sr71blackbirdd

[sr71blackbirdd]

Written in the plane with literally zero research just vibes because I didn’t want to buy internet

Set sometime in late autumn of 1918

CW: Fatphobia (ish), Racism, suicidal ideation, mentions of pedophilia

I am one of five left. Hellmann was shot from behind a Maxim gun, Goldstein and Müller died from the same grenade, and many more whose names I have chosen to forget still lie in no man’s land. Gruber’s our crooked captain, he doesn’t like us much. “Why’d we have to lose Hellman,” he moans, “he was the only one of you that could read and shoot”. I can shoot just fine so long as my glasses aren’t covered in dust. How’s that my fault? “Are you deaf and blind Bohrer?” He’ll say in his horrid Swiss accent. I think he hates me most because I’m our only Prussian left. Expects godly feats of a Prussian. Half the other boys aren’t even German (exactly 2.5 because Austria is… well…). I am the only enlisted man, the Bavarian and the Italian are conscripts, and nobody knows where the Austrian came from. The boys I am with are, in the above order, Kirchner, Vargas, and Edelmann. Edelmann is my brother’s age, or perhaps older, I think he has a girl waiting for him at home. Vargas is an immigrant, he’s fighting for his citizenship in some sense, though it was never his choice. Kirchner is the most interesting, a church boy from Munich, least likely man to be at war. Clergy or clergy-in-training get to argue they’re pacifists. I’ve never met someone out here who’s a proper devoted man of god, most lose their faith in less than a month.

As for what these boys look like, Kirchner and Edelmann actually look quite alike, brunets, glasses(almost the same exact frame!), lips that don’t hold a smile for more than a couple seconds, straight hair, nice teeth. Edelmann is darker and sharper and Kirchner is twice his size, both in height and width. Would be utterly intimidating if it weren’t for his timid personality.

Vargas looks like a girl on the other hand. Narrow frame, narrow hands, the narrow eyes of a temptress, a beauty mark under one of his eyes, dark skin and bright brown eyes. If he did not need to cut his hair for service, it would not be hard to mistake him for a lady.

I have been in this war two years, you would think I would be able to ignore loss, to leave those boys in no man’s land unnamed, but it won’t be so easy when these boys are picked off. For the first time in my life, I think I like most of the people I am with. Except Gruber. I have never felt I belonged, among peers I was an outsider as my life was always full of drills and my interests were often deemed unusual. Among my family, I was not fit for service. I did not take drills seriously, I did not go above and beyond in any field of study I had no interest in, the most crucial of which being military history, and according to my mother, my head was always in the clouds. I fit in among these boys. They tease me for enlisting, call me a poor fool. They make fun of me for other reasons, my eyesight is far worse than Kirchner and Edelmann’s after all. They tease me for being Prussian, though to say it’s undeserved with what I say about them would be a lie. We stay merry. At the end of the day, we are all brothers, a bond formed in blood spilled and bullets fired. Blood and steel, my father used to say to me all the time, blood and steel. Our bonds are made in blood and steel.

Today was a good day! Nobody died, the French seem to be backing off for now, they are hungry just as we are, and their trenches are as filthy as their rivers! Our trenches are hell but from the French trenches I’ve raided our hell is another man’s heaven. Fresh rations came in today, Kirchner went back for seconds, I had always wondered how someone could stay plump during the war until I met Kirchner. He seems to get hungry when he’s stressed, and the war is nothing but stress. He doesn’t like when I eat meals with him though.

I have been attempting to teach Vargas German in our downtime. He is older than me but nobody would know, those Italians tend to be less intelligent or so I’ve heard, he speaks Italian very nicely, but I have, perhaps intentionally, taught him much in terms of vulgar slang in place of standard German. I am the only one who speaks Italian, so he follows me around like a puppy. Edelmann came to me today and asked me advice on a letter he was writing, he did not show me the letter, just recited a passage from it. I know nothing of women. He tends to forget I am younger than him. He knows I have been in service for two years, he does not remember those two years started when I was sixteen years of age. I spend the most time with Kirchner, he is fine with Vargas being there most of the time, the three of us drink together… or the four of us really, Edelmann only refuses to join us when he is tired or writing a letter. How he manages to sleep without drinking evades us young folk. Perhaps your mind and bones are more tired at twenty-five than they are at eighteen and nineteen. Alcohol is our sleeping draught and caffeine all we wake up for.

I spoke with Kirchner today about our futures. He seemed not to like the topic. “My future is in No Man’s Land,” he told me. I asked about his past instead, why did he choose to join the war if it seemed so bleak to him. “I am a conscripted man, I chose nothing.”

“You could have gotten out on pacifism,” I told him.

“But then I’d have to dedicate myself to the lord.”

Kirchner was devout. Very devout. Painfully devout. His Catholic faith had been a source of annoyance to me for all our time together, as a Protestant born and raised, we often got into joking fights about it, not aided by the fact everyone else left is Catholic. I asked him why that was a problem. He replied that he hated god and the church and Catholicism more than anything. A genuine loathing for it. More genuine than any loathing he felt before. In his words:

“I hate this war, I hate our leadership, and most of all I hate my father, both he who art in heaven and he who preaches his word on earth.” We drank a bit before I pried further. In that time Kirchner asked me a bit about my own father, how I felt about him and my destiny to serve all my life in endless, ridiculous conflicts puppeteered by people like him, who just wanted more blood and more iron. He was clearly drunk at this point. Kirchner is very large but he does not eat when he drinks nor does he have any water with it, it seems specifically so he can get drunk. I told him I had no resentment of my father, he was doing what is best for me. Were I not in the military, where would I be? I hardly have the skills for a normal job. He claimed that was the same boat he was in, and it was a fault, perhaps even one designed to be a fault. I could never be a banker, he could never be a lawyer, we were stuck, a general and a clergyman. Dying in this war was our only way out. He put a great many words in my mouth, but I am thinking there might be truth in all of them. He said many more things in that ramble, wove poetic about a General and a Clergyman dying together on the same battlefield, a man who mediates peace and a man who mediates war, he said he was in love with me. I did not ask how he meant. He said he loves me and would love to die as Goldstein and Müller did, together, just too close to a grenade. He can’t go back, he said. He can’t go back because if his father were to give him a hug, if his father were to kiss him in greeting, if his father were to so much as pat him on the back, he would shut down worse than he ever had out here. I asked him why, he said the Catholics are devils who sodomize children. I couldn’t tell if he was exaggerating or not. I didn’t really want to know if he was exaggerating or not. He ended the night with a big, sloppy, drunk kiss on the cheek and told me he wasn’t sure what he’d do without me.

Vargas and Edelmann were sitting a while down, Edelmann was teasing Vargas for being Italian again, he was joking in turn. I don’t think I was necessarily walking straight as as soon as Edelmann saw me he came up to me and offered me support.

“How’d you get so much to drink?” He’d asked.

Kirchner stole tons of wine from the French a while back. That was the answer and that’s what I said. They sobered me up with stale bread and muddy water. Despite this, it was a very gay time, we played guess who with some cards Edelmann had made a while ago. I was Gruber, and insultingly they said as a clue that he was only one step away from who I currently am. I wish I could write more about about the good than Hermann’s Kirchner’s ramble but I was less drunk when he was talking than when they were talking.

Today was a good day.

I got to know Kirchner better, I had fun with Vargas and Edelmann, and Gruber laid off us the entire day.

I wish every day were like this.

It was cold today. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones. Even with our military uniforms, which are heavy and woolen, the cold still bites. When weather gets like this, Kirchner becomes the most popular man in our division. It is not unwise to sleep close to one another in weather like this. It is an instinct of our primitive ancestors. Kirchner the warmest of us. He can tolerate the cold better than the rest of us. Gruber often criticizes Kirchner for taking extra but in the ice those criticisms disappear. Vargas gets cold easiest, he is not used to the German cold as is. I would offer him my coat if I hadn’t lost weight. Had a terrible case of something that messed with my stomach, the medics said it was stress. Hah! Can you believe that? Stress? Were that the case most men in the war would be stressed. The humors are out of wack, I write that in a mocking tone, humors, stress, all a bunch of crap. Kirchner is very nice to Vargas, he’s very nice to everyone, it’s why I thought him such a good Christian before he told me he hated god. He allows him to sit with him even when he is having a meal, and of course Vargas jokes about how much he eats in a sitting, which Kirchner does not seem to appreciate, but he does not want our little Italian to freeze.

Often we treat Vargas as more of a pet than a person. Perhaps it is bad but he seems to like it, I’m convinced it’s the only reason he’s still alive. Vargas has a tendency to… space out. He’s forgetful, impulsive, you name it. Not quite fit to be behind the barrel of a gun in my honest opinion, but he’s a tiny thing with a cute accent who looks like a girl, what are we supposed to do? All boys have their stupid whims and desires and Vargas is just one of the ways we fantasize. Edelmann thinks this is queer and homosexual, this contributes to my theory that he has a girl waiting for him at home. Vargas is only about 160 cm tall, we have all taken turns flinging him over our shoulder before. I can only imagine being a tiny Italian among Germanic giants.

Ever since I got sick, Vargas has kept an eye on me. Even if he’s basically clinging to Kirchner, he still watches me constantly. When something seems too stressful or whatever he offers to do some of it. “You can’t read” I always reply. “You don’t know enough German” is another common excuse. Really I just don’t trust anyone to do what I do right. I am not some basic private, some of my rank was bought, but two years is a long time to stay alive in this landscape. That may also be why Gruber dislikes me, I’m a threat.

We’ve been, all day, preparing for an assault from the French. Who would assault in this weather? I’ve been thinking. I realized that is something we would do. I can only imagine how brutal the Eastern Front must be this time of year, especially with the Russians. Their war, I’ve heard from my brother, is less monotonous, but the Russians are brutal, monsters who wear the clothes of men. He claims he saw evidence of cannibalism at a Russian camp his men captured. The war over there is basically over compared to here. I think my brother worries a lot about me losing my mind out here with what I tell him, and I’m not entirely sure if I am of sound mind. I have always been a bit scatter brained, terrified of things that looking back, seem utterly infeasible, I think it’s saved me more times than it’s caused problems. For some reason though, I keep managing to convince myself I’m going to hell, I have stopped believing in such foolish nonsense objectively, but some days I am overcome with it. Kirchner says it’s a consequence of a Christian upbringing. I have also been remembering things that according to other folks, never happened. It is part of why I have been more stringent in maintaining this journal. I don’t want to forget, or to remember something that never happened. If I can check here for the day’s events I will not lose my mind fully. Other men speak of ghosts in the trenches. Noises that go beyond the whistling of rockets. Haunted moaning… apparitions, Edelmann claims he keeps running into a ghost when he gets up at night to use the bathroom. Honestly I think he’s just lonely. That’s just what happens when you don’t romanticize Vargas, what can I say. I am glad I am not that degree of insane yet. We must all stay close with one another should we hope to survive another year of this with our brains fully in tact. I will not put a bullet through my brain, and neither will anyone else in this division, at least not until the new year.

[sr71blackbirdd]

My study habits:

Chew gum while studying, chew gum again during exam

Write all notes in blue ink, they must all be handwritten

If you aren’t taking a break every hour you aren’t going to retain anything, even if it just a short walk, take some break that isn’t just scrolling

I always listen to the nutcracker while studying, (well… except this quarter) started because of my winter finals

I have a playlist where all the songs are about luck and confidence… to manifest… I listen to this all day exam day

I must always have protein and/or complex carbohydrates a half hour at latest before the exam, so that I don’t feel sleepy or hungry

What are some of yours?

[sr71blackbirdd]

I clocked out of the tutoring center (I don’t need tutoring I’m just friends with some of the tutors and they have whiteboards and air conditioning) for the last time today. Was there for 5 hours and one of my closest friends there said “see you later”… no you won’t 😞😞😞

I ❤️ community colleges. Academic institutions that aim to serve the underprivileged and provide them better skills for hiring in the modern workforce have my heart. Don’t underestimate the passion and skill of professors at community colleges, and don’t be afraid to begin your educational journey there, whether you can’t afford to go to university or you just haven’t figured out what to do yet. Dual enrollment has been an absolute blessing. (I’m graduating tomorrow and getting all in my feelings 😞😞😞)

[sr71blackbirdd]

I ❤️ community colleges. Academic institutions that aim to serve the underprivileged and provide them better skills for hiring in the modern workforce have my heart. Don’t underestimate the passion and skill of professors at community colleges, and don’t be afraid to begin your educational journey there, whether you can’t afford to go to university or you just haven’t figured out what to do yet. Dual enrollment has been an absolute blessing. (I’m graduating tomorrow and getting all in my feelings 😞😞😞)

[sr71blackbirdd]

Was feeling some Kennedy nostalgia today

[sr71blackbirdd]

If you had to guess what I write based purely off my handwriting, what would you assume?

[sr71blackbirdd]

I-I'm just here to let you know, uh, I saw your post about what you said you were writing (in a writing group, smth about west Berlin and two boys, *cough*) and I PROMISE that if you EVER need a alpha or beta reader (who has a bit of experience I editing and story structure!) I am here. No joke. DM me whenever and I'll legitimately do it for free. 100% honest.

Tysm, unfortunately I am in the midst of college finals right now (damned quarter system!) and thus progress will be slow. I’m glad you’re interested in my work :>

[sr71blackbirdd]

Wrote a short romance once about a classicist and a modernist falling in love through a series of philosophical debates and obviously I should not have because it seems to have inspired my wife (non-binary boyfriend) to force me to read the Iliad and the Odyssey, adopting the role of the classicist. Since I was young I have LOATHED Greek mythology, what am I to do 💔. I should only hope this doesn’t kick off some classicist fervor that I have to conceal for the sake of keeping up appearances as the Judeo-Christian modernist.

[sr71blackbirdd]

I actually love conversations with people of different politics than my own, emphasis on CONVERSATIONS. I have leftist friends, I have right leaning friends, one time I even almost befriended a fascist (but didn’t go through with it at the behest of everyone in my social circle). When did we reject this art of conversation? Why do we immediately shut down every idea that disagrees with us rather than being receptive but critical? Is it immoral of me to let my right wing friend finish his point about the dangers of giving hormone blockers to children, before politely explaining my point and the science behind it? Is it bad for me to read documents linked to me by a fascist before calling his ideology dumb? Can I, a liberal, ask you, a leftist, to explain the practical application of your ideology, and provide a well thought out argument from my perspective without being called a bootlicker? Can I, a liberal, ask you, a conservative, why your morality matters in the grand scheme of things without being called spineless or a snowflake? Can we have a conversation? I see so many posts criticizing “the enemy” without providing an actual point of criticism. I see so many people acting like having these conversations is some moderate brain disease. Really, I just want to talk. Maybe we could all learn something new from that. Why are you so firm in your worldview?

[sr71blackbirdd]

Hi, I noticed your story has conflict in it, and I was wondering why you didn't just write people who are right doing everything correctly with a note saying "I enthusiastically co-sign everything in this story"? Must be some kind of mistake haha

[sr71blackbirdd]

Y’all ever write fanfiction of your own story?

None of this is canon to my story but it was fun to write.

CW: Nazism, suicidal ideation, tobacco use

“Dieter is dead, Erich is dead, my father is dead. I have gone AWOL and today will go down in history as the capitulation of Germany. I, Albert Edelstein, retreated from my post on May first. Only a week ago. I am barely even a traitor to my nation and that makes me almost sick. I’ve been sick. I’ve been sick and I’ll be sick a while. I arrived at the Ziegelbauer residence six days ago. Munich was in ruins when I arrived. The Führer’s brain was full of lead when a Soviet shell almost pierced my own skull. Faced with bullet fire as a last stand for Berlin, I found for the first time in a four year military career, I ran. I ran and I didn’t stop until somehow I had found my way back home. I would hardly call this home anymore. I barely recognize it, not only because of the bombings. Through my time in the military the city has become disfigured until it was entirely unfamiliar to me. Streets I once navigated with ease I am no longer able to trace. How I found Ziegelbauer’s home perplexes me, but when Frieda saw me at the doorway she let me in without question. She recognized instantly her family friend who hardly looked like a man anymore. Who was broken and bent and foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. She recognized instantly a man who I would never have been able to identify as Albert Edelstein. The first thing my sister did when Frieda called her down was take from me anything I could use to kill myself. The pistol I’d put in my mouth, the knife I’d held to my wrist, the rope I’d used to take measurements of my neck, the lighter that has already stolen years of my life. The second thing she did was hug me. Subconsciously I leaned on her, I put all my weight on her, and she held me like it was nothing, if that tells you anything about the dire state of our supply lines. She untied for me my boots, she undid the layers of uniform that my frozen stiff fingers could never hope to work their way through. She ran me a bath. How long had it been since I last had a warm bath? Long enough that my muscles had gone stiff like that of an old man’s. Long enough that I let my body relax in the hot water until it went cold. Ernst saw me after I was dressed, he also gave me a hug, one as tight as his arms—plagued with atrophy as insulin had presumably become harder to come by in recent years—could muster. He took me to the kitchen and told me to eat. He said I looked as sickly as him. I complied. That’s all I’m good for. Following orders.

I couldn’t keep it down.

Ernst said he’d give me advice on nausea management in the morning. I asked him to light me a cigarette. It could stave off the hunger for the next 8 hours. The greatest proof I have that he loves me, or is, at least, still subservient to me, is that even after all of these years, he took a draw from the cigarette before putting it in my mouth. Just as I had asked him to do the first time. Ernst Ziegelbauer doesn’t smoke unless I tell him to.

I slept over 14 hours that night. I wish I could say it was just last night that that happened. Yesterday I slept the whole day away. Ten hours straight, wake up, use the restroom, get water, snack on something light enough not to make me nauseous, smoke, go back to bed until god next woke me. I’m sick with something.

I really ought to cut to the chase, no? Apologies, it has been a while since I’ve journaled, they’re a security concern. I overheard Ernst speaking to my sister today, he said: ‘I do quite like your brother, Alice. I wouldn’t mind him staying even now that the war in Europe has ended.’ And I will admit, that made me go red and kick my feet. It is nice to know I can still feel things like that, even if it is for stupid, stupid reasons. It’s hard not to be in love with a boy like Ernst Ziegelbauer. I am still yet to ever in my life experience sexual arousal, but I would imagine it feels something like Ernst holding my hand—shaky with withdrawal—still as he lights me a cigarette. I believe, the tone I am taking in this is one of someone very disconnected with their feelings. I must always be a perfect German specimen, I suppose. But I would let you know I am not. I am overcome by them all the time and the only thing that seems to heal me from his malady emptiness and exhaustion is my sisters dearest fiance. I live an accursed life, doomed always to fall by the wayside and be my sister’s shadow. I can delude myself into believing it is secretly me he’s after, and I will continue to do so until my mouth no longer demands the taste of cool steel, my wrists no longer the prickling of a blade, and my neck no longer the comfort of strangulation. And I will grow out my brown hair, for I am no longer a soldier, my father is dead, and Germany is free.”

[sr71blackbirdd]

Am I the only one who feels like “Fiction is for escapism!” Is a reductive, anti-intellectual dogwhistle that devalues fiction as a whole? Like yes it’s a valid school of thought so long as it exists among others, but it’s become the dominant narrative in reading and writing spaces and honestly I think it is part of what has deterred men from reading fiction. In the eyes of many it’s a frivolous waste of time because at least with a TV show or Movie you can work while it plays in the background. I don’t know, I was always taught fiction is supposed to teach lessons in a way more easily understood than lecture. It’s a symbol of an increasingly vapid society that it has become “escapist fantasy”.

[sr71blackbirdd]

Daily reminder that participating in healthy habits (ie, eating your vegetables, getting adequate exercise, sleeping 8 hours at night, drinking water, having three meals a day, avoiding non-prescribed drugs, going outside) increases not only longevity of life but also mental clarity and overall happiness. I see too many artists neglecting their health around these parts. Sleep is taken for granted these days…

[sr71blackbirdd]

In early age, it is normal for children to develop morbid fascinations. As they become acquainted with death they grow drawn to it, intrigued by it. When a child creates something edgy, talks endlessly of death, laughs over the very concept of it, it is because they are arrogant, because they are ignorant. Many children in the world have yet to face death, so they laugh in its face. Many grow out of this morbid passion as they grow older and become more familiar with death. Maybe about fifty percent.

One cannot state with certainty the reasons for both the distancing of oneself with that morbid curiosity, and the continuation of it well into adulthood, but it can be said that it is perhaps one of the biggest divides of humanity. Should man run from death or embrace it?

I think in this way, biologists and writers are the same. Through my observation, neither group of people have outgrown this morbid curiosity, and it makes sense. Death is what drives man to act, without it, what incentive would there be for action; for deadlines? The writer conceptualizes our unfortunate, inevitable fate while the biologist endlessly studies it. Science and art are born of the same morbid curiosity and existential dread.

[sr71blackbirdd]

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI models for patient diagnosis in medicine and of course I’ve always thought of them as like, input blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, etc. but I watched a podcast episode about AI in immunology and they brought up patient medical records in AI diagnosis tools. I’m wondering about how something like that could be made ethical. Any thoughts?

[sr71blackbirdd]

Stories I’ve thought of that I might write, might not (except the last one, I’m definitely writing the last one)(follow if any of these interest you!):

Black Lake, Black Sea:

A story about a detective duo working for the Olympia Police Department in Washington State in the year 1991 as they track down a killer praying on University age girls at the Evergreen College. The killer turns out to be supernatural in nature and feeds on thoughts of distrust in the government among both far left groups in Olympia, and Far Right groups in the nearby city of Tacoma. The main character is an ex-Soviet Detective named Arkady Zolotov who, while encountering this entity, reflects on political extremism in the Soviet Union vs America and emphasizes a metaphor linking the creature to the KGB and other authoritarian secret police.

Thread the Needle:

A story about two women during the Spanish revolution. Rosalia Carranza is a communist poet (and seamstress) who works in secret distributing propaganda and information to the people of Spain to aid in the fight against fascism. Rosalia is tasked one day with spying on an old friend of hers, Isabela de la Cierva, the wife of a fascist General. As the two connect more, a romance begins to blossom between them and fascism’s grip weakens on Isabela. There’s dual perspective and probably a love triangle in this one (Rosalia also falls for with a Soviet Volunteer).

(Still Untitled):

The year is 1890, Edwyn and Anna Malczyk have just moved to a village in France after their parents’ passing, opening an Inn with their remaining inheritance. They find quickly however, that this was a mistake. At night in this area, creatures, doppelgängers roam, trying desperately to kill humans and take their place. Renovations are quickly made and the Inn becomes a safe space… at least for now. The story not only follows the siblings as they face these terrifying events, but also follows Anna as she takes care of her schizophrenic brother, who cannot necessarily tell people from doppelgängers, and finds meaning in life outside of being his caretaker. This one is also a Queer Romance.

Dreaming of New York (Title in progress):

15-year-old Feli Achille has just moved for maybe the fifth time in his life, Rome, Milan, Zurich, Munich… it all blends together sometimes. This time, his uncle has found his way to West Berlin, and Feli, having been removed from his parents’ custody at a young age is forced to follow. Feli doesn’t expect much of his experience in Berlin, he knows three things as fact: Everything is temporary, the world cannot heal from the scars of the past, and people are unkind to those they see as different. Ludwig Bohrer, a classmate of his, is determined to change his thoughts on that. The leather-jacket-wearing, cigarette-smoking, New-York-Romanticizing teenager is full of a life, energy, and lack of shame that Feli is entirely unused to. As the two fall in love, Feli begins to wonder if the world truly can change for the better.

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bf taking the opportunity to make a table for literally anything