#and then unconsciously deploy those behaviors on everyone around them

[unforth]

Saw a post where people in the notes were arguing that behavior is only manipulative if it's intentional and planned, and tried to "prove" it with, like, Baby's First Example Of Manipulation ("if you don't do xyz, I'm gonna do abc.") and it's been ten minutes and it's still giving me hives. They were literally like "do we need to take 'manipulative' away and put it on the shelf" because they don't understand what manipulative behavior is.

Look if you (generic) think manipulative behavior has to be conscious, intentional, and planned, you are absolutely clueless and ripe for being manipulated. People can be i.n.s.a.n.e.l.y. manipulative without realizing they're doing it, and not recognizing that is, frankly, dangerous.

Signed, someone who has been repeatedly abused by people who certainly thought they weren't manipulative BUT ABSOLUTELY WERE.

[96percentdone]

My most controversial opinion has to be that i think that "abuse" isn't a useful construct for understanding unbalanced interpersonal relationships and their devastating harm anymore. Those dynamics and the damage they cause are certainly real, and we do need words to understand it. I even use abuse still, but the way it and its derivatives get deployed revolves around understanding the hidden (perhaps unconscious) intent of "the abuser," and intent will always be a dangerous framework to discuss harm.

I am autistic person who cannot read tone and struggles with language and communication. No matter how much I try to overcome my brain, I still hurt people by accident, often, in repetitive ways. Many people have unleashed lengthy, angry, screeds about what I meant, why I really did it, scream at me, talk over me, then punish me because "you did it on purpose." When they yell at or strip things from me it's not for what I did, but for what I'm told I meant. That's all language of intent does; it shifts the focus away from what caused the harm to an assertion about why. How is this useful, when it obfuscates the heart of the issue? You were not hurt by someone's ulterior motives, you were hurt by their behavior, their actions, their words.

I don't like hurting people. I try not to even if some parts of my existence make that a challenge, but I am often not treated like a person when I mess up. The people who shout at me may feel understandable, real pain, but they hurt me using words that decide who I am and leave no room to argue. Any marginalized person knows the language people use, as well as how it's used contributes to their oppression, how their histories and desires will be told by others in ways that are inaccurate at best and hostile at worst. The way people can treat me is ableist, but this is an unjustifiable way to talk to or about anyone.

I don't think the pervasiveness of this framework is malicious. I think most people genuinely want to help people avoid the trauma, get out of dangerous dynamics, and come to terms with what happened to them. I'm sure plenty of people are speaking from personal experience too. Like I said, that which we've labeled abuse is very real and devastating to anyone who experiences it, but dehumanization encourages perpetuating further harm. If I am not a person but a villain to be bested by the hero, then why should anyone treat me with respect?

If you have been beaten and battered by people who were supposed to love you, I understand your pain. The ache is unbearable; you'll have to live with the scars (sometimes physical) for the rest of your life, and part of healing is coming to terms with what happened. We want it to make sense. If everyone who has ever had power over us, who hurt us did so because they wanted us to suffer for whatever benefit, it cleans up nicely, doesn't it?

Isn't that a much more satisfying story to tell?

[aewriting]

Tell me about the Vegas AU?

The “Vegas AU,” as I call it, involves Jesse pretty much blackmailing Michael to leave town and leave Alex alone.  Michael ends up going to Las Vegas, and does not know that Alex has been injured.  Alex ends up moving in with Greg.  This is one that gets a bit fuzzy after that setup.  There are aspects I still really like about it, but I’m sitting on it until I can think up some next steps for it. I haven’t worked on this one in a while or posted about it in a while, so if anyone wants to read what I’ve posted so far of it, it’s below the cut.

“Another round, Roberto!”

 Roberto eyes him warily. “I dunno, man. Maria said - “

 “Maria loves me,” Michael says, waggling an eyebrow and leaning over the bar. He sees Roberto swallow nervously. “We go way back. Class of ‘08, Roswell High,” he says, and slams the rest of his shot.

 “I’ll handle this, Roberto,” he hears, and there’s DeLuca suddenly, looking... well, hot as fuck, honestly, but also pissed as hell.

 She snatches Michael’s empty glass off the bar. “The fuck are you doing, Guerin?” She wrinkles her nose at him. “You’re so past shitfaced right now, even for you. And you can’t afford it. You were already in the hole - “

 “Would have remembered that,” he says suggestively, just to be an ass about it.

 “Oh my god,” Maria mutters. “That’s it. You’re done.”

 “Sorry, that was stupid.”

 “Nope, you’re done,” she repeats. “You’re done tonight.” She shoves his hat toward him, across the bar. “And don’t come back till you can pay. In full.”

 “How much does he owe you, Maria?”

 Michael’s eyes narrow, because Maria’s just frozen. She’d looked angry, before, fiery. The anger’s still there, but now it’s... cold. Contained.

 Jaw tight, she glances at Michael, then at the man behind him. “Including tonight? $90, give or take.”

 Michael’s eyes widen as two crisp fifty dollar bills are placed on the bar, quickly followed by a third.

 “That’s to cover his tab. And your troubles. With whatever’s left, I’ll take two glasses of your best whiskey. For me and the young man, here.”

 Michael can see Maria’s need for cash warring with her evident dislike of this man. He sees the moment she decides, quickly palming the money, holding the bills tight in her clenched fist.

 “Coming up,” she says tightly, casting a quick little glance toward Michael before she goes that looks almost... concerned?

 No matter. Michael heaves a sigh. Some old guy wants to buy him a drink, the least he can do is lay on some charm. “I’m awfully grateful - “ he starts as he slowly turns around.

 Freezes.

 Because it’s Jesse Manes behind him, looking at him with those cold eyes.

 “Hello, Michael.”

 Michael hates the panic that starts rising in him. He grabs his hat, begins to stand.

 Feels Jesse grip his hand, the left one. “Sit. Down.”

 He could snap every finger, right now. It would be nearly effortless. If they were alone, he might do it... might do worse. But Maria’s watching them, out of the corner of her eye. This is so public.

 And there’s Alex.

 Alex who... Michael takes a moment to calculate in his fuzzy head. Alex who is probably back on base by now. Maybe. Preparing to fucking deploy. Alex who is still uncomfortably intertwined with his monster of a father, and while Michael doesn’t mind causing trouble for himself - hell, that was his whole purpose in coming to the Pony tonight and getting brain meltingly drunk - he’ll be damned if he causes trouble for Alex.

 So he sits down.

 “Good boy,” Jesse says with a smug little grin, like Michael’s a goddamn dog.

 “Here,” Maria says curtly, placing two glasses of whiskey on the bar in front of them, frowning as she stares at Jesse’s strong hand covering Michael’s wrecked one.

 Jesse gives her a little nod as Michael tugs his hand away, flexing it unconsciously. Jesse picks up a glass, takes a small sip. Stares at Michael. “Drink up.” Michael just looks at him, so tense. Jesse shrugs a little. “Didn’t take you as one to turn down free liquor.”

 He’s managed to avoid Jesse Manes for over seven years. He, he’s seen him a few times - walking around town, at the Crashdown, one memorable morning at the Sheriff’s station while Michael was still in the drunk tank. But there was no avoiding now. Michael picks up the whiskey, drinks a little. The burn is worse than usual, despite the improved quality.

 Jesse narrows his eyes at him. “We need to talk, Michael.”

 Michael keeps his mouth shut. Frowns.

 Jesse leans in a bit, and Michael tries hard not to instinctively back away. “You’ve been messing around with something that belongs to me,” he says, voice low and cold.

 And at that, Michael can’t contain himself. “He doesn’t belong to you,” he says harshly, probably too loud for this particular setting.

 Jesse raises an eyebrow. “Well at least you’re not denying it.”

 “Nothing to fucking deny.”

 Jesse’s mouth twists a bit. “No. Suppose you don’t think so, the way you rub everyone else’s face in your own filth.”

 How dare he. Michael... Michael could hurt this man. Wants to hurt this man. Thinks of the the ways he’s hurt Alex. Thinks of the way Alex makes Michael hide their interactions, be so careful.

 Jesse takes a small little sip of his drink, shakes his head. “Thought I was very clear. Years ago,” he says, looking pointedly at Michael’s hand. “This thing between the two of you needs to stop.”

 Michael swallows down his own fury, his own intense bitterness and hurt. It feels... bizarre to be having this conversation with Jesse Manes, of all people, when he’s never talked about it with anyone else. Not even Alex, really.

 “There... there’s no thing,” Michael says, hating how wounded he sounds. Because there isn’t. Not... not that there ever was, not really, but Michael had at least had hope before, at times. After this last time, though, the things he and Alex had said...

 Jesse scoffs, shakes his head. “I followed you. To the motel.” Michael can feel his stomach drop. “Heard the two of you. Like... like animals,” Jesse says, tone dripping with revulsion. He looks right at Michael then. “Saw some of the marks you left him with, that he tried to hide.”

 Michael’s willing his breath to remain even, willing himself not to shatter every glass in this damn bar. “What did you do to him?” he asks, voice low and dangerous.

 “Not a damn thing,” Jesse says. “Drove him back to base so he can ship off to Iraq and continue to serve his country like the decorated airman he is.”

 Michael scoffs, rolls his eyes.

 Jesse glares at him. “Do you know what he’s risking? Every time he’s with you?” He shakes his head. “Has he told you?”

 Michael’s looking at him blankly.

 “That’s what I thought,” Jesse says tightly. Leans back in seat a bit. “I kept up with you over the years. So I know about the drunk and disorderlies, the petty theft, the lewd behavior and indecency charges.” He narrows his eyes. “Alex know how often you’re down here, drinking cheap liquor you can’t afford, leaving with anyone that’ll have you?”

 Michael can feel his face flushing, the sting of tears just below the surface. He looks down, sniffs, plasters on a shit eating grin. “You have been keeping a close watch. Could make a guy wonder,” Michael says, cocking an eyebrow.

 He sees the tick of Jesse’s jaw. “Wanted to see who my son was risking his entire career for.” Jesse looks him up and down, seems disgusted. “And it doesn’t reflect well on you. Or him.”

 Michael shakes his head a little, looks away. He... he’s used to being told he’s a piece of shit. Lives down to it. But this, Jesse bringing Alex into it...

 “You’ve done a lot of the work for me. Thought my son had finally gotten his head on straight and realized that there was no future with his hometown...” Jesse’s eyes narrow as he gestures at Michael. “Whatever you are to him.” He takes a little sip of whiskey, eyes Michael. “Thought it was done, actually, till the motel.”

 Michael swallows. “There’s nothing there, okay?” Michael says, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “Alex... Alex is smart. Knows there’s nothing for him here.”

 A waste. That’s what Alex had said, what he’d called him, this last time. A waste.

 Jesse studies him. “Then maybe it’s time you and I got on the same page,” he says, taking out an envelope, fat to the point of bulging. Opening it up. Flashing the neatly folded cash. “This is the easy way to do this, Michael. There’s a hard way, too. What do you say?”

 Michael’s just blinking. Once. Twice. Looking at the cash. There’s... so much there. More than he could make for months at the ranch. “I... I don’t...”

 Jesse rolls his eyes, shuts the envelope. “There’s ten grand in there. Take it and leave. Don’t contact my son again. You do and... and I make things worse for you, okay? You know I could do it,” he says, looking deliberately down at Michael’s hand.

 And Michael’s angry now. “What the fuck man?” he exclaims, eyes flashing. “You... you think you can just come in here, flashing cash, and buy me off?”

 Jesse scoffs a bit. “You’re asking? Seriously? Yes,” he says meanly. “You are a drunken day-laborer that lives in a trailer. You’ve got holes in your shirt and shit on your boots. So yes, I think I can give you ten thousand dollars and give you a new start somewhere of your choice. Somewhere without my son.”

 Michael clenches his jaw, pushes back from the bar, too fast, and the stool clatters to the ground.

 “Michael?” Maria asks, startled, but Michael’s too angry to reply.

 “Fuck you,” he says, leaning toward Jesse, baring teeth.

 Jesse’s eyes narrow. “Michael,” he warns.

 “No.” Michael says, shaking his head. “Fuck you, Manes,” he says, itching to reach out with his powers, put Jesse through the goddamn wall. “Fuck you and your money,” he says.

 And he can’t help it this time - he nudged Jesse’s stool off balance, just a little, sending it - and Jesse - to the floor.

 He starts walking - doesn’t stop when he hears Maria shouting, doesn’t stop when he hears Jesse Manes’s damnable voice assuring Maria that he’s fine. Michael pushes through the crowded Pony, exits the bar, and heads straight for his truck at the far side of the lot.

 He pulls the door shut, locks the truck with his powers, and reaches for a bottle of acetone, only to find it drained.

 “God damn it,” he mutters, and such a stupid little thing, it pushes him over the edge. Fuck... fuck everything. This shit is just... too much. It was already too much, had been too much for years. But the past few days, with Alex leaving for a fucking war zone, their fight, and now Jesse Fucking Manes confronting him at the Pony and trying to buy him off? No wonder he’s drunk right now.

 Shit.

 He’s... fuck. He’s really, really drunk right now. Too drunk to drive, he knows. He could call Isobel. But then she’s ask questions - why hadn’t he replied to her texts the last few days, where had he been, why was he shit-faced?

 Michael sighs. It’s not too cold tonight. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s slept it off in the Pony lot. Unbidden, he imagines what Alex would say, if he could see him now, sauced and weepy. Probably the same thing he’d said to him before he’d stormed out of the motel. You’re a waste, Guerin.

 It’s the last thing a Michael thinks as he nods off.

 ***

 “Michael.”

 “Mmm, don’t go.”

 “Michael!”

 “Stay, please.”

 “Michael, I am not fucking around - get up right now.”

 Michael startles awake, out of what he thinks was a dream. It’s too bright, too loud, and, fucking hell, Max is here, rapping on his window with a fucking flashlight.

 “Fuck,” he mutters, letting his head fall back against the cracked leather of his seat.

 Max shakes his head, starts pounding the flashlight against the window again.

 “Hold on one fucking minute, okay?” Michael rubs at his eyes, tries to orient himself. He’s certainly hungover - maybe even still drunk. His mouth is dry, fuzzy, foul tasting. And, Jesus, is Max about to pound on the window again? He reaches low on the door, begins to manually roll down the window.

 He does it slowly on purpose, taking his time on each revolution. Max looks ready to burst. As soon as the window is low enough, Max leans in close, as if he’s trying to physically shove his face into the car.

 “What the fuck were you thinking, Michael?” he grits out, voice low.

 Michael looks at him blankly, and Max leans in even more.

 “Getting into a fight with Jesse Manes? In public?”

 Michael lets his head hang, shakes it a bit. So this is why Max is here? “I didn’t lay a fucking hand on him, Max.”

 Max’s frown deepens. “Well you don’t have to, do you?” he says, barely audible.

 Michael snorts a little. “You don’t have a fucking clue,” he says, immediately regrets it. Because Max doesn’t know the history here, and Michael doesn’t want him to, just wants him to go away.

 But Max doesn’t press for detail, just looks stern. “Michael, cut the attitude. This...” He falters. Actually looks a little... worried? Scared? “This is serious, okay?”

 “What are you talking about?” Michael asks, and he takes a look around for the first time since being woken up.

 There are three police cruisers here. Surrounding his truck. He sees Max’s partner, the hot blonde, talking to Maria. Maria who... who looks like she just got pulled out of her bed. She has a silky camisole and shorts on, with flip flops. A thick patterned blanket pulled around her shoulders to stave off the cold. It keeps slipping, and Michael can see her nipples through the thin material. He swallows hard. He’s long thought she was attractive, going back to high school, really, had idly wondered what she’d look like in a morning-after situation. He hadn’t intended to find out like this. He meets her eyes, briefly, and she looks away quickly. She looks... she looks worried.

 Further away, he sees Michelle Valenti and... shit. Jesse. Jesse’s nodding solemnly at the moment as he speaks with the Sheriff.

 “What the fuck is going on, Max?”

 Max’s shoulders slump. “Do you really not know?”

 Michael shakes his head. “Is this about me parking at the Pony overnight? Cause I’ve done it before and Maria’s never busted me over it. Seems excessive,” he complains, glancing quickly in her direction. Again, she looks away as soon as they make eye contact. “Like, would she have rather I drove drunk?”

 Max is just staring at him. “We have dozens of witnesses that say you and Jesse Manes has an altercation in which you repeatedly yelled ‘fuck you’ at him and mentioned money.”

 Michael sniffs, narrows his eyes. “And?”

 Max’s eyes dart from side to side, and he leans in close. “Michael, if you did it, just tell me and I’ll try my best to help you, okay? Just tell me where it is.”

 Michael feels cold. “What?”

 Max bites his lip. “Manes says you stole his wallet last night. We’ve got a search warrant for you and the truck.”

 “Fuck,” Michael says, and he knows. Knows that Jesse’s screwed him. On instinct, he whirls around in his seat, looks to the other side of the lot where Jesse is standing.

 And smiling. Right at him.

 He turns around in his seat. Looks at Max. “I didn’t do it, Max. We fought in the bar, yeah,” he says, and he sees Jesse and Michelle walking toward the truck. “Just words,” he adds hastily. “And, um, I knocked him off his stool. With my powers.” He sees Max’s disapproving face, presses on. “But I didn’t steal his wallet.” He remembers, then, the way Jesse had referred to Alex. “I didn’t take anything that belongs to him,” he adds quietly. “I didn’t.”

 “Mr. Guerin?” Michelle Valenti is standing right next to Max now, looking serious. “Could you please step out of the car?”

 Michael mouth twists. “Do I have a choice?”

 “We have a warrant,” she says.

 “So I’ve heard,” Michael says, glaring at Max. With a sigh, he unlocks the truck, opens the door, and steps out. Watches as the Sheriff begins rummaging around in his glove box. Max’s partner - Jenny, maybe? - has hopped into the bed of the truck, is combing through his blankets, his tools. She stops, frowns.

 “Sheriff?” she calls. Michelle walks around to the side of the truck and Max’s partner holds up a small item. Michael’s stomach drops. It’s a wallet.

 Sheriff Valenti looks at it. Frowns. “Jesse?” she calls, and Jesse quickly walks over.

 Jesse’s eyes widen as he gets closer. “That’s it, alright.”

 The Sheriff nods. “Could you check it for me? Make sure there’s nothing missing?”

 “Of course,” Jesse says. He opens it, eyes the cash, the cards. “Everything’s here, thank goodness. Thank you, Sheriff.”

[sweetiepie08]

RebelZ (Chapter 9)

Invader Zim fanfic

While analyzing Zim’s PAK for weaknesses, Tak discovers strange coding that sends her on a search for answers. The clues lead her to uncover a conspiracy that governs all of Irken society. When the truth sends her on the run, she has no choice but to return to the one place the Tallest would never willingly go: Urth.

Meanwhile, Dib has noticed odd changes in Zim’s behavior. Has the invader simply grown bored of his mission over the last few years, or is there something more interesting going on?

People who asked to be tagged: @incorrect-invader-zim , @messinwitheddie, @reblogstupids, @cate-r-gunn, @agentpinerulesall​

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list feel free to message me. Also, if you’re on the tag list and you changed your name, please just let me know.

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10.

[-]

“Care to tell us what the fuck that was?” the Dib shouted as they ran down the hall.

“A coup, obviously,” Zim shot back. “Just not one where you seize power at the end. So, half a coup.”

“So then who seizes power now?”

“The Tallest Red and Purple still have it,”

Dib nearly tripped over his own feet in his shock. “You mean you didn’t kill them?”

“It’s nearly impossible to poison an Irken,” Tak explained. “The PAK filters out most toxins. You can incapacitate them, though, for a short period of time.”

“So you basically just quit your job in spectacular fashion,” Dib said indignantly.

Tak almost couldn’t believe it. Zim must be sincere in his betrayal. He poisoned the Tallest and declared to the entire upper crust of the Irken military that it was intentional. There was no coming back from that. Every other disaster he caused could reasonably be argued as a mistake. But there could be no doubt here. Zim truly had turned on the empire.

Yet, something still didn’t sit quite right with her. If he had gone rebel, if he had truly turned traitor, then his life clock would have gone off like hers did. One would reasonably assume the impotence for this betrayal was her discovery of the Control Brains parasite, but she was with him ever since she told him that news and she never saw his life clock go off. But that could only mean something else prompted him at an earlier date. So the question was, what made Zim finally snap?

They came to a split in the hallway. Tak started going right while Zim went left.

“Uh, the Voot is this way,” Tak called.

“I’m not going to the Voot,” Zim yelled back. “I’m going to the control room.”

Dib and Tak cast each other a glance, then followed him. They found him crouched behind a door at the end of the hall and joined him in his hiding spot. Dib took a peak inside. There, dozens of Irkens worked at their stations. They seemed unaware that, for now, their leaders were incapacitated.

Zim tapped his PAK and a metal ball flew into his hands. He pulled a pin, tossed it in, and smashed the control panel, shutting the door. They heard coughing from the other side and, after a few minutes, opened the door to find the Irkens unconscious on the floor.

“So, what are we doing in here again?” Dib asked, as they stepped into the room.

Zim grabbed one of the Irkens who still slouched in their chair and threw them to the floor. “Wiping Urth off the navigation map.” He sat down and the monitor and started messing with the buttons. “If I’m going to continue to use it as my home base, I can’t have them finding it.”

“Not so fast,” Tak slapped his fingers away from the buttons. “Before this goes any further, I need answers. If you’re truly on our side, there’s only one way your life clock didn’t go off.”

“We don’t have time for this!”

“You had a rebellious thought!” Tak declared. “When?”

“Three Urth years ago.”

“Three years?” Dib shouted, stepping up to them. “But I’ve been watching you. Why were you still trying to conquer Earth if you kinda-quit three years ago?”

“I wasn’t.”

“But I saw you building machines!” Dib argued.

“They weren’t for me!” Zim shot back.

Tak began to ask “But how-” before Zim cut her off.

“Silence!” he shouted. “Silence your questions! I need to concentrate.”

Zim continued typing on the buttons until a picture of the Earth appeared on the screen. The stats were scarce, save for the coordinates and the note, ‘that place where Zim is.’ The little blue ball of dirt and water had gone unnoticed by the empire, noteworthy only as a banishment site. To them, it was merely a place to keep Zim contained, far away from anything important. But after the stunt they pulled today, it would be a target.

Another few clicks of a button and the Urth was gone, leaving only a blank file in its wake. All Irken military ships automatically synced with the Massive. If it was gone from this data base, it was essentially invisible to all Irkens. If they wanted to find Urth again, they’d have to scour the universe for it. But why stop at Urth?

“Let’s dump it all,” Tak said.

“What?”

“Erase the database,” she said. “It’ll be a crippling blow to the empire.”

“Do we really have time to erase everything?” Dib asked. The human made a good point.

“Jut the maps then,” she suggested. “They would have to rebuild their navigation systems from scratch and it would send the fleet into disarray.”

“Zim is no radical!” Zim snapped. “I’m only doing this to cover my own ass.”

“Not a raical?” Dib scoffed. “You just poisoned your own leaders.”

“That was personal,” Zim argued. “This is political.”

“And what about those weapons you’re building?!” Dib shot back. “If they’re not for Irk, then who are they for?”

“Zim’s business deals are none of your… um… business!”

“Shut up!” Tak commanded, taking a seat at another monitor. “We don’t have time for this! Let’s get these maps erased and get out of here.”

“If you even make it that far,” a chorus of voices answered.

Dib looked around. “Who said that?”

“We did, human.”

Every Irken in the room rose to their feet. Tak prepared herself for a fight. Her eyes darted as she watched them all, poised to deploy the weapons in her PAK. But none made a move to attack. They all stood there, stalk still, with a dead look in their eyes.

Dib gaped at the sight. “H-how are you…”

“Silence Urth Creature!” the possessed Irkens shouted in unison, turning their cold eyes toward Dib. “Do not interrupt us again!” Dib shut his mouth and the Irkens calmed. “Congratulations defectives” they said, now addressing Zim and Tak. “It’s been centuries since we had to resort to total override, but mark our words, you will pay for this waste of food.”

“What do you care for waste?” Tak spat back at them. “You throw Irken lives away every day in your conquest.”

“A calculated cost to bring me more to feed from in the long term,” the Irkens explained with their eerily monotone voices. “You should know about calculated risks. Don’t forget, we see everything you do.”

“When have I ever sacrificed good soldiers?”

Every possessed Irken in the room wore the same mocking smirk. “All through your training days. Don’t you remember? We saw everything you did, every little cheat to get ahead.”

The Irkens tapped buttons on their control boards and soon, every monitor showed various scenes from Tak’s training years. “Electrodes hidden in your boots to cripple race opponents. Stealing test answers and planting them in a rival’s locker after copying them for yourself. You got top scores on your exams and excelled at your drills, but is it really victory if you have to sabotage your competitions? Oh sure, you studied and trained, but it never felt like enough, did it? Never thought you could win a fair fight. Had to tear someone else down first. Maybe, if it weren’t for all your cheating, we’d have let you make up your Elite ranking test. After all, we allowed everyone else who was inconvenienced by the blackout to take it.” Their smirks grew as they twisted the knife further. “Just not you.”

Tak ground her teeth together as she watched the images play out on the screen. There was no denying them. The monitors played footage from her own memory bank. They showed her and everyone else who she really was. She work so hard. She clawed her way to the top and did everything she could to stay there. But it was all a lie. And now they knew it. What was worse, Zim knew it. That little pain in the ass managed to make it to elite the first time, even while being a walking disaster, and he never had to deliberately cheat. The idea of him lording that over her was enough to make her blood boil.

“Perhaps you can prove everyone wrong, though,” the Irken voices went on. “Take the honest route for once in your life. Tell Zim what you learned on your little trip to Refirencee. Tell him what you suspect.”

“Fool!” Zim scoffed. “Zim already accessed Tak’s memories. I know everything she knows about the Control Brain parasite.”

“Yes, you saw the same books. But did you reach the same conclusions?”

“Guys! Don’t you see what it’s doing?” The Dib burst in. “It’s distracting you. It’s keeping you here until your leaders recover. Let’s erase those maps and get out of here!”

“Silence!” Zim snapped at Dib, then turned back to the dead-eyed Irkens. “Tell Zim what you know, creepy hive-mind…thing!”

“Have you ever wondered why you’re such a failure? Why you destroy everything you touch? Why, no matter what you do, everything always blows up in your face? It’s because you have no choice in the matter. It’s what you were made for.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before we push for something big, we require extra sustenance. We take this sustenance in what some have called a blood toll. On our first planet, we made many mistakes, one was asking our hosts directly for sacrifices. We know better now.”

“Ans what does this have to do with me?” Zim growled impatiently.

“Since the beginning of our reign, one PAK has been passed down through generations, carrying a suppressed impulse for destruction. We need only to activate it and we have our blood toll. Clearly our PAK has become quite damaged over the years. It no longer works quite right. You’re so defective, you couldn’t even declare your name right.”

The screen flashed the name Zim across it. It then reversed the letters and spread them out to reveal an acronym. ZIM became MIZ. And MIZ became Massacre Initiator Z.

“You were supposed to live as a low-ranking drone until we activated your destructive impulse and die in the disaster. You, however, defied us at every turn. We kept you alive out of sheer curiosity. We wanted to see how your life would play out. It’s been entertaining, however, you’ve become too great a burden to bare.”

Zim stood motionless, staring straight ahead. They waited for the typical Zim outburst of “lies!” or declaring his greatness, but nothing came. His eyes looked as dead as the possessed Irkens around them. He said nothing, did nothing. As much as Tak couldn’t stand Zim’s obnoxious voice or erratic behavior, watching him be so still was chilling.

Tak’s antenna perks at the sound of footsteps trooping down the hall. The Dib’s head darted for the door. “Guy! Come on! We’re out of time!”

Tak smacked Zim’s lifeless body away from the control panel. “Do you think you can stop us by getting into our heads?”

“Oh simple Tak,” the Irkens sighed. “We've lived in your heads since you were fitted with your packs.”

Tak sneered at them. “I cut you off for me and I won't rest until every Irken is free of you.”

“Please, you worked your whole life to get our attention. You finally have it. Do you want to throw that away? Perhaps we can find a place with someone of your drive and ingenuity.”

“Liars!” Did they think she was stupid? She knew as well as it that treason of this scale would never go unpunished. Even if they tried to appease her with a higher rank or a cushy job, it’d only be a matter of time before they got rid of her. But even the fact that it was trying to negotiate meant something. She was a threat to it, and she would stay a threat until the day she died.

“We you know you, Tak. You’re a plotter. You won't do anything rash.”

They don’t know me half as well as they think. “Want a bet?” She started hitting buttons on the control board. An alert came up on the screen and the voice blared from the speakers. “All maps queued for deletion. Are you sure you want to proceed?”

She hit one more button and the screen went black. “Deletion successful.”

“Take that you parasite bitch.”

“Come on,” Dib begged, pulling on her arm. The footsteps were noticeably louder. “We have to go now!”

Tak took off running and Dib pulled on the frozen Zim until his legs moved. They burst into the hall and immediately came across a group of Irkan soldiers. “There they are!” one of the soldiers cried.

Tak led the way as they ran toward the ship’s hanger. The soldiers fired at them. A laser cannon popped out of Tak’s pack and returned fire, but it was difficult for her to aim while leading the dash to the Voot. She wished one of her companions had could back her up with a pistol but Zim was still barely conscious and Dib was preoccupied with keeping his legs moving. The sound of little metallic feet running beside them gave her an idea.

“Zim, tell me your SIR unit to go into defensive mode.

There was no response. Zim was as helpful as a sack of empty ginzor cans.

“Hey Zim’s robot,” Dib said to the little SIR unit.

Gir looked up at him curiously. “Hmm?”

“Don't you have any weapons or something?”

“Huh?”

“You know, something that makes pretty lights and goes ‘pew, pew’?”

“Oh that. I got that.” A giant laser cannon popped out of his head and he fired wildly into the soldiers behind them, forcing the Irkens to scatter for cover

Finally, they made it to the hangar and all jumped in the Voot. Zim slid zombie-like into the pilot seat.

“Come on,” Dib said, shaking Zim’s shoulder. “Get us out of here!”

“Zim!” Tak snapped. “If you don't fly this ship, I will!”

That seemed to work. Zim shook off whatever stupor he was in and his usual look of single-minded determination returned to his eyes. “No one pilots Zim’s ship but Zim!” He took hold of the controls and the ship roared to life. In a flash, they took off into the stars.

[myheroaizawashota]

[Oooh maybe a little life or Death moment. Maybe a villain attack the renders the reader very badly injured and while they’re sitting there unconscious he confesses his everything!!! This is incredibly doable! Thanks for the ask! I’m sorry this took so long to get done!! I apologize to much hahaha hopefully this lives up your expectations!!! @kweelmusic ]

Emotions were a complex and unnecessary distraction. From observation of others in the field, the pro erasure hero knew that clouding your judgment with things as trivial as feelings only ended disastrously. While it wasn’t frequent that he’d let his emotions take the best of him, when it came to certain people he just couldn’t help himself. Certain people like you. While the uncouth hero acted bothered by your presence, deep down he really did enjoy your company. Despite his constant griping about your over enthusiastic attitude and ditzy behavior, the brutal U.A educator harbored strong feelings of admiration and love for you. Everything about you drove him wild. The way you smiled, the way you laughed at all of Present Mics unbelievably dense jokes. Even the way you cared so much about everyone, including himself, regardless of how nasty they treated you.

He could be so rude to you some days, and when he was he’d regret it the moment you walked away. He didn’t understand why he acted so poorly towards you when you meant so much to him, yet here he was. Undoubtedly an asshole every time you came around. It was embarrassing to say the least. Hes never let his emotions run rapid the way they way they do when he sees you, but against his better judgements he couldn’t control it.

Huffing as he shuffled through the university halls, the ever brooding 1-A teacher made his way towards his class room. His hands balled into fist as he shoved them half heartedly in his pockets eyes casting to the floor. Anyone who wasn’t used to the sight would all but bet something was wrong with the man, but this was just typical Aizawa behavior. His closed off body language was enough to deter most from his pathway, but regardless of how aggravated the man looked you always still went out of your way to say hello to him. Smiling you gave a wave of your hand, finger tips wiggling as you made your way closer “hey Aizawa, are you going to eat lunch in your class room? Don’t you get lonely in there? You should join me and Mic in the break room! We’d really enjo-“

“No. I don’t want to join you and and Mic in the break room. Believe it or not, I enjoy the quite of my classroom with no one screaming or laughing or constant chatter in my ear as I’m trying to take advantage of the very little spare time I have in my life.” Aizawa all but growled blowing his way past you, his lips pulled into a scowl as he hurried faster down his path.

You didn’t understand him sometimes, while it hurt your feelings the other acted so cruel towards you, you still couldn’t help the desire you had to be around him. Maybe you were sadistic and liked the punishment of his cruel tone, or maybe you just couldn’t help who your heart loved. He was cold, uncaring, emotionally vacant, but yet you saw his face, those eyes, that jaw...and you weren’t able to hold yourself back. You came after him like a moth to a light, despite you’re knowledge of his combative behavior. Looking down rather defeated, you tucked your hands towards your chest, stomach dropping as the ever present smile of yours faded from your lips. “Okay...well enjoy you’re break then Aizawa..I-If you change your mind you know where to find us.”

Half heartedly expecting an answer, you couldn’t help but feel just the slightest bit broken when all your offer was met with was the slam of a classroom door. You knew you should get over this crush you had on the aloof pro, but you couldn’t shake the feelings he left you with.

Dragging in a long breath, Aizawa let his back rest against the door of his room, he closing his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose releasing that breath with a loud sigh. “Why did i just say that? What is wrong with you Shouta.”

His hands moved to roam across his face, palms rubbing and scrubbing the scruff of his cheeks as he tried to regain some ounce of composure. Feelings were such a nuisance, and to his dismay, these feelings were uncontrollable. Letting one hand fall, the other moved to run through the bangs that fell into his face, he scoopin them back and out of his eyes as he dropped his body in his desk chair. Next time he’d do better, try harder, go beyond plus ultra in his attempts to control his irrational behavior every time he saw you. He had to. He couldn’t continue to act disinterested for the rest of your lives, while it wasn’t a hard front to pull off for him, he didn’t like the way your smile vanished when he’d act this way. Was it in his best interest maybe to go apologize? Meet you and Mic for lunch after all? No. That sounded ridiculous and like far to much effort. Groaning in frustration, he tucked his arms tightly across his chest. He felt so immature, childish to be keeping crushes, and bullying the girl he liked as if he was still in grade school. Ridiculous. He was 31 not 13, who in their correct mind would think-

His thoughts paused as alarms began to frantically wail, the building trembling as bits of debris began to snow down onto the black shoulders of his shirt. What in the hell was this about? Another shake, followed by a few shrieks and screams, the sound of stampeding foots steps soon taking over the hall way as the loud speaker clicked on. “Students, please remain calm! It appears we’ve had a security breach! In a calm orderly fashion, make your way to the the closest class rooms, under protections of our pro heros. If you confront the intruders, please do not fight them! We are unsure who our intruder is or what his motives are, but we can only assume the worst of the situation.”

Aizawa throat began to clench, as he listened further to the principals speech, opening his door in an attempt to find his students. He knew class 1-A held a target on top their heads, so the faster he could gather his children the better. Wandering into the sea of students, Aizawa worked to shuffle through the crowd head turning when he heard a huge thunder of commotion, head turning towards the noise. The instant his ears picked up on the sound of your voice, his feet had already shifted gears, his body running down the halls towards the sound of distress. You were strong, incredibly strong, he was confident you’d be fine, but he felt the compulsion to make sure that was the case. He needed you to be fine.

With his heart thumping in his ear he whipped his body around the corner, fists balling when his eyes found your body pinned under the boot of a villain. The intruders eyes boiled to the brim with malicious intent and pure evil, his tongue licking across his lips as his fingers roughly yanked your head up by the hair. “Look at me you hero! Your so proud to call yourself that, but you will never stop me. Pathetic and unworthy of being called such a name! Tell me where he is, and I won’t slaughter every student in this building!”

Struggling against the others hold, tears pricked in the corners of your eyes as you did your best to break the hold of your opposing force. “Id never tell you where he is and i won’t let you hurt my students! Go to hell!” With the last remainder of your strength you pushed your body up off the floor, moving to activate your quirk, only to be immediately flung by the others brute strength and over powered quirk. Your body rag dolled before rolling to the edge of Aizawas feet, his heart stopping as you laid your body curling in on itself rivers of blood draining down the edges of your face. Those beautiful eyes of yours closed, leaving your body seemingly lifeless.

It broke his heart to see you this way, and while he didn’t have the strength to admit it to you, he loved you. His stomach boiled with rage as his naturally dark irises began to spark red, hair flairing as he made eye contact with your assailant. Emotions were dangerous to involve in battle, but Aizawa couldn’t help himself. While he himself was the worlds biggest ass to you, he’d be damned if anyone would ever lay a hand on you. Quickly deploying his quirk, the erasure pro was able to handle the villain with no problems, quickly restraining him while waiting for authorities to arrive. “I’m not sure who you were looking for or what you thought you were going to do, but let’s get something straight. You ever put a hand on her again, and I’ll do more than just bind you.” The terror in his eyes was chilling to see.

The situation was quickly dealt with the motives of the villain attack deciphered and the school back in a state of safety. It seemed to be you were the only one injured. You’d taken the fight in order to protect a group of weaker quirkless students in the general studies classes. That was very much like you. When the students had told the pro what you did, Aizawa couldn’t help the way the edges of his mouth struggled to force their way up. You were pretty amazing.

With the school returning to a sense of stability, the students being returned home to their families for the rest of the day, the 1-A teacher decided to pay you a visit. He was the one who carried you to recovery girl, and he was the one who showed the most concern for your condition. While he was not the only one concerned for you, he was definitely the most concerned. It was odd, no one had ever seen so many emotions out of the man. They all assumed his only moods were tired and grouchy. Drawing a deep breath in, he opened the door to Recovery Girls office. “She’s not awake yet Aizawa. I told you she will need time! While my quirk can heal the trauma, it’s up to the energy her body can produce to decide how long it takes to recooperate” she hummed shuffling her way over towards the towering gentleman. “It’s against policy for me to allow anyone who’s not family to see her right now....but seeing as to how concerned you seem to be, I’ll give you 5 minutes.” She sighed allowing the other access to you.

Relief cloaked over his body, he slowly making his way towards yours. You looked so calm, though his chest surged at the sight of you with all these bandages all over. “I wish you were awake right now....i hate to admit it...but i miss that idiotic smile of yours...” he sighed, moving to brush the hair that hung in your face back. “I don’t know how to say any of the things i should when you’re listening, so maybe saying them while you’re not will be easier.” You held your breath, truthfully you’d woken up a few minutes ago, but the lights in recovery girls office were just too bright so you had to close your eyes a bit more. You wondered if you should tell him you’re awake...but you we’re desperate to know what he had to say. “I’m not good with feelings, and I’m not good at saying things the right way. So here it is, I’ll just be blunt. I like you. A lot. Actually I love you. And I don’t know why I act so asinine when I see you, and I don’t know why I push you away the way I do....but...I’m sorry. When i saw you laying there after the attack, i felt sick to my stomach think I’d never see you smile again. Hm...speaking of your annoying smile, you’d be happy to know all the students are fine.”

Your heart clenched in your chest, eyes fluttering open with the treat of tears as you looked up at him. “Did you really mean all that?”

Stepping back, aizawas own chest began to grow tight, frustration and anger spilling all over his features “you were awake? Why didn’t you tell me.”

You flinched at the venom in his tone, eyes casting away from his gaze. “I woke up a few minutes ago. I didn’t have time to tell you. You just started talking I didn’t want to interrupt you.” You whispered looking up at him “are the kids really all okay? Did anyone besides me get hurt?”

Amazed, aizawa let his anger drop. You were still so caring, even though you were laid up in recovery girls office by no means okay yourself. Sighing aizawa let his hands rub at the back of his neck, “yeah....they’re okay...”

There was a thick silence between the two of you for a minute before aizawa broke it, clearing his throat “how much of what I said did you hear?”

“I love you too..” you blurred out eyes glancing back up at his once more, your lips pulling into a gentle smile.

The ever so stoned faced teacher, couldn’t fight the warmth that spread across his cheeks, the cool grey tone of his skin vibrant with reds and pinks. “I guess I don’t have to repeat any of what I said then huh.” You just chuckled, hand reaching up to cup his cheek, your body cringing as pain settled in to your bones. The aim of your affections cringed at your pain, but still leaned into your palm, his chest a flutter. “Can I ask you something?”

Your eyes were soft as you gave a gentle nod of your head to encourage his question. Gently turning his face he let his lips rest lightly against your palm as he murmured softly “come out for coffee with me? “

You couldn’t help the blush that appear on your own face now, you giving him a smile “coffee it is. But you have to pay” you laughed joking obviously

He just gave a soft huff, lips turning up st the sides “I can agree to those terms...” Who would have thought Shouta Aizawa would have a date. It would be interesting but you couldn’t wait. You hoped for many more.

[benjaminikuta]

Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe

Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe Matt Roth for The Chronicle Review By Laura Kipnis FEBRUARY 27, 2015

You have to feel a little sorry these days for professors married to their former students. They used to be respectable citizens—leaders in their fields, department chairs, maybe even a dean or two—and now they’re abusers of power avant la lettre. I suspect you can barely throw a stone on most campuses around the country without hitting a few of these neo-miscreants. Who knows what coercions they deployed back in the day to corral those students into submission; at least that’s the fear evinced by today’s new campus dating policies. And think how their kids must feel! A friend of mine is the offspring of such a coupling—does she look at her father a little differently now, I wonder. It’s been barely a year since the Great Prohibition took effect in my own workplace. Before that, students and professors could date whomever we wanted; the next day we were off-limits to one another—verboten, traife, dangerous (and perhaps, therefore, all the more alluring). My Title IX InquisitionWhat’s the good of having a freedom you’re afraid to use? Of course, the residues of the wild old days are everywhere. On my campus, several such "mixed" couples leap to mind, including female professors wed to former students. Not to mention the legions who’ve dated a graduate student or two in their day—plenty of female professors in that category, too—in fact, I’m one of them. Don’t ask for details. It’s one of those things it now behooves one to be reticent about, lest you be branded a predator. Forgive my slightly mocking tone. I suppose I’m out of step with the new realities because I came of age in a different time, and under a different version of feminism, minus the layers of prohibition and sexual terror surrounding the unequal-power dilemmas of today. The fiction of the all-powerful professor that’s embedded in the new campus codes appalls me. When I was in college, hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum. Admittedly, I went to an art school, and mine was the lucky generation that came of age in that too-brief interregnum after the sexual revolution and before AIDS turned sex into a crime scene replete with perpetrators and victims—back when sex, even when not so great or when people got their feelings hurt, fell under the category of life experience. It’s not that I didn’t make my share of mistakes, or act stupidly and inchoately, but it was embarrassing, not traumatizing. As Jane Gallop recalls in Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (1997), her own generational cri de coeur, sleeping with professors made her feel cocky, not taken advantage of. She admits to seducing more than one of them as a grad student—she wanted to see them naked, she says, as like other men. Lots of smart, ambitious women were doing the same thing, according to her, because it was a way to experience your own power. But somehow power seemed a lot less powerful back then. The gulf between students and faculty wasn’t a shark-filled moat; a misstep wasn’t fatal. We partied together, drank and got high together, slept together. The teachers may have been older and more accomplished, but you didn’t feel they could take advantage of you because of it. How would they? Which isn’t to say that teacher-student relations were guaranteed to turn out well, but then what percentage of romances do? No doubt there were jealousies, sometimes things didn’t go the way you wanted—which was probably good training for the rest of life. It was also an excellent education in not taking power too seriously, and I suspect the less seriously you take it, the more strategies you have for contending with it. It’s the fiction of the all-powerful professor embedded in the new campus codes that appalls me. And the kowtowing to the fiction—kowtowing wrapped in a vaguely feminist air of rectitude. If this is feminism, it’s feminism hijacked by melodrama. The melodramatic imagination’s obsession with helpless victims and powerful predators is what’s shaping the conversation of the moment, to the detriment of those whose interests are supposedly being protected, namely students. The result? Students’ sense of vulnerability is skyrocketing. I’ve done what I can to adapt myself to the new paradigm. Around a decade ago, as colleges began instituting new "offensive environment" guidelines, I appointed myself the task of actually reading my university’s sexual-harassment handbook, which I’d thus far avoided doing. I was pleased to learn that our guidelines were less prohibitive than those of the more draconian new codes. You were permitted to date students; you just weren’t supposed to harass them into it. I could live with that. However, we were warned in two separate places that inappropriate humor violates university policy. I’d always thought inappropriateness was pretty much the definition of humor—I believe Freud would agree. Why all this delicacy? Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. Knowing my own propensity for unfunny jokes, and given that telling one could now land you, the unfunny prof, on the carpet or even the national news, I decided to put my name down for one of the voluntary harassment workshops on my campus, hoping that my good citizenship might be noticed and applauded by the relevant university powers. At the appointed hour, things kicked off with a "sexual-harassment pretest." This was administered by an earnest mid-50s psychologist I’ll call David, and an earnest young woman with a master’s in social work I’ll call Beth. The pretest consisted of a long list of true-false questions such as: "If I make sexual comments to someone and that person doesn’t ask me to stop, then I guess that my behavior is probably welcome." Despite the painful dumbness of these questions and the fading of afternoon into evening, a roomful of people with advanced degrees seemed grimly determined to shut up and play along, probably aided by a collective wish to be sprung by cocktail hour. That is, until we were handed a printed list of "guidelines." No. 1 on the list was: "Do not make unwanted sexual advances." Someone demanded querulously from the back, "But how do you know they’re unwanted until you try?" (OK, it was me.) David seemed oddly flustered by the question and began frantically jangling the change in his pants pocket. "Do you really want me to answer that?" he finally responded, trying to make a joke out of it. I did want him to answer, because it’s something I’d been wondering—how are you supposed to know in advance? Do people wear their desires emblazoned on their foreheads?—but I didn’t want to be seen by my colleagues as a troublemaker. There was an awkward pause while David stared me down. Another person piped up helpfully, "What about smoldering glances?" Everyone laughed, but David’s coin-jangling was becoming more pronounced. A theater professor spoke up, guiltily admitting to having complimented a student on her hairstyle that very afternoon (one of the "Do Nots" involved not commenting on students’ appearance) but, as a gay male, wondered whether not to have complimented her would have been grounds for offense. He mimicked the female student, tossing her mane around in a "Notice my hair" manner, and people began shouting suggestions about other dumb pretest scenarios for him to perform, like sexual-harassment charades. Rebellion was in the air. The man sitting next to me, an ethnographer who studied street gangs, whispered, "They’ve lost control of the room." David was jangling his change so frantically that it was hard to keep your eyes off his groin. I recalled a long-forgotten pop-psychology guide to body language that identified change-jangling as an unconscious masturbation substitute. If the leader of our sexual-harassment workshop was engaging in public masturbatory-like behavior, seizing his private pleasure in the midst of the very institutional mechanism designed to clamp such delinquent urges, what hope for the rest of us? Let’s face it: Other people’s sexuality is often just weird and creepy. Sex is leaky and anxiety-ridden; intelligent people can be oblivious about it. Of course the gulf between desire and knowledge has long been a tragicomic staple. Consider some notable treatments of the student-professor hookup theme—J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace; Francine Prose’s Blue Angel; Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections—in which learning has an inverse relation to self-knowledge, professors are emblems of sexual stupidity, and such disasters ensue that it’s hard not to read them as cautionary tales about the disastrous effects of intellect on practical intelligence. The implementers of the new campus codes seemed awfully optimistic about rectifying the condition, I thought to myself. The optimism continues, outpaced only by all the new prohibitions and behavior codes required to sustain it. According to the latest version of our campus policy, "differences in institutional power and the inherent risk of coercion are so great" between teachers and students that no romance, dating, or sexual relationships will be permitted, even between students and professors from different departments. (Relations between graduate students and professors aren’t outright banned, but are "problematic" and must be reported if you’re in the same department.) Yale and other places had already instituted similar policies; Harvard jumped on board last month, though it’s a sign of the incoherence surrounding these issues that the second sentence of The New York Times story on Harvard reads: "The move comes as the Obama administration investigates the handling of accusations of sexual assault at dozens of colleges, including Harvard." As everyone knows, the accusations in the news have been about students assaulting other students, not students dating professors. The climate of sanctimony about student vulnerability has grown impenetrable. No one dares question it lest you’re labeled antifeminist, or worse, a sex criminal. Of course, the codes themselves also shape the narratives and emotional climate of professor-student interactions. An undergraduate sued my own university, alleging that a philosophy professor had engaged in "unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances" and that the university punished him insufficiently for it. The details that emerged in news reports and legal papers were murky and contested, and the suit was eventually thrown out of court. In brief: The two had gone to an art exhibit together—an outing initiated by the student—and then to some other exhibits and bars. She says he bought her alcohol and forced her to drink, so much that by the end of the evening she was going in and out of consciousness. He says she drank of her own volition. (She was under legal drinking age; he says he thought she was 22.) She says he made various sexual insinuations, and that she wanted him to drive her home (they’d driven in his car); he says she insisted on sleeping over at his place. She says she woke up in his bed with his arms around her, and that he groped her. He denies making advances and says she made advances, which he deflected. He says they slept on top of the covers, clothed. Neither says they had sex. He says she sent friendly texts in the days after and wanted to meet. She says she attempted suicide two days later, now has PTSD, and has had to take medical leave. The aftermath has been a score of back-and-forth lawsuits. After trying to get a financial settlement from the professor, the student filed a Title IX suit against the university: She wants her tuition reimbursed, compensation for emotional distress, and other damages. Because the professor wasn’t terminated, when she runs into him it triggers her PTSD, she says. (The university claims that it appropriately sanctioned the professor, denying him a raise and a named chair.) She’s also suing the professor for gender violence. He sued the university for gender discrimination (he says he wasn’t allowed to present evidence disproving the student’s allegations)—this suit was thrown out; so was the student's lawsuit against the university. The professor sued for defamation various colleagues, administrators, and a former grad student whom, according to his complaint, he had previously dated; a judge dismissed those suits this month. He sued local media outlets for using the word "rape" as a synonym for sexual assault—a complaint thrown out by a different judge who said rape was an accurate enough summary of the charges, even though the assault was confined to fondling, which the professor denies occurred. (This professor isn’t someone I know or have met, by the way.) What a mess. And what a slippery slope, from alleged fondler to rapist. But here’s the real problem with these charges: This is melodrama. I’m quite sure that professors can be sleazebags. I’m less sure that any professor can force an unwilling student to drink, especially to the point of passing out. With what power? What sorts of repercussions can there possibly be if the student refuses? Indeed, these are precisely the sorts of situations already covered by existing sexual-harassment codes, so if students think that professors have such unlimited powers that they can compel someone to drink or retaliate if she doesn’t, then these students have been very badly educated about the nature and limits of institutional power. In fact, it’s just as likely that a student can derail a professor’s career these days as the other way around, which is pretty much what happened in the case of the accused philosophy professor. To a cultural critic, the representation of emotion in all these documents plays to the gallery. The student charges that she "suffered and will continue to suffer humiliation, mental and emotional anguish, anxiety, and distress." As I read through the complaint, it struck me that the lawsuit and our new consensual-relations code share a common set of tropes, and a certain narrative inevitability. In both, students and professors are stock characters in a predetermined story. According to the code, students are putty in the hands of all-powerful professors. According to the lawsuit, the student was virtually a rag doll, taken advantage of by a skillful predator who scripted a drunken evening of galleries and bars, all for the opportunity of some groping. Everywhere on campuses today you find scholars whose work elaborates sophisticated models of power and agency. It would be hard to overstate the influence, across disciplines, of Michel Foucault, whose signature idea was that power has no permanent address or valence. Yet our workplaces themselves are promulgating the crudest version of top-down power imaginable, recasting the professoriate as Snidely Whiplashes twirling our mustaches and students as helpless damsels tied to railroad tracks. Students lack volition and independent desires of their own; professors are would-be coercers with dastardly plans to corrupt the innocent. Even the language these policies come packaged in seems designed for maximum stupefaction, with students eager to add their voices to the din. Shortly after the new policy went into effect on my campus, we all received a long email from the Title IX Coordinating Committee. This was in the midst of student protests about the continued employment of the accused philosophy professor: 100 or so students, mouths taped shut (by themselves), had marched on the dean’s office (a planned sit-in of the professor’s class went awry when he pre-emptively canceled it). The committee was responding to a student-government petition demanding that "survivors" be informed about the outcomes of sexual-harassment investigations. The petition also demanded that the new policies be amended to include possible termination of faculty members who violate its provisions. There was more, but my eye was struck by the word "survivor," which was repeated several times. Wouldn’t the proper term be "accuser"? How can someone be referred to as a survivor before a finding on the accusation—assuming we don’t want to predetermine the guilt of the accused, that is. At the risk of sounding like some bow-tied neocon columnist, this is also a horrifying perversion of the language by people who should know better. Are you seriously telling me, I wanted to ask the Title IX Committee, that the same term now encompasses both someone allegedly groped by a professor and my great-aunt, who lived through the Nazi death camps? I emailed an inquiry to this effect to the university’s general counsel, one of the email’s signatories, but got no reply. For the record, I strongly believe that bona fide harassers should be chemically castrated, stripped of their property, and hung up by their thumbs in the nearest public square. Let no one think I’m soft on harassment. But I also believe that the myths and fantasies about power perpetuated in these new codes are leaving our students disabled when it comes to the ordinary interpersonal tangles and erotic confusions that pretty much everyone has to deal with at some point in life, because that’s simply part of the human condition. In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound. Gropers become rapists and accusers become survivors, opening the door for another panicky conflation: teacher-student sex and incest. Recall that it was incest victims who earlier popularized the use of the term "survivor," previously reserved for those who’d survived the Holocaust. The migration of the term itself is telling, exposing the core anxiety about teacher-student romances: that there’s a whiff of perversity about such couples, notwithstanding all the venerable married ones. These are anxious times for officialdom, and students, too, are increasingly afflicted with the condition—after all, anxiety is contagious. Around the time the "survivor" email arrived, something happened that I’d never experienced in many decades of teaching, which was that two students—one male, one female—in two classes informed me, separately, that they were unable to watch assigned films because they "triggered" something for them. I was baffled by the congruence until the following week, when the Times ran a story titled "Trauma Warnings Move From the Internet to the Ivory Tower," and the word "trigger" was suddenly all over the news. I didn’t press the two students on the nature of these triggers. I knew them both pretty well from previous classes, and they’d always seemed well-adjusted enough, so I couldn’t help wondering. One of the films dealt with fascism and bigotry: The triggeree was a minority student, though not the minority targeted in the film. Still, I could see what might be upsetting. In the other case, the connection between the student and the film was obscure: no overlapping identity categories, and though there was some sexual content in the film, it wasn’t particularly explicit. We exchanged emails about whether she should sit out the discussion, too; I proposed that she attend and leave if it got uncomfortable. I was trying to be empathetic, though I was also convinced that I was impeding her education rather than contributing to it. I teach in a film program. We’re supposed to be instilling critical skills in our students (at least that’s how I see it), even those who aspire to churn out formulaic dreck for Hollywood. Which is how I framed it to my student: If she hoped for a career in the industry, getting more critical distance on material she found upsetting would seem advisable, given the nature of even mainstream media. I had an image of her in a meeting with a bunch of execs, telling them that she couldn’t watch one of the company’s films because it was a trigger for her. She agreed this could be a problem, and sat in on the discussion with no discernable ill effects. But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can’t help asking, because there’s a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it’s pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn. Here’s a story that brought the point home for me. I was talking to a woman who’d just published her first book. She was around 30, a friend of a friend. The book had started at a major trade press, then ended up published by a different press, and I was curious why. She alluded to problems with her first editor. I pressed for details, and out they came in a rush. Her editor had developed a sort of obsession with her, constantly calling, taking her out for fancy meals, and eventually confessing his love. Meanwhile, he wasn’t reading the chapters she gave him; in fact, he was doing barely any work on the manuscript at all. She wasn’t really into him, though she admitted that if she’d been more attracted to him, it might have been another story. But for him, it was escalating. He wanted to leave his wife for her! There were kids, too, a bunch of them. Still no feedback on the chapters. Meanwhile he was Skyping her in his underwear from hotel rooms and complaining about his marriage, and she was letting it go on because she felt that her fate was in his hands. Nothing really happened between them—well, maybe a bit of fumbling, but she kept him at a distance. The thing was that she didn’t want to rebuff him too bluntly because she was worried about the fate of her book—worried he’d reject the manuscript, she’d have to pay back the advance, and she’d never get it published anywhere else. I’d actually once met this guy—he’d edited a friend’s book (badly). He was sort of a nebbish, hard to see as threatening. "Did you talk to your agent?" I asked the woman. I was playing the situation out in my mind, wondering what I’d do. No, she hadn’t talked to her agent, for various reasons, including fears that she’d led the would-be paramour on and that her book wasn’t any good. Suddenly the editor left for a job at another press, and the publisher called the contract, demanding a final manuscript, which was overdue and nowhere near finished. In despair, the author finally confessed the situation to our mutual friend, another writer, who employed the backbone-stiffening phrase "sexual harassment" and insisted that the woman get her agent involved. Which she did, and the agent negotiated an exit deal with the publisher by explaining what had taken place. The author was let out of the contract and got to take the book to another press. What struck me most, hearing the story, was how incapacitated this woman had felt, despite her advanced degree and accomplishments. The reason, I think, was that she imagined she was the only vulnerable one in the situation. But look at the editor: He was married, with a midlevel job in the scandal-averse world of corporate publishing. It simply wasn’t the case that he had all the power in the situation or nothing to lose. He may have been an occluded jerk, but he was also a fairly human-sized one. So that’s an example of a real-world situation, postgraduation. Somehow I don’t see the publishing industry instituting codes banning unhappily married editors from going goopy over authors, though even with such a ban, will any set of regulations ever prevent affective misunderstandings and erotic crossed signals, compounded by power differentials, compounded further by subjective levels of vulnerability? The question, then, is what kind of education prepares people to deal with the inevitably messy gray areas of life? Personally I’d start by promoting a less vulnerable sense of self than the one our new campus codes are peddling. Maybe I see it this way because I wasn’t educated to think that holders of institutional power were quite so fearsome, nor did the institutions themselves seem so mighty. Of course, they didn’t aspire to reach quite as deeply into our lives back then. What no one’s much saying about the efflorescence of these new policies is the degree to which they expand the power of the institutions themselves. As for those of us employed by them, what power we have is fairly contingent, especially lately. Get real: What’s more powerful—a professor who crosses the line, or the shaming capabilities of social media? For myself, I don’t much want to date students these days, but it’s not like I don’t understand the appeal. Recently I was at a book party, and a much younger man, an assistant professor, started a conversation. He reminded me that we’d met a decade or so ago, when he was a grad student—we’d been at some sort of event and sat next to each other. He said he thought we’d been flirting. In fact, he was sure we’d been flirting. I searched my memory. He wasn’t in it, though I didn’t doubt his recollection; I’ve been known to flirt. He couldn’t believe I didn’t remember him. I apologized. He pretended to be miffed. I pretended to be regretful. I asked him about his work. He told me about it, in a charming way. Wait a second, I thought, was he flirting with me now? As an aging biological female, and all too aware of what that means in our culture, I was skeptical. On the heels of doubt came a surge of joy: "Still got it," crowed some perverse inner imp in silent congratulation, jackbooting the reality principle into assent. My psyche broke out the champagne, and all of us were in a far better mood for the rest of the evening. Intergenerational desire has always been a dilemma as well as an occasion for mutual fascination. Whether or not it’s a brilliant move, plenty of professors I know, male and female, have hooked up with students, though informal evidence suggests that female professors do it less, and rarely with undergraduates. (The gender asymmetries here would require a dozen more articles to explicate.) Some of these professors act well, some are jerks, and it would benefit students to learn the identifying marks of the latter breed early on, because postcollegiate life is full of them. I propose a round of mandatory workshops on this useful topic for all students, beginning immediately. But here’s another way to look at it: the longue durée. Societies keep reformulating the kinds of cautionary stories they tell about intergenerational erotics and the catastrophes that result, starting with Oedipus. The details vary; so do the kinds of catastrophes prophesied—once it was plagues and crop failure, these days it’s psychological trauma. Even over the past half-century, the story keeps getting reconfigured. In the preceding era, the Freudian version reigned: Children universally desire their parents, such desires meet up with social prohibitions—the incest taboo—and become repressed. Neurosis ensues. These days the desire persists, but what’s shifted is the direction of the arrows. Now it’s parents—or their surrogates, teachers—who do all the desiring; children are conveniently returned to innocence. So long to childhood sexuality, the most irksome part of the Freudian story. So too with the new campus dating codes, which also excise student desire from the story, extending the presumption of the innocent child well into his or her collegiate career. Except that students aren’t children. Among the problems with treating students like children is that they become increasingly childlike in response. The New York Times Magazine recently reported on the tangled story of a 21-year-old former Stanford undergraduate suing a 29-year-old tech entrepreneur she’d dated for a year. He’d been a mentor in a business class she was enrolled in, though they’d met long before. They traveled together and spent time with each other’s families. Marriage was discussed. After they broke up, she charged that their consensual relationship had actually been psychological kidnapping, and that she’d been raped every time they’d had sex. She seems to regard herself as a helpless child in a woman’s body. She demanded that Stanford investigate and is bringing a civil suit against the guy—this despite the fact that her own mother had introduced the couple, approved the relationship every step of the way, and been in more or less constant contact with the suitor. No doubt some 21-year-olds are fragile and emotionally immature (helicopter parenting probably plays a role), but is this now to be our normative conception of personhood? A 21-year-old incapable of consent? A certain brand of radical feminist—the late Andrea Dworkin, for one—held that women’s consent was meaningless in the context of patriarchy, but Dworkin was generally considered an extremist. She’d have been gratified to hear that her convictions had finally gone mainstream, not merely driving campus policy but also shaping the basic social narratives of love and romance in our time. It used to be said of many enclaves in academe that they were old-boys clubs and testosterone-fueled, no doubt still true of certain disciplines. Thanks to institutional feminism’s successes, some tides have turned, meaning that menopausal women now occupy more positions of administrative power, edging out at least some of the old boys and bringing a different hormonal style—a more delibidinalized one, perhaps—to bear on policy decisions. And so the pendulum swings, overshooting the middle ground by a hundred miles or so. The feminism I identified with as a student stressed independence and resilience. In the intervening years, the climate of sanctimony about student vulnerability has grown too thick to penetrate; no one dares question it lest you’re labeled antifeminist. Or worse, a sex criminal. I asked someone on our Faculty Senate if there’d been any pushback when the administration presented the new consensual-relations policy (though by then it was a fait accompli—the senate’s role was "advisory"). "I don’t quite know how to characterize the willingness of my supposed feminist colleagues to hand over the rights of faculty—women as well as men—to administrators and attorneys in the name of protection from unwanted sexual advances," he said. "I suppose the word would be ‘zeal.’" His own view was that the existing sexual-harassment policy already protected students from coercion and a hostile environment; the new rules infantilized students and presumed the guilt of professors. When I asked if I could quote him, he begged for anonymity, fearing vilification from his colleagues. These are things you’re not supposed to say on campuses now. But let’s be frank. To begin with, if colleges and universities around the country were in any way serious about policies to prevent sexual assaults, the path is obvious: Don’t ban teacher-student romance, ban fraternities. And if we want to limit the potential for sexual favoritism—another rationale often proffered for the new policies—then let’s include the institutionalized sexual favoritism of spousal hiring, with trailing spouses getting ranks and perks based on whom they’re sleeping with rather than CVs alone, and brought in at salaries often dwarfing those of senior and more accomplished colleagues who didn’t have the foresight to couple more advantageously. Lastly: The new codes sweeping American campuses aren’t just a striking abridgment of everyone’s freedom, they’re also intellectually embarrassing. Sexual paranoia reigns; students are trauma cases waiting to happen. If you wanted to produce a pacified, cowering citizenry, this would be the method. And in that sense, we’re all the victims. Laura Kipnis is a professor in the department of radio, television, and film at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of Men: Notes From an Ongoing Investigation (Metropolitan Books). Correction (3/3/2015, 2:40 p.m.): This article originally stated that several lawsuits brought by a student at Northwestern University had been thrown out of court. Only one such suit was thrown out. The article has been updated to reflect this correction. Clarification (3/30/2015, 10:45 a.m.): This article originally stated that a philosophy professor at Northwestern University sued, among others, a former graduate student of his whom he had previously dated. It would be more accurate to say that he had dated her according to his complaint. The article has been updated to reflect this clarification.

[paylolorens-blog]

New Methods Of Fight Against Excess Weight

New Methods Of Fight Against Excess Weight. Few situations can false step up someone who is watching their preponderance like an all-you-can-eat buffet. But a new check in letter published in the April 2013 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggests two strategies that may helper dieters survive a smorgasbord: Picking up a smaller plate and circling the buffet before choosing what to eat. Buffets have two things that engender nutritionists' eyebrows - absolute portions and tons of choices as an example. Both can crank up the calorie count of a meal. So "Research shows that when faced with a contrast of food at one sitting, people tend to eat more neosize plus. It is the draw of wanting to try a variety of foods that makes it particularly hard not to overeat at a buffet," says Rachel Begun, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She was not intricate with the supplementary study. Still, some people don't overeat at buffets, and that made study originator Brian Wansink, director of the food and brand lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, marvel how they restrain themselves kya boob dabanese girl ko pain hoti. "People often say that the only way not to overeat at a buffet is not to go to a buffet a psychologist who studies the environmental cues linked to overeating. But there are a ton of multitude at buffets who are really skinny. We wondered: What is it that hollow-cheeked people do at buffets that heavy people don't?" Wansink deployed a set of 30 trained observers who painstakingly collected information about the eating habits of more than 300 persons who visited 22 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurants in six states. Tucked away in corners where they could watch over unobtrusively, the observers checked 103 different things about the way common man behaved around the buffet. They logged information about whom diners were with and where they sat - close or far from the buffet, in a plateau or booth, facing toward or away from the buffet. Observers also noted what kind of utensils diners utilized - forks or chopsticks - whether they placed a napkin in their laps, and even how many times they chewed a only mouthful of food. They also were taught to estimate a person's body-mass index, or BMI, on sight. Body-mass token is the ratio of a person's weight to their height, and doctors use it to gauge whether a person is overweight. The results of the read revealed key differences in how thinner and heavier people approached a buffet. And "Skinny hoi polloi are more likely to scout out the food. They're more likely to look at the different alternatives before they spring on something. Heavy people just tend to pick up a plate and look at each item and say, 'Do I want it? Yes or no.'" In other words, undernourished people nurse to ask themselves which dishes they most want out of all the choices offered, while heavier people ask themselves whether they want each food, one at a time. Thin race also were about seven times more likely to pick smaller plates if they were available than those who were heavy. Those behaviors also appeared to inform people eat less. People who scouted the buffet first and hand-me-down a smaller plate also made fewer trips to the buffet, whatever their weight. There were other key differences in how thinner and heavier occupy acted. Thin people sat about 16 feet farther away from the buffet, on average, than bigger people. They also chewed their sustenance a little longer - about 15 chews per bite for those who were normal weight compared with 12 chews for those who were overweight. Those behaviors weren't associated with taking fewer trips to the buffet, but researchers contemplate they may be habits that daily thinner people regulate their weight. The interesting thing was that almost all of these changes were unconscious to the woman making them. They essentially become habits over time. A nutrition expert who was not involved in the go into praised the research, but questioned whether these strategies might really be powerful enough help. "As with all of Wansink's observations, these are insightful and useful," said Dr David Katz, administrator of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, in New Haven, Conn "But in some ways, they are love looking for the reasons why some folk got wet sooner than others when the Titanic went down. The bigger issue was: The carry was sinking, and everyone was in the same boat". Katz said the best advice for dieters might be to avoid a buffet's temptations in the beforehand place. "By all means, survey the scene and choose a small plate peyronie's disease treatment in tuscumbia. But, better yet, circumvent the all-you-can-eat buffet altogether".

[wagihyoussef]

Art, Tradition, and Architecture

Abstract

Most historical causes emerge from mistakes that men make about the world, that is why those historians who were independently prepared to take subjectivity into account make so many mistakes about causes. Perceptions vary in predictable ways with time, and social status; that is why individual sets of minds lend themselves to sociological inquiry. But perceptions vary also with temperament, with unconscious conflicts, with disharmonies among the public sources of perception. An individual incorporates the shapes of his culture, his craft, and his family, but his character is a unique mixture of conformity. He is not a receptacle for external influences, not always an effect but often a cause.

Keywords: cause, thing-free, perception, functionalism,

Introduction

A tradition may be a fanciful mask for sordid motives, but it may also be a repository for precious craft, wisdom and an authentic defense of threatened standards. The historian needs a more and entirely different kind of light from psychology than this. He needs theories that will permit him to construct an explanation of all conduct and motives, rational and irrational, intelligent or realistic, and he needs those theories because he renders psychological verdicts much of the time, deriving them quite unsatisfactorily from common sense, and from bold, rationalistic interests. The historian uses psychoanalysis as a way of seeing. If history teaches anything, it is that the unexpected is to be expected. The nonrational component in human experience is quite simple and pervasive. Each historical world generates historical causes of its own, even though each of these worlds initially emerges to satisfy some elemental urge. The variety of causes for their life’s work is not of their own creating, it is an overwhelming fact of their existence. Most men do not make their world, they find it. Most of what they think, feel, perceive, and do is no more than unreflective reenactment of social habits, and cultural stereotypes. The innovator is indebted to materials that the past has provided for him. Man, without culture is not merely deficient, he is unthinkable. His very language, including the formulas with which he rejects the past, is anchored in the collective atmosphere into which he is born. Sigmund Freud said there are only two sciences: psychology, pure and applied, and natural science. Sociology, the study of human behavior of people in society was nothing more than applied psychology. The historian lives in the world of the middle range and the middle size. He is in the position of the architect who makes do with Newtonian gravity or Euclidean geometry, since the language of quantum physics and modern mathematics apply to worlds either much larger or much smaller in which he piles his trade.

Talent and Tradition

Modern artists found inspiration a highly problematic endowment. Many artists saw it as the source of their originality. And that originality defines their personal talent, their relation to the tradition. Some of the most self-assertive of modern architects have acknowledged their public’s share in the making of architectural art and sculpture. Paul Rudolph has said, “sculpture is never architecture and architecture is never sculpture.” There has to be a balance. Buildings have to be of three qualities: durability, convenience and beauty. These do not add up to an architect’s license for aesthetic willfulness, but if an architect has a distinctive forceful talent, it would offer a persuasive argument that his private vision has played a significant part in his public performance.

In architectural perception there exists a tension between surface and depth perception. Architects pay little attention to the coherent things shaped around them. They may dissect them into arbitrary fragments and region them into irrational forms to suit their unconscious urge for symbolization. In other words, architectural perception tends to be not only Gestalt-free, but also thing-free. We observe this thing-free model better in primitive or irrational types of architecture which also demonstrate the Gestalt-free modes of perception. We see how in some primitive architecture the unconscious symbolism hidden in the building’s form may distort the realistic appearance of the outlines. Real things impress us in buildings by their constancy. They appear to be the same in spite of their many varying aspects of geometrical shapes.

Mass Production and the International Style

Architecture responds to social pressures in the most conspicuous memorials to its engagement with the world. Nor do private dwellings every wholly escape the public dimension. Many seekers after shelter restrict their fantasies to domestic memories of their childhood and are satisfied with duplicating the tastes of their parents. If architects really wanted to develop a genuine historically valid form of expression, they would have to revolutionize the visual education of the young and at the same time make intensive studies of mass production in housing. Overloading and false romanticism in place of good proportions and practical simplicity have for all purposes became the tendency of our age. Mass production had proved beneficial in combining the highest quality of raw material, and labor with low prices, to treat houses as industrial products would have to employ technology in the service of cultural ends. The road to the future lay in the intelligent application of prefabrication and standardization. The noisy debate between Expressionists and Rationalists, between adversaries and advocates of the machine, between champions of the solitary genius and those of anonymous designers, between ancients and moderns was in fact anything but the clear combat that the spectacle of public discord makes it appear.

Architecture has been complicated by the proliferation of the glass cages and concrete prisons that have come to dominate the office districts in the name of the International style. The most celebrated designers of our time have given the public not what it wants but what they have been grimly confident it ought to want. Looking at the cities, the universities, the suburbs built in our century we can hardly dismiss this posture as mere pose. It is true that the architect with a new sense of space, a new grasp of material, a new perception of form needs more than the scale model to test his ideas. The innovator must offend reigning taste. The modernist slogan, functionalism, which is associated with Gropius has obscured its essential flexibility. Dogmatism in fact was its enemy. Construction of a livable space was its overriding consideration. Functionalism includes comfort, intimacy, and aesthetic satisfaction. The beautiful is always truthful. To be expressive and flexible with spaces, to deploy materials candidly, was only half of the architect’s assignment. The aesthetic, though inseparable from the useful, could not properly be reduced to it. The liberation of architecture from ornament, the emphasis on its structural functions, and the concentration on concise and economic solutions, represent the purely material side of that formalizing process on which the practical value of the new architecture depends. The aesthetic satisfaction of the human soul is just as important as the material. Both find their counterpart in that unity which is life itself.

Before modernism, symbols and signs were common cultural property. Everyone knew the meaning of art as constituting a moment of frozen history, insolently refusing to age while generations who know the way to decorative designs owe nothing to familiar shapes but discussing the possibilities of synesthesia, which playfully experimenting with color and taste of sounds, or the sound of colors and letters served to emancipate art from anecdotes, from resemblances as from natural appearances and declared that all art aspire towards the condition of music, as it were the character for abstract art rejecting the sentiment of romanticism. They were searching for the purity in art, and for universal principles of beauty not being mere sensations. They thought of Cubism for taking a step toward abstraction. Artists had them see the possibility of doing art without the natural aspect of form, using straight lines placed in rectangular positions. The adage became ‘modern art is for modern man.’

The Search for Order and Clarity

Those rhythmic and relentless rectangles of Cubism may speak for search of order and clarity amidst the chaos of modernity. Then the cultivated men gradually turned away from the natural and headed towards the abstract life. This made the public aware of the possibilities of pure plastic art and to demonstrate its relationship to, and its effect on, modern life in accord with the spirit of modern times. The task of plastic art was to bring clarity into the world, a matter that is of great importance to humanity. It is the task of art to express a clear vision of reality. This made the artist appear as a liberator by freeing mankind from subjectivity, from confusion and from the oppression of time. The world then is caught in a struggle between antagonistic forces, chaos, disequilibrium, confusion battling order, balance and clarity. Art and life illuminate each other, they reveal their laws according to which a real and living balance is created towards clarity and purity. Pure intuition contains a psychological component. The art of architecture exerts itself in a true space, one in which we walk and which the activity of our bodies occupies.

A building is not a collection of surfaces, but an assemblage of parts in which length, width and depth agree with one another in a certain fashion and constitute an entirely new solid that comprises an internal volume and an external mass. The architectural masses are determined by the relationship of the parts to each other, and the parts to the whole. A building moreover is rarely a single mass. It is rather a combination of secondary masses and principal masses. This treatment of space attains and extraordinary degree of power, variety, and virtuosity. The space that presses evenly on a continuous mass is as immobile as that of mass itself. But the space that penetrates the voids of the mass, and is invaded by the proliferation of its reliefs, is mobile. This architecture of movement assumes the qualities of wind, of flame, and of light; it moves within a fluid space. The architecture of stable masses defines a massive space. Mass offers the double and simultaneous aspect of internal mass and external mass, and that the relation of one to the other is a matter of peculiar interest to the study of form in space. Exterior volumes and their profiles interpose a new and entirely human element upon the horizon of natural forms, to which their conformity or harmony, when most carefully calculated, always adds something unexpected.

The unique privilege of architecture among all the arts is not that of surrounding as it were, guaranteeing a convenient void, but of constructing an interior world that measures space and light according to the laws of geometrical, mechanical, and optical theory which is necessary implicit in the natural order, but to which nature itself contributes nothing. Light not only illuminates the internal mass but collaborates with the architecture to give it its needed form. Light itself is a form, since the rays streaming forth at predetermined points are compressed, attenuated, or stretched in order to pick out variously unified and accented members of the building, for the purpose either of tranquilizing it or of giving it vivacity. Light is form.

Abstract Building Design and Misuse of Materials

Peasant architecture was swept away and replaced by a sophisticated one. Industrial revolution’s design for mass consumption improved dexterity. This explains the phenomenon of the collapse of aesthetic values, it also explains why it is that the most forward-pointing work so often came from outsiders. The reason why it came from engineers is that the century was one of materialism and of science and technology. The progress was made at the expense of aesthetic sensibility of the kind that would have granted acceptance to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The Crystal Palace met with success, but so also did the horrors of decorative art displayed in it. Nowadays, architects consider their buildings to be liberated from the local and specific demands that had shaped architecture in the past. They are directed to design buildings of simplified geometric form in the abstract, deriving its form from the symbolic sheathing of the building frame. The nature of the architectural product changed completely, and the result was a characteristic building type that used far more energy than the buildings it succeeded. This change of building design is widely accepted.

The materials of buildings changed from natural material to synthetic ones, with an increase in the amount of energy needed to produce them. The form developed from an effort to speed design and construction by making as many components as typical as possible. Architects depended on mechanical cooling to compensate for the heat gain on the outside from the sun, and on the inside from artificial lighting and body heat. Moreover, curtain walls have far weaker performance in resisting heat loss during the winter. Mies van der Rohe’s project for an all glass tall building became the holy grail for our generation of architects, even though the performance of glass as a material developed to double glazing with various coatings. The partially mirrored glass that reflects radiant heat and the sun’s heat away from the building while still allowing vision is more energy consumptive than clear glass. Misuse and overuse of materials to perform specific functions are unacceptable aesthetically as they are economically. The extensive use of plastics and synthetics in place of natural materials has also increased energy use. Today, vinyl and vinyl asbestos are the predominantly available replacement, but they tend to break down suddenly under extended ultraviolet light or sheer passage of time. Architects and engineers are now talking of total energy systems for buildings.

Conclusion

In the pursuit on the part of the historian to explain what made something happen, but is reluctant to theorize about it, he is not likely to take his instances from art, but to draw his classic examples from portentous catastrophes. Historians who have offered explanations of their causes have never commanded general assent. The arts follow civilization and spring from all its customs. Most artists are convinced that art expresses the worlds in which it was made; their argument employs openly or covertly the language of cause. It understands art to be an effect. To assign the dimensions of breadth and depth to art is only the beginning of wisdom. Each sort of human activity has its characteristic cluster and hierarchy of causes. Yet, while the distribution of causes varies in expected ways, each event contains types of causes in combinations that we can surmise but not wholly determine in advance. Art enjoys so special a status in historical analysis. And even in those rare instances in which causes prove to be principally of one sort, the kind of which the historian is likely to find by, rather than preceding, investigation. Cause is a conjurer, concealing tricks in its capacious bag that even the experienced cannot wholly anticipate. Private motives and responses can never provide the explanation of an event because an event never wholly corresponds to individual intentions, or even to the sum of their conflicts. The historic event is a compromised formation, psychological cause can provide only part of the impetus resulting in what we see. There is a cause for everything, but we do not know it. To know, to understand is happiness.

[lovemiraclehunter-blog]

New Methods Of Fight Against Excess Weight

New Methods Of Fight Against Excess Weight. Few situations can frisk up someone who is watching their authority like an all-you-can-eat buffet. But a new scrutinize letter published in the April 2013 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggests two strategies that may assistance dieters survive a smorgasbord: Picking up a smaller plate and circling the buffet before choosing what to eat. Buffets have two things that run up nutritionists' eyebrows - extensive portions and tons of choices serial aunties saree view exbii. Both can crank up the calorie count of a meal. So "Research shows that when faced with a mixture of food at one sitting, people tend to eat more male enhancement. It is the attraction of wanting to try a variety of foods that makes it particularly hard not to overeat at a buffet," says Rachel Begun, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She was not complicated with the altered study. Still, some people don't overeat at buffets, and that made study founder Brian Wansink, director of the food and brand lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, curiosity how they restrain themselves m. "People often say that the only way not to overeat at a buffet is not to go to a buffet a psychologist who studies the environmental cues linked to overeating. But there are a ton of nation at buffets who are really skinny. We wondered: What is it that lank people do at buffets that heavy people don't?" Wansink deployed a group of 30 trained observers who painstakingly collected information about the eating habits of more than 300 public who visited 22 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurants in six states. Tucked away in corners where they could take care of unobtrusively, the observers checked 103 different things about the way persons behaved around the buffet. They logged information about whom diners were with and where they sat - close or far from the buffet, in a present or booth, facing toward or away from the buffet. Observers also noted what kind of utensils diners second-hand - forks or chopsticks - whether they placed a napkin in their laps, and even how many times they chewed a one mouthful of food. They also were taught to estimate a person's body-mass index, or BMI, on sight. Body-mass token is the ratio of a person's weight to their height, and doctors use it to gauge whether a person is overweight. The results of the analyse revealed key differences in how thinner and heavier people approached a buffet. And "Skinny hoi polloi are more likely to scout out the food. They're more likely to look at the different alternatives before they leap on something. Heavy people just tend to pick up a plate and look at each item and say, 'Do I want it? Yes or no.'" In other words, meagre people have to ask themselves which dishes they most want out of all the choices offered, while heavier people ask themselves whether they want each food, one at a time. Thin masses also were about seven times more likely to pick smaller plates if they were available than those who were heavy. Those behaviors also appeared to advise people eat less. People who scouted the buffet first and hand-me-down a smaller plate also made fewer trips to the buffet, whatever their weight. There were other key differences in how thinner and heavier multitude acted. Thin people sat about 16 feet farther away from the buffet, on average, than bigger people. They also chewed their eatables a little longer - about 15 chews per spoonful for those who were normal weight compared with 12 chews for those who were overweight. Those behaviors weren't associated with taking fewer trips to the buffet, but researchers meditate they may be habits that hand thinner people regulate their weight. The interesting thing was that almost all of these changes were unconscious to the being making them. They essentially become habits over time. A nutrition expert who was not involved in the examination praised the research, but questioned whether these strategies might really be powerful enough help. "As with all of Wansink's observations, these are insightful and useful," said Dr David Katz, overseer of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, in New Haven, Conn "But in some ways, they are as though looking for the reasons why some relations got wet sooner than others when the Titanic went down. The bigger issue was: The dispatch was sinking, and everyone was in the same boat". Katz said the best advice for dieters might be to avoid a buffet's temptations in the ahead place. "By all means, survey the scene and choose a small plate shop for vimax in birmingham. But, better yet, keep off the all-you-can-eat buffet altogether".

[aewriting]

WIP Wednesday

I’ve been posting some excerpts from a fic idea that hit me earlier this week (a Lost Decade AU), and I figured I’d post it all in one place for WIP Wednesday, with some additional content.  Enjoy!

Warning for Jesse Manes, alcohol use, homophobia, strong language, threatening behavior, violent thoughts.

***

“Another round, Roberto!”

Roberto eyes him warily. “I dunno, man. Maria said - “

“Maria loves me,” Michael says, waggling an eyebrow and leaning over the bar. He sees Roberto swallow nervously. “We go way back. Class of ‘08, Roswell High,” he says, and slams the rest of his shot.

“I’ll handle this, Roberto,” he hears, and there’s DeLuca suddenly, looking... well, hot as fuck, honestly, but also pissed as hell.

She snatches Michael’s empty glass off the bar. “The fuck are you doing, Guerin?” She wrinkles her nose at him. “You’re so past shitfaced right now, even for you. And you can’t afford it. You were already in the hole - “

“Would have remembered that,” he says suggestively, just to be an ass about it.

“Oh my god,” Maria mutters. “That’s it. You’re done.”

“Sorry, that was stupid.”

“Nope, you’re done,” she repeats. “You’re done tonight.” She shoves his hat toward him, across the bar. “And don’t come back till you can pay. In full.”

“How much does he owe you, Maria?”

Michael’s eyes narrow, because Maria’s just frozen. She’d looked angry, before, fiery. The anger’s still there, but now it’s... cold. Contained.

Jaw tight, she glances at Michael, then at the man behind him. “Including tonight? $90, give or take.”

Michael’s eyes widen as two crisp fifty dollar bills are placed on the bar, quickly followed by a third.

“That’s to cover his tab. And your troubles. With whatever’s left, I’ll take two glasses of your best whiskey. For me and the young man, here.”

Michael can see Maria’s need for cash warring with her evident dislike of this man. He sees the moment she decides, quickly palming the money, holding the bills tight in her clenched fist.

“Coming up,” she says tightly, casting a quick little glance toward Michael before she goes that looks almost... concerned?

No matter. Michael heaves a sigh. Some old guy wants to buy him a drink, the least he can do is lay on some charm. “I’m awfully grateful - “ he starts as he slowly turns around.

Freezes.

Because it’s Jesse Manes behind him, looking at him with those cold eyes.

“Hello, Michael.”

Michael hates the panic that starts rising in him. He grabs his hat, begins to stand.

Feels Jesse grip his hand, the left one. “Sit. Down.”

He could snap every finger, right now. It would be nearly effortless. If they were alone, he might do it... might do worse. But Maria’s watching them, out of the corner of her eye. This is so public.

And there’s Alex.

Alex who... Michael takes a moment to calculate in his fuzzy head. Alex who is probably back on base by now. Maybe. Preparing to fucking deploy. Alex who is still uncomfortably intertwined with his monster of a father, and while Michael doesn’t mind causing trouble for himself - hell, that was his whole purpose in coming to the Pony tonight and getting brain meltingly drunk - he’ll be damned if he causes trouble for Alex.

So he sits down.

“Good boy,” Jesse says with a smug little grin, like Michael’s a goddamn dog.

“Here,” Maria says curtly, placing two glasses of whiskey on the bar in front of them, frowning as she stares at Jesse’s strong hand covering Michael’s wrecked one.

Jesse gives her a little nod as Michael tugs his hand away, flexing it unconsciously. Jesse picks up a glass, takes a small sip. Stares at Michael. “Drink up.” Michael just looks at him, so tense. Jesse shrugs a little. “Didn’t take you as one to turn down free liquor.”

He’s managed to avoid Jesse Manes for over seven years. He, he’s seen him a few times - walking around town, at the Crashdown, one memorable morning at the Sheriff’s station while Michael was still in the drunk tank. But there was no avoiding now. Michael picks up the whiskey, drinks a little. The burn is worse than usual, despite the improved quality.

Jesse narrows his eyes at him. “We need to talk, Michael.”

Michael keeps his mouth shut. Frowns.

Jesse leans in a bit, and Michael tries hard not to instinctively back away. “You’ve been messing around with something that belongs to me,” he says, voice low and cold.

And at that, Michael can’t contain himself. “He doesn’t belong to you,” he says harshly, probably too loud for this particular setting.

Jesse raises an eyebrow. “Well at least you’re not denying it.”

“Nothing to fucking deny.”

Jesse’s mouth twists a bit. “No. Suppose you don’t think so, the way you rub everyone else’s face in your own filth.”

How dare he. Michael... Michael could hurt this man. Wants to hurt this man. Thinks of the ways he’s hurt Alex. Thinks of the way Alex makes Michael hide their interactions, be so careful.

Jesse takes a small little sip of his drink, shakes his head. “Thought I was very clear. Years ago,” he says, looking pointedly at Michael’s hand. “This thing between the two of you needs to stop.”

Michael swallows down his own fury, his own intense bitterness and hurt. It feels... bizarre to be having this conversation with Jesse Manes, of all people, when he’s never talked about it with anyone else. Not even Alex, really.

“There... there’s no thing,” Michael says, hating how wounded he sounds. Because there isn’t. Not... not that there ever was, not really, but Michael had at least had hope before, at times. After this last time, though, the things he and Alex had said...

Jesse scoffs, shakes his head. “I followed you. To the motel.” Michael can feel his stomach drop. “Heard the two of you. Like... like animals,” Jesse says, tone dripping with revulsion. He looks right at Michael then. “Saw some of the marks you left him with, that he tried to hide.”

Michael’s willing his breath to remain even, willing himself not to shatter every glass in this damn bar. “What did you do to him?” he asks, voice low and dangerous.

“Not a damn thing,” Jesse says. “Drove him back to base so he can ship off to Iraq and continue to serve his country like the decorated airman he is.”

Michael scoffs, rolls his eyes.

Jesse glares at him. “Do you know what he’s risking? Every time he’s with you?” He shakes his head. “Has he told you?”

Michael’s looking at him blankly.

“That’s what I thought,” Jesse says tightly. Leans back in seat a bit. “I kept up with you over the years. So I know about the drunk and disorderlies, the petty theft, the lewd behavior and indecency charges.” He narrows his eyes. “Alex know how often you’re down here, drinking cheap liquor you can’t afford, leaving with anyone that’ll have you?”

Michael can feel his face flushing, the sting of tears just below the surface. He looks down, sniffs, plasters on a shit eating grin. “You have been keeping a close watch. Could make a guy wonder,” Michael says, cocking an eyebrow.

He sees the tick of Jesse’s jaw. “Wanted to see who my son was risking his entire career for.” Jesse looks him up and down, seems disgusted. “And it doesn’t reflect well on you. Or him.”

Michael shakes his head a little, looks away. He... he’s used to being told he’s a piece of shit. Lives down to it. But this, Jesse bringing Alex into it...

“You’ve done a lot of the work for me. Thought my son had finally gotten his head on straight and realized that there was no future with his hometown...” Jesse’s eyes narrow as he gestures at Michael. “Whatever you are to him.” He takes a little sip of whiskey, eyes Michael. “Thought it was done, actually, till the motel.”

Michael swallows. “There’s nothing there, okay?” Michael says, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “Alex... Alex is smart. Knows there’s nothing for him here.”

A waste. That’s what Alex had said, what he’d called him, this last time. A waste.

Jesse studies him. “Then maybe it’s time you and I got on the same page,” he says, taking out a large envelope, fat to the point of bulging. Opens it up. Shows Michael the neatly folded cash. “This is the easy way to do this, Michael. There’s a hard way, too. What do you say?”

Michael’s just blinking. Once. Twice. Looking at the money. There’s... so much there. More than he could make for months at the ranch. “I... I don’t...”

Jesse rolls his eyes, shuts the wallet. “There’s ten grand in there. Take it and leave. Don’t contact my son again. You do and... and I make things worse for you, okay? You know I could do it,” he says, looking deliberately down at Michael’s hand.

And Michael’s angry now. “What the fuck man?” he exclaims, eyes flashing. “You... you think you can just come in here, flashing cash, and buy me off?”

Jesse scoffs a bit. “You’re asking? Seriously? Yes,” he says meanly. “You are a drunken day-laborer that lives in a trailer. You’ve got a record. Holes in your shirt and shit on your boots. So yes, I think I can give you ten thousand dollars and give you a new start somewhere of your choice. Somewhere without my son.”