

Max crossed the room, slumping in a chair in the middle of everyone since he knew he was clearly telling a tale they all were eager to hear.

"We were... angry, I guess. Maybe it was from when we were human and it carried over, but we felt entitled. For years we had been denied everything because of our status, but we now had something where they couldn't tell us no. We attacked many people that had wronged us in life or even just seemed the type who would have. Isobel was really good at luring disgusting men in with her beauty and she'd rip them apart as payback for what they'd done to her when she was a little girl."

"If you're trying to make us think that what you two did wasn't all that bad, you're wasting your time," Liz said curtly. He looked up at her like a wounded puppy, but she wasn't going to let that face affect her this time. She'd done so far too many times before.

"That's not what I'm trying to do, Liz," he sighed, shaking his head, "I'm just saying... We were close. We always had been, she's apart of me and I'm apart of her."

"Okay, where does Michael come into this?" Maria asked. Mimi was standing off on the side, her face hardened as if she already knew everything. That was only slightly annoying.

"I was given my soul in 1688 and Isobel and I moved to a small town in Masechuttseus. She wasn't a fan of me being, well, more human, but she put up with it because we're all we had. And we met Michael in that town. He reminded me of myself, just a kid who was abandoned and struggling to survive. So we took him in."

"Two vampires took in a human? How quaint," Kyle snorted. Max seemed to fight the urge to be annoyed. He didn't really have the right to do that right now.

"He needed shelter and I wanted to do better, so I gave it to him and tried to protect him from a life like mine. I wanted to help, not hurt. Only, Isobel didn't trust him. She became so paranoid that he was going to betray us and get us killed or something no matter how hard he tried to please her. And he did try hard to please her. He saw her as something of a mother figure he never had and spent day in and day out catering to her, but she took it as him having devious intentions. Then, in 1690, when the Slayer of that time had been making noise around our town, she was convinced he had sent for her to kill us. So she turned him because then he could no longer out us without outing himself," Max explained. Liz could feel her face being taken over with disgust at this woman that Max clearly seemed to care about. How could he still care for someone who murdered a boy you took in to protect?

"Jesus," Alex cursed, the only one who had it in him to say anything.

"I-I don't actually know what happened to him after that," Max sighed, rubbing his hand over his face, "I obviously know that he lost his soul, but I didn't expect him to... Basically, his already unhealthy obsession with pleasing Isobel was heightened. His loyalty to her is something I've never seen before. He was barely fully turned when he went after the Slayer for her. I wish I could tell you how he did it, but I don't know. I just know he managed to kill her and brought her body to Isobel as a present.

"I didn't know what to do about it. They're my family, they're important to me, but they were becoming calculated killers and I just couldn't take being around that. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't okay, that I couldn't be around it. And... they tried to stop. Sort of. Michael started specifically targeting witches and he'd bring them back to Isobel to drain together, but it wasn't as common as before so I tried to take it as a step in the right direction. Eventually, though, they started gaining powers that they got from the witches. I guess I shouldn't have stuck around once it got to that point, but I was stuck. It took me a century before I finally realized they weren't going to stop. The guilt of standing by as they lured girls in was rivaling how much I love them, so I left. I've tried to keep tabs on them, but they'd been hard to find for the last few decades. I don't even think they're really killing much anymore, but I'm not sure. I haven't seen them since the turn of the 20th century."

Everyone was silent as they tried to make what they could from the story, but Liz focused hard on Max. He took a slow, almost pained breath as he dared to look up at her.

"But she's really sick?"

Liz hated herself for a moment, hated how she resigned to desperately wanting to make him look less broken. She was so desperate that she was actually considering helping a vampire who was known for being horrifically violent and apparently manipulative. No matter how hard she tried to shake away that feeling, she was confronted with an overwhelming need to make him feel better. She hated how pained he looked.

"Michael said the last Slayer he killed poisoned Isobel with something the Watcher's Council made and that she's been slowly deteriorating since," Liz said softly. Max scoffed, shaking his head before he dropped it into his palms.

"That was 50 years ago. She's been sick for half a century and they haven't tried to reach out to me," Max said. Liz gravitated towards him, her hand touching his shoulder as she looked up to the rest of the people in the room. They clearly didn't feel as sympathetic as she did, but why should they? “I understand if you don’t want to help them, but I have to. No matter what, they’re my family.”

"So are we,” Liz stated firmly, “What should we do?" Alex and Kyle shared a look not too unlike the look Mimi and Maria shared. She knew that they didn't really want to do anything, thinking it was too dangerous. "It's his family. That makes it a little different than just some random vampires."

"They're dangerous, Liz," Kyle said carefully, "Maybe he was civil when he came to ask you for help, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way."

"We could go meet them, like, all of us. Somewhere on even ground so we can feel out the situation and see if she's actually sick and if they're actually that dangerous," Alex suggested, though even he sounded hesitant, "If he says they've dialed down their killings, it's worth a shot to check it out. If it's bad, then we figure out how to run them out of town."

"I don't want Maria anywhere near him," Mimi said firmly, shaking her head, "You all can go if you want, but not her."

Maria didn't argue.

"How does that sound, Max?" Liz asked him softly. He looked torn as he looked around the room.

"I'll protect you all if he gets out of hand," he said firmly, "But I would appreciate your help."

"Okay then," Liz said even though she felt this was the beginning to a very risky situation, "Let's do this."

The first thing Alex saw when they walked into the demon bar was Michael.

And apparently, the first thing Michael saw was Alex.

"And who is this?" Michael said the moment they walked up. The way he was staring at Alex had him feeling insecure in a way he hated and desperately tried to push away. He kept his face firm as Michael stood up, circling him like prey. "What are you?"

"Human," Alex said, eyeing Max and Liz who seemed to be watching Michael with nothing but annoyance.

"No," Michael whispered, his breath hot on Alex's neck which sent shivers down his spine and a million waves of confusion to his mind. He didn't know vampires had breath, much less hot breath. "What are you?"

"I told you," Alex said sternly, "Human."

Michael paused in front of him, letting out a huffed laugh. "There's no way. That energy you give off..."

"Michael, stop it," Max sighed. Michael looked to him with furrowed brows.

"I'm serious, you don't feel that? What is that? How are you human?" Michael said, moving closer to Alex once again. He felt predatory in a way that had Alex feeling a little more into it than he wanted to admit. Why did he have to be so damn hot? "I don't understand how you can be human and yet make me feel so‒"

"Michael," Max snapped, "Stop trying that shit on him."

"I'm not!" Michael responded defensively, though a small smirk played on his lips as he leaned back against the bar. "Though I definitely want to. It's not my fault your entire Slayer’s Brigade is gorgeous."

"Alex," Liz ordered, gesturing for him to go stand behind her. He obliged, although requiring a bit of tugging from Kyle to make it all the way. He couldn't take his eyes off of Michael.

"Where is Isobel?" Max demanded eventually and Michael managed to look away from Alex which only had him feeling slightly upset. It was like he just then registered that Max was actually there. He blinked at him a few times and his cocky smirk was all but completely gone.

“She can’t leave the house. She’s too weak,” Michael answered, “Where you been, Maxwell? I know you have been with this Slayer lately, but what about before?”

“You knew I was around.”

“Isobel needed you and you weren’t there,” Michael scoffed, shaking his head, “You’re a shit brother.”

“Why did you seek our help if you were just going to be a complete asshole to us?” Max demanded. Alex tried to care, he really did, but he really wanted to focus on what Michael meant. What feeling to he give off? He wanted to know.

“I don’t want your help. I have no choice. And I need the Slayer’s help, not yours,” he spat, shaking his head. Alex felt an inexplicable need to make him stop looking so irritated. It was more uncomfortable than the smirking. “I don’t know why we even met here. We can’t fucking help Isobel here.”

“We’re here because they aren’t sure if we should help you. You have no proof that Isobel is actually sick,” Max said, though they all knew Max believed she was. They had prepared before meeting him, pouring over every little detail they could find about the Watchers as well as what Mimi knew herself. None of them could find even a mention of a serum, not even something that was in the works to be tested. Not even Alex, who was very good at hacking into all the systems the Watchers had, couldn’t find a damn thing.

“Why the fuck would I be here if she wasn’t?” Michael snapped, looking angry and desperate. He had to reel himself back in, taking a deep breath and through gritted teeth. “Listen, I just need whatever fancy antidote they have.”

“There isn’t one,” Alex said simply. Michael shot his gaze back to him, his jaw clenched as he waited for Alex to keep talking. For some stupid reason, Alex didn’t find him that scary. He reminded him of just a big dog who needed a little more friendship. “Are you sure it was the Watchers who poisoned her?”

“Who else would it be?” he asked, “No offense, but the typical Slayer is all brawn and no brain.”

“Well, I’m not your typical Slayer,” Liz shot back. Michael smiled tightly, hardly taking his eyes off of Alex again.

“We know that.”

“Alright, I’m going to come and see what I can find out,” Liz decided firmly. Max looked at her like she’d lost it.

“If you go in there, she’ll kill you,” Max told her.

“No she won’t, she can’t,” Michael argued.

“Have her mental abilities lessened?” Max asked. Michael didn’t say anything. “See? No, you’re not going there, Liz. She can and will do something to you, especially if it was a Slayer that harmed her.”

“Well, I don’t want you going by yourself there, you’re too emotion I don’t trust them,” Liz argued, “Someone else from our team needs to go and the only person I trust not to get killed is myself.”

“Little Alex can come too,” Michael suggested, grinning slowly. Which, honestly, sounded like a good idea to him even if Liz and Kyle immediately jumped in to protest. Alex had spent the last two days researching the two of them endlessly. He’d known everything they’d done that had ever been recorded‒and most of their movements had been recorded. They were infamous.

“Max and I can go,” Alex agreed, “I make sure he isn’t in cahoots with them and he can make sure they don’t kill me.” Michael broke out into a smile.

“Cahoots,” he repeated softly, his tongue dragging his bottom lip in between his teeth as he shook his head and chuckled to himself.

“And if he is in cahoots with them, you will be murdered by three vampires,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yeah, but what a way to go,” Michael laughed. No one else found that funny, so he held up his hands in defense. “Look, not gonna let anyone lay a finger or fang on his pretty little body. Too intrigued by his whole vibe to let that happen.”

“What vibe?” Alex asked before he could stop himself. Michael shrugged and shook his head.

“If I knew I’d tell you.”

“So, that’s the plan then? We’re trusting three vampires with Alex?” Kyle sighed softly. Alex and Michael nodded at the same time which caused the vampire to smile.

Alex would be lying if he said he wasn’t eager to go.

“Isobel’s in the back room.”

Max immediately followed the instruction which led to Alex being left all alone with Michael. He watched the vampire make himself at home, seeming weirdly human as he took off the steam-punk boots to reveal colorful socks. Alex smiled mockingly at them, one bright orange with cats and the other a baby blue with a cartoon whale saying ‘having a whale of a time’. Michael flopped himself onto the couch, wiggling his toes as he grinned Alex’s way.

“Come here,” Michael urged. Alex shook his head with the same smile as he began to look around the room. It was pretty modern for a vampire den: working electricity, a kitchen, a TV, and even a laptop in the corner.

Alex kept himself aware even when he wasn’t directly looking at him. While he wasn’t scared of him, he also wasn’t about to be caught off guard. That had happened one too many times before. Since he was aware, he didn’t even flinch at the animalistic movements Michael made as he crawled to the other side of the couch and climbed skillfully to the recliner, leaning over the back to intrude on Alex’s space.

“Can I taste you?” he suddenly requested. Alex furrowed his eyebrows and leaned away to get a good look at his face.

“No,” Alex said, “Literally why would I say yes to that?”

“I want to know what you are,” he said, tilting his head to the side, “It’s driving me mad. I just know if I taste you I’ll understand more.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t bite me,” Alex said, walking towards the couch, “And if you do anyway, I will kill you.”

“Why would I do it anyway? That takes the fun out of it, I like when people want it,” he said softly, still eyeing Alex like he was so fucking confused. Alex was torn between loving it and hating it.

“How do you somehow have better morals than some people who have souls?”

“Good question.”

Alex peered towards the door that Max had gone through. It was shut tight. Clearly, they weren’t watching each other like Liz had insisted. Oh well. They could lie.

“Put your blood in a cup so I can taste. No biting involved,” Michael suggested, suddenly in front of him again.

“Good suggestion, but no,” Alex said, circling to the front of the couch. Michael’s gaze stayed firmly on him, following each and every movement.

“You can do it when I’m not in the room so there’s no temptation.”

“Why do you care so much?” Alex asked. While he was slightly curious as to what Michael meant by everything, he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it when it was probably an elaborate excuse to get him to agree to being bitten. Michael huffed an annoyed breath, but never gave an answer.

They walked around in silence for a moment, still eyeing each other despite the distance between them. Michael was annoyingly attractive and, even in the light, could easily be mistaken for human. The longer they stared, the more comfortable he got with it. He knew the staring likely would’ve pissed off Liz and Kyle and Maria and Mimi. Honestly, probably Max too. He wasn’t so negative.

“I got it,” Michael suddenly said, jumping over the couch and grabbing Alex’s hand. He pulled him quickly through the door to the room Max and Isobel were in, throwing him in front of him the moment they got through. “Izzy! What is he?”

Alex felt the floor drop from beneath him as he became the sole focus of Isobel. Her paintings and descriptions did her no justice. She was nothing short of ethereal. It was impossible not to look at her and let her engulf you with her wide eyes and penetrating gaze.

She wore a long, deep red robe tied around an equally as red slip and her hair seemed skillfully unkempt. While Michael seemed human on some level, Isobel didn’t seem to share that. She was purely otherworldly, but not quite animalistic. She neared Alex with deliberate movements, slow and inhuman. She touched Alex’s cheek and if she asked him anything in the world, he would have surrendered.

“Human,” she decided in a careful voice, pushing on his jaw to face Michael, “He’s human.”

“What?” Michael demanded, sounding more than a little annoyed, “That doesn’t make any sense, he‒”

“Michael,” Max said firmly, “You and Alex need to go, we were speaking.” Michael’s eyebrows slowly pulled together in a level of hurt he couldn’t hide.

“This is my house, I can‒”

“Michael,” Max said, louder this time. Alex found it quite interesting how different Michael became when he was in the same room with both Max and Isobel. He wasn’t the powerful, power-reading, telekinetic vampire. He was suddenly just a boy who had been on the receiving end of a neverending Us vs. You situation.

“You can go,” Isobel said, lightly pushing his jaw towards Michael.

Once they were back into the main room, Alex had to give himself a moment to readjust. All the research he’d done made it clear that, due to the way he was feeling, Isobel had probably just gotten into his mind. Which was terrifying. It made Michael cornering him against the wall much less terrifying in comparison.

“You can’t be human,” Michael accused, breathing heavy in residual anger, “I swear to fuck, I can feel you. I feel you.”

Alex couldn’t find it in him to be scared as Michael pushed further into his space. He knew he should be. He wasn’t. But it was a distraction for the fuzziness in his mind and that made it easy to play along.

“Maybe all you feel is that I’m the only one who isn’t scared of you,” Alex said back. Michael took a deep, grounding breath and that easy, suave smile found its place outside of his anger.

“Is that so?”

“I’ve done my research on you. I know everything there is to know about you,” Alex admitted. Michael’s eyes flickered across his face and lingered on his lips just long enough to have Alex’s mind wandering a bit too much.

“Everything?”

“Everything,” Alex confirmed, his voice matching Michael’s low pitch. The smirk and the half-lidded eyes on the vampire’s face was something out of a wet dream he didn’t know he’d have. “Which means I know how your powers work, I know how quick your reaction time is, and I know I’m quicker.” Michael leaned closer, their chests meeting.

“Yeah?”

“I could kill you if I really wanted. It’d be easy,” Alex told him though he knew he was probably lying. While he was indeed quick, vampires much less dangerous than him had put Alex in the hospital. But, honestly, he wasn’t Michael’s type of victim and he wasn’t one to expand. He’d had a type since he turned.

“We should spar sometime and put your money where your pretty little mouth is,” Michael suggested.

“Maybe we should.”

“Will you get away from him,” Max snapped out of nowhere, grabbing Michael by the neck and physically pulling Michael off him.

“Get the fuck off me!” Michael shouted, twisting out of Max’s hold and glaring at him. Alex watched the metaphorical pissing contest unfold between them.

“Liz is going to kill you if you get that close to him again,” Max threatened, eyeing Michael like he was nothing more than scum, “And I’ll be happy when she does.”

Michael stared at him for a minute before swiftly turning and stalking away. Alex looked at Max with furrowed brows. He hadn’t really seen an inherently aggressive side to the man. Something about Michael and Isobel must have brought it out of him. He still had the audacity to look apologetic about Michael’s actions.

Oddly enough, Alex left that day feeling bad for him.

“We’re doing what?”

Alex rolled his eyes at Max’s tone. He was becoming more and more annoyed with him by the day. It didn’t help that Michael was around more to help find the antidote to whatever that one particular Watcher had conjured up along with helping both Alex and Kyle get better at fighting against vampires. The more Alex warmed to Michael, the more Max irritated him.

“It’s a good idea,” Michael chimed in. He was sprawled on the couch in the back of the magic shop, his feet firmly in Alex’s lap. Mimi had Maria as far away from him as possible, but even she had warmed to him a bit. Max was the only one left with a major problem.

“There is nothing good about it.”

“Max,” Liz said firmly, “We are breaking into a paranoid ex-Watcher’s house that is vamp-proofed. The only reason you’re coming is to stand guard with Kyle. Mimi and Maria can’t stay because they have to charm the Watcher. I need both Alex and Michael here because Alex is the only one who can even hack into his security system and he’s the one in control of the camera that Michael will be using as eyes to get the serum without disturbing the literal spikes around it. Do you hear a way there would be anyone else to babysit Michael and Alex?”

Max looked very annoyed he wasn’t getting his way. He glared at Michael which obviously made him tense. Alex mindlessly rubbed his ankle.

“Listen,” Michael said, that cocky little smirk on his face as he tried not to get angry, “I am the first person to agree that I’m dangerous and probably shouldn’t be trusted with certain people, but my little Alex here is not one of them. I wouldn’t lay a fang on him.” Max looked like he was going to kill him.

“I don’t like this.”

“Why are you so protective of Alex all of the sudden?” Liz demanded, turning to him completely.

“It’s not just of Alex, I don’t trust him around any of you, but he’s taken a liking to Alex which is not okay,” Max accused.

“Alex can handle himself,” Kyle jumped in.

“Alex can speak for himself,” Alex sighed, trying hard not to roll his eyes, “Listen, he hasn’t hurt any of us yet, why are you so certain that’ll change when we’re alone?”

“Because I know him. He’s manipulative and selfish. We’re giving him what he wants!”

“It’s also what you want, Max,” Liz said, crossing her arms over her chest, “We gave you a chance and you’ve done worse than him.”

Max didn’t have an answer. Alex squeezed Michael’s ankle.

“Right. Everyone meet back here at 10 PM to put the plan into action.”

The room quickly cleared out, leaving Michael and Alex alone as if they weren’t just arguing about it. Alex turned to face the vampire.

“You were awfully quiet during that,” he pointed out. Michael breathed in slow, a smirk forming on his face.

“You don’t like when I get into it, so I’m trying to do better,” he answered. Alex snorted.

“You didn’t get in a fight just because I don’t like it?” Alex clarified. Michael shrugged his shoulders, eyeing him. “Man, you keep doing stuff like that and I’m gonna start thinking you like me.”

Michael grunted softly in amusement, a predatory look taking over his face before it transformed into that of a vampire. His teeth were bared and he was sitting so close, but Alex just smiled at him.

“Gonna go kill some shit before 10, gotta make sure Isobel’s fed. See you then,” Michael spoke easily, getting up and leaving without another word.

Alex shook his head with a smile before getting up and preparing the camera and microphone he’d be hooking up to Liz.

“Okay, be careful.”

“I am being careful.”

“I literally don’t think you’re ever careful.”

Michael chuckled lowly as he listened to Alex and Liz argue while she walked through the Watcher’s weird lab. The man was almost 95 years old, but apparently, he was still batshit crazy enough to have a fully functioning chem lab where he brewed serums to kill vampires. Isobel had just gotten a very early version of it and it was the only reason she’d made it 50 years.

“Okay, disable this,” Liz said softly. Michael watched as Alex did some fancy, smart shit that went over his head. Alex was impressive.

Michael leaned closer to him, eyes drifting from Alex’s work on the computer to his collarbone. His skin was tan and seemingly flawless, every curve of his body just as perfect. It was hard to stay away, even harder the more he stared.

He had no intention to bite him and he had no desire to either. Occasionally Maria would catch his eye and Kyle would annoy him to the point that he considered it, but the Slayer, the Watcher, and Alex were all tolerable. Alex was more than tolerable. Alex was one of a kind, literally. In all his years alive, he’d never met someone as intoxicating as Alex. The only exception was Isobel, but he was drawn to them in very different ways.

“Stop,” Alex whispered, nudging Michael away as his nose grazed the hacker’s jaw. Michael blinked a few times, moving away just a little bit and just enough to see Alex’s sweet smile. “You’re up.”

Michael shook himself out of the trance he’d been in, looking towards the screen. The camera was pretty shitty quality, but it was enough that he could see what he was supposed to do. He focused as well as he could on the image of the little vile surrounded in complex spikes, watching it slowly be lifted and weaved through them like he wanted.

“Yes, you’re doing great,” Alex said softly, continuing to pour words of encouragement over him in a way he wasn’t used to. Though, everything Alex did were things he wasn’t used to.

The vile landed in Liz’s hand and Michael fell back in his chair, exhaustion overcoming him. He hated using his powers for that long because of how it made him feel, but it was so fucking worth it for Isobel’s safety and the proud smile Alex gave him.

“You did it,” Alex breathed out, mindlessly putting his hand on Michael’s thigh and squeezing. Michael smiled. Honest to god smiled. “Now get out of there, Liz.”

Alex turned off the camera and microphone once everyone made it safely into the car and started making the two-hour drive home. He leaned back with a satisfied little grin, letting his head drift to face Michael. He looked so stunning.

“So, you gonna kill me now?” Alex asked playfully. Michael snorted.

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re getting what you want. In a few hours, Isobel’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to stick around, much less leave us alive. Leave me alive,” Alex said, though this time he seemed a little more serious. “Are you going to leave?”

“Would you be upset if I did?” Michael asked. Alex chewed on his lip and Michael really wanted to do that himself.

“Depends, are you gonna kill me?” Alex asked. Michael shook his head.

“What would I get out of killing you before they hand over the serum?” he asked. Alex scoffed, laughing slightly.

“Jeez, you got a point, I guess,” he said, “Just thought we were friends.”

“You like being my friend?”

“Dude,” Alex laughed, “You’re here aren’t you?” Michael took in his pretty face and thought about what it would be like to stay. He had never really had friends before. He had Max and Isobel and Max didn’t really like him all that much. Here, he had Liz who willingly spoke to him about a bunch of different weapons and took his advice seriously. He had Mimi who, while still being wary of him with her daughter, still liked to hear how he melded witchcraft with the abilities that came with being a vampire. He had Kyle who was annoying as all hell, but who made for a fun sparring partner.

And he had Alex.

“So, tell me, if you stay, are you going to go after Maria?” Alex asked after a moment. Michael furrowed his eyebrows. “I mean, she’s your type. You gonna try to seduce her, drink her blood to power you up?”

“Yeah and have Mimi kill me? No,” Michael said simply, “Mimi is a whole lot more powerful than me and she’s a lot more trained than Maria. Maria has untapped power, but Mimi’s is like an open faucet. She could snap her fingers and snap my neck if she wanted to.”

“So you really can feel people’s powers like that?” Alex clarified. Michael nodded, still not being able to look away. Not that he wanted to. “So, what happens when you would seduce those girls back then? You’d just tell them they were powerful, sleep with them, eat them? Actually, can you even sleep with people? Does your heart even beat to make blood flow?”

Michael smirked, “Are you asking me if my dick works?” Alex paused and his cheeks turned pink before he just went with it and nodded. “Yeah, it does. But I usually didn’t sleep I’d lure in. It’s weird to have sex with your food.”

“Oh my god,” Alex laughed, shaking his head with a smile that was brighter than the sun. Maybe it would’ve burned if it didn’t feel so good. “You know, you’re a lot less crazy than you tried to seem like you were.”

“Sorry to let you down.”

“No, no, I like it. I like you like this.”

“You like me?”

“I like you,” Alex said firmly, “Why doesn’t Max?”

“I don’t know,” Michael shrugged. He hated that Max hated him. He’d spent so long trying to please both him and Isobel only to be shunned away by him. It was easier to just stop trying to please him. Alex smiled comfortingly.

“I think he’s jealous.”

“Jealous of what?” he snorted.

“That you don’t need a soul to be good.”

Michael couldn’t remember the last time some had thought he was good.

He moved forward without too much of a thought and grabbed Alex’s neck, pressing a kiss to his lips. It didn’t last long and he pulled away, preparing for Alex to tell him off or get awkward. Instead, Alex smiled and moved forward again.

It had been a really long time since he kissed anyone, at least 50 years. He was admitted rusty, but Alex didn’t seem to mind as he pulled him closer until they were both sitting on the edge of their chairs. Alex’s tongue slipped into his mouth without any hesitation and the level of trust he must’ve had in Michael didn’t go unnoticed. He felt like he was 17 and stupid again, desperately trying to move closer and trying to touch every inch he could.

Michael tugged on Alex’s waist in an attempt to get him closer and Alex chuckled into his mouth before just moving to straddle his lap. Michael moved back and pulled Alex with him, splaying his hands on the man’s back to hold him through the never-ending kisses. He didn’t want them to end. He wanted them forever.

“You taste so good,” Michael said before he could even control himself and Alex smirked, weaving his fingers through Michael’s hair.

“You didn’t even bite me.”

“I don’t need to.”

Michael dragged sloppy kisses across his jaw and then down his neck. He waited for Alex to deny him, to push him away in panic. He just knew that, while Alex seemed to trust him, there was no way he trusted him to be this close, to be able to feel his pulse against his teeth, and not throw him off. Except Alex, like always, subverted expectations and held him closer with a moan. He left soft bites between kisses, trailing his way back up to Alex’s lips with extra care that he didn’t puncture his flawless skin.

He left one last kiss to Alex’s lips before pulling away, keeping his forehead against the other man’s as he caught his breath.

“Why’d you stop?” Alex asked after a moment and Michael looked at him to see a level of mischief in his eyes that had him reeling. That vibe that he always got from Alex amplified in that moment, warm and encompassing that jumped from just his regular level of no fear to just overwhelming trust and desire. “We have an hour before we won’t get another moment alone for who knows how long. We should make the most of it.”

Michael agreed so easily and they made their way to the couch.

By the time the rest of the group got back, they had managed to look normal and like nothing had happened. Well, as normal as possible.

“Why are you smiling like that? You look insane,” Max scolded the minute he walked in and saw Michael. He was still fidgety with excitement from his afternoon, but he managed to taper it down so Max wouldn’t dig. He didn’t want to deal with the backlash without having a proper conversation.

“Sorry for being excited that my sister isn’t going to die,” Michael said, though his eyes drifted to Alex who was sitting in front of the computer. His thumb was lodged between his teeth, hiding his own smile. He shot a wink Michael’s way before standing up.

It became so clear to him at that moment that there was no way he could leave Roswell now.

“Alright, let’s go heal a murderous mind-controlling vampire.”

#mgweek19 #guerinweek19 #very shocked i finished this #malex #malex fic #michael guerin #michael guerin fic #roswell new mexico #roswell new mexico fic #rnm #rnm fic #buffy au #time for bed

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steve0discusses · 5 years

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Yugioh S4 Ep6: Gozaburo Kaiba Just Casually Started WWIII And Only This One Guy Cares

Welcome to November, where we celebrate writing a 50,000 word book as if I don’t do that every single time I write about an episode of Yugioh. Hello, this is my season. It’s wordy season. I’m so freakin good at doing this. I can’t say most of what I’ve made is any good, but I CAN say at least I’m prolific. Do enough content to fill that bitter pit and walk right over it, that’s been my motto for the past 5 years.

Anyway, I had an awful flu this past week. (Everyone I live with had it so every bathroom was like ground zero) It was SO bad. I still can’t eat spicy food over a week later (Which is so hard for me because usually I can keep up with my Indian friends, that’s my spicy level--max spicy, please--but since this illness, my white taste genes went into overdrive and I tried putting pepperoncini slices in my sandwich and it set my mouth on fire. Pepperoncini. It’s v embarrassing.)

I did attempt to write this post. Unfortunately I never made it past this cap because I got VERY distracted by the emblem on Alister’s face, and how it isn’t proportionally adjusted to match the angle of his face, and it was like three paragraphs of just wanting to talk about it. And then at some point I got very distracted talking about how many empty glasses I was given at my place setting at this baby shower I went to during the flu epidemic, and it mattered a whole lot to me at the time, but I think, overall, was mostly just some sort of nonsense. The things I’ve spared you.

(bro has just informed me that the 4 gold-lipped crystal goblets I was given at this baby shower was actually very distressing and a very big deal and that I should absolutely talk to at least someone about it, but maybe he’s just saying that to make me feel better, but I have no idea. I am too sick for sarcasm at this time but my god why was I given so many glasses????)

I straight up have no memory of if I’ve made this joke before. Maybe.

(read more under the cut)

Since it feels like 8 years since the last time I could just eat chicken without feeling like I consumed an entire Thanksgiving meal, a little recap:

-Alister pretended he was Pegasus to lure Kaiba and then, off screen, murdered everyone in Pegasus’ castle

-Pegasus got murdered by I’m pretty sure Mai (which is like...OK then...)

-Yugi and Co went on vacation by driving directly through San Francisco and peeking out the window and saying “yeah that’s enough for me”

-No adults, not even Roland, bothered to come with their kids this time, so the only adult of the entire crew--Pegasus--is dead

-Rex and Weevil are luggage

-The Eye of Sauron showed up and it was the end of the world but Yugi threw a dragon at it so I guess everything is OK now

-Monsters are real but they are hard to animate so we’ll just pretend like they’re causing havoc everywhere although most of the planet seems basically unaffected by this.

-The Grim Reaper is a friendly monster that hangs out in a Japanese park and that feels fairly on brand.

And I think that was all that was happening so far.

In a weird twist of fate, Mokuba is the only one in this room that isn’t trapped which sort of...if you’re the only one NOT kidnapped wouldn’t that also be a type of being kidnapped?

And we finally get to figure out why Alister wants to Murder Kaiba so bad and, spoiler, it reaches.

???

I’m gonna get more to the obvious problems with Alister’s devotion to murdering all the Kaibas in a bit but yes, Alister is in fact going to try and Kill Kaiba on this kid’s show because of Kaiba’s Dad, who is such a horrible and abusive person that Kaiba essentially drove the bastard out of Japan and straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Just kinda feels like Alister has been living under a rock...which, I guess he has been. He has been living in some weird Atlantis structure so I guess he never got the memo that Gozaburo Kaiba is hella dead.

So that’s what they’re up to. How’s Sausalito?

Um.

Huh.

So the North Bay is a really classic scenery. It’s rolling hills. It’s NAPA. It’s like...definitely not Arizona. California has a couple of mesas but they’re no where near here and the Monument Valley style Mesas really only exist in Monument Valley.

And I know it’s because the background artist for Yugioh is all horny for horny rock structures but like...this couldn’t be farther from the Bay Area in the way that it is drawn and it is such a shock after all the work they did last episode to research that Bay Area lore. Once they crossed the Golden Gate they were like “well no one will care about this part” which is true not only of Yugioh but also of real life Californian politics.

Anyway, I have been making a map, but unfortunately my original file will not suffice. time to fix it.

There we go. Now they’re in the right place. Just smack dab in Monument Valley, Arizona, smack dab in the middle of the Navajo Nation and so hypothetically, not even in the United States anymore.

While in the car, Yugi has just been anxious as hell the entire time, and just going “y’all I have a bad feeling I’m uncomfortable I have a bad feeling” while Joey and Tea just patiently stared at him flipping out in the corner. So...kinda like a normal trip with someone who has high anxiety/possessed by a ghost. I kinda feel like this is every girls trip to Disneyland for me. There’s always one Yugi who’s like “no one said anything about CROWDS.” and you kinda just gotta let them do their thing. Just let them get it out of their system and hide in the bathroom when they need to hide in the bathroom and don’t fight it, they’ll be fine. Just hold their spot in line when they desperately look for a secret place to medicinally vape because there’s too many freakin children at Disneyland.

And it is HILARIOUS that Yugi is able to have this type of premonition but cannot figure out that they have somehow missed San Fransisco and have wandered into a DESERT.

Back in Pegasus’ California (an island that legitimately looks more like California than actual Yugioh California) Alister has decided to go completely off the rails and it happens so fast and without any warning.

the line is actually “This doll used to be my brother’s” which is a very different meaning but both are likely from weird ass Alister and this weird ass show, so I’ll leave the cap like this (although yes, this is what I thought Alister was saying for kind of a while until I recorded it for this blog and was like “oh shoot I heard the line wrong when I had the flu huh.”)

Man, RIP Noah, he would have been excellent this episode.

Honestly seems like just yesterday when Seto and Noah were pitted against eachother by a cyberdemon Dad-head floating in the sky, Mokuba was possessed for some reason and being used as a human shield, Tristan was a robot monkey, and Yugi was just shrugging at Kaiba from across the field like “Kaiba if you don’t play good you die--oh my gods, he died. Well that was bound to happen...again.” Man.

Alister should be their best friend, this is nonsense.

So lets do the math to 7 years before 2002.

I searched Wikipedia for wars during 1995 (they do have a list of 90′s wars) and looked for any that involved heavy use of tanks and their artillery fire (on big swatches of cities like this), inner city western architecture, temperate landscapes, and western clothing that match Alister and Mikey (AKA WWII vibes) and found out:

Nothing fits that description

UNLESS Alister and Mikey are time travelers from a WWII bombing in Europe. This is Yugioh. That could happen. Probably not, but youknow...it’s not too late for Yugioh to bring in time travel.

I mean if you don’t want to get super political in your cartoon just invent a world war I guess? We’ve already clarified that Gozaburo was Big Boss, so at this point I can easily see him inventing wars just to sell ships.

(I could probably add thousands of more deaths at this point but I have no idea where they are, if they’re on a tiny island or an entire country so I’ll just...leave the count alone but just now it’s implied that a hell ton of people died during this episode)

People going off about how Sesame Street is so amazing for talking about issues like you’re Dad going to prison while Yugioh was straight up talking about the intricacy of the War Economy. Yugioh being all “don’t forget kids, your good capitalist economy survives off of the undeserved bloodshed of civilians in other countries! Eat the poor!” and it’s like hot damn this heavy commentary came out of freakin no where.

Anyways, this is stuff most kid’s shows will delicately skip over but nah, Yugioh is going to go here, and they are going to steamroll directly through it with massive tanks.

So, lets kill this kid’s entire family and talk about the terrors of the World War of 1995 and all the war orphans who get recruited to become soldiers at the ripe old age of 9. Alister was 9 when he was recruited to be a child card soldier.

This kid’s show.

Alister is...basically Raiden, right? Like as long as we’re talking about Metal Gear, this kid is just one step away from cyborg implants and weird colored blood?

Better wear bright red when you visit the war crime scene, surprised Gozaburo didn’t invite like an entire photo -op crew to incriminate him even further.

Now we did look up “where the hell is Alister from Yugioh from?” (there is no answer) and we did find out a little factoid. In the Japanese version of the show, Gozaburo had bought the land and was just forcibly evicting Alister and his family from their home with tanks.

Which is wild.

He just straight up evicted an entire metropolitan city????

Like the dub did a way better job than the sub at this one, I’ll give them that.

It’s just so weird that Gozoboro just didn’t like...raise the rent like a normal bad landlord. Instead he was like “rather than gentrify my land and save me a ton of money, I’ll just destroy everything I just bought and murder everyone here” which is like...

...Seto did the world so many favors when he kicked out his Dad, right? Like Damn. I don't understand why Alister isn’t freakin worshiping Seto right now when his whole deal is “I must kill Gozaburo” and Seto’s like “yo I already did that. Twice. I didn’t even have to literally kill him either, I just embarrassed him so bad that he killed himself. His stupid tank company sells joke games now. I literally turned the man into a joke.”

Then again, Alister is on the green magic and like I think it alters your brain chemistry somewhat.

(How ripped did Alister get in this episode, by the way? The kid is like 16 years old or something so how did this happen? ...The perpetual horny line running straight through Yugioh, man. Look at it run. That 16 year old is drawn like he’s 28 and really into Crossfit and his crop top gets smaller and smaller like every scene.)

So like this is a very gray issue that I cannot believe they brought up in a kid’s show (like can you imagine if Scrooge McDuck had to face facts that his company murdered tons of people???), but also this is Seto Kaiba. Seto grew up in the system, so like he doesn’t need to be lectured to about dirty money because he was on the losing end of that not too long ago. Seto is himself basically a upscale war orphan since he was adopted by Gozaburo to continue the machine like a freakin maniac (a Solidus Snake, if you will) so of all the people on this show I don’t get why Seto would care about this. This is just how Seto views the entire world as either losing or winning and no reason to feel bad about it because he’s been both.

Also...Seto stopped the machine. Kind of. He was unaware that cards were the same thing as weapons, but at least he stopped the sale of huge child-stealing tanks.

So they play the game for a little while and Seto does kind of poorly as usual, and just when I thought this episode couldn’t get any weirder...

And just like that, Seto peaces out. Like he does almost every single time he has ever played a card game solo except for that one time he was playing Joey Wheeler. (Which was also one of the few times Seto ever won.)

Like I just want to remind you that this segment is in the same episode as WWIII and the tonal whiplash is pretty remarkable.

That’s right, we’re back in the Unnamed Monster World, which is not the Shadow Realm, and which I thought you could only access if you were dreaming and able to search through the puzzle maze.

Apparently this can just happen at any time and all that stuff with the guiding Kuriboh and Yugi and Pharaoh trying to find this place was just...them wasting time.

Again he ditches the legendary sword so freakin fast because who needs a sword when you have a dragon? Only this anime.

And that’s how Seto, who was absolutely going to lose this game, somehow just barely came to a draw.

So just to recap, Seto has yet to win a card game that he didn’t get prophetic help for via a hallucination or Yugi telling him what to do. Unless you count Joey and grandpa.

Then, the one last adult I forgot about, the driver of Yugi’s car, decides that it’s about time that he also died and left this show as adult free as possible.

THE HELL ARE THEY?

Also...maybe it’s the angle but the writing on that gas station looks a lot like kanji.

Yo, what if this is the backgrounds for a different show and they’re just sharing? I mean I doubt it because Yugioh had a good enough budget but...what if? What if that’s why they’re in Arizona?

Anyway, next time we’ll find out if this guy just drops dead or has been a Yugioh monster this whole time, and I think maybe both?

And if you just got here, this is a link to read all my Yugioh recaps in chrono order

#yugioh #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #yugi muto #seto kaiba #mokuba #alister #joey wheeler #tea gardner #tristan taylor #Arizona

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jonesgirl88 · 4 years

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A continuation of this post because @pro-choiceforanyone and I agree the other post was WAY too long and it needed a new post.

Sorry this has taken me so long to reply to; work has been crazy then the world decided to fall apart? What’s with that? Anyway, hope all is well with you! How’s school going? Are you out for summer now?

You broke down your last reply so I’ll attempt to reply in roughly the same manner:

Post One:

If we’re differing on the definition, then we need to go back and make sure we agree on a definition. Unfortunately, there’s no dictionary definition of “body autonomy”. Without an official definition, my version of “body autonomy” isn’t your version isn’t the person’s down the street and isn’t the person’s walking along bopping to Katy Perry. According to UC Santa Barbara, the doctrine of “body autonomy” derives from the 5th amendment* and 14th amendment; in which both declare the state cannot deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process. *to be completely fair, UCSB says ‘Constitution’, I narrowed it down to the 5th amendment so you didn’t have to read the whole thing. I decided it was the 5th amendment based on the wording of the paragraph. You’ve written your definition as “Body autonomy basically says that no one, other than the person himself, has a right to his or her body, and no one has the right to use someone else’s body without his or her full consent.” I’m okay using this definition as long as we’re both using the same definition. If we’re both cool with this definition, let’s move forward.

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No I would not agree that body autonomy is a sliding scale.

You’ve said you’re first year uni, so I’m assuming you’re about 18, and I’m wondering what your real world experience is with...anything. Have you been around children? Have you been around children or adults with mental disabilities to the point they can be a harm to themselves? As someone who has taken care of children and worked with children, teens, and adults with mental disabilities, you sometimes have to stop them from doing something they want to do because it will harm them or make them/coerce them into doing something they don’t want to do because it’s good for them.

Your first example would be an act of abuse and is illegal, it is an violation of body autonomy. Technically the vegetable is the one violating body autonomy and the parents are the enabler.

Are you really suggesting making a kid eat their veggies and go to bed is abuse and illegal? That’s...that’s called “parenting”. Or at the very least “caring for the child’s well being”. YES! “Found mentally incompetent” was the wording I was looking for! Thank you!

If you are talking about parenting setting bed times or telling their child to eat their veggies then that is not a violation of body autonomy, as long as the child does it of their own free will. If they put “themselves”( with necessary help) or put that veggie in their own mouth, it is not a violation of body autonomy.

A mother can give her child up at anytime. The child is not violating her body autonomy because it is not using her body (unless breast feeding however this can be stopped).

The key words are use someone else’s body. It very obviously shows that body autonomy relates to someone else using your body. It doesn’t relate to you using your body to give care.

These statements lead me to believe you haven’t had any significant interactions with children. Anyone who has spent any reasonable amount of time with children...of any age know they need to be told to do things like go to bed or brush their teeth or eat their veggies because they won’t do what is good for them naturally. Also, having children is an incredible upheaval to everything about you. You give up things you want to do, like sleep, work, hang out with friends, watch TV, read a book, be with your spouse/SO, etc to take care of a child. A child demands care and you must give it care, even when you don’t want to.

Going back to the definition we’re using: if you don’t want to do something, but someone else is forcing you to care for them, how is that not a breech of full consent? You’re trying to differentiate it as though a child in the womb uses the mother’s body in a different “consent” than when a child is outside the womb. That’s not how parenthood works. You can’t turn parenthood on and off when it’s convenient or when you want to. You’re a parent when it’s dirty and you’re sleep deprived and when it pulls you from things you want to do and when it costs more than money, it cost time, energy, resources, and talents you don’t have.

Children are already considered to be less in our society. They can’t vote, make medical decisions, work, drink or get a tattoo.

Honest question: do you think children should be able to vote, make medical decisions, work, drink, or get a tattoo?

Safe Haven Laws: statutes in the United States that decriminalize the leaving of unharmed infants with statutorily designated private persons so that the child becomes a ward of the state.

This may not be what you think it is. First, there’s a time limit. A newborn/infant typically has to be a certain age (3 days old seems to be the minimum) to be relinquished and cannot exceed a certain age (7, 14, and 30 days are typical). Second, they must be unharmed. Third, they can only be relinquished at certain locations which is specified by state. Fourth, once relinquished the child becomes a ward of the state.

Is this better than leaving a child to be found by chance in an alley or dumpster? Absolutely. But a mother cannot leave her child on a porch and claim it’s a safe haven--there are laws in place and that would be seen as child endangerment.

So is it easy to give up a child? Yes, with caveats. There are multiple ways to surrender a child to the system but it’s all up to if the mother is willing to or not.

Banning abortion is a slippery slope to oppression. “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.” —Margaret Sanger

...do you really want to invoke Margaret Sanger? You might want to research into her more before you tout her as a paragon of quotable virtue. (X X X X X X X) She openly advocated forced sterilization, eugenics, planned population control, and the removal of those with mental disabilities. She spoke at a KKK event in 1926; and ended up receiving multiple offers to speak at other events. This is the woman you’re going to quote as though I should care what she says?

No, banning abortion is not a slippery slope to oppression--it’s actually the other way around. Abortion on demand, abortion up to birth, survivors of botched abortions, post birth abortion...where does it stop? At what point is it murder? Pro-life is simple: it’s a life from the moment of conception therefore abortion is murder from week 1 all the way to post birth abortions and beyond.

I can draw a firm line in the sand, where’s your line?

If we’re pulling out quotes: “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell people not to kill one another?” ~ Mother Teresa “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish” ~ Mother Teresa “Abortion can never be safe. Any procedure where ‘success’ means the killing of another human being can certainly not be safe” ~ Abby Johnson

New question:

Feminism - the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes Pro-Life - you have the wrong definition, my friend. The pro-life movement is advocating for both lives involved in the pregnancy. It’s the radical notion both lives matter. Again, I’m not a feminist so I can’t answer this question from that perspective. I would assume the position pro-life feminist’s have is abortion kills baby girls and women and they’re against that. I would hope they’re against the killing of baby boys too. I’ll throw to @pro-life-feminism or @prolife-feminist for an answer to this question.

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The reason I go to mental incompetence is because of Sanger and the history of eugenics against those with mental disabilities. If “body autonomy” can be declared for pregnancy, then why not the care of others? Again, you want to differentiate between someone using your body for care and you using your body to give someone care. There are times there is no differentiation--such as caring for children or the mentally disabled. Due to how you have given answers, I assume you’ve never been in that situation and are not speaking from experience when you say things such as “...setting bed times or telling their child to eat their veggies...is not a violation of body autonomy, as long as the child does it of their own free will.”

There are 3 overarching classes that need protection in a well-functioning society: the children, the elderly, and the mentally disabled. Sanger and abortion actively attacks 2 of those classes, which is why I bring up the mentally disabled.

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Post Two:

Again, I’m not a medical expert and neither are you. Let’s get that out of the way. Abortion is when a completely healthy woman walks in to terminate her pregnancy for a non-medical reason. Is it a termination? Yes. Is the mother’s life at risk? No. During a life-saving procedure for the mother, a pregnancy can terminate--either spontaneously due to stress or due to medications or procedures used to save the life of the mother. Is it a termination? Yes. Is the mother’s life at risk? Yes. Do you see the difference? The definition won’t have intent because it’s defining the actual event, not the emotion-driven logic behind the decision. When a woman gets an abortion, there is always an intent, a reason, for it. Whether that be her own intention or someone else forcing her to have an abortion, there is always a reason women get an abortion. During a life-saving procedure, there is no intent to terminate the pregnancy. The medical field has created safer medications and procedures to use during pregnancy to specifically reduce the chance of a termination. This has no intent--the woman’s life is at risk and must seek treatment and caution is made to keep the pregnancy.

In a sterile, event-only definition, are they both terminations? Yes. Bring the world into focus and you see the intent is the overriding factor in both.

If you can find me one doctor who isn’t pro-life, that says a save the life abortion isn’t abortion, I would be surprised.

...you want to hear a non pro-life doctor say a life-saving procedure termination isn’t an abortion? I’ll just look at my Rolodex... I actually live near a major medical center and several hospitals so once restrictions are lifted, I’ll try to see what I can do. I will commit to doing this for you as far as they allow me.

I actually don’t notice how the pro-life argument has more science backing it, if you or anyone could point it out that would be nice.

It’s because I’m the one posting sources backing my claims and using actual science to make any assertions.

Honestly I find the pro-life arguments reductionistic.

That’s an interesting statement. The pro-life stance is all life has value, life begins at conception, and you can’t kill that life. I guess in a way it would seem reductionistic if you have to go through a flowchart to determine the value of someone and whether that lines up with the latest definitions at the time.

I’m going to hazard a guess here, let me know how accurate I am? You were raised in an environment in which you believe your body autonomy was routinely broken. You didn’t want to do something (go to bed, brush your teeth, eat veggies, take a bath/shower, etc) but your parents/guardians made you do it anyway. Because you believe you were forced to do things you didn’t want to do, you believe children should have the right to choose to make their own decisions. This thought process has carried you through to your 17 or 19 years of life when you discovered the concept of “body autonomy” and now body autonomy rules all. It’s the ultimate decision maker for you. Am I anywhere close to what happened?

Quick semi-related question: do you believe men should be forced into fatherhood? If women have the choice to choose motherhood, should fathers have the choice to choose fatherhood?

More links because you asked for them: aclj.org Think ACLU but actually doing good. Pro-Life Action League - former abortion providers Born-Alive Abortion Survivors (pt 1) Born-Alive Abortion Survivors (pt 2) - Gianna Jessen - saline abortion survivor - Claire Culwell - survived the abortion that killed her twin - Josiah Presley - survived an abortion at 2 months - Ana Rosa Rodriguez - survived a 32-week abortion - Heidi Huffman - survived a 10 week abortion - Brandi Lozier - survived a saline abortion - Sarah Brown - survived an abortion that left her with brain damage and blind. Died at 5 years old due to complications of the abortion. - Carrie Fischer - survived an abortion that left her disfigured and with health problems. Feminists for Life - pro-life feminists March for Life - the largest pro-life event around the world Life Institute - pro-life group around the world

So...I might have gone a little overboard? But you wanted more links...

Hope all is well with you! Stay safe, friend :)

#sorry it's taken so long #my thoughts #abortion #prolife

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septembersung · 5 years

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They say abortion is a women’s choice, however it seems to me many women choose abortion because they feel they don’t have any other choice. They are pressured by angry parents, unsupportive partners, persistent doctors, and well-meaning friends to terminate a pregnancy that will supposedly make life hard, or unbearable, for themselves and their unborn child. When presented with only horrific ‘what ifs’, a woman can feel that choosing to give birth to her child is worse than ending his or her life.

If you are faced with an unplanned or high-risk pregnancy, or your unborn child has been diagnosed with a disability, and you feel abortion is your only option, I encourage you to talk to women who’ve walked in your shoes and can give you a better perspective than the doctors, family members and friends who, while claiming to care about your best interests, have never actually raised a child alone on government assistance, held a child who died shortly after birth, cared for a child with cerebral palsy, lived life with a physical disability, or ended a high risk pregnancy via induction or C-section.

Don’t rely on people who can only present you with grim statistics and possible outcomes. Don’t allow the angry or inconvenienced to tell you what’s in your best interests. Find out for yourself. Don’t be afraid of doing this hard thing. You don’t have to walk this road alone; so many of us have been there before. You may upset the doctor, your boyfriend, your parents, your boss, but it’s your body, your choice and you have the right to keep your baby and piss off as many people as you want in the process. Call upon those of us who’ve gone before you- who’ve been pressured to abort a child, who’ve been shamed, and abandoned. We will support your choice because everyday we see how choosing life has improved our lives and that of our child. None of us thought we could do it; we had doubts, fears, wondering about those horrible what ifs, but now we’re all here on the other side and we can tell you we’d do it again in a heartbeat.

During one of my first interviews on The Jen Fulwiler radio show, Jen asked for my opinion on a piece she’d heard about a women who terminated her pregnancy because she learned her unborn son would have Spina Bifida. The woman’s husband was concerned the child would have an unsatisfying or nonexistent sex life, and so she had an abortion. Angry and astonished, I quickly blurt out, “Did this couple ever consider talking to anyone with Spina Bifida?!” All I could think of was my friend, a woman with Spina Bifida who uses a wheelchair, who is happily married with a son. To think, this couple denied themselves a child based on their preconceived views on what life with Spina Bifida would be like, rather than actually learning about it from someone with the disease. Don’t deny yourself the gift of a child just because the package or circumstances don’t look exactly the way you expected.

Let me personally introduce you to women who’ve been single moms, teen moms, and to children and adults living happy lives with the diagnosis your unborn child has (like Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Cerebral Palsy and more). I know parents who’ve said goodbye to their children after only a few hours or days and have no regrets (and they’re not alone). I know women who, due to their own medical complications, gave birth much sooner than expected, and those who know the NICU inside and out. I can introduce you to the families who’ve adopted the children of unplanned pregnancies and the open relationships they have with the birth mothers.

Let me connect you to resources like Good Counsel Homes, and help you fill out the paperwork required to get WIC, food stamps, welfare or other public assistance. Let me provide you with love and support, and if you wish, tell you how to put your child up for adoption and introduce you to agencies so you can learn how it works. Or I will help you find childcare, arrange transportation, and help you fight your employer if they discriminate against you.

Prolifers, this is our job; not to simply say “Don’t have an abortion! Abortion is bad!” but to actively provide the alternative solutions- whether it be through sharing our stories and experiences and connecting struggling moms with resources to learn more; or by giving assistance to those who want to choose life for their babies but are alone in their decision to do so.

This post is not me simply waxing poetic. I will personally help you. Email me and I will connect you with a woman you can talk to about your specific pregnancy issue. It is almost impossible that the situation you find yourself in has not been experienced by someone else. I personally know women who’ve come through all the situations listed above, and I will connect them to you. I will help you find the resources in your area if you need a doctor or government assistance. If you need an adoptive family, I volunteer mine! but I can also point you to agencies that can help you set up a plan to place your child. If you’re a reader who is willing to do the same for other women, get the word out. Share that you’re a person a women in crisis can come to for help so no one needs to feel alone if they want to choose life for their baby.

Only when no one feels the need to choose abortion, will we have succeeded as a prolife movement.

#pro life #abortion #crisis pregnancy #feminism #catholic feminism #anti abortion

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Best Books of 2020

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In 2020, we needed good stories more than ever: To escape, even for a little while. To subvert and question the status quo. And to remind us of the joys of being human. The books listed below fall into one, some, or all of the above categories. We had our contributors select the stories that meant the most to them this year and polled you the reader to compile a subjective yet comprehensive list of some of the year’s best. Here are the books, organized by genre, that broke through the cacophony to mean something to our Den of Geek contributors—and to you—this year…

Quick note before we begin: Like many other areas of the media industry and economy, the independent bookstore industry was hit hard by the lockdown caused by the pandemic, as more people than ever flocked to Amazon to get their reading fix. If you are inspired to purchase any of the titles we gush about below, consider using Bookshop.org or other sites that support independent bookstores (especially Black-owned ones) to do so. They need your help more than ever!

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Best Horror Books of 2020

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic was the buzziest release of the summer – and with good reason. Her lush prose, descriptive settings and disturbing plot combine for one of the most compelling – and likely uncomfortable – reads you’ll experience this year. (If you love mushrooms, I’m really sorry in advance.)

Set in 1950s Mexico, the novel follows the story of the vibrant debutante Noemi, who must journey to a remote mountain village to check up on an ailing cousin, whose mysterious husband keeps insisting she’s mad. If you’ve ever read any Gothic literature before, you know many of the beats that come next: The isolated manor, the creepy servants, the dark dreams, the gaslighting, and the constant sense of rising dread. There’s even a cruel housekeeper that could give Mrs. Danvers more than a run for her money.

Moreno-Garcia uses nearly every conceivable Gothic trope to her advantage, telling a familiar tale whose often predictable elements still somehow manage to feel fresh and new. This is largely due to the deft way that the author weaves the political and the fantastical together, reckoning with larger issues such as racism, British colonization and Mexico’s fraught history with eugenics. A good story, well told, with more going on beneath the surface than one might expect.

– Lacy Baugher

Devolution by Max Brooks

World War Z author Max Brooks takes on Bigfoot in this excellent eco horror which comes with added resonance during a pandemic. Like in his zombie bestseller, Brooks approaches the story as if it were real—it’s the novel equivalent of a found footage tale with the events that befall the residents of isolated eco community Greenloop documented in the diary of our protagonist Kate. Greenloop is a remote idyll of smart homes powered by sunlight and waste and controlled by phones and tablets where deliveries arrive via drone, but when the eruption of active volcano Mt Rainier cuts them off from the rest of the country the groups survival skills are tested. The trouble is, most members of this wealthy community don’t have any. And that’s before the family of sasquatches turn up…

This is a violent, vibrant horror with carefully drawn characters and an escalating sense of dread. Though there is humour here Brooks manages to make the Bigfoot group scary rather than faintly ridiculous, while the mirroring of the devolving eco society and the rise in power and confidence of their feral counterparts is handled skillfully. Intercut with interviews and real life stories of broken boundaries between man and wildlife it’s a cautionary tale that tells us never to underestimate nature, be wary of an over reliance on technology and that humans have animal instincts too.

– Rosie Fletcher

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

Tremblay completed his infection horror Survivor Song long before the pandemic hit but the novel is unsettlingly prescient. An outbreak of a deadly and fast acting strain of rabies has swept the country. Citizens are told to isolate at home while hospital staff are vastly overstretched and are put at risk due to a shortage of proper PPE. But when Doctor Ramola hears that her very pregnant best friend Natalie has been bitten by an infected human she’ll do anything in her power to help deliver the baby safely.

This is an incredibly poignant road trip novel, of sorts, which takes place over just a few hours. It’s a love letter to friendship, an anti-fairytale and a careful character study drenched in Tremblay’s characteristic ‘sad horror’. One ‘interlude’ section, which features characters from Tremblay’s earlier work A Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, is so utterly devastating you’ll want a biscuit and an episode of Schitt’s Creek just to get over it. If Tremblay’s A Headful of Ghosts was his take on the possession subgenre, Survivor Song would fall loosely into the zombie category, though it’s likely to be the most gorgeous and literary zombie novel you’ll read all year.

– Rosie Fletcher

Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Despite the slightly twee title, Hendrix’ latest is an evocative and often very frightening tale of a small town terrorized by a violent outsider. Based in the same world as his coming of age masterpiece My Best Friends’ Exorcism this tale is set in the 90s and focuses on the mothers of the small Southern town of Charlston: bored housewives whose work is often denigrated and overlooked.

At the centre is Patricia, who spends her time looking after a senile mother-in-law, almost grown kids and an ungrateful husband. She, along with neighbourhood friends, forms a book group who discuss true crime stories which provide handy knowledge and insight when Patricia begins to suspect handsome stranger James Harris is up to no good. Charleston is where Hendrix grew up so he paints the town vividly and with affection while acknowledging the oppressiveness felt by the women there, and the systematic racism experienced by the black community, whose children are disappearing and who are not being taken seriously.

Across his work from Horrorstor, My Best Friend’s Exorcism to We Sold Our Souls, Hendrix has proven excellent at writing women and girls. It’s no different here, where the Southern mums of Charleston are heroic and fearsome and their friendship is all powerful – if anyone can take on a vampire it’s them.

– Rosie Fletcher

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

This extraordinary debut by Sims is a both a multi-genre anthology and an overarching haunted house story. Centred around the mysterious Banyan Court, a housing complex consisting of a thirteen storey luxury high rise and the poorly built and utterly decrepit affordable housing unit hidden behind it, the book introduces us to various residents or people connected to Banyan Court, each of whom receives a mysterious invite to a dinner party on the top floor hosted by the strange and reclusive billionaire who owns the complex. At the end of this party, we are told, the billionaire will plummet 13 storeys to his death, and none of the guests will have any recollection of what happened.

This is a very smart first book, showcasing Sims’ talent in a range of different horror styles and bringing multiple voices without ever feeling overcrowded. There’s the eerie tale of a little girl and her imaginary friend, who might not be as imaginary as you think, the loyal door man and his violent alter ego competing for supremacy and the art dealer who becomes obsessed with a strange painting. Characters interweave in pleasing ways building to a grotesque but satisfying denouement which ties all the stories together. Sims is an exciting new voice in horror who is definitely one to watch.

– Rosie Fletcher

If It Bleeds by Stephen King – READERS’ CHOICE

The people have spoken!

Stephen King is not only one of the greatest writers of his generation but also one of the most prolific, and nigh a year goes by in which at least one of his stories—either new or adapted—isn’t in the cultural conversation. This year, it was If It Bleeds, a well-rounded horror collection of four previously unpublished stories, including one that features King universe character The Outsider‘s Holly Gibney (in the story that gives the book its name). The novellas revisit many of King’s most popular themes, from supernatural cell phones to the cost of creativity, and manage to feel both modern and nostalgic at the same time. If It Bleeds hit bookshelves in April and, in the midst of the real-life horror that was the pandemic, the continued killings of Black Americans by police officers, and the American presidential election cycle, King gave us something gloriously fictional to be afraid of. Whether you’re a longtime King fan or have never read anything by the horror master, If It Bleeds is well worth your time.

– Kayti Burt

Best Science Fiction Books of 2020

Riot Baby – Tochi Onyebuchi

One of 2020’s most incisive works packed more power into a novella than a book thrice its size; and while its particular story has a dystopian feel, it is actually keenly of the moment: not just the current protests against incarceration and police brutality, but the vicious and violent cycles that imprison, murder, or otherwise cut short Black lives. In an NPR interview at the start of the year when Riot Baby was published, Onyebuchi discussed how well-meaning white people talk about broken systems, when instead Riot Baby concerns “a system working just as designed.” That is, a system that cannot be overturned except possibly by superpowered means—and even then, not always easily.

Ella has a Thing, an otherworldliness to her that allows her to glimpse the fates, positive and negative, of those around her; to astrally project across the country and into others’ minds; to control unimaginable forces. But she can’t break her brother Kev (the “riot baby” of the title, born during the 1992 Los Angeles riots) out of Rikers Island. She can’t stop him from getting arrested in the first place, struggling as an adolescent not to transmute her rage into her powers and hurt those she loves, even as her baby brother is targeted for the color of his skin.

That tension and futility drive this slim account of not just their lives, but of the Black experience, projecting back to the roots of their family tree and forward to the authoritarian near-future in which Kev struggles to build the foundation of the rest of his life. Riot Baby is brutal, but it still nurtures hope—and it’s a necessary read for well-meaning white people like me.

– Natalie Zutter

Star Wars: Shadow Fall – Alexander Freed

This might seem like an odd pick, as it’s the second in a tie-in trilogy, and not particularly accessible if you haven’t read the previous book. But I’m true to myself. This was certainly one of my favorite books of 2020, with the caveat that sometimes favorite means “heavy enough that it, artfully, made me extremely miserable.”

It’s not what you might expect from the generic title. I’m often fascinated by genre writers who try to tackle writing about aimlessness in genre, whether that be slacker heroes or the existential ennui faced by Alphabet Squadron between spaceship gun fights. It’s such a plot-heavy genre that writing about questlessness sounds very hard. And Shadow Fall has done that magic trick. To quote my own tweet, this book is about people who act on mistaken assumptions and concoct entire non-existent relationships in their heads and hurt themselves in fugue states. All of the relationships are intense, but splintered and sideways all the time. Each character is their own carefully defined brand of amoral and brittle. I’ve rarely seen awkwardness portrayed so well in a book without the story itself coming off as edgy and misanthropic.

It’s also a good adventure story, with set-piece battles, a mysterious cult, and a genuinely surprising take on how the Force works from a series that isn’t at all about Jedi. Start with the first book, Alphabet Squadron, don’t mind that title either, and make sure you have some calming tea ready.

– Megan Crouse

Sex Criminals Vol. 6: Six Criminals by Matt Fraction + Chip Zdarsky

Really, this is celebrating the end of Image Comics’ raunchy-yet-surprisingly-heartfelt series about Suze and Jon, who find out they share the same gift: Their orgasms stop time. So, of course, they start robbing banks—only to discover that it’s not just them with this gift, winding up on the lam from the Sex Police. But rather than treat this audacious premise like a fleeting dirty joke, Fraction and Zdarsky built out a deceptively simple metaphor into a thought-provoking exploration of lust-versus-love, money and class, the chasm between finding someone who “gets” you in the bedroom but not outside of it. With cheek and heart, they boiled all this down to Suze’s refrain of “This fucking guy” that makes me tear up every time I read it.

And it wasn’t all just bodily fluids and dangly bits—Sex Criminals also consistently delighted in pushing its own envelope in all things meta. Drawing in post-it notes to obscure the Queen lyrics they couldn’t get the rights to for a scene they’d already drawn; a sequence in which huge dialogue bubbles physically knock extras out of the way; even turning Fraction’s anxiety attack about writing a key scene between two female characters into its own mini-comic—this team often turned their probing gaze on themselves.

In the Sex Criminals universe, robbing banks was small potatoes, foreplay even—the final volume ascends beyond the initial crime, transforming into a treatise on grief and time and retreating into memory. As the final issue posits, take any significant moment between two people and you have to expand the frame, to look at every single other person who brought these two together, whether for a one-night stand or “to have and to hold.”

In fittingly 2020 fashion, the series concludes bittersweetly, but the final moments come back full circle to where the series started: wanting to prolong that particular pocket of time and space in which it’s just you and your person, the rest of the world be damned.

Yet Sex Criminals’ greatest legacy is that it’s not the last comic to delve into the intersections of sexuality and science fiction. Vault Comics’ Money Shot, from Sarah Beattie and Tim Seeley, is a clear successor with its story of underfunded scientists having sex with alien species in order to subsidize their interstellar teleportation research. As another series about copulating to undermine capitalism, Money Shot carries on the horny torch that Fraction and Zdarsky lit way back in 2013.

– Natalie Zutter

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Queer western speculative fiction. Need we say more? Sarah Gailey, author of Magic for Liars, is back with an all-too-brief tale of Librarians, the only truly free women in this version of the American west, and Esther, a stowaway escaping her small town and plenty of secrets. Nothing is as it seems, including those running the book wagon – one’s a trans guy with they/them pronouns who must masquerade as a woman for his own safety whenever authorities or other prying eyes are near.

While the noir of Magic for Liars made that world feel inevitably dark, Upright has a more hopeful outlook and a wide-open setting that feels full of possibilities, even as the Librarians make their way delivering books in the kind of dystopian setting you might find in The Handmaid’s Tale or The Grace Year. In a year so full of doom, the Librarians are capable and even swashbuckling in their adventures, teaching our newcomer narrator and maybe even making her swoon with their swagger.

– Delia Harrington

The Resisters by Gish Jen

In AutoAmerica, a not-so-distant future where everything is connected to artificial intelligence and the have-nots are meant to be good consumers and nothing more, a young Black-Asian woman with a gift for pitching baseball becomes the eye of the storm when her country decides to bring back the national pastime and compete in the Olympics.

Come for the underground baseball league, stay for the sly pop culture references. The world is built out so fully that the inevitable movie or limited series version of The Resisters might even be better than the book – blasphemy, I know, but so many concepts and kinds of tech are dropped in that a showrunner and crew would have a field day bringing to life.

It’s rare these days for a man to narrate spec fiction, and he certainly has the least interesting story here, but perhaps he has the best vantage point to admire his talented wife and daughter, the former a lawyer who repeatedly takes on Aunt Nettie, a defiant nickname for the government-backed AI who runs their lives, and the latter, a young woman who was raised in a defiant household, whom he hopes won’t fall for the allure of Aunt Nettie’s promises.

– Delia Harrington

Best Fantasy Books of 2020

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

In a year where we are all struggling with how we feel about Harry Potter and its complicated legacy, Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education has arrived to offer us an entirely different and thoroughly exciting magical boarding school tale. The first in a trilogy dubbed “The Scholomance” after the magical school at which it takes place, the story is sort of like Harry Potter’s dark twin, featuring a difficult female heroine, a unique magical system, and a very dark take on the world of teen magicians. (Plus, it features the sort of effortless, matter-of-fact diversity that more authors – both YA and adult – should emulate.)

Galadriel “El” Higgins is a powerful, potential dark sorceress in her junior year at the Scholomance. Here, students must fight for their lives from the moment of their admission against the horrifying monsters known as malificaria that roam the school halls trying to eat them on their way to class and graduation is simply a test of who can escape a roomful of the largest and deadly creatures in the school. El is powerful enough that she could probably wipe out all of them on her own, but she refuses to embrace her natural affinity for dark, potentially world-destroying spells – no matter how many of her fellow students think she already has. Novik’s prose is as propulsive and fun to read as ever (consider this an additional, belated plug for her icy fantasy Spinning Silver) and A Deadly Education manages to put a fresh spin on what otherwise might feel like a staid, overdone setting. From its prickly heroine to the very real stakes that surround her classmates – most literally won’t live through final exercises – there’s so much here that feels unexpected and new. The sequel cannot come fast enough.

– Lacy Baugher

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

It’s rare that a story truly feels like magic, but such is the case with Alix E. Harrow’s lush and enchanting The Once and Future Witches. Part period piece, part celebration of sisterhood, and part feminist manifesto, the story is a love letter to women of all kinds, everywhere.

Set in an alternate version of America in the late nineteenth century when witching of all kinds is banned, this is a story about three sisters finding their voices and staking a claim to their own futures. It is also about accidentally summoning a magical tower and returning witchcraft to the world, healing the rifts between sisters and exposing the cracks between people who claim to want justice, but who actively work to oppress others. And it is about the power of community – the great things that can happen when women honestly see one another, support one another, acknowledge the challenges inherent in saying yes to help, and work together to make the world a better place. Isolation is dangerous, both for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and this is a novel that will make you want to call your personal coven and thank them for being there when you needed them.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters and they starred in a remarkable book, full of fairytales and folklore and old stories made new. In 2020, perhaps more so than ever, the idea of once and future resonates more strongly than it ever has before, the people we were and are, and what we might become – but only if we hold on to each other along the way.

– Lacy Baugher

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Multi-perspective fantasy novels are all the rage right now, but Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter is truly something special. Not only does it deftly weave what initially seems like five separate stories together into something powerful and thrilling, the novel contains precisely the sort of compelling characters and rich worldbuilding that make this genre so much fun to read in the first place.

The first installment in the “Drowning Empire” trilogy, The Bone Shard Daughter is set in a sixteenth-century kingdom comprised of migrating islands that float through something called the Endless Sea. A story of empire and identity as much as it is a story of magic, the book at first follows Lin, the heir to the throne of Phoenix Empire, or, she will be as soon as she has proven she can properly use bone shard magic.

It’s this central magical system that makes this book so compelling – it involves commands being etched on pieces of human bones harvested from the general public in annual trepanning ceremonies, which are then used to power “constructs,” chimaera-like beings cobbled together out of various animal parts. If that wasn’t creepy enough, these shards literally drain the life energy from their doners to keep the constructs alive, a sort of human battery system that is horrifying to witness. (Especially when it appears that many of the more complex constructs have something like sentience of their own.)

Creepy and thoughtful, The Bone Shard Daughter grabs your attention from its opening lines, dumping you in a complex tale with lots of moving pieces that only gets messier as it goes on, and expects readers to keep up. For those who can manage it, it’s more than worth the journey. (And did I mention there’s a magical aquatic cat?)

– Lacy Baugher

The City We Became – N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin is a master of fantasy world-building, and she turns that eye to the real world in an unsubtle, masterful New York City under attack by lovecraftian horrors. Funny, weird plot twists abound. This book starts with someone screaming on top of a roof, beautiful mystical singing from his point of view, and a neighbor yelling at him to shut up. There’s a musical beat through the whole thing, and all the ways that music can be added to or enhanced by the city noises all around it.

Along with living in the city herself, Jemisin meticulously researched its history and quirks. She’s great at digging into detail, but also knows when to go broad, adding pop culture and references that seem obvious in hindsight but not too goofy to maintain the tone of the story. It’s fast-paced, especially toward the end.

This is distinctly a novel for today, talking about racial tension from a variety of perspectives, and addressing the kind of harassment that comes with those conversations. It’s a snapshot for what’s been talked about on Twitter, what’s being talked about in art galleries and publishing houses. And it’s a snapshot of the city — kind and cruel, raucous and serene. It probably helps that part of this book made me feel some rare home state pride.

– Megan Crouse

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood

The Unspoken Name by K.A. Larkwood sets itself apart in two major ways: its setting and its characters. Priestess Csorwe is fated to be sacrificed to the eldritch god her people worship. But when she’s rescued from that fate with a wizard with ambitions of taking over a kingdom, she becomes a servant to a different master entirely — and has the chance to become far more than a sword-wielding minion. (There’s some cool sword-wielding too.)

Surrounding her are people motivated by power, ambition, the unknown, the experience of living always in the shadow of the unknown and their sense of what is known becoming askew because of it. It’s about emotional abuse and people who want things and people they shouldn’t and can’t have. At the core is Csorwe, refreshingly straightforward but wonderfully complex in her own way.

This story plays out in a world the author describes as an “eerie hyperspace labyrinth” that also does great things with some more familiar, but under-explored fantasy elements like flying ships and orcs. Full of strange magic and fascinating creatures, it’s truly inventive. The world may have orcs and elves, but it never feels derivative of the fantasy greats. In more ways than one, this is a book that exemplifies what secondary-world fantasy can be in 2020.

– Megan Crouse

Wicked as You Wish by Rin Chupeco

It’s a rare thing when I encounter a novel that feels as though it’s written exactly for me. The first time this happened to me was when I (belatedly) read American Gods. Wicked as You Wish is the second book I’ve ever picked up where I immediately felt as though I were the target audience, and the story was just for me.

The story opens with the budding friendship between Tala Makiling Warnock, a girl who can nullify magic, and Alexei Tsarevich, heir to the throne of Avalon, in hiding after a terrible spell froze his kingdom. The Makilings are allies and protectors of the throne of Avalon, and Tala’s family is dedicated to keeping Alex safe—at least until his sixteenth birthday, when the Firebird will arrive and help him come into his powers. But the Snow Queen of Beira, Avalon’s enemy, is eager to finish the war she started, and Alex is keeping secrets of his own.

Rin Chupeco’s world draws on mythological and literary traditions including Wonderland, Oz, and Tala’s Filipino magical heritage, blending them into world building that’s contemporary and relevant (there’s a scene with ICE—at the behest of the Snow Queen facing off against Tala’s immigrant family). And while the book is marketed as YA and would certainly appeal to that audience with it’s predominantly teenaged cast, Chupeco’s sophisticated third-person omniscient narration gives readers insight into the motivations of the adults, who come through as strong leading characters as well. It’s an incredibly smart fantasy novel, and if it requires a little work to keep up with the worldbuilding and twists the story takes, it is absolutely worth the effort. The next book in the series cannot come out soon enough.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon Ha Lee is better known for writing stories in space than fantasy, but based on his blending of space and mythology in his middle grade novel, The Dragon Pearl, I’d been looking to his first fantasy novel. I was not disappointed. Phoenix Extravagant follows Jebi, a non-binary painter trying to succeed in an occupied nation; when trying to assimilate gets them thrown out of their house by their sister, and fails to get them a well-paying job they’d applied for, Jebi’s at a loss. Jebi has no desire to work at the Ministry of Armor, aiding the war effort that continues to oppress their people by painting the magical commands for automata. But the Minister leaves Jebi no choice: join, or their sister—who, unknown to Jebi, is a revolutionary—will pay the price.

Jebi’s gift for painting allows them to communicate with a dragon automata, who was painted with pacifist instructions, and the two make plans to escape the conflict all together. Lee’s story tackles themes comparable to Peter Tieryas’s “United States of Japan” trilogy and Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, especially in the way both of those series look at ideas of assimilation and the justice—or injustice—of dues one pays to their government. Lee gives no clear moral answers in the tale—Jebi’s sister seems to prioritize revolution over family, Jebi’s lover has killed people Jebi cares about, and the antagonist may have valid reasons for his evil plots—and that’s part of what makes the story so compelling to navigate. The novel is planned as a standalone, but I’d love to read more set in this world.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Reading Black Sun was like opening a new door in my mind. This is an epic fantasy series opener, and a lot of the tropes are familiar, but they’re all presented with different structure and framework–enough so that the novel feels like something entirely new. The story centers on Serapio’s journey to the homeland of his mother, where a bloody destiny awaits him; the efforts of Sun Priestess Naranpa to revolutionize her priesthood and make them more relevant as true servants uplifting the people of her city; and Xiala a ship captain whose supernatural origins make her both feared and targeted, but whose earthy attitude grounds the story. While Naranpa and Serapio are set up by the cosmology to be enemies, Roanhorse depicts them both so sympathetically that readers will hope for both of them to survive–and thrive–despite whatever fate has in store for them.

Roanhorse draws on indigenous American and Polynesian cultural and physical geography, which makes the world feel rich and new in a genre that has traditionally drawn on classical or feudal Europe for its influences. Using language that tends toward poetic, she plays with time, so that the narrative moves backward and forward around the events rather than in a linear fashion, which means the reveals of the narrative come not as the story progresses, but as readers progress through the story. Don’t be surprised to see this one on all the award lists in 2021.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

A girl makes a deal with the devil to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. It’s the kind of premise a book could coast on, but V.E. Schwab has never been a coaster. From the very beginning of her career, the 33-year-old fantasy author has elevated engaging plot with unforgettable prose, resulting in stories that stick with their readers long after the book has been closed.

With The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, the story is a particularly ambitious one: spanning 300 years, from 18th century France to modern New York City, we follow Addie as she learns how to live an existence in which she cannot hold a job, cannot rent an apartment, cannot have relationships. “We tell these immortality tales of men where all of a sudden they’re immortal and it’s just like, go get rich, go have fun, go have 100 mistresses and just sleep your way through eternity,” Schwab told Den of Geek earlier this year. “But women would never have that option.”

But this is not just Addie’s story. It also belongs to Henry, the only person Addie meets in three centuries who can remember her. Henry is a millennial living in New York, living with mental illness. In a story whose only other two main characters are an immortal woman and a devil, Henry is our human.

Ultimately, like so many of Schwab’s books, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is not quite what you expected: romantic and Romantic, modern yet classic, Addie was one of the unforgettable books of 2020.

Best Young Adult Books of 2020

Ruthless Gods by Emily Duncan

Emily Duncan’s “Something Dark and Holy” trilogy is everything YA fiction is not supposed to be: Dark, frightening, unsettling, and very, very bloody. Its second installment, Ruthless Gods, is a complex tale of war, betrayal, and heartbreak – a story that is not particularly hopeful, gory in a way this genre is rarely allowed to be, and populated by heroes who are often anything but.

The novel follows three lead characters: Nadya, a young mystic who talks to gods but can no longer hear them; Serefin, a king whose country has long been at war with Nadya’s and whose life and consciousness are no longer entirely his own; and Malachiasz, a deeply disturbed boy who either wants to destroy the gods, become one himself, or something in between. Over the course of the story, their lives become intertwined on what feels like a cosmic level, as politics, religion and the very survival of humanity collide.

Duncan’s prose is rich and lush, full of gorgeous descriptions of eldritch nightmares and frightening visions, with a fair amount of body horror thrown on top. For YA fans, this is a series that is unlike most anything else you’ve encountered this year.

– Lacy Baugher

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

There aren’t a lot of books I read this year that captured the feel of 2020 as well as The Sound of Stars. There’s no pandemic in this book, but the alien invasion that results in humans being locked inside their apartment buildings, unable to socialize, their normal lives taken from them because the world outside just isn’t the same? I’m sure Dow never intended that to be a metaphor, but it worked for me!

The title takes its name from a fictional album performed by fictional band The Starry Eyed, whose media presence before the alien invasion provides a framework for the book. The story centers on Ellie, a black girl determined to help her human community escape through the illegal borrowing of books, and M0Rr1S (Morris), an Ilori labmade, responsible for vaccinating humanity to prepare Earth for Ilora habitation. Morris, unlike other Ilori, is emotional, and loves music; immediately Ellie intrigues him with her bravery and willingness to risk everything for the sake of stories. When he enlists her to steal hidden music for him, their uneasy friendship begins, and as the stakes get higher, Ellie and Morris travel across the country on a mission to save humanity.

The story is fantastical and earnest and hopeful, and it was especially wonderful to experience in the audio production, which featured two excellent voice actors telling the story of stories and music and love.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

“I know the exact moment of inspiration for [Cemtery Boys],” Aiden Thomas told Den of Geek about his YA debut. “[A Tumblr writing prompt asked], ‘What would you do if you summoned a ghost and you couldn’t get rid of it?’ And you see people commenting and stuff and they’re like, ‘Oh, this super spooky, scary thing.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but what if he was cute?'”

Cemetery Boys is not only breaking new ground when it comes to explorations of trans identity and Latinx culture, it’s also a delightful read. The story of Yadriel, a trans teen boy determined to prove himself a brujo to his traditional Latinx family, Cemetery Boys has the best inciting incident: Trying to get answers about his cousin’s mysterious death, Yadriel attempts to summon the ghost of his cousin. Instead, he summons the (cute) ghost of school “bad boy” Julian. Julian has some questions of his own he’s looking to answer and, when he refuses to leave, Yadriel’s mission gets a little more complicated… especially once Yadriel realizes he might not want Julian to go.

Romantic and hilarious, sweet and suspenseful, Cemetery Boys has so much to fall in love with: from its diverse cast of characters to its vibrant and complex world. Thomas wrote the novel, in part, so that young, marginalized readers would have a story not only to escape into but also “where they see themselves as being incredibly powerful, supported, but very importantly, being loved.” Cemetery Boys is a gift to us all, and a reminder of what is possible when the still far-too-inaccessible publishing industry lets more people in.

“No, it wasn’t the end. It was a better beginning.”

Best Non-Genre Books of 2020

The Darling Killers by Sarah McCarry

Over the summer, mere weeks into lockdown and in the phase of the pandemic where it felt like you couldn’t trust anyone or anything outside of your precarious bubble, author Sarah McCarry began serializing her latest novel The Darling Killers via a weekly Substack newsletter. The sparklingly clever title tells you plenty, but in short, it’s a female-perspective Talented Mr. Ripley by way of Los Angeles’ glittery world of young adult authors whose mastery over words has earned them obsessive fandoms and access to the endless party life.

In the style of the best thrillers, this lush novel provided the perfect escapism as antiheroine Sofia Bencivenga arrives in LA and immediately falls in with a trio of talented, haunted writers: ethereal Alison, bitchy Judith, and charismatic Jaxson. Sofia goes from shadowing their weekly writing dates to conning her way into emerging-writer status, but when Alison dies under suspicious circumstances at one of Jaxson’s fabulous parties, Sofia has to pause in her pursuit of vicariously living through Alison’s life to consider its dangerous flipside.

It would have been enough for the book to skewer the particular cult of YA author celebrity, to mock how every supporting character nurses their own dreams of writing—or at least acting out—The Great American Novel. But McCarry also gets to the heart of yearning to create worlds and characters, the ache of writing-as-processing, the thrill of trying on other stories and lives—she grabs that heart out of your chest and shows it back to you, thumping obscenely but recognizably. Back when the rest of 2020 stretched out ahead of us, especially uncertain, waking up to each installment every Tuesday morning was one of the few things keeping me looking forward to the next week.

– Natalie Zutter

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read is perhaps the worst misnomer of any book title on this list, and the cover doesn’t help. The lead characters only go to the beach near their adjoining properties once, maybe twice! Emily Henry’s gem lies somewhere between romance and literary fiction, mirroring her characters’ work. In Beach Read, next door neighbors find themselves uncomfortably close – they can see in one another’s windows, when they’re both on the deck they can easily chat at normal volume – and of course their first interaction is fraught.

It doesn’t take long to find out they’re both writers – she, romance; he, literary fiction – and amid an argument about whose work is easier, a challenge to swap genres unfolds. Throughout the heat of the summer they teach one another about their respective genres and open up about their lives. It’s darker than the average romance – he’s writing about a cult where pretty much everyone died; she’s cleaning out her dead father’s home – but if you’re looking for something with adult sex/romance and adult relationships and emotional pitfalls in equal measure, Beach Read has you covered.

– Delia Harrington

Yes, No, Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

In a year when politics was inescapable and inescapably miserable, Yes, No, Maybe So provided political escapism that soothed my soul in the form of a romcom about a state senate race. While the setup might sound contrived – two teens, a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl volunteer to knock on doors together and fall in love – the book itself featured well-drawn characters. Trading off narration by character and corresponding author, we learn about their home lives, friends, hopes and fears, why they’re invested in this race, and how they really feel about one another.

Taking place mostly during Ramadan, the book has some fun easter eggs for veteran canvassers and field staff while doing a decent job explaining some of the inner workings of a state-level campaign for newcomers. Anyone interested in getting more politically active will find numerous examples in the book of how to do so, and it certainly helps that as Jamie and Maya face their respective fears, they make getting involved seem easier to the reader, too. The book is incredibly earnest, tender and sweet, both about politics and their romance, especially under Jamie’s narration, but Maya and their circumstances bring in a dose of realism to help balance things out so it’s not too saccharine.

– Delia Harrington

What were your favorite books of the year? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Best Books of 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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openamenta · 7 years

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some of my favorite fiction with speculative caste systems

I like sci-fi, what can I say?

Brown by Ali Lamenelmi. Her first and only novel, but it’s very polished. People start being born with brown hair sometimes, in every caste. They don’t pass it on to their children, usually; one in ten thousand babies is born brown-haired, and the rate is the same no matter what color hair their parents have. The whole thing is extensively studied, but without much success. They notice that brown-haired people are unusually likely to fit into their birth castes very badly, so they start testing them when they’re a year old to assign a caste. The main character is a brown-haired green studying the phenomenon and most of the character drama in the book is about how, since she was raised by a purple family who didn’t know any greens before they had her, she grew up mostly learning to be purple. She had green classmates but purple friends after school and now she has green coworkers but doesn’t feel like she can connect with them on a personal level. But she’s also, at the same time, getting more and more distant from her family and old friends. It’s really intriguing and goes deep into the benefits that castes would have culturally even if they were made up and arbitrary… which it kind of lightly implies they might be.

Invisible Light, which bright-like-the-sun reviews well here, so I won’t go into too much detail. I do want to add how detailed the worldbuilding is so far. It doesn’t just go into how things are usually supposed to work. It actually goes into what happens to edge cases or if something unexpected happens. What if you have an injury or illness or anything else that makes you less fit for your very, very narrow, individual not-really-caste? It’s not just a matter of finding a different grey job, say, if you’re injured too badly to be a gymnast anymore, and one of the secondary characters deals with that in a very interesting way that I thought was a thoughtful look at how things like that work in the real world. Warning: it’s still a WiP! Maybe wait till summer to read all of it at once.

Blue as a Cloudless Sky, by Tefam Kita, who is a pretty prolific author. I think this book (which is, alas, a standalone) is even better than the Blackout series, which got into kind of a rut with the second and third books. An alternate history, one of the only two non-sci-fi works on this list, where grey aristocracies were able to hold their own and eventually overwhelm several of the more peaceful and trade-oriented blue-led countries. There are three alternating viewpoints: Asani, a yellow secretary for a grey government official; Ina, a young blue refugee whose family is one of a couple of blue families trying to survive all alone in the desert; and Emitil, a purple housekeeper working for the king of one of the houldout blue-led states, who gets approached by an agent of Asani’s country wanting him to spy for them. It’s very intricate but if I had to sum up what it’s about in one word, that word would be “tradeoffs”. It has a more lyrical, poetic tone than Tefam Kita’s other works and it’s more poignant. It goes deep into the characters and how their situations change them, yellows who learn to cover for greys’ weakness in domestic economic policy and have to decide how much to let their own jobs slide to pursue that, blues who grapple with doing manual labor while being worthy of respect and come through changed, canny purples who don’t understand economics but do understand enough to see which countries are better off and make world-changing decisions as well as they can. I really recommend it!

Blackout, also by Tefam Kita, which everyone has heard enough about, I think. I know it’s amazingly overhyped and no one will shut up about it, but it really is great!

Innate, by an anonymous fanfic person on ourpersonalarchive.net (and used to also be on fanfiction.com), which… makes the list partly because it makes me uncomfortable and partly in spite of how uncomfortable I am with it. Part of me wants to call it a cheap gimmick and I kind of object just on principle to spoilers that need content warnings that would also be spoilers. The premise is… I don’t know what to say. I have all the obvious problems with it. But it made me think a lot about castes and… stuff… and in the end I really respect what the writer wanted to do (not exactly agree, but I respect it) and I’m glad I read it. Okay, so, if you need a trigger warning for, let’s just say anything at all, consider this your trigger warning for even just the description. And if you want a spoiler warning, here it is, don’t keep reading, just go look up the fic. So it starts out with this blue walking somewhere unspecified and thinking a lot and watching things. And it turns out the castes have different hair. The soldiers have purple hair, the people who farm and stock store shelves have grey, judges and most government officials have orange… but then it’s revealed that the castes are actually sort of the same. Judges don’t just have orange hair, they are orange because oranges have good people skills and care enough about everyone to be fair to them all. Greys do farm work and heavy lifting because you need to be strong and because it’s sometimes dangerous work and you need to be brave to work around hazardous materials or heavy machinery that could kill you. And meanwhile the narrative cuts in and out of this blue’s life and you start realizing that yeah he’s definitely not doing what our blues do or living like our blues live. He’s a blue so the fic pushes the idea that he’s someone who thinks big-picture about what all of society needs, who understands that sometimes something that looks like a good idea to the masses isn’t, he thinks about how if blues were oranges (if it were like the real world) then he wouldn’t have their problem with feeling bad about other people thinking they’re corrupt or something because as bad as it would feel he would know he was doing something right and important. And then we get to find out about the other… recasteings, purples are in the army and are cops, greys farm and stuff, oranges rule, yellows do science, greens are mostly accountants and programmers… except, our sad blue protagonist isn’t orange. In fact, castes teach their own children in this world! See, there are six castes in their world. No, I mean really, there are actually six and nobody else. Yyyyyyyyyeah. That reveal is about ten thousand words in (the fic is about 80k) and then there’s actual plot about sad blue trying to be an activist. I don’t know how I feel about it, it’s obviously a cheap gimmick but it’s really serious about everything, really philosophical and the writer was clearly going for “think hard about everything we take for granted, if it’s not uncomfortable you’re not digging deep enough” and not “haha what if the blue protagonist was secretly red all along isn’t that gross lol” but it’s kind of inevitable that it turns into the second one a little bit just because how could it possibly ever not.

#amenta rp #submission

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alwaysabeautifullife · 7 years

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What are your thoughts on private vs public adoption agencies? I've been looking for jobs and have been thinking about working in adoption. Private agencies pay better obviously lol

(This is going to be my LEAST popular post) When I first started actually looking into adoption I was looking at all the wrong places. I was looking at adoption agencies, mainly private ones. I was reading stores about how families that had adopted babies or children, how happy and wonderful their lives were to have children because they were infertile or just because they felt called to adopt. I had heard all these wonderful stories from adopted children, how much they loved their parents who adopted them and how grateful they were to have families. It seemed like the perfect, most pure and good thing to do was adopt, especially as a prolife person, some unwanted baby who had escaped the possibility of abortion by people like me who wanted that baby.

A couple years ago I was scrolling on Facebook in my favorite Facebook group, a Catholic Homeschooling group. It was such a good place to go for comfort and prayers, from the daily struggle of being a Catholic Mother and Wife. I felt the urge to pray for some of these women who I considered my friends, and I came across a photo of a beautiful newborn baby with beautiful black skin and thick black hair over his little head, laying in the hospital bed just so tiny. “PRAYER REQUEST” it read. The first few sentences was about the babies health problems, as he was a few weeks premature, but the writer assured us that he would make it, being the strong little guy he is. She gave us a little background, how badly she had been wanting this baby for so long, she had children herself, but had always felt called to adopt. “Over 30,000” she began to explain, she spent on adoption fees and hospital costs! On and on she went. Then came the real prayer request. The biological mother and father wanted to keep the baby. After all this money she spent, after months of preparing the nursery, “he’s already mine” she yelled into the screen and into the many hearts of mothers reading who gasped at the idea of someone tearing their infant from their arms! The post went on about the biological mother and father, who clearly were “unfit” do to their age and financial instability.

“They aren’t able to take care of the baby, the world doesn’t need more thugs and drug addicts, the baby is already yours I will pray immediately that the laws are in your favor have faith!!!” That was the general voice of the over 300 women in the comments. Every single one of them busted out their rosaries and prayed with their whole hearts that this baby would be delivered into the arms of the adopted mother who so clearly loved this baby more than the biological parents, after all, she was the one that paid the hospital fees, the adoption costs, “Tell her she will have to pay back all the fees! That will make her change her mind! She just wants to use the baby to live off the government!!!” More and more similar comments came in.

I sat down myself, saddened by the situation and started to pray. At first I also began to pray that the adopted mother would win the child, but something didn’t feel right.

At what point does someone have the right to take an infant from the arms of their mother? After they have paid 30,000 dollars? After they have had the lawyers for their private adoption agency protect the adopted mother by packet of papers with laws and signatures? After finding out that the biological mother was a poor scared young woman? Who deserves their own child then? By most those terms certainly not me.

For a while I thought this situation was rare. I thought generally most women who gave up their infants were happy, or even grateful their children were adopted by warm wealthy families. I was wrong.

I started researching birth mothers, I listened to their stories, their stories of immense regret, loss, pain that only a woman who’s infant was living but not in her arms could feel. As a mother myself, I can’t even fathom the pain. I mean that from the very moment I hold my child, the bond is something you simply cannot understand unless you are a mother yourself.

See, in government ran agencies there are no lawyers. The primary concern is the best interest of the child, which professionals, psychologists, even our Catholic theology all agree over and over the best interest of the child is it’s biological parents, second choice being other blood relatives. I won’t go into detail on this, you’re welcome to research yourself.

If it was up to me, private adoption agencies would be illegal. That’s right. Illegal. In order for their doors to stay open, they need to make money. Their best interest is NOT for the child, although they may tell themselves that they are doing God’s work by “rescuing” the infant from the arms of a poor teen mom and into the arms of wealthy infertile parents. The fact is, the concern is not for the infant, the mother, or anyone. It’s for the paying customer, and the financial gain for the doors to stay wide open. Most of them with the loving intention of saving babies from abortion, completing families with infertile parents. Women (birth mothers) come to these agencies scared out of their minds, they don’t want an abortion, and they honestly believe (thanks to society) that an unwed mother, a teen, a poor woman, is undeserving of her own child. They go to these agencies and are are coerced. Lawyers work for these companies and are paid big money to work on behalf of the adoption company and the client-the adoption parents. The birth mother has absolutely zero protection herself. These businesses profit by taking children from the wombs scared hopeless young birthmothers and into the arms of paying customers. There is no turning back, once the money is paid, the baby is no longer belongs to the birth mother. At this point she is reduced to as the prochoice people say “an incubator”. We can deny it all you want, but in this business, is she anything else?

Did you know that government agencies almost never have infants available up for adoption? Do you know why? Because they aren’t making any profit adopting children out. They are working for the best interest of the birth parents and the child. Mothers are directed to help, and get the help they need to keep their children, or a biological family member is able to care for the child, because that’s the best interest of the child. The mother is also legally able to have her child returned to her, as long as she is not an addict, or has ever been charged with child abuse. In private adoption, this is absolutely never an option, unless of course the lawyers didn’t cover the company and the adoption parents well enough.

Slowly I began to uncover the real face of most infant-relinquishing adoptions, children desperate to know who they really are, forbidden by laws or their adopted parents to find the mother and father that they were created by to be loved and cared for them. Forbidden to have relationships with their birth parents. Then you see the birth mothers, who morn the loss of their child who’s still alive for the rest of their lives, shamed, guilty, hopeless. Look up their blogs. Read their stories, face their pain.

The worst part is, because this has a lot to do with religious, particularly Christian and prolife groups, we turn our cheeks and close our eyes to the pain. We tell ourselves that it isn’t our problem and we’ve done our part. I don’t believe that, and I’ll stand on whatever side against what is the best interest of both the mother/father and the child. I’ll never choose one or the other. And never on the side of profit, especially profit off human beings.

There was a story my priest told me about the importance in our Catholic faith about the relationship between a mother and child, being as were Catholics and we don’t dismiss the importance of Mary in the life of Christ like other Christians might. He said in Yakima there were many Latino immigrants who were there illegally, and were being deported. The problem is, the children they had, one in particular only days old, were legal citizens of the United States. In situations like this the children are actually forced to remain in the Untied States as citizens. The Bishop of Yakima, stepped in, firmly planted in the truth that a child should never be separated for a mother. The children were then able to be processed, released, and returned to the parents.

If we look at Mother Mary, a teen, unmarried (betrothed, but unmarried), she would probably be deemed an “unfit” mother by our society. We gasp in horror when prochoice people say heinous things about Mary aborting Christ, but we would support Christ being raised by any other woman than the Mother of Christ?

Why are we okay with signs at clinics where scared women go to have abortions that read, “don’t kill your baby we want it!” Why are we so obsessed with “choose adoption!!!”

Where is the rally for the “alternative” true and holy nature of keeping a mother with her children? Why is adoption seen as the solution to abortion? There are programs in place to help these women, in our country how is it possible that a woman is so scared she feels the need to abort or give away for her child? How is this still a normal mentality? Because both prolife and prochoice people feed the fear. Neither of us apparently has any faith or respect for the nature of human beings. We have those who are prochoice who stand solely on the side of the mother, and those who are prolife who stand solely on the side of the baby, but who protects the family? Isn’t that the divine nature, the most important structure of our entire society? Unfortunately even pregnancy crisis centers are required to educate mothers who have already chosen to keep and raise their baby, on the topic of adoption and how much better it is for their baby, before giving any sort of services.

So, is there a need for adoption? Yes there is. There is a need for adoption because although God has designed us to be raised by our mother and father there are still evil and sin in this world. Sin that abuses children, causes parents to become sick with addictions, and creating broken family and children who have not a single blood family member to turn too. This is where the need is, not in the wombs of scared women or young mothers.

Now, we can tell ourselves, as prolife or proadoption people, that “we’ve never done that!!” Or “I’ve never strictly advocated for a woman to adopt without pointing her to help as well!” But honestly that isn’t good enough to wash our hands free of guilt. If we aren’t actively seeking and speaking out about stuff like this, we feed the same mentality that feeds abortion. That an unwed, poor, scared, mother is unworthy of her own child. I see hundreds of prolife people state that “we need less adoption laws to make adoption easier!!” Easier for who? Adopted parents? Through the state adoption IS easy, for parents who are qualified based on the best interest for the child. It’s also little to no COST. Yep. You heard that right. What’s easier than that?

Since I’m not a birth parent, I would like if we could all actually read what the birth parents have to say about adoption.

Here’s a pamphlet created by birth parents on how adoption has affected them. In order for a woman to properly and willfully choose adoption as a choice for her, she needs to know these facts, she needs to hear the good and the bad in order to make an informed decision. I beg all people especially prolife people, to read the pamphlet and inform yourselves please! If we want to really protect woman and children we need to protect the family!

(Sorry for any grammar, spelling mistakes)

http://www.cubirthparents.org/docs/39%20What%20You%20Should%20Know%20if%20Youre%20Considering%20Adoption.pdf

#adoption #abortion #prolife #prochoice

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