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viv-hollande · 10 months

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As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out.

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised.

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad.

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me.

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them.

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me.

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important.

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future.

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this.

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable.

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind.

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it.

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest.

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they?

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another?

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from?

Mongolia.

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack.

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't.

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away.

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about…

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes.

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes.

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives.

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats.

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War.

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children.

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome.

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for.

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis.

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end-

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup.

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around.

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you.

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points.

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism.

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense.

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups.

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go.

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way:

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order:

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers.

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening?

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities.

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide.

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important.

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism.

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do.

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization.

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause.

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts.

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No.

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game.

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification.

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement.

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics.

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage.

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case.

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel?

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide.

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one.

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member.

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant.

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not.

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager.

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts.

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime.

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare.

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine.

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes.

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart. And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got.

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

#long post #really long post #israel palestine conflict #i/p conflict #i/p #israel gaza war #antisemitism #islamophobia #war crimes #crimes against humanity #ethnic cleansing #viv lectures #fuck bibi #fuck hamas #free palestine #ceasefire now #kicking the hornet's nest #and the bee's nest

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caralara · 6 months

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I know Louis' your fave so I hope it's okay that I send you this. But recently the blinkers have been coming off for me in regards to Louis. I think I used to have him up on a bit of a pedestal. I just thought he was this really intelligent guy, really aware of social issues and willing to fight for the right thing and be rebellious when necessary. I don't know. I saw things playing out very differently. But unfortunately, lately, I've been seeing a lot of laziness and complacency and a willingness to settle from him. A lot of contradictions as well. Like he gets the anarchist symbol tattooed but doesn't speak out or place his support behind anything substantial. I'm sorry, legalizing weed is his most political stance. And then being seen with the Starbucks cup and actually covering it in the video like lmao. Not knowing what number year your festival is when he supposedly had big dreams for it. I know this is so small but it irks me that he's been going on about playing the guitar for years. And he is yet to bring it on stage for even one song! I know it comes from a place of self-doubt and insecurity no matter how confident he makes himself appear but like he just doesn't help himself. And fans exaggerating and praising every little thing he does as if he isn't just some basic white man does my head in. Sorry I word vomited on you and I know this sounds harsh but I acknowledge it comes from a bitter place where I feel like his potential is just not being met. At the end it's his life and I genuinely hope he doesn't have many regrets later on.

hi babe

I think I am completely in the same situation as you! I might not be triggered by exactly the same things but I’ve been going over and over it for the last couple days asking myself why I’m so annoyed with him right now?? And I think it really is just the disappointment finding out your fave man is after all, just a man.

Like, to me, it feels like he’s been stagnant since early 2023. right now, to me it feels like he’s just on the hunt for the cheap thrill, getting the validation in that he also can pull massive crowds of screaming girls just like he did during 1D (and it isn’t even the actual validation he’s looking for??? Like he still starts yapping every time a man validates him as if it’s so much more important??)

I feel like he lost focus, or energy, or both. You know, you said it!! You know I love Louis to death, he’s my favourite, and genuinely, I don’t blame him. It makes a lot of sense to me. He’s finally proven himself to not be a flop to all the people doubting him. He’s overcome all the obstacles, did LTWT and had massive success with it, way beyond anyone expected, rode that wave, made a second album that proved he’s not a one hit wonder either, an album he actually enjoyed making, and proved his fans liked it, too. And then… it just kind of stagnated. His team made mistakes and miscalculations. Announcing Asia tour so short notice thinking, then cancelling bc it didn’t sell out, handling the announcements horribly, not realising LTWT was massive bc of all the pent up excitement and desire throughout years of a pandemic, the magnetism of it being the first solo world tour. They also didn’t get it when it came to Milano Summer fest vs. AFHF. The 35k sold out bc it was announced many months in advance and it was the last LTWT show - that’s meaningful to fans. It was easily accessible. You can’t translate just the numbers to „it’s bc he’s popular in Italy,“ there’s so many factors at play they ignored, and therefore AFHF Italy only sold 2/3 of tickets, and a lot of these people didn’t even show up (couldn’t, I better say).

For me, FITF felt like he had checked out a little. He’s plateauing. The excitement and irresistible draw he has is largely due to his resilience, his underdog persona he created that allows normal people to identify with him. And there just wasn’t any… growth since early 2023. He‘s also alienated a large part of his fandom with the bbg pushes, and as you know, I still believe it was all part of the bigger plan to end it, but it does feel like he gave up, got comfortable. And it’s not that I blame him for it necessarily?? Like all he’s been through? It makes a lot of sense to me that now he’s achieved all the things people told him he wouldn’t be able to achieve, that now the burn out sets in, that now, the driving energy of spite and wanting to prove himself has run out.

I feel like the jokes of “oh I’m a pothead I can’t remember if it’s the third or fourth edition of my super duper important close to my heart festival project” or “oh yeah sometimes I forget I’m an actual parent and have a kid” are getting old. Like, it doesn’t serve him anymore it feels like? To me it feels like the weed was a coping mechanism that helped him get through hard times, and that’s completely valid, but now it looks like to me it’s holding him back, blurring his genius.

I’m sorry for the rant back to you. I’m deeply upset because Louis is my escape, my happy place, fandom is my comfort, and I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers because it causes me more upset than happiness at this point. The amount of “kill yourself” messages I have gotten over criticising louis for announcing AFHF so short notice is frankly INSANE. Do people not talk to other people in real life?? How do the people around these people that send those messages deal with them in real life?? It’s so upsetting to see how many people feel comfortable typing out these kind of messages and sending them.

I do hope this feeling of mine calms down, and I can go back to just glorifying louis and have him as my comfort place, because I do not like the thoughts I have and the way it makes me feel.

#anon #louis #sorry anon #please be gentle with me #I am just genuinely expressing my feelings #and believe me I am aware that I am judgemental #and have no idea what his life and thoughts etc look like in reality bc I don’t know him at all #but this is my fandom experience #and the way I feel about it atm

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sleeptowns · 2 years

Text

a year (or so) of fics, in retrospect

once every handful of years i remember to look back at the collection of projects i’ve finished recently and to simulate a critique as if i’m an art school student — and also as if i’m the haunted teacher’s assistant who wants to be gentle on the prof’s behalf but actually hates your work and also i am the other students who have been sitting there for seven hours straight and can’t offer much more except say, “it’s fine.” a one-man critique day, all parts played by me.

sometimes i do this and the last period of writing has been drier than a pizza slice left in the winter sun, but this time i’m lucky that these last couple of years have been the closest i’ve had to a writing pax romana.

with that said, i’m not entirely sure how valid i am whenever i think these days that my writing has gone through some drastic changes in the last year; i’m not even sure if it’s accurate to call any of it growth, though i’m aware it’s the sort of thing i won’t have a clear perspective on until a few years after the fact. but i do know that i’m lucky to have so many works to act as markers for different periods of my writing, and while it’s far from a sure method of evaluation, there are parts there that i’m able to at least assess, if not outright measure. in the last year or so, my fics have started mutating towards — not really a separate sort of output than my previous ones, but definitely older somehow. older and quite different because of it: stylistic choices i would have steered clear of before, failed and/or lacklustre genre explorations, even relationship dynamics that were previously unfamiliar territory. my most recent fic feels like a culmination of all my attempts at wrestling with my writing in the ring, and now that it’s a few weeks behind me and i get to look at it with fresh(er) eyes and accept that it’s my favourite child (i’m sorry flls... you’re not too far behind), it’s also reminded me that i have a now overdue fic roundup to write.

tangentially speaking, it’s interesting that you never really hear about self-taught writers. self-taught artists, yes, and self-taught musicians, but never quite self-taught writers. i don’t exactly purport to have taught myself everything i know about writing, and i know you can’t really be self-anything as a writer; what i lack in technique and finesse learned from proper writing classes, teachers, and/or workshops, i owe to the media i’ve consumed, good and bad, as well as to the creators i love and to all the thoughtful readers i’ve had over the years. if i’m self-taught in any way, then the self as a teacher was reared by countless others who have honed in me a limitless capacity to be an observer to stories, mine and all else.

this post is just a roundup of all my fics from december 2020 to january 2023, including only the ones with enough substantial content to write about, which disqualifies a lot of the fics i left at one or five scenes max but qualifies the ones i abandoned at one chapter. just a little something for me to reference as i figure out where to take my writing next and hopefully move towards some kind of ✨ growth ✨ lol

・・・・・・

FIRST LOVE, LATE SPRING december 2020 to march 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | dual pov romance, multimedia (?)

i covered a bit of the early chapters and conceptualization for flls in a separate post, but as i was reflecting on how to write a continuation, it occurred to me that if there’s a clear before and after to the current state of my writing, then the first portion of flls chapter five is where i’ll find it.

when i was drafting my 58393th version of that chapter — nothing was working, none of it was the right vibe i needed, most of them too detached or too on-the-nose but never the perfect middle — i happened upon trying second person pov by accident. i’m not the biggest fan of second person (though to be fair, i don’t think anyone is) but by that point i was so sick of writing and rewriting this one section and not getting anywhere that i wondered if i should just lean all the way into that disgust. why not do something i hated entirely? and act of desperation as that was, the moment i started writing in curt, nauseating second person, i knew it was the right choice.

the thing about writing flls!yuuji is that he felt both alive and unfamiliar. flls!megumi was easier to understand, even if he was trickier to write — but yuuji, i had to really work to get to know. one thing about him that i knew to be careful about from the very beginning of jjk is that it would be too surface level to think this boy is an extrovert. yuuji is usually painted as an energetic, sunny person, and i don’t think he’s not that, but there’s something about yuuji that’s also very internal and almost innately… isolated? i don’t know if that’s necessarily the right word, but there’s a lot about him as a character that’s out of view or grasp, which ironically i find people taking at face value. in flls, he required a lot more balance than megumi, who was a dam waiting to be relieved of its duties. flls!yuuji knows who or what he is — how could he not, when he’s never had a choice but to be this person, this kid who lost his grandpa, this kid who needs love but doesn’t know how to ask for it because he doesn’t even know there are forms of it he can ask for?

how to write a character like that? how to nudge someone who doesn’t reveal even at his most revealing towards the christmas eve fight i had set up in the beginning of flls chapter one? back before chapter six of flls came out, i saw a lot of people argue that megumi and yuuji just needed to communicate, and yes, of course they do, but i was also very adamant as i started chapter five that the real tragedy about them is that communication will do nothing in the end. even if they magically became master communicators about their needs and wants and insecurities, none of it will change the fact that neither of them are ready to love and be loved by the other person. at least not in any way that constitutes a relationship that feels like love.

i think that’s the key to writing the relationship in flls. it was never a question that they loved each other, and how much. never. this is probably the first piece of ~growth i appreciated about flls. it would be easy to write a romance where the main conflict is them not knowing the other loved them back, but flls got rid of that quite early. i left no room for doubt — or at least this is the hope — that flls!itfs loved each other in a way no one else would be able to compare to. they’re it for each other. but if it had been as simple as portraying that, then i never would have finished flls at all, and it definitely wouldn’t have been my longest fic at the time.

instead — what if it was a given that they loved each other, and it still wasn’t enough? what kind of story can we spin about that? what kind of questions and answers can we find?

that’s actually such a pretentious way to frame that, but the fact of the matter is that i needed to not waste space now that we’re five chapters in. this is the beginning of the end. how do we shift gears and take the tone of the entire story along with it? i don’t know if there’s something about second person pov that’s just inherently full of dread, but it did quite a bit of work in chapter five. it felt disembodying for me as a writer, and i could only hope the same for readers. i was really, really worried some people will give up reading altogether thinking all of chapter five will be in second person, but i didn’t want to compromise. it was going to be second person for most of their real relationship or nothing: vaguely dissociative, intensely drained, with no room to actually enjoy being each other’s boyfriend. the main challenge was to not go from zero to a hundred in a snap. i had the room to do so in only one chapter, but i had to find a way to keep a tight rein on the pace or else the whole fic will fail.

there also had to be love. and longing. and a desperation to make it work. i think that was yuuji in a nutshell — someone desperate to make it work, whatever this thing is. that’s what constitutes his strengths and his weaknesses, in canon and in flls. i wanted to find a way to make that palpable to a reader the way it was palpable to me while writing yuuji in second person. somewhere along making sure to tether myself to him by knowing what pieces of media he’d reference (high school musical and fullmetal alchemist) and his life outside of megumi (work, basketball, tea with nanami, skateboarding), i had to also drown with yuuji in the hope that the reader would follow. chapter three afforded me the luxury of only examining yuuji from the omniscience of a writer writing in third person — i could dismantle him through the therapy scene, could show myself and the reader a way to understand him, but i could not take us there to where he is.

i don’t know how successful the second person pov was, ultimately, though i’d be lying if i said it wasn’t what i thought was truly best at the time. it probably wasn’t that creative to anyone but me, but it gave me a nudge towards different ways to explore… vibes. atmosphere, maybe, is the more formal word for it. if not for the second person pov choice in flls, i wouldn’t have been nudged towards kamo’s newsletter to act as the midway point of the story, the last palate cleanser i’ll allow myself and the reader, and i never would have written please let me love you forever and days of brutalism and hairpin turns the way i did. i owe a lot to that tiny but crucial choice, as does flls as a whole. everything that followed that section — the fight, the aftermath of the fight, the breakup — relied on it to make themselves work, and it’s funny (and valuable to note) how it’s something as seemingly inconsequential as a pov choice that set the tone.

especially because there’s nothing special, really, about those following scenes. the christmas eve fight, megumi’s conversation in the car with geto, the break-up itself — all of it followed my standard flow of dialogue. sure, there’s more tension when you’re writing an argument, let alone when writing scenes that will inevitably lead to a break-up, but all scenes, particularly dialogue, have to feel fraught with some kind of energy and inevitable anyway. for the remainder of chapter five and six, i just coasted on the tone set up by the beginning of chapter five, and that’s knowledge that has served me quite well since. atmosphere goes a long, long way, and with my writing style, a healthy balance between dialogue and introspection will take me the rest of the way to the finish line. the part of flls that i’ve heard people find the most heartbreaking were also its simplest. all of chapter six is dedicated to one wedding, and chapter seven to one evening. i wish i could say there was a trick there, that i agonized over how to write such important scenes, but my personal takeaway is that there is no trick. the point is that you get the story to a point where those scenes write themselves; there’s nowhere else for the flow to go, and geto’s gentle unpacking of megumi, the last few scenes before megumi and yuuji break up, and the bittersweet reunion after two necessary years — i can only hope they carried a sense of “this is the only way it could have gone” the way they did for me. geto doesn’t tell megumi anything we don’t already know from earlier chapters, if only just now put into words. megumi and yuuji also don’t tell each other anything, in the breakup scene and the getting back together sections, that we haven’t already gleaned from them. from the moment kamo’s newsletter ended and we headed into act two — everything was just wrapping up what i left for myself.

it’s worth noting that i did try to complicate the final chapter a bit. i tried a split pov between yuuji and megumi at first, as a way to finally reconcile their two perspectives, but that felt too cheesy. i tried an outing to nagoya for nobara’s birthday, tried to divide the pov amongst the people in their lives (junpei, nanami, nobara, etc), and even to do my usual cyclical structure of starting with the same image we did in chapter two, this time in yuuji’s funabashi apartment — but those all felt too on the nose. i trusted my flls readers. maybe that’s what all it came down to. i trusted them to know these people, and this story, and i didn’t want to do too much and compromise that trust. and in the end, i would argue, returning to simplicity made the story what it was.

something i love to think about is how to explain my fics to others. i know it’s been said a lot that the ao3 tagging system has convinced a mini generation of writers that tags and names of tropes are all you need to pitch/be pitched a story, and i wholeheartedly agree. or i might just be terrible at advertising my work, with an obnoxious aversion to learning how to do it better to boot, but to be fair, i think my premises are all just as boring as they are ridiculous. flls is a college au with two friends with benefits turned fake boyfriends turned real boyfriends turned exes. that’s it. there’s nothing else in the plot but that. yet it’s a lot more to me than that, and sometimes that’s all you have when you send a story out into the world. the knowledge that it was briefly yours, and now it isn’t, but that doesn’t at all devalue what you’ve taken away from spending time with it.

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US april 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | short form, childhood friends

this is one of a handful of attempts at writing a trope i don’t love all that much, inspired largely by the atmosphere in “horatio” by t.j klune. i was very conflicted about this fic when i first published it, primarily because it was so short and written in a sparse style i didn’t know how to evaluate, and partly because it didn’t feel substantial. in a post i’ve put on private since, i’d written:

what if i repeat the same themes in another context? that doesn’t make the theme carry any less weight as long as i put heart and sincerity and compassion into how i’m writing about it. there’s something that is equally as much self-deprecation as it is borderline vanity in me placing these rules upon myself. i’ve always known i wrote first and foremost out of love, out of what makes me excited to write — and that still applies here. i was thrilled to be able to experiment with a short, snappy fic. and that’s far more important, isn’t it, than whether i’m writing a different dissertation angle on love or friendship or family or career? it doesn’t feel like it, no, but it should, because i know it is. i know that what matters to me is that writing is fun and compassionate, and i know that as long as one person finds comfort in a world i’ve built, it’s enough.

i don’t sound very convinced there, and i wasn’t. i still don’t know what to make about us. i like that it’s short, and i endeavour to write more short fics with nothing specific or significant about them — but it’s hard to stomach its existence, let alone see it as something to love. it just feels so… not empty, but definitely less than what i’m used to asking from myself. it’s short, it’s sweet, it’s snappy. it’s also formulaic in its own sparse way, and i think it works because of the sweetness, but the truth is that if i hadn’t written it for itafushi week, i would never have greenlit it for publishing. i still wrestle nowadays with wanting to delete it, but it matters so little to me that i can’t even justify that much. it’s a weird limbo of a story, though i still hope to explore this kind of writing more in the future.

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SOME KIND OF WE june 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | sequel to existing complete story

broke my own rules here by revisiting a story past its run, but to be very fair, it was less out of sentiment (though there was also that) so much as me startling at my first proper reread of the latter half of flls and realizing there are still unresolved arcs for megumi because the final chapter set two years later only had yuuji’s pov. not many of them, and none especially urgent, but i thought it would be a good opportunity to reorient the story to something quieter and more mature than what the central conflicts in flls left room for. i’m not convinced the back-and-forth between pieces of their recent few months being together and the present evening worked as seamlessly as i wanted it to, but it was still a nice opportunity to use a non-linear narrative to explore the growth and development of a relationship that i left at quite the bittersweet open-endedness. what was only delicately certain by the end of flls was made concretely certain through some kind of we, even if it did run a bit too sentimental and saccharine. but i think it can be forgiven, considering what yuuji and megumi went through in flls proper.

the main challenge of this fic was figuring out which portions of their life post-flls were worth including, and the first draft had five potential sections:

tokyo, for megumi’s first visit back after moving to chiba, mostly dedicated to him realizing that home — after being rooted for so long to this city, this one apartment with his dad, the same neighborhood and transit lines, to the gojo-geto household — now finally belongs somewhere else, with someone else.

funabashi, most of which was preserved in the version that was published.

sendai, to visit grandpa itadori’s grave, which i decided to streamline into a single scene at the end of the final some kind of we draft to cut away the excess and break it down to the core of why i wanted them to make this visit — which is to hammer home for yuuji that he isn’t alone anymore, that he has someone taking care of him and loving him without fail and with care, and to give megumi the agency to solidify, for his own sake, that he’s someone who means the whole universe to yuuji. enough that what place is his will always and solely be his, and enough that megumi will be allowed to love and take care of another person in a way that’s both eternal and an ever-evolving work in progress.

okinawa, for a trip that was only referenced as a backdrop in the final version but that i still like to think a lot about even now. a cc anon said once that the gojo-geto household must be so lonely with all the kids grown up, but as i talked about in another reply once (it’s too far back for me to have time to dig out at this point), i do love to imagine yuuji and megumi being uncles to the next generation, even if not outright parents themselves. sometimes you don’t know what you’re capable of giving as someone who was denied so much as a kid until you see someone so young, a stranger to the world, and know what to give them precisely because you didn’t have it once. and between yuuji not having much family and megumi’s life being complicated by the fact that he has too much family, i think they’re well-equipped to be uncles to tsumiki’s kids and beyond. and i was tempted for a bit to show this in the annual okinawa trips i mentioned in the final version of skow, but there just isn’t enough space without becoming superfluous.

kuantan, to visit nanami, mostly to reconsolidate the rather serious interaction megumi and nanami had in flls into something gentler, considering he’s still family to yuuji and while nanami might say yuuji doesn’t need his blessing, yuuji will want it anyway. i never did end up writing this part, so it’s not exactly canon to the au and i’m hesitant to make it so, but the idea was to end with megumi asking for both nanami’s blessing and help to propose to yuuji on that malaysia trip.

the end result for this fic was a little lesson for me in cutting and cutting and keeping my hand light on the source, until i’m left with what i consider necessary. the final version of some kind of we is more a collection of vignettes than a straightforward account of megumi and yuuji’s life together post-flls, which i found much more strangely fitting. i feel like i spent so much of flls trying to get them to a point where they’re ready to be with each other, and i just wanted to dedicate skow to them not just making it work but building love on top of the foundations they secure. it’s one thing to portray that through a whole fic dedicated to each milestone; it’s another to write ordinary moments that are made extraordinary because they have chosen that for and with each other. neither of them say i love you out loud in the entire fic, but i wanted there to be no doubt that they do say it. that they do love each other, and that this part isn’t the obstacle it used to be. they’re just some kind of them, together, and this time it doesn’t feel bittersweet for me to send them off to the world for good knowing there’s love falling out of the spaces between each vignette i wrote.

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HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND october 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | fantasy au

yikes. one of two fics in this round-up that i abandoned at chapter one. started this because an idea occurred to me while reading the atlas six, wrote until i had to stop, then didn’t look back once even when it would have served me to.

i flew too eagerly close to the sun with this one, truly, but as far as intentions go, i think both my mind and heart were in the right place. it’s quite clear where this one went wrong: i had neither time nor the energy to dedicate to it; i started it on the same whim i start most other things but this time didn’t have the passion for it — and i confess i just didn’t have the patience required to work on writing the story i wanted to write.

it was also one of those lessons in how often big ideas — or an attempt at them — cannot sustain a story. i had what i thought were clear ideas and intentions about the themes i wanted to cover in this one (the downfall of religious devotion, reconstruction, academic institutions versus personal/individual responsibility, all of which just look like buzzwords now that i’m typing them out, omg), but it just didn’t leave room for the kind of story i like to write. i guess my main takeaway here is that the pitfall of high(er) concept genre stories is that you have to make space for the world at the cost of room for character writing; it’s just the nature of how much space in the narrative you can allot for each individual aspect of the story, and with stuff like fantasy and sci-fi, the worldbuilding takes up a significant amount more than your run-of-the-mill slice of life story where the only world i have to worry about sketching is where someone lives and works.

i do like some parts? it’s kind of crude, how i tried to reconcile my writing style with genre-specific bits, but it’s not all terrible. this sequence is alright:

Megumi was seven the first time he restored something.

Every part of it had been an accident, and he remembers it now only in fragments. The wet rag in his hand as he wiped down the dining hall tables, having to climb the chairs to get to each corner. The horrible echo of something shattering in the kitchen, where Tsumiki had been tasked to do all the dishwashing for the evening. The panic on her face when Megumi got to her, both of them crowding around the shards of ceramic left by what was once a plate. The spill of harsh candlelight from above the sink, the harsher shadows it sent dancing around the broken glass.

But he does remember the remembering. The knowing of what the plate had looked like once, the image behind his eyes anchoring him in place as he latched onto the curl of the shadows on the floor. It would be more intuitive, more rudimentary, than anything he’d learn to do later in life, propelled by the worry on Tsumiki’s face and the footsteps he swore he could hear coming towards them from the other end of the servants’ quarters they called home back then—but it had taken only a single blink for the shadows to cover the plate, tighten around it into darkness, and then retreat to where they were, leaving a clean, untouched plate in the middle of the kitchen floor.

it could be better, but it still could be worse. and i do like the overall architectural imagery and how i managed to scrounge up some standard fare coziness somewhere in the cold, almost-medieval setting.

as far as disastrously failed ventures go, this one could be a lot more embarrassing than it is. i’m not mad at it. it’s far from good enough, and if i didn’t write it in such a frenzy, i probably never would have allowed it to be published. but. it’s a useful failure.

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PLEASE LET ME LOVE YOU FOREVER march to june 2022, blue period trial element | five-character gen dynamic, multimedia

what a... headache of a project. bit off more than i could chew without choking and decided to take even more bites each new chapter because why the hell not, apparently. i do appreciate how un-edited this fic is, despite it all. it feels the most bleeding-heart of all my fics from this past year or so, and it’s nice to look back at this and know exactly when i shifted my approach to it altogether because, again, why not. it’s such a valuable “why not?” to have. it’s nice when i don’t feel quite as… under surveillance? when writing a story. and i get to just go off the rails a bit. a lot, actually, with this one. it’s nothing crazy because i don’t think i can write anything crazy (though i think hairpin turns had blinks of it), but there’s definitely plenty of choices that i’m surprised i decided on with a sober mind.

to be fair, they weren’t exactly mindblowingly successful. if i were to rate this fic out of five, despite all my fondness for it, i’d maybe give it a 2.75. it’s a well-earned mark, and i have a special soft spot for people who have read it, but i’m not mentally proud of it. emotionally so, maybe, in whatever way i can be, but if this fic didn’t feel so intimate with a much cozier readership and comment section, i’d be a lot crueler to it than i am, i think. as it is, it makes for wonderful conversation and reflection for me, and it’s always fun to consider how a story about a disbanded idol group became a metaphor for childhoods lost to growing up too fast and also involved alternate universes.

but cycling through five povs really is too much, i think, and if it was exhausting for me to write then i imagine it was just as exhausting to read. a nicer alternative would have been to stick to one pov for each chapter, but even that was a lot to juggle considering there were also smaller dynamics going on in the background with each character. within the core group of five alone, there were thirty-one variations of scenes to write, including individual introspection and pairs — and that’s not to take into consideration trios, or groups of four or the whole five plus a secondary character, for example. i don’t know how i pulled off my usual character study here. i don’t know if i did.

another thing about this fic is that i’m still not sure why a time loop didn’t work. i wanted it so badly to work. i thought it would be fun, but i guess time loops aren’t necessarily compatible with prose. there’s something about repetition and looping that’s best visually, but even if i had been able to stick to imagery and vibes, it would have gotten tedious at some point for me and a reader considering the quantity/length i tend to need. just something to keep in mind if i get the urge to keep trying time loops in future works and wonder why it’s not sticking seamlessly. as with a lot of things in life, if you have to force it then maybe it’s not meant to be there. or maybe you have to go shortform, narrow down the playing field?

one thing i’d commend this fic for is how it managed to unpack so much between dynamics that barely exist in canon. that, and how it managed to pack so many formats into one story — song lyrics, album reviews, tweets, a play, nonfiction, a profile, wikipedia pages, messages, i don’t even know how many more — while maintaining a semi-cohesive tone throughout. there was a lot of fun there, in figuring out how to adapt your typical characterizing to a format you haven’t tried before: how would kuwana write a preface to hashida’s book? would this particular character include rhymes in their song lyrics, or are they more of a diaristic stream of consciousness kind of lyricist? what medium best translates this character’s personality? what medium best conveys this dynamic’s under-the-skin knowing of each other? who sees more than the others, and how can i show that without using the same structure of two or three characters talking in a setting that doesn’t change?

my favourite part is probably the fake album review at the top of chapter four? there’s something giddying about the research-like quality of figuring out how to perfect the tone that music reviewers tend to default to, but also sobering about how easily adapted this fake idol group’s history is from real life. the easiest part of the entire fic was making this group feel real to me, situated in the real life history of j-idols and beyond, even if i admit to shying away from being explicit about the worst things that would still have been grounded in reality. some references to real life idol incidents worked a little too well, but there was also how clean it felt to spin fictional lore for this group in that fake album review. from their individual songwriting styles to tobi’s own background in-story to the kind of themes and concepts a faux pretentious pitchfork reviewer might like to talk about — it was just incredibly fun. i don’t know when else i’d get the chance to write something like that. everything else paled in comparison to it soon after, though i do also tolerate whatever my writing was doing at the end of chapter five, even if some parts of that chapter also feel lacklustre through a hypercritical lens. it doesn’t hold up under extremely rigorous scrutiny, even if i consider the fact that i’d just wanted the fic wrapped up as soon as i could at the time. it could be better, more so than all the other fics in this post could be better. but i don’t mind too much that it isn’t better. i mind it a little. just a little. but its flawedness is also what forced the multimedia format to happen in the first place, and that, i like a lot.

there’s a fair amount that this fic did quite more than alright, i think. if nothing else, it was useful as a playground that i didn’t have to be too finicky about. it will be one of those projects i’ll look back at someday and laugh deliriously over because how did i think that was the only way to make it work, but with the facilities i had at the time, it’s definitely not a shitshow. it has a lot of heart — which doesn’t necessarily redeem awful works, but in passable ones, those parts of the writing meet each other halfway. please let me love you forever holds its own weight, which is plenty more than i can say for most of my other experiments. plus it contains a background relationship that is not at all the focus of the story yet will probably haunt me forever. it’s always the ones you least expect to matter that will ripple further down the line, etc.

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LOSER TAKES ALL july 2022, tomodachi game trial element | soulmates, mystery au

another unpublished little guy left to rot at one complete chapter. i don’t really have any huge problems with this one, just that i tired of its demands very quickly and didn’t have enough attachment to the dynamics in it to muster up any motivation for. but tomodachi game, and especially yuuichi and kei, are so uniquely positioned for a fic like this, and i don’t resent past me for approaching it this way at all. is a soulmate bond that fosters a telepathic link between people who come back from a brush with death kind of an unhinged premise for a mystery au? yes. but so is remodeling a breakfast restaurant with my mom and the guy i didn’t know confessed to me in high school and who is now literally displaced in more ways than one by said remodeling, and even also acting is all i know so here i am trying to find the love of my life by dating anyone for an entire month on a first come first serve basis only to be shocked when that doesn’t work.

again. boring yet equally ridiculous elevator pitches. if i cemented anything for a fact from this abandoned wip, it’s that my premises have always been questionable, and that time and time again, the only path forward is to lean all the way into it — which i did with hairpin turns, thankfully. hand in unlovable hand and loser takes all are apart by about a year, and there’s palpable change here in my approach to worldbuilding even if i abandoned each for unrelated reasons. granted, i might just be better suited to one side of speculative fiction than the other, but that’s such a copout. when it comes to trying new things in writing, the “if he wanted to, he would” logic applies, even if the he in question ultimately finds that it doesn’t work the way he wants it to (like in hand in unlovable hand).

loser takes all worked fine for me, and i loved the inherent intimacy in having two incredibly smart and perceptive characters in each other’s minds while trapped in this soulmate bond that isn’t necessarily romantic. not to mention yuuichi is a deeply unwell person, and his ways of showing attachment to kei range from drastically protective, such as offering to fire the receptionist that was rude to kei, to:

Sometimes, watching Kei asleep right against him, Yuuichi wants to press his lips against Kei’s pulse. To feel it warm and alive under his mouth, to hear that little sigh of ticklish laughter Kei does if someone so much as runs a soft cloth against his neck.

And sometimes—sometimes Yuuichi is also seized by a strong thought, a strong urge, to sink something sharp into that pulse. His teeth, a fork, a shard of broken glass. Sink it in hard, deep enough to leave a bloody bruise, a scar, a puncture. Hard enough to maybe even sever that heartbeat, to tear it, slit it into silence somehow. Hard enough that it feels almost the kinder choice to imagine himself wrapping his hands around Kei’s neck—tightening them without hesitation, itself a mercy of a kind as the blood quickly drains out of Kei’s cheeks. Yuuichi imagines then how Kei will struggle, whether he’ll kick or bite Yuuichi, if he’ll reverse their positions with one twist of a martial arts trained body, or if he’ll just accept it, resign himself to it knowing that not even this, if it’s Yuuichi, could possibly be meaningless.

But it would be. It would be meaningless to kill Kei. Meaningless because Kei is singular in his position within Yuuichi’s life, loyal and intelligent and a force to be reckoned with like no one else is, not even Yuuichi’s sister, not even the only friend he trusts most. Meaningless because every time Yuuichi pictures it, every time he wonders if he’ll have it in him to press two killer’s hands around Kei’s neck, it doesn’t take long for the accompanying sting to come like a splash of boiling water on exposed skin. A kind of scolding, a kind of reminder, that just as much as it would be difficult for anyone to kill Kei—so impervious to physical harm, whose broken bones and bleeding wounds will always heal even if he jumps off a twenty-story building—it would be just as difficult for Yuuichi to do him harm and survive it without any damage done to his own heart at his own hands.

the temptation to keep writing this is not entirely absent, to be honest. but a mystery takes care and attention, and i just don’t have that in me the way this story deserves. but this fic was delicious to write, and i think it gave me a hunger to write more dynamics that feel just as juicy. dynamics that aren’t necessarily geared towards healthy love, but ones that ooze if poked anyway.

i definitely want to revisit the telepathy plot device i explored here someday, but for now, this fic, abandoned wip as it is, is kind of the goldilocks midpoint between failed venture (hand in unlovable hand), almost-passable venture (please let me love you forever), and basically there if being there counts taking your literal first baby step into a new frontier (days of brutalism and hairpin turns).

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HONORARY MENTIONS

i don’t mean to ignore the canonverse fics (here and where you are, i’ll give you something so real, detour, and the two manhwa fics, that is) out of favouritism, but i’m afraid there’s nothing much to say…? not that these weren’t lessons in themselves, but canonverse takes a quarter of the energy and brainpower to write, and i’ll be lying if i don’t go about them essentially all no thoughts, head empty. i talked a bit about here and where you are here, while the logic for detour, which i was happy to write for and based on exchanges with a friend, is pretty self-explanatory. i did love getting to write a character like loid (and i’m relieved that the chapters that follow the ones i took into consideration for that fic hold up the characterization i imagined for him) + it was interesting to give sexual content and the philosophy of desire or whatever a shot in i’ll give you something so real. they were effective at what i needed them to do — which is, really, just to check the temperature of the water. i always feel so rusty when any amount of time passes without me writing, and these small, low-maintenance fics work as a burst of ice cold water before jumping in. i don’t value these fics any less for their place in The Process, and i might even be extra happy when someone likes them, but as far as Advancing The Craft 🤢 goes, all of these are simply necessary bridges to get to the next checkpoint. sometimes you gotta scratch the tip of the pen before the ink starts bleeding like it’s supposed to. words are the same. it takes a while each time to get my writing to a place i recognize, and sometimes a while is an entire fic before i can write the next chapter for an ongoing multi-chaptered story.

(that said: shoutout to the particular flavour of introspection in detour, within which my favourite line was written the literal minute before i sent it off, and a big heart emoji for the fact that i’ll give you something so real unfolds in a span of barely half a day. both are very interesting to think about moving forward.)

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DAYS OF BRUTALISM AND HAIRPIN TURNS january 2023, blue lock trial element | a romantic triad, sci-fi, memory loss (finally!)

my angel. my darling. my love. who is far from being perfect but is the closest i’ve had to at least being sure i won’t just wake up one day loathing the soul out of it. i’ll laugh at it, probably. i’ll think it’s hilarious and cringy someday soon. but it’s a work i can’t not appreciate wholeheartedly.

my cc tells me that the first time i put it on record that i won’t mind doing a blue lock fic is may 16, 2022, and the fact that i didn’t even make it a year and did so in the most Hard To Pitch If This Was An Actual Novel And Not Just A Fic For Fun way possible is worth at least a salute of disbelief, i think. my journal from my writing hiatus also tells me i’ve been trying to make memory loss work since 2020 and managed to scratch the itch minutely with here and where you are (which is… a pretty janky piece of work, looking back now) — but i’m just really, really content, even proud, of how i managed to weave it into a fic adapted from a story about football battle royale.

it’s almost kind of unnerving how satisfied i am with the premise of hairpin turns, even if the execution leaves quite a bit to be desired — as it always will, really, and therein is the joy of finding the next writing project. i laughed a lot at myself while writing hairpin turns, and of all the inside jokes that my works started as, this one is by far the fic to feel most like it — a fun little joke that got funnier and funnier the more of it i wrote, and so i wrote more, chasing that laughter until it was time to catch my breath. and i think with how much i require writing to feel urgent and single-minded to be fun, there’s a part of me that’s easily... bored, for lack of a better word, when something doesn’t give me that. without this fast-paced almost-violence, i get bored and restless, the way i was around all the projects i had lined up after please let me love you forever. i’m making a face as i type that but maybe i just mean to say that there were a good few months there where nothing scratched the itch in need of stimulation. i’d write scenes and they wouldn’t be awful, wouldn’t even be bad, but they weren’t exciting to me. they weren’t thrilling. they didn’t feel like i was dissecting anything, just poking at skin with a scalpel and rolling my eyes when i didn’t draw blood from a dead body — you know?

but projects have an uncanny way of arriving in your life when you most need it, and just when i have peeled and replaced my wallpaper and assembled and reassembled my keyboards and poked at this manuscript i refuse to rewrite until i did a warm-up that felt substantial enough, the blue lock anime started airing. i knew vaguely what dynamics i wanted to write even back when i had only the manga, but i know i could not have tortured this fic out of me then. not before please let me love you forever, not before loser takes all, not even before all my failed attempts at pitching speculative fiction stories to myself at 3 AM and gritting my teeth at my own disgust. the best aus fall into your lap fully formed and fully realized before you even know what you’ll be shaping it into; they’re a little predestined that way, and aus might be why i owe fanfiction my certainty that the author is just as possessed by the narrative if the narrative has its own pace and direction. i think that’s logic that should be applicable to original projects as well.

i did hesitate in the very beginning of hairpin turns because sci-fi was such a huge deviation from my comfort zone and i have the misfortune of being both a taurus sun and an enneagram type five. i’ve never tried writing proper sci-fi, not even a little, let alone enough to be comfortable with knowing where to start something that wasn’t merely regular slice of life with a slight sprinkling of specfic. i was sure my writing style wouldn’t be a good match for it. i still don’t think it’s a match, necessarily. my prose is a bit too sentimental for some of the demands sci-fi asked of me — and that’s fine. i wouldn’t know the precise nature of that incompatibility if i hadn’t jumped into the pool of sharks and came out of the tank somehow, disbelievingly, friends with them. i began wary of relying too much on technobabble since i’m not exactly the most stem-oriented person around, but even the background of this au wrote itself, half because blue lock was a shockingly perfect match for the world i had in my mind and half because i found that the technology i imagined for the plot was both possible and easy to break down into the narrative. even now i’m still shocked at how scientifically sound the core pitch of the story is, and the fact that it married itself well to both the overarching plot and the character dynamics i wanted to highlight was just icing on a cake i would have tried to politely finish anyway.

it could very well be that hairpin turns is just a fluke, its parts too seamlessly glued to each other that i’m not sure it could have been anything else except luck doing the work there, but i think there’s also credit to be found in how nothing is sacred in blue lock. these are characters who have done ridiculous things and said ridiculous things, and it was a matter of matching their energy. therein is the same lesson from loser takes all: if i’ve always known that characters decide the pace, tone and atmosphere of the story and everything else in it, then doesn’t it also go to say that in order to write a story far out of my comfort zone, i need only start with characters far outside of my comfort zone?

i think with au fics in particular, a lot of the work begins with justifying why certain things are in character for them in this universe based on what we know from canon. but because those boundaries are expanded by what blue lock innately is, it doesn’t feel as weird to posit something like, what if you and your android bf get tasked with rescuing his older brother’s android bf and find out along the way that you might also both be in love with your childhood best friend? as with most other of my initial ideas, this quickly spiraled into something significantly different — which luckily for me included the memory loss idea that i’ve been wanting to explore for forever now. proper sci-fi was the perfect backdrop for it, and bachira the perfect person to willingly do it, and isagi and rin the perfect people to be left in the aftermath of that loss. stars aligned, truly. i’m incredibly grateful for it.

whatever challenges i encountered writing this fic had nothing to do with writing it. it was as smooth to write as it was an absolute pain to edit, because the three povs are so vastly different from each other, and with no outline to mentally check each time i add a new scene, i was reliant on going back and forth again and again to make sure the worldbuilding is cohesive and the plot is coherent. at some point i couldn’t look at it anymore, and it might even be a testament to how much i appreciate the fic that i still can’t look at it now yet cannot deny how fond i am of the final result.

with sci-fi in particular, it really is a case of faking it till you make it, and whatever lies don’t feed into each other, you can always revisit and adjust later. that’s the common sense magic of fiction, i suppose. there’s a degree of patience i held onto writing hairpin turns that i wouldn’t have had with any other previous work, and i think it benefited me more to have all three chapters written in varying increments, out of my usual linear order, than publishing it chapter by chapter. i had all the room to experiment — what does the world look like in 2070? is 2070 even the right year to set this in? is there anything big happening around that time period? how does the lingo change in the time between present and this potential future? when i run into things that feel too out of my depth to write, like isagi’s pov for instance, do i actually have a justification for saying no other than how it will be easier than trying? are there benefits to giving bachira the final chapter that i’m being biased against because i think it would be a challenge? and between all of these choices, how do i adapt existing blue lock canon, from their playstyles to the favourites listed in the egoist bible, to worldbuilding in other forms of media that i’ve always wanted to try a different approach to?

i used to think it was unnecessary and superfluous to go into writing something while getting bogged down by stray facts about characters, in both fic and original projects, but at the same time, it’s truly the tiny details that will humanize more than knowing a character’s birthday or what traumatic events lie in their backstory. tiny details that breed more tiny details, until it’s about the fact that bachira and isagi are childhood friends in this au yet when we meet bachira again he’s calling isagi by last name, or how rin understandably questions the validity of his own humanness because we can only assume sae had recreated him in grief or defiance against mortality or whatever other emotion that we’ll never know for sure because we only ever see sae in this fic through rin, and that matters a lot more than if i gave sae a pov — and yet rin manages to love through the small things, in how the warehouse is in an eternal sunset waiting for bachira to return to him and isagi. it’s about how first love, late spring was about learning how to love someone else the way they need you to when you weren’t loved the way you needed to be, but hairpin turns is about how spending your whole life never questioning if you were loved can rob you of the facilities to put a name and shape to what you feel for someone who’s always been in your life. the things you don’t take for granted, necessarily, but you do love for granted by not calling it love.

hairpin turns is about the pieces obscured from view and all the more present because of it. it’s about lost memories, the phantom outline of a person like a haunting. it’s about how sae never once appears in a direct scene yet he looms over rin’s existence. it’s about how rin’s chapter represents the past, isagi’s the present and bachira’s the future, but time matters little in the end — how could it weigh any more, in a story about memory? it’s about the uneasy momentary peace that’s the only scene we can count on as a happy ending. it’s about the lengths you’ll go to get the chance to be ordinary about your love, even if all else about it is unconventional.

and yet above all, what i like best about this fic is that it works towards questions that feel like being given answers. some of my other fics try to provide answers to its characters and the readers they resonate with, to give them a way to be well-equipped to move forward, while a few other fics settle on non-answers because uncertainty is the only ending there is. but hairpin turns moves outward only to ask more questions, questions that are the answers and the thesis, yet in a way that isn’t strictly open-ended. and i have no fucking clue how i managed it, but this feels like the target i’ve been itching to catch sight of this entire time. this is the kind of story and process i would like to aspire to this year, and even though it had taken me 80k to glean what i needed from it, i’m glad i stayed with this fic as a warm-up.

anyway. this got a bit away from me, and who knows, maybe this level of pretentiousness is only because i’m still riding the high of affection for my most recent brainchild to make it to college — but i’m not totally blind to the flaws in hairpin turns. the execution of the ending itself is clunky, not because it doesn’t resolve anything but because it does, and by then, the post-rescue section has gone on for long enough that even an ending feels like an epilogue. the story overall lacks complete confidence in what it is, with some parts shadowed by a slight hovering hesitation and others weighed down by a heavy hand showing too much kindness to my non-confidence. it’s never too heavy-handed, and definitely not so much that i’ll send it to the bin, but enough that if i want something to pick apart, there are stray choices hiding in places that i’d circle as an editor for feeling too sentimental, or the tone too dissonant with the pacing, or, ironically, not explored enough. in the genre i’m used to writing, the adrenaline rush is in finding the right balance within a new choreography for a dance style i know well, but in my first real foray into speculative fiction, i think i was just trying to find my footing the whole time. i’m still surprised i made it to the other end of the tightrope, honestly. i didn’t expect to applaud myself for the bare minimum, and i still don’t.

but all of this is a lesson for me, too. what i do know is that it’s interesting to tell a story about what’s missing, about the unsaid and the unseen, and if that’s what it will take for me to rediscover excitement in what i write so that i don’t have to sink back into the ennui of these last couple of months, then that’s a pretty darn fun goal to spend the rest of the year unpacking.

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katzirra · 11 months

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I sure do be feeling a lot of bad things about my relationship with art these days lmfao, and I really don't know how to fix them and overcome them anymore.

It's like... there's such conflict about like... if you complain about the nature of social media people either are like YEAH!! or there's this weird thing I'm seeing now where people are getting mad at people bringing up the importance of reblogs as like attention seeking begging and shit like?? LIKES ARE NICE, I LOVE LIKES but like reblogs are how people actually SEE your stuff?

A like is like ah nice, scrolls past, a reblog is like MAN I WANNA LOOK AT THIS LATER or like it MEANT something to someone. But people act like that's so wrong artists are bummed out over engagement with shit lmao?? We're just selfish little hogs or something.

Or there's like this long standing thing about artists being bothered they don't know what to draw to get that engagement and people are like "DRAW FOR YOURSELF!!" like bitch, I been doing that because tumblr and twitter fucking drove that nail in lobotomy style - and it's making me sad because I feel like the more I like a piece, the SADDER I am when no one else engages with it or it's like 25 people??

Felix use to get alarming notes at times, now it's like feh, nothing? So, I tried drawing for fandoms I was passionate in - which got me a lot of people I care for, but also a lot of needless drama I hated and didn't ask for and that caused a LOT OF ISSUES when I even TRIED to stay out of it LMAO good LORD.

Even doing the Xig blog lately, I've been like okay I'm gonna stick with it because a WEIRD AMOUNT OF PEOPLE engaged with that poll I posted and I was like okay, that's a substantial amount of people who want that content, and even on the blog itself THAT poll was like OH. OKAY?? Because honestly, I feel like I'm on a weird blocklist or something or people don't like my art in the fandom so it's a weird place to be for me :))!! But I know people send me really sweet messages sometimes or sometimes I get amazingly sweet tag comments or people REALLY like an answer to something and it tickles their brain and that makes me happy but like??

I spend hours on that shit and it barely hits 100 unless it's a meme post usually and I dunno, I feel selfish all the time for being bummed about that. I'll spend days on some of them and be like SO PROUD and then just - the low engagement I'm like man, am I wasting my time? AM I STUPID? AM I TOO OLD TO BE HERE NOW, TRYING TO MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY? IS MY ART BAD? IS IT?? DO I JUST SUCK??? AM I NOT SELF AWARE??

It's weird how I see so many times people like my style or whatever, and like I know people still stick around for it, and I see so many artists post such GRAB BAGS of fandoms and stay strong in engagement and I just always feel like I'm doing something wrong or bad lmao?? Not supposed to talk about your feelings anymore, but also supposed to be engaging and personal on this here hellsite lmao??

I've been doodling shit at work and just feel tired all the time because I don't even want to finish anything anymore. I thumbnail mini comics that are like 5-10 pages of things that I think would be nice to do, I thumbnail out the backgrounds, thumbnail out bigger samples of poses and stuff and feel a little excited about how nice I could make it, and I just... know the energy put into it wouldn't be worth it because it'll be something I finish and am excited to post and no one will care.

Okay not no one, but like who is really gonna put fucking hours and hours of work into something that's gonna fall flat on it's face. I do that enough already! I over the last few years have posted so much stuff I was actually proud of and just felt....stupid for being happy and no one engaging with it. And then feeling more stupid and GUILTY because I'm upset about it?? LMAO LIKE WHAT KIND OF EMOTIONAL GARBAGE IS THAT?? And I'm barely online these days too beyond randomly scrolling shit to see what my friends that I barely feel relevant to talk to are doing in their lives nfjgkh I've lost all personalableness... that's not a word but we keep goin' lmao

It's like boy howdy, this kinda like ennui gets met with the whole ooooh two cakes and ohhhh but it'll be someone's favorite and blah blah - PBBT PBBTTT PBTTTT I GET IT!! But like, I'm sorry, I need more validation that I'm not wasting my fucking time. Because that's kind of all I feel these days is that I'm just wasting my time... which is sad. But ya'know some asshole will also be like "so stop" like thanks, thanks kiddo. That's the kind of shit I need I guess. Just stop. Just give up!

It's like, keep struggling, or just stop. Both options kinda fucking blow. But I've also tried to just stop caring about numbers and engagement - but I've noticed all my friends have slowly stopped posting art too. Busy and tired.

I wanna be excited to post art again, man. I miss when I'd post Marvel shit and actually have hilarious engagement and made friends and had fun conversations.

I miss when I'd post a Xig post and I'd see a tag and end up having a conversation in someone's ask box back and forth because I made some little easter egg or HC they were really into and were curious about more.

I dunno :)) bitching for no reason I guess. Shuts up and draws my stupid little pictures.

I feel like the only reason I keep doing art anymore is because I'm grasping some thread of hoping social media flops over again an engagement booms again LMAO - and also like, I have 3 patrons that ya'know. I'M FUCKING TRYING TO KEEP DESPERATELY LMAO.... Patreon pays for my fucking vet bills at this point and I'm obnoxiously thankful for those people but just fuck idk.

I'm doing everything wrong anymore it feels like but whatever!!

Maybe I just don't try hard enough lmao. Just not meant to be an online artist anymore. After 20 years, I'm still fighting this hard for mild engagement? What kind of fuck up, am I lmao holy shit.

#kat talks #ignore me #long post

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yooniesim · 2 years

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Literalite, sojutrait and all their cliquey ass friends are just a bunch of hypocrites, sitting on their high horse, trying to destroy everyone who calls them out on stuff. They're the ones who keep dragging this out because they thrive on attention. You're a good person, Ceci. Hope you know that ❤

Thank you, nonny. They're both seriously awful & proud of it apparently. I ignored this ask for several days, but when I see shit like this, why bother? They consider it harassment & fixation just to point out they lied their asses off (and continue to lie) to their thousands of followers. I pinned the post because the original was full of lies and I have yet to see a single thing proving otherwise because it does not exist. I say that confidently even in a time where everyone screenshots everything that happens immediately, because I know I'm right. The events the way they described them simply never occurred, and they can't get away from that fact, which is why they're still bullshitting to ignore the actual issue even now. It's just like how there's no proof of Seph ever doing any actual "peacekeeping" at any point in time, other than the act of "kindness" of joining the server itself, which says absolutely nothing besides he sat there and read what was said just like 200+ other people. There was never an attempt to come to an understanding between us, no added perspective on behalf of his friends, no meeting in the middle during discussions/disputes. The one time I actually asked for his help with a situation related to both of our friend groups, I was straight up ignored. And every time I've asked for any type of empathy or understanding, I either haven't gotten any. So what peacekeeping, honestly, can he say he's done? I'd be curious to know, though I'm well aware I'm never going to get an answer, because it never happened. That's why you never hear a detailed account of anything that occurred, or god forbid an actual screenshot.

While I have plenty to back up what I've done, including an extensive account of very much punishing the person responsible for what they're pinning on me because it's convenient for their made-up narrative (and there's nothing else for them to use besides "she likes kpop too much for our personal tastes" which shows how shallow it all really is). And they can't refute that, so they have to resort to acting like I should've had the power to... somehow prevent someone from sending a message in a group chat before they sent it? If that sounds like nonsense, that's because it obviously is, and they don't even realize how ridiculous it was to say. Not to mention the silly, middle-school "cohorts" concept about people I only knew online in a public server, that I was not "warned about" by them in any capacity, which is yet another lie to add to the pile. It shows they find people that agree with you on the internet to be your ride or die friends, which explains a lot. And yes, I am very much able to call out people I was formerly friendly with when I get evidence of them showing their true colors, even when it's towards people I'm not particularly fond of, because that's what you're supposed to do- but clearly none of them have learned that yet. Instead it's always "my friend is never wrong because... they're my friend" or "the enemy of my entirely self-perceived enemy is my friend", which shows the immaturity in their thought processes. I don't find them any different than any of the others spewing false allegations, microaggressions, shit talking, or bigotry, because they're not. They just don't have the self-awareness to see what they do compared to when they're happily criticizing the people they don't like. That's why they're always convinced people are mad at them for "having fun" or "having friends", they have to victimize themselves to distract from their own shitty actions.

This entire post by sojutrait is nothing actually substantial because there's nothing to lean on other than being vaguely edgy & rude, better than, and using words and concepts they don't seem to fully understand. You can really tell no thought or deeper meaning was put into it at all. Just like how Seph's earlier response was absolutely nothing relevant as well. Both are obviously more or less a performance for their own egos and to justify their blatant lies so, as Seph said, they can be stable and happy and sleep at night despite the obvious hate they bring to others. Because if they'd truly moved on & were so much better than me, they wouldn't have posted either in the first place. (Including the tags- if I was lying, why didn't you just take your friend's advice and ignore it? Is it because you don't want anyone to see it and question you? Because posts like that with no proof should be questioned, precisely because of situations like this. You lied, you know it, and now you're caught in it.) People that are unbothered don't need to repeatedly tell you how unbothered they are... if they do, chances are they really aren't. They only want me to "move on" because they can't stand being criticized, it burns them up inside and you can tell. Which is a shame, because I don't care about them having fun with their friends, but I do care about this vile and embarrassing behavior that has gone on for years unchecked. They're not "consequences" if you had to outright lie to get them to happen, including knowingly using those lies to encourage disgusting asks... that's a "harassment campaign", one they're doubling down on despite knowing it's wrong and what they alone caused. That they never would've even had the guts to try if they hadn't known I was in a vulnerable place at the time, which is sad and gross enough. They should both honestly be ashamed and I hope they do some serious growth in the next five years or so to gain a little empathy and maturity because they desperately need it. Both in public and in private. Especially if they continue preaching accountability and self-reflection while never once (I challenge you to check) embracing those concepts themselves.

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destinyimage · 2 years

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Encounter Deep Intimacy with the Father

The apostle Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly…” (1 Corinthians 13:12a).

The context is love—the “more excellent way,” the perfection that comes, causing the imperfect to pass away (see 1 Cor. 13:10). The love Paul talked about is the kind of love that begins in the Father as a condition of His heart. This kind of love eludes us when we fix our eyes on the vague reflection in the mirror of self-righteousness and mere religion. In the days Paul wrote about the mirror, there were no such things as plate glass mirrors. The mirrors were made of hammered metal, usually bronze or brass. The reflections were much distorted at best. We are so busy trying to impress God and ourselves that we ignore Him. We have missed the music!

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Beloved, we are created to live face-to-face, presence-to-presence with our Father. We bear His very breath!! The Eternal kissed us alive, intending that we would never turn away. Yet we so often live in the mirror. When I live in the mirror, I am looking at myself or my past or comparing myself with you. I look at myself trying to improve or impress myself and you. I see what is right or wrong with me and find myself wanting. I become fascinated with the mirror and cannot see you or anyone else. I look at my imperfections—a pimple here and too much scalp there. As I look in the mirror, I age. I no longer see the 20-something young person; I see Elmer Fudd!

When I live in the mirror, I am always looking at my past, and I fail to see the present or the future. I see where I blew it and where there seems to be no hope. I cannot move beyond that deadly offense or believe that the Father would see anything beyond that failure.

When we live in this face-to-face kind of relationship, we are not looking around for the right thing to do or trying to impress God with our deep spiritual insights. He knows who He is. We are born to live within a breath’s distance of a Father who is passionate about seeing our faces. Imagine the ache in His heart when we turn aside because we have looked in the mirror and seen that our lives are not yet perfect. He sees us perfectly, and He has called us to move beyond the mirror and into His face and presence.

An Obstructed Focus

God reminded Moses of His priority of living face-to-face in the first of the Ten Commandments. God said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2-3). A literal rendering of the Hebrew text translated “before Me” suggests something like, “You shall have no strange gods (or anything else for that matter) before My face.” The words for face and presence are substantially the same in Hebrew. It is the heart of God that we would live in an intimate awareness of His presence and heart. This is the place of ultimate power and love.

Brennan Manning said:

The gospel proclaims a hidden power in the world—the living presence of the risen Christ. It liberates men and women from the slavery that obscures in them the image and likeness of God.

Beloved, we have damaged and distorted images of ourselves and the One who calls us to a deep and quenching intimacy.

Two Faces

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When I read these first words of the Ten Commandments, an image of two faces comes to mind: Christ’s and mine. And there is a junkyard of debris laying between them on the table. I see this junk between the faces of married people all the time. Marriage is much like two people sitting down at a table across from each other. Two people come together and are in love with each other. In the beginning they can see one another and are able to love and be loved. But as life happens, a layer of undealt with offenses piles up between them until they can no longer see one another; they are looking at the pile of rubble. Here lies the rusting hulk of failed marriages, the broken remnants of familial relationships. In this no man’s land of rubble, there are burnt and broken stones cast aside from past failures and unrealized dreams.

Between Abba and us there is the tangled junk of performance and the many ways we’ve tried to earn what was already freely ours. Likewise, the Father’s passion to see our faces is obstructed with sin, self-effort, and issues growing from the bitter roots of past hurts. This junk cannot be overlooked and shoved aside; it must be hauled out to the curb with the rest of the trash.

There are so many things that have obstructed our focus from our Father’s face. When Adam and Eve stumbled in the garden, they removed their focus from the Father’s face and put it on themselves. Ever since the fall, we have been fascinated with the mirror and our shortcomings. We have squandered precious face time with God and stood in front of the mirror practicing our religion just as I used to practice my trumpet. We are trying to get all the moves down and look good to the world and God. We are fascinated with ourselves and locked onto our imperfections. Both we and the one who invites us to intimacy are deprived of each other’s eyes.

When we spend our lives looking into the mirror, ignoring the eyes of our Father, we reject ourselves. Henri Nouwen said “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is self-rejection.”2 We live in a culture of mirrors and self-rejection.

Oh, how we are seduced by the mirror! Even when we have come to experience a saving personal knowledge, we take our eyes off the Father’s face and return to the mirror.

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? (Galatians 4:9)

What will ever get our focus off of ourselves and back onto the face of our Father? There is only one way, and that is the way of mercy released in repentance. Repentance, in the Hebraic sense, is simply turning back. But it is not just turning in another futile direction. So many of us keep turning like whirling dervishes to other things to validate or excuse whatever we have seen in the mirror. But we seldom turn back toward His face. How many times did the heart of the Father cry out through the Law and the Prophets, “Return to Me…”? Repentance is simply turning back toward the Father’s face where we were created to live.

We have lived life in the dim and shadowy reflections of a mirror. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). When is the “then” Paul was talking about? There is a greater knowing of God, face-to-face. It is when the imperfect passes away, when we put aside the mirror and look deeply into the eyes of the one who created us to love Him.

Beloved, our Father has a passion for our faces. He has withheld nothing to remove the obstacles and shadows that have come between us—to remove the mirror and call us back to His face. It is only when we look into His face that we will know our Father’s heart and our truest selves. The Psalmist said, “They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed” (Psalm 34:5).

When we take our eyes off of the mirror and again “look to Him” we become “radiant;” we literally sparkle in His presence. We no longer focus on ourselves, our past wounds, our offenses, or our sins. We are now focused again on the Lord for whom we were created and recreated in Christ Jesus. The Father has removed every obstacle in Christ Jesus, according to His great love toward us, as expressed in mercy.

They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads (Revelation 22:4).

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bestcatlitterforcats · 2 years

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How to Buy Cat Litter

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aphrostarot · 3 years

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The Emperor Pick a Pile

If you feel like you need to set better boundaries, protect your energy, and fully embrace your boss energy then this pick a pile is for you.

Please remember that this is a general reading and some things may not apply to you. Don't force it to fit. I offer paid readings on my page if you would like a personal reading. Prices are listed there. Please message me or email me if you are interested!

Pile One:

What things are currently out of control in your life?

Death:

To me, it seems as if you are constantly trying to control everything in your life. Additionally, I believe that you may fear change on top of the control issues. Intuitively, you may know when big changes are coming, which provides you with a chance to delay them, but you do not seem to have been able to do that recently. Change keeps coming your way no matter what you do, which has been making you pretty stressed out. However, you are unaware that these changes are helping you to become a better version of yourself.

Passion Ignited:

A new beginning within your soul passions is the theme of this card. This suggests that your passions have undergone some major shifts. Maybe you've lost your job recently, or maybe you've just realized that what you once loved isn't what you want anymore. There may be people in your life who are putting pressure on you, trying to make you do things that you do not want to do, which has further contributed to your stress. It seems you have been struggling lately trying to figure out how to pursue what you really want while also making the people around you happy, regardless of the situation. You need to know that your own happiness is all that you need to focus on, not anyone else’s.

Heart Chakra:

Given your current situation, it makes sense that your heart chakra is currently out of balance. It's difficult to have parts of your life out of your control, especially when it comes to your chakras. During this time, you can begin to regain balance within this chakra by practicing more self-care.

What do you have control over in your life?

Seven of Cups:

Right now, you are unaware that regaining control over your passions is within your reach. All you need to do is realize this and take the necessary steps to regain control. The first step is to do what makes you happy and stop trying to make everyone else happy.

Trapped in Fear:

It seems that an unnecessary amount of worry plagues you. Since you are filled with so much worry you are unaware that these worries are actually preventing you from taking the steps necessary to regain control over the things you have lost along the way. Get out of your own head, stop letting your fears drive your life, and take control of your life again. Get back in the driver's seat.

What is outside of your power?

Two of Pentacles:

Your finances may have suffered as a result of your struggles with your passions. It may have been a long time since you were financially stable. At this point, this does not need your attention. Right now, your financial security is beyond your control. What you have control over is how to regain balance in what you want to pursue, not how much money you will make. Money worries are not necessary right now. You are focusing too much on the future when you should really be focusing on the present.

Patience:

During this time, you need to be patient with yourself and your journey. By exercising patience, you will not only regain control over parts of your journey that have gone off track, but you will also feel balanced within yourself, which may eventually allow you to let go of some of your worries.

Solar Plexus Chakra:

This chakra is associated with your psychic abilities and inner feelings. As I mentioned before, you may have a strong intuition, and this card seems to confirm it. Currently, it appears that this part of yourself is out of balance. You may want to try yoga or breathwork to help you restore your balance. Also, keep a close eye out for other people and energies surrounding you.

What should you be saying no to in your life?

Page of Cups:

It is possible that you are an extremely sensitive person. This can cause you to live with your head in the clouds, seeing the best in everything and everyone. As a result, you are often taken advantage of. Some people in your life may only keep you around for you to fulfill their needs. It is time that you begin to say no to the people who take advantage of you and your energy. Now is the time for you to focus on yourself and your journey.

Sacral Chakra:

It seems that most of your chakras are out of balance. The Sacral Chakra focuses on your emotions, desires, sexuality, and creativity. Because you are surrounded by some energy sharks in your life you have not been able to fully express yourself. Now is the time for you to do this. Try dancing, or meditation to help you find balance in this area. Also, it is important that you remember that you matter, regardless of what others tell you!

What is something you should keep in your life that needs maintenance?

Six of Cups:

For some, you may be in a soulmate relationship right now and debating on if this person is truly meant for you or not. This is a sign that they are meant for you, but that your relationship just needs a bit of work to maintain. For others, I am getting that an ex has recently come back into your life and you don’t know if you should take them back or not. This is a sign that you should be taking them back but that once you do, you will need to go about the relationship differently than how you did in the past.

Knight of Cups:

This person is very romantic and cares deeply for you and your feelings. You can count on them to be loyal and dedicated to you. They want what is best for you and are willing to provide you with a fairytale romance. Considering you have an out-of-balance heart chakra right now, it would make sense that you may be having questions about this relationship. The maintenance here is you regaining balance in your heart chakra so you are more willing to accept the love this person offers.

Hope:

For some, it feels to me that you had been lacking hope in your life for some time before this person came into your life. Having them here makes you feel things that you have not felt for so long, and that makes you worry that it won't last. You've rediscovered freedom through hope and this leaves you feeling nervous about the outcome because you are frightened that things won't work out, leaving you heartbroken.

Temptation:

There is a substantial amount of sexual desire between the two of you. If this is your ex then maybe this was one of the reasons why the two of you ended up breaking up in the past, as you didn't take the time to get to know each other and only focused on sex instead of developing an emotional relationship. If that is the case, your guides are telling you that you need to make sure you don't get lost in lust in this relationship, as you did the last time.

What is something that brings you joy that you should keep safe at all times?

Eight of Swords:

At some point in your life, you may have struggled to maintain happiness. Perhaps it wouldn’t stick around once it came, or maybe you didn't know what made you happy. Because of this, you need to protect your happiness at all costs. As well as keeping your mental health safe. Particularly from yourself.

Six of Swords:

Progress in your life is what makes you happy. When you start to see all your hard work paying off in your life, especially on things you have been struggling with, it gives you an extreme sense of pride in yourself. You are being told that at all costs you need to keep that feeling. Don’t let what other people have to say about you and your journey make you lose your happiness. Make sure you are doing things that make you happy, not things that make others happy.

Triumph:

The meaning of this card is essentially the same as that of the Six of Swords or The Chariot in Tarot. Your guides are telling you that you must make sure that your progress is protected at all costs. Don't let others dictate your life. The only person who can control what you do in life is you, so take back control. Let yourself be happy.

Channeled Messages:

Library:

You can see from the picture of this layout that this card depicts a woman who is essentially a puppet. Your life is in the hands of others, and they have the power to control your emotions, your actions, and who you are. This card warns you of that. Now is the time to take control of your own narrative. Don't let other people tell you how to live your life. Live your life for yourself and no one else.

5461:

I encourage you to look up this angel number as it can have many different meanings. Search Google for "angel number 5461 meaning" and see what your guides have to say.

Pile Two:

What things are currently out of control in your life?

Nine of Swords (reversed):

You have been plagued with nightmares recently. Traumas from your past that you were putting off have come back with greater intensity. They have become such a problem that you don’t know where to begin when it comes to healing. The good thing is that you are willing to find a way out, it's just that your mental state has become so out of control that you are feeling overwhelmed.

Three of Cups:

Your current state makes it difficult for you to celebrate all you have accomplished in life. You have been in such a funk and dark place and have not really experienced a second of joy as of lately. You may even feel that joy seems far away and unattainable right now.

Solar Plexus Chakra:

Solar Plexus Chakra is the center of self-esteem and confidence. Yours seems to be out of balance right now, which means that you may be experiencing some major self-doubt right now. You can get this back into balance by doing yoga or breathwork. Additionally, be aware of the people and energies that surround you. Energy sharks are the last thing you need in your life.

What do you have control over in your life?

The Emperor:

Considering I am doing the Emperor's reading, it is interesting to have it come through as something you are in complete control of at this time. It appears that you do not realize how much control you really have over your life. You already have all the power you need, you just need to realize it. Currently, your current inner turmoil has been affecting your view of yourself, but your guides are letting you know that there's nothing to fear at this moment, you have everything you need inside yourself to conquer your demons.

Balance:

You have complete control over invoking balance in your life. I know that right now it may not seem like it but you truly do have the power to take back your control over your mindset. Your anxieties no longer have to control your daily life. Making an appointment with a therapist can help you regain balance in your life. Remember that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. If therapy is out of the picture then try yoga, or doing something that helps alleviate some of your stress like drawing, or going to an art exhibit.

What is outside of your power?

Nine of Wands:

Currently, you are experiencing a great deal of inner conflict. Because of this inner turmoil, you feel as though there is no way out, which makes your stress levels even higher. You have been trying to get out of this situation with all your might, but you are trying too hard and not taking the proper actions. As your guides tell you, the way you are going about getting out of this is not the best way. By stressing so much, trying to escape, you are actually making your situation more difficult. I feel that some of you think that being in darkness is a sign of weakness, which is why you try so hard to get out. Right now your guides are telling you that your lesson is to allow yourself to feel something other than positive emotions.

Queen of Cups:

The Queen of Cups is extremely empathetic, someone who puts others ahead of herself and never fails to show compassion and understanding. When it comes to other people, you are quite good at this, but not when it comes to yourself. It is time for you to show yourself compassion. According to your guides, right now getting out of this situation is out of your control, which tells me you're meant to go through it. For some, I believe that you are going through your dark night of the soul right now. This is a necessary step in your transformation and self-discovery, one that should not be rushed. The best thing for you right now is to show yourself the same compassion and understanding you so easily exhibit toward others.

Sacral Chakra:

Your Sacral Chakra is the center of your creativity and sexuality. Right now, this seems out of balance for you. It has affected not only your motivation and creativity but also your sexuality. In recent months, you may have found it difficult to fully express yourself. Your guides are telling you that this is just a part of your current journey, and you should not worry about it right now. Since you've been stressed out about so many things recently, this has actually made your current situation worse. You should relax and give yourself the opportunity to take a break from constantly worrying about how you haven't been acting as you did in the past. You are undergoing a transformation as part of which you are changing. You should not worry about how you are acting differently than you used to.

What should you be saying no to in your life?

Six of Pentacles:

You are a very caring and understanding person. Even when you are trying to deal with your own issues, you are constantly there for people in your life. You have been putting a strain on your mental health by sharing too much, and now is the time to say no to the energy sharks who call themselves your friends. It is unhealthy for you to be around people who know you are going through something and expect you to be there for them constantly. It's time to begin saying no to them, let them figure it out on their own, and if they get upset at the idea of you taking care of yourself then they aren't meant to be in your life.

Three of Swords:

As you are going through a big transformation in your life, you feel very heartbroken and lost, and by constantly being there for the people in your life, you ignore yourself and your needs, which has been making your recovery much harder. It's time to put yourself first, stop thinking about others before yourself.

Throat Chakra:

Your Throat Chakra has been blocked for quite some time, and now is the time to begin speaking up for yourself. It is quite literally speaking up when you have something to say that will help you unblock this chakra. Quit silencing yourself to avoid rocking the boat.

What is something you should keep in your life that needs maintenance?

Two of Cups:

You are currently in a soulmate relationship, whether it is romantic or platonic. This relationship that you have been questioning recently is meant to stay in your life. Recently there have been problems with its harmony, which may have caused you to question it. These problems are not a reason to end it, there is just some upkeep and maintenance to be done.

Four of Wands:

Currently, this relationship may be lacking stability, so your guides are telling you to find stability as soon as possible. If you live with this person, you may want to try redecorating or rearranging your furniture to make it more comfortable for both of you. You could also try having a date night with this person at home in a comfortable environment that will help you two regain some stability.

Power:

You have the inner strength and willpower to get through your current situation, especially when it comes to this person. Due to all of your worrying, you may not realize this. Right now, you must remember just how strong you are to help you overcome your problems.

What is something that brings you joy that you should keep safe at all times?

The Hermit:

You may like to be alone, preferring your alone time over hanging out with a bunch of people. Even if you are in a relationship, you still prefer to have some alone time. This is something you should not change about yourself, according to your guides. Do not let other people change or judge this aspect of yourself. This is a part of your identity that should be protected and not changed.

The Chariot:

You prefer to move around and travel rather than staying in one place for a long period of time. For some, I’m getting that you want to move out of your home town but there are people in your life who are pressuring you to stay. You are being told by your guides to keep your free spirit intact, do not let other people's pressure and judgment change you.

Wisdom:

Your desire to learn is constant. You always want to broaden your perspective and knowledge, and your guides are telling you to keep this part of yourself safe. Never stop learning, it is what makes you so unique.

Emotional Loss:

It is possible for you to move on and heal from any emotional loss, whether you are aware of it or not. You may not think that is the case right now because you have been in darkness for so long, but your guides are telling you that you have the power to heal yourself and move forward and you need to keep this part of yourself protected.

Channeled Messages:

Red:

Right now, your guides are telling you to forgive. You should forgive those who have let you down in your life, forgive yourself for not allowing yourself to feel pain, and forgive yourself for being upset with your guides for making you have to go through this pain. For some, I believe you have been extremely angry with your guides during this time, believing they have abandoned you or that they do not have your best interests at heart. Your anger is 100% valid and you need to forgive yourself for hating them.

1211:

I encourage you to look up this angel number as it can have many different meanings. Search Google for "angel number 1211 meaning" and see what your guides have to say.

Pile Three:

What things are currently out of control in your life?

Two of Wands:

You may have just entered a partnership recently. In most cases, the Two of Wands describes a business partnership but based on the energy I am getting from this pile, I feel this could pertain to a romantic relationship for some. When this card comes out, it shows how well you and your partner work together and that you will go far together.

Page of Wands:

This person is an extremely friendly individual. They are very adventurous and fun-loving. Their charm and ability to communicate enable them to make friends easily. If this is a business relationship this is what has helped or will help the two of you get far.

Trapped in Fear:

This person's friendliness has been eating away at you for a long time. You are scared that this person’s friendliness will not make them committed to you. That they will leave you for something or someone better. Your fear has taken control over you and this relationship and it has gotten so bad that it is so far out of your control now.

Light:

You have let your fear control your life and your relationship, which has affected your happiness, especially in this relationship. Previously, you could fake happiness around this person, but now it has gotten so bad that you are unable to fake it.

What do you have control over in your life?

Two of Pentacles:

You may have struggled to maintain balance in your life in the past, but lately, that is not something that you struggle with anymore. Your life seems to be getting back to normal now that you have recently started regaining balance in areas where it had been missing for some time.

The Hierophant:

While it may not apply to everyone, I am seeing that you may have been unsure about marriage for some time now, which may be due to your lack of balance, but as of now, I am seeing that you may want to get married in the near future. A marriage, you feel, will give you a solid foundation in your life. For those who are already married, you may have felt that your marriage was one of the things lacking stability in your life, but now that you have regained a sense of balance in your life, it seems to be doing well.

Firm Foundation:

Following a period where you were lacking stability in your life, your guides are expressing to you that now you can create a foundation that is firm and lasting in your life. Whether it's marriage or finding stability and balance in your relationships, this is something to look forward to.

What is outside of your power?

The World:

You have a lot of anxieties when it comes to endings in your life, especially endings in your relationships whether romantic or platonic. Your guides are telling you that these endings are beyond your control. You cannot always keep people in your life, and that is okay. It is not possible to force people to stay or to put off endings. You need to let go of your fears in these situations.

Stand your Ground:

You have been allowing your fears and anxieties control your life for quite some time now and your guides are telling you that now is the time you stood your ground. You need to learn to control your anxieties.

What should you be saying no to in your life?

Seven of Cups:

You are being presented with a variety of options in your life, and most of these options are tempting you to veer off course. You are being told not to steer off course by your guides. Currently, you are on the right track and you do not need to change direction anytime soon. Say no to the people or things that tempt you to change.

Temptation:

We have established that you are being tempted by people and things in your life that seem much more fun than your current path. Stay on course; don't let these temptations lead you to change your direction. All the signs you get are urging you to stay on track.

What is something you should keep in your life that needs maintenance?

Seven of Wands (reversed):

It feels as though you have fought tooth and nail to get to the point where you currently are, and you are tempted to change your course of action because nothing is going your way. You feel pretty defeated right now in some areas of your life.

Justice:

In this situation, you should know that justice will be served to you. Your efforts will pay off, all you need to do is start believing that you are worthy of winning. That's what needs maintenance, your mindset.

Spiritual Union:

What we have been discussing might be a soulmate connection, be it romantic or platonic. When it comes to this relationship, it may seem as though things are not going your way, but your guides are telling you that this is not the case, you will soon be facing justice.

What is something that brings you joy that you should keep safe at all times?

The Empress:

The Empress represents growth and feminine energy. You embody The Empress' qualities. You have a strong sense of self-worth and exude a calming and nurturing energy. Your guides are telling you to hold onto this side of you at all costs. Don't let someone or something make you lose this part of yourself.

Ace of Wands:

Starting new passions is something that brings you great joy. You are constantly moving onto new passions because you love the excitement they bring. Your guides are telling you to never let this side of you go, keep it safe at all costs.

Emotional Loss:

In the past, you may have experienced a major heartbreak that caused you to want to change aspects of yourself in order to get this person back or to make more people like you. Taking this step is not a good idea. You are being told here that changing yourself for someone else is not the right way to go about your life journey and you should not let other people's pressure to change your personality damage yours.

Channeled Messages:

Sword:

You have been considering making a change recently, whether it is cutting your hair or starting a new hobby, and your guides are telling you to go for it here.

5849:

I encourage you to look up this angel number as it can have many different meanings. Search Google for "angel number 5849 meaning" and see what your guides have to say.

Pile Four:

What things are currently out of control in your life?

Three of Cups:

All things fun are associated with the Three of Cups. Previously, you may have been the party animal, the one everyone turned to for fun and to plan all of the get-togethers. Now, you have changed and it seems that people in your life still expect you to be that person, but you are no longer that person. It has become a conflicted situation since you feel that you have to fulfill that role in order for the peace to continue.

Harmony:

You are trying to be an old version of yourself in order to maintain harmony in your relationships at the moment, which is why it seems that harmony is lacking in them at the moment. You’ll be unhappy because you have to pretend to be someplace you’re not, so the harmony can't be maintained. It's hard to pretend to be happy when you're not.

What do you have control over in your life?

Eight of Pentacles:

At this time in your life, you have control over your mind. You know that you are not that old version of yourself, and you know that you do not want to be that person. Because you think the people in your life won't enjoy this new version of you, you pretend that you are still that person. Your guides are telling you with this card that you are in control of who you are and you know who you are. It shouldn't be necessary for you to pretend to be someone you aren't. People who do not like you for who you are aren't meant to be in your life.

Sacral Chakra:

In your Sacral Chakra, you find all of your feelings, desire, creativity, and sexuality. You may not realize you are in control of these things in your life because you're trying so hard to be someone you're not. By pretending to be an old version of yourself, your guides are telling you that you are causing this chakra to get out of balance. Stop trying to be someone you're not. It's unhealthy.

What is outside of your power?

Nine of Wands:

You will experience small setbacks in your journey with the nine of wands. Therefore, I am not surprised that you are experiencing some stress in your life due to setbacks. Every time you think you are getting closer to the finish line, something comes up that sets you back a few steps. Your guides are telling you that there really is nothing you can do to stop this from happening. Sometimes you will face setbacks, that’s just how life is.

Financial and Material Changes:

Money changes may be involved in these setbacks. It is possible that you are spending more than you are earning, causing you to struggle financially. Alternatively, you may be in a career such as running your own business where money doesn’t come as often as you’d like which pushes you back a few steps in your path. There's not much you can do about this at the moment, according to your guides.

What should you be saying no to in your life?

The Hanged Man:

In order to keep the peace, you have been making sacrifices in your life for quite some time now. One of the main sacrifices is you feeling the need to change yourself to make your friends happy. Your guides are telling you now is the time to stop feeling the need to change yourself for others.

The Star:

There is a small part of you that wishes you could one day feel happy while doing this. Your guides, however, say this is not the case. It is pointless to hope that one-day things will go well for you while you pretend to be someone you aren't.

Balance:

There is a lack of balance in your life right now because you are not fully expressing yourself. In order for you to regain balance in your life, your guides are telling you to stop thinking you have to be someone you are not in order for others to like you.

What is something you should keep in your life that needs maintenance?

The Devil:

For quite some time now, you've been lacking fun and happiness in your life. This is because you believe pretending to be someone other than yourself will allow you to have fun. Having fun within your true self is what your guides are telling you to do. Make a point of finding new things that make you happy and things that you enjoy doing. You can have fun while being yourself.

The World:

You need a completion in your life right now. A completion in you thinking that in order for you to be liked you need to be someone else. It is now time to start showing your true self instead of hiding it.

Deception and Envy:

You may be jealous of the people in your life who are more confident than you are and do not fear expressing themselves. Your guides are telling you that expressing your true self will help you overcome this jealousy.

What is something that brings you joy that you should keep safe at all times?

Six of Cups:

A soulmate relationship in your life is something you need to protect at all costs. Though I do believe that it is a platonic relationship, it could be either romantic or platonic. Your guides are telling you that this person brings you great joy and you shouldn't let them go.

Firm Foundation:

Possibly this person has been in your life for quite some time now, and you have a solid relationship with them. You two get along really well together and are extremely comfortable in each other's company. In front of this person, you might even be able to express yourself fully. According to your guides, you should keep this relationship safe at all costs. You shouldn't let your current situation affect your relationship with this person.

Channeled Messages:

Potion:

During this time, your guides encourage you to practice self-care and self-love. Since you've been hiding your true self for so long, you've forgotten to take care of yourself. At this time, make sure that you are putting yourself first.

Lioness:

You have come a long way in your life and have experienced so many things that have left you physically and emotionally scarred. Here, the message is not to hide. As a result of your life experiences, you have accumulated some scars, but you should not be ashamed of them. The time has come for you to fully embrace everything that makes you who you are.

1332:

I encourage you to look up this angel number as it can have many different meanings. Search Google for "angel number 1332 meaning" and see what your guides have to say.

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