#I am The Sports Friend inescapably and like that was what made me realize how fucked up Desert Bluffs is

[curiositykilledtheradiostar]

I finally finished Sandstorm B and I think those two might be my new favourite Night Vale episodes (however I am not very far but still), and hands down the funniest part is Kevin arriving in Night Vale all "oh? What is this strange new world I have discovered?" meanwhile Cecil is over in the Desert Bluffs studio like "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK"

[star-anise]

why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

[andy-the-8th]

September '99

Read on AO3

Part 11 of Creatures That Defy Logic

Jess at the end of the first day of high school - some things change change over the summer, some things don't. Some things come back after the summer - and some don't.

A word on characters' ages - I realize that generally you enter 9th grade at 14-15, not 13, so I've been writing most everyone with those ages in mind, Cody and Jess being the only exceptions. I figured Jess might have skipped a grade or started young, and Cody has a May birthday/they weren't really sure how old he was when they found him anyway.

"Alright everyone, one day down, 273 more to go, get on out of here."

The bell rang right as Mr. Derrick, the last-fourth-of-the-alphabet's freshman homeroom teacher, finished. Jess got up from where he was in the back row but waited til most of the room had emptied, the better to avoid the rush into the hall and down to his locker.

All in all the day hadn't really been that bad. The building itself was only a bit larger than the middle school, and that was mostly to allow for a wider variety of classes  and facilities - with such a small town it wasn't like there were other middle schools that fed into one large one, so that meant it wasn't entirely full of unfamiliar faces.

Furthermore, Jess had proactively memorized the map and room designations of all the floors weeks ago - only an amateur nerd would go into new hunting grounds blind. It wasn't like all that information wasn't available in the school bulletins and freshmen incoming packets anyway.

Not that most any other incoming freshmen read the school bulletins or packets - if anything, Jess had sympathized with the more savvy upperclassmen trying to push past the awkward gaggles of freshmen cluttering the halls, craning to see room numbers, running into friends back from the summer - generally causing loud inconveniences everywhere.

Classes were just the usual first-day-of-school routines - stacks of freshly printed-out syllabi, formulaic overview lectures, excessive vaguely-condescending reminders to resist peer pressure and drugs and bullying and such, that one teacher who decided to give actual homework on the first night.

Lunch had also been a pretty standard routine. Jess had half-thought to look for Sam and Jennifer, since they'd hung out over the summer, but knew better than to try to punch above his social weight class on the first day of high school - Sam would either be sitting with the swim team, or with Jennifer and her other friends. Jess didn't want to make it awkward with either of them in front of their friend groups, and honestly wasn't that put off by sitting alone either. He'd been doing it for his whole academic life after all, minus six weeks or so.

Swimming was just as socially-prestigious a sport in Mahone Bay High as it had been in the middle school, and with their class having just won and broke records at the state championships last year, the gossip about who would be joining varsity was inescapable.

It also made the fact that Cody still wasn't there a bit more publicly-noticed than would be ideal.

Jess fortunately hadn't run into Sean at all over the summer since the almost-incident at the library. High school was big enough and busy enough that he actually didn't have to run into him at all in classes either. Definitely an improvement over last year, Jess thought.

A metallic clang on the locker next to him jarringly snapped him out of thought. He closed the door, and behind was waiting the absolute last person Jess wanted to see. Perfect timing, as always.

"Hey Jooooosh," Sean drew out the syllable in mock excitement and familiarity. As usual, he was flanked by two of the other freshmen swim team boys. Jess didn't know or care if they were the ones from the library or not, they were all too generic anyway. They could at least try to look less like his goons, standing just behind Sean, looking down at Jess as he finished zipping his backpack.

Jess looked up at Sean, willing himself to project his usual quirky sarcastic confidence. "Hey John, how was your summer?"

"It's Sean."

"And it's Jess." He put his backpack on and smiled at Sean's annoyed expression. "Sorry, I forgot."

"Ha." Sean made a mirthless sound between a laugh and a scoff. "Summer was alright for me. How about you? Been to the library recently?" It was like he was consciously trying to intimidate Jess by bringing up the memory.

"Well, it is a nerd's natural habitat, so yeah, I have." Refusing to let Sean scare him, or at least let him know he scared him, seemed to be working just fine so far. Just had to get through whatever half-demeaning conversation piece they wanted and walk away.

Sean must have been getting used to Jess's retorts, or come to expect them, or....something - at least, he didn't look at him with that same incredulous anger he had before. Still didn't look happy either.

"So where's Griffin?"

Jess shrugged, a little too performatively to seem genuinely nonchalant. "I don't know, I haven't seen him. I don't think he's in any of my classes this year. Wasn't he with the rest of the swim team at lunch?" He kept his voice even as possible, but it came out shakier than he wanted. Jess wasn't great at lying.

Sean crossed his arms - Jess couldn't tell if he believed his act or not, but wasn't particularly keen on sticking around to find out.

"No, he wasn't. Thought maybe he was hanging with you and the other weirdoes." The boys at his side both snickered a bit. "Do you think he'll show up to varsity tryouts tomorrow?"

Jess ignored the jab - that was nothing new to engage with. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Well aren't you two supposed to be friends now?" He emphasized "friends" strongly but with a whining, effeminate lilt to his voice - Jess had had time to put things together over the summer, what with learning some definitions of things, and was pretty sure he got what Sean was trying to imply about him and Cody.

At least that wasn't something Jess had to lie about. They were just friends. And Cody was with Sam, everyone knew that.

"I guess. He's been away all summer." He thought he sounded pretty convincingly ambivalent. It kind of hurt to socially distance himself from Cody, even if it was just to Sean, even if it was to protect everyone involved.

"Aww, Jessie, that's too bad. Didn't he call?" The swim team goons continued to crack up behind Sean about this. Honestly, Jess couldn't get what was supposed to be so funny, and was ready to be done.

"He was in Australia, genius, that's pretty long distance. Brush up on geography sometime, guys." A small voice in his head advised him it was a risk, but Jess turned his back to them and started walking down the hall to the exits. There were enough people still milling around that he gave it at least 70% odds they wouldn't try anything. Still, Jess knew that figure was based on middle school behavioral statistics - high schoolers allegedly had a higher tolerance for violence and other adolescent idiocy, if media was to be believed.

"Well if you see him, tell him he better not try any of that experimental pills shit at tryouts. I've told the coach to watch out for that already. If he even bothers to show his face."

Jess turned around again, now a good couple meters down the hall. Doesn't hurt to have a bit of a safe distance.

"I don't know what you're talking about, but OK." Jess worried he sounded a little nervous there. Hopefully if he noticed it, Sean would just think he was intimidated for normal, human, definitely-not-keeping-supernatural-secrets reasons. He started walking off again.

"Maybe I couldn't prove anything, but it was awful convenient how he just disappeared for the whole summer, before anyone could double check anything. Just seemed fishy."

That emphasis was a little too close to the truth to be accidental. He burned to say something back - maybe being a merman may have been a little bit of an unfair advantage, but it wasn't like Cody had tried to cheat. There was definitely no reason to talk to the coaches about him like that. Jess might not have had much of his own reputation to protect but damn he wouldn't give it a shot at protecting Cody's - but still. It was too dangerous. For once, Jess swallowed any response. He hated giving Sean the last word, but he could tell it was smartest to back out now.

Besides, for all he knew/guessed, Cody probably wouldn't be joining the swim team again anyway - maybe he would have better control of his condition when he returned, but regularly being in the water in front of watching audiences couldn't be a good idea. But Sean didn't have to know that right now.

Sean also didn't need to know that Cody wasn't just missing from school today - he hadn't come back at all.

"Hmm." Sean could have the last word but Jess would claim the last non-committal non-lexical noise. Jess made it down the hallway, surprised but relieved that Sean didn't try to start anything else. He got out front of the school, walked down the sidewalk to bike racks all the way at the far end from the door, where he'd claimed one of the last spots. He put his helmet on and kicked off, past the lines of cars in the parking lot.

Jess had consciously focused on school as much as possible all day not just out of his usual studiousness, but also to keep his mind off of worrying where Cody might be.

Maybe it was just a mistake. They probably didn't have calendars underwater, and they definitely didn't get the school bulletins. Maybe he was just a few days off.

Maybe Cody was already at home but didn't feel up to coming in so soon. Maybe he was still having trouble controlling his powers.

Maybe he was at school today, and Jess just happened to miss him.

Maybe he was back but he didn't want to see him.

Anxiety getting the better of him, Jess steered out of the school driveway, making the turn toward the Griffins' house.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Sean punched the locker wall in frustration.

"Dude, what is your issue. If he doesn't show that's only better for you, right?"

Caleb had a point - he really shouldn't care this much. High school was different, new rules, new competitions.

"Yeah, whatever. He just better not have any fucking fins if he does."

If Griffin had taken the state title from him fairly, he wouldn't care that much. They had been friends after all, even if they were rivals. But you could only be friends with an equal rival - not some cheating freak.

Especially not some cheating freak who blows you off for some gay little nerd.

"C'mon man, let it go, it's starting to make you look bad. Kid acted like he was barely even scared of you this time." If Kevin was trying to get him to lighten up, that was definitely not the right tack. One thing that always set Sean off was being shown up, in any competition or confrontation. He had to make sure everyone knew he was on top, he was in control.

"Seriously dude, I don't think he had fins. Sure, maybe he took 'roids, or snuck some kind of secret armgear in somehow. But fins are a little far-fetched."

It did sound stupid when phrased like that. "Yeah, you're right."

They started walking down the hall towards the exits. Caleb and Kevin continued talking about varsity tryouts coming the next day, not particularly concerned about whether Griffin was going to turn up past backing up Sean's personal issue with it.

Must be pretty simple when you're only competing for 6th place all the time.

Not that he'd ever say that to them. They were decent swimmers, but they didn't get Sean's mindset of having to be the best.

Dealing with his first-ever silver at the state championships would have been hard enough. Whatever the hell Cody had pulled just made it all the more infuriating, because he should have the gold, if only he'd caught him running off to wherever he went. Being too slow twice in one day had been gnawing at his pride all summer.

And where the hell was he anyway? Sam had consistently blown him off when he'd tried to ask, just the same vague bullshit about his aunt in Australia. Didn't respond to any calls all summer. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen her hang with any of the swim team at all over the summer. Always off with Jen and the rest of them. She wouldn't even say where she was supposedly working (though that was probably just another excuse to ignore people).

Sean decided to push the anxiety about the tryouts out of his head. He'd done all he could by warning the coaches; even though he could tell that they thought he was just being paranoid and competitive, they took drug doping more seriously in high school - if Griffin showed up and tried to cheat again, it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel. Sean half hoped he would - if he were lucky, maybe that would be enough to overturn the state championship records.

And if he didn't show up, then there wasn't any need to worry at all. Can't beat him if he's not even there.

Caleb and Kevin had drifted to social topics as they wound their way down the sidewalks alongside the school building, and Sean eased back into the conversation, out of his own head, once there was a pause.

"So you thought Jess wasn't afraid of me this time?"

"Nah man, but he's like always been kind of weird like that. Like, remember when he got between you and Griffin? Acted like he wanted to get beat up instead?"

God that kid was just fucking strange. Sean had never really had to think about Jess before he and Cody had suddenly become all friendly after that biology project. Or probably more that Jess was following him around, and Griffin was too much of a pushover to get rid of him.

Caleb nodded. "Yeah he's a freak, but it seems like he doesn't get scared as easily as you'd think."

Sean sneered satisfactorily. "Maybe we should fix that next time."

[austennerdita2533]

Day 6: Canon-ish

A/N: This is the first part of an intended 4-shot. Basically, my idea is to craft some kind of Klaroline kiss/moment for each season of the year while also showing the two of them at various points (and emotional states) in their relationship. I started thinking about how Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall all have a different look or feel about them, and I thought it would be fun to play with that thematically/symbolically. Plus, it’d give me an excuse to play with seasonal imagery.

Anyway, this part is Winter. It’s canon until Liz’s death and Caroline’s grappling with the loss. I’ve also ignored all things Stefan and Caroline. (Loss. Angst. Hurt and Comfort.) 

This gave me loads of trouble, so if it’s terrible I apologize but I couldn’t bear to edit it any longer haha. Enjoy. :)

(FF.net)

xx Ashlee Bree

A Kiss For All Seasons

Part 1: Fold Into Me, Shivering

Winter’s kiss wisps across her forehead at a time of shivering delirium and despair.

She’s gone.

It’s not a dream because each breath in tastes metallic and rough, because each breath out rattles and hisses like a dented whiffle ball which has sunk beneath sediment and drowned in the shallowest of streams. It’s real life. It’s real loss, too. And real loss throbs.

It breaks—tearing, cracking, pulling, shattering, rupturing, wrenching a person into angles so painful or contradictory, that life itself feels distorted. It plunges emotions into a vise that’s so unbearable and inescapable at times, it almost feels impossible to still be alive let alone be expected to stand.

Or talk.

Or move.

Or think.

Or cry without wiping at eyes and waiting to find blood puddled on fingertips instead of tears.

At times, grief even makes it difficult to exist.

After someone dies, especially if you loved that person, the world begins to clutter in a way it never did before: it pinches in at the sides so all the noise can spill in unheard, unseen, clouding your mind and chest with smog that refuses to lift so you can breathe easy again. Everything becomes drenched in the blacks and purples and blues of a bruise, too, until there’s nothing left for us to do but crash to our knees. Until all we can do is shrink inside our gloomy new reality and burn our lung’s raw with missing.

In Caroline’s case, icicles splinter across her chest whenever she blinks against the harsh whites of morning to relive the tragedy all over again.

Mommy.

Mommy.

Mommy.

Instead of Liz’s death providing her with comfort or relief now that she’s no longer suffering, the unfair and untimely permanence of loss hollows her out until she’s raw—numb—freezing. The air around her tastes as toxic and as gritty lead. The din of life, which was once so variable and mellifluous and exhilarating to her ears, rings like television static in her head now. Blurring one minute of monotonous agony into the next without end. More than that, the rising sun in the distance (the same one that used to stream vivid, happy yellows through her window every morning), is far too weak or indirect to do anything besides snake across her moistened cheeks with it pale rays before it leaves her cold and dejected again.

Caroline’s parentless now. Alone. She’s still loved by a few friends, of course, but she feels so incredibly, unbelievably, disconnected from them all.

She’s more or less invisible. A ghost.

None of them see me. None of them know what I need.

She’s a ghost girl stuck in this endless life on her own: more hollow than haunted, more sorry and solitary than surviving. She’s an undead warrior on the outside, perhaps, but she’s all but a living, feeling woman shriveling into pieces of nothing within.

“Please don’t leave me,” her body trembles, the words scraping and shrieking inside her own mind as pain paralyzes them in place so they can’t slip down, so they can’t vault out from her throat. “I need you, Mommy, I still need you…”

But Liz is no longer there to answer. She has taken her last breath, has spoken her last goodbye.

There’s no one here who cares for Caroline unconditionally now…no one else who listens. There’s no one around to hold her hand, to kiss away her nightmares, to kill her insecurities so she can fulfill her dreams. There’s no one left who loves her in ‘alls’ instead of ‘somes’—no one.

How could leave me like this, Mommy? How?

Eyes dark-circled with sorrow and exhaustion, Caroline lies curled on one side of her mother’s bed with her knees hugged to her middle. She never stirs; she never sleeps. She stares out the paned window at a February sunrise obscured by indigo snowflakes that drip from the clouds like sleeted tears that the winter needs to cry. Fresh powder bleaches the ground and builds mounds so high they touch the trees, bending branches until they snap like broken rubber bands, burying all sounds of life beneath it except for the squawk of a nearby crow.

In places where the sky meets the horizon, bleak plums, grays, navies, and ivories scratch the edges of Caroline’s vision and almost make her long for blindness. The world outside as stark and as bone-chilling as the nightmare gnawing her apart on the inside:

Mom died, Mom’s DEAD.

But she can’t be gone, she…no! Mom? Mommy, where are you?

Mommy I—please stay. I need you to stay, okay? I’m not ready to live in a world without you. I—not yet.

It’s too soon, it’s too soon!

Mom?

MOMMY!!!?

Shadows scuttle along the walls. The floors. The furniture. Speckling her room like pox of rotting melancholy, they seem to grow larger and more formidable with each tick of the clock on the wall, their black edges curving into sharp spindly fingers that slice at entering streaks of light like a sword; their trunks expanding to root into corners as if they refuse to timber away.

Caroline, however, makes neither a move to halt their proliferation in her room nor to purge them from the space. Instead, she watches with blinking apathy as one detaches from the doorjamb at the far end of the room like a silky talon and crawls closer. It almost glides across the floor.  

How will the shadow consume her, she wonders? With a bite? With a few nibbles? Or will it gulp her down whole and damn her to its full belly of despair, plummeting her into a pit of darkness with no end?

She watches as the shadow drifts forward with a slow yet assured grace. Its movements are cautious. Soundless except for the stray floorboard which creaks when it edges along the foot of the bed and crosses into streaks of daylight, exchanging shadow for skin, swapping an  ‘it’ for a ‘him,’ as a man stoops to kneel beside her head.  

This isn’t just any man, though.

Oh, no.

But one with eyes that are rimmed in lightning yellow. One who smells of cedar and cognac and cologne. Tastes of oranges dipped in rust. Touches with hands made of calloused buttercups. And snaps necks for sport.

He’s someone who charms a crowd with dimples and drawled threats before he strikes swiftly, and completely. He’s a wolf who’s determined to paint away his personal miseries with other’s blood. This is a man who often stars in Caroline’s dreams, and his face is one she not only recognizes, but knows—

Intimately.

“Kl-Klaus? Is that…is that really you?” she croaks uncertainly.

“It is.”

Dizzy, disbelieving, greens and blonds and brown leathers all swirl together in front of her, so she rubs at her puffy eyes then squints harder at the blurred shape of him. Her next words come out more froggy and weak than questioning.

“You came back. You’re—here,” Caroline says with a puff of breath. “You’re back in…back in Mystic Falls?”

“I am.”

“But I didn’t call or—no…no texts were sent?” He nods in confirmation of this, which puzzles her further. “You couldn’t have known that she—and the funeral? No way could you have been there because I, because I never…”

“Wait a minute,” her brows pinch, heavy lids lifting slowly to his face, “did you…did you break into the house?”

Klaus compresses his lips together, shrugs at her sheepishly. Caroline responds to this by smashing her face into her pillow with a groan and an agitated ‘un-freaking-believable.’ Then, in one swift movement, she throws the blankets over top of her and rolls over flat. Onto her back.

“Don’t be angry with me, love.”

She snorts. Pulls the covers higher.

“I realize my relationship with my family is dysfunctional at best,” he tries cautiously, his voice dipping low, “but I do have experience in parental loss. I know what it’s like. How it feels. The way it cuts you and—” she crosses her arms, holds her breath “—burns.”

Caroline cringes and squeezes her arms tight like she’s holding herself together.

“I only worried on your behalf because I know how deeply you cared for the sheriff, so I trailed you home…lingering outside in case you bolted with no reference to your humanity because I didn’t want you to do anything rash you’d regret later. I just, I wanted to keep you safe and protected. To…help you avoid any extra pain.”

"It wasn’t until you screamed that I couldn’t—it didn’t seem right to—not when you sounded so—how could I not look in?”

He pauses for a moment. Clears his throat, cracks his knuckles.

“Anyway, I thought you might be in want a friend,” he offers placatingly, pressing his palms flat against the sheets so he can lean forward a bit and hover above her. “Someone to be a shoulder. A punching bag. A hand for you to squeeze. Whatever…” his voice wobbles uncomfortably, “whatever it is you need.”

“And what if what I need is for you to, you know,” she swallows hard, “get the hell out?”

“Then I’ll go, Caroline.”

She tuts but it lacks bite. “Go where? Back outside to hide behind more snow until I snap?”

Resigned, almost as if he’d expected this kind of reaction, he draws back with a small hiss like he’s been stung, “No,” he answers cooly, his words heavy and flat, “I’ll do as you bid and head home. To Louisiana.”

The air between them becomes stagnant. Oppressive all of a sudden.

“You mean you’ll leave me here?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?” she asks.

“If that’s what you wish,” he sighs, “then yes.”

“Oh.”

Time seems to slow here, silence stretching and growing like a beanstalk weed between their two bodies. Klaus plucks at a mattress spring with his thumb, its notes sharp and discordant underneath her back as he stands to pivot on his heels, readying himself to glide back into the shadows from whence he came. Leaving her alone in Mystic Falls again, setting her free like he promised two years ago.

Caroline hears him shrug his arms into his jacket with a grunt. Or maybe it’s a growl? A humph? Regardless of the noise he makes, there seems to be a sluggish dereliction to his movements. A hesitancy to proceed. And it’s probably because he’s preparing himself for the long trek through miles upon miles of snow that’ll weigh him down like ice before he reaches New Orleans. All of that slush waiting to seep in, hoping to blacken his toes…

He’s more than likely dreading the sound of orange embers crunching into snowy ashes beneath his feet as he retreats from her warm hearth and stomps out through the door again. He probably loathes the idea of submerging himself into a frigid morning all because she’s almost commanded him to go. Leave.

To go off on his own and freeze like me.

At the thought, a fresh chill kisses the back of Caroline’s neck. It momentarily anesthetizes her lungs and she cannot breathe; she cannot think. She cannot feel anything except the frostbite which pricks down low, too low, and buries itself somewhere below skin deep.

The whole world shifts inside her own head again as arctic wind gusts across a few remaining fragments of coziness: of old memories tinged pink with brandy smiles or marshmallow’d cheeks, of scarved hopes for the future knitted in bright, pretty patterns, of rich caroled dreams hummed sweetly into ears with full-bodied meaning, of soft painter’s hands which curled over top of stupid fears or desires like mittens to ease her shuddering, warming her to the bone. All of them slipping away on a sled she’s about to let crash straight through the North Pole so they may never resurface again.

Except how could she bear it? How could she survive the barrenness without them, all the cruelty? How could she find the strength to keep breathing after she lets one final sliver of warmth slip away because she’s bitter and hurting and broken? Where would her optimistic flames entomb themselves? In permafrost? In tundra? In icebergs crowding the sea?

Deep-down, Caroline knows that one biting word from her would silence Klaus for good. One more dismissive statement is all it would take to send him back to New Orleans where he belongs, thereby freeing her up to mope in this room forever. There’d be no more judgment to combat from him, no more concern. But to what end?

So her mouth can match the blue which has settled in around her heart since her mom passed away? So she can shudder harder at the falling flakes of grey and white which accumulate outside her window and aim to bury her beneath centuries of unrelenting snow? So life’s color can leak and harshen until it’s nothing more than a dead block of ice for her to kick?

As if winter isn’t teeth-chattering enough already!

Licking her lips, Caroline exhales before she slides the blanket down the bridge of nose enough to peek up at him. She rakes over his consternated expression. She watches when his body stiffens and squares in preparation of her next words. It’s as if he’s waiting for a dismissal to scythe through the air and lash him up.

“Okay, and what if—” she gulps, her voice dry and a little muffled. “What if I say I don’t want to be alone in this room right now? What then?”

Klaus’ eyes widen, hope spilling into their depths. But only for a second. A scratch of his chin followed by one, two, blinks and it sinks back into his pupils like an illusion. Like it was never there.

“I’ll make sure you aren’t. You won’t be, if that’s what you desire,” he says simply.

“And if I cry?”

He shrugs. “Then you cry.”

“I think I’m out of tissues.”

“You can use my clean sleeve then. I’m sure it’ll do just fine,” he offers drily.

She quirks an eyebrow. Shoots him a dubious look.

“What? I’m not allergic to tears, Caroline, for Christ’s sake.” He rolls his eyes. Wanders closer again. “Not immune to them either, unfortunately, if that’s what troubles you,” he adds under his breath.

Dragging a desk chair behind him, he erects it near her bedside table with a flick of his wrist. And sits.

“But you’re allergic to me, is that it?”

When he opens his mouth to respond only to slam it shut, puzzled, she gestures nonchalantly and says, “You can sit next to me on the bed, Klaus. There’s more than enough room for two, you know. It’s not like I think you have cooties or anything.”

Scooting over and up, she pats the open area with her hand. He doesn’t move.

“Well, come on then!” she tries again, less sarcastically this time. “Take off your shoes so you can climb in here. It’s drafty.”

After a few more seconds of gawking silence, Caroline, feeling both tired and fed up, rolls her eyes before she launches herself onto her knees to grab him by the hand, forcibly tugging him down onto the sheets beside her—shoes be damned!

They crash back against the pillows intertwined: Klaus’ arm braced ‘round her shoulders to cushion the fall; her nose scraping the lapels of his jacket. Her chin bangs against his clavicle and they tumble into the headboard cuddling. It’s an accident, of course, but one that feels comfortable. Oddly natural, too. And instead of shrugging him off or pushing him back so she can erect an elaborate pillow fort between them like she ordinarily would, she veers from expectation and tradition by throwing the blanket over his legs.

Next, she curls into the crook of his neck. Rests a hand in the center of his chest. Exhales. And thaws against his side as she listens to the rush of his ancient heartbeat, feeling it thrum through her own bones like this lullaby:  

‘Hold me close; hold me tight; and everything else will be alright,’  

Klaus initially tenses at the intimate contact. Afraid to move a muscle in case she changes her mind or wants to pull away, probably.

When she doesn’t, he relaxes. One hand drops atop the one of hers already on his chest while the other fingers silky tresses near her ear, plucking them strand by strand so they fall back against her sweatshirt with a sweet tap tap. His mouth also teases the crown of her head. It hovers close enough for her to feel each tickle of his breath against her skin, but remains far enough away that she misses the softness of his lips.

Sliding down lower onto the mattress, he kicks his shoes off onto the floor, lets a foot hook around her ankle, then folds her tighter into the furnace of his arms.

“I must say,” he murmurs against her hair, “a literal pillow is the last thing I expected to be for you today.”

“It’s only because I’m cold. February sucks and I miss my mom, okay? Don’t read too much into it.”

“Whatever you say, love.”

“Oh, shut up, will you? I can hear your smirk from here,” Caroline huffs into his shirt.

“Ah, sweet, sweet proximity.” Klaus sighs contentedly. “It’s half the battle, truth be told.”

“Ugh! You’re so exhausting.”

“I don’t see why,” he answers wryly, “it’s not as if I’m complaining.”

“No, but I know what you’re thinking.”

“Perhaps you do,” he hums in that assured, taunting way of his, “but you can’t fault me for being more than willing to comfort you given the chance.” His fingers draw soothing circles on her back. “So, if body heat is what you need from me right now, then fine—take every last ounce of mine and zip yourself up in it. Wrap it around you like a duvet, because it’s all yours.”

“Suuure,” Caroline drawls sleepily. She yawns. “Until I accidentally elbow you in the nose once I fall asleep, you mean.”

“No. I’m here and I won’t leave you. Not even if you make me bleed,” Klaus says, all pretense gone.

“Oh, you and your ridiculous promises. I swear!”

He responds to this with a low chuckle. It soon flattens into something more weighted and measured when he draws her in to deposit a sweet, earnest kiss across her forehead.

“Ridiculous or not, sweetheart, the promises I make to you I do and will keep. You can count on that,” he adds in a whisper. “You can count on me.”

Emotion clogs her throat at this; stings the corners of her eyes.

It’s right at that moment, with Klaus’ firm and unshakable finality, and his body spooned around her, that Caroline feels a ring of fire spring to life around her heart, thawing her all the way through with hope and waking her up to one devastatingly beautiful enormity: he’s the one person left who’s always wanted to be there for her. And he isn’t going anywhere. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in a hundred more lifetimes.

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that, won’t we?” she shivers, cuddling closer and melding into his warmth.

“Don’t worry, love. Time is on our side.” She feels Klaus’ lips tug upward in smile. They sweep across her forehead again in kiss, but this time, they deliver promise as well as comfort, “We will.”

Thanks for reading. xx

[badforyourheartgoodforyourart]

Commodity self: you are what you buy

I’m guilty of a bad habit: retail therapy. I’m having a bad day, so I go to the store and buy some stuff. It’s as if you’re saying, “Buying things that reflect me and who I am will make me feel better.” 

And that’s honestly what it does. For me, retail therapy has included a lot of boots, sweaters and watches. Luckily for me and my bank account, I don’t care about labels or top-class apparel. I do most of my shopping at second-hand stores, Ross, Target, etc. Nonetheless, I am going into stores with the goal of finding things that I can wear to portray the “me” that I want to be and that I want the world to see. Big warm sweaters and cute boots almost epitomize who I am. I love the fall and the chilly weather. I like being comfortable. I like being outside. I used to be teased by my friends for wearing a sports watch every summer (and getting an impressive watch tan) because where I worked I couldn’t have my phone on me to check the time. And now I have a dozen watches in different colors and styles because it became a part of who I am. 

Other than apparel, there are other materialistic things that I consider “mine”. The two biggest ones that come to mind are Apple products and my Jeep. I have been an Apple girl my whole life — er, since my family got its first Macintosh when I was five. It must have been in middle school that I realized there was a divide: Macs. Vs. PCs. I’d get defensive and prideful about my computer brand. No viruses! Easy! Made for the costumer! Used for design! No right clicks! Horrah! I chuckled at my SMAD professors repeated side notes about the inferiority of PCs. When Steve Jobs died we (me and the rest of the Mac team, that is) felt it. Apple has built a devoted customer following with ingenious marketing (donating computers to elementary schools), advertising (nerdy PC guy vs. cool Mac guy), and continuously creating new devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad). There, my allegiance lies. iLove! 

As for the Jeep, it was about February when I started looking for the type of car I would want. Maybe a sedan. Maybe a sport SUV. And then as if the clouds parted and the heavens sang, the Jeep came into my head. A Wrangler, of course. It was so me. It was cute, and the top could come off in the summer, and I could drive through the mud, and who’s not impressed by a girl who can drive stick? I entertained my mom with considerations of safer cars that got better gas mileage, but it was never a question. 

The general feeling toward commodity self seems to be a negative one. One that harps, “How disgusting is our culture? Why must we identify ourselves with materialistic things!?” My opinion lays in opposition of the norm. How wonderful is it that we have such material things with which we can construct ourselves? How wonderful is this relatively new outlet we have to express ourselves through? Is this naïve? Am I telling myself this because I don’t want to change? Because I like my shiny Jeep, my high-tech toys and my sweaters too much? Subconsciously, do I want to be ignorant of my faults and our faults as a population? Maybe. But bear with me, for argument’s sake. 

It is not a new phenomenon: creating, finding oneself. We, as a race, have done it for some time, I imagine. In its infancy, however, it wasn’t material things that we identified with. It was ideas, thoughts, abstract things that we identified with. “AHA!” you shout at me. “Where is our society headed if we see ‘me’ as material things rather than abstract things? What a shallow way of life we’ve created. We need to regress or we’re doomed.” But when has regression ever been the answer? Or furthermore, when has regression ever been an option? The march of marketing, advertising and branding are inevitable. Even if you, as an individual, could somehow detach yourself from all material associations, you’d be one of a handful, while the rest of our society carries on. I am in no way arguing that we should accept our damnation because it is inescapable.

On the contrary, I’m challenging you to embrace our evolution. Material things don’t replace abstract things. My love for my Jeep does not replace my love for nature, my love for learning, my love for the color orange. These are still things I very much identify myself with. Commodity self is not the only self. It is not a cancer that’s eating away at other selves. It is simply an addition — new colors to paint with on our individual, unique canvases. That’s the way I see it, anyway.

[recentanimenews]

Chihayafuru, Vol. 1

By Yuki Suetsugi | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics

Chihayafuru is a long-running josei sports manga series about a girl who discovers a passion for the Japanese card game, karuta. The very factors that made me sure I’d love the series also made it an unlikely licensing prospect. Happily, Kodansha Comics has started releasing it digitally! I still can’t quite believe that it’s really happened.

In the opening pages, we get a glimpse of a teenage Chihaya Amase during an intense match, then promptly travel six years into the past. At twelve, Chihaya had no dream other than seeing her older pageant-entering sister, Chitose, become “number one in Japan.” When she befriends transfer student Arata Wataya, who’s been shunned by classmates for his poverty and regional dialect, he tells her that her dreams should be about herself. Fired up by Wataya’s speed and intensity at karuta, Chihaya can’t help but attempt to score at least one card off of him, and the delight on Wataya’s face as he finally makes a friend who shares his passion is poignant.

As Chihaya (and the audience) learns more about karuta, Wataya eventually gains the respect of his classmates for his skill, prompting Taichi Mashima, the ringleader of the bullies, to cheat against him in a school tournament. I quite liked that we see Mashima’s motivations—his horrid mother flat out tells him that if you don’t think you can win at something, you shouldn’t even try—and that, afterwards, he makes his own decisions about what is right and what is important to him. The three kids become friends and, after joining a karuta club in their neighborhood, conclude the first volume by entering an elementary tournament as a team.

In several ways, Chihayafuru reminds me of Hikaru no Go. You’ve got the sixth-grade protagonist discovering enthusiasm for a traditional game. She makes a small group of friends who share a deep love of the game, and they compete together as a team. And yet, there is the inescapable fact that they won’t be able to stay together forever. Mashima’s path will take him to a prestigious middle school while the ill health of Wataya’s grandfather compels him to return to his hometown. Will Chihaya continue on her own? Presumably, like Hikaru, she will make new friends at each stage of her journey, and potentially face Wataya again as a rival in future.

As usual, what I really loved most was Chihaya finding the place she belonged, and the outlet in which her specific skills—quick reaction time, acute vision, and an extremely keen sense of hearing—are recognized and appreciated. Her sister becomes positively odious as she realizes Chihaya now has something in her life to work towards besides Chitose’s fame—“All Chihaya needs to do is look at me and tell me how amazing I am”—and I wonder how far she’ll go to sabotage her little sister’s ambitions, but the opening pages show us a Chihaya still deeply dedicated to the game, so I’m sure she’ll remain undeterred.

I really, really loved this debut volume and eagerly look forward to more!

Chihayafuru is ongoing in Japan, where the 34th volume will be published next week.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

By: Michelle Smith