#British men act like it’s as simple as that

[yanderenightmare]

Dabi x darling x Hawks

TW: NSFW, noncon, war, soldiers, married reader

AN: kinda inspired by when British Parliament passed the Quartering Act in 1765, and those in the American colonies were required to provide housing for British soldiers, and how they were also expected to provide food, firewood, and even beer.

fem reader

Thinking about old-timey soldiers Hawks and Dabi who knock on your door with their caps in hand, plastic smiles on both their faces when asking for a warm homecooked meal – knowing you can’t refuse by order of the King.

It’s a humble cottage more than it’s a house, but the two men make themselves at home while you slowly stir the stew you’ve whipped up for them – only halfway of your own free will. 

Hawks asks where your husband is, and you point to the love letters displayed on the mantle and tell them he’d been called away seven months ago. 

Dabi then asks if you’ve been lonely…

You try and laugh it off as though it was a charming thing of him to say – but you’ve been feeling apprehensive ever since you opened the door – seeing their hands casually resting on the weapons by their hip as though in silent threat.

You sit with your hands in your lap while they eat. They say they’ve missed the sweetness of a woman like you – that the lads back at base don’t know how to do it the same way. And you know they’re talking about the food, but still… you can’t help but feel they’re insinuating something else.

You scream when they grab you – but it’s not like they expected anything else from a married woman – of course, a good wife would give anyone who isn’t her husband some fight – but like any woman, you’re quickly subdued by the two of them. 

Their smiles are still eerily calm, even as you cry – utterly unmatched by their actions, where they squeeze into all your plush parts with unwarranted strength.

Hawks hugs you from behind, forcing your arms behind your back – his crotch planted firm against your rear, even through all the thick layers of your skirt. 

Dabi is in front of you. He ripped open your blouse in the struggle – now whistling at the pretty sight of your tits while stroking his revolver up the crane of your neck, poking it into your cheek before using it to brush a wisp of hair out of your face – pretty and riddled with tears while you snivel and whimper.

He takes your chin in a strong hand, his tone smooth while he tells you to calm down – as though he's not got his loaded fire weapon aimed at you. His nose brushes yours as he croons at you through a smile – giving your quivering lips a quick peck.

Hawks’ tone is just as suave – playful even, grinning toothily, chuckling out how they just want to thank you for the hospitality as he quickly tugs the wool of your dress up, balling it all around your waist. Petting your cunt through your bloomers with your wrists gripped firm in his other hand, pinned tightly to the small of your back.

Cutlery, plates, and cups crash to the floor when Dabi swipes to clear the table – sending you hips-first against it.

The nose of his gun jabs into your nape, forcing your head down until your cheek smudges the splintery wood.

He doesn’t bother retraining you, letting the threat of his bullets do to all the talking while he unbuckles his belt, letting his uniform drop around his ankles.

He rips a gash in the thin cotton of your bloomers. They look too cute to remove. Not frilly like rich maidens wear, like in those catalogs the men will pass around if not pictures of each other's girlfriends. Yours are worker class, probably sewn by yourself from some old curtains – not meant to be erotic, but made so erotic because of it. 

You’re just a simple farmer’s daughter making your country proud – is what he whispers in your ear when he has two fingers stuffed up your cunt.

It’s obvious you haven’t been fucked in a while – the two digits make you wince and, in turn, make him restless to give you the real thing. He can tell just by the buck of your hips it’s going to feel the same as fucking a virgin.

You’re quickly wet like one, too. Makes it easy for him to slide into your tightness despite your teary whines. 

He lets out a heavy groan when you’ve taken him to the hilt – stays nestled there for a minute – in reverence of the tight, wet warmth he hadn’t felt in a while.

Sure, he and Hawks might have done things on cold, long, lonely nights, but nothing can quite compete with the softness of a woman in his mind.

Those precious ways you tighten up and shake from the stretch, shuffling your thighs when he kneads into your womb – soaking him with wet velvet slick.

His gun goes lazy against your back, though still very much keeping you scared in place as he lolls in and out of you at a languid pace – his chin tipped up with a sigh.

But it’s only initial relief – and once it dies down and the hunger spurs anew – he’s got his lips at your ear and his gun in your mouth – crude things flying off his lips, hips thrusting against you with the same haste of a hound in his rut – saying if he were your husband, he’d never leave your cunt and cooking – that he’d pick being buried six inches deep between your thighs than six feet deep in the dirt – sucking your cheek while telling you not to fret long over your man – how he and Hawks will help you grieve when the love letters stop coming.

The blonde is busy looting the liquor cabinet while Dabi ravages your poor cunt – but he comes back to switch with him once he finds the most expensive bottle.

It was a wedding present you’d been saving, one you’d thought you’d open the day your love would return – but Hawks cares little for the etiquette and swigs it raw from the stem as he retakes his place behind you – bathing his thick shaft with the slick sheen on your inner thighs before pressing himself inside you.

He doesn’t bother to start slow – he’d been kept waiting long enough and goes straight to pounding you deep. Kicking your legs apart – a hand buried in the cake of your ass to steady you whilst the other grips the bottle.

The table is small. Meant for only you and your man – so perfect for bending you over – just intimate enough to allow Dabi to stand at the other end with his cock in your mouth.

The whole thing wobbles against the floor as the two men have their way. 

They deserted from their battalion a long time ago and have both grown pretty tired of house-hopping – and this place seems far enough removed from where anyone would bother looking for them. 

Who knows, maybe they’ll stay until the war is over. 

♡ DABI - TODOROKI TOUYA masterlist ♡ HAWKS - TAKAMI KEIGO masterlist ♡ BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA masterlist

[sepublic]

Now that I’m older, it’s occurred to me that Jack Sparrow really does play the role of the mentor figure in Curse of the Black Pearl. He’s definitely a very cleverly subversive take on the trope, but he is a take on it nonetheless; The older figure who teaches our young, hotshot hero how to act and passes on wisdom. “I knew your father.” An experienced member of a forbidden group that our protagonist learns to accept he is a part of. Acts as a call to action, and isn’t introduced until past the first few scenes of the film.

By contrast, Elizabeth and Will are established in the movie’s first scene, which further strengthens the actually hot take that they’re the main protagonists of the film and the trilogy as a whole, not Jack. Jack is just less recognizable as a mentor because he breaks a lot of the rules (more guidelines really) of the trope, and is treated as more than just a tool for our main character’s growth; He’s someone with his own life and wants and stake in this, too.

Jack Sparrow is ultimately the Gandalf, the Obi-Wan of Pirates of the Caribbean. And that leads me to my argument that PotC is the Star Wars of its generation, with its own Empire Strikes Back and everything. It’s got a lot of the same tropes and structure, but it’s mixed around and dressed up in such a unique way that most people fail to realize this at first glance. 

Take for example, the dynamic of Davy Jones and Cutler Beckett... This is just Vader and Tarkin in A New Hope; A more iconic, supernatural threat, physically imposing, who is nevertheless subservient to Just Some Guy who is British and represents the Machine that strips the world of its magic and wonder. Vader and Jones are more romantic, they’ve got sad backstories and are humanized to the audience; But Tarkin and Beckett are banal and simple, just ruthless men who don’t care, like in real life.

But while Tarkin dies in the first film to make way for Vader taking the spotlight, as well as his similarly theatrical Emperor, the creators of PotC clearly wanted to explore the dynamic of a supernatural force straining against his imperial collar, and the tension of knowing he is contributing to the decline of his own kind. They took Vader and Tarkin’s relationship and made it front and center, happening at the end of the trilogy and not at its beginning. And it is Beckett and the imperial machine that is emphasized as the true evil, whereas in Star Wars, the Empire takes orders from Palpatine and his Dark Side shenanigans, who are framed as the foundation for the conflict.

The crew reinvented Star Wars for a new audience, rather than just... pulling off of the brand and imagery of Star Wars, or copying it word-for-word. They understood the core foundation of the story and the earnest creativity that comes into making something both familiar yet inarguably new, which subverts the stories that came before it in a meaningful manner.

[diejager]

My deep dark desire for a distillery au wherein each force is a competing distillery and you yeet an expert taster reader in there who is in charge of judging each whisky and ranking them. Either they are pulling out all the stops on your tour and treating you like a princess or doing the opposite and threatening you to rank them the highest :')

Mhairi, I am the worse person to ask about whiskey, my parents have delicious smelling ones, fruity and spicy ones, but taste wise? I gag like there’s no tomorrow, especially gin!! I hate gin. The only thing I can stomach so far is sweet, coffee and cream flavoured Baileys Irish Cream. (I know there’s Irish whiskey in it, but it’s only 17% compared to the 40% of any other whiskeys)

Eau De Vie Cw: Alcohol drinking, whiskey taste, tell me if I missed any.

Whisky had always been your favourite, your little secret that you shared with your closest friends alone —your penchent for judging whiskeys and bourbons alone, managing to include rum and brandy in rare occasions. So when you were approached by a known figure in the Whiskey industry that acted as the face for many distilleries across the world, you couldn’t turn down the offer when you were given so much in a simple deal.

You were responsible to drink and rank many popular brands by taste and smell alone, the only person delegated to become the judge. You were given the privilege of taking home a bottle of each brand after this competition, another reason to accept it. So you signed the contract without a second of hesitation, shaking her hand to conclude the deal before she left you squirming with excitement in your office home.

You were flown from your city to a calm part of the Scottish countryside, a chalet overlooking the Scottish highlands and its green beauty. This was the quaint house you would temporarily live in with the rest of the team orchestrating this friendly competition, leaving the connecting house up the cliff side to the different distilleries. From what you’ve heard, Kate Laswell - Kate you called her after a few meetings that had fully bloomed into a friendship of alcohol connoissoir - the participating teams were the British company 141 - who in coalition to Chimera and the ULF - would represent their alliance, the American Shadows, the multi-national KorTac and the Russian brewery Konni. They were all popular brands distilling whiskey and brandy in their own countries, creating a plethora of tastes and sensations that would explode on your tongue after a few sips.

You were ecstatic, your mouth salivating at the simple thought of tasting the finest whiskeys from around the world, but you had a few days to rest and tour the side of Scotland you were shipped to. What you expected to be calm and mild-mannered men and women from their side of the world to meet and eat with refined etiquette, was shattered the second you peered through the door after walking down the connecting path from your chalet to their house.

They were loud, rambunctious in the very sense of it, loud and jovial, hurling insults and hissing out jeers at one another. It was a dogfight between brewers, like cats and dogs. You felt like a stranger, gawking at the group hurling words at one another until it all stopped, the open living room falling in silence when they heard you drop your bag on the polished wood. You’ve never seen humans move so fast until the second after the silence, scrambling to clean the room up and wooing you with their compliments and sweet pleasantries to appease you.

They gave you a tour of the house, the rich wine cellar that was open to you whenever you wanted a drink, the wooden patio that had it’s own lounge and bar, and the various rooms in the mansion-like chalet. They all vied for your attention, ripping one another’s throat to have a second of your attention, kissing up to you with sweet compliments and even sweeter praises.

The Brits - well, three English and one Scott - were a good mix of mature and zealousness, low voices and near-overwhelming figures with their broad shoulders and stocky mass. They came with other people to represent their company: Farah and her devoted Alex from ULF, and the crude Nikolai and Krueger from Chimera.

The Shadows were American, the most American you’ve ever seen, energetic and determined to win you over, and the CEO, a man with a southern accent and a seductive smirk, swiping you off your feet with pet names that made you fluster.

KorTac had as many accents as they had people of different countries, both men and women skilled in multiple languages and conversing so fluently that you started to question if you were on the same planet.

Konni was rough on the edges, their leading figure as scheming as he was gentlemanly, his thin lips letting out the most vicious praises to have you squirming under his dark gaze and unmoving determination for the win.

Days later, you met them at the compound farther down the road, away from the beauty of the coast and cliff, a long table exposing their finest to you. Poured in a cups, one with ice and another without, they were left for you to decide which would win the prize for both straight and on the rocks. Today was the day you would nominate one as the best, standing higher than everyone else without bias despite the times they rendered you a flustered mess and made you unendingly grateful for their help.

Your pallet exploded with flavour every time you sipped on a different brand, eyes rolling to the back of your head with the deliciousness of every bottle. 141 brought three bottles of their aged whiskey: a smoky Scotch Whisky made in the same Highlands you were tasting it, the bitter spiciness of rye whiskey from the American branch of the ULF - credits to Alex for introducing it - and the woody and fruity aroma of Chimera’s whiskey. Shadows had brought - unsurprisingly - their most popular types of whiskey to the table: Bourbon made in their own distillery in Kentucky, a sweet and mellow sub-type of their first one and the smooth flavour of their wheat whiskey. KorTac had a large variety to it’s collection: a floral tasting whiskey that outmatched Hibiki Harmony, a nutty sensation of a bottle made in Ireland and the rich and peaty on of a danish-made bottle. And finally, three Russian bottles from the biggest distillery in Russia: a sweet and smoky bottle, a second one with rich malt and honey, and a third focusing on aroma with it’s spicy odour and fruity taste.

They were all so delicious, if you had these bottles when you working at the bar, mixing concoctions for paying clients, you would’ve been overjoyed, but those days were long gone, your priority standing elsewhere than fulfilling your dream. Truthfully, you didn’t know who to give the medal, the flavours so vast and unique. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind if you took a second or third sip just to be sure.

Part 2

Taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @bvxygriimes @distracteddragoness @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly @tuttifuckinfruttifriday @kaelysia @notspiders @velvetsoulweaver @petwifed @aldis-nuts @randominstake

[leohttbriar]

Someone brought an overhated character poll to my dash about Kai Winn and im literally so sad about the responses. I knew there were people who hated her but it's really baffling to me how maybe 10 people tops acknowledge her past and the reasonings behind her choices, they just see a space Karen.

oh dude, i'm sorry that sucks. and "sad" really is a simple but fairly complete word when it comes to the character of winn adami, huh.

like. i think a lot about how she's the most normal-looking woman on the show. she is also, simply, normal. she is faithful and political and appears and acts in ways far more familiar to us than most characters. even the fact of her alien-faith hardly serves to alienate, given that she is faithful in the way we might be--without true expectation of ever meeting the divine in this life. while kira can seem more like a fictional character when she speaks of the prophets, due to her proximity to them, winn sounds like the person accosting you on a street corner to talk about the rapture.

that's the thing, though, isn't it. about the "karen" phenomenon in general. there is nothing uniquely bad about middle-aged white women--nothing that makes them uniquely ungovernable in social spheres in ways men aren't. in ways everyone isn't, in some way. (merely anecdotal evidence, but my own experience in the service industry made me far more wary of men in their 30s wearing patagonia vests over dress-shirts). winn adami is a normal sort of frustration to people. one they encounter in the day-to-day. the political conservative who stands outside of planned parenthood and tells girls not to throw away their everlasting souls. the pentecostal women speaking gibberish in church, gesturing to the heavens with their out-of-fashion french manicures, who brought a tater-tot hot dish with extra kraft cheese to the pot luck. the women with cross-walls. with like. so many crosses. the women with leathery tans on the aging skin of their arms and neck. the women who quietly walk into voting booths around the world and choose "safety" over anything else, whether or not that "safety" is real.

at least. that's who people think winn is. setting aside the fact that most people don't truly know the kinds of women listed above, that it's unlikely they've spared a single ounce of pity for women like that ever in their entire lives, winn is not exactly pitiable in this way. she is awash in power. she is intelligent. she thinks. she would stand in a voting booth and choose "safety" (whether or not it's real) but she's not the lady wearing a t-shirt that says trump could grab her pussy if he wanted. she's not one of the many blonde women on fox news. she's not even sandra day o'connor or any other female conservative intellectual. because she's a metaphor.

we don't know her real-world politics because she's a fictional character in a fictional universe leading a fictional world. we know she's a conservative because fights very very hard to maintain the status quo regarding her bajoran religion and its teachings. but we don't know how any of that can be truly allegorized to conservative policies in the real-world. the main tension being: conservatives in the real-world base a lot of truly evil policy on a made-up divine figure interpreted through thousands of made-up hermeneutics and it is materially all Not Real. in ds9, the prophets are actual beings who affect reality. winn's said and done things on the show that sound like something an annoying woman with a turquoise-cross around her neck would say at a utah city council meeting about creationism and "inappropriate books." she also says things that a woman would say at a protest against the racist and paternalistic policies of the british museum. all we know of her as a political figure is that she is conservative. and like, power-hungry and desperate, but those aren't essentially related. she wants to conserve. and that encompasses more than one thing.

which means that people, when they see her, simply aren't thinking. they react to a woman who looks as she does. who speaks like a politician. who makes decisions that are unfair. but, exactly as you said, the show grounds her. they give her a past. they richly flesh out so much about her. they have her acting too rationally sometimes for someone of her professed faith. they have her acting completely irrational as her gods reject her again and again. all while she clings to them with a faith that endured actual torture at the hands of violent imperialists who yet attack her planet and yet attack her and yet she has to speak with as the leader of bajor.

and it's hard to see (beyond the obvious) why this character receives so much vitriol when you have characters like garak and dukat and kira who all are considered charming and beloved in some way or another, while still being as complex as they are. (and i don't even think dukat is all that complex.) even sisko has some moments that, if i lived in his world, i would be somewhat repulsed by--like when jake begs him to let the prophets go and sisko embraces the cosmic over the request of his son. (again: the prophets are real though, so my "repulsion" is more a reaction against people i see as priests, who i find in the real world, as a rule, awful.)

so. it's definitely sad. because the level and kind of hate bestowed upon this character really does seem to be a symptom of a much larger issue: of course, misogyny.

also that people don't tend to think.

[sadist1224]

I STILL WANT Mafia!141 AU

Part 1 https://www.tumblr.com/sadist1224/742379650222784512/i-need-the-mafia141-au?source=share

Part 2 https://www.tumblr.com/sadist1224/742405536052543488/i-still-want-mafia141-au?source=share

The Mafia!In which you, a former second lieutenant of the police, were kidnapped by unknown people while 141 were in another city on their mafia business.

The first alarm is raised by Val, who does not find you at the bar, although you always arrived on time. The woman starts calling and texting you, but your phone is out of the network area, so the second thing she does is go to your apartment nearby. Not finding you there either, she decides to wait before acting decisively, but don't worry. The waiting period will not be so long, in an hour her people will interrogate passers-by in search of witnesses.

Just imagine Price's face, which Alejandro calls right during the interrogation, and on his work phone, while the Ghost beats the next drug dealer to a pulp. The captain stops the lieutenant as soon as he hears the latest news that Valeria has started making a fuss. Her people are questioning civilians, looking for something. Price asks to keep him informed and hangs up. I have a bad feeling in the back of my head.

The guys immediately sense something wrong with this call. Johnny and Gaz exchange glances with the Ghost.

Kyle, who was able to get Van's phone number almost before he left, just in case. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he could call you or not, but that doesn't mean he didn't want to.

Therefore, when they dial your number 5 times in a row, and you still haven't answered them, their anxiety increases significantly.

Alejandro was actually surprised by Valeria's unusual behavior and watched her actions all day, until eventually he and Rudy came back to the bar to interrogate her. And, of course, they didn't find you there.

You, who always smiled so friendly at them when they met and who had already learned their favorite positions on the bar list. Of course, they couldn't help but flirt with you, but how else would they behave with someone like you? How witty and at the same time cute you could respond to Rudy's flirting and to the same extent you could interrupt absolutely any disliked thing addressed to you. You definitely knew your worth, you made great jokes and could support even the most insignificant topic, or at the right moment take the conversation in a different direction.

You are the perfect bartender, and absolutely the man who completely captured the attention of two Mexicans. In fact, Alejandro has already been thinking about how he can lure you to their establishment. You would absolutely fit into one of their restaurants or casinos. If, of course, the guys from 141 hadn't already had their eyes on you.

Yes, the British liked you just as much as they did. The way Johnny ran after you, how easily and often Gaz communicated with you. Or how the Ghost and Price looked at you.

Alejandro is not stupid. He knows how the familiar coldness in the Ghost's eyes changes when he looks at you. Or how Price's eyes look at you with undisguised interest when you once again bring them the best whiskey from your stock. And how masterfully you manage to ignore it. Alejandro is ready to give a standing ovation to your stoic, even expression when you refuse to let Sope join them.

You're a professional. And you're not that simple. The Mexican likes this mystery about you. Only a very attentive person will notice that you've been through some shit. And it seems that the Ghost and Price have already guessed this.

But now, you're not here. Alejandro knows that he has to call Price, tell him about the disappearance of "their" favorite bartender. And he is already ordering Rodolfo to gather his men and comb the streets, because they all know very well how dangerous members of other groups can be. And they have plenty of enemies in the city and beyond.

Johnny, who just can't find a place for himself after the news of your disappearance, cuts circles around the hotel room. If you could see how worried he is… The man is ready to take off right now and go in search of you.

Gaz, who has been sitting tensely on the couch all this time, clutching his phone and nervously glancing at his watch, waiting for Price to finish the conversation with Alejandro. Of course, what did they expect, appearing so often in a bar, and even in your company?

The ghost knew that sooner or later it would happen, but that doesn't mean he's calm. In fact, he already imagines how in one of the shelters he will clearly show your kidnappers that they should not even pull their hands to what already belongs to them.

Of course, they've almost claimed you. You're almost there, even if you don't know it. Price had already thought about it. He already had a rough plan in his head how he could lure you into their family. Of course, he already had the idea to buy out the bar to begin with, but Valeria sent him far away, even with a very profitable offer for her. So the simplest option has disappeared.

But, never mind, he has plans to the last letter of the alphabet. In his head, you fit perfectly between the four of them. In every sense.

But he just can't choose between you and their job. The latter was still more important. That's why Price decides to finish all the business here first, and then deal with your kidnappers. After all, Vargas and the Couple care about you too, so they may not worry a bit.

[smytherines]

Fuck it, here's an Owen Carvour dissertation

We don't have canon ages for Curt & Owen, but personally I headcanon Owen as being born in 1928, making him 29 when the banana incident happens. This leads to a lot of thoughts that are fascinating to me, because growing up in London during WWII could inform so much of his character.

Personally, I believe DMA's accent is much closer to Owen's natural accent. I think the Owen Carvour accent is something he puts on to make himself sound neutrally British while working abroad, because he grew up working class. RP is how most people (at least in the US) assume British people speak. This also works with the Texan agent mega headcanon, like they both have to put on an act to be spies, just like they have to put on an act with their relationship.

And class is really really important to how you conceptualize this character, because your experience of the war could be radically different depending on how much money you had. Food rationing began in 1940, which in this case would make Owen 12. Rationing isn't fully lifted until 1954.

At Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947, the palace made a big deal about how she was saving ration coupons for the material for her wedding- a full two years after WWII ended.

Here's WWII London:

This is the city Owen would've grown up in. This is a war zone. A city where food is tightly rationed, where sirens were constantly going off and you had to draw down the blackout curtains and go sleep in the tube station with bombs dropping constantly overhead:

If Owen were upper middle class, he might have had a shelter at home, some people did. But I imagine him sleeping in dark, cramped, noisy stations. And he learns to keep his cool. He starts to enjoy the danger because he has to to survive it.

Maybe he has lost loved ones to the bombings. Maybe one morning he comes home from the tube station and half of his house is in rubble on the ground. Maybe he's used to hand me down clothes and simple homemade toys and not having enough to eat. He's used to having nothing, having nobody. That's a headcanon a lot of folks have, and I think it makes a lot of sense for his character.

Even if Owen were one of the kids evacuated to the countryside, maybe that happens when he's 15 or so, it wasn't a Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe situation. For a lot of those kids they were leaving their parents behind in a war zone, sleeping in barns or basements, and most importantly working almost non-stop on British farms because all the regular farmhands were fighting.

I think, if this happened, Owen would be itching to go off and fight in the war. My personal headcanon is that he's an intelligent guy, and he figures out how to forge some basic paperwork to claim he is older than he actually is, so he can go fight in WWII.

But by some fluke he couldn't account for, he gets discovered. And because of his skill and his ability to keep his cool under interrogation, he gets recruited to MI6. A lot of MI6 operatives are upper class men, recruited young from the top schools. He mimicks them.

I think many years later, when he and Curt are escaping a Russian weapons facility, Owen loves Curt and trusts in his capabilities (maybe a bit too much- especially when he's been drinking), but he also feels frustrated that Curt is impulsive and cocky and thinks he is untouchable.

Because Curt didn't grow up the way Owen did. He didn't grow up waiting for the bottom to fall out over and over again. He's certainly got his own shit from adolescence, but he doesn't have that survival impulse hardwired into him the way Owen does. So Owen is careful and cautious for the both of them, trying to keep them both safe and alive.

I think about Owen being trapped in the rubble a lot. He would almost certainly be critically injured. Maybe he has PTSD from the WWII bombings, and he's just trapped in an exploded building, trapped with his own memories of childhood until he's almost feral from it.

This also, btw, is why the AU of Owen as Eurydice from Hadestown is so so poignant to me. Someone who grew up cold and hungry and turned their collar to the world, and then suddenly they fall in love and everything is sunlight all around them. All I've Ever Known is such an important owen!Eurydice song to me

I could keep going from here, but I'll stop for now. This isn't as neat and concise as I wanted to present these thoughts, but I can't stop thinking them

[benkyoutobentou]

What I've Been Enjoying Lately - Japanese Media

This is way overdue! I've been consuming so much great media in Japanese, it's time to share the love and recommend some things for all of you lovely language learners

📚 Books:

旅猫リポート - 有川浩: This is a super adorable novel about a stray cat who is taken in by a young man. Five years later, the owner is suddenly unable to take care of this cat and the two embark on a road trip across Japan to find the perfect new owner. This one is definitely a tear jerker to any animal lover and will absolutely make you want to cuddle your own fluffy friends into oblivion.

キノの旅 - 時雨沢恵一: This is a light novel series that's extremely close to my heart! The 2003 anime adaption of this series also isn't just my favorite anime, but my favorite TV show ever. Because of the relatively simple vocabulary, I often see it recommended as a first read for Japanese learners just dipping their toes into novel reading, and I find myself agreeing. This series follows a teenager named Kino who travel from country to country with a motorrad named Hermes. There's not much of a continuous plot and very few recurring characters, making it even easier to follow if something confuses you. Despite the fluffy sounding description, this series has a good amount of content warnings accompanying it and can get pretty gory at times as well.

僕らの地球の歩き方 - ソライモネ: An adorable manga series in which two men travel the world together under the agreement that, upon returning to Japan, they'll get married. I feel like if someone looked into my brain to find what I like in a series in order to create a manga series perfectly suited to my tastes, it would be 僕らの地球の歩き方. It's gay, it's adorable, it's about traveling the world, it's about loving the people around you and human culture and delicious food, I'm already crying. Definitely one of my all time favorites.

薔薇王の葬列 - 菅野文: I went back and forth about putting this on my list, but it's not titled "What I've Been Enjoying Lately" for nothing and boy oh boy have I been enjoying this lately. Perhaps I've been enjoying it a bit too much. A while back, I actually banned myself from reading this series because I didn't have the full set and would instantly be put in an awful mood if I caught up with the volumes I had. This manga series follows Richard Plantagenet III, yes, that one, and his ascendance to the British throne. This series is chock full of treachery, murder, violence, and everything else nice. Due to the... everything about this series.... there's a lot of unusual vocabulary, but it has furigana on everything, which helps a lot for speedy look ups.

気になってる人が男じゃなかった - 新井すみこ: Bonus manga! Because this one is worth it, and also because everyone needs a little more GL on their shelves. This manga is so good that I've even been seeing people who don't speak Japanese buy this to have on their shelves. It follows a slightly awkward girl and a gyaru from her class as the two bond of their shared love of western rock music. Yeah, this is the manga that's doing a collab with Nirvana.

📺 Shows and Movies:

Old Fashion Cupcake - This is a BL office romance drama about a middle aged man and his subordinate who begin acting like teenage girls in an attempt to regain some of their youth. Through eating sweets together, taking selfies and food pictures, and talking "girls' talk," the two deepen their bond. I don't think I can say this enough, I love food romances. If their is food involved in a romance, I'm there, no need to tell me twice. This series is super sweet and a really enjoyable watch.

カルテット - Four musicians meet by chance and decide to form a quartet together. However, each one has secrets that they're hiding. Bonus points to Netflix for actually having a J-drama I like for once. This series has a warm and cozy found family vibe, while still managing to have some of the most wildest shenanigans imaginable. I also really appreciated that this series seems to take some stances that I've never seen before, especially regarding family and what you owe to your parents.

映像研には手を出すな！ - This anime follows three girls and their attempts to make anime. As an anime that is about the creation of anime, it's really no surprise that the art and animation is stand out in this series. I loved the ways that we as the viewer were able to see the imaginations of the characters. I also really enjoyed the characters, and the voice acting was phenomenal as well. This show is also home to one of the best intros ever.

赤髪の白雪姫 - This fantasy anime follows the titular character Shirayuki as she escapes from her home kingdom after being chosen as a royal concubine due to her unusual red hair. On her travels, she meets a prince from a neighboring kingdom and becomes a palace herbalist. It's not often that I watch or care about straight romances in media, but this romance is so adorable, and even beyond it, I truly love all the characters and their relationships in this series. Also, I think this is the only show I've watched where I found the soundtrack to actually be distracting- and not because I didn't like it, but because it was just that good.

🎤 Music:

オーガストの風 - THE BLACKBAND

夢伝説 - Stardust Revue

lemonade - Chili Beans.

Show - Ado

[theirishwolfhound]

A Heart of Gold In a Sea of Green: The Synopsis

Heyo! I'm making this post just so I can get ready to start posting on Tumblr as well as Ao3. My main reason is that I can add GIFs/images, music, and color code the dialog on here. With that being said, I'm still working on the imagery for my masterlist post and this is just to act in as the informational "chapter".

"Crow "Wolfhound" O'Neil had been a sergeant in a different troop, known as the WatchDogs, before joining Task Force 141 as an additional sniper, but mostly for his innate understanding of many terrains and the survival skills needed for them. Yet he mostly kept to himself when he joined up as he was still reeling from a recent loss of a loved one; he remained the calm, patient soldier he had always trained to be… despite joining what he could only call as the most chaotic gaggle of men he's ever met. He followed orders, never spoke back or questioned his fellow officers- he was loyal, just as his nickname implied. Though when asked about it he spoke only a simple phrase: "Gentle when stroked, Fierce when provoked" and left it at that."

The fic takes place around six months after Wolfhound transferred into Task Force 141 from the Watchdogs and focuses on him finally putting in the effort to improve his mental state after he lost his fiancé: Malakai Harper. As well as focusing on improving his relationships with his fellow operators: Price, Gaz, Ghost, and Soap— who are already in a polyamorous relationship.

There is a lot of fraternization that goes on, it's not meant to be a serious down to code/law type of fic— I literally only wrote this because I love the characters and wanted to try writing a fanfiction for the first time. I will also put the other warnings in under this indent, as well as a put the proper warnings before the start of every chapter. Also fair warning: Most Chapters are Long Reads (potentially up to 15k+ type deal).

Below is the first thing on the Ao3 fic, just to give an understanding into Crow's background:

Crow Nevan O'Neil was born in Galway, Ireland and lived there for most of his life. He is currently twenty-seven and has been in the British military for seven years. Previously he was a Forest Ranger at the Wicklow Mountains National Park in Ireland and has visited other places to get the experience of working in different terrains.

He was born into a Catholic family and still holds those beliefs to this day, but does not talk about it with others- just as he keeps his gender identity and sexuality under close wraps. The only person that knows he is transgender would be Captain Price and he was given the accommodation of a private shower to make his time a bit easier on base. He only wears long sleeved shirts and pants to keep a more conservative look, though it was mostly to hide his tattoos so that no one asks him any questions about them- he may be social but not when it comes to speaking, he's a listener not the speaker.

Crow got his nickname "Wolfhound" mainly because he is Irish- but also because his old troop thought it was funny that a 165cm (5'5") man who barely weighs 81kg (180lbs) soaking wet can be called something in relation to a huge dog. He has hazel eyes, many many freckles, and curly reddish brown hair- the pinnacle of Irish stereotypes minus the anger and drinking, but by god does he have the accent of a man who sounds like he is fresh from Dublin. His actual callsign is Foxtrot Four.

He was engaged to a Lieutenant form his previous troop named Malakai Harper, but after his death Crow was looking for any chance to have a fresh start with a new team- and luckily he was given the chance to join Task Force 141 as their third sergeant. He knew very little about the other operators, but that meant they knew nothing of him.

Now time for lists and links:

Ao3

Playlist

Crow's Reference Sheet (Will Be Redone Eventually)

[cringe-but-proud]

I just watched Bullet Train recently and I’m in love. I was wondering if you’re able to write a Lemon x fem!reader where basically Reader is one of those assassins coming on the train (like the wolf and the hornet) while going under the name The spider. But instead of reader trying to kill Ladybug and the twins. The reader is trying to stop them from killing each other but it’s just Reader and lemon bumping into each other a lot and having love at first sight 🤭 and every moment then keep bumping into each other, they just keep falling for the other.

OH MY GOD. I WANT HIM SO BAD...

Lemon x Fem!reader (Bullet Train)

A/n: This one's kind of long as hell, I can't lie. My requests are open (see pinned post for info)

WARNINGS: Cursing. That's it, I think 😛

Why do you always get jobs like this? Jobs where there's some big, fucked up scheme going on, and you have to unfuck the whole thing. You're used to it, but it never gets less annoying.

Whatever. The sooner you get the job done, the sooner you get off this god-damned train.

You entered the train and walked from compartment to compartment, looking for one of your guys. Finally, you walked into a cart where you were immediately greeted by the sound of two British men arguing.

The twins.

You slowed down the pace of your steps as you walked by and tried to subtly look over at them. But, when looking over, you found that one of them was already looking at you.

You should've looked away. But, you couldn't. You'd only ever seen him in pictures, you didn't think he'd be just as good looking in real life. Your eyes locked on to his and time seemed to slow down. You felt your heartbeat quicken and-

"Shit!" You tripped over your own feet after a man bumped into you, not bothering to apologize or even acknowledge the fact that he'd almost knocked you over. You managed to catch yourself, shooting a glare at the man who was already walking into the next compartment.

"Jesus Christ! Fucking asshole didn't even say sorry!"

"Are you alright, love?"

Fuck.

You looked back at the twins and froze up for a second. He was looking right at you. Is it cliche to feel like you could get lost in his eyes? Yes. Yes, it is.

"... I'm fine." You managed to speak before regaining your composure and quickly walking away.

Holy FUCK. That couldn't have been worse.

You were in the luggage compartment, trying to calm yourself down.

For the love of God, you're a grown woman who does illegal shit for a living, WHY are you acting like a middle school girl with a crush?!

While in the middle of scolding yourself, something caught your eye.

Silver briefcase. Train sticker on the handle.

You were surprised that you'd managed to find the thing almost immediately. After a brief check to make sure no one outside of the luggage compartment was watching, you grabbed the briefcase and stuffed it in your bag.

Great. Now all you had to do was stop three grown men from killing each other.

Great.

It had been hours now. Hours without getting off this train. You sort of felt like you were going crazy.

Things were already getting chaotic. The son of the white death was dead, which couldn't be good for the twins. And there was a dead body near the back of the train wearing a bloodied white suit. You didn't even know how that happened.

At least you still had the briefcase.

You were sitting in an empty part of the train, going over the current plan that you had in your head when you heard the doors slide open.

You glanced up and-

Fuck.

One of the twins. The hotter one.

You immediately whipped out your phone and pretended to be busy on it. You thought that if you were focused on something other than the man, he wouldn't acknowledge you. But, of course things couldn't be that simple.

"Excuse me, miss."

Inside your head, you screamed. But, on the outside you casually looked up from your phone.

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen a bloke walking around with a sliver briefcase? Train sticker on the handle?"

You subconsciously brought your bag closer to yourself.

"He's got nerdy glasses, a stupid hat?" The man continued.

You tilted your head innocently. "A silver case?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think I've seen anything like that, sorry. Why do you ask?" This was your current plan: Keep him talking. The longer you kept him talking to you, the longer you'd be able to prevent a fight.

"Oh, uh..." The man trailed off. "He's with me. I've gotta grab something from the case, but he wandered off."

"Oh." You nodded. "I'll be sure to keep a look out. You said there's a train sticker on the handle?"

"Yup."

"Why's that?"

"Well, I put it there so that we'd be able to spot it."

"You just had a train sticker laying around?"

"I like trains." He shrugged.

Keep him talking. "Oh. I do too! My dad was a train conductor. So, I grew up going on a lot of train rides, I really wanted to be a train conductor too, so I learned about pretty much every kind of train you could think of," This was all untrue. You didn't like trains. Your dad was a dentist. But, again, you needed to keep him talking. Now you were just listing different train related topics and waiting for something to stick.

"I watched a lot of Thomas the tank engine-"

"Great show." He interjected.

There it is. "Oh, yeah. I was absolutely obsessed with it when I was little. Did you watch it too?"

"I still watch it."

"Oh?" You chuckled. "Um, yeah. That's-"

"I mean, because it's very nostalgic for me, a very comforting show. Plus, it's better than some shows they're putting out nowadays, y'know? It's got a lesson, it's got good characters, it's-"

He went on rambling. You noticed that he sounded... Nervous? Embarrassed?Flustered? Was he getting flustered while talking to you? Oh. Oh. This changes things.

"I think it's endearing." You said.

"What? Watching Thomas?"

"Yeah." You shrugged. This wasn't necessarily a lie. You did think the fact this man, who was supposed to be intimidating, watched and enjoyed a children's show was quite charming.

"That's... Thank you. I've never had anyone say that about.. You know, watching Thomas the tank engine."

"There's a first time for everything, right?" You smiled.

"Yeah, I suppose there is." He bit the inside of his cheek and averted his gaze away from you momentarily. "I should probably be going now, I've still gotta find my case and-"

He continued talking as you noticed the other guy. The guy the twins thought had killed the son and stolen their case. He seemed to be looking around the luggage compartment, probably for the case that was still stuffed into your bag. You couldn't let the man in front of you see him. Not if you wanted to prevent them fighting each other until they were both black and bruised.

"But, I did enjoy talking to you, so-"

You interrupted the man. "Hey, can I get your number or something?"

He was visibly surprised and was quiet for a second before nodding. "Yes. Yes, I can- I'll give that to you."

You handed him your phone and watched as he punched in his number.

If you were being honest, asking for his number definitely wasn't your last resort. You were actually glad you'd gotten the opportunity to ask, because this guy was very handsome and very charming.

He finished punching in his number. You glanced over to the luggage compartment and the other man was gone.

Thank God.

You looked back to him and smiled. "Thanks. I'll text you later." You promised.

He smiled, a smile you could tell was genuine, and nodded. "I'll look forward to that."

With that he walked away. You sighed in relief and relaxed into your seat. After a moment you looked down at your phone. He'd saved himself in your phone as a train emoji. You couldn't help but smile.

This whole thing was starting to feel less chaotic and-

IS THAT A FUCKING SNAKE?!

[tehamelie]

Various fine opinions on the meaning of life contained in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life:

*Unionize your workplace, alternatively turn it into a pirate ship and take to the high seas. It'll piss off management either way.

*Question everything.

*Look at what you think you know from a different perspective.

*The pursuit of profit at all costs can and will ruin the meaning of any work and also make you worse at it.

*Gender roles are not necessarily assigned at birth.

*The Catholic church is not well.

"God has blessed us so much I can't afford to feed you all any longer."

*Just because you're allowed doesn't mean you should.

*You should not, and will not, die to "keep China British."

*God has many ways to cook you to death, if He wants to.

*Straight sex is so damn boring.

*Don't just stampede towards the clitoris, Watson.

*Sport, like sex, only works between equal parties. Any other way and you invite horror and depravity. (That kid is definitely dead and the upperclassmen are just stomping on him anyway.)

*Actually, getting murdered playing rugby against adults two or three times your size is an excellent way to prepare you for fighting in a war.

*Even a good captain will be hated by their subordinates. This is the burden of command.

"We'll always need an army, and may God strike me down were it to be otherwise." *is immediately struck down by literal the hand of God*

*A fighting force is better served by a single soldier who actually wants to be there than twenty men who doesn't.

*There's a fine line between keeping one's cool in a heated situation and acting like you're on a bloody different planet when people are dying in front of you.

There are less than 4500 wild tigers left in the world. The "A tiger? In Africa?!" bit is less of a joke every year.

*In less than surprising news, killing people is bad for you. (It turns out, for psychologically healthy people, doing violence really hurts you as much as the victim.)

*Where is that fish?

*Theme restaurants could do with a bit of randomly mixed themes.

*Don't be afraid to ask the most idiotic questions about things you don't understand. That's how we learn.

*Oh ho it's the meaning of liver donation I get it now.

*The Galaxy Song is fun and all but don't give in to misanthropy.

*Matter is energy, the human soul grows with care and attention, and people aren't wearing enough hats.

*Actually, the movie makes a staggering point here and buries it with distracting nonsense jokes, while also making the point that we get sidetracked from self-actualization by distracting nonsense jokes. It's a point sandwich with joke filling.

Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis? Shout out to happy penis havers, though I'm not one myself.

*M Creosote shows us that single-minded devotion to one's mission in life (eating an entire upscale French restaurant in one sitting, for example) will leave you unhappy and alone.

*Dunk antisemites in buckets of vomit.

*Gaston, the middle aged waiter, delivers a coherent personal philosophy as he walks us to the cottage where he was born. The significance of this cannot be overestimated. He decided to be a waiter, you see. Because he believes in something. It's a simple belief of giving, of loving people and bringing them joy. But be believes it with all his heart and he'll fight for the right to live the life he chose.

*If you have to die, but can choose the manner of your execution, try being hounded to death by naked women.

*See the world in a grain of sand, or a maple leaf as it were.

*Terry Pratchett was a great man and a great writer, but he's wrong about one thing: Death is relative. No, no, you can't argue away Death or shoot him, but he is subject to the laws of relativity. Consider the stars in the sky; at least one star that's visible to the naked eye I hear may be dead right now - it's 500 light years away and they think it may go supernova at any point within 500 years from now. But here, locally, the star still lives; there's no possible reality where it's gone until the light of its explosion reaches us.

*Heaven is a fantastically cheesy musical theater performance with angel santa claus strippers and a lead singer you just want to punch. Clearly we need to build something better here on Earth.

*Be nice, read books, take a walk sometimes, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. Obviously.

*[The producers] hope that other fish will follow [the example of the movie] so that, in future, fish all over the world will live together in harmony and understanding, and put aside their petty differences, stop hunting and eating each other and live for a brighter, better future for all fish and those who love them. Yes, clearly this is about fish.

[amuseoffyre]

I was mulling on how well OFMD does layers and layers of storytelling in such understated way with framing and sets and dialogue that carries so much weight without beating you over the head with exposition. Especially when it comes to the text and subtext of the history of the characters and what is happening in context.

Like every scene has a surface read, but there’s also so much more going on underneath. It’s like the many strands of threads used in weaving, where even when the things aren’t said directly and out loud, they’re present and building depth and colour to what’s happening.

I’ve picked a couple of examples which tell so much with so little.

Even this frame gives so much context without a word: Ed is from a poor background, his father is pictured beside a tankard of alcohol, his mother is dressed in servant’s clothing and he and his mother are very much separated from his father who is halfway into the shadows.

Then we have the impact of colonisation show in the words and presentation of Ed’s mother. She and Ed are both played by Māori actors, while Ed’s father is white. The way she talks about not being “those kind of people” and “it’s up to God” were lessons drilled into the many Indigenous children who were taken from their families and communities to be forcefully assimilated in church-run schools in British colonies, where they were taught English, indoctrinated into Christanity and were usually trained for roles in domestic service (for girls) or manual labour (for boys).

In three lines and with some simple set dressing and costume, they have set up not only Ed’s own history, but the history of his family and culture and how that impacted him and continues to impact him.

Another scene where this is intensely evident is in the Privateering academy:

For the first time, Ed and Stede are in the same clothing. On a surface read, this puts them on an equal footing, with them both being in the same situation. But once again, colonialism rears its ugly head in the context, especially in regards to Ed.

As mentioned before, the British colonies created schools with the declared intention of educating and improving the well-being of indigenous populations, while the reality was cultural erasure, indoctrination and genocide.

A lot of these schools demanded the pupils all dress in uniforms and in most cases demanded the children abandon all aspects of their culture. The fact that Ed has to physically change his appearance upon arrival in this British-run academy - it wasn’t regulation, it had to go - is a call-back to that legacy.

While less pointed, Stede has also been forced to assimilate into the more traditional and masculine attire. Even in the 1700s, there are accounts of queer men being described as too colourful and flashy and in the academy scenes, they have stripped his flamboyant soft queerness away from him, pushing him into the stiff, colourless cultural masculinity that is represented by the British forces throughout the show.

I could go on and on but it is very cold and I am very sleepy, but I will finish on a note about the Act of Grace and specifically on Hornberry’s “it’s boilerplate, absolution for your terrible crimes, blah-di-blah-di-blah.”

That line alone carries the weight of every single treaty arranged by the British when they colonised countries and it is a very pointed barb because it turns out that the British were very good at loopholing the hell out of their treaties, making sure certain turns of phrase could be re-interpreted to their advantage, something that is still impacting many people today.

The fact that Ed - and Taika - is the one to say “that’s where all the tricks are” is especially loaded given the history of the Treaty of Waitangi in Aotearoa and how the British interpreted it to their benefit.

There’s so much history built into the body of the show and I love that it’s there, adding depth and weight, a realness which I think is what has caused so much resonance with the audience. It provides a grounding foundation and while yes, the show is a comedy and is very funny, the history is always there too.

[greatmuldini]

The Iron Harp

We’re all in prison together, Johnny, one way or the other.

Act 1

Outwardly, Joseph O'Conor's play is a simple tale of love and loss in times of war: set in rural Ireland in early April of 1920, the action takes place on the property of an English industrialist whose mansion has been taken over by a contingent of IRA volunteers. Their leader is Michael O'Riordan, a gifted poet-musician in civilian life and conveniently the peace-time manager of the Englishman's estate. Michael has recently been wounded in action; now blind as a result he is no longer on active duty but still responsible for an English prisoner of war. Being a man of his word, Captain John Tregarthen has made no attempt to escape, earning Michael's trust and eventually his friendship. He also earns the friendship and love of Michael’s cousin Molly Kinsella, with whom he spends long days roaming the extensive grounds of his idyllic prison. Dreaming of a future life together, the lovers are oblivious to the feelings of their “best friend” – who ends up sacrificing his love for Molly in what he hopes will be a lasting gesture of selflessness only to find that Fate intervenes, with devastating consequences for them all.

Completing the quartet of characters is the dark and “indistinct” figure of IRA commander Sean Kelly, a dark and "indistinct" figure who emerges from the shadows to immediately assert his authority not only in military matters but - crucially, and disturbingly - in those of the heart as well. Specifically, it is the heart of Michael O’Riordan that Kelly claims to know better than O’Riordan himself. As a flesh-and-blood character Kelly is difficult to pin down: cold and calculating by his own admission, he expresses admiration for Michael's hot-blooded fighting spirit. Michael's own startled response to Kelly entering "like Nemesis himself" is ambiguous at best, and even his description of Kelly as a “good friend” comes on the back of a warning to Johnny that "he won't like you."

When Kelly tells Michael that he has never been wrong and does not know what it means to feel regret, the sense of foreboding is inescapable, yet Michael never seems to give in to the negativity emanating from his old wartime comrade who admonishes him to see his friends “as they really are” and not as “you want to see them.” Ironically, Michael refuses to see an enemy in John Tregarthen, but he is equally stubborn in applying the same criteria of honour, loyalty, and friendship to Sean Kelly, who seems troubled by this flaw in Michael’s character: "you love people too much."

Michael's emotional warmth stands in stark contrast to Kelly's impersonation of infallibility - which Michael seems to accept as a token of his friend's unassailable integrity. He continues to defer to Kelly's judgment when a messenger arrives with bad news from the front: three IRA fighters have been killed in skirmishes with British forces, and reprisals must be carried out. Twisting the metaphorical knife in the very real emotional wound, Kelly as the commanding officer nominates blind Michael to be the impartial instrument of God's justice. Forced to select three victims for execution, Michael all but collapses when one of the chosen names is that of Captain John Tregarthen.

Act 2

After he has persuaded Johnny to flee the country and reunite with Molly back in England, Michael is left alone to guard the now empty house. Blind and unable to defend himself, Michael is powerless against two marauding Black & Tans who break into the property and proceed to taunt and abuse the solitary occupant. It does not take them long to realize their victim is an IRA member rather than a civilian enjoying certain protections. Further violence is prevented only by the surprise return of Captain Tregarthen, armed and in uniform, who holds the attacker at gunpoint until Kelly and his entourage arrive to take the men away. Where any other human being would have expressed relief or gratitude at the discovery that the life of his friend has been saved, Kelly’s reaction is characteristically impassive, betraying, if anything, a degree of irritation at the unforeseen complication that has shown the condemned prisoner – the enemy – to be capable of compassion and self-sacrifice in saving the life of his friend. Human qualities that Kelly explicitly claims not to possess. As if to prove the point, he responds with the formal announcement of Tregarthen’s impending execution.

The order is to be carried out within three days, enough time for Kelly to travel to headquarters - and return with a firing squad. But first he must interrogate the captured Tans. While Kelly is thus occupied, Molly manages to convince the love of her life to take her with him. Johnny only agrees to the plan on the promise that Michael will convince Kelly to rescind the execution. If Johnny and Molly can make their way to Belfast on the early morning goods train, and from there to England, all will be well. Michael knows how to distract the guards, and Molly can bribe the train driver to let Johnny jump aboard. Three loud whistles will give the all-clear. With hopes of future happiness rekindled, Molly and Johnny each rush off to their respective tasks, and Michael is left alone with three empty glasses that he cannot see – a detail that does not escape Kelly’s notice as he re-joins Michael to formally accept his plea for clemency. Which he says he will duly submit to "the general," but in his estimation the chances of success are slim. "For God's sake, don't build up hope," he tells Michael before agonizing – to himself – over how to soften the blow for Michael: by bringing the execution forward and keeping it secret, he is certain he can spare Michael the pain and the guilt of having to witness the event.

Act 3

In the pre-dawn hours of the following day, Michael and Johnny are wide awake and waiting for the sentries to change and the train to whistle. Thinking the house empty and their enemies far away, they pass the time in a dreamlike state of high anxiety, reciting heroic poems and melancholy songs in whispering voices, so as not to miss the stroke of six to mark the end of their nightmare and the beginning of a new life – only to see Kelly standing in the door, with orders for Johnny to be executed at dawn, 24 hours earlier than they were told originally. Michael's world is falling apart, he pleads with Kelly, he begs him to show mercy, but an almost equally distressed Kelly reminds him that "I have never promised you hope." Johnny declines the comfort of a priest or minister and is led away to meet his fate offstage while, also offstage, Molly will be waiting in vain for the love of her life to board a train that will never arrive.

Left on stage for their final confrontation are Michael and his Nemesis, both knowing full well that nothing they can do or say will change what Kelly might term the preordained outcome of their efforts. To Michael's accusation of "trickery" (by which he means Kelly's surprise return before the agreed time), Kelly offers no subterfuge, no defence, and no evasion. Instead, he says, Michael’s agony is self-inflicted: it was, in fact, his own stubborn insistence on hoping against hope that has now led to anguish and pain. The only way for Michael to end all suffering, Kelly explains, is to give up hope. Unless he manages to see past the private pain of the moment and becomes a distant observer, Michael will forever be "tortured by hope."

Here Kelly is borrowing from the Conte Cruel tradition made famous by Edgar Allan Poe but named after a collection of short stories by the French symbolist writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. A useful definition of the genre is that it concerns "any story whose conclusion exploits the cruel aspects of the irony of fate." Not only does Kelly borrow the concept, and the title from Villiers' tale, The Torture of Hope, he even recounts the plot to underline his point:a hapless victim of the Inquisition escapes his prison cell only to stumble into the arms of the Chief Inquisitor. The lesson for Michael is that, like the victim, he keeps on hoping for release only to suffer defeat over and over again. There are no similarities, however, between himself and the sadistic Inquisitor, Kelly says: his mission is to ease Michael'ssuffering, not to prolong it.

We are given no reason to doubt Kelly’s sincerity, but neither can we reconcile the apparent contradiction between his declared intention and putting Michael’s best friend before a firing squad. If Kelly wants to end all suffering, as he says, surely, a good start would be to save Captain Tregarthen’s life? It is the argument that Michael himself is trying to make, by reminding Kelly of his god-like powers. Michael’s understanding of those powers differs fundamentally from Kelly’s own. Michael’s life-affirming principle of hope and Kelly’s seductive all-consuming fatalism are the two opposing philosophies that take centre stage in the final scene – while John Tregarthen dies a largely symbolic death offstage.

Johnny’s death is symbolic in that it is not the tragedy at the heart of the play. Michael O’Riordon is the conventional male protagonist whose existential crisis we are witnessing; Michael is unable to prevent the execution of his best friend; and to make that very point, his best friend must die. Michael’s blindness contributes to this failure in the course of the play but read as a metaphor it turns Michael into “one of us.” His blindness leaves him vulnerable to attack and it echoes our own sense of powerlessness in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. The reverse, however, is also true: being blind, and being a poet, puts Michael in the illustrious company of the Blind Bard, an archetype of Western literature since at least the (mythical) time of Homer: the blind singer/seer whose “inner vision” surpasses that of sighted humanity. His Irish equivalent – and explicit model for Michael - is the (dwarf) Harper of Finn, whose iron-stringed instrument has the power to move its audience to tears. Michael O’Riordon is both vulnerable and endowed with the superpower of emotional insight – fundamentally human qualities that Kelly admires in Michael, and which he admits he does not possess.

Kelly is an abstract concept in human form; even while he is evidently the cause of human suffering, in his denial he appears to be channelling the sadistic Inquisitor. The apparent contradiction is of our own making, though: Kelly is Cruel Fate personified. He represents that which we like to imagine as the source of all our woes - the betrayals, the injustices, the disappointments which inevitably end in what we define as tragedy and what to the rest of the universe, that hostile universe, is of no consequence whatsoever. If we substitute “hostile” with “indifferent,” then Kelly becomes the antithesis to Michael’s humanity – his indifference is as inhuman as the infinite, indifferent universe. Conversely, Michael is not concerned with an infinite universe; his frame of reference is on a human scale, and very finite. When Kelly challenges Michael to take his place and adopt his abstract, God-like perspective on life, death, and the universe, Michael does reject the responsibility – but also the indifference required for the position. If the promise of a pain-free existence did not convince Michael to abandon hope, Kelly's failure to shame him into admitting defeat is a testament, at the very least, to human perseverance: we will forever be prolonging the agony to delay the inevitable. (1/4)

[etoilesombre]

Series: Another Troy to Burn

Way back in the day, before I had even finished watching Black Sails, I became totally convinced that Silver and Flint could have been fucking for the whole show and their dynamic would still work, and it wouldn’t necessarily change the outcome. That is the premise of this series. It is canon compliant perhaps to a fault, and evolves in many of the same ways as the show in terms of tone. As such - do not expect it to hurt any less. This is a love story. That does not mean it's happy.

---

This has now been my baby, my pride and joy for a couple years and I'm re-dedicating myself to finishing it. The first two parts are complete and work as a stand alone. A million thank yous to @jaynovz, who made this incredible moodboard and has been an indispensable support for all things writing. They also recorded podfics of Part One and Part Two, which I highly recommend, impeccable voice acting, they truly channel the boys.

[image id: a collage of photos arranged into a moodboard in a dark color palette. includes photos of: a promo shot of Flint shoving Silver against the rocks from Black Sails episode 1.2, Flint drunk at a table holding a bottle of rum in Eleanor's tavern from 1.7, Thomas Hamilton, Miranda Hamilton and James McGraw (slightly off screen) standing in the Hamilton house from 2.5, a shot of the warship sailing away with Flint's flag raised from 2.1, a flintlock pistol next to a bottle of rum on a wooden deck, Silver smirking smugly at Flint at the end of 2.1, a profile of a majestic black horse, Silver on the warship window seat post-amputation from 2.10, a shot of the Urca gold in the hold of a ship from the end of 2.10, ominous looking island cliffs, a shot of the Port Royal bay with several tallships in harbor, Silver facing away from the viewer belowdecks in 3.1 holding a guiderope in one hand and his prosthetic leg in another, a promo shot for s3 of Flint standing in an ocean of blood with his sword unsheathed, ships and the British flag aflame behind him. /end id]

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The poem from which the series takes its title, because I think it's perfect for Flint:

No Second Troy, by William Butler Yeats

Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

---

One more bit: there is a playlist for this series! I will never be over them, and here are all the songs that make me cry.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Szu Ping Chan

Published: Mar 31, 2024

Britain has a boy problem. If you are born male today, you are increasingly likely to struggle in school, in the workplace and at home.

The gender attainment gap is not new – girls have been outperforming boys at GCSE level for over three decades now, while the number of women completing degrees has exceeded the number of men since the 1990s.

But solving the problem of underachievement among boys has never been more crucial. Economic growth is stalling, productivity is flatlining and public finances are creaking under the strain of growing benefits bills.

At a time when businesses are struggling to hire, more and more men are dropping out of the workforce. Everyone in society must achieve their fullest potential if we are to fix our economic problems.

There is a political dimension too – William Hague earlier this month raised the alarm about the growing numbers of disaffected young men who, with little offered or promised to them in life, were turning to far-Right politics.

There is nothing innate about boys’ underachievement. There is no fundamental reason why outcomes should be getting worse.

Yet without a concerted effort to close the attainment gap, it seems destined to widen. Ever more men and boys will find themselves unwittingly consigned to life’s scrapheap.

The problem is clear – where are the solutions?

Deepening development gap

Before children even step a foot inside the classroom, boys are already behind.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) notes that “a significant gender gap in both cognitive and socio-emotional development” emerges by the age of three.

By the time children start primary school, two-thirds of girls have reached a “good level of development”, suggesting they are able to write a simple sentence or count beyond 20.

Just under two-thirds of boys have hit that same milestone. For children eligible for free school meals, the disparity is even larger.

This gap that opens up at three never completely closes, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) analysis of Department for Education data.

“There’s a silent crisis brewing among boys and men in our classrooms, workplaces and communities,” says Richard Reeves, academic and author of Of Boys and Men, which explores the male malaise from cradle to career.

“Boys now lag behind girls and men lag behind women at almost every level of education. That’s true in nearly every rich economy.”

Reeves, a former adviser to Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, says biology is behind some of this gap.

All the academic evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex – or in Reeves’s words “the part of the brain that helps you get your act together” – develops around a year or two faster in girls than boys.

Girls are not smarter, they just mature faster, Reeves says. “Anyone who spends any time with teenagers knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

His conclusion is that there are simply some “natural advantages of women and girls in the education system”.

Rather than recognise and compensate for this, the system has in fact evolved in ways that favour girls. A switch to more coursework at GCSE level benefitted girls more than boys, according to the IFS, which noted that the gap in performance first emerged in the 1980s when exam-based O levels were replaced by GCSEs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“The shake-up brought a move towards more continuous assessment, which seems to have benefitted girls,” the IFS said in a recent paper.

This idea is “quite hard to get this across because many people say: well if girls and women always had this natural advantage, why didn’t we see it 40 years ago?” Reeves says. “The answer is sexism.

“There is no doubt my mum would have gone to university if she was born 50 years later, but it wasn’t considered to be a thing. But now having taken the lid off, that potential for women in education just keeps going. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that along the way a lot more men have fallen behind.”

Woes of the white working class

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest women were doing better than men in the working world. A median gender pay gap of 7.7pc still shows women are being shortchanged.

After graduation, men are more likely to get a “highly skilled” job than women and average earnings for a male graduate are around 9pc higher than a female a year after they leave university, according to the IFS.

That gap rises to 31pc a decade later.

However, what is worrying academics, politicians and teachers is that attainment among men and boys seems to be declining while for women it improves.

Average pay adjusted for inflation has fallen by 6.9pc for men since 2008, according to ONS data. Among women, it has climbed 2.2pc. In fact, men’s wages are no higher in real terms today than they were in 2002.

Men have been behind the fall in average hours worked since the pandemic, while women are working more.

Louise Murphy at the Resolution Foundation says the worsening prospects for boys and men reflect structural factors.

“The industrial structure of the UK has changed. Some of these manufacturing jobs that existed don’t exist in the same way now.”

Reeves says: “It used to be true that men with relatively modest levels of education do OK in the labour market. And that is not always the case anymore.”

The experience of boys in schools has led them to “underperform in the labour market” more broadly, he adds.

Achievement has become a particular issue among one subset of boys in particular: the white working class.

“Too many people in society just see these boys as the people on mopeds with a balaclava on their head,” says Andy Eadie, assistant headteacher at Cardinal Langley school in Rochdale. “Actually, that’s only a tiny minority.”

Eadie has taught at the mixed comprehensive school of 1,200 pupils since 2016. A fifth of his pupils are eligible for free school meals.

Many have already been “written off” by teachers as soon as they enter the classroom, Eadie says, particularly if they are white working class boys.

“There is a perception that some boys are already signed off and have no hope,” he says.

“The danger is that people aren’t bothered about these gaps. They’re just bothered about keeping them quiet so they can get on with other things.”

Just 14.6pc of white working class boys went into higher education in 2021. This was the lowest figure of any ethnic or socio-economic group and a third of the overall average, according to research published by the House of Commons Library.

Eadie says: “A lot of young people in the white working class background actually have really low self-esteem.

“And so you’ve got a lot of young people who potentially all underachieve and not feel very good about themselves.”

There are signs that this malaise is adding to Britain’s worklessness crisis. One in three 18 to 24-year-old boys were classed as economically inactive – meaning they’re not in work or looking for a job – in the three months to January, a record high.

The figure is up by more than five percentage points since the end of 2019, before the pandemic. Inactivity among 50 to 64-year-old men has climbed five times slower over the same period.

The inactivity rate among young men has roughly doubled since the early 90s, with almost two million now out of the labour force.

Some are choosing to stay on in education but the share of men not in employment, education or training (NEET) is climbing back towards financial crisis rates at 15.3pc. For women, it has remained on a bumpy but downward path.

“I think it goes back to the idea that we just don’t expect our boys to do well. So they don’t do well,” says Conservative MP Nick Fletcher, who leads the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for men and boys.

Caroline Barlow, headteacher at Heathfield Community College, has submitted evidence to the APPG suggesting there was a culture of low expectations for male students.

“In the early days, there was a tendency to almost just be grateful if boys were there and they were doing some work,” she said.

By shifting teachers’ expectations of their pupils, results improved and Heathfield was also able to close the gender gap.

Fletcher says: “We expect our boys to behave badly, so they behave badly. We are letting our boys down and unless we actually recognise we have a problem, then we won’t really start searching for the solution.”

Where does the problem start? Some think it is in the home.

Family circumstances have changed dramatically over the past few decades, with a sharp rise in lone parent households as divorce becomes more common or people don’t even get married in the first place. The vast majority of children in these circumstances grow up with their mothers.

In part, this reflects the economic empowerment of women: they can afford to be a single parent.

However, it raises the question of where male role models are coming from. Research conducted jointly by the Fatherhood Institute found that fathers who read to their children every day are contributing to their development and can help to address early attainment gaps.

The Conservative peer Lord Willetts writes in his book, The Pinch: “A welfare system that was ­originally designed to compensate men for loss of earnings is slowly and messily redesigned to compensate women for the loss of men.”

This too can leave men rudderless in mid-life.

As Reeves puts it in his book: “Economically independent women can now flourish whether they are wives or not. Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess. Compared to married men, their health is worse, their employment rates are lower, and their social networks are weaker.”

‘Crisis in masculinity’

The underachievement of men and boys was once seen as almost taboo.

“There have been people who have sniggered when I stood up and asked for a minister for men and a men’s health strategy,” says Fletcher.

“I genuinely believe some of the problems we face are down to the lack of interest in young boys and men, who we’ve always assumed are going to be fine.”

However, politicians have now started to notice.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has announced that Labour is looking at introducing a men’s health strategy to address what he describes as a “crisis in masculinity” that is costing lives.

It is understood that Labour’s forthcoming review into mental health by Luciana Berger will include a chapter that focuses on male suicide. It remains the biggest killer of British men aged under 35.

William Hague, the former Tory leader, believes the issue is reshaping politics. He recently highlighted that a majority of men now believe they are being discriminated against, which is fuelling support among young men for extreme parties.

Fletcher is calling for a dedicated minister for men to match the minister for women, Kemi Badenoch, who is also part of the Cabinet as Business Secretary.

Despite overwhelming evidence that boys are falling behind, some colleagues still treat the idea of a dedicated minister with ridicule.

Fletcher says: “I think one of the problems that we’ve had as a society is there’s a lot of reluctance to speak up for men. We’ve noticed it in parliament over the years.”

Reeves wants to challenge the longstanding assumption that gender gaps only run one way.

He takes particular issue with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which looks at progress on gender equality across the world.

Countries are scored on a scale from zero to one, with the former representing no equality and the latter signalling full equality. The problem, says Reeves, is that the index itself assumes that only women have any catching up to do.

For example, it “assigns the same score to a country that has reached parity between women and men and one where women have surpassed men”.

This is a deliberate choice. However, as a result the UK’s educational attainment score stands at 0.999 despite the fact that girls have clearly outperformed boys for decades.

Reeves believes continuing to publish the index in this way is damaging and leads “to a lack of policy attention to the problems of boys and men”. In short, he says: “It makes no sense to treat gender inequality as a one-way street.”

The Government insists it is making progress, with a Department for Education spokesman saying the gender gap “across most headline measures is narrowing across all key phases.

“Education standards have risen sharply across the country, with 90pc of schools now rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, up from just 68pc in 2010.”

Reeves offers some radical solutions to closing the attainment gap in his book, including starting boys a year later in school. Many teachers and academics believe this is not practical and Reeves himself says the idea was designed to spark a debate.

Reeves says the evidence also suggests children should take more frequent breaks at school because boys find it harder than girls to sit still. He himself was put in a special class for English because his teachers felt he lacked focus.

At Balcarras secondary school in Cheltenham, headteacher Dominic Burke felt the only way to tackle what used to be a 15pc gender gap in the GCSE results was to level with his students.

“We got the boys together en masse and said to them: ‘You’re going to underachieve. The girls are going to beat you hands down’. And then we showed them the evidence. Their ability profiles were the same. But we said the reality is girls are going to get better results than you and we challenge you to be the first year group to stop that. We called it the ‘effort challenge’.”

It worked. Competition and the offer of cold, hard cash was enough to encourage many to put the effort in. Boys who were judged to have done so received £20 at the end of term. The school managed to close the gender gap and a few years ago, the boys beat the girls for the first time.

“Competition does work I think, and it’s a good tactic for teaching because it becomes a rewarding experience to meet the challenge,” says Burke. “If you make something more engaging and enjoyable, people are more likely to do it.”

Healing

No survey of the state of boys and men in Britain today can ignore the changing ideas of masculinity.

Whereas men were once seen as breadwinners, American sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas point out that many women in poor US neighbourhoods have come to see them “as just another mouth to feed”. This is disorientating.

Yet perhaps the way to survive as a man in the job market of the future is to junk ideas of traditional masculinity altogether. Many of the jobs of the future will be in things like caring and education.

Reeves wants governments to spearhead a drive to get more men into health, education, administration, and literacy jobs – which he brands HEAL – just as they have ploughed efforts into getting more women into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – or STEM roles.

Increasing the number of male teachers would also raise the number of role models for boys in class. Three-quarters of state school teachers are women, according to data published by the Department for Education.

The share of men working in state-funded nurseries is even lower, at just 14pc. Around 30pc of primary schools have no male teachers at all.

“I did actually get some funny looks when I first started,” says one male nursery worker who does not wish to be identified. 

“Even now I tend to leave the cuddles to my female colleagues as I think there’s still a stereotype that any man who wants to work with young kids has to be some kind of pervert.”

Encouraging more men into these types of jobs would be no small undertaking. Perceptions that men are not suited to caring or creative professions are deep-seated.

Florence Nightingale, who in the 19th century established the principles of modern nursing, insisted that men’s “hard and horny” hands were “not fitted to touch, bathe and dress wounded limbs, however gentle their hearts may be”. The Royal College of Nursing did not even admit men as members until 1960.

Edward Davies, policy director at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, cautions: “It’s absolutely right to remove cultural, perceived and real barriers that keep men from certain careers, especially caring and teaching professions. But we also need to be careful not to pretend men and women are exactly the same.

“At a blunt population level women seem more interested in people and men in things. You would expect to see that reality play out in the jobs they do too. Imposing quotas or expectations that all professions should be evenly split between men and women will probably drive some people into careers they are not suited to.”

Fixing Britain’s boy problem may be harder than even experts think.

[ Via: https://archive.today/AFaiR ]

==

The people who talk endlessly about "equality" and "equal rights" are strangely silent when it comes to areas where boys and men fall behind: education, health and lifespan, and life satisfaction.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205349

[ The Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI, x-axis) as a function of the Human Development Index (HDI, y-axis).

BIGI is the average of 3 components: Ratio in healthy life span, ratio in overall life satisfaction, and ratio in educational opportunities during childhood (see Materials and Methods for details). Deviation from zero implies the extent of gender inequality. The plot shows the largest contributor to the overall score for each nation: Purple dots indicate healthy life span is the most important component, green dots indicate educational opportunities, and red dots indicate overall life satisfaction. The Ns indicate for each level of HDI how many nations have a BIGI score greater than 0, and how many less than 0. ]

Almost like it isn't "just about equality."

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: Bullet Train

I've been missing a few Film Fridays lately, partially because mental health has just kinda been like that and partially because I've been struggling with a slightly more meaty analysis that my brain just won't let me figure out properly. As such, I'm going to get into the swing of things again with a movie that is pretty stupid, and I say that with all possible love and admiration.

Ladybug isn't really comfortable with the title of hitman anymore, he's trying out a more harmonic life, but even so he does find it in himself to undertake what should by all accounts be a simple last-minute job. Board the eponymous train, grab a suitcase, and get off at the next station. Oh, were it only so easy. Turns out said bullet train is flush with kooky assassins and hitmen who are either out for the suitcase, the lives of one or more of each other, or have larger and more ominous designs.

There's Ladybug, of course, the quirky pair of British wetworks men Lemon and Tangerine out to escort a drugged-out VIP and a suitcase full of money, notorious and sneaky The Hornet who's skulking about somewhere, the megalomaniacal but brilliant Prince playing a larger game with the life of desperate father Kimura's child as ante, as well as the hot-headed Wolf who is out for vengeance and a paycheck, but mostly the vengeance thing. It's quite the web of coincidences, interferences, and merry chaos as these murderers navigate the crowded train.

It's chaotic, but one throughline that honestly makes the constant shifting priorities and allegiances of Ladybug and the other hitmen work is that it's all a job to them, a very messy job that may or may not be arranged by a Russian usurper of the Yakuza crime syndicate known as White Death, but still a job. Whenever it's expedient for our heroes and antiheroes to not kill each other, they'll show professional courtesy to each other, bantering in that "a little bit too cool" stylized way that's second nature to Hollywood assassins.

What sets the banter apart, though, is a distinct sense of humor. Lemon, much to Tangerine's annoyance, has a theory of human personalities and moral character based on Thomas The Tank Engine. Ladybug has luck that fluctuates wildly between being impossibly good and impossibly bad, and he has a problem with remembering faces which makes some of the networking with his fellow killers challenging. Wolf's role in the movie is short in a way that feels darkly comedic yet apt, and I was surprised to learn this was, in fact, a cameo from musician Bad Bunny (listen, I'm old, ok?)

It's all breezy fun. The movie takes itself about as seriously as any movie that features a Japanese-language cover of "Holding Out For A Hero" in a moment of high drama, but that's fine, the movie expects you to chuckle along, knowing full well it has your heart in a vise by the third cover of "I'm forever blowing bubbles." Not a joke by the way, the few moments that Bullet Train allows itself to express emotion more complex than "holy shit" and/or laughter, it's acted well enough and with enough genuine skill that it actually gets to me a fair bit.

It'd be an act of overstatement to call Bullet Train all that deep, but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It ends up saying some fun things about fate. I wouldn't exactly cite it in a philosophy paper or anything of the sort, it is fun to sit at the end of the "Michael Shannon plays Russian roulette in an oni mask to look badass" movie and go "You're right movie, maybe human misery DOES come from the hubris of believing ourselves to be masters over fate." I don't know, it's just nice for a crowd-pleasing action movie to go out on a note of what seems like a genuinely held belief and not "welp that happened" glibness. It reminds me a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Smith like that, a movie I'll probably end up talking about here one of these days.

[thatstormygeek]

That’s because the Cass Review rejects the affirming model of care embraced by groups in the US like the American Psychological Association or the American Academy of Pediatrics and instead openly regards medical transitions as an unjustifiable last step to be pursued after blaming a child’s gender nonconformity on anything and everything else—social influences, comorbid mental health disorders, or the influence of social media among them. Contrary to its stated aims, the Review further pathologizes gender nonconformity itself, claiming “social transitions”—which can be as simple as a new haircut and clothes—”may change the trajectory of gender identity development” and thus should be avoided, a slippery slope argument that suggests letting your son play with Barbies will invariably lead to a vaginoplasty so best to hand him the monster truck and nip it in the bud. Most tellingly, the review claims limiting access to hormone treatments for adults may be advisable, theorizing “a follow-through service continuing up to age 25 would remove the need for transition at this vulnerable time and benefit both this younger population and the adult population.” The overall recommendation is to force patients to wait through psychological busywork and relevant-sounding delays, implementing a largely-arbitrary set of hoops to jump through with the hopes the patient just gives up. Focus on the patient’s anxiety, focus on their autism, focus on any other issue except their gender and their desire for a sex change because, as private British medical provider GenderGP said of the report’s underlying assumptions, “cisgender lives are judged to be more valuable or desirable than transgender lives and that healthcare services should prioritise encouraging youth to assume cisgender lives, regardless of the suffering that this causes.”

This is a democratic vision of medicine that doesn’t disregard empirical measures but, in fact, acts in their defense. These advocates rightfully recognizes that standards of evidence often regarded as “objective” are frequently enough built on the subjective biases of researchers and practitioners and the subjectivity of patients is a necessary corrective. Clearly, however, many politicians and right-wing activists are eager to have the medical state return to its role as a reliable partner for eugenic social engineering, closing paths toward “subjective satisfaction” and forcing patients towards rigid, essentialist understandings of not only who gets to be a man or woman but what men and women are for. You see this not only in the Cass Review nor just in regards to transgender medicine; it was a rife theme in the Supreme Court filings and arguments over the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, where a conservative set of doctors—one of whom also authored Indiana’s ban on gender-affirming care—demanded the return of restrictions against the drug which advocates long-held were based in stigma, not evidence.

[...]

The state doesn’t claim banning this care is in the best interests of transgender children—it simply asserts nothing in the Constitution prevents it from doing so. This is why transgender people’s autonomy will either spring from our own humanity and subjectivity or not at all: That right is limited when it is only granted with the blessing of pathology because, when asked to choose between their relationship to power or their relationship to their patients, many doctors like Dr. Cass will go leaps and bounds to choose their power over their patients. For much of the cisgender public—and even some trans advocates—that may come as a surprise. Gender transitions are understood as the treatment for a condition called gender dypshoria rather than a human right. And while the distress and dissociation that we call “dysphoria” is real, gender dysphoria’s existence as a diagnosis is simply the key that unlocks the cage transsexual people are put in to deny us autonomy over our own bodies, tying us to the conditional good will of a biased and compromised medical state.

The doctors who wish to once again be the masters of their abortion patients are now limited to the few cranks and conservative activists who would sign up to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Because transgender people’s autonomy challenges more assumptions about gendered life than abortion does, however—negating not just patriarchal power but the naturalized gender binary that serves as its foundation—and transgender people ourselves are still denied representation among the decision-making institutions that govern this care, the doctors running that playbook against us are welcomed as liberators by media outlets and politicians already convinced a transgender life is an unlivable life. As much as 19th-century gatekeepers couldn’t fathom a woman that would want to end a pregnancy in the absence of a life-threatening emergency, 21st-century gatekeepers still can’t fathom the desire to change one’s sex—particularly when the world still treats trans people like shit. Our “subjective satisfaction” is thus steamrolled by supposedly “objective” measures constructed around that failure of their own imagination, our misery living in a transphobic world treated as simply yet another reason to do away with transsexual life altogether.