#The only difference all that praxis made in the end

[translesbiantheo]

Kinda wild to experience so directly the tropes of transmisogynist ostracisation.

[llyfrenfys]

I'd like to preface this with that this is a screenshot of a post I saw a few days ago in the #welsh tag and that the OP has since deleted this post, but the sentiment is something I'd like to address since I see a lot of parallels with this kind of thinking in other contexts, such as in LGBTQIA+ rights conversations.

So, the most obvious elephant in the room is the idea that Welsh is super widely spoken in Wales now and that it isn't in as much danger as other Celtic languages. This idea is wishful thinking at best and erases the very real danger that Welsh is in and that it could be lost just as easily as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Cornish (which is related to Welsh) actually did die out and has had to be revived. To make a metaphor out of this, we classify languages on a scale of non-threatened to endangered in a similar way to how we classify species.

Here are the statuses of Welsh and Irish as of 2010 (above) and the statuses of Lions and Tigers (below).

On paper tigers are more 'in danger' than lions. But that does not mean that lions are suddenly not in danger at all. The little bracket above CR, EN and VU labels all of these classifications as threatened. It isn't (and definitely shouldn't) be a competition of 'who is most in danger' because you do not want the thing you care about (whether it be a species or a language) to be in danger.

To come back to the original screenshot "they* [Welsh speakers] have always had the means and the ways because the English didn't beat or slaughter them for speaking it"- on the most basic of levels, this is just incorrect. The Welsh Not was a wooden token hung around schoolchildren's necks if they spoke Welsh in school. If someone else spoke Welsh the Not would be hung around their neck. At the end of the school day, whoever was wearing the Not would be beaten and caned by their teachers. I needn't go into much detail but there have been concerted efforts to beat Welsh out of schoolchildren. With the lions vs tigers metaphor, making the claim Welsh speakers have never been beaten for speaking Welsh because they always had the means and ways, while Irish speakers were beaten and never had the means or ways is like claiming poachers have never shot lions, only tigers. Bottom line is, lions and tigers are both victim to poaching and both species have suffered as a result. Similarly, Welsh and Irish have both suffered language loss and both need conservation efforts in order to survive.

(*sidenote- the consistent use of 'them' and 'they' in the original post is definitely indicative of a 'us vs them' sentiment which is a deeply unhelpful attitude to have when it comes to endangered languages and the Celtic languages in particular)

I see parallels with LGBTQIA+ rights in this situation. When equal marriage came in for gay and lesbian couples in the UK in 2014, many allies began to act like gay rights had now been achieved and that gay issues had been done, they're solved. Except, they really weren't (and aren't). Progress has been made in Wales and undeniably Welsh is doing the best out of the living Celtic languages. But that doesn't mean Welsh has been saved or that full equality for Welsh speakers has been achieved. It very much hasn't. The sentiment of the post in the screenshot is not conducive to helping Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Putting down Welsh speakers and erasing Welsh-language history will not save Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Pretending Welsh has had it easy in some kind of lap of luxury is a deeply harmful and bogus claim.

I'll address the tags under the cut as this post is getting long.

To address the tags, personal feelings ≠ an accurate reading of a situation. Nor is it praxis, for that matter. Why is pride in Welsh different/less good than pride in Irish? Is it the assumed proximity to England? If so, that's a terrible claim to make. Not only that, but Scotland is also next to England- does that make pride in Scottish Gaelic the same as pride in Welsh according to this metric? It's a ludicrous thing to say and deeply insensitive to the needs of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh speakers, who cannot help any current or former proximity to England.

Additionally, proximity to England ≠ worse. I know it's a popular internet joke to hate on England because of English attempts to eradicate the Celtic languages, but when the joke becomes praxis, it does not help. England ≠ a place devoid of Celtic languages either. Many English counties near the Welsh border actually have communities of Welsh speakers, such as Oswestry (Croesoswallt) in Shropshire. Cornwall is also home to many speakers of revived Cornish. It does a disservice to Celtic speakers in England to insinuate that proximity to England taints or corrupts them somehow. This is how ethnonationalism starts and we ain't about that.

And "#it feels a little.... blehhhhh you were seen as sophisticated and english enough and you assimilated however the Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled". So, this is arguably one of the worst things to say about a Celtic language- or any threatened language in general. First of all, the 'you were seen as' - 'you' is very telling. The switch from 'them', 'they' to 'you' indicates that this sentiment is aimed at Welsh speakers directly. This was likely a subconscious thing that OP wasn't thinking about when they wrote this. But it does indicate unhealthy feelings of jealousy and bitterness unfairly directed at Welsh speakers, who are also struggling. This righteous anger at the decline of Irish and Scottish Gaelic would be better directed at efforts to help promote those languages- some useful things to get involved with are LearnGaelic, similar to DysguCymraeg but for Scottish Gaelic or supporting channels such as Irish channel TG4 by watching their programmes.

The idea that Welsh speakers were or are 'sophisticated and english enough' is insulting and carries with it a lot of baggage of how any of these assumptions came about. Welsh speakers were definitely not seen as sophisticated. Where Welsh was 'tolerated', it was treated as a curiosity, a relic of a bygone age. Classic museification which all Celtic languages and cultures suffer from as well. Welsh was not tolerated in any legal sense since 1535- with English becoming the only valid administrative language and the language of Welsh courts after England annexed Wales into its Kingdom. Monolingual Welsh speakers suddenly had no access to any legal representation, unless they learned English. This is no voluntary assimilation- it is an act of survival for many speakers of minoritised languages to 'assimilate' into the dominant culture, or else risk losing access to legal security and other kinds of infrastructure. You need only ask any non-native English speaker living in an Anglophone country what that process is like. Welsh people did not see English incursion as an opportunity to become 'sophisticated and english enough', they had to assimilate in order to survive.

The "Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled" is also painfully misrepresenting a very complex social and political process that unfolded over the span of hundreds of years. The phrasing itself of 'brutish animals that need to be culled' speaks to righteous anger at the damage done to these languages and cultures, but it reinforces negative stereotypes about the Irish and Scots themselves. It also is more complicated than a simple English hatred of anything non-Anglo, since the English conception of particularly the Irish changed a lot over the centuries. It was (and still is) rarely consistent with itself. See: the enemy is both strong and weak. The very earliest Celticists were by and large, Anglos or French.

Ernest Renan (1823-1892) for example, was an early French Celticist who published La Poésie des races celtiques (Poetry of the Celtic Races- English translation) in which he says:

"... we must search for the explanation of the chief features of the Celtic character. It has all the failings, and all the good qualities, of the solitary man; at once proud and timid, strong in feeling and feeble in action, at home free and unreserved, to the outside world awkward and embarrassed. It distrusts the foreigner, because it sees in him a being more refined than itself, who abuses its simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only one thing, that it should be left to itself. It is before all else a domestic race, fitted for family life and fireside joys. In no other race has the bond of blood been stronger, or has it created more duties, or attached man to his fellow with so much breadth and depth"

Yeah. This guy (unsurprisingly) was a white supremacist. Note that this sentiment is being applied to all people considered Celtic by Renan- Irish, Welsh, Breton, Scottish, Cornish, Manx etc. None unscathed by the celtophobia of the day. In this period, Celticity was romanticised (yet disparaged at the same time). It is less 'brutish animals' and more 'archaic, time-frozen peoples' in this period. Of course, 'brutish animals' attitudes towards Celticity did still exist, but it is disingenuous to act as if it was this attitude alone which drove English celtophobia. Like many things, it is always more complicated and never clear cut as it might seem.

I'll bring this to a close shortly, but returning to OP's suggestion that the Welsh assimilated and the Scots and Irish did not, is also incorrect in that some Scots did have to assimilate to survive as well. The Statutes of Iona (1609) required Scottish Gaelic speaking Highland chiefs to send their sons away to be educated in Scots and/or English in Protestant schools. Many did as the statutes required, which led to further language loss in the Highlands of Scottish Gaelic. These are acts of survival- and not ones always taken willingly.

This has been a long post but it's one which I felt I wanted to address. There's no need for infighting between speakers of Celtic languages over who has it worse. There isn't any answer to that question, nor is it a good use of time or energy. All in all, the Celtic languages have suffered greatly over the years and its only just now that some of them are turning a corner. If you care about these languages, put your energy into something good. Only through active work will these languages be saved for generations to come.

[everythingmp3]

𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞

𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐨𝐬 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

you´ve been living in Jackson for a few years and things are not looking great; you are bored, lonely, and have very little to look forward to but your feeling of numbness stops all of a sudden when Tess and Joel arrive in town. you feel an intense pull towards Tess that makes it impossible for you to remain a loner.

author´s note: this is an alternative reality where Tess and Joel went to Jackson as a platonic duo with the plan to live there indefinitely. Joel has a few appearances with dialogue, him and Tess give off middle aged bestie vibes, reader is kinda depressed about her situation but nothing heavy. also this isn’t about the game, never played it, this is just what Anna’s Tess inspired in me. hope u enjoy! (part 2 can be found here)

warnings: minors dni! smut (reader receiving, fingering), there´s a slight dom/sub vibe going with Tess and reader but only if you squint, not dark at all, spit is involved briefly

word count: 9.5k

honesty was not something you could afford anymore those days. you knew that if anyone had a clue about how you really felt about your life in Jackson, you´d have been called ungrateful or worse, so you kept it to yourself but the ugly truth was that you did not feel grateful, not at all. most days you felt nothing, there was a vast emptiness inside of you and no way to fight it, no way to reach a sense of fulfillment. on paper it was an ideal situation: community based living where everyone feels responsible for everyone, decent food and fresh air, the option to spend time with animals, to take care of kids or elders, to spend evenings drinking tea or having a drink with other people your age, celebrating holidays together, peace, quiet, tranquility. 

it was all ideal in theory, but in praxis it had slowly but surely sucked the life out of you over the years. you´d grown up in a QZ in the south, which was hard in its own right, but you were used to that lifestyle: the tall buildings, the wide spaces, the anonymity, the ability to walk for miles and not reach city limits. living in a small town, a space that confined and regulated, it was wearing you down; you hated that you could never just walk outside without being recognized, without everyone knowing your name and greeting you, expecting a bright smile in return for theirs, you hated the weird cheerful vibe that hung thick in the air at all times, the odd sense of satisfaction that everyone seemed to carry with them despite living through the end of the world, the families that took up the whole town with their domestic sweetness, it all began to piss you off a few weeks into your first year there, but instead of turning cruel or mean, you decided to zone out as best as you could and just keep to yourself. you were not made for that kind of life, you yearned for more, for excitement, for big cities and anonymity and the freedom to move around amongst strangers, you wanted the thrill of something dangerous and surprising, but day in day out, you were bored and lost in your dreams of a different life. 

Jackson didn´t get new arrivals often, so the few times that the town gates opened up to strangers, everyone was highly curious; kids hoping they´d get some new friends their age, a few sleazy guys hoping that hot girls were part of the group, others who were more pragmatic about it just hoping that the newcomers were strong enough to help out with physically demanding jobs. you never really cared, they were all the same to you, but when you heard that Tommy´s brother and his friend were coming, you had to admit you were intrigued, since Tommy and Maria were two of the few people you felt comfortable around. 

you were subtle about it, keeping your distance, but you watched them being toured around town on their first day and you found yourself looking at Joel´s friend more than at him, even though you´d assumed that he was the one you´d pay attention to, considering your interest in seeing who Tommy was related to, but the moment you saw Tess she stuck out you, immediately. it was impossible to explain why, but seeing her confident walk, her stern look, the air of mystery that surrounded her, it was such a contrast to all the other women you´d come across, your whole body had a reaction the sight of Tess. the first time you heard her voice from afar, you thought oh wow. that´s a good fucking voice, the voice of a woman who doesn´t take anyone´s shit. truthfully, it kind of turned you on. 

the first few days of them settling in, it was impossible to get a chance to say hi, people swarmed them wherever they went, so it took about a week until you found yourself nursing a drink at the bar and saw that Tess was standing all alone, just looking around, so without wasting any time you got up and walked over, a little shy, but eager to see what she was like, to hear that voice up close. 

once you were a few feet away from her she locked eyes with you and gave a nod, you almost felt your cheeks flush from the eye contact and tried to act casual as you introduced yourself, followed by “so, how are you liking it here so far?” a little mischievousness in there, like you were trying to get her to admit that it wasn´t all rainbows and sunshine. 

Tess could tell what you were trying to do and it amused her but she chose the diplomatic answer, unsure whether she could trust your discretion, “oh you know. it´s a lot to adjust to after all that time in the QZ. we also had one hell of a journey here so yeah, still processing. but so far I can´t complain” you nodded, “right, you guys must´ve gone through some shit out there. I remember when we came here a few years ago, almost froze to death a few times”, she agreed “yeah it was pretty gnarly. and obviously Joel and I aren´t the youngest anymore, I think we complained about our backs hurting at least 100 hundred times a day, kind of a miracle we didn´t just kill each other honestly”, a laugh from you then.

“well, it´s better now I hope? they gave you a good house, nice beds? I´d assume Tommy saw to that”, she nodded, “oh yeah for sure, listen, after all that, anything seems like a fucking five start hotel to me, I am easy to impress in that regard”. you found yourself standing closer to her than you usually did while talking to people, looking at her with more interest, she was exactly what you´d hoped she´d be: funny, charming, but not in a way that was particularly soft or endearing, a distinct hardness was there, unwavering, and it pulled you closer, you had respect and admiration for that kind of temperament, not just that, but a deep attraction too, you couldn´t remember the last time a woman had had that effect on you. 

there wasn´t much else you could bring up or say, you kept it brief for your first encounter, “anyway, I just wanted to say hi, wish you guys a smooth moving in process and all that. we´ll see each other around I´m sure!” she nodded, something about you was charming to her, “right yes, and thank you. see you around!”. 

you set down your glas on the counter and made your way out of the bar, Tess didn´t think twice about it but an older man who had just gotten his glass of whiskey and overheard the exchange leaned closer to her, “how´d you manage to do that?”. she was confused, “how did I do what?”, the man watched as you walked out of the door, she did too, “I don´t think I´ve ever seen that girl initiate small talk with anyone, and she´s been here for a few years so, you must´ve done something right”. she was taken off guard by that, “really?”, he nodded, “yeah that one´s not a talker, keeps to herself. not that she´s rude or anything, not at all, but socializing.. yeah not her thing, she´s a lone wolf.”, the more he said, the harder it was for Tess to believe him, why would you be more inclined to talk to a random stranger who usually doesn´t seem very inviting, than some nice person who you´ve lived with for years? “okay. and what´s her deal?” she asked, intrigued, he smiled, “well, I´m not one tell people´s business. but from what I just saw, I´m pretty sure you won´t have to try hard to get that info out of her” she nodded, “right. sure. if you say so”

the man took a sip of his drink, muttering “funny girl” as he left Tess standing there, wondering what you´d seen in her that had driven you to start a conversation. next to Joel, she was often keenly aware of her lack of charm, he had no trouble fitting in with everyone in Jackson, that southern hospitality reminiscent of his old life, the Texas Joel coming out again, whereas she could tell that some people were a little intimidated by her, by her potential judgment or lack of enthusiasm over her new home. Tess knew she was not the best at first impressions, so the idea that someone in that town might have taken a genuine liking to her just by looking at her, she had to admit, it felt really good. partially because you were one of the only women she´d seen so far that she´d consider her type. 

the next morning in the dining hall Tess sipped her black coffee, glancing over at you a few times, before setting the cup down and clearing her throat. “hey”, she tapped Joel on the shoulder, who turned to her, mumbling his words because his mouth was still half full, “yeah, what is it?”, “what do you make of her?” Tess asked, pointing at you. you sat a few tables away from them and had no idea you were being watched, Joel studied your expression for a moment, “hm. I don´t know. seems kinda tired. and I don´t mean from a lack of sleep” Tess nodded, “yeah, seems that way”, she paused for a moment but she trusted Joel, so she continued, “this thing happened yesterday, she talked to me and apparently she hardly talks to anyone. strange huh?”, he considered it, “interesting. well, if you ask me you should see what that´s about. I mean, what do you have to lose, hm? seems like she could use a friend. or you know…”.

she knew what that last part was insinuating and threw him a look that said very funny, he teased her a little, “oh, don´t act like a saint Tess, I know you wouldn´t pay attention like this to any random person. and I don´t blame you, she´s very pretty”, “okay, watch it old man” she said, a sudden harshness to her tone. Joel knew exactly how to rile her, he laughed, patting her on the back as he stood up, “don´t worry, she´s all yours. come on now, let´s go, we´re on for patrol, you can continue your ruminating out there”, she waved him off “you know what, forget I ever mentioned it” but part of her enjoyed it, it had been ages since anyone had caught her attention, since there´d been banter like that between her and Joel over breakfast. 

the next night, there was a bigger get together, most people either drank or danced or sat around tables in small groups, and you tried your best to join in on it but after about an hour you felt the urge to leave, so you stood outside on your own for a short while, debating whether to go back in and say goodbye or just do an Irish exit. about 10 minutes after you went out there, someone else followed: Tess. she had the same issue, not really being one for parties or large gatherings, so it was a pleasant surprise for her, to see someone else standing there. 

“air got a bit thick in there” Tess said as she approached you, taking a deep breath, hands in her pockets, standing to your side, you looked at her, making a “hm” sound of agreement, she continued “oh by the way, I might be totally wrong but I thought out of everyone here you might be the one who´d appreciate this thing I found in my bag yesterday” she pulled something out of her jacket pocket, at first you couldn´t see but then you realized she was holding out a pack of cigarettes to you, “take it, I don´t need them. but I have a feeling you might”, you smiled, “do I give off that energy?”, “kinda yeah” she admitted, you took the pack, pulling one out, “and you´d be right. hell I´d take any drug at this point but this is a good start”, she got out a lighter, stepping closer to you, holding out her hand to shield the flame, “come here”, you liked the sound of that, the tone of an order, you blushed as you leaned closer to her, you didn´t make eye contact but she took in the sight of your face up close, your lips, before you stepped away again and took a drag, exhaling slowly with a sound of pleasure, “yeah this is good, thank you”, after a moment of silence you met her eyes again.

 “so, I heard you and Joel did some pretty fucked up shit back in the QZ”, that got the first genuine laugh out of Tess in a good while, everyone else in Jackson had danced around the topic, never explicitly mentioning their past as smugglers, probably to pretend that they were just a normal middle aged man and woman, but there you were, getting straight to the point, and it was refreshing, to hear someone speak that frankly. somehow she felt like you shared a language, “you could say that yeah”, you were curious, “ever killed someone?”, “of course” she responded without thinking twice, and for a moment she regretted it, scared of your reaction, but when she saw that you were grinning she thought oh no, I don´t have to censor myself at all around this girl at all.

“do you still have a gun?” you asked, raising your eyebrows at her, daring her to say the truth. she eyed you, debating whether to lie, knowing that it wasn´t encouraged to have weapons like that in Jackson, since it didn´t mix well with the pacifist vibe, her voice giving away that it was a clear yes, “but shh”, holding her index finger to her lips, you nodded, smiling “sure I won´t tell. that is if you let me hold it sometime”, she crossed her arms, impressed by your audacity, “oh I see we´re negotiating now, are we?”, you shrugged, “hey, I´ll give you something in return, anything really, just ask”, she turned your words over in her head for a second, wondering if they were as suggestive as she hoped they were.

 “right, okay I´ll think about it. have you ever fired one?”, you shook your head “no, we left the QZ when I was 17, too early to get into any of that”, she perked up, “right, I meant to ask you about that. what´s your story, how´d you end up here?”. you tried to summarize it well, not wanting to bore her with the whole thing, but from the way she was looking at you then, you realized you had her undivided attention, “the short version is this: my parents died a few years before I came here. I was too young to live on my own back then, like 14, so this girl I was friends with, her parents took me in. then when I was 17 they said they knew people here, that our life be better. they didn´t force me, I had a choice, but I would have been on my own and I was scared so I came here. we got along fine but I could tell they were sort of relieved when I suggested I should live on my own here, so yeah, that´s what happened” she took the words in, “I´m sorry. all of that must´ve been rough at that age” she felt a pain her heart, imagining you that young, already confronted with that much loss and change, it was starting to make sense, why you seemed sort of numb to everything, why a happy-go-lucky outlook didn´t really suit you. but she also respected you for it, knowing what it took to rebuild your life after a rupture like that. 

“can i say something really fucked up?” you said, taking another drag of the cigarette before flicking it away and rubbing your hands together to stay warm, she grinned, increasingly charmed by you, “please do, I´ve had enough polite chit-chat today”.

that encouraged you to be really honest, “I regret coming here. I wish I´d have been brave enough to stay back, make my way on my own. I am miserable here in ways I never was back then. it´s fucked up I know, considering all this” you gestured towards the fairy lights hung on a house across the street, the snow, the peaceful air of the moment, “but it´s the truth” a shaky exhale, like you were physically releasing tension by confessing that thought. 

Tess instinctively got closer to you, she was very interested in your thoughts then, “what do you miss?”, you had a wistful look in your eyes, “everything. minding my business and being left alone, walking for hours without seeing anyone I know, the wide spaces, the way nobody pretended that life was great, the fact that people were allowed to be openly frustrated with shit. here it seems almost blasphemous to say that you´re pissed off or angry about how your life turned out, back then it was a shared feeling of well, we´re in this hell together, you know? I don´t know man, I just don´t fit in here I think”.

it made sense to her what you were saying, she could feel some of it to be true for herself, “yeah I´ll be honest you don´t seem like the rest of them here”, you looked up at her then, “I don´t?” she shook her head, “no. if none of this ever happened I´d imagine you to be the type to end up in New York or some other big city with some cool friend group, going out a lot, hanging out in cafes all day, something like that” you groaned, “jesus don´t stay that you´ll make me cry”, she laughed, placing a sympathetic hand on your shoulder, her grip stronger than you expected, a heat where her fingers pressed into your skin through your jacket, “sorry, I´ll stop. but you get what I mean”, “yeah, I do, thank you. feels good to say it all out loud for once”, “well, then I´m glad. also I won´t lie, Joel is better fit for this place than I am, so you´re not alone. but then again, I´m older, I get that for someone your age it´s especially shitty to be stuck in this suburban kind of living, with no way out”. she was spot on. 

“well, I might have to ask you to tell me some stories about your life then, to live vicariously” you smiled at her, batting your eyelashes for dramatic effect, she was not immune to it, “right, some lovely stories about breaking people´s bones during fights” she joked, your eyes had a twinkle in them then, she clocked it and wondered for a second if the idea of her violent past might actually be part of what made you like her, find her attractive. “tell me more..” you said, your voice clearly signaling that you weren´t shocked but intrigued, Tess thought about what she could share, “well most of it is the same story of dumb luck mixed with slightly above average shooting skills, but one time I somehow managed to win a fight when the guy had a gun and I only had a knife. one of my sweeter memories” she joked, you nodded, “impressive. I´d like to see that” you meant it, she shook her head, “believe me you wouldn´t, it´s not glamorous, sounds much cooler than it looked”. you looked at each other for a moment, the night air was cold, you were both shifting your weight and clasping your hands together to stay warm, since apparently neither of you wanted to suggest going back inside or home.

Joel was the one to interrupt the moment. he swung the door open, looking around and seeing Tess standing there with you, giving you both a nod, waiting to see if Tess was gonna leave with him, both of you could feel that it might be time to call it a night, “well, I think that´s my cue” she said, you nodded, “yeah, I should get going too”, pointing in the direction of your house, “but it was nice talking to you” she agreed, “I´m sure we´ll run into each other again soon, would be pretty hard not to in this small ass town” you laughed, glad that she was willing to engage in some light shit talking “exactly, see you around”. 

“sorry, didn´t mean to cockblock you there” Joel said with a smugness about him as they started walking, Tess slapped him on the arm for that one, muttering “shut up” under her breath. “but on a real note, I asked Tommy about her and he couldn´t tell me shit. only that it took a while for her to warm up to them and now they´re friends, sort of. apparently she´s real smart, has read about every damn book in town, good on horseback, other than that he couldn´t tell me much.” that description didn´t mix at all with the fact that you´d just been so open with her, that you´d had no issue telling her about your deep feelings, it was dawning on her that you actually did behave differently around her, that you seemed to trust her for some reason. 

“we talked a little. she´s cool” she said plainly, trying to sound casual, he let her believe she did, “Tommy said people are kinda intimidated by her” Tess looked at him, “really?”, to her it seemed absurd but she could see why others might feel differently, “hmm” he said, “reminds me of someone else I know” nudging Tess in the side as they kept walking, she smiled to herself, not letting him see it, but he was right, something about you seemed surprisingly familiar, it kind of impressed her that your instincts had been sharp enough to pick up on it that quickly. part of her was grateful, it was good to know that regardless of where things would go with you, she´d always be able to count on having someone to have a good chat with, to be her true self with for a moment. 

the next few days you saw each other a few times, on the street in passing, in the dining hall, and Tess quickly realized why others might be hesitant to approach you; there was a stark contrast between how´d you acted that night talking to her, compared your vibe during the day. your expression was not grumpy but not inviting either, there was a clear distance that you kept between yourself and everyone else, you were polite, but whenever she saw you interacting with people there was none of that charm that you´d had with her, your eyes didn´t sparkle, your face was way less expressive, you seemed mellow, a little depressed to her, like you´d rather be on your own. she kept thinking back to how you´d smiled at her and it haunted her, the fact that you didn´t do it for anyone else. she didn´t want to admit it to herself but she wanted to talk to you again, she was dying for some excitement herself, the domestic life in Jackson wasn´t making her yearn for more as well, so about a week later she gave in. Tess had an idea about how she might get some genuine joy into your system. 

by the time Tess knocked on your door it was about 09:30 pm. it took a while for you to answer but she saw that a light was on so she was patient, standing there until you cracked the door open, a few visible marks from a pillow on your cheek, “oh fuck sorry did I wake you?” you shook your head, glad to see her, trying to fully wake up, “no, I mean.. kind of, I fell asleep on the couch” she laughed, “falling asleep before 10, huh? how old are you again?”, you squinted your eyes at her, “did you come here to make fun of me, or-?”, clearly not really bothered by her razzing you, “not strictly, no. I have a surprise. go put on a jacket, and a scarf too while you´re at it, it´s fucking cold” you nodded, trying to understand what her plan was, “a surprise?”, “well don´t think too big it´s nothing crazy, but yeah”, “okay wait, give me one second” you left the door open and quickly got dressed, a smile on your face then, you had no idea what was happening but you were just happy to see her again, to be sought out by her, so you hurried out and shut the door, following her. 

as you started walking you exchanged a few formalities, then you asked “where´s your buddy?” in a sort of teasing tone, she threw you a look from the side, “my buddy” she imitated in a low tone, “he´s with his brother. Maria isn´t feeling well, and I don´t need to be the only woman at that table, I really don´t” you laughed, “right, I get that. so what are we doing?” you asked, trying to suss out where she was leading you but it looked like you were heading towards the stables, she didn´t bother answering your question, “people won´t bother us there at this hour right?” she said, seemingly worried you might get caught doing something. you knew she wasn´t shameless or desperate enough to just lead you somewhere in public to hook up with you, but still, part of you liked the double meaning of the sneaking around, trying to find a place where you wouldn´t be disturbed, “no, I actually sometimes go to the horses at night when I can´t sleep. it´s kinda relaxing” that was an endearing image to her, you amongst those big animals, maybe petting them or talking to them, “yeah, I heard you´re good with them”, a prideful smile flickered across your face for a second “I guess yeah. I never really got the craze about dogs, I like them more, they´re strong but quiet about it”, that way of putting it amused her, she met your eyes; it didn´t escape her that that description also fit her. 

once you reached the stables and went inside, she walked over to you, close enough to face you. that was the first moment that night you actually took a good look at her; she looked hot even though barely an inch of her skin was visible, a forest green flannel was peaking out of her brown oversized jacket, she was wearing jeans that looked worn in, fit her perfectly, her face was flushed from the ice cold air, her long hair falling down her face in waves, the wind had messed it up a little, you were staring as she spoke, “so, I´m gonna need you to close your eyes and hold out your hands for me” you were clearly confused by that “huh? are you joking?”, she shook her head, “no, go on, do it”, so you did, not arguing about it, and she liked it, seeing you take her instruction without much questioning, your palms open, facing up, Tess could´ve done anything, she almost reached out and took your hands in hers, but she got her mind back to what the actual plan was before she could slip up and do it.

you could hear her reaching for something inside of her jacket, “okay, don´t be shocked it´s a little cold and a little heavy” you were out of ideas, no clue what was gonna be placed in your hands, a moment later you felt something that was clearly metal of some sort, holding it tentatively at first, “okay, open your eyes” she was standing a bit further away then, watching your reaction, and it was worth it: you jaw dropped when you realized she´d placed her gun in your hand. 

“you know, keeping up my end of the deal” you recalled that you´d jokingly told her to let you hold it but you didn´t think she´d actually do it. it wasn´t a small one either, you started tracing its features with your index fingers, inspecting it up close, fascinated, she watched you, a grin, “you like it, don´t you?” it was clear from your expression that you did, her suspicions about you not being easily shocked by anything confirmed, you nodded, “is it loaded?”, “hmm” she confirmed, and that really surprised you. she had basically handed you a lethal weapon that she knew you had no practice with, enough trust in you to believe you wouldn´t put her in danger, even though she hardly knew you. 

Tess moved to sit down on a stack of hay, keeping her eyes on you, “okay, now give me your best pose”, “huh??” you said, staring at her. “you know, show me how you´d yield that thing. just pretend I am some freak who is about to attack you”, you lowered your eyes, “right that should be easy”, she smiled, leaning back against the wall, manspreading, “I´m waiting”, an authoritativeness to her tone that made it impossible to deny her request. 

you felt a sense of embarrassment, hyper aware of your body because of her unflinching gaze, but it wasn´t entirely unpleasant, there was a heat to it too, so you relaxed your muscles and actually thought about how you´d behave, getting a feel for the gun, holding it out, not pointed at her but next to her, shifting your stance a little, closing one eye, a nod of approval from her, “not bad, not bad at all actually. I might have just recruited you if you´d been back in my QZ”, you grinned, dropping your arms, standing more naturally again, “then you don´t have very high standards if this is all it would take”, Tess stood up, “yeah, maybe I don´t”, moving closer to you, “do that again please”, she watched from up close then, “there´s just one thing I´d change, and then you´re good to shoot the shit out of something, or someone. here”, before you knew what was going on, she knelt down next to you and used both of her hands to roughly push your leg into a stance that would support your weight better, that would make it harder for someone to push you over. the feeling of her manhandling you like that shot a wave of adrenaline through your whole body, you almost asked her to keep her hands on your knee because it felt so good, even thought there was a thick fabric between her skin and yours, it felt just as thrilling as if she´d touched your bare leg. 

“yeah that´s better” she said, glancing up and down your body, “suits you. you should get into some shady business if you ever leave this place” she said, only half joking, admittedly a little turned on from seeing you like that,  “you´re really corrupting me here, huh? and you didn´t see me shoot yet, I might be god awful” she shrugged “oh we could work on that. maybe we´ll end up on patrol together one day, you could go off on some trees, practice” you laughed, “sure, sounds great”, the idea actually did seem pretty good to you, being out there far away from everyone with her for a while, doing something sort of forbidden, there was a clear intrigue in you and she could sense it, a pride swelling in her over the fact that her plan to get you to loosen up and have some fun had worked, she´d gotten through to you again, that smile back on your face that she hadn´t seen all week, that she´d admittedly missed and daydreamed about a few times. 

Tess was at a point in her life where she rarely felt angry about her circumstances, she was way past that, there was a general philosophy of it is what it is that she subscribed to, but because of you it was different all of a sudden, there was an anger about the world that you had reawakened in her. all she could think of the days after first talking to you was that she wished that the outbreak had never happened, that you´d have gotten to live the way people in their 20s lived back then: going out to bars with friends, spending hours out and about, studying, walking around town, going to see films in theaters, going to concerts, taking road trips, traveling, the list of things she wished you could go out there and experience was endless and it pissed her off, that someone clever like you was destined to just wither away, nothing to look forward to, no big dreams to go after. Tess could tell you´d have built a beautiful vibrant life for yourself if you´d have just gotten the chance, and she knew she couldn´t give you a miracle, but she knew she could give you something. you evidently saw something in her that you wanted, and she would try to do her best to give it to you. pulling you out of your house at night to have some stupid fun was a start. you sat down next to her on the stack of hay then, fidgeting with some pieces of it, the gun resting in your lap.

“so, you must have been pretty bored if this was your idea for a Friday night” you said, teasing, she raised her eyebrows, looking at you from the side, you were sitting close enough for you to see her eye color for the first time, “well, if there´s a secret exciting nightlife around here that i could have explored instead, please do enlighten me” you laughed, “yeah no, staying up past 12 am is as about as wild as nights can get here”, she nodded “sounds about right”, busying her hands with rubbing her legs that had gotten a little cold. “you know I get it, what you said, about having that kinda fucked up nostalgia for the QZ. I would never say this to anyone here because I really am grateful for their kindness but yeah. I do miss a few things about our old life” she seemed lost in thought, you felt for her but you were also relieved to have some comradery for once, after years of only thinking about these things, never sharing them with anyone, you spoke up “yeah I´ll be real with you, at this point I even miss the fear of walking around darker secluded parts of the city and possibly ending up in a fight. I would take a punch right over another night of not knowing what to do with myself” she let out a genuine laugh, your honesty was refreshing, attractive even, she´d never been a fan of sugar coating things.

“I hear you, I also miss the thrill of certain things, I am not great at just being content and settled. maybe I was when I was younger but yeah. things changed”, she was staring into space but you were looking at her, enjoying the feeling of being close to her, it was a peaceful scene, you two surrounded by silence, only the faint sounds of horses moving, the smell of earth and fresh air and hay, something comforting and serene about it, you patted her leg sympathetically, “but you´ll be fine, I can tell, you´re tough” she turned to look at you then, the feeling of your hand on her instantly pulling her out of her thoughts, your expression was soft, it had been a while since someone had looked at her like that, “that I am, yes” she said, a slight grin. 

she pointed towards your chest “okay that jacket really isn´t warm enough, you´re shivering”, you hadn´t realized because you were so lost in the joyful feeling of being with her, but she was right, your body had quickly grown cold from just sitting there, “do you have a fireplace in your house?” she asked, “no, just some heaters that only work half the time. wait, do you?”, “yeah, I think Joel left it on earlier so the rooms would warm up a little”, “damn, it really does pay off to come here as a relative of someone in town huh? they gave you the fancier kind of house”, “guess so. so much for everyone being equal around here, right?” she joked, you smiled, “I mean I´ll share our luxuries, gladly, you could come warm up if you want. jesus your hands are red” she said, holding one of your your hands in both of hers, shielding it from the icy air, your breath hitched as you felt her skin on yours, she rubbed your hand a little in attempt to get the blood flow going again, “yeah no, we´re going inside, I won´t be responsible for giving you fucking hypothermia out here, come” she said, pulling you up, the word “we” swirling around in your head, all those details you pick up on when you like someone, the first time of her referring to the two of you as a union, as “we”. 

you almost felt dizzy from that whole exchange, by the sudden tenderness, her worry for your well being. most nights you could have sat there for hours and nobody would´ve come to bother you or check on you, but there she was, watching out for you, paying attention. after so many years on your own, day after day of floating around, never being tethered to someone, it was almost overwhelming, to be touched, to be seen, taken care of in some small way. 

you both walked fast, clouds of smoke from your breath in the air, the streets empty, indirect light from a few windows illuminated the snowy road little, “okay almost there” Tess said as you approached their house. she was relieved that it was dark, since it meant Joel wasn´t home yet and she would have hated nothing more than her one on one time with you being cut short. 

once you were inside, she turned on a few smaller lights in favor of the big overhead one, “don´t be shy, make yourself comfortable” gesturing towards the fireplace where a medium sized flame was slowly burning away, the couch only a few feet away from it, “want a drink?” she asked from across the room as she made her way towards the kitchen, “uh, sure yeah” you answered, while scanning the room. it was clear that they´d just moved in, but it was cozy nonetheless, lots of old wooden furniture, a few clothes thrown over the chairs, a few pretty pink flowers on the dining table, probably a housewarming gift from someone. 

you got rid of your jacket and crouched down in front of the fire, warming your hands for a second, feeling the heat on your face, which almost hurt since your body temperature was a sharp contrast, but very shortly after you could feel your cheeks flushing, your hands getting less stiff, your muscles relaxing. as Tess walked back into the room she smiled to herself, the view of you doing that endearing to her, “nice huh?”, she asked, “yeah I think I could fall asleep on the floor right here” you mused as you got up to join her on the couch. she held out a drink to you, which looked better than you´d expected: a few ice cubes, a slice of lemon, you didn´t bother asking what was in it, you just leaned on the armrest of the couch, pulled your legs up onto the cushions and took a big sip as she did the same. you both exhaled at the same time after, “damn, this is better than the drinks at the bar” she was flattered, “well, I´ve learned a thing or two about improvising with whatever ingredients I have access to. she was quicker than you with downing the contents of the glass, clearly not a lightweight, you set yours down too after a few more sips. she had also gotten comfortable, her arm lazily thrown over the back of the couch, an achingly hot pose for her to be in, the way a lot of guys usually sat, it had been a long time since you´d come across a woman like her and it was waking something in you up, slowly but surely.

“you should be careful with being a good host. I might start showing up here more than you´d like. you know, that thing of not feeding stray cats because otherwise they´ll wait on your doorstep every day” she laughed, amused by that comparison, “well, I happen to like cats, so” there was a longer, charged pause after she said that in a tone low enough to make it clear she wasn´t just saying it plainly, that there was a clear double meaning in there. you both just looked at each other, neither of you breaking eye contact, but also not growing nervous either, it was comfortable to share a wordless moment of connection, the light of the fire drenching your facial features in a golden hue, not helping either of you with your painfully intense attraction. “can I ask you a question, and you promise to answer it honestly?” you smiled, tilting your head, “sure” you had nothing to lose, you´d tell her whatever she wanted to hear. “why are you so different with me than with the others?” she asked, a seriousness to it, not letting you off the hook, her eyes remaining on yours.

you thought for a second, the truth seemed simple to you, “well, I like you”. she shook her head, “no, that´s not a good enough answer, try again. I´m not daft, I can tell you like me, what I asking you is why”. you pointed at her then, “well there is one reason, I like that you tell me to do things, that you aren´t timid or weirdly careful with me” she nodded slowly, something dawned on her, “okay I see, you like when I boss you around, huh?”, you shrugged, “perhaps”. she was alert then, her posture shifting to a more upright position, instinctively leaning a bit closer to you since the conversation had turned in a way that was affecting her on a deeper level, “I mean-” you continued, “on a more heartfelt note, when I saw you interacting with people I just felt that there was a strength to you that I´d rarely seen in anyone else, makes me feel at ease. I guess there´s something secure about you, something solid and.. I don´t know calming. I like being around people who are stronger than me, not just physically, I don´t always need to be the tough one in the roomm you know, I really don´t” you leaned your head back against the cushions then, turning to face her, looking up at her, and she was in awe of how your entire physicality had changed, how pretty much all of your walls had come down, you looked almost angelic to her in that moment, she shook her head a little, a gentle smile as she spoke in a quiet voice, “they all got you so wrong, huh?”, “how so?” you asked, remaining in your comfortable position, without hesitation she reached out and caressed your cheek, softly, “you´re such a sweet girl. and they have no idea”. you were entirely hers then, it was done, the feeling of her fingers on your face, the deep affection, the way she´d figured you out completely, you were melting right in front of her, hardly anyone had ever called you sweet, she could see in your face that she´d hit you right in the heart, “not for just anyone” you said, earnestly, weight to her words, wanting her to know it was special for you, to let someone in.

she nodded, her hand still on your face, “you want me to take care of you, hm?”, you nodded, your eyes like you were looking up at a god, pleading for mercy, for light, for love, her whole body was flooded with warmth and not because of the fire, “nobody´s ever given you what you really need, right?”, it was like she was reading you, saying all the deepest most intimate things you´d never dared to express, to anyone, pulling them out of you, she brushed her thumb over your lower lip, watching every last bit of composure leave your spirit. the moment her hand left your skin you looked devastated, a satisfied smile on her face as she leaned back, letting you sit in the feeling that had just crashed over you because of her, before giving you a gentle order, “come here” she said, her hand waving you closer, and the moment she said it you climbed over to her, reaching for her but before you could decide what to do, she already had her hands firmly on the back of your head, eagerly pulling you in for a kiss, fully in control, you didn´t have to do anything but lean into it, her lips warmer and softer than you expected, but a clear force in there, she kenw you didn´t need it to be slow and chaste, she knew you needed it visceral and intense, your hands found her neck as you opened up for her, the kiss turning sloppy and needy in an instant, the taste of her hot and sweet, a residue of liquor on her tongue, you didn´t even try to suppress any sounds as her tight grip slowly turned you into a desperate mess, once you seperated to get some air you just stared at each other, out of breath, skin on fire, faces glowing, eyes lowered like you were fixing prey.

without much time to lose you pulled your shirt over your head, you wanted her to see you, it had been ages since anyone had admired your naked form, and you were dying to give yourself over to her, for someone to make use of your body, to derive pleasure from it, once you were left topless, only your lower half still clothed, Tess felt a deep reverence for you, leaning closer to slowly run her hand from the top of your chest down over your tits, resting it there, marveling at you “god. you´re fucking perfect..”, your breath was shallow, an impatience growing in you, so you closed the distance to kiss her again, feeling her grab your tits rather hard, yet somehow the passion was not enough for you yet even though you were already practically devouring each other, so you pulled away, your lips still apart as you said something you had never said before.

“spit in my mouth” you practically begged her, your tone not playful or provocative but earnest, an urgency to it, she was barely inches from you and realized that you weren´t asking her to degrade you, you were offering up total submission to her, it was something of an honor, to be the sole witness of your surrender, so she placed her hands on the sides of your face, looking down at you, almost cradling your head, your tongue flat, like you were waiting to take communion, she didn´t do it with force or malice, letting her saliva drip into your mouth slow and thick like honey, watching you take it, without any hesitation you closed your mouth and swallowed, it felt natural, right, to try and become one with her like that, to feel some part of her running down your throat, Tess was staring down at you with nothing but pure adoration by that point, she didn´t even have to tease you or edge you to give yourself up, nothing, you had done it out of your own want, which turned her on even more than if she´d had to push you, “such a good girl, aren´t you?” she cooed, fingers in your hair, your hands on her back, your eyes went wide as she said that, it didn´t escape her, that she´d hit gold, “say that again” you pleaded, a smile from her then as she leaned close to your ear, her voice sultry and deep, a whisper “good girl”, one of her hands lower on your body then, your chest flushed from arousal.

“I thought about this all week” you confessed, feeling her mess with the waistband of your jeans, “yeah, what did you do while thinking about me?” she teased as her hand slipped into your underwear, a sharp breath in from you, it was hard to speak, so she pressed further, “something like this?”, her fingers finding your wetness then, getting coated it in, slowly moving them up and down, teasing you, you nodded, moans starting to leave you, “feels better when I do it, hm?”, “yes” you uttered, before another desperate sound escaped you, her movements were steady and skilled, not erratic, creating a delicious ache in your core, your nails starting to dig into her back as she had you pinned to the couch, “please Tess..” you begged, it was clear that you needed more, she could feel her fingers practically dripping from your slickness by that point, so she pushed two of them into you, not too fast, but her fingers were bigger than yours so there was a moment of pain, but you took it, letting her go knuckle deep, she could tell you´d winced a little at first, “look at you, all quiet and behaved” she praised, “you can be louder sweetie, it´s okay” she encouraged, not minding a little whining, you relaxed a little as she started figuring out how best to fuck you, finding a rythm that would suit you, to get you to unravel, a heartfelt “fuck..” from you as she hit a certain spot, she leaned down to kiss your neck then as she kept her fingers at that angle, hitting your weak spot, drinking up all the sweet sounds you were making for her, the scent of your skin driving her crazy as she left kisses all over your throat, easy access since your head was thrown back. 

your moans were turning into cries as you felt yourself throbbing around her fingers, the heat at your core growing more intense each time she pushed into you, the feeling of being trapped beneath her, her lips and teeth on the side of your neck, her hand drawing out a pleasure unlike you´d ever felt, it all left you helpless and shaking in the face of your approaching climax, “fuck Tess” you got out, she could feel you clenching around her fingers, “it´s okay, I got you”, she pulled back to watch you then, a vulnerability to it as your hips moved up more violently, a few harder thrusts into you got you to claw into her back and shudder as you came around her fingers, a deep satisfaction in her as she saw your face twist in pleasure, your mouth open, your hair all messed up; it was all she needed to almost cum herself, that sight, burned into her mind already.

 once your muscles went slack she moved her fingers from inside of you to your clit, a few last lingering touches as you felt the aftershocks of the orgasm until Tess let go of you, slowly moving to her side of the couch, knowing that some people need a little space after they cum, but in that moment, with her, you didn´t; the second you regained some strength you got up and moved over to put your hands on around neck and look at her up close, not a care in the world about the fact that you were still topless, an exhausted but bright smile on your face, she shook her head, hands on your bare waist, “god, you´re fucking killing me..” she admitted, you cocked your head, “am I? I haven´t even returned the favor yet” you said, a grin, “no need, I got what I wanted, trust me”, she said, caressing you, “makes two of us then” you whispered before kissing her again, slower than before, a laziness to it, it was late, you were both tired, but blissed out, content, holding onto each other. 

after a moment she urged you to put your shirt back on, not wanting you to get cold, even though she missed your skin the second she moved her hand away from your back. once you were dressed again you came back to your senses a little, a giddiness to you then, both of you almost shy for a second, laughing at the same time, sitting there next to each other, a little in disbelief, “you know having no friends and no relatives around here has its perks, I won´t have to justify this to anyone” you joked, she raised her eyebrows, “well good on you sweetheart, me on the other hand, I doubt Joel would love to explain to his brother that the friend that he vouched for is messing around with the girls here”, you feigned shock, “girls? i´m one of many, huh?” she laughed, “you know what I mean”, you nodded, “sure, I get it, you could try blaming it on me, just say I relentlessly pursued you”, “right, so kind of the truth, hm?” she teased, “fuck off” you said, pushing her in the side, but smiling still, “you were the one who showed up late at night, not me” she couldn´t argue with that, “right”, “I mean, not that I´m complaining, do it again any time you want please”, she nodded, smiling “if you insist”. you both just sat there for a moment, absentmindedly holding hands, until you realized how late it had gotten and that Joel must be getting home soon, “I should probably go, I doubt you wanna explain this to your roomie”, an ironic emphasis on the last word, she laughed, “right, no, let´s save that for another time.”

Tess wished she could have told you to stay, but she knew it would have been awkward as hell for all three of you to be in the same house, so she let you get up to go put on your jacket and shoes, watching you from the couch. before you could leave, you went back over to her once more to lean down and kiss her goodbye, a tender gesture that you wouldn´t have just done for a hook up and she could tell, still in awe of how willing you were to be like that with her, “I´l see you tomorrow then?” she asked, obviously counting on it, “yes, and if not I´ll find you”, she caressed your cheek “good. but have a good night first, sleep well”, you turned to leave as you said “you too. and thank you, for.. well everything”, feeling her loving gaze on your back as you went outside, the cold air hitting you in the face so hard you didn´t even realize that Joel was approaching the house until you were only a few feet away from him,, too lost in your feelings for Tess to feel embarrassed or weird about it, giving him a nod, he suppressed a grin, opting for a polite smile instead as he made his way past you up the stairs, “have a good rest of the night” he said, “yeah, you too!” you answered, barely aware of his presence as the feeling of Tess all over you was still clouding your mind. 

the moment he walked through the door, Tess was a little scared of his reaction to having seen you come out of their house at that hour, but he dropped his jacket over a chair and said “well you sure as hell didn´t waste any time, huh?, his tone giving away that he was amused, relief washing over Tess as he flopped down onto the couch next to her, that familiar groan from him at the end of a long day. “so I take it this is your way of telling me you´re okay with me having her over?” she asked, eyeing him, he realized she´d been unsure whether he´d be mad or not, it was a funny thought to him, since Tess was so rarely timid around him, “I don´t mind, you can have her here. I mean, she´s not bad to look at, so I won´t complain”, she shot him a glare “you keep your eyes to yourself when she´s here, got it?” he laughed, “god that poor girl has no idea what she´s in for, with your possessive ass”.

she grinned, “oh please, she loves it”, he considered it, stretching out his legs, getting comfortable, “guess she does. man, you really found your match in her, huh? you two are a bit insane for this, but hey, I respect it, gotta find joy one way or another” she could tell he meant it, “exactly. maybe you should give it a try too, I saw at least a handful of women turning to look back at you the past few days” he shook his head, “no, thank you. I´ll leave the midlife thing of dating young girls to you”, shedidn´t fight him on it, “fine, I´m better at it anyway” she teased back, “judging from that smile that was frozen on that girl´s face you might actually be right”, she liked hearing that, “oh really?”, he nodded, “you should feel really good about yourself my friend, two weeks here and you already cracked the supposedly toughest one of them all” she leaned back, closing her eyes, enjoying the feeling of the fire and the familiar vibe with Joel and the memory of you, thinking about how only she had gotten to see your true core, that beautiful look on your face, only for her. she knew she´d have to show you just how grateful she was for making her arrival in Jackson that much better than she had dared to hope for.

Tess was not a spiritual person, but somehow it did seem like fate of some sort, that you two had ended up in the same place and understood each other so instinctively, that both of you slept much better that night knowing someone else in that town would always see you for who you really were. 

[creature-wizard]

I figured I might as well talk about my story when I was more heavily involved in the entire Law of Attraction community growing up.

So when I was younger, I was like really susceptible and shit and I think I still am but I'm getting better. Eventually, I ended up getting caught up in the entire 'make your life the way you want it' and the 'you deserve better' praxis. Not bad at first, but it eventually started getting worse with the entire issue of 'what is a negative and a positive emotion'. I have depression, some days are just bad and I struggle holding a picture positive mindset. Add onto that the entire bullying thing and I ended up becoming dependent on it because 'maybe if I just change one thing then it'll get better' and what not.

Vulnerability lead to me getting involved with a few different groups, one of them was the Lighthouse Summit, and that entire Violet Flame thing which I ended up leaving because it just didn't vibe right for me. That made me feel worse because I had all these ideas, all these concepts and it was shit trying to take them and make them work for me. You get told about mental and emotional blockages all the time, hypnosis and meditations get thrown at you and you end up trying everything in an attempt to get something to move, then there's the guilt of not being good enough, or the entire issue of maybe the Universe has it out for me.

That entire guilt and seeking out something impacted everything else. I ended up struggling with my personal religion, my identity and all that jazz, and as a queer kid who's already trying to find out who they are, that was a fun ride.

Eventually, a few years later, I realized that I was going to have to do shit myself. So, I ended up having to pick up all those broken pieces left behind because you tear yourself apart for everything in an attempt to find out what triggers those movements, those 'energetic alignments to the 4D 5D 420-69D'. It was shit, and I had to go through hell in a handbasket and that only became an issue because, as one might expect, everyone on every side is against people who try to pursue some sense of religion or another that isn't purely based in this pseudo-liberation ideal.

I had to work to try and unlearn all that stuff, or at least take it and use it as a fulcrum to get my stuff done. It was a lot, to say the least. Now, I'm here. I'm doing better, I still occasionally get the crisis of maybe I'm just a bad person, or maybe I should try and not use the 'negative' thoughts to keep moving but it's one step at a time. Anyway, you live and you learn. I guess that's why I'm so finnicky with a lot of groups.

You really do have to be careful about which groups you get into; you never know which ones are going to pull you into some incredibly nasty shit.

I'm glad you're getting better, and I wish you the best of luck in future recovery!

[anghraine]

stripedroseandsketchpads replied to this post:

1) I’m very sorry to hear about the fandom sexists (god are they everywhere—“nasty woman” much? They sound like Andrew Tate, jfc!)

Thanks! Certain parts of Austen fandom are fairly conservative and very gender-normative and that's definitely come up in response to that particular fic before. First Impressions was my most popular Austen fic on AO3 for years, but other parts of fandom struggled more with the idea of a f!Darcy who does pretty much everything that canon Darcy does being desirable to a man, or appealing to anyone at all.

(In fairness to them, some of those spaces ended up actually having conversations about why Catherine registered as colder and more unpleasant than Darcy even when doing exactly the same things, interrogating their own double standards, etc.)

This isn't the only reason to dislike the fic or Catherine, of course—I made my other post late last night when I was tired and forgot to clarify that! It's from 2010 and definitely has flaws. It's just that there was (and apparently still is) a very glaring divide between the responses from the more progressive and queerer side of fandom and the more conservative and heteronormative side, wrt Catherine in that fic specifically (even though it's a het fic!).

2) Your fic concepts are impeccable, I followed you for genderbend blogging and I really need to spend sone time trawling your AO3

Thanks! I have written a ton of fic over the years, so some are definitely weaker than others, but I have fun with them.

Also, my experience is that most people are very much not here for genderbending, so that's really nice to hear!

Also tbh as a lesbian often writing lesbians… “step on me” any time a woman is the tiniest bit not-nice or does anything perceived as “mannish” (including being the tiniest bit not-nice) doesn’t feel much better…

it feels like ppl think femdom is “taking the most toxic possible iteration of misogyny in D/s dynamics w a male dom & female sub (bc obv male dom/female sub can be perfectly fine!) and flipping it so the man is in the ‘girl role’ and the woman is in the ‘male role’” and. Heavy sigh. A lot of AO3 comments give off the vibes of “She’s totally a bitch but I can say that bc I like it and think it’s hot. Feminism!” RIP.

Hmm. It really depends on context for me. My experience with it has come pretty overwhelmingly from other queer people, primarily queer women—that may reflect my social circle!—and that feels very different to me than an environment overwhelmingly dominated by straight women being like "ew, a woman acting like Darcy is so awful."

Like, sometimes it does definitely give a "me finding anything between slight assertiveness and mass murder in a woman hot is totally praxis" vibe that's annoying. But annoying in a very different way!

I will also say, in fairness to the AO3 First Impressions commentariat, that they did not literally say "step on me, Catherine," lol. I was just quickly characterizing the sort of vibe there—it was more like "I'm gay for Catherine" "you managed a female Darcy without making it feel like she's being punished, awesome" "Miss Darcy is a gem" "one of my favorite versions of Darcy" "I have a crush on Miss Darcy" "fem!Darcy 4ever and ever amen" etc. So the contrast with the "I don't get what Henry sees in her???" "I guess he wants to be dominated because he's weak" "Darcy could never be a woman" etc is just very sharp.

[the-incorrigible-chaia]

The White Fang Arc Is Racist

I'm saying this as someone who really, genuinely adores RWBY as a show: The way the White Fang arc was written is racist.

(Note: I'm not saying the writers are racist, I'm saying that the story they wrote, as it stands, has racist elements. Describing people as racist is usually less helpful than describing actions or choices as racist.)

Remember:

Simply put: They should have either a) introduced Sienna Khan much, much earlier, and made it abundantly clear that Adam was going rogue, or b) not killed her off, or c) both.

The problem with Adam Taurus isn't that he's a villain, an abusive piece of shit, or that he ended up being killed by Blake and Yang. The problem is that he's taken as the be-all and end-all of violent Faunus resistance to human persecution. In the show as we have it, Adam's White Fang is the only example we have of Faunus rights activists who are willing to use violence. The show polarizes between the Good Activists who never use violence and instead try to Set An Example and Earn The Humans' Respect, and the Bad Activists who are siding with Salem, who blow up cities and unleash Grimm into schools and cut off Yang's arm - and against whom violence by Team RWBY is therefore justified. This implies that violence against Faunus rights activists is OK as long as they're Bad Activists, but violence by Faunus rights activists is not, because that would make them Bad Activists.

And this is, I think, why they tried to backpedal by introducing Sienna Khan. She is, in my opinion, a great character. Ghira's speech in V5C3 made clear that while he, as a character, doesn't approve of her violent methods, her goal is that of equality. She's a good person with just goals who also uses violence where necessary - the same as Robyn Hill, or Team RWBY themselves.

But she should have been brought up much, much, much earlier. By casting Adam as the leader of the White Fang in Volumes 2 and 3, the entire White Fang is cast as villains who are working with the known evil of Cinder. If they'd even mentioned Sienna Khan earlier - maybe had some White Fang grunts express reservations about going behind her back, or have Adam lie to her about his plans - it would have made it clear that Adam is going rogue and acting on his own personal bullshit.

But they didn't do that.

So V4 rolls around, and Sienna is mentioned by the Albains, only for them to be revealed to also be working for Adam. Bleh. Finally, Sienna appears in V5 - much too late - and dresses down Adam for his bullshit. And this could have been the point where Adam fully goes rogue, splits off on his own, and tries to go after Blake. Hell, he could still have launched a coup, and we could have gotten a season of Sienna and Ghira having to put aside their differences to stop him - since, as Blake points out in V5, Haven falling wouldn't materially help the Faunus at all. It's a plan wholly composed by Salem to get the Relic. That story could have ended with Sienna retaking control of the White Fang, maybe with her and Ghira having both learned from the situation - Sienna learning not to allow the conditions that let someone like Adam's influence grow unchecked, and Ghira learning that sometimes violence is the only viable option. They could both renew their commitment to Faunus equality, and to working together in the future to get it.

But no, they don't do that. Instead, they kill Sienna off, and flatten the nuance back down to Good Activists Who Are Peaceful vs. Bad Activists Against Whom It Is OK To Be Violent (and OK to inflict police violence towards.)

Adam is a good villain, a perfect representation of someone who's decided that justice is impossible, so the next best thing is revenge. But without Sienna Khan present in the story to provide important nuance, Adam's presence as a villain makes him representative of all violent praxis, and in condemning him, the story also condemns that praxis.

And that's racist.

[rasmot-corner]

Rasmot Hates HFY: a barely held together ramble about a certain writing sub-sub-genre.

As you can tell by the title of this one, this is going to be a fairly lengthly rant about a very specific genre. For those of you who either enjoy or write this specific genre: this is your time to get off the ride. I have a very strong opinion about HFY that I have had for the better part of a number of years now. You're welcome to your opinions and likes about this genre. Hell you're welcome to disagree with either all, or a lot of what I have to say. But I will not be changing my opinion about HFY. You write what you want to write, or read what you want to read. But if I contain this any further I will pretty much end up like Praxis.

For those of you sticking around, I thank you for doing so and hope that this will either be insightful or perhaps entertaining. I will be adding a spoiler/read more after this, so keep that in mind.

--Part one: What in the ever-living hell is HFY?--

So as some of you might've gathered from the title of this ramble, HFY is a sub-sub-genre of writing. Specifically it is a sub-genre within Sci-Fi writing. In fact I would go as far as to say that it is often a sub-genre of Space Opera. Which pisses me off to no end. But I am getting ahead of myself there. So as such let me give a bit of history.

Before it was called HFY, it started as a small if innocuous thought experiment on Tumblr. Now it could have also started on Reddit. But I am more than certain that the majority of the conception of it began here on Tumblr. What was this thought experiment? What if Humans/Humanity were considered "Death Worlders" by the galactic community. This is also sometimes known as the "Humans are Space Orcs" theory. Now one could say that it goes earlier than that and that Humans are "confusing" to Aliens simply in how they act or are made. But the part where it really started to take-off was in that thought experiment that Humans are essentially the "Orcs" of the greater galactic community.

Very tough, born on a planet that in many ways hates them, and I could go on and on. But you can get the general idea behind the concept. As such when it came to Reddit, it was put into the writing tag of "HFY" or "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!" And while I could leave it at that, there is a lot more to it. So why does it bother me so much? Well . . .

--Part two: "I hate this! I find it utterly repulsive!" (Star Trek Generations)--

As someone who is a very large fan of Science Fiction, I have watched and read quite a number of things in relation to the genre. From the original series of Star Trek, to even the more strange and interesting Farscape. I have immersed myself deeply within the genre. In fact my favorite sub genre of the genre is Space Opera. The idea of a grand and wider universe full of different races with their own opinions and motivations. As such I tend to enjoy 4X Strategy games that involve Space Opera. In fact one that I started with all the way back when I was steeping myself in the genre was "Sword of the Stars". One of the more unique 4X games that put in a lot more into making all the races unique from each other in the ways that they operated and how they traveled across space.

But I have always had one problem with all the Space Opera and Sci-Fi that I have read and steeped myself in. And ironically one of the better series, Star Trek, had a scene in one of their movies that encapsulates my problem.

"It's a Homo-Sapiens only club!" - Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

And this extends to far beyond just Space Opera. There is a lot, and I mean A LOT of Sci-Fi that is either Human-centric, or very focused on humanity. Now some series manage to do a little short-hand and convey an interesting idea. Like say the Galactic Empire from Star Wars and how it is an oppressive human-only regime. But then it kinda undercuts itself by having the main characters of most of it's entries be humans. In fact they are often a very specific type/breed of human.

Let me just say that I do get it. These stories are often written by humans. So as such you will often have a human or humanity being part of, if not the central crux, of the story. And there are ways to either offset that or weave in interesting themes and stories into everything. And there are times where this is actually done! Again Star Trek is often a really good example of this. There are stories and thoughts and themes that run throughout all the various series. And all of them help to create this interesting weave that often ends up being a nice quilt of sorts.

Warm, Soothing, Comforting.

I love Star Trek, I love Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was my jam, There are so many series and movies and stories that I have delved into and enjoyed and always gotten an immeasurable sense of enjoyment.

And then along came HFY.

--Part Three: The "Human" problem--

Now when I first saw this concept I got a bit of a chuckle out of it. Mostly because a lot of it was due to silly scenarios. Like aliens being confused about the mental process of humans, or the idea of human ingenuity, or even about the habit of humans adopting things or sticking weapons (knives) onto said adopted things (roombas). It was pretty much a silly/fun thought idea and I thought nothing more about it.

But then people started writing HFY stories and I had to take a much closer look. About Humans being "secret masterminds" of war. Or Humans living on what the galaxy considers to be a "Death World". Or the idea that Humans are tougher and stronger than most alien races. Or the idea that humans are somehow braver than the majority of alien races.

And it started to get me really REALLY angry. For the longest time I couldn't figure out exactly WHY it was making me angry. But it was. And then came a flood of HFY stories on both Reddit and Youtube by various narrators. And still I was struggling to fully comprehend why it was angering me so. There were even ones that I enjoyed! But they always had the problem of a Human being a "Mary Sue" or "Gary Stu". Before long it started to click to me as to WHY I was getting as angry as I was.

Humanity was always put as Number One.

They were always the Strongest, the Fastest, the Bravest, the Smartest. And all the other races, no matter HOW UNIQUE or interesting they were, were always put in the dust. Now this is nothing entirely new to Sci-Fi, but it is usually a lot more subtle about it. Even pulp Sci-Fi was far more subtle about things. And yet here was this sub genre of a sub genre that was being absolutely brazen about things. And that's when I came to a sudden conclusion.

HFY is completely Racist.

--Part Four: Living in the Shadows--

Some of you may sit there and balk. Some may say "well that's not entirely true . . ." And here's the thing. I get the initial knee-jerk reaction. But what I get even more is my own feelings on the matter. Especially when it comes to being viewed as an "other" in society.

That is where the crux of this lies. When it comes to society, I am considered as one of the many categories of "other". I'm not a part of the main "bulk" of humanity. Especially when it comes to how I operate mentally. I talk "weird", I think "weird", I act "weird". Most common people really don't know what to do with me, or even how to act around me in most circumstances. I have what one could call "Resting Bitch Face". I walk on my tip-toes. I am frankly taller and bigger than most people. And yet in many ways I am more agile and gentle. I try to hold myself back as often as I can.

In my own little way, I am an Alien.

And this was forced unto me even when I was younger. I always had a vivid imagination and was always considered strange or "weird" in comparison to other people. So imagine the sense of comfort when you partake/immerse yourself in something that seems to VALIDATE your existence. That makes you feel like you BELONG for a change. That you're not some sort of other or lesser being because of how you act or are. That it is perfectly acceptable to be who you are.

That is what Sci-Fi, and more importantly Space Opera, did for me. It allowed me to put myself outside of the context of humanity and make that alright. And for years that was more than fine. In a weird way, the places I was in were mostly fine with me being that way for the most part. There were sore spots of course, but nothing too bad. And then I came to Texas. And a sense of deafening loneliness. That I was simply too weird for the majority of the people in the state. That I was a confusing piece in a grander puzzle. Why couldn't I be more like them?

"Why can't you be normal?"

Now mind you I wasn't alone in that regard/respect. There were a number of people that were like me. Far more weird and different than one would believe. But still, that haunting loneliness stuck with me. It had been there for a while, but it only seemed to be magnified with time.

Which is why Space Opera became more and more of a comfort to me. Here was something I could immerse myself in. To feel more REAL in. Where I didn't need to "preform" to the standards and envelope of the world around me. It was my escape. It was my salvation.

--Part Five: Barely contained Hatred--

Let it not be said that I just don't "get" HFY and why it's written. This is not a case where I don't simply understand. But this is a case where even WITH that understanding, it still causes a problem. Because it is a "solution" to a problem that really didn't exist. As I said a while back, the vast majority of Sci-Fi has a very human-centric skew. And I normally don't have a problem with that because as I said, it is usually very subtle.

HFY is nowhere NEAR subtle. It is very clearly trying to puff up the chests of humans to make them feel like they're unique in a wider cosmos. When that is FAR beyond the truth. The simple matter of the truth is that there would be more species and cultures that are like humanity than there would be that are not.

Cultures that are as tough as humans.

Cultures that are as brave as humans.

Cultures that are as smart as humans.

And all the flaws that would entail. Humanity is not some super special unique race within the cosmos. There are probably a number of races that are either similar to humans or perhaps even better than humans. In the grater scheme of things, Humans are like any other species or culture. And I suppose that is the anxiety and fear that fuels a number of HFY authors. This idea that Humanity is not unique, that it is not very special at all. But instead of embracing that and following complex and interesting ideas about how many civilizations and cultures can come to the same conclusions/ideas, instead they have to create a fantasy about humans are special or unique.

We live in an age with constant conflict between factions of people. Of disagreements and misunderstandings. Where many want to put themselves above others just simply because they don't look or act the same. And here is HFY throwing more gasoline onto the fire.

Perhaps I'm rambling into the void. Or perhaps I am connecting on some similar wave-length or thought line. At the end of the day there should be more stories about over-coming differences and being able to coexist. Rather than trying to fluff up one group of people over others.

So as a closing thought, let me put in a question for you to ponder. Say humanity were to venture into the stars. Say they were able to meet other races and cultures. Would you prefer that they see their differences and similarities and focus on what makes them similar to each other rather than not? Or would you prefer humanity to puff up it's chest and declare itself superior to everyone else no matter the consequences?

I have my preference . . . but that's just me.

[spuddy-buddy]

scattered notes from a hypothetical Jak and Daxter series re-write of sorts because i have fucking brainworms now i guess

THE GIST

The story kicks off two years after TPL; Jak has been training his channeling to become a proper sage as implied by the sages at the end of TPL, Kiera has still been inventing things, and Daxter still has no pants. Sometime near the beginning of the story stuff goes down which causes Jak to need to take a hit for someone and gets hit with some manner of dark eco. It doesn't kill him or turn him into a furry, because thanks to his being more experienced with channeling he actually manages to channel it. However, dark eco is still dark eco and therefore still wrecks your shit no matter what, so Dark Jak happens. It's taken a lot more seriously than it was in Jak II so instead of having like no story relevance it's actually the main catalyst for the story since everyone is very rightfully horrified and worried about Jak's well being, Gol and Maia still fresh in everyone's minds. Since the only people on the continent stupid enough willing to study dark eco are kinda floating at the bottom of a vat of the stuff the Sandover crew gotta look abroad for help. Samos recalls rumors of another continent on the other side of the world, so the Sandover crew sets off and, after spending time at sea, end up in Haven City. One thing leads to another and they all get mixed up with the Metal Head war and the Underground, all the while having to appease the various Havenite factions to try and get Jak the help he needs.

WORLDBUILDING/MISC STORY BEATS

I've only thought as far as Jak II story-wise.

The 100 power cell ending is ignored for now bc I can't think of anything for it.

Not sure if Gol and Maia come back(yet?).

For now I've decided that maybe it's a dark eco bomb from the Metal Head war that's washed up on the shore that kickstarts the story(from who's side? wouldn't you like to know weather boy).

Jak's worsening condition plays more of a part in the story, serving as the Sandover crew's main motivation.

All our faves are still there, albeit altered to better fit the re-write.

Since this re-write nixes time travel Haven's just a new city; the culture's way different, with a society that's less attuned to the world and more dependent on technology because of the Metal Head War(though not as technologically advanced as Haven in Jak II).

Haven’s development convergently led to something close to Kiera’s a-grav zoomer.

It appears at first that there are no channelers or sages, but in actuality it turns out there's coincidentally and conveniently three sages secretly operating in and around Haven: one red, one blue, and one yellow.

Mar is still a revered hero and founder of Haven City, but because there's no time travel there's no confusion later on if Jak is Mar or not.

The Precursor Stone and Mar’s big-ass gun are still plot macguffins.

There aren't guns yet; the closest things are the Guards' shock staves. Tess is working on it though.

The Krimzon Guard have some sort of artificial channeling suit technology and are split into the Krimzon Guard(red eco) and the Ambyr Guard(yellow eco). Their "tattoos" are actually scars resulting from from using the suits.

Barron Praxis’ mechs are cobbled-together Precursor bots.

After Gol and Maia bit it(?) the Lurkers make a sort of peace w the Still Unnamed Main Race. Because the latter would-be conquerors never made their way over to Haven some have even integrated into society there.

By extension, Barron Praxis' enslavement of them is less so systemic and moreso a very recent development and/or dirty secret to be used against the Barron except the sharks the sharks are true neutral bastards who heed no master(inspired by astrathechinchilla's good takes).

At some point in the story when everything starts getting out of control the Sandover gang almost decide to pack it in and head home until it's revealed that the Metal Heads plan to invade the rest of the world after conquering Haven. Around the same time it's also revealed that Baron Praxis wants to capture Jak for himself to use him in experiments(basically to start the Dark Warrior Project instead of effectively ending it).

Jak and Samos(and maybe Kiera idk) are all from Haven originally. Samos was part of Damas' court and was charged with hiding Jak to ensure his survival; this is why Samos knows about Haven. Domino-ing off of this Barron Praxis has been in power for far longer than he was in Jak II. When this is discovered Jak decides it's better to leave Ashelin in charge after the Barron is deposed since he's not the leader type and she knows better what her people need than he does.

Also at the end Jak comes to the conclusion that he probably can’t be cured, but that he’ll be fine as long as he’s got support from his friends and loved ones.

Spargus and Kras City still exist, albeit slightly altered to better match the rest of the rewrite. Lurkers are even more present in those cities because A: there isn't an active war going on, and B: they aren't being secretly used as slaves. Instead of cars Spargans utilize less intelligent beast-type Lurkers as mounts for traversing the wasteland and adjacent areas. Kras has more of a remote floating city vibe and is still known for its lawlessness and night life, though has more of a pirate spin to it instead of an avid racing scene.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay is once again more exploration-focused than combat-focused, with players being rewarded with orbs and parts for exploring and returning to areas with new abilities.

Haven itself isn't as fuckoff huge for no reason as it is in Jak II, but still bigger and more developed than anything in TPL. It’s still the central hub of the game.

Places like Haven Forest, the Precursor temples, and the mines still exist, though some are altered to better fit the re-write.

There are subquests equivalent to TPL's power cell missions for things to do outside the main story.

No guns. The gunplay in the Jak games is not very good y'all we're getting rid of the guns.

Combat adds a sort of lock-on that can switch targets for better utilization of ranged eco abilities, as well as a dodge.

Kiera gets to be important again and is the reason Jak gets to use whatever eco whenever he wants instead of having to collect and use it right away; she invents something he can use to store it until he needs it because fuck love triangles and shelving. She can upgrade this device as Jak and Daxter collect parts for her.

Skull gems are still the main collectible, orbs are still the super secret hidden items that unlock goodies, and parts are rewards for side quests.

The d-pad is used to cycle through eco types like it was used for gun mods in Jak II/3; this is referred to as the "eco wheel" for now. All ecos have three abilities tied to them with the first level for each being the basic functionality from TPL with some added functionality: blue eco now also affects all momentum when active for higher/longer jumps, red eco gets knocks enemies down further and for longer, and yellow eco gets a minor moveset tweak(square's punch is still the projectile, circle's kick has an AoE affect).

Green lvl 2 can heal on demand, and lvl 3 can heal the environment.

Blue lvl 2 can be used to parry if dodging is timed right, and lvl 3 can power machines for a time.

Red lvl is a passive buff that adds concussive AoE effects to hits, and lvl 3 adds a charge attack that can break through damaged structures.

Yellow lvl 2 is a passive buff that increases projectile speed and tracking, and lvl 3 adds a charge shot that can break through damaged structures.

Jak learns the lvl 2 and lvl 3 abilities from the Havenite sages and Samos through story progression.

All eco regenerates passively up to a point, but can be replenished faster and further by eco pickups. Kiera's upgrades can affect these aspects as well as max capacity.

DARK JAK

Aspects such as passive buffs to speed and power and the arcing dark eco are maintained.

To emphasize that Jak's exposure is very much so Not Good, instead of being a panic/win button Dark Jak is more of a high-risk-high-reward kinda deal: Dark Jak takes more damage, can't dodge, can't use normal eco abilities(most notable being green's self heal), and drains eco and health. These negative affects can be mitigated as the story progresses, but not outright removed. As a compromise the game wouldn't be as ball-bustingly unforgiving as Jak II is.

The eco wheel changes while playing as Dark Jak; the typical colors and abilities are replaced with abilities exclusive to Dark Jak. These abilities are analogous to their colored eco counterparts.

Green is replaced with a life sap that kills and corrupts wildlife.

Blue is replaced with a sort of bullet time kinda thing.

Red is replaced with something analogous to the Dark Bomb and Dark Blast, but less extreme.

Yellow is replaced with piercing bolts with minor DoT.

that's it that's all i got

[astrathechinchilla]

For the lurker slavery thing, I think it was implied that Gol and Maia created them so after they were defeated they were lost and leaderless. Just left on their own to survive with precurians (borrowing your word) hating them. So of course they retreat into caves and dark spaces, slowly building their own culture while precurians slowly grow in fear of them upon stumbling into these budding civilizations because 'what if they're regrouping and planning to invade us again' and eventually tensions grow until the precurians, already paranoid because of a war with the metal heads, invade them to eliminate a potential threat of a two front war. They still see them as not much else than beasts and now defeating what was essentially a culture of refugees and seeing how easy it was, someone gets the idea of putting them to work. So now any settlement found gets raided for more slaves. Only now.in constant contact with the lurkers and some lurkers slowly learning precurian languages do a select few precurians start to see beyond prejudice of them being conquered beasts and seeing the culture lurkers developed and really they are sapient creatures like them and maybe this whole slavery thing is kinda fucked up.

Welp that got longer than I thought it would. Hope you don't mind the headcannon

You do not know how fast I clicked to answer this

Neat headcanon

I don’t really know if that first fact of Gol and Maia creating the Lurkers is really a definite truth or falsity in the actual canon, but it is one way to view them that I believe is valid. I don’t personally go with it, since the origins of their people aren’t really the big issue that I have with the way Jak & Daxter writes them, so I’m not going to really talk about that in all honesty (also it may not have been all Lurkers that served under those two, but they are the only ones that are shown so you are right to assume that).

Even if this isn’t how I would frame the situation, that being a majority of Precurians having a long standing hatred for Lurkers that lasted up until now, it is a valid approach to writing this.

However, you also have to consider when the enslavement began. If it was happening long before the Baron came into power, then you have to also consider Damas and the Mar family line who ruled before him as actively participating in the crime of slavery.

However, if it happened after Praxis became the ruler of Haven, I don’t think it would be hatred alone that was the cause of the Baron to so quickly commit a crime such as this. I think it would stem from a very different crime, betrayal.

You must consider the timeline you made before putting in these kinds of details.

This is what @sonicringnoise means you guys, DON’T DO WHAT I’M DOING IF YOU LIKE YOUR BRAIN.

If you don’t want to talk about the contradicting time line and lose your sanity, turn away now. Otherwise, buckle up cause I’m about to spit some facts that are important when you consider this specific plot hole.

———

Now when it comes to the details of the timeline, it’s all over the place. So many details do not make sense when considering certain character’s ages, specifically Mar’s(the kid), and contradict each other.

Everyone out there, how long do you think the Baron has been in power? With how a lot of the story is framed, it makes it seem like decades, but in reality I believe it hasn’t been that long. Why do I think that? It’s the combination of Mar’s age, Veger kidnapping him then losing him, and Damas being banished.

Now, look at Mar.

When we put his height into consideration, along with the way he walks, I believe he’s around 3-4 years old at the max. Some believe he’s around 5-6, but I believe he’s younger than that solely because of the comment older Samos makes at the end of Jak 2.

Younger children like that generally don’t remember much from that age, and though Jak says he does remember ‘the light’, that’s the only thing he seems to remember.

When we consider this, it’s right to presume that Mar’s kidnapping had, at the very least, taken place 3-4-ish years before the events of Jak 2, and along with that Damas’s banishment.

Damas most likely lost his son in Haven City after Praxis betrayed him, separating him from his son upon being imprisoned, and he then was later banished. That’s why he sent Sig into the city as a spy, to find his son.

At the very least, Mar had to have been an infant at the beginning of Praxis’s reign, only a couple a months old at best, so it was easy for Veger to take him. However, he couldn’t hold onto the child for long, because he ‘lost him to the Underground’.

Therefore, the max amount of time Praxis has been in power should be about 4 years. Granted, this number can change increase depending on if you think Mar was kidnapped in Spargus or Haven, but for what was presented to us in the games, it’s most likely the latter being the actual canon cause they don’t specify.

However, when you make this the exact number of years Praxis has been in power, certain details don’t make sense and contradict these facts. The major one is actually a part of the physical world design- and I’m not talking about the map itself. I’m talking about an important detail.

I’m referring to the Baron’s statue in Haven City.

Now, with how the statue crumbles, along with the crunchy sound affects after it’s hit with the laser/light/whatever that was, people would assume that the statue is made of stone or a material along those lines, right? Wrong.

If you look closely, the inside of the statue’s head it’s shown to be hollow on the inside. And notice anything else? The color looks akin to the shade of the Statue of Liberty(probably another thing inspired by GTA- I don’t know if any of the games at the time take place in New York City, but this is all speculation)

However, why I bring up the specifics of the material being used to make this statue is important, because if this was made the same way the Statue of Liberty was made, it would have taken 9 YEARS TO FINISH(give or take).

This completely contradicts all of the information I previously presented, so in my fic I changed the statue from being a completely finished structure to being at the beginning of its construction.

Now, everyone must be thinking, what does this all have to do with the slavery of the Lurkers? It’s exactly what I pointed out at the beginning of the rant- You must consider the timeline you made before putting in these kinds of details.

If you have Lurkers that have only been enslaved after Baron Praxis was put into power, that means if we consider the fact that it would only be at a max 4 years, it’s most likely not bigotry being the primary reason he did so.

If it were to have been longer than that, you’ll then have to consider the fact that Damas may have participated in such a inhumane practice along with the entirety of his bloodline, possibly even Mar himself.

However, if it’s the former like how I personally believe, it most likely happened this way-

The Lurkers and Precurians did have conflicts in the past because of the aftermath of Gol and Maia, but they soon came to an understanding with each other after these fights. This could either be because-

They saw that they were more alike than they realized via experiencing each other’s cultures and people realizing the fighting wasn’t worth it, or-

They found respect in each other when a common enemy, The Metal Heads, appeared. They then realized fighting amongst themselves was going to kill them, so they made a truce that grew into a strong bond between their factions.

It could be both of these reasons in varied combinations, or it could’ve been neither. Either way, they reconciled somehow. Therefore, it was most likely not hatred and bigotry being the sole factor of their future enslavement at the hands of the Baron’s rule.

The Lurkers must have been aligned with Haven in the fight against the MetalHeads, but the Baron broke that alliance when he enslaved a large portion of the Lurker people, betraying their trust. Why? Most likely because they would’ve retaliated when Damas was banished from the kingdom and are fiercely loyal to people they consider friends. He doesn’t want to lose his new founded position, so he attacks first, and enslaves the Lurkers that didn’t escape him.

I only came to these conclusions solely based on the time frame I grasped from the given information the game presents. You can all come to different conclusions depending on which facts you think are the best to go with, even changing key facts like where and when Mar was born and all that stuff.

However, you must still consider the implications that your headcanons/alternate universes have, and take extra care to iron out any contradictions caused by such details. I do it everyday with my work, and I urge you all to do the same.

———

Nobody else has sent an ask like this before so if you want to send me more, please do so. That goes for everyone else out there as well 🤗.

[battlestar-royco]

In response to you last answer:

I can agree that Gale may not have been romantically compatible with Katniss. Reason why, though, disagree. If anything Peeta showed signs of possessiveness from the start, i.e. becoming jealous when Katniss revealed that her and Gale were, in fact, not related. (This was when they had only known each other for maybe a few days, max). Not to mention that he completely ignored her for several months after Katniss told him that she did not actually return his romantic feelings after the first games. Gale, on the other hand, actually have her much needed space after she returned and did not press her in that way.

Something else I find interesting is that you bring up Beetee and Johanna as points on a spectrum very much separate and distanced from Gale, when Beetee literally created the idea for the bomb with Gale (readers say that he (and Coun for that matter) even took advantage of a young teen soldier with a desperate need to win the revolution after experience so much injustice). Johanna I find to be even more radical than Gale, having blindly wanting revenge in its purest form (which find to be reasonable as well, personally) whereas Gale fought for justice for his people.

Katniss I really do find to be representative of centrist ideologies found in the USA (which are actually more conservative leaning than the rest of the world.)

But I’d like to know what you make of that.

Re: your first paragraph. I truly have no idea how you arrived to this conclusion and I honestly don't see a point in us discussing it beyond acknowledging that we're completely different readers. My reading of these two characters is the literal exact opposite, and I have a feeling that anything I could say to explain my opinion you've probably heard before and disagree with.

Re: second. Rewatched Mockingjay II since you sent this to refresh my memory on the details. I can see where you're coming from with Beetee. I was more thinking of the fact that he made them wmds for fighting the Capitol. As for Johanna (at least in the movie; haven't read the book in a few years), she encouraged Katniss to kill Snow specifically whereas Gale's tactics canonically targeted first responders etc.

And yes, I can see why Gale fans see this as vilifying violent resistance. Collins didn't have to add this, or she could have written something less extreme than Gale being okay with killing random kids to win. But (and as mentioned earlier, we're not going to agree on this based on your read of him) I still find it in keeping with his short-term oriented and self-centered characterization previously established in THG/CF. And I do consider trying to be a generally good person part of a leftist praxis. So for me it becomes more of a "Gale was a bad character because of how he functions as Peeta's foil from start to finish" than a "It was wrong of Collins/OOC for Gale's tactics to specifically blow up the children at the end" issue. The latter is what I see people argue most often, and the former doesn't cancel out the total merit of Peeta as a character for me personally.

And in all honestly I've always found the treatment of Coin to be way more bothersome than what happened to Gale. The false equivalency of District 13 to Snow's regime has never worked for me, and her suggestion of the Capitol Hunger Games always seems to come out of nowhere no matter how many times I return to the books/movies.

[my-personal-domain]

The old stories from the sea, mermaids and kraken. All real. They exist. An old arrangement was made for both races to stay apart. Land walkers sometimes see the ocean dwellers come up to the surface every so often. If humans try to hunt them, the merfolk will hunt them back.

The peace was kept until Lord came into power. The ocean dwellers started getting caught to be slaves or pets. It went on for years before some of the ocean dwellers realized who was behind the disappearances.

Warlock was once a high ranking member of the Temple. However, it was discovered that he was doing questionable experiments with ancient artifacts and dark eco which led to him being casted out of both the Temple and the Kingdom. He also made a secret project of breeding a hive, like the metal heads.

Warlock ran across Praxis and they got into a conversation about the disappearances and it went into how the King is handling it. Warlock saw an opportunity to get revenge on King Damas and continue his 'studies'. In exchange for supplies for his experiments, Warlock gave Praxis the information needed for an overthrow.

King Damas was about to contact the human government when Praxis banished him and any those loyal to him. At the same time, Jen disposed of Lord. Almost ten years later, things are getting real tense.

Jen managed to free all the stolen ocean dwellers within five years after she got away from Mother and Da. Thanks to that, a good number of ocean dwellers owe her. Even Baron Praxis was impressed (not that he would ever admit it).

Jen and Nick were on break from traveling and took a quick swim in the ocean. The warlock took this as an invitation to snag them.

Waking up a few hours later, they wake up in an underground caveren in the sea. They are bound by rope, surrounded by multiple items of old age. A short distance away is the 'dead' king Damas, bound by chains.

Using an old seal from Damas' line, he turned Jen and Nick into ocean dwellers. Damas watched the transformation take place. At the end of the forced change, Damas' allies found them and chased Warlock off.

Jen and Nick may be small compared to everyone else but they are relentless hunters. They also have retractable claws and stingers.

Nick managed to send out a message with an electronic he still had on hand to their AI. Tony made himself a new body and tracked the other two down.

The decision was made. Jen and Nick will travel with the group, learning how to be ocean dwellers.

They eventually come across a large group of teens, the children of the original rebels. With their help, including Ashelin from the inside, they make their way inside. Damas is ready to settle a score.

When the confrontation takes place, many remarks are thrown to where the whole picture is put together. Warlock makes his appearance and Baron realizes that he has been used.

Warlock used a different Artifact to shapeshift himself into a leviathan. A battle took place

The leviathan impaled Baron with the spear tip of his tail. Praxis died soon after firing his spear into Warlock's weak spot.

Damas retakes his place as King and makes Jen his queen. Nick marries the royal medic, Dolly.

Ocean dwellers lay eggs. They look similar to the egg of manaphy in pokemon. The color indicates the hair color. The inner pattern shows the sex. Swirl for boy. Speckled for girl. After the egg is laid, they are coated with pure salt to form a shell. Eggs are formed inside the carrier for three months, then incubate in the shell for nine months.

The line of Mar name all their main heir Mar. When they turn ten, they choose a new name. The heir's younger sibling/s have the option to change their name too.

For Jen's first pregnancy, she had twin boys. Mar and Ram. Ram got his name because it is his brother's name backwards. His egg came out backwards. Maria's egg, who came a year later, was a similar shade to Mar's. Hence why Jen gave her a similar name. Due to being an only child, Maria's egg was larger than the twins. That's when Jen decided no more kids.

Nick and Dolly have a son, Daktari. Said son will take on training to be a knight of the kingdom.

Warlock did leave one child behind. Erol. He found his father as he was entering his teen years. Warlock put Erol in charge of watching over the breeding program. When Erol's mother and stepfather found out, the redhead torn them to shreds. As Erol left, he missed seeing a red egg drift out of a carcass and went of in the currents.

When Jen had the twins, an unshelled egg came drifting in the current. They don't know how long it's been drifting and there are no sign of parents anywhere. It was a bright red. Adoption time. The hatchling was named Daxter.

When the kids are 17/16 years old, council member Veger broke into Warlock's lab in search for anything that could help increase his political power. In doing so, he accidentally released the Queen from her shackles. The Hive is free. Erol managed to implant himself into the Hive mind and become like a second in command. It is war.

Both land and ocean are working together the best they can. Land is working on shooting the ones crawling up the shorelines while the ocean wage the battle underwater.

The green Sage Brothers are Samos and Shadow. Shadow heard a little about the Stone that belongs to the royal line. He somehow got it in his head that he has to create the big sacrifice. Shadow tricked Jak into getting the Stone. When told to give it to the Sage instead of his parents, Jak realized he was tricked. Thankfully Daxter was right there and helped him get away from the madman. Shadow lost his position of a Sage for good.

The Artifacts that helped Jen and Nick turn into ocean dwellers in the first place merged into one. The artifact went missing afterwards. Daxter found it while searching out gifts for Tess. Good thing he was close to the surface when he activated it. And good thing that Mom told stories of the land, just in case.

Vegar kidnapped Kaj and infected him with an unstable light eco crystal. Erol kidnapped and tortured Jak with a dark eco crystal and Maria got kidnapped by the Hive. She got out with a nasty scar on her back.

Daxter, Jak and Kaj all dealt with stress when they got their girlfriends pregnant during the Hive war.

Daxter and Tess had a boy, Andrew.

Jak and Keira had a daughter, Mira.

Kaj and Seem had twins, Endri and Alora.

Keira found a mechanism in Warlock's lab that purposely weakened the Hive Queen. Jak and Daxter killed the Hive Queen. Kaj ended Erol. Maria ended Veger when he tried to intervene, wanting to claim credit.

Maria and Daktari ended up with twin girls one year after the war, Panyin and Banji

When the royal grandchildren reached 17/16 years of age, a calamity from the far past rose from the depths of the sea. The Dark Ones. They were long in hibernation until now. Another war approaches.

Mira, the royal granddaughter, nearly gets in in her head to take on the burden on her own. However, Andrew, Endri, Alora, Panyin and Banji stuck fast with her. The previous two generations also pooled in their knowledge and resources.

With all working together, the family managed to find the ancient defence systems and annihilated the Dark Ones. The world is at peace once more.

Please check out loveangel15 on Deviantart. Their mermaid work on the Jak and Daxter universe is where I based this AU off of.

[theabstruseanon]

I'm so tired and I made the mistake of wading into 🎲2️⃣0️⃣ discourse posts so dont expect the following to make much sense LOL

I do get the narrative critiques of it not feeling like the themes of rage/interrogating rage/countering rage are being engaged with on a sliding scale from effectively to at all (idk if said interrogation of rage mechanically was hinged on only the rage tokens but thematically yeah I do get the critique re ep19 there).

For example it's like on one hand I did like how quickly they shut porter down because yeah his ideology is the kind that sounds justified on paper but then in praxis all he's doing is selfish destruction. On the other I really wish they had a philosophy-off with him about one of the core central themes of the season LOL. Also navigating the fandom balance between [it's interesting mechanically that trg fight was so one sided as commentary on how trg cut corners while still 'acting entitled' (tho tbf. This is really only kippelilly)] and [god I wish the fight had more juice or narrative payoff because of the role trg were set up to play as rivals and foils who gave into rage].

Re trg, Im just musing on how it feels like the banality of 'evil' is actually applying to them at this point. They were manipulated teens who were unfairly forced to accept a horrifying cosmic deal. Theyre characters who are selfish and jealous and willing to hurt others and gave in to these base emotions for personal gain which is the aforementioned banality. Their emotions are being heightened by the rage.... We're pretty sure? Again we only really actually see this in action with kpl, which is unfortunate and I think one of the main reasons why this is such a hot bed LOL (that BC they lacked on screen substance ppl are filling in the gaps with stronger narrative hc's that they're now attached to which makes sense. Fanon Buddy you will always be legendary to me LOL).

Trg really are in a strange narrative position to me too BC like ppl have pointed out even despite the bad rolls it wasn't for lack of trying that the players tried to engage with them earlier on before switching focus BC of a combination of bad rolls and the NPCs being rp'ed as hostile/uninterested. It's like how much of a role (not just plot wise but mainly thematically wise) were they actually supposed to play. So significant yet insignificant unfort.

But regarding the themes of rage yeah, it's been kinda all over the place to me narratively. I think the start of the end was when the players were like. Won over by Porter's teaching for a while like 'wow he did make sense' msmsmsm like noooooo 😂. The rage thing is so pervasive yet also feels so disconnected often which yeah improv hard to juggle themes and u can't edit things for clarity and adherence of narrative but overall I do wish they had more time to engage with this overarching season theme. It's certainly no TUC American dream for me.

I want to say that the diff btw Tbk rage and the general 'rage bad' is that we're meant to see Tbk rage as being protective, but that's just me projecting a layer of meaning on it 😂. I'm not as broken up about how the narrative theme feels kinda weak but I do see where this critique is coming from. It's like, on the meta narrative level it feels disconnected/unsatisfying that the rage of trg is narratively punished but the rage of Tbk is so far narratively neutral or rewarded when the theme specifically is /rage/ regardless of who has it, regardless of whether there is dnd combat going on or not, and BC trg were set up to be foils to tbk. The fundamental basis of the critique is different between the people using in-verse explanations and the ppl making observations about the overarching meta narrative. I know I reblogged posts that counter the critique (well mainly focusing on trg discourse) but personal enjoyment aside yeah. Things I would edit if this was a script LOL

The final thing is the perennial critique of the violence inherent to dnd and the more academic literary critiques of the fetishisization/glorification of violence but to that I am taking off my critical analysis hat because I like dumb shounen action violence in stories sorry for being a bad leftist 😔 (big neon sign that says: I am being tongue in cheek). I get that it's coming up a lot again esp for this season cause it's the "we should self reflect on the nature of rage" season but yeah.

[luuurien]

Marxist Love Disco Ensemble - MLDE

(Disco, Synthpop, Boogie)

Luxuriant disco with a leftist edge, the Italian collective's debut album explores not only the relations of its chief genre to class struggle and social identity but how disco has been morphed by Western capital desire over the years. MLDE is the band's mission statement, and it's a near-perfect one at that.

☆☆☆☆½

Created with liberation and freedom in mind, disco's history has nearly been entirely wiped from its modern image. In its earliest incarnations, disco and the places you could dance to it were safe havens for queer communities, music made by oppressed communities as an expression of joy and empowerment they weren't allowed anywhere else in the world. After the genre's mainstream explosion during the 1970s, all those precedents were lost, disco homogenizing to fall in line with the needs of record executives and radio stations, and by the early 80s disco was largely already on its way out - not to mention a healthy dose of racism and homophobia thrown towards it and the club culture it was born from as well. Marxist Love Disco Ensemble isn't having any of it. A somewhat mysterious collective from Bologna, Italy, their debut album MLDE refutes the idea of disco as a purely bourgeois entity, pulling off the veil over disco's sociopolitical origins and embracing the joyous, communal resistance its early years held so dear. Dusted with retro stylings but settling principally in modern Marxist theory and praxis, MLDE is one hell of an impressive debut. Inspired by Soviet era disco-pop à la Hamlet Minassian and Chaz Jankel, MLDE is an amalgamation of post-disco gentility, 80s boogie, and pure pop perfection, vocals often performed by a quartet in homage to traditional Soviet vocal records while the rich orchestration of disco colors in everything else. But there's more to Marxist Love Disco Ensemble's formula than meets the eye: it's hard to deny the many similarities between them and Stereolab - there's even hints of loungey, space-age pop in the flashy synth arpeggios dotted all over 1905 and Dust's jazzy piano line - and the notes of retro synthpop in the glowing keyboards all over Manifesto or Engineers' shiny digital strings help give bold outlines to the lo-fi edges of the album's 1/2 inch cassette tape recording set up. All these little details are what keeps MLDE from growing stagnant, a disco album through and through but never succumbing to the genre's trappings and testing how far they can take things while staying comfortably within dance tradition, Brumaire toying with a fuzzy analog synth solo and Hues of Red featuring a percussive breakdown and a whistle that calls back to the same way Donna Summer used one back on 1979's Bad Girls. In sound alone, MLDE is one of the most delightful listens this year, balancing creamy disco richness with just enough new additions to make their take on it compelling and singular. But the most important thing that distinguishes MLDE from its disco contemporaries is its political focus, Paolo Volkov's songwriting pulling from different strands of Marxist theory - dialectical materialism, class struggle, capitalist social stratification - and implementing them forthright into his music without subtlety. He references Marx's book on The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte on the fittingly-titled Brumaire, situating bloody images of revolution ("The workers aren't blindfolded / ...Bleed the skull from culture") with his hope for a communist future ("Brumaire's up eighteenth / Take the bow now"); album centerpiece 1905 takes advantage of its radiant space-disco sound to look back on the 1905 Russian Revolution and the following revolution which ended the Russian monarchy and reformed the Bolshevik party in 1917. His reserved vocal presence serves not to undermine his message but ensure it doesn't take over the music, Engineers shifting between proletariat sympathies ("The calloused hands who work for pay / Can change their emotions to betray") and outward calls for protest and change ("Here's the voice that calls your name to go defy / Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxembourg") and perfectly balancing the disco's hopeful glow with the message Marxist Love Disco Ensemble seeks to convey. It's both poetic and sardonic at once: Volkov can sell his message so well because he knows that keeping his ideals crystal-clear while presenting them underneath velvety dance music is the most potent way for him to express it. Outwardly political music rarely manages to be so well-constructed and lyrically impactful at once, yet MLDE seems to manage it with more effortlessness than anyone else out there. Maybe it's their low-key Italian cool or the hazy warmth of these cassette-recorded dance tunes, but Marxist Love Disco Ensemble makes for one of the most enchanting new groups of the year with a might few others could manage, MLDE's leftist-aligned disco jams as fun to listen to as they are spiritually vital. The dancefloor's demands for energy and passion are met by the group every time, and the strength of their Marxist-aligned message is only amplified tenfold through it.

[adhd-witching]

Paralysis and Self Doubt

DISCLAIMER: All entries on this blog are made to simply share my thoughts, progress, and experiences as I live them. I am not an educator, I am not a medical professional, I am just a pagan witch with ADHD. I am not asking for sympathy, and I am not trying to gain attention, I am here to talk about how my disability affects my day to day life and progress as a practitioner.

Warning for talks of depression and being a general downer. This is just how I'm feeling today, and I think it's important to share because this side of witchcraft and deity worship isn't talked about very often.

My executive dysfunction is terrible today.

My plan for today from yesterday was for me to wake up, get dressed, deliver the readings I owe people, finish filling out my forms to send in for disability, and spend the day cleaning and organizing.

That did not happen.

Instead, I woke up, and I have not moved from my bed. I have not gotten dressed. As of 6:30 PM EST, I haven't eaten anything but half a bagel with cream cheese early this morning. I spent a good portion crying because I feel like a failure.

I feel paralyzed, and no matter how much I beg my mind to allow me to just stand up and do the things I need to do, my body will not listen.

I'm disappointed, because I thought I was finally starting to improve. I thought I was getting better. My dosage of Adderall had been upped the last time I saw my doctor, and it only made a difference for a couple of days. When I made this blog, my plan was to talk about how proud I was of myself for tidying up the house and setting up a brand new altar as a chance for me to talk about how good it felt to be so motivated. I never even got to that part. I stopped cleaning one day and I never started again, so everything piled all back up and I'm back to square one.

I desperately want to be able to function as a person, do daily rituals, and spend my time researching and learning. I want so badly to be able to spend hours upon hours reading about the gods, learning every epithet and story so I discuss them in depth with my friends and fellow worshippers, but most days I can't even move because I am simply frozen.

Many of the people I know are so dedicated to their practice, and it's so, so beautiful. They are able to meditate with their gods regularly, make the time for rituals and have the most beautifully decorated altars, and know those gods inside and out. They're all able to have in depth discussions with one another about praxis, about the deeper meaning behind certain texts, and as much as I love that for them and am happy for them. I also feel as if I'm never going to measure up to that.

With my ADHD, studying and remembering facts is so hard for me, and I never really learned how to take effective notes. Every time I try to open a book, or try to read a page of text, my brain goes blank. The words look like soup, I can't comprehend or retain anything. When I leave food offerings, what ends up happening most of the time is I forget they exist, which of course makes them.... gross.

I ask myself: "If I can't even make myself put on clothes, how can I effectively learn and grow as a worshipper and a witch?"

I feel useless. I feel incapable of giving my deities the love and attention they deserve, because I can barely give myself the love and attention I deserve. I don't even have my altar set up because I can't get out of bed, and when I do I'm too exhausted to make the time to arrange it. I feel like because I'm in such a rut, I'm not worthy or interesting enough to contribute to these discussions, and it sometimes feels like I'm excluded from them. All I have right now are the conversations I manage to have with the gods on my own. I've been doing this for several years now, and while I've had my ups and downs, this general sense of being overwhelmed and stuck is typical for me. I wake up, I watch the clock and beg my body to allow me to move, the sun starts to set, and before I know it another day has gone by with me accomplishing literally nothing.

I love to learn. I love learning about magic. I love learning about the gods. I love finding out new ways to practice, or new spells, or finding out something new about one of the deities I'm close with. I also love to sing, I love to draw, and I love to write.

Lately, I don't feel enthusiasm for any of those things. It's been this way for a long time.

I'm not asking for advice, or ways to fix this. It's not something that anyone can really change except for me, and the way to do that is by being patient with myself and waiting for my appointment to get my ADHD med dosage changed. I know that the gods love me and care about me regardless of my mental health or disability, and I know there's not any deadline for me to meet when it comes to progress. It's still hard to feel like everyone around me is having so much success, but my stress and insecurity is not anyone else's responsibility.

I bought John Beckett's Paganism in Depth as an audiobook to hopefully allow me to at retain information by listening to someone else talking. I've found reading books is a bit easier for me this way. If anyone has any good audiobook recommendations on witchcraft or paganism, feel free to send them in an ask or on my main blog.

The reason I am sharing this is because I want to document how I feel now, so that future me can look back on this time and (hopefully) reflect on how far I've come. I also want others to see that they are not alone in feeling this way. I'm sure this is a very common problem for witches and pagans suffering from executive dysfunction and mental illness, but it's not something that's talked about very often. I want to be transparent about my progress, which means being transparent about my lack of progress, too.

If you've read my ramblings this far, thank you so much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.

[star-anise]

Can you or someone kindly explain to me why violent riots are necessary? Why we apparently need to fight fire with fire? I just. Similar to your recently reblogged post, I cannot fathom how it is helpful. I understand that people are angry and they shouldn't be condemned in the way they are being condemned for property destruction (though people seem to forget that a lot of people, especially poor and disabled people, can't afford that) but like. What is this actually going to achieve?

The specific “point” of the current protests is addressing racist policing practices, an end to police brutality, and/or the abolition of the police, all of which have very actionable goals--for example, increasing crisis mental health resources, decriminalizing stupid shit that it doesn’t benefit society to police, changing how police are funded to de-incentivize unnecessary arrests or tickets, or increasing police accountability for harm. But I’ll address your question less as “what do these activists want to achieve” and more as “why are riots occassionally necessary praxis.”

The one thing I can’t comment on is how much the appearance of armed counter-protestors changes things. That’s new, partly in the last couple years and especially this week, and I haven’t got a solid grip on how that plays out. So I can just talk about my general knowledge.

The violence isn’t the inherently necessary part, it’s the protest. Protests and demonstrations are necessary; to create political change, it helps to demonstrate that a fuckload of people care deeply about this thing and are willing to take time out of their day to show that. It shows other citizens that this is an issue they could care about without being alone, and it shows the people in charge that if they don’t pay attention to this issue, a large proportion of their constituents are going to be unhappy. Sometimes the protest is also instrumental to the change, like occupying a building so it cannot be demolished, or occupying a road so that troop convoys cannot drive down it. My ex-girlfriend’s involved with a group that puts cups of paint on bike lane markers to demonstrate how frequently cars drive into bike lanes if they’re able to, in an attempt to get the city to invest in bike-friendly infrastructure. There are a lot of tactics out there.

Most protests are nonviolent and many are successful. They achieve small goals. An elected official may have so many people sitting in their office waiting room that they are forced to talk to them so that they go away and business as usual can resume. A cause may get on the news because people want to understand why a road was shut down or what all the people standing out there are talking about. People in power have to listen to activists and make concessions to them to make them go away. Stuff like that.

Some people believe that violence is intrinsically necessary--that’s the point of the Black Bloc, who think that property damage is a positive good in itself, or that nobody will listen unless you damage things and cost people money. That, to be honest, I... mmm. I think many people with violent leanings love violence in itself and will justify it more often than someone looking at the situation with dispassionate eyes will say, “What we need here is to break a bunch of shit.” 

But the more common cause of violence in protests is when people want the protest to stop or go away. That is, when the elected official’s secretary says, “Look, he’s not going to meet with you, please leave,” or a boss says, “I’m not going to increase your wages, so go away and stop telling the customers about your grievances with me.” Part of what makes a protest successful is saying, “No, I’d really rather stand here and talk about my goals than go away and make your day easier.”

That’s when it escalates to force. When they call security or police to get them to force the protesters to leave. It turns into a game of chicken; as a protestor, it doesn’t do to show that you can be easily made to back down, but your opponents are going to use an increasing level of force to make you want to leave, or to physically remove you. And when that escalates--for example, when the riot squad shows up and starts physically attacking people--protestors often find that sitting there and letting someone attack you isn’t a good strategy; keeping yourself safe and continuing the protest are generally preferable. Responses can range from putting people who’d make the police look bad for attacking in front (people in wheelchairs, people in nice clothing, people with bicycles, Nice White People, whatever), to having medics on hand to treat people who have been injured, to using umbrellas to ward off tear gas, to, yeah, the use of violence in defense. If a cop is beating up your friend, and you can beat the cop up so they stop, that makes a material difference to your friend.

This is why even Fox News has slowly started to cotton on to the fact that forceful police responses to protests, like calling out the riot squad, are the key feature that escalate protests and turn them really nasty. Only a small number of people at any protests actually want things to turn violent or loot things; the majority of people would rather use peaceful means if they were available, but they’ve found that nothing else worked so now they’re protesting. But once people are under physical threat, they get scared and desperate, and things get ugly.

Especially at Black Lives Matter protests, the police often have a very direct and vested interest in making sure the protestors don’t get listened to. They don’t want to be criminally responsible for the things they do in the line of duty or have the news talking about what a bad job they’ve done. Therefore, there is a lot of incentive for police to make the protestors look bad--so they’re very likely to use police tactics that they know will escalate the situation and turn it violent. And since that’s the exact thing BLM protestors want to draw attention to, it to some degree proves their point to be able to demonstrate the police responding to nonviolent people with violence when the cameras are rolling.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

hi there! what’s your take on blogs that go “fujos don’t interact” and shit on the authors but jump from one bl drama adaptation from another? do they…not see their hypocrisy or am i wrong?

Hi anon,

I mean there is a lot of unpack in those types of behaviours, and there might be differences from one person to the other, but yes there is a certain sense of hypocrisy and double standard when people who generally seem to seek m/m content, whether they include censored or toned-down bl adaptations or not, think they can create such a neat separation between the people who consume m/m correctly and those who don't. Yes, there are fans or consumers of bl-danmei who do not act right--but there are fans or consumers of any type of mlm content who don't. Have you perchance heard of One Direction RPFers? Generally the only issue that seems more specific to some bl-danmei fans vs mlm fans in general is that of fetishising the asian men, which however unfortunately crops up in any fan spheres of east asian content--and yes, that very much includes the CQL fandom 🙃. As well, there are bl-danmei content that leave me uncomfortable and which I choose not to engage with--but so do other types of m/m content.

The goal ultimately seems to be to divest themselves from any scrutiny or self-reflection regarding why/how they consume m/m content by making villains out of anyone who reads a certain genre of it. And one thing that makes a lot of people uncomfortable about the trend of 'fujos dni' is not only that it has very clear racist/orientalist undertones (these asian women don't know how to respect gay men but *I* do), sexism (if something has an audience of mostly women it is inherently gross and inferior), a tendency for speaking over or for men attracted to men (and at times reproducing harmful stereotypes in the process...), as well as the fact that the growing push of "anti-fujo" discourse was also apparently fueled in parts by TERFs who thought it 'transed' the youth (ie, if you are a woman who likes men who reads bl then you might start thinking you are a man who likes men). Wow, look at that--even hating problématique fujos is problématique. Guilty! We're all guilty!!! No one is free of sin!!!!

I mean, from a materialist perspective, I'm just like... yeah, go off, praise the censored adaptation profiting a government-backed megacorporation that included fanservice only because the original danmei-bl fans raged against the decision to include a het romance and they didn't want to alienate their intended audience (in terms of the ones that would be the most invested and thereby lucrative) but which you have re-contextualised as a pure love story made entirely out of the easiest moves in the book, that is wrist grabs, stares, slow-motion shots and declarations of being life-long confidants. That sure is.... praxis....... !!!

At the end of the day these sort of things make me shake my head and roll my eyes, but it does not affect me. I know how I treat gay and bi men in the real world. I know how the gay and bi men I've interacted with and been friends with have perceived me as a friend and colleague. Hell, I'd be ready to bet that I have had more rich and varied relationships with gay and bi men in my life than most if any of the people who try to decide who I am as a person because I sometimes read danmei-bl. I'm good.