#and with my actual interest??? this country never heard of women football

[me-uglypretty]

i won't recover from that lucy bronze interview where it feels so much like a date and i just- i literally have a degree in journalism. that could be me?? what am i doing with my life?? how do i get there??

[newtonsheffield]

For spicy sunday (or whatever day could use some heat) could you kindly elaborate on offside Anthony telling Kate to "Fucking. Ride. Me. Doctor."? Seems like something he would say rather frequently

Ahh bless these sweet little switches.

Kate had known Anthony would be a little dominant, right from the get go.

Anthony was an alpha male, even if he was surprisingly nurturing deep down. It was one of the things that had made her think really, THIS man is the one you're falling in love with?! He practically oozed testosterone. A football player who'd slept with a parade of socialites and actresses and singers. His presence was imposing, his shoulders broad and string, jaw chiseled. It was a little annoying actually, just how fucking male he was and something about her drove her a little insane.

She'd heard what people said about her, what they said about all women in her position. That she was bossy, commanding, authoritative: words that would have been a compliment to a man, but for a woman they weren't. Every morning she forced her spine straight with the knowledge that she was good at her job and forced herself to take up space people would rather she didn't. Perfectly in control of everything the minute she entered the surgery.

And just once she wanted to not be in control.

So it was so nice when Anthony growled in her ear, his hands tight fucking everywhere as he bent her over the back of his couch, her knees bruising against the back of it his voice cracking in his chest,

Fuck Kate, I've wanted this all fucking day, Scream babe, let fucking everyone hear how much you want it.

So no. It wasn't a surprise to her that she enjoyed being pinned down and pressed into the mattress until her voice was raw and she could barely remember her name. And it wasn't a surprise that Anthony wanted to pin her there, their eyes caught together, while his hips bucked desperately against her . What was a surprise was that wasn't all Anthony wanted. And apparently, it wasn't all she wanted either.

She'd first noticed it when they'd been officially dating just a week. Anthony had been laying on her sofa while she'd sat in front of it, on the phone, irritation rising by the second, her voice sharp.

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but that's my professional opinion." She'd hung up soon after, leaning her head back against Anthony's chest, sighing, her heart pounding in her ears. And then she'd noticed it: Anthony shifting uncomfortably behind her.

Kate had turned curiously, her eyes scanning over her boyfriend, and a shocked guffaw had left her chest, even as Anthony groaned embarrassedly, attempting to cover his very obvious interest with one of Edwina's throw cushions.

"Please don't laugh, you're just... I fucking can't help it when your voice is so commanding, and you look like that- I just want you to fucking step on me, honestly."

She'd stared back at him for a very long moment, her lips parted, something burning in her chest before she'd tugged his lips to meet hers in a searing kiss as their lips clashed, and his hands gripped at her and she fixed her voice into something imperious when she said, All you had to do was ask, honey.

Anthony had fallen apart with his wrists pinned above him and her thighs around his waist, and he'd never looked quite so satisfied.

There was something deeply possessive about the way they wanted one another most of the time. In the way that burned in her chest to mark him as hers and Anthony's hips stuttered and his voice whined Yes, Kate, baby, Please. while her teeth closed around his pulse point.

But tonight it had been worse.

They'd agreed not to confirm their relationship, that they didn't have to. And Lord knew their were enough rumours out there about them, picture after picture of them together printed online and in newspapers. Their relationship was really a secret that the entire country was in on. But that didn't stop people from trying occasionally.

Didn't stop players from other teams sidling up to her after games, leering at her as they said I think I'm gonna ned a rub down doctor.

Which always had her rolling her eyes and pushing against their chests as she said, You'll be rubbing yourself down for the rest of your life. May as well let you get some practice in.

And of course, at just about every event they went to, someone tried it on with Anthony.

Tonight it was a model.

Kate could see them across the room as she stood at the bar, Edwina humming beside her. The woman's long hair cascading down her back leaning close even as Anthony leaned back, his hand lightly removing hers from his chest, his fingers flexing a little distastefully as she tried to cling on tighter.

"Don't make a scene." Edwina said a little quietly, leaning against a bewildered looking Matt, his hair neatly tied back, looking a little uncomfortable in the tux Kate knew Edwina had coaxed him into wearing.

"I'm not going to make a scene, it's just- obvious we're together, it's a bit disrespectful." Kate said quickly herself, finishing her drink.

"You know, if you just confirmed your relationship, this wouldn't happen."

Kate rolled her eyes, catching them with Anthony's at the last moment who sent a little wink her way with a jerk of his head Meet me outside. "I have to go."

"You're going to fuck in the bathroom aren't you?" Edwina said distastefully, loosening Matt's tie a little as he squeaked.

A smirk tugged at the corner of Kate's lips, feeling Anthony's eyes burning into her, "You definitely shouldn't wait for us to share a car home."

"Foul!" Edwina's voice followed her out of the ballroom, anticipation already rising in her stomach as she felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her waist, tugging her out the side door, into the garden.

"Fancy seeing you out here, doctor."

Anthony's voice was hot against her ear, his tongue tracing the words on the skin of her shoulder as she shivered against him, ugly jealousy still burning in her chest as she turned to meet him.

He was so handsome in the dim lighting, the dark grey of his tux stretched tight against his shoulders, his hands light on her, his eyes burning softly.

"I'm glad I could pull you away from your friend."

He felt the change, she knew he did, saw it in the slight stoop of his shoulders, the way his posture became a little more vulnerable, the way his hips shifted at the edge in her voice and something in her burned.

"How can I... make it up to you?" His eyes were darting over her face, a slight grind starting against the leg slotted between his, his voice breathless. "I'll make you feel so good if you'll let me."

Kate darted forward, couldn't take the tension rising steadily between them, like a string pulled tight: and sealed their lips together. Her hand tugged at his bowtie while her tongue tangled filthily with his, the smooth silk slipping free of his collar, as her lips slipped to his adam's apple nipping lightly at the soft skin, enjoying the way Anthony shuddered against her.

she pulled back abruptly, ignoring the way he whined, trying to chase her lips with his in favour of tugging his hands slowly from her waist pulling them behind his back, wrapping his bowtie around them snuggly, Anthony's voice rough in his chest.

"Oh fuck yes."

Kate sat on the stone bench behind her raising her eyebrow imperiously.

"What are you waiting for? Get on your fucking knees, honey."

Before she could even finish the term of endearment Anthony had dropped to his knees, whining desperately as he shuffled forward, staining the knees of his trousers on the grass she was sure, his head ducking under the hem of her dress as her legs fell open for him, a gasp caught in her throat at the first touch of his tongue.

It was too much already. The way Anthony was relentless against her, his lips and tongue and teeth, licking and nipping and sucking and fucking desperately, the satisfied moans and gasps falling from his own lips at the taste of her, shooting right through her. There was no air left in the entire world, Kate was sure, Anthony had stolen it all the second he'd dropped to his knees.

It was relentless, and desperate heat licking at her stomach, licking everywhere as her hips ground against him, the cold night air all around them and-

Everything shattered.

Kate was still struggling for breath as Anthony wriggled backwards, his hands still tied behind his back, his eyes shining with something dark and dangerous as his tongue tangled with hers, the taste of her all over him.

"Fucking. Ride. Me. Doctor." It was a challenge, she knew, something desperately wrenched from his chest all the same. "Show me I belong to you."

God she couldn't breathe. Even as she forced herself t stand, legs still unsteady, her hands firm on his shoulders as she forced him down against the bench, tugging at his belt buckle, swallowing the whine in his chest with her tongue, making it settle in her own chest instead as she straddled him.

Anthony's chin was tilted upwards so their eyes met, something deep and primal settling between them from the very first roll of her hips, his own bucking upwards, chasing them desperately as they moved, the pace quickening furiously as one of Kate's hands tightened in his hair forcing him to keep looking her in the eye, the other braced behind her.

Oh fuck, yes Kate, oh my- Holy fuck! All yours, I'm yours Kate, just yours, oh fuck, take it, take whatever you want.

There was something so heady in it, in the power coiled in Anthony's firm muscles, that could easily rip his hands free from their bindings. In the fact that he didn't want to. That he'd willingly put himself under her control completely, desperate to submit to her. And even though he couldn't touch her he was everywhere, the taste of him on her tongue, the feel of his body against hers, hips snapping desperately, his eyes fluttering closed.

Open your eyes Anthony. You wanted to be mine now fucking watch it

Anthony's eyes shot open with a whine, his voice stuttering in his chest, rumbling against her

I'm not- Fuck Kate I'm so-

A harsh cry ripped from his throat his hips snapping erratically, warmth filling her, and the look of awe on his face, and the feeling of them pushed Kate over the edge again as she shuddered against him, and everything went still.

Kate had no idea how long they say there, crickets chirping in the quiet night air, the water fountain behind them gurgling happily, but all she could hear was Anthony's breathing, quick and hard in her ear.

"Holy fucking shit I love you so much."

Kate chuckled a little breathlessly, brushing her lips against his hairline, "I love you too." She reached around to untie his wrists, tucking the fabric into his jacket pocket. "Good boy."

His hips bucked against hers feebly with a whine. "You know you can't call me that, this'll start all over again, and I at least want to be at home when it does, my knees are fucking killing me now."

She stood, her legs still shaking a little holding her hand out to him, "Come on then honey, I'll suck your dick on the way home instead."

And for someone who'd just complained that his body was aching, he followed her awfully quickly.

And when the pictures appeared in the newspaper the next day, both of the slipping into a car looking a little rumpled, Anthony still with a dopey grin on his face, Kate couldn't help but feel a little smug.

[sincerelyella]

RAMifications Prologue - Breakaway

Book: The Royal Romance (AU)

Pairings: Liam x MC (Ella); Ella x OC

Song Inspiration: Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson

Characters belong to Pixelberry; MC Ella Brooks and Ethan belongs to me

Summary: How Liam met Ella and their love story.

A/N: This entire idea came from Burnsy and her unBEARable series featuring her OTP Drake x Alyssa Devereaux. This is Ella’s backstory and how she met the love of her life King Liam of Cordonia. This doesn’t follow much of TRR books, there is still a social season but not all of the players are present. Throw canon out the window! If you have not read unBEARable by @burnsoslow​ (catch up here) I suggest you go and read that first. There are SPOILERS in this series!

Warnings: Except cursing? Not much.

Words: 1129

Ella Brooks was sick of school. 

At 25 years-old, she had already busted her ass and gotten her bachelor’s degree in history and political science.. Her parents, however, were less than thrilled about her choice in majors. She agreed to go back to school and was almost done with her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of California in Los Angeles, just needing a semester of an internship for graduation. Ella had already told all of her professors that she wasn’t doing an internship abroad before graduation. It was the sudden break up with her long time boyfriend that made her change her mind and want to get the hell out of California.

A week ago

As Ella walked to her car from campus - she had put in a study session at the library - Ella heard loud laughter echoing from the outdoor bar next to where she parked. That sounds an awful lot like … she narrowed her eyes just as she saw that it was her boyfriend Ethan. He was laughing with a blonde haired woman, his arm around her shoulders, face close to hers as they held onto their drinks.

Unable to contain her anger she stalked over to the oblivious pair and tapped Ethan on the shoulder. He turned and the smile he had on his face immediately fell, his eyes widened in shock.

“Uh … Ella, hey! Wh-what are you doing here?”

Ella grit her teeth and tried to compose herself. “Ethan. I was studying, as you know since you were supposed to meet me.”

“W-well, something came up after the meeting.”

Ella’s arms were folded in front of her, her brow arched. There was an awkward silence and the blonde couldn’t take it anymore.

“Hi! I’m Madeleine. Can we help you?” she said, with an oblivious smile on her face.

Ella looked at Madeleine, then back to Ethan. “Actually no, Madeleine. I think I’m done here.” Ella turned and walked towards her car.

Ethan scrambled to stand up, leaving Madeleine at the bar with a perplexed look on her face. “Ella! Wait!”

She kept walking, absolutely seething and determined to get to her car before Ethan caught up with her.

“Ella!” Ethan grabbed her arm and whirled her around. “I’m so sorry, that’s not what it looked like. W-we’re just … friends, me and Madeleine.”

“This is why you flaked out on the study session and had me sit in the library alone for hours? She was your ‘quick meeting at work?’”

“I DID have a meeting!”

“Your meeting consisted of sitting at a bar with your arm around her? Your face was right next to hers! Oh my God, Ethan! Do you think I’m fucking stupid?!”

“S-she had asked me out for a drink and -”

Ella couldn’t stand there and listen to his bullshit anymore. She wrenched her arm from his grasp and walked to her car. “We’re done Ethan,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m sick of all your excuses about all these different women being ‘just your friend’. I’m throwing out all your shit in my apartment if you don’t come get them tomorrow.” She got in her car, turned the ignition and sped off, leaving Ethan standing in the street.

**

Present-day

Ella dragged her carry on suitcase and personal items past TSA and customs in the Los Angeles International Airport. She stood in line for an hour just for them to wave her throug; she rolled her eyes and shook her head. Her long dark hair in two braids, she sported a plain black baseball hat, a plain grey t-shirt, black leggings and Nike sneakers.

Once Ella made it to her terminal she saw people already lining up to board. She presented her boarding pass and went through to the walkway to find her seat. The flight finally took off after a couple stragglers hurried onto the plane and sat down. Ella’s noise-cancelling headphones were a game changer. Damn these were so worth the money. 

Ella thought about her life in Los Angeles and how much things have changed. That was two years of my life I’ll never get back. She knew Ethan was never devoted to her, yet she stayed with him out of … familiarity? Complacency?  

Time for a new beginning. Ella settled into her seat, waited for the snacks and drinks to be distributed before she fell asleep.

**

15 hours later

Ella walked through Cordonia International Airport and went into the customs line.

“Miss Ella Brooks?” the customs agent asked while looking at her passport and paperwork.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“You’re here for a study abroad internship?

“Yes sir, I’m with the International Medical Aid program with UCLA. I’ll be a nurse intern in the Children’s Hospital at the capitol.”

The customs agent nodded. “Okay and how long will you be here for?”

“Six weeks.”

“Alright,” he stamped her passport and wrote down the dates on her paperwork. “Just know that if you plan on staying longer than that you’ll need to be employed in Cordonia. You either need to extend the dates or file for Cordonian citizenship. ”

Ella chewed on her bottom lip. Stay? “Right, thank you.”

The agent handed Ella back her documents and she was shuffled off into a van with her classmates from the study abroad program.

**

Five weeks later

In the last five weeks, Ella fell head over heels in love with the little country called Cordonia. The people were friendly, they loved to hear about where she came from and were in awe that she volunteered at a busy ER five days a week. Ella had contacted her university in Los Angeles and requested all her transcripts be sent to Cordonia University. She still had a couple more classes to finish plus her licensing exam to take; she couldn’t begin working as a nurse until those were complete. According to the U.S. embassy, she would need to find a job in Cordonia that was at least two days a week. After six months of steady work, she could file for Cordonian citizenship.

Ella walked outside the Emergency Room of the Children’s Hospital on her lunch break. She loved walking around the capitol exploring the architecture and little shops in the area. There was even a large library next to a fountain of a naked ... person that she sat in for hours. The historical books on Queen Kendra Rys were so interesting, she found herself wondering what it was like to be royalty. The small country was one of the few that was still governed by a monarchy and her political science degree made her even more excited to read the stories.

Ella’s eyes stopped at a shop that sold cronuts and quirked her brow. What exactly is a cronut? She saw two men and a woman sitting inside at a corner table that had what looked like a dozen or more cronuts in front of them. One man had on a black t-shirt with dark jeans and scowl on his face; he was sitting next to a beautiful woman with dark hair and wore a Chicago Bears jersey with jeans. Nice, someone here that knows American football. The other man had on a blue shirt with squids all over it and dark jeans as well. The man with the squid shirt was chattering away with the woman, both seemingly oblivious to the other man’s glowering. Are they going to eat all of that? She shrugged and walked in to try one. Ten minutes later she had eaten two cronuts and had a to-go cup of coffee in her hands.

Time to head back. Ella crossed the street and started towards the hospital. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a small flower truck parked on the curb. A long line had formed right outside the window and whoever was working there looked frantic. She caught a sign on the window that said Help Wanted. Ella arched her brow and stood there thinking for a moment. Oh, why not? She walked over to the window.

“Excuse me! Are you looking to hire someone?”

[cadopan]

Though i would share how i got into woso reading all the messages. I was never into football really, i mean i only watched euros or mundial and my country's never really reached that far. I wasn't really even aware of women football being a thing. I came across some videos of Viv, 'perfect striker's, somewhere before summer of 2021, and i watched some arsenal content, they got my interest, and i really gravitated towards Viv personality/ attitude-wise. Then olimpics- Netherlands-> arsenal

Yayy more woso discovery stories. I love reading all of them!

Ouhh I see. This may be strange to you but I never knew the World Cups were called 'mundial' 😳 feel like I've definitely heard it before but actually had to do a quick search to see what it was and I was little embarrassed to find out it refers to the WC lol

Oh I know what video you're talking about! Is it this one? (love that channel, it has such well-made woso comp videos) I love Viv's personality/attitude too, probably one of the players whose off-the-pitch persona I like as much as (or even more than) their balling skills on the pitch.

[armenelols]

Hey, sis, the country ask: 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 27 and 30. Thank you, if you do them! 😊❤️

*it got pretty long so the answers are under the cut*

1. favourite place in your country?

As a lover of history and mountains, in a country full of both, it’s a bit difficult to choose :D I am going to limit it to places I’ve been to to make it easier for myself. Of those, my favorite would be probably Orava Castle. It lies in the northern part of my country and is one of our largest castles. I’ve been there when I was perhaps ten years old or so, so my memory of the place is a bit blurry, but I remember parts of it and I loved it. Nosferatu was actually shot there. I’ve never seen the movie (I am not one for horror), but I heard it’s pretty popular? :D Anyway Also, we have some caves that are worth visiting - of those I’ve been to, my favorite was Belianska cave. Open-air museums (skanzen in my language) are worth visiting as well.

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

Depends on what place in my country and which country abroad. Going abroad is always an amazing experience, seeing all the different cultures and places. I long to visit some of the countries in Northern Europe, as well the Mediterranean area for its history. Switzerland is one of my favorite places to visit, I’ve been there twice. But my country can be certainly fun as well - we have beautiful mountains in most of Slovakia, and we are the country with most castles per capital (alongside Wales, each site claims something different :D). I probably prefer going abroad for holiday, but for a simple trip, Slovakia is the best.

5. favourite song in your native language?

I tend to listen to English music more, and most of the new songs in my country are pop (which I don’t listen to), so it would probably be something older from my childhood. So the bands my dad would play in the car - Elán, Lojzo, IMT Smile, Horkýže Slíže, Tublatanka and so on :D No specific song, really.

6. most hated song in your native language?

I have no idea what it’s called, but my classmates listen to it all the time and it always gets me into a murderous mood.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

11. favourite native writer/poet?

Well, I’ve been only in two of them - the Czech Republic and Poland, tho I did pass through Hungary a few times. I don’t have any real preference. We have much of common history with Czechs and it's been the country I’ve been the most times to, but really, as a lover of travel and learning about new places, I don’t have a preference.

Edit: oh god I forgot Austria :D been there several times, loved it

From most of our writers/poets, I’ve read only some of their shorter works. But my favorite was Bloody Sonnets, written by Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav in the early 20th century, so I am gonna say him.

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?

I’ve never read any, but I’ve just searched above mentioned Bloody Sonnets (it’s an anti-war poem) and found parts of it in English, so for comparison:

ENGLISH:

What caused this wreck, this brutal and ignoble

collapse of morals? What provoked the breach?

What led mankind, in spirit grand and noble,

to plunge in the mud? What vampire? Oh, what leech,

sucking the sap of life out of the breast,

constantly thirsting bloody parasite?

Ah, selfishness! — and to destroy this pest

today we have no troops, no heroes to fight.

Yes, it will twist and tear and rend, and fall,

a tyrant, on the weak and innocent;

although the world is wide enough for all,

it would have sole control of earth’s extent

and even possess the universe, no less,

pitching the other into emptiness —

SLOVAK (same paragraphs):

Kto zapríčinil tento úpadok,

zosurovenie, zdivočenie mravov?

Čo ľudstvo zviedlo s ducha veličavou

vbŕsť do bahna? Ký upír to a mlok,

z pŕs sajúci mu i dnes žitia mok,

krvožíznivec s večnou záhou žhavou?

Ech, sebectvo! to! — a niet nad ohavou

tou zvíťaziť, vojsk, rekov po dnešok.

Hej, ono krivdí, hnetie, zdiera, týra

svevoľne, kde len stihne, slabšieho;

hoc zem je pre všetkých dosť šírošíra,

chce, aby strela sa len pre neho;

ba končiny si svojí všehomíra,

kams’ v prázdeň vytískajúc iného —

Personally, I prefer the original, tho the translation isn’t bad - it’s just that Slovak and English are different in every possible way, so the translation is difficult and the words sounds more poetic in the original :D

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

I don’t watch TV at all and rarely go to the cinema so can’t say. I am more for literature.

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

My country isn’t very well-known so I didn’t encounter that many stereotypes - thus I am not passionate about them, so I will be speaking in general, rather than hate or agreeing. The only occasion when a foreigner said something about our country was in Switzerland, when a random guy immediately went ‘Peter Sagan!’ (our cyclist), and once in Italy a guy went ‘Hamšík!’ (our football player) and said to us three words in Czech. So I had to google a bit what people think of us, and what I got was ‘drinking too much, problems with internet, constantly grouping as with Czechs and Russians and eastern Europe in general, us having beautiful women, us not having a sense of humor, thinking Czechoslovakia is still a thing'.

So.

About alcohol - I don’t drink, but many Slovaks do. However, not to the extent that they would be constantly drunk - usually only in restaurants, on visits, celebrations, holidays, and when they aren’t driving. At home, it’s not that often. It doesn’t seem too much to me, but I don’t know how much people from other countries drink so can’t judge. By the way, this extends to the part of the country where I live so can’t say about other parts of Slovakia (goes for all stereotypes).

Problems with internet - false. The only places where I have problems are public spaces and my dorm.

With Czechs, we have much of common history, and to this day, we consider ourselves brothers and sisters and easily understand each other’s languages. But in the end, we are separate people, so Czech and Slovak aren’t the same. Czechoslovakia hasn’t been a thing since 1993.

Older people here speak Russian since it was mandatory for them in school (for us, it’s English). I was never taught the language - in school, we got to choose between German and Russian and I chose German since it would be more useful for me. I don’t understand the Russian alphabet (don’t not how it’s called in English, for us it’s azbuka), and I understand very little of the language itself since I’ve never really encountered it. However, after a little exposure, it probably would be more understandable to me. In Croatia, we didn’t have much trouble communicating while speaking, despite us talking in different languages. But really, it depends on the person and the language. I’ve heard that Slovak is the language easiest for all Slavs to understand, but if it’s true, I don’t know.

We aren’t in Eastern Europe. We are in Central, and we are more of a mix between West and East, so grouping as with one or the other is incorrect.

Can’t judge on beautiful women and I have no idea how did this become a stereotype - one of the rare ones I’ve actually heard about :D

About the sense of humor, once again depends on the person. Period. But we are private people, so that may be where the stereotype is coming from.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

Not really, the only difference between my way of speaking and the ‘correct’ one is that I pronounce words with ľ harsher. For example, ľudia is pronounced with ľ (basically soft l, closest to pronunciation would be ‘li’ but it’s still very different), but here we pronounce it ludia.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

Proud? Our nature, culture, historical monuments. Ashamed? Politicians.

27. favourite national celebrity?

No one, I am not very interested in celebrities in general.

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

My dad has a few distant cousins in the Czech Republic, but other than that, I am not aware of anyone.

[jonismitchell]

hey arden. i was listening to maathp and i was looking for a post i liked a while back analyzing the song that i always meant to read but never did and couldn’t find it, so i was hoping you’d give your analysis of it when you can bc you’re one of the only people who will analyze one of her songs in a way that’s more in your own way and not the “this is what the song probably means to taylor” kind of way which i kinda hate that most swifties do 💖

Hello! I read this lying in bed and thought ‘hey, this is an awesome ask, but it’s 11pm so maybe I’ll answer in the morning,’ and then I got too swept up in thinking about Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. Now I’m up cranking out Taylor Swift analysis in the middle of the night, which is my preferred habit. (Thank you for your compliments on my specific style of analysis! I love looking critically at media and will aggressively take any opportunity to do so.)

The analysis is under the cut, because it is 1000+ words and I do not hate my mutuals. Hope you enjoy!

So, what is MAATHP about? In my opinion (a general disclaimer for this entire answer), this song is about political turmoil and an obsessive romance that anchors you through it. As a greater metaphor for the juvenile state of politics today, it’s set in a high school, which also links back to the idea of public perception being the most important thing and romantic love being all consuming. (Think Lorde’s ‘blow all my friendships to sit in hell with you, but we’re the greatest.’ That’s the vibe I get from this song.)

The first verse is as follows: You know I adore you / I’m crazier for you / Than I was at sixteen / Lost in a film scene / Waving homecoming queens / Marching band playing / I’m lost in the lights. She sets the stage for the song here: an obsessive love, a comparison to being a teenager, and specific allusions to typical American high schools. There’s a reminder of her early, Fearless-era work in the homecoming queens and marching bands, but the idea of being lost in public perception implies a darker edge than we’ve heard before.

* The ‘lights’ were formerly referenced as a context for public perception as ‘another name goes up in lights’ in The Lucky One. 

Swift continues with: American glory faded before me / Now I'm feeling hopeless, ripped up my prom dress / Running through rose thorns, I saw the scoreboard / And ran for my life  Quite a bit more to unpack here! The first obvious political association here is the idea of American glory fading (a reaction to the 2016 election, presumably). Our narrator destroys a standard symbol of ‘successful’ teenage years, the prom dress, in an extension on this theme. A conflict is introduced in these lines: a visual of escape, a view of the scoreboard (nice wordplay—could be a football game or a national election). 

Pre-chorus: No cameras catch my pageant smile / I counted days, I counted miles / To see you there, to see you there / It's been a long time coming, but We’re again looking at the idea of public perception with the pageant smile, which is associated with beauty pageants for young women but is in the song’s context an allusion to the very social nature of political campaigning. It’s reinforced with counting days and miles, as if on the campaign trail around the country, and sets up the complete clash of personal and political for the chorus.

It's you and me, that's my whole world / They whisper in the hallway, "She's a bad, bad girl" / The whole school is rolling fake dice The primary romance of the song—the idea that the world is such a disaster that this one person is your lifeline and your world throughout it. Despite the gossip typical to high school halls, the narrator holds onto the person they love and condemns the rest of the school as liars. (Fake dice to me means a presupposed set of outcomes that don’t actually exist, i.e. there are more choices than others appear to see. Could also be a reference to ‘fake news.’)

You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes / It's you and me, there's nothing like this / Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince / We're so sad, we paint the town blue / Voted most likely to run away with you If you do something stupid, you have to accept the consequences for your actions = if you assume there are only a set number of outcomes, you force yourself into accepting the unpleasant result. (Maybe a bit too leftist for Swift’s intention, but this isn’t about her. Could also be ‘voting for Trump / not voting means you have to accept the consequences of his presidency.’) It’s in essence a condemnation of a narrow outlook. 

We’re drawn back to the romance that forms the backbone of this song; between someone so perfectly American (at least on the surface, conforming to the politically and socially acceptable views of the nations) that they are ‘Miss Americana’ and their lover, the ‘Heartbreak Prince’ here to ruin it all. Both of the lovers are disappointed with their society—unclear whether it’s the school or the country, probably deliberately—so they strike back for change (vote blue), but ultimately want to escape the world that has ostracized them and is actively burning down. 

My team is losing, battered and bruising / I see the high fives between the bad guys / Leave with my head hung, you are the only one / Who seems to care The second verse is pretty impressive to me from a lyrical standpoint. We can see the team as a high school’s home team or a political party, but either way they’re being fought against and beaten down. The opposition is fierce and cruel, the ‘bad guys’ who revel in their victory of cruelty. The narrator abandons this with a miserable look and her lover is the only one there to comfort her.

American stories burning before me / I'm feeling helpless, the damsels are depressed / Boys will be boys then, where are the wise men? / Darling, I'm scared  The typical idea of America—good guys always win, a bootstraps / American dream narrative—is crashing before a narrator who’s held such a strong belief in it. Without the system, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, and sees this reflected in the people around her. The ‘damsels are depressed’ is a typical idea of the role women are meant to play changed by the mental health crisis. (I am extrapolating heavily, folks.) 

‘Boys will be boys’ is a play on locker room talk, the culture of misogyny and assault that plagues America beneath the veneer of glory, and Swift follows by writing ‘where are the wise men;’ a biblical allusion to the idea of singular people that can remedy the faults in the system. She finally reverts back to the lover to share her fear. 

No cameras catch my muffled cries / I counted days, I counted miles / To see you there, to see you there / And now the storm is coming, but We look again at the idea of public perception, a private love that outlasts the outcry in a similar way to Swift’s own ‘reputation.’ She discusses hiding from the ever-present storm (whether it be a debilitating political condition or a flurry of gossip within a high school) and holding onto that lover as a remedy for outward pain.

[Repeat of the chorus as above.]

And I don't want you to (Go) / I don't really wanna (Fight) / 'Cause nobody's gonna (Win), I think you should come home [repeated] And I'll never let you (Go) 'cause I know this is a (Fight) / That someday we're gonna (Win) This repetitive bridge, a play on a traditional cheerleader chant, highlights and contrasts the two settings in this song for a final time. The narrator displays brief hatred, reconciled to the idea of no change, and unwilling to lose her lover.  Soon after (in the typical fashion of young, passionate people), there is a minute belief in the idea that the battle (against another school or political party) can be won, that it is worth sticking your neck out for, and that the narrator becomes willing to sacrifice their lover for. 

It’s in this vein that the song ends with the ‘she’s a bad, bad girl’ line repeated; now symbolizing the willingness of the narrator to sacrifice themselves and their lover for a victory they fervently believe in. This 180, incidentally, is what makes the song less convincing for me—the desperation for escape turning to a preparation to be villainized—but I hope this analysis was interesting and helped you form some of your own conclusions.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Things Dobson mocks because he is too ignorant...

One “talent” Dobson seems to have, is the ability to alienate a lot of people through his opinions. And while he claims to be proud of that talent because he believes those he alienates are just assholes and racists who disagree with him CAUSE he attacks their abhorrent worldviews, the reality is much simpler; On average, people just don’t like him cause Dobson has no idea what he is talking about, which won’t however stop him from mocking the mere existence of certain things/interests and the people enjoying them. And those people tend not to be racists who want to see non-white people go extinct, but simply nerds and enthusiasts who like to enjoy their hobbies without the input of someone who won’t get over how he was bullied as a nerd back in school, but at the same time will bully you for being “nerdier”.

I could go into more detail how I mean that by analyzing a lot of his anime related SYAC strips as well as his soapbox strips on comic culture in a row. However, for the sake of “simplicity” I just like to go over one of his oldest strips, published around 2011. Back when Dobson was portraying himself still as a human. This strip alone will show how even a decade back, Dobson could just be an asshole to any “nerd” who dared to be into stuff he wasn’t, how he could manage to piss off many people all in one going AND be unfunny.

Now the first thing I want to put out is that I do not even think that Dobson’s primary intention with this strip was to mock others and their interests. See, one thing about So you are a cartoonist especially in its early days was, that it was in a way Dobson’s attempt to make himself look likeable in the eyes of others. He portrayed himself just as an Average Joe, wanting to make comics. This strip itself was even part of a series of strips I like to call “Things Dobson likes/dislikes”, which really were just him in each panel pointing at something he is into or not.

 And honestly, part of me does not mind it. It is just Dobson’s attempt to show others how “quirky” or contrarian he is. The problem really steams more from the following two facts: a) It is not really a cartoon or comic if you think about it, because there isn’t a joke, punchline or story attached to them, just Dobson showing off what kind of person he is and b) that his “things I do not understand” comic is really mean spirited compared to the others if you look just a bit deeper into it.

Right from the beginning the strip is just indicative that this will be more mean spirited than Dobson will later like to claim it was. Otherwise he would not feel the need to say “chillax” as a sort of semi defense mechanism, cause if he really intended to make his grievances heard through “good fun” he would not need to say that. So from the gate we can assume its snarkier and more hurtful than it needs to be. So lets get through the things he does not understand, shall we?

Sports: I will admit that I am not really into sports myself, neither as a fan or someone participating in it competitively. I go to the gym however in order to feel good about myself and do something for my health instead of going every Friday to McDonalds. In addition, as long as you do not go overboard with being a fan or participating in it, I understand how sport can unite people (see events like the Olympics and Soccer worldcups) , and while I am baffled upon the fact that the salary of many people in sports (particularly soccer and football) are ridiculous high in addition to money they make with advertisement deals etc. I have respect for them. Respect for how they can stick to a hard training schedule, can take injuries, will do stuff for charity etc. Furthermore, unlike Dobson, I do not believe people who are into sports are dumb. Yes, I know the stereotype about college footballers and sports who only graduated because of their sports activities and are otherwise “meatheads”, but that stereotype does not apply to everything in reality, Dobson. Ever heard of NFL lineman Duvernay-Tardif, who also has a degree as a surgeon? Granted, he made that title only in 2018, seven years after the comic was made, so look a bit further and see what we find… Oh, look: Myron Rolle, college football player and later members of the Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers around 2010/12: Has a bachelor degree in exercise science and in 2008 studied for a Master of science for medical anthropology in the UK.

Ron Mix, famous AFL and NFL football player forever immortalized in the Hall of Fame has a Juris Doctor Degree and after his work as a sports became an attorney.

 And that are just three examples googled up in relation to American football. Other famous sports worldwide have degrees in medical and sports related sciences. Heck, one of Europe’s most famous boxer’s in the 2000s, Vitali Klitschko, not only has a doctors degree in sports, he is nowadays head of the governing party of Ukraine, following the independence of the country in 2014.

So stop wiggling your three sets of eyebrows and cease your smug grin and shove that periodic table up your ass, Dobson. I bet you yourself don’t even fucking know the chemical symbol for silver or titanium you Agonizing Twat who never got over the fact some popular kids in school bullied him.

 Final Fantasy: I doubt Dobson ever even tried to play Final Fantasy or ANY JRPG, honestly. Heck, not only does Cloud look pretty wrong (anime hair seems to be another thing Dobson can not draw) but frankly, the statement of Cloud being an emo is false and is based on misinterpretation. Bear with me for a bit; Final Fantasy 7 is in my opinion a good game and it had a major impact on the series and the perception of JRPGs in the west. However, I do also believe that many people overhyped its quality over the years. Including SquareEnix themselves, who particularly around 2005 released all sorts of tie in and sequel games, including also the movie “Advent Children”. Or as I like to call those things, Tetsuya Nomura’s wankfest, because now all of sudden everything is related to some guy called Genesis, we have even more characters to supposedly care about than we already got through the original game, happy end override happens almost on every corner and “goth” aesthetics are everywhere. And Cloud himself became an embodiment of that emo/loner stereotype in anime and manga around that time, despite never having been like that in the original game if you ask me. Yes, Cloud in the original game went through a lot of emotional trauma and he was not like some happy go lucky laid back shonen manga protagonist. But he also didn’t come off as a pretentious fucktard who never showed emotions and shut himself off from his friends and allies. He was more of a determined person who still cared for others and wanted to stop Sephirot so no one suffered like he did. His most “depressing” moment was when Sephirot revealed his false memories, making Cloud question his own existence as an independent being to the point he was broken enough to hand the Meteor sphere to Sephirot, but that was about it.  But hey, “emos” sell better, so SquareEnix tried to sell that aesthetics and others were just so dumb and further misinterpreted it as emoness being Cloud’s main character trait, when in reality freaking Squall Leonhard in his original game was worse than Cloud in comparison.

I also find the implication of Dobson, that Final Fantasy is pretentious in that panel funny as fuck. Cause Final Fantasy 13s’ pretty dumb story and wankery of clicheed anime tropes not withstanding, the average Final Fantasy game has a straightforward fantasy plot of good guys vs bad guys, with some twists and anime tropes thrown into the mix. The most pretentious guys in those games really are just the bad guys when they talk on average about how the world is suffering and misery, and even that is just straightforward nihilism to justify why they want to destroy everything. It is in fact so straightforward, most little kids will get it particularly in the first 6 games of the series, which are just set in more “classic” fantasy worlds to begin with. I am not saying the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole is flawless (I really am not a fan of 13 and its sequels, but if you like it, you do your thing) but you do not need a thesaurus to get why people enjoy it or individual games from it. So stop hating on an entire game series, which btw has actually some pretty awesome female characters in protagonistic roles in it too.

 Twilight: Both an example of Dobson’s hypocricy and idiocy. Idiocy cause frankly, what is hard to understand why people liked the books? Twilight (in my opinion) was just a professionally published self insert fanfiction, in which Bella/the reader fell in love with the local bad boy who just happened to also be a vampire. Sure, a vampire in name only (seriously, if you asked me, the Cullens could be replaced with a lot of other fantasy creatures and it would barely affect anything), but that is beside the point. Shameless romance stories about someone falling in love with the bad boy who deep down has a heart of gold and just needs someone to fix them, are nothing new. So I was not surprised that people, particularly teenaged girls and other women, enjoyed it. It was the romance literature equivalent to fast food which just happened to explode in popularity because Young adult novels were a simultaneous hit and something needed to fill the void after Harry Potter. I read the first book myself and I thought nothing in particularly wrong with it, aside of the fact I thought the book itself was plotwise kinda dull. But that was not why people bought it, they wanted Bella getting together with the bad boy. The fact Dobson did not understand on what the popularity was build up on, is just an example for how Dobson does not even in theory understand how stories work and what it is on a pure technical level that makes them interesting and sell worthy to others.

As for the hypocritical aspect, that comes up nowadays when Dobson claims he feels bad for mocking Twilight all those years ago and how people were bad for making fun of it and Stephenie Meyer. That those who did it were like women hating assholes and still are if they do not apologize. Cause frankly, I feel a majority of people “apologizing” are just dishonest with themselves now. Apologizing primarily because in the eyes of some other people they look up to, if they do not they will be pariahs. Especially when extend of their initial childish disdain for Twilight becomes clear. I e.g. do not hate Lindsay Ellis aka the former Nostalgia Chick, but the fact she made a big apology video on Meyer was laughable when you see how she “stood” to her opinion back in the day to the point she wrote a novel to mock the kind of story Twilight did. Sure, she admitted to a lot of her own faults back in the day so there was also some self reflection to it and I respect that. But I think in a way this was also a tactic to just appease some other people and it does not take away that initially she had those thoughts about Twilight. And frankly, Twilight is problematic in a way.

Again, I read the first book and I did not consider it the worst thing in the world, just kinda dull for my taste. However, having read on a lot of things that happen in the book series itself, it is clear that Bella and Edward are some pretty horrid and selfish characters who barely get called out or face consequences for terrible actions. Take also into account the pacing of the story and you get on average a book series that deserved a certain amount of criticism from a technical point of view and Meyer’s at least being questioned about some of her decisions in the writing process. It did however not deserve book burnings or people mocking and harassing fans and the author, the former being mocked by Dobson here funnily enough.

 Transformers: And what is it you find weird about people caring for cars? This is not even me being a cars fan here or something, I just ask because even that “explanation” is no explanation at all. He is just saying “I don’t care for X because I also do not care much for Y”. The correlation between the two is missing.

As for why people care about those two things Dobson, perhaps it is for the following:

Cars because people like the aesthetics, the technics, like to build stuff or get a rush by driving them. Transformers, because people just like action as well as the lore to the franchise and think giant robots turning into vehicles is cool, as long as Michael Bay is not involved in creating a story.

Furries: As with cars, likely aesthetics. Anthropomorphic animals have been part of our culture even long before cartoons (just look at fables, fairy tales and legends all across the world involving animals) so I assume there is even something more subconsciously involved with it. And frankly, I like furries myself. Some of them are way better artists than Dobson could ever be. That said, I do as an individual draw a line at furries that harass other people and show creators, hurt animals or are combining their interests with some really weird sex fetishes (two words: diaper fur). Which I guess do many other people cause there is a healthy amount of furries and non furries who have standards. The thing is just Dobson seems to think all furries are the same. Not to forget that for a long time he did everything denying he was interested in furries, citing his college as a reason for it cause people there installed a hatred for furries into him. A wonder then he would even enjoy Looney Tunes anymore. And honestly, himof all people mocking people for having a “sick” fetish? I am sorry Dobson, but compared to the kind of inflation you drew, I would say the average furry (as in someone who just draws two adult fursonas making out with each other under consent) is less “disturbing” than you. Someone who did not just inflate the female, at times underaged victims, but also made them pop/killed them.

DnD: I wish I had the comment Dobson posted on deviantart under the comic, as in it he digged himself even deeper with every panel and the explanations he gave. Just to show I am not pulling it out of my ass when I say for DnD one of the main reasons he hated it was that he thought nerds made the fantasy genre even nerdier by adding math to it.

Oh no. The fact people have to add numbers from a couple of dices together is too high of a math concept for Dobson. So those people must have absolutely no lives and are all just fat, bald and with acne.

Seriously though, fuck off. I am not into table top gaming, but whoever is, they shall just have fun. And stop body shaming nerds with the way you draw the DnD player here (and in that other infamous DnD comic he did), especially when you yourself look like a shaved egg in real life. Heck, did you know of all people Vin Diesel enjoys DnD?

Just let the people enjoy their adventure campaigns and come together once in a while instead of being shut offs like you, whose only experience with an interactive fantasy story involves playing Skyrim at 10 fps.

And yes, I am aware that Dobson has changed his opinions on DnD now thanks to some podcast. But based on his record, I feel that Dobson only did join it because it is now the cool thing to care on average about DnD as nerd. In addition he also did not own up to his past “mistake” till people just called him out on his bullshit often enough.

Klingons: Okay, I am not much of a Trekkie myself, but again, I get that people just like the aesthetics of them and the story crafted around Klingon culture within the franchise. So, just let them have fun with it. What is even the “joke” here? That people enjoy it despite it “just” being black Asian barbaric samurai in space, which is a very simplistic, in my opinion even outright racist description based on the choice of words here? Frankly, I am glad he did not just also add a racist Japanese accent to the guy here.

So there you have it: Things Dobson does not understand and essentially mocks for existing. And don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Dobson not “getting” those things. Everyone has their own tastes, likes and dislikes as well as reasons why they are into it or not. I e.g. understand that people enjoy Bob’s Burger, but I myself really do not like the show much, because most characters come off as annoying to me in terms of personality and quirks. That said, I understand the visual appeal to it, if you like it that is fine and if you ass why I don’t like it I will give an explanation to it. What I will not do is make a comic mocking the existence of it, imply that my disinterest is correlated to me thinking there is also something inherently wrong with you if you enjoy it and build my disinterest on none existing issues with the thing in question.

Dobson however seems to have done that quite a couple of times and combined with his self righteous nature, it becomes kinda obvious why people began hating his stuff to the point that almost all of 4chan and tumblr developed a stern disdain for him.

[7deadlycinderellas]

The Starks at War, ch3

Ao3 Link

1940 begins. At the end of January, Arya turns fifteen, and along with her birthday comes the start of food rationing.

Hot Pie is outraged. He says nothing of quality can be baked with the butter and sugar they are allotted. Bran misses bacon terribly. But the day before her birthday, the greengrocer in the village has apples in stock, and Hot Pie whips up a fairly decent apple pudding.

Even the things that aren’t on ration seem to be getting harder to get. Shopping involves waiting endlessly in long lines.

And with the end of winter, comes the first casualty of the war.

It doesn’t really seem right to call it a casualty, but that’s how it feels. After Old Nan doesn’t show up for a few days, Arya rides down to the church to check on her.

Her sister says it looked like an apoplexy, in the night.

It’s a blow to the whole family.

“Nan was our nurse when I was a child too,” Ned says when they leave the church after her memorial. “I knew she was old, but I didn’t ever really think this would happen.”

“What are we going to do about Rickon?” Cat wants to know.

Rickon, the youngest, who less than ten minutes after the memorial has already taken off to play football with the evacuee boys.

Cat gazes after him.

“Gilly seems to be good enough with him, but I don’t know if there’s really anything we could do about Rickon that would change him,” is Ned’s take on it.

“I know I used to worry about Arya,” Cat muses, “too much probably. But I never worried she might slip away, just one day sneak away through a spot in this world and slip free.”

Slip free, Ned thinks, does sound like something that might explain Rickon.

As soon as the ground starts to thaw in early spring, Catelyn throws shovels at all of them with packets of seed and pamphlets on digging for Victory.

Arya groans. Some of the Guides in her patrol had helped type and print those.

Bran rolls himself outside to watch them dig up the roses and rhododendrons to replace them with potatoes, and carrots and turnips.

He reads the back of the packet of carrot seeds and tosses it to Gilly to take a look.

“It doesn’t say that there are other colored carrots too. We mostly eat the orange kind in tribute to William of Orange.” he comments.

Gilly laughs at him,

“I don’t know how you remember all of this.”

“Well it’s more interesting than remembering who William of Orange was,” Bran insists. Bran has been spending more time with Gilly in the new year. The realization that the girl was borderline illiterate had been a shock to him he had desperately wanted to correct.

“I don’t understand, don’t they make you go to school in London?” he asks her.

“No one really pays attention,” Gilly says, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, “And it’s not like I can’t read anything, I can write my name and do all my letters. But I don’t understand how you can look at all those words on that pamphlet and make sense of it.”

And so Bran embarks on a quest.

Ned asks Arya every week what her and the guides are doing. She’s already finished her first aid badge, and her electrician badge, and next week their starting on the signalling badge. She’s been looking forward to that one, she’s still terribly jealous of Meera’s proximity to boats. She doesn’t tell her father that their even talking about doing riflery badges too.

In the springtime, Bran helps her get her telegraphist badge. The requirements are that she build her own receiver and be able to transmit in Morse code at at least 30 letters per minute. Jojen and Bran both manage it easily, and eventually, she can too.

They all listen to the wireless more.

The news of the invasion of Norway is hard to listen to, it’s far too close to Scotland.

“You don’t think Robb and Jon…” Cat starts off.

“I don’t think so, “ Bran comments, “Their more recent letters say their squadrons have only been over France.

Jon in particular, has waxed poetic about how France looks from above. His letters he’s sent to Sansa in Kent are mostly recounts of what he has seen of the country.

Sansa tries not to be jealous when she reads them at school.

“You’ve never been to France?” Margaery asks her one day when she’s recounting what he’s written. They’re stretched out side by side on her bedspread in the dormitory, most of the other girls outside in the warm spring day.

Sansa shakes her head.

“I’ve been to Scotland a few times, but never overseas. Have you?”

Margaery nods.

“My grandmother is French, she lived in Paris as a girl, she spoke French to all of us as children. We’ve gone back multiple times. We can’t anymore, obviously, especially with the way things are going, but..”

Sansa doesn’t really notice her pause. She’s done all the things they say she should to support the war effort, but sometimes it feels like she doesn’t grasp it.

“I’ve been to where my mother’s from, but Suffolk isn’t really anything like a different country.” And no one in the family was terribly close to Uncle Brynden, who was a career soldier, or Uncle Edmure, who didn’t really seem to know what he was.

“Maybe I’ll take you someday,” Margaery tells her quietly. When Sansa turns seventeen in early May, she gives her a pair of gramophone records of a singer her grandmother had spoken to her about being one of France’s greatest.

When France falls, school has already let out for summer, so Sansa doesn’t have to see her cry.

Olenna scolds her for it.

“Don’t get upset, get angry. You should be angry that your homeland has been taken over by those lousy krauts.”

She doesn’t correct her that she was born in Britain and that it is actually what she would call her homeland, but correcting her grandmother has never gotten Margaery anywhere in life so she just wipes her cheeks clean and goes on.

After France falls, Gendry’s letters to Arya transform from belligerent to sorrowful.

 There were so many fleeing, the Navy didn’t have enough ships to take them all. We had people piled up on top of each other across the channel. There were fishing boats and cruise ships trying to rescue people who were fleeing, and there still weren’t enough. I saw people trying to swim...I don’t even want to try and imagine if any of them made it. And then we had to go back, again, for eight days straight.

 I haven’t felt like this since hearing about Norway. Stories of pilots whose planes couldn’t even take off because everything was frozen. It was only weeks ago,

 Our ship was moored early because of a special assignment. We were escorting a small group of civilians, patients from Institut Pasteur. One of them was the ten year old daughter of some high up politician. The girl was there for experimental treatment of leprosy. Leprosy! As if her life wasn’t going poorly enough, there has to be a war on.

 Even though we brought the patients on board first, we packed the ship to the gills before leaving. Soldiers packed in like sardines, sweaty, bloodied, scared out of their minds. Don’t tell Robb and Jon, but I heard a lot of men cursing the RAF because the sky was too thick with gunfire to see if the planes were doing anything to help.

 The leper girl- her name’s Shireen something- somehow seemed perfectly happy through it all. She has big patches all over the side of her face, and some of the others onboard seem wary of being near her, but she didn’t pay them any mind. She was singing songs and reading from a book she had carried with her the whole trip. Oh to have her heart in the face of horror.

France falls and summer comes, and thank God Sansa’s returned home. Because over the summer comes the bombardment.

Robb not only doesn’t get leave for his birthday, he doesn’t even get to write letters home during it. The RAF is trying to fight off the attacks on the Channel Islands shipping lanes. They aren’t succeeding.

Meera had been stationed in Devonport, near Plymouth, which starting in July, begins to take a beating. She writes as frequently as she can. Her letters from earlier in the year had been mild by comparison. She had spoken of her training, and the other women on her ship. She’s always had a mild temperament, and took orders easily enough. The other women it seems, mostly think of her as distant and aloof, or the more charitable ones, like she has her head in the clouds. The ones who are intrigued by her title are put off when they realize she really isn’t that grand.

 I guess I should accept that I never have really felt like I fit in. I don’t pick fights though, so most of others just ignore me. I’ve never thought myself unfriendly, but apparently I keep to myself more than most. It was strange, before the war I didn’t really know who I was. I’m hardly some fine lady, born for a life of theater and socials, and many of the upper class would think me no better than a street urchin. But the working class girls spot my accent immediately, and I have far more schooling than them. Even here. But at least here we’re all Wrens, we know who we are here. My bunk mate, Dacey is nice though. She’s from up north, her father owns a mine. Sometimes when we have time off we ride bikes around the town. I miss swimming, I miss fishing too. It’s hard to remember families use to holiday in Devon. The beaches are blocked off now, with thick rings of barbed wire. We helped place mines there too. I hope we can clear them easily enough when their not needed.

Plymouth begins being struck from the air first. She can’t write as often then. When she does, Jojen begins bringing by pieces of paper marked with just Bran’s name. He doesn’t understand why, and Jojen doesn’t seem to either, fixing Bran with looks that are somehow both curious and suspicious.

Reading them it’s understandable.

 I marked these for you Bran because I didn’t really think I should tell some of this to Arya. The letters she writes me are hot blooded as it is. You can share with her if you want.

 Seeing the after effects of the bombs is harrowing, both the buildings and the people. I was upset that I didn’t get stationed in Portsmouth at first, but I don’t think I could watch this happen to something so close to home.

 I was partially right. We may not be at sea, but as soon as the bombs started to fall, those first ones in Cardiff, they asked for volunteers to learn to crew the anti-aircraft guns.

 The guns we have fire so fast you can barely keep track. It takes four of us to fire the damn thing, and if you’re not careful it can knock you on your arse. If we bring any of the Luftwaffe down, I like to imagine it was me.

After Plymouth, Portsmouth is next.

Winterfell’s not that close to Portsmouth, the Stark children had always though, not really anyway. Arya could have made the journey by bike, but her legs would ache and her chest burn with exertion by the time she reached the outskirts.

But now it is somehow both far away and right outside the window.

Every day it seems, the roads are packed with the injured, clutching bundles of possessions, fleeing their destroyed homes. If anyone’s outside when the sirens blare, they can see the sky filling with smoke and fire. Any time of day RAF pilots might pass over head. One morning, when the all-clear blows, Arya sees the red-orange glow of the city on fire over the far horizon, and thinks that it looks frighteningly beautiful.

It’s too far away for most of the volunteers from the village, yet Arya’s guide patrol still makes the journey by bus a few times. They try to clear some of the injured from the first aid stations. She’s growing surprisingly numb to the sight of blood and burns, the sounds of children and grown men screaming. The smell is another story.

Twice, the guides have to take shelter themselves in town, when the sirens announce daytime strikes.

Bran spends his own birthday in the cellar. It’s not like they’re going to be able to have a cake anyway.

They’ve dragged bedding and pillows down, they’re all in the cellar so much. Having been dragged down the steps by both of his parents, and one memorable occasion by Arya and Gilly, Bran’s beginning to think he ought to just find a way to set up a cot or something and sleep down here. Maybe do his schoolwork. Never leave the cellar.

That particular day, Ned is in the village, sheltering at the station where he had gone to refill the petrol with their remaining ration. Cat, Sansa and Gilly are knitting socks, and Arya is pacing.

There’s a loud whistle and a crash that feels far too close. There’s no explosion.

“That was an incendiary,” Arya mutters while pacing, “It won’t explode, it will burst into flames and shoot out bits of metal-”

Bran cuts her off. Sansa is crying and their mother’s face is tight.

“How do you tell the difference?”

“It’s the sound.”

Arya stops herself from telling them about the incendiary charges went off the last time her patrol had been in town. It had set the house next to their shelter on fire, and provided light for the next charge to be aimed at. It had flattened the block. Had they been in one of those pop up shelters instead of a proper underground one, they would have all died.

In the middle of August, Arya is shocked to discover Sansa’s planning to return to school the beginning of September.

“How can you leave? Bombs are falling from the sky!”

“Bombs are falling all over the country, Arya,” This isn’t entirely true, but it remains that the entire southern coast is taking a beating and dogfights are happening over Kent every day as well.

“But if you stay, you’ll be able to be with all of us.” Arya’s eyes are welling up. Her and Sansa were never close, but this whole war has made her heart feel tender in ways it never had. After losing Robb and Jon, and Gendry and Meera, Arya had no desire to let anyone else in her family get away from her.

“It’s my last year of school, I have to finish. If I don’t, it’s like we’re letting the Nazis beat us. It’s not like I can just stay home forever.”

Arya clenches her fists. Is that what this is about? Sansa’s always talked about leaving Winterfell, going to London or Paris or New York, and meeting glamorous people and having some grand romance. Did she still want that, even when she might lose everyone?

“You just want to get away from all of us. We’re not good enough for you anymore are we? You just want to fuck off and leave us all behind.”

Her language is harsh, and her sentiment more so. Sansa has tears running down face, and turns to run away.

Her mother scolds her that night, and when everyone has gone to bed (thankfully, free of air raids for the night), Arya sits up in the parlor by herself.

Ned joins her, offering her a cup of newly rationed tea.

“You were cruel to your sister.”

Arya hangs her head.

“You should apologize before she leaves, or you might regret it.”

“She wouldn’t even care.”

Ned sighs, and wraps an arm around his daughter.

“Sansa loves you, she loves all of us. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have cared what you said to her.”

“Then why does she want to leave again?”

Ned looks at her carefully,

“Arya, what do you want from life?”

Arya tilts her head,

“I don’t really know. I’d like to learn to drive a car. I’d like to swim in the ocean. I’d like to try riding my bike further north, maybe over several days.”

She pauses, for a long time.

“I’d like to get a job, see what it’s like to support myself. I want to go swimming with Meera and Jojen. I want to take rides with Robb, I want Jon to explain everything to me that’s happening in the newspaper. I want to fight with Gendry over Weird Tales, then bring it home and read it with Bran anyway.”

“You want to stay at Winterfell.”

You want things to stay the way they used to be, is what he means, but doesn’t say.

It all sounds strange on Arya’s tongue. She’s always wanted adventure, read stories of jungle expeditions and space flights. Listening to her father’s stories from his days in the Navy as a young child, she’d once asked if she would ever do something so great. Ned had laughed, and the next day brought home a copy of 20,000 League Under the Sea.

The Nazis had stolen that from Arya. Now she longed for the war to end, and for her family to return home. She longed to help bring them home.

Arya nods, eventually. That really is the rub.

“Your mother’s always wanted the same for both you and Sansa what she had. She wants you two to marry well. To marry men of means who love you. For you to be good ladies, who live lives of ease. That would always involve you leaving, and I think that’s one of the reasons you’ve always fought so hard against it.”

Ned suddenly looks very sad.

“I don’t think any of that will happen any time soon. Sansa’s always been more open to the life your mother’s wanted. She’s seen life outside and wants more of it. There’s a lot of wonderful things in the world, outside of Wintefell. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, or her home.”

Ned leans over the squeeze Arya’s shoulders.

“I’m going on the train with Sansa tomorrow, to spend a few days in London.”

“What? Why.”

“Got a call from the foreman. Emergency he needs me to deal with.”

“Why doesn’t he ever call Robert with these?”

Ned laughs. Robert Baratheon, longtime friend, was part owner in the factory. Part owner, but Ned would be pressed to find if Robert gave it any thought whatsoever.

“Because Robert is all the way out in Cheshire, God’s knows how he spends his days.”

Arya still looks terribly downcast.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I understand what you were trying to tell Sansa, but you should still apologize for making her cry. I want to be together with all of you just as much as you do.”

And with that, Ned sends his daughter off to bed.

Sansa and Ned leave the next day on the same train, an hour later disembarking and parting ways.

Arya had watched the two of them leave, and try as she might, couldn’t take her father’s advice. Sansa hadn’t even looked her in the eye over breakfast.

Bombs fall again that night, and in the cellar, Arya feels empty.

The next day, Bran is listening to the wireless and tells her,

“They’re bombing London now.”

Arya feels her insides seize.

A few days he’d said. For once, Catelyn looks as upset as Arya. Ned had telephoned the first day, and the second, but they hadn’t heard from him since.

“They’re aiming for the docks, and the East End,” Bran tells everyone on the third day. “

Gilly chokes a bit, but doesn’t cry.

“My sisters- I hope some of them at least fled.”

“What about your father?” Bran asks.

“He can burn for all I care”.

On the end of the fourth day, Catelyn finally dials the telephone of the factory office.

They haven’t seen Ned since the day before. She tries again the next day. And the next.

Finally, someone gives them the answer.

Arya has never seen her mother collapse before. She’s making noises, like she’s gasping for air. She drops the phone.

Arya picks it up, and demands to know what her mother has just been told.

Parts of her feared, perhaps parts already knew.

Eddark Stark, believed deceased on the 9th of September in structural collapse of the Hotel Guilford….

[hollyscout]

Selling Your Student Experience: University Societies and Career Plans

Selling Your Student Experience

Most university students deal with the same two issues when it comes to figuring out what you want to do when you graduate. First, what job do you want, in what sector, in what city, in what role. Second, how you’re even going to get that job. I found student societies incredibly formative in this process; this article outlines why this is the case and how to utilise societies to find out your interests and to apply for graduate jobs.

Finding what you’re interested in

The best thing about societies is that there is something for everyone! You can continue activities you did in school like football, debating or orchestra or you can try something you’ve never heard of or done before like swing dance, Model United Nations or student cinema.

Societies are the perfect place to try new things and develop interests. If you have an idea as to what sector you want to work in, you can pursue that through relevant student societies. There are groups with entrepreneur grants or student think tanks or even opportunities to volunteer as a teaching assistant. Even if you don’t have a clue what to pursue, societies can still help you figure it out, by allowing you to try out different sectors like media, politics, or charity within your university you can see if this is what you want to do after graduation.  Importantly, this isn’t limited to societies that are career-focused, the skills you gain from your sports team, or writing club, or pantomime group can make you a more appealing applicant for jobs as well as allow you to find new passions and interests.

When I started my degree I was focused on a future law conversion course and pursuing a legal career. However, because of my involvement with societies, I discovered that I thoroughly enjoy writing for student publications and am considering journalism as a possible career choice due to my participation in different student publications. I was able to not only write for student newspapers but also take on an editorial role. I discovered that media wasn’t all about serious news and political discussion but could enable creativity and discuss issues that were more interesting to me like sex and relationships and books. My commitment to Model United Nations has significantly developed my interests in foreign policy and diplomacy so much so that my dissertation follows this theme and I am planning on studying International Relations for a Master’s Degree. What you can discover through your extra-curricular activities can be just as valuable as the content of your degree, if not more so, as it is based purely on your interests.

How societies will help you get a job

A major obstacle to getting the job you want is not having previous experience, how can you get a job after uni if you need to have years of experience behind you to even get through the door? A little known secret is that you just have to sell your skills right. During your time at university, you have learnt new skills, and grown as a person just because you did this on your campus in a society doesn’t mean it has less value than those who’ve learnt it elsewhere. A mistake university students tend to make is underselling their assets; your week-long work placement may seem the strongest attribute on your CV but that doesn’t mean that your university experience, especially the elements we see as ‘the fun bits’ aren’t valuable too. Make sure you include your participation as a member of activities and certainly as a committee member on your CV. If you took on a committee role in your society you may have learnt administrative skills like organising trips or events as social secretary, or demonstrated excellent written command in weekly emails as secretary, you might have exercised strong leadership as president or excellent recruitment skills as brand ambassador or recruitment officer, or reached out to interesting guest speakers as campaigns and speakers officer, the list truly goes on.

Model United Nations

As a fresher, I vaguely knew what the United Nations was, but didn’t have a clue about Model United Nations. I went to the first session and was horrified to find out that every week these people gathered together to simulate the UN through debating foreign policy as a representative of a country. Public speaking to me was more a daunting compulsory presentation to be forced into, not a hobby. Somehow, I stuck to it, returning every Wednesday to face my fear, taking only three weeks to actually get up and speak. By the end of my first term, I went to my first conference in Germany to do it competitively and managed to spend a whole weekend speaking in a room of almost 100 people, in one of the largest MUN committees I’ve been a part of. I still dislike group presentations, but I’m able to public speak to my heart's desire, confidently and (if I must say so myself) at a high standard.

Developing my public speaking has certainly helped me in interviews but more importantly, it has also increased my confidence to apply for more opportunities, attend networking events and utilise them as well as widen my horizons to benefit my future. Graduate schemes appreciate the skills that MUN nurtures; leadership, organisation, and communication are all vital elements to the perfect candidate for a job, and the best way to learn these is through activities and societies. Employees think that MUN is very impressive, which it is! It not only gives you a long list of skills, but also a strong awareness of global issues. You can use your experience and skills from societies in applications, if a job requires event planning or organisational skills, you can back up your abilities with conference organisation, or duties from a committee role. If you can successfully get the delegate for Saudi Arabia to sign your women’s rights resolution then you can probably handle team meetings! My participation in student societies has certainly been the cause of the majority of my personal growth, my belief in myself and my confidence that I will achieve the goals I set for myself, and I urge any university student to get involved!

Written for The Zig Zag, a career advice platform run by Women In Foreign Policy (WIFP) focussing on the experiences of womxn in the foreign policy sector.

Read it on their website here.

[berniesrevolution]

On the list of America’s irrational fears, Palestine is near the top. This is no small feat for a “country” with no actual territory and a population about the size of South Carolina. Despite its lack of an air force, navy, or any real army to speak of, Palestine has long been considered an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and the full backing of the United States. Since there’s no military or economic justification for this threat, a more nebulous one had to be invented. Thus, Palestinians are depicted in the media as hot-blooded terrorists, driven by the twin passions of fanatical Islam and a seething hatred for Western culture. So engrained is this belief that the op-ed page of the New York Times can “grapple with questions of [Palestinian] rights” by advocating openly for apartheid, forced expulsion, or worse.

This worldview demands an Olympian feat of mental gymnastics. It can only be maintained so long as most Americans have no firsthand contact with Palestine or Palestinian people. Even the smallest act of cultural exchange is enough to make us start questioning the panic-laced myths we’ve been taught since birth.  

Of course, the best way to discover the truth about Palestine is to visit the country yourself, though most Americans don’t have the free time or financial resources to do so (this is not a coincidence). This means that those of us who are fortunate enough to visit have a responsibility to share what we’ve seen and heard, without lapsing into pre-fabricated narratives, even “sympathetic” ones. We can’t fight untruth by telling untruths from the opposite perspective. What we can do, however, is report what we saw and heard in Palestine. We can try to provide a snapshot of daily life and let people come to their own conclusions.

With this in mind, here’s what I learned during a recent trip to the Holy Land…

The Palestinian doorman of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem is a large and friendly man who insists his name is Mike. My fiancée and I are skeptical, as we’d expected something a bit more Arabic. We ask him what his friends call him.

“Just Mike,” he says, and taps an L&M cigarette against the wooden desk. He’s sitting in a dark alcove with rough stone floors, nestled halfway up the staircase that leads from the fruit market to the Palm’s small arched doorway.  A pleasant, musty oldness floats in the air. You could imagine Indiana Jones staying here, if he’d lost tenure and gone broke for some reason. To Westerners like us, it seems too exotic to have a doorman named Mike.

Before we can ask him again, though, Mike pounces with a question of his own. “You’re from the States, right?” He speaks English with a thick accent and slow but almost flawless diction, an odd combination that is causing my fiancée some visible confusion, which seems amusing to Mike. I tell him that we’re from Minnesota, a small and boring place in the center-north of the USA. His grin gets bigger, which makes me self-conscious, so I also explain that Minnesota has no mountains or sea, and the winters are very cold.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “I lived in El Paso for thirty years. Border cop, K9 unit. It was a nice place. Had a couple kids there.” Now it’s my turn to gawk, and I start to race through all the possible scams he might be trying to pull. Mike seems to guess what I’m thinking. “Really. I even learned some Spanish.” He scrunches his brow in mock concentration and clamps a hairy hand over his forehead. “Hola. ¿Como estás?Una cerveza, por favor.”  He opens his eyes and laughs. “Welcome to Jerusalem, guys. Damascus Gate is that way. Enjoy.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised he knows a handful of Taco Bellisms, or why this convinces me of his honesty. However, now it’s impossible to walk away. We have too many questions. The first one: Why’d he return to Jerusalem? Mike looks down at his cigarette, smoldering into a fine grey tail of ash. He flicks it against a stone and a bright red ember blazes to life.

“This is my home. I had to.”

Later, as we sip sweet Turkish coffee outside a rug shop in the Old City, it occurs to me that Mike was the first Palestinian person I’d ever spoken with face-to-face. His life story seemed unusual, but I have no idea what’s “usual” when it comes to Palestinian lives. I’d never thought about them before, to be honest. The world has an infinite number of stories, and the days are not as long as I’d like. It’s not like I’d chosen to ignore Palestine. I just hadn’t chosen to be interested in it.

Which was odd, because Palestine has been all over the news since I was a kid. There isn’t a single specific story I recall, just a murky soup of words and phrases, like “fragile peace talks” and “two-state solution” and “violent demonstrations.” They all swirl together, settling under the stock image of a bombed-out warzone as the headlines mumbled something about Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinian Authority. I remember reading about rockets and settlements, refugees and suicide bombers, non-binding resolutions and vetoed Security Council decisions. Not a single detail had stuck. I could feign awareness of some important-sounding events—the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit—but I couldn’t say what decade they happened, or who was involved, or what was decided.

For years, I’d been under the impression that I knew enough about Palestine to be uninterested in what was happening there. This isn’t to say I felt any particular animosity toward the Palestinians. But it’s impossible to fight for every cause, no matter how righteous, if only for reasons of time. Every minute you spend feeding the hungry is a minute you’re not visiting the sick. Life is a zero sum game more often than we’d like to believe.

As we headed toward the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion, I began to feel uneasy. The Israeli police (indistinguishable from soldiers except for the patches on their uniforms) who stood guard at every corner still smiled at us, and they were still apologetic when they forbade us from walking down streets that were “for Muslims only, unfortunately.” Their English was excellent. Many of them were women. They were young and diverse and photogenic, a recruiter’s dream team. But all I could see were their bulletproof vests and submachine guns. Above every ancient stone arch bristled a nest of surveillance cameras. Only a few hours ago, I’d been able to block all that from my sight, leaving me free to enjoy the giddy sensation of strolling through the holiest city on earth.

The road ended at the Lion’s Gate. Just as we approached it, a battered Toyota came rattling through. It screeched to a halt and a squad of Israeli police surrounded the car. All four doors opened and out stepped a Palestinian family. The driver was a young man in his 20s, with short black hair cut in the style of Ronaldo, the famous Real Madrid footballer. When the police told him to turn around and face the wall, he did so without a word. It was obvious this was a daily ritual. The policeman who frisked him looked as bored as it’s possible to look when patting down another man’s genitals. Soon it was over, and the family got back in their car. One of the policemen pulled out his phone and started texting.

If I’d made a video of the search (which I didn’t) and showed it to you with the volume off, you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. The Israeli police didn’t hurt the man, and he barely made eye contact with them. There were no outrageous racial slurs or savage beatings. The only thing you’d see is a group of people in camouflage battle gear standing around a small white sedan, with a middle-aged woman and a couple of young girls off to the right. Unless you have hawk-like eyesight and an exceptional knowledge of obscure uniform insignias, I doubt you’d be able to tell “which side” any of the participants might be on. All you could say for sure is that the police wanted to search the family’s bodies and belongings, and the family looked very unhappy about it, but the police had guns and cameras, and that settled things. It’s interesting what conclusions different people might draw from a scene like that.

Later that night, after we get back to the Palm, I tell Mike about what we saw. He asks what we’d thought. “It was fucked up,” we say.

Mike sighs. “You should see Bethlehem.”    

Jerusalem is so close to Bethlehem that you barely have time to wonder why all the billboards that advertise luxury condos use English instead of Arabic as the second language before you arrive at the wall.

The wall is the most hideous structure I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, groaning monument to death. Tall grey rectangles bite into the earth like iron teeth, horribly bare, cold, sterile, a towering monstrosity. The wall makes the air taste like poison.

We’re in the car of Mike’s cousin Harun, who is Palestinian, but his car has Israeli plates so we aren’t searched at the checkpoint. We inch past the concrete barriers and armored trucks. Harun holds his identity pass out the window, a soldier waves us through, and a few seconds later we’re in Bethlehem, a short drive from where Jesus Christ was born. It feels like entering prison. I don’t say prison in the sense of an ugly and depressing place you’d prefer not to visit. I say prison in the literal sense: a fortified enclosure where human beings are kept against their will by heavily armed guards who will shoot them if they try to leave. This is what modern life is like in Bethlehem, birthplace of our Lord and Savior.

Looking at the wall from the Israeli side breaks your heart because of its naked ugliness. On the Palestinian side, the unending slabs of concrete have been decorated with slogans, signs, and graffiti, which break your heart for different reasons. One of the hardest parts is reading the sumud series. These are short stories written on plain white posters, plastered to the wall about 10 feet up. Each story comes from a Palestinian woman or girl, and most are written in English, because the only people who read these stories are tourists.

One in particular catches my eye, by a woman named Antoinette:

All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there at a school as a volunteer and all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem: the wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman.

The flowers are what gets me, because my mother also arranges flowers at church. Hers is an Eastern Orthodox congregation in Minneapolis, about 20 minutes by car from my childhood home. That’s about the same distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, although there aren’t any military checkpoints or armored cars patrolling the Minnesotan highways. Until today, I would’ve been unable to imagine what that would even look like. The situation here is so unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in real life that all I can think is, “it’s like a bad war movie.” For the Palestinian people who’ve been living under an increasingly brutal military occupation for the last 70 years, an entire lifetime, I can’t begin to guess at the depths of their helpless anger. What did Antoinette think, the first time the soldiers refused to let her pass? What did she say? What would my mother say? There wouldn’t be a goddamned thing she could do, or I could do, or my father or my sisters, or anyone else. We’d all just have to live with it, the soldiers groping us, beating us, mocking us. No wonder Antoinette gave up hope. In her place, would I be any different? We walk in silence for a long time.

We end up in a refugee camp called Aida, where more than 6,000 people live in an area roughly the size of a Super Target. Here, the air is literally poison. Israeli soldiers have fired so much tear gas into the tiny area that 100 percent of residents now suffer from its effects. If they were using the tear gas against, say, ISIS soldiers instead of Palestinian civilians, this would be a war crime, since “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” are banned by the Geneva Protocol. However, such practices are deemed to be acceptable in peacetime, since there’s no chance an unarmed civilian population would be able to retaliate with toxic agents of their own. Without the threat of escalation, chemical warfare is just crowd control.

Before we continue, there are three things you should know about Aida. The first is that there’s no clear dividing line between Aida and Bethlehem, so an unwary pedestrian can easily wander into the refugee camp without realizing it. The second thing is that it doesn’t look like a refugee camp, at least if you’re expecting a refugee camp to be full of emergency trailers, flimsy tents, and flaming barrels of trash. The third thing is that the kids who live there have terrible taste in soccer teams.

We meet the first group as soon as we enter the camp. There are five of them, all teenage boys. One of them is wearing a knockoff Yankees hat. They’re staring at us, and at once I’m very aware of my camera bag’s bulkiness and the blondeness of my fiancée’s hair. A loudspeaker crackles with the cry of the muzzein, and it’s only then that I realize how deeply we Americans have been conditioned to associate the Arabic language with violence and death. The boys exchange a quick burst of words, raising my blood pressure even higher, and cross the street toward us.

“Hello…  what’s your name?” The kid who speaks first is tall and stocky, wearing the same black track jacket and blue jeans favored by 95 percent of the world’s male adolescents. He’s also sporting the Ronaldo haircut, as are several of his friends. Two of the kids start to pull out cigarettes, so I pull out my cigarettes faster and offer the pack to them. Is this a bad, irresponsible thing to do? Sure, and if you’re worried about the long-term health of these kids’ lungs, you should call the American manufacturers who supply Israel with the chemical weapons that are used to poison the air they breathe every day.

I tell the kid my name is Nick, and he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Shadi.” He’s carrying a rolled-up book, as are his friends, so I ask if he’s going to school. “Yeah bro, exams. We have three this week.” His friends laugh, and then engage in a quick tussle for the right of explaining that they’re heading to their math exam now, which is a boring and difficult subject, and I agree that it is, although at least you never have to use most of it after you finish school, a sentiment that earns me daps from Shadi and his friends, and we stand there giggling and smoking on the street corner of the refugee camp, though for a few moments we could be anywhere in the world.

My fiancée and I, both teachers by trade, start to pepper the kids with questions. Shadi says that he has one year left at the nearby high school, which is run by the UN refugee agency that was just stripped of half its funding by Trump. After he finishes, he plans to study at Bethlehem University. The other guys nod with approval, and speak of similar hopes. I ask them who their favorite footballer is, and they all say Ronaldo, at which I spit in disbelief, because everyone knows that Ronaldo sucks and Messi is much better, visca el Barça! Shadi and his friends break into huge grins, since few elements of brotherhood are more universal than talking shit about sports. Seconds later we’re howling with laughter as Shadi’s buddy makes insulting pantomimes about Messi’s diminutive size. A small part of my brain is loudly and repeatedly insisting that everything about this moment of life is batshit lunacy, that there’s no reason why I should be standing in a Palestinian refugee camp, yards away from buildings my country helped bomb into rubble, with my pretty fiancée and expensive camera, talking in English slang with a group of boys whose lungs are scarred with chemicals made in the USA, the exact kind of reckless young ruffians whose slingshots and stones are such a terrifying threat to the fearsome Israeli military, and the craziest thing of all is that here in the refugee camp, surrounded by derelict cars and rusty barbed wire and 6,000 displaced Palestinians,  we are not in danger, at least not from whom you’d think. Here, in the refugee camp, we can joke around with people who speak our language and know our cultural references and actively seek to help us navigate their neighborhood. None of this is to say that Aida is a safe, comfortable, or morally defensible place to put human beings, but only that the people who live there treated us with such overwhelming kindness and decency that I have never been more ashamed at what my country does in my name. I tell Shadi and his friends to take the rest of my cigarettes, but they smile and decline.

“We, uh, have to go now,” says Shadi, as his friends start to walk up the street. “Do you have Facebook?” We do, because everyone does, and as we exchange information, I wish him good luck on his math exam. “No way, bro, I suck at math,” he says. We both laugh, and I pat him on the back.

“Fuck math. But hey, you’re gonna do great, Shadi.”

“Thanks bro. Fuck math.”

I hope he gets every question correct on his exam. I hope he goes to university and wins a scholarship to Oxford. I hope he invents some insanely popular widget and it makes him a billion dollars and he never has to breathe tear gas again.

We continue walking through Aida camp. The buildings are square, ugly, and drab, but the walls are decorated with colorful paintings of fish and butterflies and meadows (along with a somewhat darker array of scenes from the Israeli military occupation). We meet a group of cousins, aged four to 10, all girls, who ask if we can speak English. When we offer them a bag of candy, they take one piece each, and run away yelping when a man limps out the front door of their house. “Thank you,” he says, his face a mask of grave civility. Cars, all bearing green-and-white Palestinian plates instead of the blue-and-yellow Israeli ones, slow down so their drivers can shout “Hello!” We meet another group of kids, boys this time, who grab fistfuls of candy and make playful attempts to unfasten my wristwatch. We make a hasty retreat from this group. The streets are scorched in spots where tear gas canisters exploded.  Narrow strips of pockmarked pavement lead us down steep hills and into winding alleys, and soon we’re lost.

This is how we meet Ahmed. He’s a tall man, about 40 years old, with a small black mustache and arms as thin as a stork’s legs. A yellow sofa leans against the concrete wall of the three-storey apartment building where he lives. Ahmed is sitting there with an elderly couple. He asks if we’d like a cup of tea, and although we’ve been warned about the old “come inside for a cup of tea” scam, we accept his offer. The elderly couple greets us in Arabic, and I try not to notice the large plastic bag of orange liquid peeking out from beneath the old man’s shirt.

While we climb the stairs to Ahmed’s apartment, he tells us that the old people are his parents. “They live here,” he says, pointing to the door on the first floor, “because they don’t walk very good. My mother has problems with her legs, my father is sick from the water.” He traces the pipes with his finger, and we see they’re coated in a thick reddish crust. “Here is the home of my big son,” he says when we reach the second floor. “He has a new baby.” We congratulate him on becoming a grandfather. “And I have a new baby, too! Come, I show you!” One more flight of stairs, and we arrive at Ahmed’s apartment.

It looks remarkably similar to a hundred other apartments we’ve visited. Framed photos of various family members hang on the living room walls, which are painted the same not-quite-white as most living room walls. There’s a beautiful red rug and a small TV. A woman is sitting on the sofa, nursing a baby as she folds socks. “My wife,” says Ahmed.

She speaks a little English too, and says that her name is Nada. She has a pale round face and long black hair. Her eyes are soft, kind, and completely exhausted. Yet if she’s annoyed or embarrassed by our presence, she doesn’t show it. She just hands the baby to Ahmed and goes to make the tea.

“I’m sorry for my house,” says Ahmed, cradling his son like a loaf of bread with legs. “We try to be clean, but…” There’s not so much as a slipper out of place, but I know what he means. “We rent this flat. And my son, and my parents. All rent. Before we have a farm, animals, olive trees, but now, we rent.” I ask about his job. He smiles and shakes his head. “I want a job,” he says, “I love to work. With my hands, with my mind. I love to work. But here, haven’t jobs.” For a second he looks like he’s going to continue this line of thinking, but he stops himself. “I help my wife, that is my job.” Ahmed laughs and passes his baby to my fiancée. “And he, he helps in the home?” She demurs while I protest in mock indignation. I do the dishes every morning before she even wakes up! Still laughing, Ahmed rubs his shins, and again it’s easy to forget we’re sitting in a refugee camp in Jesus’ hometown.

Then the baby wheezes. It’s a dry, scratchy wheeze. Ahmed squirms in his seat, looking embarrassed. The baby begins to cough. My fiancée rubs his back as the coughing turns wet and violent.  Machine gun explosions blast from his tiny lungs. As an asthmatic, I recognize the sound of serious sickness. The baby writhes in my fiancée’s lap, struggling to breathe. He’s gasping and it’s getting worse fast. At moments like these, personal experience tells me that a nebulizer can be the difference between life and death. I don’t insult Ahmed by asking if he has one, because it’s clear that he doesn’t. All I can do is rub the boy’s chest with my finger, a stupid and useless massage. He kicks and stretches as if trying to wiggle away from the unseen demon that’s strangling him.

Nada hurries back with the tea. “I’m sorry,” she says, picking up the baby. She coos to him in Arabic and rubs his back, both of which are comforting but neither of which can relax the inflamed tissues of her infant’s lungs. “My baby…” Unable to find the words in English, she looks to her husband.

Ahmed rubs his cheek. “When she is pregnant, one night the soldiers come. They say the children throw stones. They always throw stones. So the soldiers shoot gas in all the houses. In the windows, over there.” His voice gets quieter. “And she is very sick. When the baby is born, he is sick too.” I ask him if it’s possible to find medicine. “Sometimes yes,” says Ahmed, “but very, very expensive.” For the first time, there’s a note of frustration in his voice. “Everything is expensive here. You see this,” and he picks up a pack of diapers, “it cost me thirty shekels. 10 dollars, almost. And the baby needs so many things. It is impossible to buy. I haven’t money for meat, how can I buy medicine?” He points to a plastic bag with four small pitas. “This is our food. One bread for my two sons, and two breads for my wife. She must make milk for our baby.” When I ask him what he eats, he holds up his cup of tea.

Somehow Nada has soothed the baby out of danger. His breathing is almost normal again, just a quiet raspy crackle. She’s still staring at him, her big brown eyes wide with worry. I don’t know how many times she’s done this before. I don’t know how many times are left before her luck runs out. 

Somehow she’s keeping her baby alive with nothing but the sheer force of her love. I ask to use the toilet so I don’t have to cry in front of her.

(Continue Reading)

[december-girl06]

65 Questions You Aren’t Used To

I was tagged by one of the sweetest people I know @rafaelina-casillas <3 Thank you for being interested in my pretty dull personality.

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

No, I don’t believe that I live in some huge extravagant experiment and I don’t usually delve too deep into human existance itself.

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

Probably 4, I’ve been scared of the dark ever since I was little.

3. The person you would never want to meet?

One of the world’s dictators be it past, present or future.

4. What is your favorite word?

I don’t really have one.

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be?

A willow, I’ve always found it beautiful and I’ve heard that its a symbol of wisdom and adaptability.

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?

“Ugh you look like a mess.”

7. What shirt are you wearing?

An ordinary white one.

8. What do you label yourself as?

A shy person.

9. Bright room or dark room?

Bright, dark rooms make me feel suffocated.

10. What were you doing at midnight last night?

Browsing Twitter/Tumblr.

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?

19-20 because i became more independent and came to live in the big city with my best friend.

12. Who told you they loved you last?

My mom probably but it was some time ago.

13. Your worst enemy?

Of course it’s my own self because I want to change but I’m the one who makes it difficult.

14. What is your current desktop picture?

This picture of my sweet baby Changkyun from MONSTA X <3

15. Do you like someone?

Romantically no.

16. The last song you listened to?

Ladies’ Code - My Flower

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

No one, bearing the responsibility for someone’s death will be too much for me.

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

Myself for being so lazy and unmotivated.

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

I don’t like the idea of having a slave.

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)

Probably my long eyelashes.

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

I would want to be tall, moderately muscular and with dark hair and eyes. I would probably put on a suit and go to a business meeting just to find out what it’s like to have that infamous male confidence that impresses us women so much.

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it?

I have some talent for acting. I’ve been in a few plays and got pretty high praises from professional theatrical actors.

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?

Falling down and smashing my teeth, I believe that it would be extremely painful so I wish I would never have to go through it.

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.

Sybway has a sandwich called Italian B.M.T. with a few types of meats, vegetables & cheese so probably that.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?

On MONSTA X merchandise.

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go?

Seoul, South Korea especially right now since MONSTA X is having a comeback next week.

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be?

Moët & Chandon - champagne.

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?

No violence.

29. What is your favorite expletive?

Fuck!

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

My wallet because my documents & money are in it.

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

My father getting into a car crush, being in pain and struggling to do anything through the recovery process.

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world!

Seoul, South Korea. The people I’m a fan of all live there.

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

My best friend’s favourite grandmother.

34. What was your last dream about?

I was sitting in a car talking to someone but I don’t remember who the person was or what our conversation was about.

35. Are you good at hiding your emotions? Like pretending to be happy while you want to cry?

Yes, I’m very good at it actually so if I do show my emotions that meants that I trust the other person a lot.

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

For just a few stitches yes but it was a long time ago.

37. Have you ever built a snowman?

A lot of times when I was little.

38. What is the color of your socks?

Blue.

39. What type of music do you like?

I listen to whatever song sounds good to me it doesn’t matter if it’s pop, hip-hop, rock, trap and so on.

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

Sunsets especially if I’m at the beach, the atmosphere is so peaceful and you can take a few moments to really appreciate the beauty of nature or just pretend that time has stopped.

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

Chocolate, I like everything with chocolate in it.

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer)

I don’t support a particular team.

43. Do you have any scars?

Yes, the most prominant one is near the corner of my right eye from when i fell on the edge of the bedside table when I was about 5.

44. What do you want to be when you graduate?

I want to be a baker or a chocolatier but that’s not going to happen soon.

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My anxiety, sometimes it drives me almost insane and it sucks.

46. Are you reliable?

I believe that I am yes.

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

Are you still so insecure in yourself?

48. Do you hold grudges?

Not really.

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

A panda & a koala to create the ultimate cute fluffy lazy bear.

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had?

I avoid having such conversations so I can’t think of one.

51. Are you a good liar?

No because the people who know me well can figure me out right away.

52. How long could you go without talking?

If I’m by myself very long but if there are other people around me I hate being silent it makes the atmosphere awkward so in that case a few minutes.

53. What has been you worst haircut/style?

I had curled puffy hair for my high-school graduation and I absolutely hated it.

54. Have you ever baked your own cake?

One time and it was quite fun, I would like to try that out again.

55. Can you do any accents other than your own?

I can but they’re very bad, I’m not good at accents.

56. What do you like on your toast?

Cheese or ham.

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?

I have no idea, I haven’t drawn in ages.

58. What would be you dream car?

An Aston Martin.

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.

Sometimes I play with the water but that happens extremely rarely.

60. Do you believe in aliens?

I believe that out there in the universe exist other creatures besides us yes but they’re definitely not green and how they’re depicted in the Hollywood movies.

61. Do you often read your horoscope?

No, I don’t care for horoscopes.

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

S, the letter my name begins with.

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

Dragons because the fantasy novels I’ve read make them sound very cool and majestic.

64. What do you think about babies?

They’re super adorable, cute & sweet. I would love to have a baby some day.

65. If you could marry and live together forever with one of your crushes (doesn't matter whether fictional or a celebrity crush) who would that be?

Probably Alexander Skarsgard because he’s a talented, handsome, intelligent, funny man and wants to have a big family, he’s pretty much the whole package.

[richigneven]

Buenos Aires Calling!

The signs could not have been much better: My first ‘vacation’ lasting more than a week since the awesome festival so called “gneven im grünen”, three concert tickets for my more or less favorite band ‘die toten hosen’- a band I have followed along down the road, which not only makes good music but also supports smaller bands, ethical correct NGO´s and sometimes even play in your living room if you are lucky AND the promising city of Buenos Aires, which goes as the Berlin of South America, or not even Latino American anymore. So my expectations were quite high as well, still they s were exceeded...

My hostel was great, although I arrived way too early they welcomed me with breakfast and showers. As I did not take the first internet recommendation I ended up in a 100% spanish-speaking community, from which a few studied and others sadly escaping war in Venezuela and some others doing whatever. Crazy those two things, first I could never do my exchange semester out of a dormitory, as I already troubled falling a sleep when not completely wasted- how do people snore louder than a airplane taking off? Second why have we reached the point that people need to escape their homes again and shouldnt we welcome them a little more than given them a bed in return of work? You find Venezuelans everywhere in South America right now...

Anyway, I wanted to get to know this European city, which at first glance showed off with nice facades, broken sidewalks and a walkable traffic situation (remember Im used to Lima at the moment, I actually got quite a cultural shock when people actually followed traffic rules and not everyone looked quite similar). I did a walking tour, and right away I saw it at its best, stunning buildings and cemeteries everywhere(at least in the right suburb..) Btw the popularity of their steaks is based on the flatness of the countryside of Argentina, cows actually do have some space to walk around and not need to be cooped up in some stall. Afterwards, I stumbled around myself, and by this is into a huge demonstration. All kinds of human protested in favor of rights for everybody, especially Woman and the LGBT scene. Every of the last ten years more than 200 women has be mudered by their husband or partners, I have heard about it before, but seeing the demonstration showed me how serious the issue is and how many must have suffered domestic violence. I followed along and was quite impressed by the creativity and number of participants. It seems like still the authorities dont really care, as this has been run for over a year now...

it really was endless...

I bet a better photografer would have made a good pic out of that!

Rushed from the energy of the protests I had a buncher Spätibeer (cerveza de ciosco) and decided to go see my friend from my old exchange semester in good old fresno..So we met 9 years ago and havent seen since. Ines were just working in a restaurant and I already had a few beers too many. So after she invited me for two more I tried too call it a night, which is always hard when you in a foreign city for the first time 10km away from your bed and trying to go by public transport. AllI know, I woke up in my hostel the next day and some blurry memories sitting in some other bar with some Germans, but I dont know why. Alright lets face it, probably the craving for more beer.

In the morning, I realized today would be the day I have never really imagined to become true. Seeing “Los Hosen” in Buenos Aires is said to be special. I always wanted to know what´s about it, because special is also sitting one hour in the” Berlin Ringbahn” and drink beer or the Chinese Wall, but neither gets a lot of my attention. After another day of enjoying various parts of the city I went in front of the venue, Museum, a buncher years ago crashed the stage in the second song and the concert was over. The first guys I approached were already a win in the lottery and I could not have asked for more. Spätibeer here and there and talks about everything what my Spanish has to offer. The show was crazy, a venue like SO36, long and narrow. A small terrace all around from which Campino (singer) jumped into the crowd and somehow mad his way back, totally red, as people did not want to let him go...A few punch were needed so he reached the stage again. 

The crowd of 800-1000, of which maybe 100 were German, freaked out at pretty much every single song. Decent singing along but even harder dancing along. Everybody full of energy, led by a Band which noticeably enjoyed to be part of it once again. After the concert I went further to a few more Bars or you could call it Club even, energy for those after concerts partys I usually do not have after concerts in Germany. This night, I got a ride home, across the entire city, letting somebody out at the bus station apparently is no option when you their “guest”.

Party people

The same reason, the next day, I was invited to a match of one of the biggest football teams over there.. Boca Juniors, it was really interesting to see such a steep stadium which shacks because everybody jumps and how fascinated all the players and fans are. But I certainly have friends which can analyze those events way more. Side note: Argentina has stopped to allow fans of the visiting teams for all league games, in order to prevent violence. A working approach, but defiantly not in the sense of the sport.

A couple more or less boring hard working days for my uni were interrupted by a Cover concert and even more interesting of a Concert of the Magic Mystery tour show in a house in Buenos Aires. You can apply ahead and if you lucky the Hosen come to give a show and the fans possibly destroy all you have. I talked to many people who at least once tried it, but these gigs are quite precious. Getting inside this house was not possible, but through same delays in my taxi I arrived for the last few songs of the concert, which was totally sufficient for me. Except the drummer, everybody got outside of the house once and of course Campino climbed every fence there exist on the premises. Afterwards, a little party in front of the fence took place and once again a intercultural understanding with hands and legs. Knowing a few words of Spanish certainly made the situation even more fun and allowed me buying beer in the cioscos around, which was hard as for some reasons they only wanted to sell cold beer, but to understand this I almost failed.

Campino not only gave its best during the show, the aftershowparty he won against everybody!

In front of the fence, it was still cleanable afterwards, nobody know about inside

Wow Wednesday already, but still two more official shows to go! The German Hosen fans, organized a bus tour to the town of the next venue, La Plata, which is 1-2 hours down south from BA. Ive almost missed the bus, due to lets face it: Hangoverness but also Credit Card issues, during which I kind of realized how screwed you could be in a foreign country. But all worked out and with 1 hour delay and a busdriver who ask after 1 hour ride where he actually supposed to head we were almost at our first stop: The barbeque party in some Argentina´s house. The owner just decided to through a party for everybody who wanted to come and as it was somebody´s birthday the owner bought beer and steaks for the most of them. (unluckily no grilled cheese, but this time people were at least to buy warm beer in the Späti next door) So i tackled my hangover from last night with a few beers and it become a really nice get-together with people from all parts of society, ages and regions of Germany and Argentina. The good bye was a kiss for the woman living there for everybody and the last existing steaks as “Schnittchen” for later. When was the last time you invited 70 unknown people to your backyard and when it comes to cleaning up they all get in a bus and you give them food and beer for the road?  Arriving in front of the venue the people once again couldnt even wait to party on and sang along the sound check inside which was with the song “Reisefieber”, so an old and popular one, this was promising. I dedicated myself to socialize and to the Späti´s around so once inside It starts to be more of a blur...I remember a few songs, some crowdsurfing, an amazing venue as very wide, once again energized Hosen, more beer(in cans btw) and a few special acts. Is there anything more to ask for? Claro, afterparty, but this is even more of a blur...With many more beer and whatsoever for everybody who was tired or just wanted to be sure to make it a good night we drove through la plata and some other parties over there...At some point i recall 7 people, from which I knew 1 slightly before but good times. At some point at 6 or 7 we returned to BA, I was already sleeping in the car for a while. But the others were still going strong not being tired at the moment. Such a day, no shower, one more sip of beer and straight to bed. I reckon I will never get closer to Punk rock than this before.

Days with the most drinks, usually the ones with the fewest pictures for me ;)

Next day started slowly, ended slowly but again a Coverband concert, Peru tied Argentina, so know it´s very interesting who is going to qualify and another day I made a nice tour through the party area of Palermo with two new friends. The show on Saturday was in a huge venue of 5000-7000 people. The living room of the Ramones, they said. Many other guest, setlist switched again and At least the first third of the concert everybody went crazy once more. With forgoing time, people got more relaxed and only half of the stadium jumped along..I mobilized my last strength and had an amazing time. Meeting people in the crowed I have met during the last week and giving them a possible last high five or smile.

Los hosen more or less announced the location of the aftershow party: the club we went the week before but I called it a night in some bar close to my hostel. A friend gave me his sweater to show once more how welcome I am here. Lots of promises of reuniting in whatever part of the world were mad and at some point I went home to my Hostel. I´m not sure if or when I will see this city and especially all those nice people again. But the times, friendlyness and in all kinds of situation and circumstances they gave me here will always be reminded in my brain and my heart. I now understand when los Hosen say they do not come for the music, they come to meet the people, I seldom received such a warm welcome of different people in various situations in several forms. As always I hope to be able to return the favor in a place where I can show people around and gave them a good time, but for now I can just say thank you!

rocknroll

last beer, this time for sure!

more impressions:

there he is!

street art

subway art

maybe next time Ill tell you about my first Spanish interview! ;)

[billvsamerica]

A Little British Jaunt

A week before we were due to depart to Florida on May 17th, I had a sudden realisation. Kroc Fury, a local 9-12 year old football (soccer) team, were set to play in the finals on May 18th. Normally, I wouldn’t care very much that a children’s team had a game, but on this occasion it was important because I’m the coach. Unbeaten since the first game of the season, they had a real chance of winning the whole thing for the first time since my inaugural season nearly three years ago. I had to make a decision: a) disappoint my wife, leaving her to drive eight hours alone and go down a day later to Florida on the plane, or b) disappoint a bunch of children who idolise me as a demi-god and changer of lives. I booked my flight for after the game. Oh yeah, it was also my wife’s birthday on May 17th. We lost the game on penalties, so I made the wrong decision. They really did let me down. Embarrassing. 

Kroc Fury changing their name to “The Let Me Downs” for next season.

Anyway, after sorting all that out we arrived back in England on Monday morning. After a day of tea and biscuits, we joined my parents on a trip to Oxford to see my brother. He’s teaching there while his girlfriend gets a degree from Oxford (ohhh, posh). Wandering the streets where other great academics had once roamed — Tolkein, Wilde, Hawking, Theresa May (ahem), had made me feel quite at home. I started to wonder whether I should have made more of an effort throughout my school life, messed around less, participated in positive extracurricular activities, got the qualifications I needed to get in, and had actually applied to go there, but then I thought, that sounds like a lot of hard work and I may never have come second in that pizza eating contest if I’d have chosen that path. 

After exploring the historic buildings, like the pub that Tolkein himself used to frequent, the old university grounds, and the Uniqlo that sold those boxer shorts that I like, we ate a Lebanese meal with my brother and headed back to Worcester on yet another pretty train ride. 

The next day, I was planning on getting pissed with my friends from University. It’s mad to think that I’ve known these guys since I was ten, because I haven’t. We met at University, I just said that — pay attention. My friends were coming from Cardiff and they suggested meeting in the middle at Chepstow on the border of Wales. After arriving, I quickly found out that it was only 15 minutes from Cardiff and over an hour and a half from Worcester. Haha, they don’t half like a wind up, those guys.

Bros in Chepstow on tip toes.

They had been in Wetherspoons since 10am, so me and Shelby had some catching up to do and we did so in one of the top five pub gardens in the whole country —the Three Tuns Inn. The only thing that was three tonnes by the time we left was my bladder after all the ale I drank, let me tell you (because I’m proper tough and manly). We reminisced over old memories and looked out over the nearly thousand year old castle. I was a little bit tipsy by the time we got back to the train station, where Rich (my so-called friend) twisted his ankle on the bridge and made quite a fuss about it. Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if we’d have met somewhere closer to Worcester, like Cheltenham perhaps, where I’ve heard the floorboards in the bridge have recently been refurbished. 

This candid picture was taken just after the incident. You can see Rich looking at his ankle and, from a safe distance, Jake also staring at it, both wishing they were in Cheltenham no doubt. 

The weekend came along and with it was the dawning of “Family Day”. In the morning, the family came over to our house and we drank mimosas and Bloody Mary’s. Later on we went over to my aunt’s house for pizza and the main event: Shelby’s Great British Poker Tournament. Joel, wearing sunglasses to disguise his sad little eyes, went ahead early on. He was incredibly cocky the whole time, which made it even more unbearable. I looked like I was heading for an early exit at one point. Down to my last chips, I went all in. I had to win to stay in the game. And did. The weaklings dropped like flies around me after that — Cat was so afraid she didn’t show up; Leah, gone; Lucy, bye bye; Mom, pathetic; Leah, it’s not snap!; Abby, come on now; Mika, no chance; Dad, embarrassingly kept saying that he was getting no cards up his end of the table when I know for a fact he was because of a carefully placed mirror behind him. Down to the last four players, the game started to get interesting. Jack won big and had the majority of the chips. He really let me down with a couple of poor decisions and then I basically bowed out to make him feel better when he lost them all. James came in second and Joel won. You’d think he’d won the Superbowl (that’s basically the Wimbledon Final for the Brits out there).

“And this one is called Cooke, the Baker. Now, do you understand, Joel?”

The next morning, James, Joel and Mika rocked up in a massive clanger of an Mercedes that he had bought recently. He kept saying how it was a cult favorite and everybody wanted one. Yeah, it was a cult favorite alright, looks like the bloody Manson Family used to own it! (Unfortunately, I didn’t say this at the time because it has taken me a couple of weeks to think of it, but I think my silence said basically the same thing). Still buoyed from his jackpot the night before, Joel was ready to splash some cash at the local flea market and I was ready to be told I didn’t need certain items by Shelby and that we couldn’t get them back on the plane anyway. As we turned into the car park, the parking attendant told James to roll down his window. I was half expecting him to tell him to leave because he’d sold him a dodgy motor in the past. Instead, he said “Can you get me one of those cars? I’ve wanted one for ages.” James, smugly smiled. 

After we entered, James immediately walked off in no particular direction rather than wandering around with his nephew he hadn’t seen in nearly a year. The rest of us traipsed around the stalls, Joel purchasing a carved wooden candle stick holder shaped like Jesus and Mika spotting a great gift for Ed Ford’s birthday. It was a lamp that had been crudely taped to a cricket bat and ball. It was the tackiest thing in the whole market. Joel was conned into buying some sunglasses that made him look like Ted Bundy and I bought three old West Brom programs for my brother and dad. All in all, a partial success of a market. When we were about to leave, Mika and Joel went back to buy the cricket lamp. They returned sullenly a little while later with no lamp. Remarkably, somebody else had bought it! Howzat!?  

Ted Bundy and his weird dog, Bear, who kept jizzing on everything (the dog, not Joel).

After Family Day drew to a close, Monday was unofficially named “Friend Day”. There’s a pub in Worcester that Ali Wilson says is his favourite. For this reason and many others, I have never ever been there. On this occasion, it was worth it. They were hosting a reggae sound system in the garden on Friend Day afternoon. With the sun beating down and the beats booming out, I could see why it was a good place to be, until I went inside to order a drink. I refused to give Joel the money to increase his single whisky to a double. In response, the landlord said something antisemitic about me not paying for it. Fortunately, Shelby was still outside, otherwise he might have been on the wrong end of a Jewish headlock. The music thumped out of the speakers and the droves of white people with dreadlocks bopped their heads in tandem and smoked a special kind of cigarette that had a very distinctive smell to it. I wouldn’t know what that stuff was though.

The next few days flew by like a low flying drone illegally filming somebody’s barbecue. On Tuesday evening, I jogged down to Pitchcroft, the local racecourse to play football with the lads for the first time since my knee operation. Will I ever be the player I was before again? I hope not, as I wasn’t that great and this knee is supposed to be better than the last one according to my doctor, Neil Snapinhaff, I think he’s Dutch (say it slowly to get the full benefit of this excellent joke). 

Stoked to be here, folks.

Wednesday, we drove out to Malvern and marvelled at the ancient hills that were said to have inspired Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings (this blog is very Tolkein heavy for some reason). Thursday, we said goodbye to dad and went to Brighton for one final night of fun before hopping on the plane home. 

Once in the coastal home of my cousin and her girlfriend, Abby, we went to eat a wonderful curry and had drinks at a cafe with computer games and stuff in. I didn’t much feel like playing games though. I took a moment alone outside and walked to the pebble beach. It was quiet out there, just the sound of the crashing waves to keep me company. I stared across the pebbles. There’s no place like it I said, but I looked around and nobody had followed me outside to hear my poignant statement. I ran back into the building and shouted loudly “I said there’s no place like it!” They all stared at me and then carried on playing their games and drinking their drinks. I suppose, life goes on for these little Englanders when I’m not around. And my great country will still be here for me whenever I need it. 

Not the only pebble dashing I’d done that week.

Sidenote: I was astonished to see the amount of kids who now do wheelies down the streets of Worcester. I may sound like a Daily Mail reader here, but I would just like to say that it’s very annoying and frightening for the elderly women who are just trying to stand and look at clothes they won’t buy. If all of you are doing it, then it’s not as impressive, is it? So, I propose you design a schedule that allots a different weekday for all of you to do it somewhere quieter, like, the car park of an abandoned warehouse. Also, I tried the Gregg’s vegan sausage roll and it was so good, I actually thought the woman in there had inadvertently given me a meat one, which, in fairness, she might have done as it was very busy. So have that, Piers Morgan, you daft bell end. 

My mad and sound family, plus that guy off Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

[theadmiringbog]

I also decided, a few months ago, to read the Bible on my own—three or four pages a day. But that early stuff was boring and the clock was ticking, so to speak, so I moved on to a timely novel, Left Behind, and made it through enough of that to warn you: Never read it. Believe me. Since then, I’ve tried to talk to God a lot more and to sin a lot less. Had a hard time doing either.

--

Some worry the computers will revolt at midnight, unable to comprehend the year 2000. Each machine’s rebellion will spark some small catastrophe: Planes, unable to find their way, will fling themselves down to earth—darkened earth, since streetlights will not heed commands to glow past midnight. Dams and sewers will surrender to the water’s long-held wish to flow all over the place, all over the people, who will not be warned because the telephones will not connect them to each other anymore. They will have only themselves. Won’t even have money, except whatever cash is on hand, since bank accounts will reset to 1900, when everybody was broke. They will be broke again tonight, and hungry, too, as many grocery shelves have been emptied. Oh, sinnerman. The worst is yet to come. Plagues. Riots. An atom bomb or two on accident, and more: a lake of fire where each sinnerman and sinnerwoman and sinnerchild (twelve years and older) will swim, ablaze, forever and ever.                

--

How exactly would Jesus have kept coming back again and again, based on the different time zones? Hadn’t thought of that.                

--

A great man is an inconvenience as a father, in part because every boy wants to be a man (until it happens), his own man, and that is hard enough to do without everybody calling you the son of somebody.                

--

My mother never made any sense to me and that’s what I liked about her.  

Every other adult seemed desperately committed to making sense. They were all headed somewhere in a hurry, and on their way they always had to tell me that I didn’t have my shirt on right or that I needed to lotion my ashy knees, that I was talking too much, too loud, or not correctly, that I had better stay out of their high heels, that I needed to put on deodorant, that I had to either come inside or go outside but choose because I was wasting the air-conditioning and running up the electric bill.                

--

I’m not saying she was perfect, just that I sure benefited from her imperfections. Maybe that’s what magic is: a useful mistake.                

--

I’m holding the back of the driver’s seat so I can see the white line guide our tires through the rain. I would put this pen down. I would close my bank account and give my monies to the poor. I would ask the Lord to still my voice so I never say another word if I could only sit there in the storm and watch that line again, forever.                

--

Casey! She shot up like Thomas A. Edison himself had run the world’s best electricity through her bones. What did I say?!?                

--

I could never fully make out what she said when she put this stuff on, since she always pulled her mouth tight like she was placing the last bolt in the Brooklyn Bridge and didn’t want to kill a million people by losing focus.                

--

Okay gentlemen y’all watch me now I’ma do what I gotta do soon as I figure out what I gotta do!                

--

Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of a slippery slope and find, instead, a cliff. Maybe that’s what happened to them that night or maybe, bless their hearts, they had spent a great deal of energy keeping it together—since my tenth birthday, since the seizure, since the beauty convention or the move to Columbus or the first time they met. Who knows? It’s amazing, either way, how quickly you can become a thing you’d never thought of being and may not even want to be.                

--

I’ve come to believe that the general role of school in American life is to introduce young boys and girls to inescapable misery at an early age so they won’t complain too much when they reach the workforce.                

--

That’s the image I see now, the one that feels true. A little boy with a heavy sack on his shoulder. He’s trying to get somewhere but doesn’t know where exactly, or how. This sack is so heavy he’s starting to limp and he can’t go any further. He stops on the side of the trail and sits down on a rock. The cool night wind feels gentle on his aching neck. He unties the heavy sack and looks at all the things he’s been carrying. He smiles. No wonder this walk has been so hard. He decides to leave some of the things here on the trail—the heaviest things, the jagged things, the things whose use he doesn’t know. These are the things that he takes out first. He sees a stick nearby and uses it to dig a hole next to the rock. In the hole, he buries the things in his sack that hurt too much to carry. He doesn’t know he will need them later. Doesn’t know that they will wash up in the next rains. For now, all that matters is that his limp is gone and his sack is light and he’s on his way—I’m free.                

--

Yet my rabid search for the person of Jesus, for the path to Him and, through Him, to the next life, was also shaped in those years by a desperate need for something not to fail me.                

--

Even in the most meaningless worlds there are places of privilege.               

--

The only thing worse than being an insignificant member of something is to not be a member of anything. Jefferson should have put that right in the Declaration, so true is it of life in this country.                

--

This was the first time I learned how far you can make it in America if you have enough disregard for your personal welfare. Maybe that’s why football is the national pastime.                

--

When I think about this little coincidence, I realize Jimmy Bishop was the first person I’d ever met who had left Oak Cliff and stayed gone for a good reason, and Gloria Bishop was the first parent I’d met whose questions didn’t make me sick, and Alex and Avery Bishop were the first perfect black boys I’d met that didn’t make me want to punch them in the face. And all these firsts ope’d a space for me to consider, even if I could not know for sure, that here at the other end of the world there might be yet a little room for me.                

--

Every journey is really two journeys: a going-to and a going-away.                

--

But I felt in the hands of the men and heard in the voices of the women and saw in the eyes of the little children that if I went all the way, then they would go, too. And it seemed that they had been waiting so long to go.                

--

Never eat alone. 

That’s what the man says. Yale has brought him to offer wisdom and a free book to its new sons and daughters. This is his message. Every meal is an opportunity to build a new relationship. To grow your network, which becomes your net worth. Say hello. Smile. Send a note. Get out of your room. Share your interests. Your passions. Your projects. Offer help. No, don’t offer help—help. Contribute. Suggest. Put your money in the bank of people. Invest it. Watch it grow. Write a check on it someday. You are here to win. Win the people first. The rest will follow. You don’t yet know you will win fewer people than perhaps any freshman in the history of Yale College. So you listen to the man. You never eat alone.                

--

Well, the truth is that I was nineteen, so can’t be too sure what exactly I wanted. Not even Jesus knew what He wanted when He was nineteen, which may be why there’s nothing in the Bible about that time in His youth.                

-

The trend at Yale and other colleges to have enough leaders to satisfy everybody’s parents and destroy all hope that anything would ever be accomplished.                

--

“The best revenge is excellence.”                

--

I’m talking about the real American Dream, the way the country actually works: If you know the right people, they can help you do anything, be anybody, rules and hard work be damned—as long as they like you. They do have to like you, and that takes a good deal of work.                

--

I was paid great wads of US dollars just to sit at a desk from seven in the morning to eight or nine or ten at night and do what almost everybody else does at work for much less money: try to avoid actual work, and try to keep your boss from figuring out you don’t know what you’re doing.                

--

In the rush to decry the silly and dangerous aspects of this sport, the critics miss a vital fact: these boys, these coaches, are often not just brutes in tights and screaming maniacs, but family—and family does not come easy in America.                

--

But for the rest of my time at Yale it was as if he had let a river run between us and walked away from the other side. Or did he stand there, waiting to see if I would swim across?                

--

Had learned, without reading a single page of Machiavelli, that a great man cannot be a good man.

[segadores-y-soldados]

(not @-ing the person because if they wanna find this they can) (also not putting this under a cut because it deserves to be “out” (lol) in the open)

“God knows I'm an hardcore r76 shipper but I genuinely don't agree with any of this. Teasing tone?banter? It's interesting to me how people perceive things completely differently. Honestly I always thought as reaper as the concept of people catering to the edgy teen stereotype, he's super macho and mysterious. Now he's getting more background and that's good and right, but it started out as a stereotype of a het teen fantasy. I don't mean this as bashing op, everyone is entitled to their Hc.”

---

I think we’re getting something really LOST in translation here.

Because unless I’m wrong

It seems to me like you think I’m stating that Gabriel/Reaper’s mlm-coding is somehow...intentional.

And that leads me to ask:

Do you know what queer/gay coding is?

Queer/gay coding is NOT necessarily intentional on part of the creators.  Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.  When queer/gay coding IS intentional, that’s a form of “queer baiting” - attempting to get a greater audience, usually LGBT+ people, by dangling a “queer/LGBT character” in front of them.  Typically, queerbaiting is never actually fulfilled and instead leaves LGBT+ fans feeling frustrated, denied, and used.

When queer/gay coding is unintentional, it is seen by the creators as “a mistake” and that the fans are “reading too much into it.”

But here’s the thing.

Queer/gay coding exists.  It’s real.  It happens A LOT, whether intentional or not.

http://theroguefeminist.tumblr.com/post/56658099133/queer-codedqueer-coding

http://lgbtfiction.com/index.php?title=Queer_coding

Here are some good starting places to read up on what queer/gay coding is and how it can manifest.  Specifically for our purposes, we wanna look at: “More commonly, however, queer coding is used to reinforce negative and harmful stereotypes. For example, male villains are often depicted as effeminate and flamboyant in contrast to the "manly" hero, reinforcing both damaging stereotypes about masculinity and tropes such as the Depraved Homosexual.”

“Even traits that have become tropes for villains (being well-dressed; having feminine mannerisms or manner of speech; being aristocratic in manner, wealth and appearance; being a smooth talker; having flamboyant hand gestures, manners of dress, and decor in their homes/lairs; having little to no interest in women; being conniving or catty etc etc etc) show how deeply imbedded queer coding as been to the point where queer qualities are associated with evil.”

So let me repeat my original point:

Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is mlm/gay-coded.

That list of design elements?

Those are statements of FACT about his appearance and mannerisms.

I dunno how you think you’re gonna “disagree” with the fact that he wears jewelry, heels, has a faint lisp, is almost 100% sassy/sarcastic/snide/sardonic, has a paired Contra reference spray with another masculine character, permits only one masculine character and reluctantly permits one feminine character to call him by a nickname, drops a ton of pop culture and music references, has a very clearly defined “aesthetic,” etc.  These are all things you can double-check in the game, in his character design, and in his voice lines.  Here, let me give you some links to start with:

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157092621240/reaper-art-assets

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157341261265/reaper-references

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157452109935/reaper-and-soldier-american-cultural-references

And for good measure, you can also have this one on Soldier: 76:

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157721843510/soldier-76-fact-sheet-references-and-some

In fact, with all the new Uprising content, I could actually probably write ANOTHER Reaper/Soldier: 76 “paired cultural references” just with the Commando skin-Predator line-Contra sprays alone.  

Which brings me to my next point:

“Honestly I always thought as reaper as the concept of people catering to the edgy teen stereotype, he's super macho and mysterious. Now he's getting more background and that's good and right, but it started out as a stereotype of a het teen fantasy.”

Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s appeal to “edgy teen stereotype[s]” and “het teen [fantasies]” is about as deep as a puddle.  And you wanna know why?

Because about ALL of his references - save for the “I’m not a psychopath” one and “Nevermore” - are approximately 30 - 50 years old.

Present day.

So by “in-game time,” Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s references are approximately 70 - 100 years old.

The man is a NERD.

Again, I’d like to refer you to the essays above.  Almost EVERY reference Gabriel Reyes/Reaper makes is older than you, me, and most of the people on this website.  He quotes Chick Hearns, Al Davis, AC/DC, The Last Starfighter, and Predator.  He now has a Contra reference spray.  His Pumpkin skin is a goddamn Headless Horseman homage.  His Raven skin is a Edgar Allan Poe reference.  The very name “Gabriel Reyes” is very likely to be a reference to Misión San Gabríel Arcángel and El Camino Real.

Do you know who Gabriel Reyes appeals to?

Men like my father.

Men in their 40’s - 60’s.

(This is why I wrote that “Gabriel/Reaper is basically a ‘mlm character designed and written by straight men (mostly).’”)

“Edgy het teeangers” don’t get the majority of Gabriel/Reaper’s references.  Bloody hell, half the replies and tags on my “Reaper References” post are simply “oh I never knew this” or “thanks for sharing this” because many people under the age of 40 simply don’t know them.  How could they?  How could you?  Have you ever heard the phrase “Welcome to the Black Hole?”  Unless you’re an Oakland (now Las Vegas) Raiders fan or you follow American football, how would you know it?  Did you know who Chick Hearns was before the “It’s in the refrigerator” quote?  Do you know the story of the Headless Horseman?  Did you how important San Gabriel Mission is to the history of Los Angeles?

The vast majority of Overwatch players under 20 simply don’t know all this stuff.

Sure, maybe they get the Nevermore reference.  Maybe they get the “I’m not a psychopath” reference.  They probably get the “Back in Black” reference.

But they probably don’t get all or even the majority of the references.  Many of them are just too old for young people to immediately recognize.

While ALL the Overwatch characters have pop culture references built into their in-game dialogue, their voice lines, their skins, their sprays, etc, the only other character to truly have as many “old references” is

Soldier: 76.

Jesse McCree definitely has some as well, but his are mostly limited to “The Dollar Trilogy” and “Mad Dog McCree.”  Soldier, meanwhile, has references to Evel Knievel, Michael Jackson, Apocalypse Now, Contra (again), Commando, and M.A.S.H.  In fact: “So I brought this up briefly in the Reaper References post, but as far as I can tell, Reaper and Soldier are the only two characters who make references to a major American movie star: Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This is rather odd considering characters like Reinhardt and Mercy are geographically and culturally closer to Arnold’s home country of Austria; Reinhardt in particular shares a similar sense of bravado and battle-lust that Arnold has portrayed in many of his films (Kindergarten Cop Reinhardt when?).”

“Reaper, on the other hand, has the voice line “If it lives, I can kill it,” which is a reference to Arnold’s famous quote “If it bleeds, we can kill it” from Predator, a movie that also features Schwarzenegger in a military role.  I’m waiting for someone to get an “Hasta la vista, baby” line - bonus points to Blizzard if they give it to Mercy.”

I haven’t gotten either of these yet, but the Contra sprays were a step away.  At this point now, I’m waiting for Gabriel/Reaper to get a Rambo or Stallone reference to complete the set.  

But sure, yeah.

I’m “reading too much into it.”

Never mind the fact that someone - or more likely, several someones - at Blizzard approved all these cross-references between two masculine characters.  Again - they don’t have to be intentional to be coded as queer/gay.  But with Uprising - in particular with the Contra sprays - we know that some of them ARE intentional.  It is not “coincidence” that the actual name of the Contra sprays is “Commando,” a reference to the Commando: 76 skin, which is in turn a reference to Schwarzenegger’s Commando movie.  And it’s not a “coincidence” that stills from the very first Contra box art has stills from Schwarzenegger in Predator, and Stallone in Rambo.  And that Gabriel/Reaper has had a Predator quote for ages now.

Do you think Blizzard - a company with their headquarters in Los Angeles, a video game company with their headquarters in Irvine/Los Angeles - is unaware of video game history?  Or Schwarzenegger movies?  Or Los Angeles/California history in general?

But sure, yeah.

I’m “reading too much into it.”

Which brings me to my final point:

“I don't mean this as bashing op, everyone is entitled to their Hc (headcanon).”

I need to ask:

What EXACTLY did you think you were going to accomplish by coming onto a post - written by a mlm trans man, describing really obvious, blatant mlm-coding in a masculine character’s design, a character who fits the two examples of queer/gay coding I’ve quoted above, all the way down to said character’s SHOES - and saying that you “disagree” and that I am “entitled to [my] own headcanon”?

You offered nothing as a rebuttal, you offered no counter evidence, all you did was lampshade that my discussion on the Reaper-Soldier interactions were not said in “teasing tones” and were not “banter” (hey, by the way, if you want to hear the lines again: http://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Soldier:_76/Quotes there they are.  You can hear the sarcastic laughter when Soldier starts the “you sure take to this bad guy thing easily, don’t you” and you can hear the teasing/mocking/sarcastic emphasis when Reaper says “boy scout” so literally no one has to take my word for it - the actual audio is right there).

You just did the deadass “gendered opposite” of when straight cis men went “I never expected Lena/Tracer to be a lesbian/wlw.  I never saw ‘the signs.’”

But hundreds if not thousands of wlw Overwatch fans will tell you the exact opposite.

And they’ll also tell you that many of them never dared to believe Lena/Tracer would be confirmed “canon lesbian/wlw.”

Because they had been burned one too many times before.

So what really, really ruffled my feathers about your response

Is the implication that I - a mlm trans dude, someone who has thought about their own masculinity every single day for the last 13 years - was somehow misreading mlm/masculine gay-coding.

That I had formulated some sort of “headcanon” about Gabriel Reyes/Reaper.

It’s true that I have MANY headcanons about the character -

But his mlm/gay-coding is not one of them.

The post was not meant as a defense of “is Gabriel Reyes/Reaper canonically gay?”  No.  Gay-coding has nothing to do with “level of canon.”  Gay-coding is about the presentation, design attributes, and stereotypes built into a character - intentional or not.  Gay-coding is about the implementation of ideas, concepts, traits, and biases about LGBT+ individuals - subconscious or not - that creators put on certain characters, especially “villainous” ones.

No, the point of the post was to simply list those exact design elements and “personality traits” that demonstrate just how mlm/gay-coded Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is.  The point of the post was to tell other mlm and our allies, “Hey - you’re not alone.  You’re not insane for seeing these traits.  These traits are real.  They are present.  They are veiled under a very thin layer of black kevlar, but they’re there.  You are not alone.  I see them too.”

You proved why the post was necessary.  

You proved why this whole list needed to be written in the first place.

Because some people will “disagree” even when presented with a straight (lol) list of elements and traits - things you can literally visually see on Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s standard design - that show how the mlm/gay-coding was built into his character. And that includes before Reaper even HAD the “Gabriel Reyes” backstory.

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/156816655280/blizzards-shitshow-of-a-timeline

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/156928707135/blizzards-shitshow-of-a-timeline-part-2-the

You say that you thought Reaper was designed as an “edgy het teenager fantasy,” but Reaper has ALWAYS had the bangle, the heels, the skintight clothing, the slight lisp, the multiple belts, the hand gestures, the “sassiness,” the sarcasm.  These all existed before “Gabriel Reyes the character” did.  And even once Blizzard had thought of Reaper’s backstory, they continued to fill it with mlm/gay-coded stuff - voice lines, references, more sarcasm, only they also paired it with a “strong friendship/bromance” between Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison.

The question here is not if Gabriel Reyes is mlm/gay-coded.

By two definitions of queer/gay-coding, by a long list of design elements and traits, by the tone of voice of some of his dialogue, by everything that Blizzard has added to “Reaper” since the mere act of designing him -

He is mlm/gay-coded.

The question now is how intentional is all this.  

And if it will actually result in anything meaningful.

So don’t try to imply that I’m seeing or perceiving things that aren’t there.  

Like the vast majority of other mlm individuals, I’ve been burned A LOT by hoping and waiting and wanting the mlm/gay-coding to “mean something more.”

I’m not waiting for that here.

Rather, I am writing down what MANY of us are thinking but are too nervous to say: that Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is mlm/gay-coded, and therefore we are NOT “seeing things that aren’t actually there.”  They are, and I want my fellow mlm individuals to know that they are.

[samael-delta96]

Fallen is Babylon Chapter 1: The World you Once Knew It Part: 3

“Yes ma'am, ” I said

“Sam, I've been going over your writing…..” she said

“If you don't mind me asking, but is there something wrong with it?” I asked

“There's nothing wrong with it, but I must say it is truly inspiring. Your poetry on the war, your essays, especially this one titled ‘I Have Demon Eyes’ for the short story project” she said

“Not to be rude but is there a point to this?” I said

“From what I've heard you was one of the many who was on the frontlines of the battle. You've seen how this world has changed. You've heard the stories. Women in control of the most misogynistic countries, nonbinary and genderfluid being recognized as genders. But with all of that peace, there was an incredible story behind it. Would you mind if I had you write about your experience during the fight? The school, no the world needs to hear how this Hell on Earth became a reborn Eden” she said

“No,” I said

“No?”

“That's right no. That story is mine and only mine to tell as I please. I don't want to tell it just so the world can see me as a damaged monster” I said

“But….”

“You have a good evening ma'am”

I walked out of the classroom and made my way outside the building. I found Cyrus by his car talking to one of his friends. We had to drive home since no bus would be able to drive out that far to take us back home. Cyrus and I both have our license, but I didn’t like to drive cars that much. I got my motorcycle license for a reason, so Cyrus had to drive.

“So how was the rest of your classes?” Cyrus asked

“Boring” I replied

“It’s always boring for you,” he said

We got in the car and drove back home. Our date wasn’t until tonight so that gave me time to check in with my parents and relax. It was our anniversary, and Cyrus said he didn’t want anything, but I didn’t follow his orders.

We pulled up to my house and I leaned in closer with Cyrus. I locked my lips with him, and his dark hair poked my eyelids. I laughed a little, and Cyrus laughed only because he likes the sound of mine.

“I can't believe it's been a full year,” Cy said

“I can't believe you stayed with me,” I said

“Of course I would. I’m not leaving you for anyone” he said grabbing my hands “I want you to know your mine and only mine”

“Same with you,” I said kissing him again

I got out of his car, and I waved him goodbye as he drove off. God, I love that boy.

I walked up to my porch steps and opened the door. My mom was in the kitchen making her afternoon coffee. She does the finances of a local hospital so she just has to work from home. My dad is a construction worker. He gets home late at night, mainly because he likes to drink with his boyfriend from work. FYI my parents are in an open marriage. Both of my parents are bisexual. They still love each other but they're just into have more than one. It’s been like that from the start.

“Hey, Sam. How was school?” Mom said

“Hell’s fine,” I said

“Trust m, honey, Hell is everything but fine” she replied

We both laughed and giggled. My parents let me and my other siblings curse. They say the more curse words you know the bigger your vocabulary is.

I looked at the newspaper on the table

“Ruler Xavier Moreno and Lord Joshua Caliber married in their hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio” I read the heading of the article

“I know. They seem happy” mom said

“Yep. Anything interesting in the news today” I asked

“Just random shit. Nothing to get shaken up about” she replied

Good.

I went down to my room after grabbing a snack. It was just a green apple. My room was in the basement that was connected to the other garage door. When I got in my room I turned on my computer. It pulled up the schematics to the engine of my motorcycle. I’m trying to see what I need in order to fix it. Something blew on my last ride and I need the parts by today. I know a guy who can get me these good parts for cheap up the road. He said he should have them today and I’ll only have to pay 150 for it. I might as well replace the old one. I built that thing from scratch. It will just cost me 500. Plus the guy I know might take down the price. I guess I just talked myself out of buying the pieces and getting the whole engine.

I left the house and walked up the street. The guy I’m buying this from was a really old friend back during the revolution. He was one of the main mechanics for when we needed terrain advantage.

I made it to George's (that's his name) house. I walked up behind him as he was working on his car. He turned around as I was about to tap his shoulder, and he got scared and jumped back.

“Good damn it Sam you know how to scare the shit of a bitch,” George said

“My bad” I replied “Just force of habit”

“You came for the parts,” George said

“Actually just give me the whole engine,, ” I said

“Really the whole engine?” he asked

“Yeah. Mine is getting old and I’ve been looking to replace it anyways. I’m tired of spending more money on the parts over the yea than the actual engine” I said

“Say no more, friend. I understand” George said

As he was finding the engine I wanted I pulled out my wallet.

“No need for payment Sam," George said “I'm still in your debt. After all your help during the fight”

“You don't owe me anything George. I did what I had to do. I did my job” I said

George looked at me with this smile on his face.

“Ya know…? You never really told me what that job was” he said moving the engine on some kart into his car

“I wouldn't worry about. That part of me isn't ready for you to see yet” I replied

George got the engine in his car. I got in and he took me home. His care was the spitting image of someone who has their shit together. I don't know what kind of care it was but he keeps the inside and out cleaner than Nirvana itself.

We made it back to my house, and George rolled the engine to the house. I opened the garage door, and we pulled the engine in. I thanked George and he went home. I grabbed my tool box, put on some dirty clothes and got to work. It was only four. It shouldn't take me long to get this thing in here. Once I do I have to meet mom back upstairs so she can take me to my MMA practice. My family thought it was weird that I just didn't do wrestling since I'm such a heavy guy, but the idea of using more than one form of martial arts is kind of empowering. It just took me 45 minutes. It would have been done faster if everyone would stay out of my room, and stop taking my tools and nuts and bolts. My dad's been trying to fix his vintage car. He should just let me fix it for him. It would be a lot faster and I’d have all my shit where I left it.

“Sam!! Come on!! It time for you and Rachel’s practice!!” mom said

There wasn’t any point in taking a shower at home since I’m about to get sweaty and dirty at practice. I got up stairs dressed for practice in my workout clothes. Rachel was up here too dress for karate. I was a black belt when I was 15. I learned how to box when I was 16, and I got put in the advance course at our practice gym.

“You ready?” Rachel asked

“Yeah” I replied

Rachel was my adoptive sister. Me and her are the same age, and we've always gotten along. We was interested in almost everything. We might have different friends, and social groups whenever we need each other we are always there. Our older brother on the hand is another story. His name is Draven. Most of the time he’s an utter asshole. No one knows what his deal is. He’s just like this because he thinks he’s better than everyone juggling a job, college, and football practice. But if he’s such hot shit, then why is he still living with our parents. I don't know. Don't really give a single ounce of a fuck to be honest with ya.