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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 4 years

Text

An Obituary for Identity Politics

I began writing this text about a couple months before the uprising in response to George Floyd’s death. The uprising, which now has become a global event, has motivated me to share my perspective in this text. My experiences in Minneapolis from the 26th through the 31st of May have furthered my contempt for identity politics and so I have included additional critiques of it based on those experiences.

Rewind back to a time and place where people used pagers and pay phones. When front porches and public parks were the hang-out spots. A time when conflicts were resolved face-to-face and shit-talking came with real life consequences. These were the days before ‘call-out culture’, ‘troll-baiting’, and other internet-dominated social activities. Some say the internet and technological expansion have advanced the fight against oppression. My opinion? The internet is where all potential for social revolt goes to die. In addition to pointless petitions and endless memes, recognition as a rebel can be gained through pity parties and academic loyalty rather than hands-on direct action. While providing an excellent breeding ground for keyboard warriors and pretentious academics, the internet also allows for the stunted development of social skills necessary in navigating face-to-face communication. Conflict resolution takes the form of indefinite internet drama and at most an awkward in-real-life re-construction of judge, jury, and executioner. Face-to-face interaction is almost unnecessary in the techno-society where phones have become a personalized commodity seemingly fused to one’s hand. From a screen with adjustable dimming, a full spectrum of emotional expression can now be digitally represented from a cache of emoticons.

The internet is also a place where the lynch-mob mentality of “call-out culture” encourages people to view one another as one-dimensional beings – only defined by mistakes and imperfections. In the name of ‘social justice’ and ‘outing abusers’, a new statism emerges, utilizing fear and guilt to coerce allyship conformity. And similar to being charged by the State, once condemned on the internet, an individual may never escape that reputation. Instead, any or all personal growth and development remains trivial to the static nature of their past mistakes. Despite personal improvement, a convicted individual is sentenced to forever remain captive by the essence of their online portrayal.

In my experience as a ‘marginalized voice’ I’ve seen identity politics used by activists as a tool of social control aimed at anyone who fits the identity criteria of ‘oppressor’. The traditional power-struggle for equality has turned into an olympic sport for social leverage, inverting the same social hierarchy that should have been destroyed in the first place. Many identity politicians I’ve come across are more interested in exploiting “white guilt” for personal (and even capital) gain than physically confronting any organizational model of white supremacy. I’ve witnessed victimhood used to conceal blatant lies and bullying, motivated by personal revenge. All too often I have seen how identity politics creates a culture where personal experiences are trivialized to the point of passive silence. But this is all old news. Any experienced, self-identifying anarchist has seen or probably experienced some form of being ‘called-out’ or ‘cancelled’. So why do I bring it up? Because I still see this shit happening and I still see so many people lacking the courage to openly confront it.

I don’t expect this text to bring identity politics to a grinding halt. I am merely expressing my hostility for it and its authoritarian, anti-individualist nature. I still see self-proclaimed anarchists fussin’ over ‘white’ dreads (as well as seeing people cut their dreads under social pressure). I still see people justify voting like they did for Obama (this time it’s for Bernie). And I still see ‘allies’ mumbling frustration under their breath, too scared to confront the authoritarianism they see right in front of ‘em.

How many ‘white’ anarchists were called racist (or privileged) and shamed for refusing to vote this past 2020 election?

Imagine what anarchy would look like if people refused to obey the condescending demands of identity politicians. Would people feel more free to explore their lives beyond the narrow limitations of prescribed identity? Would they fearlessly reclaim their power to formulate their own opinions? Is there a joy to be experienced in the hysterical mockery of academic elitism?

Would this text be less valid if it wasn’t written by a queer person of color? What if I was a ‘white’, ‘cis’ ‘male’? Why would it matter?

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t. Because after all, this isn’t just about identity. This is about anti-authoritarian anarchy. If there is one thing I have seen the most in the past few years, it’s how identity politics moves like a plague, consuming every social space — ironically including anarchist circles. For me, anarchy is about destroying socially assigned identity and all the limitations it imposes upon the imagination. Anarchy is an individualist experience that finds itself held captive by the prison of assigned identity. Rather than destroying that prison along with the society that constructs it, anarchism today has become a cemetery of dead potential, internalized victimhood, and an ideological competition for who is ‘most oppressed’.

Rather than taking aim at identity itself and the apparatus maintaining this paradigm, energy is spent tearing one another down, ignoring the complexity of individual uniqueness, and playing the State’s role of defining each other based on membership to identity categories. Embracing a particular identity only reaffirms that identity’s existence as a ‘universal ‘truth’ – and therefore, by the colonial intentions of assigned identity, the servitude and enslavement of some to others as a universal truth as well.

I refuse to participate in upholding enslavement as a condition of my existence, and therefore these ‘truths’ are nothing more than political works of fiction. They are the products of a well-perfected, socially engineered god-complex that enters the mind like parasitic cordyceps, demanding unquestionable obedience. The atom of mental manipulation is a mind institutionalized by the incarceration of industrial society. Identity politics are the antiquated chains of colonization, polished by those who assign personal value to them. These ‘truths’ are the social constructs of control, keeping the life of rebellion shackled in a cold well of reform. And while many have become comfortable there, I have broken out to explore the infinite unknown terrain of hedonism and anti-political anarchy. ‘Black’, ‘Brown’, or ‘White’ power is the antithesis of freedom; it is the ideological charity work of a civilized, humanist form of rebellion. Identity politics is the sterilization of individuality, rendering it both obedient to the collectivist authority of identity and gullible to the nationalist myth of supremacy.

Ultimately, the ‘human’ is an animal domesticated with labels socially constructed to correspond to a hierarchy of economic status. And though this hierarchy has changed over the years, it is constantly held in place by a relationship of those who make demands and those who obey. No matter how the categories are arranged, the hierarchy represents authoritarianism; the group dominating the individual. What defines a ‘human’ is the degree of obedience and commitment to civilized roles and behaviors required by industrial society. The less cooperative a ‘human’ is, the more likely that ‘human’ will be compared to an animal. The animal is the undesireable being – even for the identity politicians who prefer to adopt the colonizers’ ideological anthropocentrism. Perhaps this explains why there is such little discussion on animal liberation in leftist-anarchist writing. The marginalized voice is more concerned with being portrayed as equal to the civilized colonizer than with the lost connection between their animality and the earth. At the core of leftist politics is the humanist aim for social equality within industrial progress — all while the earth continues to be cut up into nation-states and ravaged for anthropocentric exploitation and expansion.

It is my opinion that as long as one maintains a personal relationship with the ‘human’ identity, similar to ‘white’ or ‘male’ identities, the individual will only continue to reinforce the colonial paradigm of civilized vs savage. And as long as this reinforcement continues, the individual also remains vulnerable to imprisonment within other identity constructs that further suppress feral potential.

I wonder when or if anarchists in general will move beyond the group-mentality of leftism toward individualist insurgency — recognizing confrontation with identity as an act of personal emancipation. Will anarchists one day come to realize that anyone or anything above the individual represents an authority figure – whether it be “The Commune”, the “Movement”, or the cultural governance of identity? Maybe some, but I am sure not all.

The Victimhood Saint

After a 45 minute drive we finally arrive. It’s been a long day of retail theft and this is the last stop. It’s my turn and I plan to walk out with at least $500+ worth of merchandise for online resell. But I’m already gettin’ a bad feeling from this place. Unlike the other locations, this store is much smaller which to me means Loss Prevention will have a visual advantage watching the doors. Bigger places mean the enter and exit doors are spread further apart. In addition, the bigger the store, the more difficult it is to keep track of every shopper through the cameras. I decide to go for it anyways. Never know anything for sure until ya try.

I walk in, grab a cart and begin searching for the specific items I plan to take. I also scan the check out lanes and customer service desk. Two customer service employees busy chatting, check out lanes all blocked off except the one near the entrance and two near the exit. The entrance lane has a worker wiping down carts. One exit lane has a cashier, the lane next to it is totally empty. I take note of it as looking “too easy”, but I decide to refocus on where my items are located in the store. After loading my cart I start my journey to the exit. For anyone who shoplifts for a living, they know this is the exciting part. Every moment up to this point I’ve been just a regular shopper. But now, as I walk toward the exit, I begin to shed the costume of “shopper” and prepare for the criminal experience of “shoplifter”. As my heart starts to pound I feel my nerves initiate a well — developed calming response where I temporarily disassociate from the panic in order to keep my senses sharp and focused. I have to be ready for anything. And I still have to maintain my “regular shopper” face and body language. As I pass through the “too easy” lane everything looks good.

Customer service people are still chatting not paying attention, the one cashier is too busy ringing up someone to notice. I pull out my fake receipt and casually make my way through the first set of exit doors. If I was seen or caught, this is about the moment I would hear someone approach me from behind or feel someone grab my shoulder. Out the second set of doors, all is good. Time to start making my way toward the back of the parking lot – and then it happened...

Anyone who has ever shoplifted long enough knows these dreaded words: “Sir... Sir!”. I hear someone behind me yell out. I pretend to not hear it. Then I hear quick footsteps approach from behind. “Sir, I need to see your receipt” he says as he flashes me his Loss Prevention badge. Fuck. Where did this clean-cut lookin’ hipster see me? Must have been in the clothes area behind me... maybe that lane was a fucking trap? Doesn’t matter. Let go of the cart and walk away. I start to walk away and I hear “No no...sir we have to go back inside and fill out paperwork. Don’t worry you will not be arrested”. Yeah, fill out paperwork with all my information, have my picture taken for their records – fuck that. I continue walking away. Another LP runs out and is on the phone. This guy is on the phone with the police. I instantly realize the first guy was secretly stalling me till the police got there! I break out in full run. I hear them both running close behind me. I cross the street and bolt into a trailer park, zig zag between trailer homes and finally hide out in a steel shed. I force my paniced breathing to quiet deep breaths. I calm down and listen to them searching for me nearby.

Finally after not hearing them anymore I text my accomplices a rough idea of where I am. I come out of the shed, trying to tidy up a couple things that fell inside from when I stormed in there. The cops will be here any second. I see my accomplices car slowly drive by and wave em down. I jump in and lay down and we drive off.

I should have trusted my instinct. This was a bad run. But it could have been worse. Instead of being in jail tonight, I am comfortably here writing this text. But this is the reality of shoplifting – or any crime for that matter. No matter how many times you get away with it, it is important to expect to get caught one day. Be ready for it. And when it happens, study the panic, the emotions, the physical responses... know it all well. So the next time you engage in criminal activity, you have a better understanding of the worst case scenario. For me, this is elementary, and there is no place for victimhood or or an outcry of innocence.

While Covid-19 created the conditions for state repression in the form of “stay-at-home” orders, ironically my opportunity for illegalist fun has expanded! Many businesses are left unattended for weeks at a time, meaning property damage goes longer without being reported. In the midst of the panic, supermarket Loss Prevention and security personnel are focused on the number of items people purchase in each cart without realizing the cartloads of food quietly slipping out the other door.

Before shutting down, many stores like REI, L.L Bean and other places would deactivate their security towers. I am guessing this was due to the high volume of people passing through with purchased merch with hidden tags still attached. Probably to avoid the annoyance of the alarm going off every few seconds, the towers were turned off, leaving open a grand opportunity to simply walk out with security tagged items hassle-free.

The past few weeks got me revisiting old memories of when my understanding of anarchy was that of an activity that only lasted as long as a may day march, a demonstration, or night-time fun. I remember feeling like anarchy was the moment I wore black pants, shoes, gloves and a t-shirt around my face. After these activities it was back to the “real world”. Back to wage-slavery, back to the daily routine of paying rent and penny-pinching my food stamps for groceries. Sure, there was the occasional clandestine activity along with tabling zines at punk shows or radical events. But there was this divide that always created a separation, always treating anarchy like an extra-curricular activity. Sure, my life was committed to rebellion; the very concept of a zine distro before I named it “Warzone Distro” was conceived while wasting company time on the shitter. Despite wage-slaving, my mind was always fixated on understanding how to cut corners and work the least for the most amount of money. I was the worker who handed my extra hours over to others. Half-day at work due to light truck load? Hell yeah, I’m out!

Over time, anarchy as mere extra-curricular activity just wasn’t enough. And what I mean by that is I became less and less tolerable of bosses, wage-slaving, alarm clocks, paying rent, and penny-pinching. I remembered what it was like being a kid and not having to conform to such obligations. I remembered adventuring all day outside from early morning to late at night. Everyday was a new adventure, and everyday I was learning something new about myself. Then, as a responsible adult I was learning something new about myself. I hated adultism, adulting, and the performative role and identity of “adult”. But I wasn’t tryin’ to become a child again. Those days have come and gone. I began to wonder what an anarchist life that transcended the adult/child binary could look like.

Fast forward years later here I am, jobless but no longer penny-pinching, and older but more youthful than I have ever been. Some say I am the worst of all worlds; hedonistic, violent, and childish. Of course, what these words mean and how they are applied to me is subjective to interpretation, but one thing is for certain; I feel far more free than I have ever felt and experienced. And I have a love affair with crime. It is an intimate experience — committing crime with a furious contempt for society and the law. Causing disruption and getting away with it compliments my desires for anarchy moment by moment. Nowadays I adventure all day outside from early morning to late at night. And with every criminal activity I am learning more and more about myself. In addition to accepting the fact that my days of joy-riding the fuck out of life will either end in prison or sudden death, I am learning to appreciate the present more than the past or future.

One thing about crime that I have come to realize is a uniqueness that comes with breaking the law, a sense of individual ability, inability, strengths and weaknesses. All are discovered within the experience of breaking the law. And it is this experience that I intend to expand in order to discover more about myself, becoming ungovernable in an anti-social sense.

I reflect back on my past self imprisoned by the cult of identity-politics. I remember how one reason to glorify victimhood was to gain social attention and portray the (marginalized) identities assigned to me in a positive light. “Look at me! A responsible queer person of color holding down a job as a law-abiding citizen!”. But why? So I could prove how similar I was to all those ‘white’ hard-working class heroes that America needs to uphold its colonial establishment? Another wage-slave to passively, willfully accept the conditions of my enslavement? To become another christian of color pretending there is an imaginary kingdom above for all us hoodlums that just never got a fair chance in life? Fuck all that.

The reasons for white supremacists, homophobes, patriarchs, and patriots to fear people like me is beyond identity politics; I am a sworn enemy of their control and order. The societal castle they seek to build and maintain will always be the target of my sabotage!

I think most people can see and understand that embracing socially assigned identities is not necessary for understanding how society utilizes them as tools for social control. I think it is equally as easy to see how identity as a tool of revolution is limited and in fact has led to internal conflict within many revolutionary projects. But what blows my mind is the fact that for so many, these identities were not immediately rejected as a primal, personal form of rebellion. But to be fair I think it is safe to say that these identities maintained the power they do because they are so frequently used by leftist organizations for moral persuasion. Through victimhood and innocence, identity politics is used as an appeal-to-all method of creating group-think that ultimately encourages an individual to surrender independent thinking to a god-complex of morality and collectivism. I think this also plays a pretty big role in statism and the rejection of illegalist revolt.

I reject the statist, civilized binary of guilt and innocence, and therefore also reject the internalization of victimhood. I have no use for “call-out culture” or an internet lynch-mob against my enemies. On the internet, attempts to gain public support against one enemy only informs and empowers another enemy (the state) to confiscate my responsibility. And guilt and innocence is a legalistic binary that only serves to judge and divide based on moral determination. I despise the State, all its social manifestations, and it’s enforcement of repression against chaos. Therefore I am not a victim; I am a self-declared enemy in a war against it. I don’t expect pity, a pardon or charity from it, nor from its defenders.

It was the day Chicago issued its Stay-At-Home order. My partner-in-crime and I were in my home town visiting my mom. While driving home from getting my mom some groceries I notice someone sitting on a park bench alone. “Big Momma” is her name. I was surprised to see her outside in the cold and not indoors at one of the local shelters. Come to find out the shelters had closed their doors probably related to Covid-19. I started to wonder how many others were outside in the cold...

My partner and I head over to a park that I used to do Food Not Bombs at and to my surprise there are about 20 people set up camp outside a building’s air vent blowing out warm air. We walk over and ask how everyone is doing. Some people, after recognizing me from activist projects years ago, excitedly run over to greet me. They are all the unlucky ones locked out of the shelters at least for that weekend. My partner and I get back in the car and come up with a plan.

A half hour later we are at another grocery store. Unlike other times, getting out of this one with free food is going to be a little difficult. The set-up has changed due to heightened security at the door due to Covid-19 and the fear of looting. But it is still possible to get out with a full cart. We load the bottom of the cart with bottled water, multiple loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, over 20 bags of mixed dried fruit, fresh apples and bananas. Were ready. We make our way to the door with me leading. My role is to peer around the corner at two self-check out clerks to make sure they aren’t looking. If they are, I will pull out my phone like I am making a phone call. If not, I keep walking forward. My partner and the cart close behind, the coast is clear. First set of doors... second set of doors... all good. Finally get to the car and unload into the trunk. Success! Next stop is another grocery store, but we won’t be getting food at this one: we’re raiding the men’s and women’s bathrooms for huge rolls of toilet paper. The dispensers can be a little loud opening sometimes, but relatively easy to do with any kind of house key. Two backpacks filled with about three huge rolls each, we are all set.

Back at my moms we clean our hands thoroughly before making bags and bags of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Once we finish with that were off back to the homeless encampment. Every person gets two sandwiches, two apples, two bananas, some dried fruit and a bottle of water. In addition we wrap the toilet paper rolls in the grocery bags to keep dry and pass them out. We stick around for a bit and exchange laughs and talk shit on the cops. It was good to make new friends and catch up with old friends. It was good to see they were all maintaining and in high spirits despite the circumstances of the weather and the shelter closures. We left and decided to check other parks for people. Found a few lone wolves who happily took what we had left of the water and sandwiches. We arrive back at my mom’s house and settle in for the night. I open the fridge and giggle while scanning over all the stolen vegan food contemplating what to have for dinner.

The Allyship Coward

In my opinion, the concept of “Allyship” started with good intentions, but like other aspects of identity politics became sour and ready for immediate disposal. Here is how I feel about “Allyship”: If you need a politicized buzzword and concept to motivate you to build bonds with people across gendered or racial categories, your “solidarity” is disingenuous. If your style of communicating is loaded with talking points pre-approved by some Woke Ally 101 workshop, you have become a free-range puppet. Genuine mutual aid or solidarity doesn’t require trendy twitter phrases to motivate bond building. In other words, don’t work with me only because that’s what you read is the “right” thing to do, or because your progressive college professor told you to. Don’t kiss my ass and follow me because I am a victimized, ‘marginalized’ or ‘poc voice’. Or because your friends or comrades will guilt you. Don’t let something as fake as socially constructed categories define our relationship. Work with me only if you personally enjoy our interaction, my personality and most importantly you want to out of individual desire. I don’t believe in coercive mutual aid: it makes a fool out of two people at once.

There are also those who assume they know how other people think based on racial and gendered assumptions. These are the identity politicians who act as both police and representatives of others, coercing allyship through guilt and shaming campaigns. Using their identity, they declare themselves beyond reproach while utilizing a passive-aggressive method of communication for intimidation. But in my opinion, nobody is obligated to support or listen to them, or any one, especially based on something as flat as identity. I am always weary of those who talk as if they represent the interests of people they have never met. It is foolish to think that just because people are socially assigned similar identities that every individual subscribes to the stereotypes of those identities.

Identity politics has successfully offered an understanding of how civilized society works, but as a solution to tearing it all down only leads to boundary policing identities, nationalism, internalized victimhood, and more stereotypes for people to find themselves fighting against.

Wanna know someone’s experience? Interact with them directly. Don’t make assumptions based on social constructions. Wanna show solidarity with people? Treat them as individuals with unique experiences and histories, not as mere drone members of homogenized groupings. And to those who still obey without questioning, another word for white ally is still coward!

The Woke Leadership

Personally, I don’t like to use the word “educate” to describe the communication of ideas between two individuals. “Educate” implies the instillation of universal “truths” rather than the horizontal exchange of personal perspectives. The context of which I see this word “Educate” used the most reinforces a social hierarchy between those who are “woke” and those who are not. Do people actually learn anything when the communication of ideas is asserted in a top-down manner? Maybe. But I prefer not to entertain that hierarchy.

Individual people are more than just ‘white’, ‘brown’ or ‘black’, ‘male’ or ‘female’, or whatever social construction assigned to them at birth. Therefore, communicating with identity-based assumptions will almost always come off as condescending. I see shit like “educate your friends”, or “get educated”, as if to direct toward a Church of Social Justice in order to be “awakened”. And apparently the capitalist mentality of further monetizing information is acceptable without question. Some think the ‘labor’ of answering questions merits a wage, citing something as voluminous as a Google search if one is unable to pay. Ironically, many questions come in good-faith, and are from well-intending activists who endure being talked down to in the first place. In my opinion, this elitist way of responding to well-intending people discourages their empowerment by trivializing their personal histories and guilting them into accepting others as paramount. There is a collectivism to this method of “educating” which creates the foundation of another social system of coercion. I have no interest in contributing to the materializing of that. I can offer a critical view or counter a point without socially stratifying the exchange.

I consider each and every individual mind a rushing, wild waterway of ideas that spill out when the dam of social subordination breaks down. Society collectively discourages any wildness, domesticating the individual and ultimately creating a caged animal within the mind. Beneath all the social conditioning there is a unique individual that discovers itself in chaotic contradiction with society.

Uniformity is the enemy of free expression. There is no “education”, only popular opinion enforced by those who intend to think for others. I think ideas and perspectives can be exchanged in a way that doesn’t resemble an authoritarian model of top-down communication. I’m not an educator and I seek to educate no one. Rather, as they grow and develop, I share my personal experiences and ideas with the world with the understanding that others will differ and have unique experiences of their own.

For example one thing that I have come to realize is that the illegalist life isn’t for everyone. I have seen some people do it for a while and ultimately break under the weight of the very real stress of criminal activity. So when I write these words about criminality – and my contempt for identity politics – I speak only for myself. When I began writing “Descending into Madness”, it was the same night I had walked out of a Seattle REI with two packs worth over $300 each. The security tower alarms never went off as I walked right out with two rope-style security tags attached. Prior to walking out I joked with myself that my criminal affairs indicated that I was descending into madness because attempting this was fucking crazy. And then I was successful. And I realized on the car ride home that if it wasn’t for entertaining such courageous insanity I might not have never known that some of these stores have non-operational security towers.

In my opinion, the “Woke Leadership” of leftism leads anarchism over a cliff into a downward accelerating disintegration. Paralyzed by the fear and shame enforced by a new order, some anarchists will never make it to self-emancipation, or independent thinking as a rejection of group-think authority. It is by a narrow, liberal definition of anti-oppression that many individuals define themselves as anarchists – a type of definition that limits anti-oppression to the moralist, humanist confines of civilized society. It is not a coincidence that most anti-oppression praxis requires a statist apparatus to enforce laws that accommodate equal rights. And while there’s nothing wrong with people having equal rights under capitalism, that victory celebrates the power of statist reform rather than anti-authoritarian attack. And in front of this statist power are the “community leaders” or those who have no interest in critiquing authority. Instead, they have built their socio-political careers on petty reforms in the name of “the community” and scold radicals – calling them “outside agitators”. And following behind these leaders are ‘white’ anarchist allies, confused and frustrated, trying to decide between being called a racist for setting shit on fire or a good ally for kissing a ‘black’ preacher’s ass.

“What you or I may or may not consider ‘tactical’ isn’t really relevant. This is less a war in the traditional sense and more a storm -uncontrollable and chaotic. This is one of the problems with the left’s characterization of ‘the movement’ as something uniform, monolithic, and ideologically consistent. It isn’t. It won’t be. ‘The movement’ consists of a million individuals with their own individual views and opinions and actions, and it does no one any good to deride anyone who isn’t doing things exactly the way you see fit.” Baba Yaga

Another Word For “Black Leadership” is Authoritarianism

After marching, we arrive at the 3rd Precinct at East Lake St and Minnehaha Ave. BLM organizers begin howling into the megaphone about demands, with a few prayers and droning chants mixed in. I notice someone slowly creeping up behind me who starts bangin’ his fist on the window. Concerned it will break, three bystanders begin quietly shaming him “this ain’t the place for that, keep it peaceful!”. The person responds back quietly but with angry tension in his voice “that’s the fuckin’ problem, y’all muthafuckas never wanna do shit except march and chant...”. Discouraged, he starts to walk away. “I’m with you on that shit fo real tho” I tell him. “That’s what’s up – fuck all this other shit” he responds while walking away. A minute or so later, I lose my patience for listening to BLM talk about being peaceful and decide to go look for that same individual again. I round the corner to the back of the police station and notice a commotion. A group of about 5–7 ‘black’ folks are blocking the back glass doors of the police station, arguing with a group of about 20 ‘black’ and ‘brown’ angry youth – including the one from earlier. Unable to contain my own frustration I get caught up arguing with the police-defenders as well. Finally, in the middle of the shouting a couple of ‘black’ and ‘brown’ youth begin spray painting “fuck 12” near the commotion. Cheers behind me erupt from a crowd that has now tripled in size. A brawl breaks out near the doors, and then a single rock smashes through the precinct window and is immediately followed by a hail storm of rocks, street cones, water bottles, and anything else within reach. The group of 5–7 ‘black’ pacifists cry out in desperation to stop the destruction, going as far as attempting to physically detain people, but ultimately are overwhelmed. They try to collect the rocks after being thrown and find themselves in multiple physical confrontations while doing so. People from the front of the building run over and join in on the vandalism. Eventually after every window is smashed the crowd moves toward the police parking lot and begin damaging police cars. I finally pause to catch a breath when I hear a stun grenade go off. The police run out from another door and begin shooting rubber bullets and tear gas. The crowd disperses but with hysterical laughs of joy and accomplishment. The 3rd Precinct is in ruins — and little did I know this was all just the beginning.

The very next day a bigger crowd of mostly ‘black’ and ‘brown’ youth showed up and continued to wage war on the 3rd Precinct. By night, a three mile radius was liberated from police control by the people on those streets. The 3rd Precinct was breached and taken over. Police abandoned the area all together. Their building was looted and cop cars driven into the street and set on fire. A Target across the parking lot was broken into and looted along with other stores nearby. People celebrated the victory by shooting off their guns in the air. Strangers sang and danced around burned out cop cars, exchanged high-fives in passing, and shared looted food. People casually socialized in front of burning buildings while others threw rocks through the remains of store front windows for target practice.

While it might have seemed like a perfect utopia, it wasn’t divorced from reality. Fights broke out between small factions of people and long-awaited personal conflicts were solved in the now cop-free streets. Business owners shot and killed looters and low-income housing units burned to the ground. But this is the difference between the textbook, sugar-coated ideologies of politics and raw, unmediated rage. The revolt didn’t happen due to any teachings of Mao or religious messages from a god. The fires, looting, and attacks against police didn’t need Marxism, a transcript of The Coming Insurrection, or an academic course on the history of anarchism. All that was needed was the chaotic expression of rage against representations of authority.

As expected, many people on the internet – including many self-proclaimed anarchists — passed judgement on the situation – most often coming from an ideological position that placed value in uniformity and a narrowed range of “acceptable” forms of revolt. In my experience, uprisings like this flourish best when least controlled or organized. The more that expressions of anger are controlled and organized the less anarchistic they become — essentially becoming pacified to accommodate a particular political vision. For me that is undesirable and also unrealistic. Destruction is destruction, violence will be violence, and to expect an uprising to be anything less is naive at best. While some can sit on the sidelines and moralize specific tactics or forms of emotional expression, they disregard the reality that full-fledged warfare has no inherent morality. Businesses that were boarded up and declared “black owned” weren’t spared by any moral consideration; they too were broken into, looted, and subsequently burned to the ground.

Also, in my opinion, the more uncontrollable and unmanageable an uprising remains, the less likely the police will have the ability to adapt to its formation and dominate it. The police had the least control over hundreds of individuals rebelling in such a chaotic manner as to overwhelm them and send them fleeing.

Over the next few days, attacks against the 5th Precinct happened while liberals, pacifists, and identity politicians quietly crawled back to avenge their loss and inability to control the first riot. The internet became their ground zero for one of the worst campaigns of lies and fear mongering I have personally ever seen.

As the victories of burning cop cars and police stations circulated online from all over the states, liberals rushed to the scenes in a desperate authoritarian attempt to assert their ideological morality and political program. They insist on a narrative that labels anyone who engages in sabotage as a “white supremacist” or “undercover cop” “infiltrating” the uprising.

Many of these liberals are the same ‘black’ people who failed to stop ‘black’ and ‘brown’ rebels from looting and destroying property. They failed to convince all ‘white’ people to evacuate the riots (because even some ‘white’ people knew not all ‘black’ or ‘brown’ people have a problem with them being there – recognizing their value as accomplices). And in an effort to preserve capitalist, reformist values, liberals of all races sought to halt the looting and vandalism by bombarding social media with blatantly false information. This false information is riddled with catch phrases like “outside agitators” and “white supremacists” in order to emotionally motivate readers to chose a side within a false dichotomy. And those who are not physically on the streets or there with rebels battling police are the target audience of these narrowed, inaccurate representations of reality.

Different ideological motives create different interpretations of events. And since liberals and pacifists tend to dominate social media more than those who are too busy out in the streets, they have an advantage. And since liberals morally frame all people of color as obedient, victimist heroes, most people have difficulty admitting that people of color are capable of destroying property and participating in violent forms of protest. This also plays into the compulsion to blame ‘white’ people for forms of rebellion considered morally undesirable. Riots/uprisings are not all utopian and pretty. They are the dangerous elements of liberation that occur when all other options have failed. Whether people are afraid of violence or not won’t change the fact that police kill, and will continue to kill as long as the concept of law enforcement exists. In my opinion there is no “bettering” the police, and there is no “justice” when someone is already being buried six feet deep.

And the police are not all ‘white’. ‘Black’ cops kill ‘black’ people too.

The worst part about the online interpretation of events is that the people spreading this misinformation fail to communicate to the online-world the joy, smiles, singing and dancing of racially diverse rebels as they celebrated the destruction of the 3rd Precinct.

I mean shit, imagine being a person of color, harassed by police all your life, and then a day and night comes when you actually get to see a police station burning, and police completely abandoning the area. All this is erased from history when liberals credit it all to a group of people — white supremacists — who didn’t exist in those battles in the first place.

To this day as I write this, there are still people spreading conspiracy theories on the internet like the famous “brick bait” video of cops unloading bricks (behind their own building – not in an alley as originally propagated). While I can’t say for absolute certainty that there were no white supremacists at the events at all (I mean I saw some driving past in pickup trucks yellin’ white power shit, and the ‘brown’ dude who rolled up in a truck rockin’ pro-police slogans and a confederate flag) I sure as hell didn’t see any in the battles. I have seen pictures of ‘black’ people locking arms to protect riot police, white allies turning other ‘white’ people over to the police in the name of ‘black’ support, and ultimately police regaining control and using these pacifying efforts to brutalize peaceful protesters.

Feral Delinquency

It is my opinion that the last months expose weaknesses of civilization in very obvious ways. Governmental control had increased as a panic response to social tension and spontaneous ruptures of illegal activity. Covid-19 broke the order of daily productivity and civilized slavery, leaving people more time to contemplate their lives and the value of their free time outside of working. The uprisings in response to the murder of George Floyd demonstrated the weaknesses of the police power and control – even at their own home base. At this point I have no earthly idea what will come next.

I admit to finding it fascinating to see non-human animals and the earth flourish in the midst of our industrial despair. To see clearer skies, various animals walking the streets, flooding that loosens the foundation of this concrete jungle. I can’t help but feel both the pandemic and these continued ruptures against authority are better than a return to normality; a normality where death from industrial civilization and the State is as routine as a slaughterhouse in full operation.

I wonder what kinda conversations people are having with each other or with themselves during this blooming destabilization of domesticated order. Will more and more people seize this opportunity to express anger and frustration through random acts of violence and sabotage against one another? Against law enforcement? Against the institutions that have become weaker due to financial loss and now stand more vulnerable than ever? I can only hope the uprisings continue in some capacity – above or below ground which is personally more favorable for me at this point.

Will people beg for the return of the old daily misery of monotony, or will they explore the depths of permanent uncertainty? Return to work or rewild? I guess only time will tell.

But here, I can only speak for myself. My anarchy is my own, as are my thoughts and words in this text. I don’t write to impress any club of internet anarchists who flex intellectual texts for self-congratulatory praise. I make my diary public in an antagonistic effort to mock the victimist, anti-individualist narrative of leftism which currently dominates contemporary anarchism.

I don’t wish for a return to normality and the daily misery of industrial production. I have no desire to celebrate ridiculous “victories” such as police accountability, firings, or prison terms – which will only be followed by the rebuilding of their ruined precincts or perhaps an equally authoritarian “community-based” replacement. I desire nothing less than the total abolition of all governance and policing. And perhaps those who hold some form of elitist power will find me undesirable and will orchestrate a smear campaign against me, banning my writing and “cancel” me from their Movement. But little would they know that the days and nights, between wide fields and the stars, and between the tree tops and the ground – is the domain of my adventure! And with it is a joy that follows anarchy as a vibrant life experience rather than a measure of social capital online, or a theory frozen in an academic journal.

The internet has created a culture of desperation for social continuity and digital validation. It is the breeding ground for “new” concepts of anarchism that are nothing more than communist corpses with hipster aesthetic. Anti-civ anarchy, impregnated by leftism now displays the extent of its power with endless twitter debates on “eco-fascism”. Twitter — a place where reclaiming one’s life and body is shamed by the disciples of privilege politics – is a graveyard of voices glorifying their own death-by-internet.

My animalism looks nothing like adopting the imagery and behaviors of existing animals. Instead it is the silhouette of an illegalist, feral menace dancing around the burning prison of domestication. My abandonment of victionhood is a foreclosure on both the pity politics of morality-based organizing and the sainthood of innocence. My anarchy is an obituary for identity politics. It is a personal insurgency without a future, a dream without the anaesthesia of hope, a declaration of joy with the lifespan of an exploding bomb.

This text is dedicated to all those rebels whose only negotiation with authority is fire and destruction...I am forever inspired by your courageous wrath across racial and gendered lines... To the youth who made history on May 26th, to the rebels who perished, and to those currently held captive for their part in this war against the state. RIP George Floyd

#george floyd #minneapolis #anarcho-nihilism #anti civ #anti identity politics #identity politics #decolonialization #identity #illegalism #individualism #individualist anarchism #Nihilism #post leftism #post left anarchy #rioting #flower bomb

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 3 years

Text

Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

#cptsd #healcptsd #actually CPTSD #just cptsd things #traumabrain #Complex Trauma #trauma recovery #complextrauma #complexptsd

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icosmohunters · 4 years

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chapter seven : candor

chapter seven of cosmo hunters!

word count : 4.5k words

synopsis : after the meeting, hope finds herself feeling suspicious. all of this talk about a coup d’etat has her throwing glances at the pirates who she believes might be responsible for all of this. but upon taking the time to sit down and talk, she’s about to uncover some horrifying details.

once the meeting had come to an end, hope wandered out through the doors with a look of hysteria plastered onto a pale face. she had expected the whole experience to have been more subtle rather than something that was going to stun her out of her wits.

it had been like entering a dream sequence, perhaps the most jarring one yet. she’s never been into a meeting like, let along received news of a possible overthrow of a major corporation like voyage inc. it was ghastly. it wasn’t even a political party nor a part of a major government. it was a global company that manufactured the resources required for the human space colonization process.

but voyage had started off as scientists and engineers and mathematicians and ended up into lieutenants and generals and politicians. from an ambitious project into a major contribution to the evolution of humans. and now, there were signs of people showing hostility towards them.

potentially physical hostility, based on what she’d heard.

“ you okay, hope? ”.

the girl rose her head with furrowed brows and saw hina standing in front of her, expression worried and tender. “ y-yeah, of course. it’s just quite overwhelming. but i think it’ll all work out ”, she replied. even though she felt absolutely no confidence in her own words.

“ of course it will! all of this sucks, i know, but i don’t think it’ll get too serious. oh, hiro and i are going to get some food from the cafeteria ”, the other girl pointed in the direction of the boy who’d gone off to a vending machine to acquire something. “ they’re serving chicken katsu curry for lunch. ”

hope’s stomach churned. as hungry as she was after not having had a proper meal in a couple of days, she also felt too anxious to eat anything. and if something settled in her stomach, she wouldn’t be able to hold it there. not with how much her heart was racing at that moment.

the reason why she was particularly worried was because of the pirates. she had been at j-colony the same time as the act of vandalism against voyage was committed. and she recalled that she had passed out because of that bomb, she didn’t know how long she was out for but the pirates were out whilst she was unavailable.

doing potentially anything, getting up to no good.

perhaps it was just convenient that it had all happened at the same time. besides, the city was so large that it could have potentially been anyone. but her suspicions were still intact, especially since she knew the crew’s hatred towards this very corporation. the reason for it, she wasn’t aware of.

“ uh, yeah, i’ll go ”.

the way to the cafeteria was long, but hope didn’t really take the time to notice it because she was so deep in thought. she almost walked face-first into so many people if hiro hadn’t pulled her back the last minute. he scolded her, inquiring her what the matter was but she didn’t reply at first.

if the meeting room had been large, the cafeteria was larger. it stretched on for a great length and walls covered only in glass allowed a great view of the outside world, well, moon. titan wasn’t particularly grand at that moment considering it was raining methane of all things. but the view was familiar and brought a sense of safety for the young bounty hunter.

tables scattered around, hope searched aimlessly for the pirates. surely they wouldn’t have gotten far, especially with how great this place was, unless if they truly wanted to risk putting themselves in danger. it was already dangerous, to begin with, being here. but they’d promised to behave so where were they?

“ are you looking for your people? ”, hiro asked and hope nodded slightly. “ well, if they’ve been here before, they couldn’t have gotten lost. but you said they’re newbies so you just have to pray you’ll find them. ”

hope did pray, mostly under her breath, and she wasn’t even religious. she just hoped the universe would gift her with a day of relief. or even a moment of relief, especially in this climate, especially when her suspicions were high and especially when she was carefully trying to avoid problems.

sighing, hope followed hiro and hina to where the food was being served. thank god she didn’t have to pay, that was the last thing she needed. so upon collecting her food, a plate of chicken katsu curry with sticky rice, not to mention a carton of juice and a mandarin to peel and enjoy, she walked to one of the tables and took a seat. hina sat right beside her.

“ so, tell me, what do you think? it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? for years, it seemed all so peaceful but now it’s gone to shit. it always does ”, hina began and saw hope’s resilience to talk. “ it just changes a lot of things. ”

hiro sighed, lifting up his spoon and gazing at it for a moment. “ i think it was inevitable. voyage has a lot of influence and there are just some people out there who refuse to accept it. it doesn’t help that voyage doesn’t tolerate rebellion ”, he said before shrugging softly.

“ tell me about it, these guys may pose themselves as angels as they’re helping with the colonization process. but they’re like a dictatorship, nobody can challenge them without getting bashed ”.

hope stared down at her food. it felt wrong to be sitting with two proper voyage workers, hiding the fact that she had brought pirates into headquarters, pirates who were potentially responsible for the vandalism at j-colony. she inhaled deeply and looked to the side.

her eyes widened slightly when she spotted a familiar trail of blonde hair and a voyage uniform. vivienne. standing up abruptly, hope called her, “ io! ”.

vivienne was no idiot, so she turned swiftly upon hearing her fake name being called. her face lit up with a small smile, and hope couldn’t help but feel guilty for earlier, for having snapped out for no basic necessity other than due to her explosive temper and defensive ego.

the blonde suddenly turned and called out to someone. soon, hope saw the pirates coming in. dawn’s face lit up after seeing the bounty hunter, whom she waved excitedly at before dragging the others over.

“ oh, you’re cute! ”, hina commented when the young girl approached.

dawn’s cheeks appeared to glow pink at that point, “ t-thank you. i’m stella, by the way. ” the girl looked towards hope who didn’t seem willing to meet her gaze. “ is it okay if we sit with you guys? ”.

“ as long as you manage to stay quiet ”, hiro said, raising his glass of water to his lips before letting his gaze all on hope. “ care to introduce us, hope? ”.

gulping, the girl nodded. “ that’s stella. blondie is io, one with the bruise is leo, nerd is benjamin, and the other one’s roger. ”

hiro snorted, “ roger? ”. his gaze flew towards enzo who rose a brow as if posed with a challenge and hope wished that nothing argumentative would come out of these two meeting. usually, two confident people clash, and most of the time it’s not in a good way.

“ yeah. you must be hiro ”, enzo said slowly, but then his gaze fell on hina and softened. “ and who’s this pretty lady? ”. hope swore she heard dom groan slightly in the back.

hina seemed to giggle and waved in greeting, “ hina koyabashi! it’s a pleasure to meet all of you. why don’t you all get some food? it’s really good today. ” hope didn’t understand how this girl was so pleasant, it was puzzling but she chose not to question something she probably won’t understand, hope isn’t a pleasant person.

“ oh, that’d be nice. but we’re planning on getting food elsewhere anyway, thank you for asking ”, vivienne said but still sat down beside hope, who was struggling to eat her food. “ so, how was the meeting? ”.

“ wonderful ”, hiro spoke, putting his glass of water down. “ we found out that there have been some acts of vandalism being committed against voyage at the j-colony. someone completely trashed the base there overnight and now they think a coup is being committed. ”

“ a what? ”, enzo questioned.

hope glared down at her plate, “ an uprising. ”

“ o-oh. ”

she felt the tension in the air almost immediately, hearing vivienne inhale deeply beside her but not a word came from the pirates, which was weird. and it only added to hope’s suspicions, but she didn’t show any reaction to indicate that. she simply let hiro continue to explain.

“ but now we’re on high alert. they’re investigating nearly every colony in search of any criminal activities targetting institutions. stuff on earth is completely messed up, some people are being put on leave to ensure their safety ”, he stated.

hope hadn’t heard about that. feeling her stomach churn once more, she simply stabbed her straw through the hole on her juice carton and inhaled deeply. her father was most likely not going to get his arm nor his treatment, he was going to be put off work completely.

how long was her old man going to have to wait to get the treatment he deserved immediately? she needed to visit him. but she just felt like something was going to get in the way, and she needed to prevent them. she’s been avoiding going back home in fear that she’ll get attached and not be able to go back to work. but now she wanted to see her family.

“ that’s . . . a shame ”, dom uttered and then sighed. “ well, voyage has angered many people, i can see why some people have revolted. not that i agree with it but it makes sense. ”

hina snapped her fingers and pointed, “ see? he gets it! i’m not the only one who thinks this company can be bat shit insane sometimes. hope, you recruited some very smart people. ” hope didn’t react at first, she just gave a halfassed chuckle and tried to eat.

hiro’s gaze remained on hope for a long time, she felt it but she didn’t think to question him about it. she could already imagine the thoughts rolling through his brain, the questions and the assumptions on how hope came to find these people and she didn’t have the brainpower to make up a credible story.

“ how’d you find ‘em, hope? ”.

“ hm? ”.

before hiro could repeat himself, vivienne swept in, now the ball was in her court. “ we were always looking to join something like voyage. thankfully, hope gave us the opportunity and signed us in. we’re newbies thanks to her. ”

“ oh, that’s so nice! but it seems like you guys already ran into some trouble ”, the girl beside hope stated. hina glanced over at dom and tilted her head. “ is that why leo has a bruise? ”.

now hope like she was going to throw up. she gulped and tried not to bring attention to herself whilst also avoiding dom’s gaze. she was bad at many things but knowing when someone is looking at you is something she’s mastered.

“ we ran into some trouble with pirates ”, dom said slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. “ i’m not the best fighter so i got hit. but we also jacked the guy up afterward so it’s all fair and square. ” hope felt like she was being threatened, she couldn’t look up, nor even think about having her food.

hiro scoffed, “ pirates? well, that just proves yoh’s theory. it’s just criminals on loose sturring up a fuss because they can’t see that they’re in the wrong. ” hope really wished he would stop talking now.

“ you don’t know that ”, enzo said with a rising tone. biting back a wince, hope adjusted herself in her chair. her gaze fell on quinn who was already looking back at her. he didn’t need to say much but his eyes held a sweetness in them that she’s never noticed before, a caring undertone to a usually grim expression.

“ oh, come on, some of these criminals on the loose turn into criminals because they think voyage is against ‘em or something. as far as i’m aware, voyage has only ever attacked anyone because they attacked first ”, hiro continued but then pursed his lips and shrugged smugly. “ that’s just my theory. ”

“ hope, you okay? ”.

the attention suddenly shifting onto her stunned her. she blinked slightly and reeled back in shock before sighing, and then offering them all a nod. “ y-yeah, absolutely. i just don’t feel like eating anymore ”, she said.

vivienne’s hand met her shoulder once more and this time hope didn’t shrug it away. “ we should probably get you back to the ship ”, she decided whilst rubbing her back slightly.

“ oh, you’re leaving so soon? ”, hina said in a tone of sadness, pouting but she nodded and gave the group a smile. “ well, i suppose there’s no reason to stick around. hope, it was lovely meeting you. ”

whilst getting up from her seat, hope saw hina offering a handshake and ultimately accepted, giving a firm one of her own. her gaze went over towards hiro and he just nodded and waved her off. cold, as per usual.

hope then followed lazily behind the crew, who seemed more adamant about getting to the ship than she was. but she could almost understand why. they were in a dangerous environment that could potentially end in an altercation that would reveal their identities.

she couldn’t help but throw a gaze over her shoulder, seeing hina wave happily at her and hiro glance back with no interest. still, she reached into her pocket and felt the squishy toy he’d given her, and carried on walking.

after going through the exits and slipping their oxygen helmets on, they traveled back to the ship. hope didn’t even get to say goodbye to creed nor to esme, but she would end up coming back at some point to enjoy it. well, to enjoy the company of the people in the corporation. people whom she didn’t mind being around.

when the stairs for nebula opened, hope stopped and took one quick glance back at the headquarters. the experience here wasn’t the best, but what was she expecting? in a way, she disagreed with hiro’s statement, and now, she could moderately understand the trepidation and hesitation the pirates showed to coming within a range of anyone belonging to voyage.

it was just all bad news. bad news and the strive for perfection.

“ well, thank god that’s over! ”, enzo declared, giving out a loud sigh whilst proceeding to remove all of the garments, especially the badges and the gloves. with quite a lot of distaste, might she add? “ also, hope, i can see why you dislike that guy so much. ”

they had entered the lounge once more and enzo had collapsed onto the couch alongside quinn, a small frown on his face. “ like, is he always that much of a douche? ”, he questioned, arms crossed behind his head.

“ you didn’t even speak to him properly ”, quinn mumbled.

enzo rose up slightly onto his seat and pointed a figure in some general direction, supposedly where hiro was. “ you’re kidding, right? that guy gives off bad villain vibes, you could feel it from a mile away ”, enzo argued.

“ hiro . . . is a complex individual ”, hope cut in, gaining enzo’s attention once more. “ we used to train together, share the same room. he was always competitive, always trying to be the pillar of perfection but what i admire most about him, despite hating his guts, is how precise and watchful he is. ” she took a small pause and took out the animal squishy toy once more. “ he sees, remembers, and acts. ”

dawn gasped and cooed, “ that’s so cute! ”.

“ yeah ”, hope agreed with a small chuckle, raising her brows slightly. “ he gave it to me. he knows i’m not fond of packed environments. the noise usually causes some awful sensations, as they did today, but he kept me from having a total breakdown. ” playing with the toy for a little longer, she soon tucked it back into her pocket.

quinn hummed before elbowing enzo gently, “ he’s not a villain, cap, he’s just moody. just how you’re not a villain, but you are an arrogant prick. ”

vivienne burst into laughter and hope snorted, averting her gaze away as to avoid being seen smiling so plainly. she had to admit, as much as she wasn’t accustomed to being around so many people, she could get behind the idea of being humored frequently. they provided free humor, so she might as well enjoy it.

hope’s eyes trailed up towards dom whilst quinn and enzo bickered. he seemed to be in a better mood than she’s seen him, but then again, she doesn’t exactly pay much attention to him. but the bruise was obvious now and it was started to grind her gears. she was mad at herself.

yes, he might have deserved it but hope felt like she could have easily stepped back and come out of her fit of blind rage because some guy said something she didn’t like. she’s heard so many things, was spat so many insults at yet he was the one who managed to push her to her limit. and she didn’t even know him!

a stranger doesn’t deserve to make you angry, she reminded herself. but then again, neither do they deserve a punch for making you angry. hope stared for just a little longer and when his head moved as if to look at her, she looked back down.

after a couple of hours, nebula had left titan and they were in outer space once again. hope had chosen to eat her food alone, and she could hear the laughter and chatter from the dining room even from the lounge. it wasn’t disrupting her as much as she’d imagined.

the bounty hunter had changed into some decent clothes, being a t-shirt and some sweatpants because as far as she was aware, she wasn’t going to move from a slow orbit any time soon. she wanted to relax, especially after having such a shaky day.

dawn and vivienne had prepared some nice carbonara pasta with the ingredients hope had in her fridge, and she hated to admit it but it was just like her mother’s back hope. if not better.

but she had long lost the taste of her mother’s food since she left, and after that, it was mostly microwaved food, she barely had the energy to prepare something fresh. but she could burn the carbs off afterward, even if it hurt every bone in her body.

whilst eating, she was flipping through her stats again since she didn’t get to check them. after having gained some bounty points, her level had risen to sixty-seven, especially considering crimson had been a particularly hard person to catch and considering he was in the top ten most sought after criminals, the reward for his death was high.

hope sighed. rising five levels after one kill felt like a relief, especially considering she would end up on some of the league tables. she didn’t know exactly where she was placed in the board of bounty hunters but she could have been in the top twenty. the recognition is often quite the self-esteem boost.

but even after killing him, she couldn’t help but remain worried. she shouldn’t have brought the pirates to voyage and when the news in the meeting was revealed, she felt sick. in fear that because she slept, she missed the chance of seeing the pirates up to no good. then again, nothing could prove they had anything to do with the incident.

but it was a probability.

and she still had to take these guys to pluto and that’s an easy portal ride away but why was she so hesitant? she wanted to get rid of the problem rather than keep it around but she didn’t want to let them go until she had the answers she required.

thankfully, she wasn’t going to have to wait for long. she felt like dinner had finished when the doors of the lounge opened and she heard some voices filter in and then pause when they seemed to detect her.

“ hope, have you finished eating? ”.

“ it wasn’t you guys, was it? ”.

hope turned and looked over her shoulder towards the two figures belonging to dawn and dom, who both looked puzzled. and then enzo came in, followed by vivienne and quinn.

she frowned, “ i want to believe that it wasn’t. for some reason, i’m showing the leniency to trust you even though i probably shouldn’t. but if it was you guys who were responsible for the vandalism against voyage, i have to know. and then i’ll make the decision.” hope paused and gulped. “ the last thing i want is to have to remove my trust from the table. ”

“ n-no, of course not ”, enzo began, sounding nervous. “ oh god, no, i know weren’t there when you were passed out but we didn’t go to vandalize anything. we already have targets on our backs, the last thing we want is to cause more mayhem. besides, our feelings towards voyage are sour but they’re not toxic. ”

vivienne interrupted, “ and we don’t even have the funds to buy the resources required considering most of our money got blown up with our ship. all we have is dom’s bank account to save us. we wouldn’t waste money on spray paint and bombs. ”

hope nodded slightly and then looked down. at her trembling hands, she noticed her middle and index finger had crossed and locked together. she didn’t know just how much she believed them but hearing it from them was better than assuming they’d truly done it.

“ don’t tell me you don’t believe us ”, dom began.

hope snapped back quickly, “ i do. ” blinking, she took a moment to gather herself and her thoughts. “ i do believe you. i want to believe you because, i think that i gave you too many chances and if you spoil it this time, i won’t be able to handle it. ”

“ handle what? you can take us to where we have to be now that all of that is over ”, dom persisted, nodding towards some random direction. “ you can take us to pluto, can’t you? ”.

“ y-yes, bu— ”.

“ well, why don’t you take us th— ”.

“ hope, i’ve detected a new addition to your bounty list. ”

a.j saved her once again. the bounty hunter ran a hand through her hair, sighing with frustration. usually, she would go up to her cabin to hear about the details but she didn’t mind sharing them in front of the pirates. it wasn’t like she was going to ask them to go along with it. not after what happened last time.

“ proceed, a.j. ”

“ real name unknown, but the alias voyage has given them is the puppeteer. voyage has signed them as a technological terrorist, as they have been responsible for many government-targeted financial and cyber attacks. it’s said that perhaps they’re looking for money. but others have stated it’s pure psychopathy. they’re on top of the bounty list when it comes to hackers ”.

hope’s eyes widened but she didn’t react as quickly as enzo did after he let out a small exhale, “ the puppeteer? ”.

“ it’s a stupid name ”, dom commented with a snort.

“ no, shut up, i know who they are ”, enzo growled and crossed his arms, hope acknowledged the dense muscles for a moment and then shyly gazed away. “ the puppeteer, you mean the one who was behind the 3017 financial wipe that stole over a hundred billion dollars from global banks? ”.

a.j replied swiftly, “ that is correct. ”

why was he acting like this? hope furrowed her brows slightly whilst staring at enzo, who seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts. “ holy shit ”, he muttered under his breath.

“ enzo, are you al— ”.

“ we’re helping. ”

hope reacted with a scoff, “ are you out of your mind? the last time you tried to help me catch a criminal, you nearly killed me and let him escape! ”.

“ this is different ”, enzo replied. “ the puppeteer is a force to be reckoned with, they have the capacity of putting an entire country through a blackout that could potentially end with millions of lives lost. they’re a financial thief and have been behind many terrorist attacks committed against innocent people. in concerts and in reunions and meetings. ” he looked towards hope with determined eyes. “ you need to let us help ”.

“ i don’t feel like i owe you that leisure ”, hope said through gritted teeth. “ if this son of a bitch ends up being dangerous, i don’t want anyone dying and me getting the blame for it. ”

dom rolled his eyes, “ you think we’re that incapable of fighting? ”.

“ i mean you nearly let crimson get away through that smoke even though you knew how to handle yourselves ”, the bounty hunter snapped and forced herself to calm down, to lower her tone. “ i’m not letting anyone help. i can handle it myself. ”

“ consider it as part of the bargain, hope ”, enzo insisted, god he was so persistent, it made her blood boil!

“ dying isn’t part of it. and that’s final. ”

“ fine, we’ll just devise a plan without you in it but we’re going to somehow help, we are. don’t underestimate us ”, enzo said and turned to walk away. and the pirates followed, some reluctantly but hope called out just before the doors could close.

“ fine! ”.

they turned and looked at her with equal expressions of shock. hope couldn’t believe that, yet again, she was going to let herself be put in danger because of these pirates, that she was going to try to work alongside them as if they were a team. this was supposed to be her mission, her well-earned reward. she didn’t want to share it with anyone, call her selfish if you want but she’s been doing fine for four years by herself. without pirates mingling with her business.

and yet here she was.

risking it all over again.

“ y-you . . . you can help me hunt the puppeteer down. ”

#chapter 7 #writing #original writing #space adventure #space pirates au

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years

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November 18: Thoughts on The 100 2x07

Okay, gonna try this again with another ep. Long Into the Abyss

The last time I was watching T100 I was back at the beginning of S2 so I could remind myself of some stuff for a fic so now I’m really out of sorts.

I remember watching this ep for the first time and thinking, ‘oh, I guess Keenan isn’t going to be important, then.’ The fucked-up-ness levels of this scene are supremely underrated. Much like how they experiment on Maya--they know no shame. Also I feel like the implication is that Keenan isn’t the first person they’ve killed in this way. Does no one.... miss them? Why was there no revolt from the populace on the grounds of ‘they’re experimenting on us’ if not on the grounds of ‘they’re experimenting on these random kids’?

That Keenan was felled by rain makes me think that the rain was....dun dun dun, acid the whole time.

“Civilian check-in will take place at 0900 hours. All civilians must be accounted for by your station supervisors.” I mean first there are only two stations lol but otherwise... collecting more data for the Ark AU.

“This is not our home, it’s theirs” is SUCH a retcon and I’m still angry about it.

It makes absolutely no sense that Abby is still in charge even though the duly elected Chancellor is back in the settlement. I mean I know they’re just making shit up now but they’re not even trying.

Jaha’s faith would be more compelling if it didn’t mean randomly abandoning big chunks of his people--not just Marcus and the 48 but every other station that may or may not be out there. I guess he still sees them as a whole not as individuals or even as sub-parts. (I’d say he’s being selfish but in fact he will sacrifice himself too.)

This would have been a good time to lean even more into the 100 as a distinct people all their own. Clarke (and co.) care about the 48 than anything else. But no one else does, really; they were already thrown away.

That was the worst speech Chancellor 1 and Chancellor 2 could have given because now it’s super obvious they are not on the same page.

“The Grounders are attacking because of me” is 100% true and you should say it. People in this fandom love to hate on fuckboy Finn but the actual main characters stuck behind him right up until the bitter end lol, let’s not forget that.

Also yes Clarke’s line is stupid (”The Grounders are attacking because that’s what they do”) but.... she’s not entirely wrong that the Grounders have historically targeted them for almost no reason, over and over, since day one. So yeah they’d probably be attacking anyway. Not five minutes ago Jaha was saying they were just trying to get ‘invaders’ off their land so....yeah no one knows.

Raven’s Gate!

The Mount Weather delinquents! I love them. I love their group dynamic. I love the bizarre way Jasper is sitting, and how much faith he has in Clarke, and Monty being the voice of pessimistic reason. I do not love Monty’s hair. That is an unfortunate cut.

WE’RE CRIMINALS RIGHT SO LET’S BE CRIMINALS.

Says the boy whose crime was being a stoner.

Like tbh now that I’ve looked at the whole season from afar, trying to make it make sense for fic writing purposes, I see that this whole ep’s story line probably mostly exists just to buy some time while actual progress is made outside the Mountain but... I still love it.

Give Ricky Whittle an Emmy lol.

S2 Clarke was such peak Clarke... she’s so smart. Figuring everything out all the time.

[All Grunting]

David Miller is the true and only MVP I said what I said.

Mount Weather population: 382. You know people can give bone marrow without dying. Perhaps you could stop being so greedy and impatient.

Octavia trying to be brave and strong while looking young and scared and small is Endearing.

Totally forgot Nyko was a healer.

Or an Angel of Death lol.

I’m just going to say it. Bellamy was turned on by Clarke electrocuting Nyko.

I’m not super crazy about the Finn and Lincoln comparisons given that Finn acted of his own free will and Lincoln was turned into a cannibal.

The only scenes that really matter are the MW ones as per usual.

“Ye of little faith.”

“That’s my boy.”

I love Miller’s little thief kit omg. And Monty the Stereotypical Hacker.

“And they said we wouldn’t amount to anything.” UNDERRATED LINE.

“Abby, you cannot seriously be taking seriously the thoughts of a teenage girl we previously agreed was completely expendable lol??”

I’d say ‘why do the Grounders need such a comically large force to wipe out a tiny little enclave of scared refugees’ but of course the last time they went up against an even tinier group of refugees they got roasted, toasted, and burned to a crisp so...fair enough.

“She was Anya’s second” as in that should matter because Clarke and Anya were such good friends....?

Jaha hates not being in power so bad. Like he’s this-close from saying ‘Abby stop playing and hand over the pin to a real adult.’ Like he truly thinks she’s just fucking around and he’s entitled to the final say because...habit I guess?

Another point to Finn: if they left they would NEVER come back for the MW kids lol. What an obvious lie. Does Jaha believe his own bs??

Also someone should have pointed out that the Grounders have literally never been good faith with them. Never. Like who says that if the Ark left the Alpha Station site that the Grounders wouldn’t pursue them and kill them anyway? The delinquents abandoned the dropship site and were followed and attacked. (Am I mis-remembering or was ‘leave or die’ the offer then too?) The Ark doesn’t know how much land “belongs” to Trikru (prob because none of it does lol). Like, Jaha’s confidence that Lexa wasn’t lying to him the whole time--like every other time she opens her mouth, because almost everything she says is in fact a lie--is wildly misplaced imho.

All of that said and I completely stand by it--he’s not wrong that he’s the real Chancellor and it is ridiculous that the actual elected Chancellor has to beg the rando who just happens to have the pin to do something. Like--he is right on the procedure but wrong on the substance is what I’m saying.

And here another example of how only the person who controls the army has real power.

Remember when Abby and Clarke had a good relationship? And it was significant and moving? Anyway another answer to ‘why are you throwing everything away on this plan’ would be ‘because it’s not a shitty plan, you’re just not hearing it out,’ or alternately ‘because we need to deserve to live as I have already said back in the pilot and walking away from MW would be morally abhorrent.’

Netflix subtitles don’t know Miller’s name lol.

MW surveillance of Alpha Station.

Honestly as soon as the stuff with the Grounders moves to the fore I just zone out. Maybe it’s because the tension is gone when you know what happens or maybe it’s because I never really believed ADC but...eh. She has a cool glove though.

They really do hammer home the idea that the MM aren’t really “alive.” Someone bring back that ‘they’re the souls in the underworld’ meta stat.

“This is our world. We deserve this.” Imo this is the hubris of the descendant of American Executive Branch survivors, the belief that, because they were chosen to live for their importance to the whole concept of America, that they now deserve not just survival but a return to that which they themselves destroyed. (I know in this universe it was some rogue AI blah blah blah--it’s more interesting if it was a nuclear war in the traditional sense in my opinion.) Dante has the other side of the argument: We are the keepers of history. The responsibility, over the entitlement. And he recognizes that this legacy is already stained, perhaps irrevocably. Is it ridiculous that he drew his line in the sand? Did he even make that decision, about the Grounders, or did his father make it? Does he think it’s okay because the Grounders are ‘savages’? Because the MM can survive without the bone marrow but not without the blood?

I’m going to be honest, I have no idea what the concept is here with saving Lincoln. Like is this real science about overdoses or just like shit made up as they went along? The only thing I got was the heart thing with the electric shock but like...unclear on the rest... is it just waiting out the detox, I guess?

The dropship has a cute tiled floor. I never noticed that.

They didn’t lie! They were just being as dramatic as possible! Griffin women specialty.

I never shipped M/inty but that was a nice moment. Love those attempts to expand Miller’s character. Also completely forgot that what Miller found was the engineering schematics.

“It’s not complicated really. We just need to keep them alive long enough for the drug to leave their system.” Okay so I was basically right. Not sure how she came to that conclusion from the fight scene but w/e.

L just strikes me as like a young person pretending to be a leader rather than like an actual leader... I’m sorry. But that’s just my read.

Anyway here she is, bad faith as always--moving the goalposts again. “You can have your truce if I get one thing”--LADY YOU GOT YOUR ONE THING THE FUCKING REAPERS HELLO. You don’t get a second thing. I mean fuck really you’re already getting two things: the Reapers and an ally in taking down the Mountain. Now you want a third thing?? No. No more things.

“The one you call Finn”--see, honestly, fake. You’re from fucking Baltimore, no one talks like this or has ever talked like this in the history of human speech.

Anyway, that was intellectually exhausting. Missed seeing my girl Maya. And even more importantly, Raven. And Bellamy had so little to do. He looked damn fine though.

#the year 2019 #2019: fandom thoughts #2019: the 100 s2 #the 100

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solgunslinger · 5 years

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I've had my meds and sleep so I can properly respond: I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I've barely managed to pick up the pieces from the first. For both our sakes, I want this to be the last you ever hear from me. And for yours, I hope you realize you're making the same mistake I did before it costs you more than any future career prospects.

Hm. This message tells me you took nothing we told you to heart and mind.

The only mistake I made was speaking to you. And I didn’t even start that. I really tried to help you, but there’s nothing to help. Don’t assume you know anything about me, because the truth is? You don’t. Just like how I didn’t know how full of shit you were. What the fuck were you thinking, talking about helping some oppressive force massacre EVERYONE in the Discord full of minorities? With minors? Don’t you fucking realize there are children in there? How fucking sick you are to think what you do? You disgust me.

This shattered any hope I had you might change for the better. I was content to let your memory fade into something distant so the rage I kept from you only simmers when I remember what you said. You shouldn’t have said a goddamn thing. But you did because you just NEED to have the last word to feel a little better about your repulsive, repugnant, revolting ideologies. YOU ARE A NAZI SYMPATHIZER. Through and through.

Is that a threat, perchance? My hands are shaking… from working on a bush we trimmed into a cube. It’s cute, unlike your ridiculous defeatist attitude. You make no fucking sense, you fucking coward. “I hope you realize you’re making the same mistake I did before it costs you more than any future career prospects” I am LAUGHING you piece of shit. As if you ever made the right choice to begin with! No, that’s asking too much from you. How scary, how ominous! Oh what would I ever do? Volunteer to kill off a bunch of minorities I guess! Just! Like! You!

I would sooner throw myself on a sword or lay across burning coals than let anything happen to those kids. I would kill to protect my people. I would die for my people. And you know who those people are? Everyone you’re willing to sacrifice to get a slightly longer life in the exact same circumstance. Not just the Discord, but everyone else I’ve ever met with that good spark in their hearts and something that you think would lead to them being massacred in the upcoming years. For everyone I ever will meet with these standards. Everyone I’ll never have the chance to meet as I lie six feet under an ancient sequoia and my people play among the stars.

All Orientation and Gender Identities, Religions, Races, Neurodivergents, Handicapped, all of these? Are my people. I fight for them and I fight for myself. We have been here from the beginning. We will be here until the end. You cannot change this.

You lack honor and integrity more than anyone else I’ve ever met. And you use mental illness as an excuse for all of this!? This, too, is unforgivable! You bring shame to the world, you bring shame to humanity, and you bring shame upon yourself. I don’t need to be kind or respectful to someone who thinks like you do. Acts like you do. Tries to play me like some weak-willed fool as though you’re looking in a mirror. Ignorance is one thing, stubbornness is another, but you’re damn well aware of your decisions and fully intend on going through with the worst acts possible because you’re absolutely spineless.

I don’t fear you, cowardly bastard. Nothing you say or do matters to me because you mean nothing. Stand for nothing. After all, you’re already kneeling.

#unless you somehow change #never speak to me again. { ;Collector; }#my hope for the future remains unchanged. you're only a tiny piece of what lies within our way #but it is easy to step over the likes of you.#I apologize to everyone else for the amount of ugly in this post. you shouldn't have to see this #but it is important this is made public.#if anyone asks #I am willing to provide details.#Genocide mention #Massacre mention #trigger warning #foul language tw #violence tw #newfrankcity #Negativity TW

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maraki-of-the-fandoms · 5 years

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Thoughts on les miserables bbc episode 5

Not the worst but a large part was fights so there wasn't enough dialoge to mess up....they still mess it up

Thernadier escapes with no help of gavroche and the patrominate and a suspensfull plan

He pretends to die for cholera....which is stupied....my first though was they didn't check for pulse

Some point out that they didn't know about pulse but even back then they knew to check for heartbeat and breath

And cholera is a very messy disease with messy obviouse symptomes...difficult to fake

They trie to robe rue plumet and half the gang is missing

And they have the part with eponine trying to stop them but here is useless!!

She just screams a little and stops when they threat her with a knife and they leave because of dogs....so thats a strong intresting character...not like the boring females in the book where she curse them tells them to die and scares them and force them to leave

And an other strong character who faints when she meets the love of her life...i have seen patriarchy sexist movies for the 60-70 with the same fainting women but that was worst....not like that boring book where she expecting him and the kiss

And in here the keep kissing a lot of time because there is no reason to talk and get to know it's other...not like that boring book where they meet for weeks and talk and they don't kiss because they respect it's other and they care for personality

And we don't how long they see it's other here but it's not long...propable it's only the (2) times we see

Marius tries to ask his grandfathers permision to marry and it's quite good scene

Although we don't know how long he was gone

Or how much gillenormand missed him

Or that Marius needs permision because he is basically a minor(he will be adult by the law at 25)

And we see gillenormand chase after marius but in the book he was to late because he is old and slow and marius didn't listen becase he was already gone and the poor grandfather lost all hope

And we don't have the all conversation to see that the grandfather has a point to worry about the marriage because marius is penniless at this point and looks the poor part...and in this version he doesn't no cosette long enough

So the revolution begans and i don't care about anyone at the baricade which is a shame

Gavroche is ok and cute and acts like a gamin for the most part...

...but when he has a gun acts like a gigling murderous psycho!!

The amis are some pansies and kinda cowards

The amis (or what they left of them) need support to follow the revolution?! They need to persuade from a worker to follow(who is not Feuilly for some reason)because it's not like they where one of the main organizer revolutionary groups

They just shit and drink must of the time

And when the revolution begins we see them at the funeral full of fear which is stupied because they just began the fights and in the book they are prepared and it's not they're first revolotion...they were part of the 1830 jule revolution

They are lots of people in the funeral who openly carry guns!!! What the hell?! Where is the police?! They see them and they just stare when they expect a revolt....just take some safety measuremants you fools(but can you blame them when their boss only carres about valjean?)

The fights are good and they try...but half the time it copies the 2012 movie with out the epicness of the music...the music tries to make it suspensfull but there is no epic and drama in it and it's out of place half the time(generally the fight is good and tries more than the whole script)

I thing they are to many people...not so in the funeral but later in the baricades...makes me wonder why they fail

Marius threatens to blow the baricade!!(yeeeee) ...when his not on the baricade and I think his closer to his friends than his soldiers(nitpicking here but it's kinda funny) and start hunt the soldiers away while screamming like a bear(whyyyyy) because aparently we must have at list one bear scream per episode and at this point I'm to scared to ask why

They had the flag and mabeuf and somehow they didn't make it work....why didn't even know why he was there...we didn't had him became friend with marius, try to make his project work,to try to share his knowledge and passion and end bankrupt,to try to survive,to get him stay unnotice from the goverment who said they would help him,to get him find a purse full of money and retarn it to the police will he could ise it to buy food,sell everything he loved to aford food and hope he would die before he sell everything...when he went to the baricade he had sell his last thing(to help his sick servent) and he knew he would die for starvation...he decided to go to fight for something better because he had lost everything and had nothink else to lose...he decided to die heroicle...when they ask a volunteer for the flag everyone knew it was a suicide mission...but he still went and chose his one death instead of the slow one chosen by the society and died will saying basically the most epic screw you to the wrong society...he couldn't kill anyone in the baricade because he was too peacefull for that so he decided to be the first martyr instead for somone young...that was mabeuf in the book and we never see him

Eponine dies and the change her last words which is a discreace to the character and the intresting build up hugo did for her

Valjean hasn't appear yet....instend we have someone who drags his daughter and locks her inside...he grabs gavroche and forsefully take(basically steals) the letter...he doesn't care that the kid is going to a fight!!! He doesn't try to give him money to help it....he doesn't see a kid breaking lambs and says to it "cool break as many you want" he just scares it and than reads his daughter letter gets angry for the man whose gone take here and decides to grab a knife(they focus on that) and goes to the baricade...if i didn't read the book i would guess his going for a good old murder!!! And we didn't see the conflic to "let marius die it's an idiot who is gone take away my only happiness or it's a boy it's not right to think like and be happy about that his death and cosette would be sad... gona try and still hope for his death but at least it would not be my fault"....honestly valjean in book is the swetty but awesome grandpa we all want and need who has a habit to feel guilt and insecure over everything(just like half the people I know including me)

Javert still missing...and OMG his worst even for geoffrey rush version(not the actor....he was actually the only thing that make enjoyable)!!! He is the must borring flat oneminded obsess over valjean version of all and it' ironic because "this is a book accoured version who does justice to the book unlike the awfull musical" and the book!javert is the least obsess of all and the most intresting funny sarcastic human version.....here he has so much power that he has do deal with the preparation and the plans to stop the revolt and he doesn't care about that he cares about valjean!! How he even achive the promotion with this focus!! Really everything it happens it's valjeans fault!! I'm sure he blames valjean even for the rain or the cholera!! Can't he focus?!?!?! He goes to the baricade because he things valjean is the leader and it's his fault(a bloody revolution!!!) And when his men try to stop him from going he insist to go because he is the only he can deal with valjean....he goes to the baricade and ask for valjean!! He is caught and arrested and the baricades and he still ask for valjean and still thinks he is the leader!!!! In book he was a really low member of the police with little power little money outside of society but he believed in law and order...he was just follow orders from his bosses when his at the baricades and from the law when it's about valjean....when he gets arrest he is calm fearless and full of sarcasm and it's so admirable...in the bbc version I dislike him and want him died just to sut up and stop being such a pain in the ass and feel sorry for his officers who have to listen to his whine and it's horrible because he is my favourite character in the brick and one of my favourite fiction character generally

Not the worst episode but they messed already most of things so they didn't have much to screw up...But they have messed so much that I hate to watch the scenes with my favourite book characters(valjean javert)and not only and want them to live the screen because they are annoying and horible people( almost everyone is in this version expept for 3-4)...at this point I care most for the poor officers who have to deal for javert!! Can't wait to see them destroy the derailed

#bbc les miserables #les miserables bbc #les miserables #bbc les mis salt #les mis bbc #les mis #bbc les mis #javert #jean valjean #valjean #mabeuf #my reviews

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cinnbar-bun · 5 years

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Unpopular Kpop Opinions

A/n: Yeah I know this isn’t exactly new or anything but there is just some things I’ve noticed and wanted to say about Kpop??? Keep in mind, these are just my opinions and I hold no ill will towards anyone and feel free to disagree with me. Just uh... please don’t harass anyone??

I think it is completely alright to be a Kpop fan even if you stan one group. I just think it’s pointless to say someone is a “fake fan” just because they like one group. What?? Kpop is a new experience for many people, and sometimes they need to take it slow. I definitely relate to some newcomers because when my friends were trying to get me into Kpop, they went off with like twenty million groups and songs, not to mention all the inside jokes and members- and for real, this is a lot to handle for a newcomer. Showing them tons of new information when they’re trying to learn is probably one of the best ways to make them not interested in Kpop. It’s like throwing a child into the deep end instead of letting them dip their toes into the water first.

I really like cute concepts. Even for boy groups, honestly, you might find this dumb but I first really got interested in Kpop because a friend showed me Chewing Gum by NCT Dream. It’s still one of my faves to this day. My first Kpop song I ever listened to was Chuck by SEVENTEEN and gosh, they are at the top of my list for favorite band.

I don’t like how some “rappers” rap. Like you can fight me but I think the way Lisa (Blackpink) and LE (EXID) rap is not really rapping. I don’t know why but it really isn’t interesting to me because it sounds like they’re just talking in a nasally voice very fast. For Lisa though, I’m not sure if that’s just because YG rarely gives them much comebacks (like seriously, we’ve been waiting two years for four more songs, can these girls please get more comebacks???), and because of that they really haven’t changed much, or if she herself just doesn’t wanna change. I’m not sure, but I really don’t care for it too much. [P.S. I’m not hating on Blackpink, I love them, and Lisa is honestly very pretty and entertaining. I think she also has some real potential as a vocalist, but rapping??? Ehhhh.....]

I really can’t get into Got7, VIXX, Monsta X, Big Bang, or EXO. EXO is a very different story because I love a lot of their older songs but honestly haven’t been feeling some of their newer ones. And Baekhyun??? Amazing. And it’s really weird too because like I love a lot of their songs but can’t seem to get into them?? For the others, I was shown some songs and didn’t really care all too much for them. Perhaps I’m listening to the wrong songs, so maybe ya’ll can help and suggest some to me??

I actually like the newer BTS songs. I don’t know if this one is considered “unpopular” but I’ve heard tons of complaints about how their older songs were better or they’re becoming more westernized. I definitely don’t hate their older songs, but a majority of my favorites are the newer ones. The westernized claim though??? I don’t really think I can call it that. I don’t know how to explain but like I feel they are mixing their older days of being the hip-hop band they were supposed to be during debut, and the more pop band they have become now. It just feels so them that I can hardly consider it “western”.

A lot of us Westerners need to understand the customs that occur in Korea. I thought this was an obvious thing, but it seems that many are in the dark about those customs/ or just don’t give a heck. Listen, I’m with you guys a 100000000% that idols should not starve themselves or constantly wreck their bodies in order to hold up to such a high standard. But the thing is, you can’t expect these customs and standards to change so quick. It’s unbelievable and unrealistic to think that just because you talk about it on the internet once, a whole country will change. I wish that were true and that these idols could be less stressed, but we just know that’s not possible.

Being a casual fan does not make you a fake fan. I. Can’t. Even. This whole statement is flawed and honestly very discouraging. Much like in point 1, if you force someone to like something, they probably are not going to like it. It’s hard sometimes to manage life, and I get those that just don’t have time to watch every V-live or appearance or concert or fan meet or whatever. But to claim they are “fake fans”? That’s disappointing to me. Kpop is a MUSICAL GENRE. Sure there are a lot of other things that come with it, but at the end of the day, it’s music, done by artists who really need you to listen to it so they can get paid. Just because someone who really loves the songs doesn’t remember every band members real name or birthday, or favorite color or celebrity crush, doesn’t mean they are fake. They are casual, and they don’t wish to spend a lot of time watching videos that they probably don’t care about. They’ll watch it if they feel like it, and people should respect that.

The utter disrespect given to some idols/other fans. This to me is just absolutely revolting, and I cannot understand why some people act the way they do. I get it, you love your band, awesome! Good on you for finding something that makes you happy! You know what’s not awesome? Harassing people for not liking said band. Fan wars are a complete waste of everyone’s time, and people really need to act like the bigger person and ignore the hate or at the very least, calmly discuss it. Starting shit for no reason is pointless, and showing people the worst sides of the fandom help no one. There’s going to be tons of bad apples in every fandom, and Kpop definitely is not the worst fandom out there. But disregarding boundaries towards the very same idols you stan is shameful. Harassing idols because you don’t agree with their actions is wrong, and just straight up detrimental to their health. You don’t need to call someone an attention whore just because they didn’t wish to continue with a band and instead pursue a solo career. If you loved them, you’d let them go. You’d let them grow so they can finally be at the place they wished to be all that time. I get it, it’s depressing when your favorite group disbands, but sometimes things just don’t work out. You shouldn’t be dragging them down, you should continue to support them and show them that as their loyal fans, you still will be by their sides. Also the fat-shaming or calling idols ‘ugly’ really needs to stop. They are humans. They are not dolls for you entertainment. They are people with real emotions, real feelings, and real insecurities.

UHhhh that was all I had to say for now, but hopefully I don’t entice too much hate?? These were just my opinions and things I felt needed to be stated. Once again, please respect everyone’s opinions!

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the-desolated-quill · 6 years

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Into The Dalek - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Deep Breath couldn’t have been a more disappointing start if you tried. Into The Dalek on the other hand is pretty damn good for the most part. There are some problems, sure, but the quality is night and day compared to the previous episode. Maybe Phil Ford’s input had something to do with this improvement. I don’t know.

On the spaceship Aristotle (subtle), the Doctor discovers a Dalek that seems to have turned good. So he, Clara and some soldiers from the future get shrunk down and go for a little trek inside the Dalek to see what caused this. Now yes, this premise is similar to The Invisible Enemy just like the plot of Deep Breath was similar to The Talons Of Weng-Chiang, but unlike Deep Breath, Into The Daleks is actually entertaining and does just enough to make the premise its own. I mean come on. It’s the inside of a Dalek! How cool is that?! We finally get to see how it actually works, and there’s a lot of imaginative concepts here. I like the Dalek antibodies, the whole idea of a memory cortex that edits and suppresses memories to keep a Dalek ‘pure’ is intriguing, and we finally get an explanation for the sink plunger at last. So it’s used to absorb protein from victims? How positively revolting.

But let’s talk about the thing I love the most about Into The Dalek. The Doctor. Now we’ve gotten past all the post regeneration nonsense, we can finally see what kind of Doctor this one is going to be, and it’s very dark indeed. Warm and cuddly he most certainly ain’t. He’s very cold and methodical. The scene where he lets one of the soldiers die in order to use him to track the antibodies was a bit of a jaw dropper, but i liked it. It’s still very much in character and it’s a side of him we don’t often get to see in New Who. I’m also pleased to see that the humour has improved since Deep Breath. It’s no longer goofy whimsey. This Doctor’s humour is much more acerbic and dry, and he delivers a lot of darkly comedic lines.

Journey Blue: (referring to the protein vat) “Is Ross here?”

The Doctor: “Yeah. He’s the top layer if you want to say a few words.”

This kind of humour fits Peter Capaldi like a glove and he does a great job portraying that cold logic mixed with callousness. but what I especially love is how this episode explores this Doctor’s priorities. One of the many things that’s been bugging me about New Who, and about the Eleventh Doctor especially, is how the Doctor has been sliding closer and closer to being an all powerful saint who can do no wrong. Not only is that incredibly boring, it’s also not who the Doctor is at all. Sure the Doctor is a decent person who will always try to help those in need, but he’s not a god or a superhero. He’s just a guy. He can make mistakes, he’s capable of doing morally questionable things and sometimes he can let his own scientific curiosity and self interests get the better of him. Into The Dalek really seeks to highlight that. Throughout the episode, the Doctor is utterly convinced that there is no such thing as a good Dalek, and when he fixed the radiation leak, he knew full well there was a chance that the Dalek would revert back to its murderous self, but he did it anyway. The Doctor knew that fixing the radiation leak could make the Dalek evil again, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was being proven right. I love that because it adds a whole other layer to the character and makes him all the more interesting.

But as much as I enjoyed Twelve in this, there are some aspects of his character I don’t like. For example, the whole self doubt thing and his constant need to seek Clara’s approval. Considering he just retconned the whole Time War in order to save his own race and defended Trenzalore for centuries, I don’t see why the Doctor is furrowing his brow over whether he’s a good man or not. Especially when the answer is so painfully obviously yes. He may occasionally be selfish and self absorbed, and can sometimes make mistakes, but he always tries to do the right thing. And can I just take this opportunity to debunk the idea yet again of the Doctor being completely ineffectual without a companion. It seems as though the Doctor can’t do anything without needing Clara to hold his hand and guide him through everything, which just feels totally wrong.

But by far the thing I hate most about Twelve is his soldier prejudice. I’ve spoken at length in the past about how idiotic the whole pacifist thing is considering the Doctor has often resorted to using violence and guns in extreme circumstances during the classic series. Yes I suppose you could argue that Nine and Ten’s PTSD might have exacerbated the whole ‘no guns’ thing, but Twelve takes it to a whole new level. He hates soldiers to the point where he rejects Journey Blue’s request to travel with him at the end, but he doesn’t actually seem to have a good reason for his hatred. Journey doesn’t do anything wrong as far as I can see. He just hates soldiers because the script said so. You’d think, considering he recently met the War Doctor, that he would be slightly more sympathetic to soldiers, but nope. It just doesn’t make sense and the whole idea of all soldiers being bad is just too narrow minded.

It’s such a shame as well because I actually really liked Journey Blue. Zawe Ashton did a really good job in the role and I loved how she interacted with the Doctor. She clearly has a begrudging respect for him, but at the same time she’s not prepared to put up with any of his bullshit. I would much rather she was travelling with the Doctor than Clara because I feel Twelve really needs someone to pin him against a wall sometimes and challenge him. Clara seems to have more of a teacher/pupil role with him (with Clara playing the teacher role, which is wrong in and of itself), which just feels incredibly patronising. Journey’s relationship with the Doctor is more believable and thus more engaging in my opinion and I would kill to have her in the TARDIS with Peter Capaldi. I know some people didn’t like how aggressive and stroppy she was, but to be fair, she did just lose her brother. I think she’s got a right to be a little bit cranky. And the scenes with her uncle, played by Michael Smiley, do more than enough to humanise her in my eyes so she’s not just an angry, shouty woman. They have this really professional relationship, but you can detect a familial warmth underneath.

I really enjoyed Into The Dalek for the most part, but it’s when we get towards the end where the wheels start to wobble. The Doctor realising that all the Daleks could potentially be turned good isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. The problem is what this plotline focuses on. In the end, it’s the Doctor’s own hatred of the Daleks that turns Rusty into a Dalek killer rather than the reformed good guy the Doctor wanted, and we’re clearly supposed to be thinking about how much hate and prejudice the Doctor has towards the Daleks, but it doesn’t work. Not only have we basically explored this already in 2005′s Dalek (and done it better), I can’t help but feel Phil Ford and Steven Moffat have missed the point of their own story entirely. Honestly I think this tells us more about the Daleks than the Doctor. My main takeaway from this isn’t how hateful the Doctor is, but rather how utterly beyond help the Daleks are. Rusty was banging on about destroying the Daleks long before the Doctor mind melded with it. The way I see it, what turns Rusty isn’t the Doctor’s hatred, but rather its own desire for hatred. The Daleks don’t just want to hate. They need to hate. Whether it’s hating against humans, Time Lords or their own fellow Daleks, it seems that is a Dalek’s sole purpose of existence. Even in an attempt to expand its consciousness, Rusty ends up going for the one thing it recognises within the Doctor. Hatred. Why? Because that’s the only thing it knows how to do. It’s kind of tragic when you think about it and could have been used to great effect. This could have been an opportunity to shine a whole new light on the Daleks and present them in a way that’s never been done before, but instead Ford and Moffat sidestep what could have been a very interesting issue to explore in favour of retreading old ground. They’re focusing on entirely the wrong thing here, which is frustrating.

And then there’s the whole situation with Danny Pink. Samuel Anderson does the best he can with what he’s been given, but I’m not impressed with this character. Not only are we doing the whole cliched romcom shit again like we did in The Lodger, it’s also yet another stupid mystery for Moffat to drag out over the course of the series. What did Danny do while he was a soldier? And just to make sure all subtlety is thrown out of the window, we even get a prolonged shot of a single poetic tear trickling down Danny’s cheek. It’s really pathetic. Moffat is so bad at getting us to care about his characters that he has to resort to melodramatic bollocks like this to try and drag some kind of emotion out of us. Also, fuck you Clara. I don’t know what sort of emotional trauma Danny went through (and I don’t really care neither), but he’s clearly suffering from some form of PTSD, so to make dismissive jokes about it really is just beyond insulting. (And while I’m complaining about Clara, can we drop all the companion slapping Doctor jokes now please? Like I said in the past, it’s not cute and sexy. it’s assault and battery).

While there are a few flaws here and there, I still had a lot of fun watching this episode. I’d say this is definitely one of the better Dalek stories to come out of New Who.

#into the dalek #phil ford #steven moffat #doctor who #twelfth doctor #peter capaldi #clara oswald #jenna coleman #daleks #bbc #review #spoilers

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chief-1-hunet · 6 years

Text

This for you, boo~ @ohmygillygoshoppler

Hopefully I can get a part 2 in.

Here ya go~

“Down Girl”

Jordi was sick…

She slowly came down the stairs, her hair in a matted mess, and bits of mascara from the night before that smudged around her eyes. Simóne and her had a girl’s night, and surprisingly, Jordi had more than a few sips of the devil’s water.

Simóne was baking her famous apple pie when Jordi sat at the kitchen table, and she paused when she heard a sniffle, “Is that what I think it was?”

“Huh?” followed by a nasty cough.

Simóne sighed, “Not just a hangover, but a cold, too,” she rolled out the dough, “Looks like it’s time to put an onion on your foot.”

Jordi frowned, “Can’t I just take cold medicine?” She cringed at the sharp pain of a headache, “And an aspirin.”

“Sure,” she smirked, “And an onion on your foot.”

Jordi just accepted it, she was way too out of it to argue. She got up from her seat and made some herbal tea. Simóne actually had some pretty dope herbal tea, that she would prefer no other kind over the witch’s.

Jordi smirked as she boiled some water in a kettle, “Wanna know what else?”

“Hm?” The witch mused.

“I’m also on my period.”

They both cringed, and Simóne replied, “That sucks. Mine just ended.”

Jordi nodded, and they quietly continued with their tasks.

——

Jordi had finished her tea, took some cold medicine, and was heading back up to her room when she got a text:

DINGUS (strife): you home? :)

Jordi’s heart fluttered, but she immediately oppressed the feeling. She bit her lip and replied:

Jordi: yeah but I'm sick, so its probably not a good day to come over

DINGUS (strife): lol i didn't even say i was coming over ;)

Jordi: …

Jordi: shut up

DINGUS (strife): death said he was coming over anyways, i was only gonna follow if you were home, so i guess I'm followin’ ;)

Jordi: strife please,, i can't today…

DINGUS (strife): :(

DINGUS (strife): did something happen last night?

She couldn’t find anything to say, so she put the phone back in her pocket and continued to her room, but was stopped by Simóne’s gentle grasp on her wrist.

“Why have you been shutting out Strife lately? You know he likes y—“

“I know,” she pulled away from the grasp, “That’s the problem.”

——

Death indeed came over, dropping off some herbs from the Maker’s Realm for Simóne. He rapped on the door, and it was quickly answered by the lovely witch, “Heeey! Come on in—“

Strife pushed passed Death, almost in a panic, “Where’s Jordi, Simóne?”

Simóne sighed, letting Death walk in and take off his shoes after giving Strife a grunt, “She’s upstairs in her room, but she really isn’t feeling well, Strife. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go up and—“

Strife ignored her warning and rushed up the stairs after shoving off his shoes and hanging up his scarf and coat.

Simóne knew there was little she could do to stop him when he was determined. She looked to her deadly friend and smiled, “And how are you?”

Death grunted, taking a seat on the couch in front of the fireplace, “Decent. Not any better or any worse,” his lip curled up, as if he was thinking about something that revolted him, “Strife insisted on coming along, talking non-stop about how Jordan refused to return her calls, and how strangely she was acting.”

Simóne was fixing him a cup of black coffee, a usual for him, “Well, she feels like shit today. She danced on the bar counter last night. She was so drunk off her ass, she danced, Death. I took a video of it.” She smirked, holding up her cell phone.

Death looked over his shoulder to smirk back, “It would be a crime not to show me.”

Simóne hummed, “I would never commit such a blasphemous thing,” followed by a chuckle.

—-

Jordi sat at her art desk. She was staring at one of the portraits she had done in the past of a man that died before the apocalypse, one that could not be resurrected because he did not die because of it.

He was in a car accident.

It was the day the world actually ended. Her world…

It was something she never wanted to remember, and here she was.

And it was all Strife’s fault.

She sighed, biting back tears. His portrait was placed back in her portfolio folder and hidden away in her drawer.

As if on cue, the spikey haired nephilim barged in her room, “What’s your fucking problem?” He stomped over, “Why have I been getting the cold shoulder these passed few weeks, huh?! You don’t wanna see me anymore?! What the fuck did—“

“You have his temper.”

His brows furrowed in confusion, “What are you talking about?”

She played with an ink brush, using it to calm her by softly brushing the hairs over her left palm, “You’re just like him,” she sadly smiled, “Your temper, humor, flirtatiousness, closet geniusness…”

He simmered down, realizing just what she meant. His voice softened, “Jordi…”

She hung her head, squeezing the brush in a fist, “God dammit, Strife,” she swung around to face him, her face covered in dry tears, now forming new ones, “Why do you have to fucking remind me of him? Who fucking sent you??!! Am I dead and in Hell?? Is this just a fucking punishment for my sins? What the hell did I do? All I ever did was…” she sobbed, covering her nose and mouth with her sweater, “All I ever did was love him.”

She plopped on the bed, just sobbing. Today really was a shitty day.

Strife could see that the crying really wasn’t helping with her congestion. He ground his teeth and popped his jaw from side to side. He left the room in search for a tissue box.

His ventures took him to the kitchen, where he walked passed Death and Simóne sitting on the couch laughing up a storm at some video.

Simóne was out of breath, “H-Hey Strife?” a cackle, “How’s Jordi?” Death guffawed in response.

Strife shot them both a glare, grabbed the box of tissues, and headed back up to her bedroom.

Simóne stopped laughing, “Craaappp.”

—

Jordi thought Strife had left for good, and was getting out the last bit of tears she had. But alas, he returned.

He always did.

He set the box of tissues next to her, and sat next to her small form on the edge of the bed.

There was silence for a moment, then he broke it, “I’m sorry.”

She looked up at him in surprise, and he was already looking over her with his golden gaze, “Strife… You… did nothing wrong,” she sighed, “It’s me. I’m just really fucked up. Up here, that is,” he hit her head with her palm. Bad idea, she forgot about her headache, “Ow…”

That prompted more crying, and she held Strife’s bulky arm, “I’m so sorry, Strife! I know you’re not him… I would never—“ she coughed, “I would never want you to be anyone else,” she sobbed, burring her face in his bicep, “I just can’t help the fact that you make me feel loved,” this made her lose all of her composure, all of the bottled up pain left her vessel. The once composed, cool Jordi was now a mess before one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, “Like he did!” She collapsed on the floor at his knees, losing herself completely.

Strife wasn’t having it any longer. He hated seeing her this way. This wasn’t her. She never deserved to cry! Not a single fucking tear!

He took her being in his strong arms and squeezed her against him, not leaving any room for gaps, “Stop crying. Stop. Stop. Stop…”

After what seemed like forever, but was really about five minutes, she stopped sobbing.

Deep breath.

Inhale.

Exhale.

“I’m done,” she sniffled, “I’m done…”

Strife let out a relieved sigh, “Good,” he held her face, forcing her to look up at him. He didn’t care that she looked like a mess, “I don’t ever want to see you like this again.”

She smiled, followed by a pathetic chuckle, “I don’t either, you goof. I hate crying.”

He smirked, “That’a girl,” and he placed a kiss on her forehead, long and warm.

She gasped, looking up at him in question.

“Returning the favor, you know, for that one time I made you be my getaway driver. Best night of my life, by the way,” he snickered.

Jordi chuckled, hugging him to subtract the distance, “Don’t ever fucking do that again.”

He hugged her in return, of course, rubbing her back, “I’ll think about it.”

—-

Simóne and Death were still recovering from the video. Death couldn’t even finish his coffee.

He breathed out, “It’s a shame I wasn’t there in person. There were probably other atrocities she performed, seeing as how drunk she was.”

Simóne snickered, “You wouldn’t believe.”

Death leaned in, expecting her to elaborate.

“Well—“ She was stopped at the sound of footsteps coming from the stairs. Strife followed by Jordi in a blanket bundle.

Jordi brought the box of tissues with her, blowing her nose, “What’s so funny? I wanna laugh, too.”

Strife crossed his arms, “Yeah, same,” he was picking up on the modern human slang.

Both Death and Simóne snorted, trying very hard not to lose their shit.

Both Strife and Jordi raised a brow in response.

Simóne pulled out her phone and pulled up the video, “Come look,” a snicker.

—-

Jordi sat in the love seat opposite to the three of them, who were still rolling around, dying.

“I hope I see you all in Hell,” she said grumpily, followed by a sniffle. Jordi covered her whole being in the blanket, looking like a white fluff.

Strife was practically crying, “Looks like there’s a lot I still don’t know about you.”

“I just really liked the song okay!! Down Girl by Roy Woods is a great song!” She grunted.

Death had calmed down before the rest did, able to finish his coffee. He could see how sickly Jordi was, so he decided it was time for her to be entertained.

“Simóne,” he pulled out a scroll with golden trimming, “A friend told me to pass this on to you.”

Simóne took the scroll, still recovering from the video as she was opening it.

Her laughing stopped immediately after reading it.

The blush on her face was the reddest Jordi had ever seen it.

She smirked, “I fucking knew it!!” She hopped up an down on the couch, “I knew he’d ask you on a date!!! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!!!”

Strife looked at the scroll, eyes wide, “Nathaniel?!!! The angel???”

Jordi stopped hopping after her headache worsened, “Ow ow ow.”

Strife went to her side, sitting her on his lap, “Take it easy, shorty,” he smirked, “Don’t start dancin’ again.”

She only smacked him on the arm.

Simóne was still flushed, “I… I never thought he’d actually…”

Jordi shrugged, “He thinks you’re a cutie~. And why wouldn’t he think so. You are.”

Death and Strife nodded on agreement.

Before Simóne could respond, Jordi cut in, “Nuh uh, you’re not aloud to say no.”

She sighed in defeat, “Fine.”

To be continued…

#darksiders #fanfiction #ohmygillygoshoppler #this was fun #lol #part 1

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ii-thiscat-ii · 7 years

Note

What about one for Incandescence?

DVD-style commentary for Incandescence.

(Commentary is provided on the whims of the author. The author feeds on your blood. Consider yourself warned and keep sending requests.)

Ah, the single darkest fic I’ve ever written. The idea for this fic has been around for a long time. I don’t remember exactly how long, but we’re talking years at least. It’s gone through a million different forms before I even started to write it.

Let’s go.

Chapter 1

This fic was not actually supposed to be chaptered, but it grew, and then it grew, and then it grew. It was at over 12k words when I let myself be convinced to post the first part. I thought at the time it would be two parts. It ended up as three. That keeps happening.

Here, love was what made her different. Not quite nightmare, but not a dream either. Love made her bright, made her a mess of colours and smiles. Love made her more. Love made her Incandescence.

Incandescence. The original idea involved just any random generic nightmare, but I’m glad it ended up with her instead.

I don’t remember where she came from. All I know is that she works for this. She’s good, innocent, beautiful and bright, and such a big contrast to what I’m putting her through. She’s only been with the Flock for a little while, which I honestly don’t remember why I did, but it sure makes things even worse. Pretty sure that at the end of it she’s spent more time trapped in the physical world than she spent as a sheep beforehand.

She’s also the first sheep I’ve written who’s explictly “non-binary”. It’s not a term that works for sheep the same way it works for humans, as the dream-nightmare binary is completely artificial.

All nightmares are dreams as well, and of the dreams that come to be in the Mindscape, the vast majority are smaller, nicer dreams. The problem, of course, is that only the biggest, baddest dreams survive long enough in the Mindscape to make it to a safe place to live without being eaten, and these are the ones that make it to Dipper’s mindscape and become his nightmares. Of course, when he starts rescuing dreams, most of the ones he finds are very drastically different, which makes the apparent binary appear, but the difference is much more gradual than that, and Incandescence is one of those on the nightmare end of the scale.

She’s also literally made of love. They’re all made of different emotions, giving them different ways of thinking, and she’s one of very few of them who’s capable of romantic love. Not quite the way most people do it, but she is.

She’s panromantic or omniromantic or what have you. If she likes you, she’s probably in love with you, and that’s just how she is.

The scene where she’s pulled into the physical plane is one of those I could rewrite a dozen times and still not be quite happy with, I think. How do you describe someone’s mind being torn to pieces, from the inside?

I do like the description of her realizing what’s happened, though. I played a lot with pronouns for things. You might have noticed I only ever refer to the body as ‘her’ body when it’s from someone else’s point of view. From her point of view, I took care to describe it with as viscerally revolting words as I possibly could.

In contrast, the next scene where the scientists talk about what they’ve done, the whole mood is different. They don’t know they’re the antagonists.

“She even understands human language!”

She laughed. They were both beside themselves with happiness, exhaustion from a sleepless night the only thing keeping them from still skipping, as they had after Eve opened her eyes.

“To be fair,” Ida said, “mostly she was screaming ‘no’.”

They know ‘Eve’ isn’t happy about what’s going on, but they can rationalize that. In the end, they don’t think about her as a person as much as she is a personification of their personal success. They believe they’ve created a human being, but they’re not treating her as one, which is of course the one thing that creates the conflict in this fic.

As someone who is very fond of science myself, these characters annoy me most of all because they’re very good at what they do. They’re making amazing breakthroughs which could be used for wonderful things, but they failed their ethics classes at some point and are thus reduced to mere antagonists.

It’s a shame, really.

“I don’t know!” Lolonja snapped back, and she belatedly realized that she was angry. At herself, for not taking better care. At her flock, for not staying closer to their brightest, newest sister. At him, for not being the great, all-powerful Master and easily fixing everything immediately.

I love this paragraph a lot.

I’ve gotten comments about how I make the nightmares so much like people, make them individuals, but that is, in the end, exactly why I love them so much.

They are individuals. They have feelings and bonds. They react to stressful situations in human ways, because they’re not just tools to use. They’re people. They act irrationally sometimes, and their devotion is not blind.

They’re still devoted, of course, and that means more when they don’t have to be. It means more when it’s because they think he deserves it.

Other than that, this scene is mostly the beginning of Alcor’s despair. He’s an extremely powerful character, which means that taking that power from him is a very important part of writing stories about him, otherwise you won’t have any plot. Despite that, it also means that he isn’t used to having his power taken away. He isn’t used to being powerless, which makes putting him into a situation where he truly is that much more rewarding.

It also lets me show off exactly how strong his bond with the Flock is. Sometimes they’re the only thing he’s sure is going to be there, and he really doesn’t know how to deal with that constant failing him.

The second time Incandescence opened the seeing-parts, the eyes of the body that was not-her-but-her, there was darkness.

This scene. Was a nightmare. I almost never rewrite things. I don’t bother to. They’re just fic. This scene though, I came halfway through and then rewrote several times.

The description of how Incandescence sees the world filtered through human senses instead of directly like she’s used to was easy enough. I could do that. But the conversation. Oh god, the conversation with the person who came into the room.

I needed to show how the human would talk to her, as a thing that the human thinks it thinks is a person, while also figuring out how Incandescence would read and react to what was being said. Then I needed to have Incandescence argue while not explaining things well enough that this human understood exactly how badly they fucked up.

One side effect of that was that I had her not be able to give her name, which is of course very important. Names are important for the sheep, because it’s not something they’ve been allowed before, and her not feeling like she deserves her name anymore is such a strong sign that she’s already falling into despair.

I was stuck for so long. It was terrible. But I got through it, and then I could write the rest of it easily enough.

This scene is probably also the darkest one, wordwise. It’s the one that shows the best what I imagine it must feel like to be stuck in a body that really isn’t your own, where every movement disgusts you because it doesn’t belong to you.

I’m calling it heavy body dysphoria. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I also don’t know what else to call it. I also didn’t actually mean for the fic to become an analogy for transness, but with the central message of ‘you aren’t your body’ I suppose it was hard to avoid.

Either way, the end of this scene is pretty much as dark as it gets. It’s the beginning of Incandescence’s descent, and it starts off Alcor’s on the other side.

The forest around the now-levelled building was mostly quiet, aside from a single set of footsteps. Likely some random hiker, who unlike the animals did not have the sense to move away from loud, inexplicable noises in the woods. A hiker who would most likely make a fuzz about a child crying in the ruins of an old house, after which there might be a lot of screaming.

This whole scene is much better than the last one. It fits so perfectly after Incandescence falls back on the Master coming to save her as the only way out, to show that Alcor can’t find her, and that he’s horrified by this.

He’s not used to being powerless, and he doesn’t know how to give up.

The hiker actually showed up in on idea for this scene. Someone who was walking around in the woods and decided to check on the random crying child in a smashed building.

It was an interesting scene, but ultimately contributed nothing to the plot, so I left it as an exercise for the reader, by making it just a possibility that never happened.

The blip into the current Mizar’s bedroom was as quiet as he could make it. She was asleep on her bed, muttering vaguely into her pillow, and he had no intention of changing that.

Not only did he not want to bring her into this, he also did not actually need her for the next step. He just needed her computer.

Then there’s this. I honestly have no idea which Mizar this is, and it doesn’t matter. I just needed to establish that Dipper has a life outside of this one random fic, though he’s putting it on hold right now.

And then there’s Al-V, who, if you look closely, is the only person in this fic who actually manages to do shit. He’s a saving grace for Incandescence, and also for me, when I wrote this fic. I had no idea how to make any of Alcor’s scenes relevant when all they were was him flailing about in angst and accomplishing nothing. Al-V presented himself as something Alcor could do that would seem to do nothing even though it ultimately moved the plot to its end.

The last part of this chapter is just Incandescence hitting rock bottom. I had her bite a chunk out of someone and eat it, which was fun. Not for her, but I don’t actually think of my characters as people in context of myself, so it’s fine.

The first chapter is worst, honestly. By far. Maybe not in quality, but in mood. It’s dark as fuck, and really meant only to send people spiralling downwards with no apparent hope for rescue. Which of course is much more effective when it actually turns into a chaptered fic.

Chapter 2

And he was definitely not Oskar Rasmussen, intelligence officer. He was John Zipp, Mafia enforcer and currently inspector, going to take a look at the progress of the project the bosses had commissioned, and he was perfectly calm.

Oskar. Hah.

I have no idea how many times I spelled his name with a ‘c’ on accident, but it was a lot.

I also have no idea how the military works. Did you notice?

But I like Oskar. I just needed someone to come in and rescue Incandescence, but he turned out to be a pretty neat person. Intelligent enough to know what he was doing. Empathic enough to feel the significance of it.

The difference between Oskar and ‘John Zipp’ is also fun, because it let me write someone we were supposed to cheer for being really rude to those asshole scientists and then have them be scared in return. It was fun.

I was honestly worried about what people would think about such a long part of the fic focusing only on an entirely new character all out of nowhere, but it seems like people doesn’t mind?

Most of the first part of chapter two is just me trying to find the balance between making things go too fast and not getting bogged down by ridiculous amounts of exposition. I needed to show how this whole thing worked, and to make it seem like Oskar was doing his job, but I also wanted to get to Incandescence as fast as possible. I think, in the end, I balanced it well enough, but I still have issues with parts of it.

This is also where I introduce the idea that what was done to Incandescence isn’t only trapping her, it’s killing her. There had to be a reason bodies generally have souls, and not just lumps of thought-stuff, and here it is. It raises the stakes, and it gives us a new antagonist once these ones are taken out of the picture. (Friendly reminder that an antagonist doesn’t have to be a person, but it can be such an abstract concept as an illness, or time itself.)

She was a woman, almost definitely, with ghostly pale skin and dark, dirty hair. Maybe black, maybe dark brown; it was hard to tell in the dark. She lay straight on her back on top of the sheets, wearing a thin dress, possibly a hospital gown. She was completely still, facing the ceiling and with her arms straight and limp by her sides.

One thing I wanted to communicate and am not sure if I managed is that Eve is classically beautiful. The body was made to be attractive. Incandescence, trapped in the body, isn’t beautiful. Not only because she’s dying and the body reflects that, but because the hate she has for it reflects outwards. She does nothing to maintain that beauty because she can’t see it, and will actively try to ruin it if she gets the chance.

Oskar, here, doesn’t see a beautiful woman. He sees, at most, something that might have been one, once. It doesn’t make him very happy.

She had her eyes closed. Against the light, he realized.

“Sorry,” he said. “Is it okay if I sit down on the bed?”

And here we have the first friendly interaction Incandescence has had since she arrived.

The first thing he does is apologize, the second is ask for permission to come closer.

She tells him she doesn’t care, and he does come closer, but only a little. You can be sure that if she had said no, he would remain standing. And this is important. As is the fact that the very next thing he gives her is his name. A thing that is so important to her as a nightmare, and specifically as a nightmare.

You can draw parallels between this conversation and the one I struggled with in the first chapter. Oskar treats her as a person, not as the body she’s stuck in. He listens, he believes her, and he gives her hope.

This is also the place in writing the fic I realized I’m writing a story of a man coming in and rescuing a powerless woman, which still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so this is where I tried to give her some autonomy.

Not a lot, and still necessarily depended on him granting it to her, considering the circumstances, but she has a voice here and she lets it be heard.

“Here, I’ll show you,” he said, and she pulled herself up to watch. He pointed at his watch, digital, luckily. “You know how to read numbers?”

“Yes,” she said.

The watch. Until now, she’s been seen more or less as ignorant. Oskar doesn’t think she is, but a part of him still thinks so, because that is how she’s been presented.

He knows she speaks more than one language, but he doesn’t take it for granted that she can read numbers. Of course, the fact that she doesn’t know how long half an hour is kind of gives him a point. Then he’s surprised that she knows about seconds, and again when she can ad in her head better than he can.

Because she’s intelligent. She’s just also trapped and has had no reason to show it. Until now she’s been entirely powerless. This man gave her something. One tiny little thing, and she grabs it with all she’s got.

The next scene, the watch scene, is Incandescence alone in the darkness again. Only this time she has a ray of light. Literally. Most of it is just her contemplating whether or not it’s worth it to start hoping again, even as she already is.

I like the part where she calls Oskar’s teammates ‘flockmates’. It’s what she knows, and she doesn’t think of him as the same kind of creature as the ones that trapped her in the first place.

The second chapter ends on a brighter note than the first one, but it’s not over yet and they all know it.

Chapter 3

The first scene of chapter three is all tell and very little show. I honestly just didn’t feel like creating a whole bunch of characters just to establish Incandescence’s life at the base. Maybe I should have, but at that point I really, really just wanted to be done.

I needed to establish even more hopelessness, and explain why Al-V didn’t notice anything earlier. It happened through making all the military people so distrassed about the whole thing they’d rather not think about it.

The coffee just showed up as a natural consequence of the dream thing, which was a natural consequence of considering exactly how wrong shoving a nightmare into a human body would go. I still think she’ll probably drink coffee whenever she can get it even later, though.

I also needed to give them all a reason to be attached to her, because the next few scenes really wouldn’t work without that.

The source of the small program read the saved file considerably more slowly, as there is a large difference between truly reading something and just searching through it for a specific word. It still only took him a few seconds before his variable counters associated with success and reward spiked, and he scrambled to double-check his conclusions, a process that took him approximately five minutes and involved hacking into seven cell phones and getting access to a closed-circuit military security system.

And Al-V to the rescue. He’s the one who got the military moving in the fist place, and he’s the one who found Incandescence before it was too late. Honestly, he’s the hero of this story by a large margin. Everyone else is just flailing.

Case in point, the next tiny scene is just a scene of Alcor taking a brief break from his ineffectual flailing.

“Hey, you okay?” Mizar asked.

The first time he had come down and tried to focus on something else, the day before this one, he had ended up crying on her shoulder.

…he’s not okay.

Luckily, that won’t last much longer.

And then the next scene. Sheesh. That was one of the first scenes of this I really wanted to write, and it was great.

It felt like a ‘pop’, a small pressure change, something weird, something you noticed, but not more than that. Still, it was peculiar enough to have them all quiet for a moment and look around curiously. Dor rubbed at an ear.

This is possibly my favourite of all of Alcor’s entrances I’ve ever written.

Just… ‘pop’. Alcor.

And then he shows up, too worked up to think about explaining himself, in the middle of a group of armed, twitchy and overprotective soldiers. Ahh, I had so much fun with that.

Everyone’s scared, Alcor is intent on finding his lost sheep and really nothing else, and Incandescence is too confused to be sure anything is real.

The table disappeared. Not thrown aside, not moved, just disappeared as if it had never been, letting the pieces of Marilynn’s gun clatter on the floor, to make room for him as he sank to his knees beside the couch.

I like this a lot too. I needed the table out of the way, and then I thought, ‘oh right, demon, heh’ and removed it.

There were tear tracks down his face. The world’s most powerful demon sat in a heap on their break room floor, sobbing.

Only thing that annoys me is that I felt the need to add dialogue before this part. If I could have found a way to go directly from “what have they done to you” to this, I’d be happy.

Of course, then he wakes her up properly, starts rambling about how happy he is that she’s alive, and she decides he’s being silly and kisses him instead.

I foreshadowed that kiss enough that it felt natural for the plot, but just like every other time I’ve ended my fic with a kiss, I’ve gotten comments from people who weren’t expecting it. Honestly, I just like having people kiss Alcor. Don’t judge me.

Then he leaned back in and they were kissing with a fervour that suited the aftermath of a weeks-long life-or-death situation. It was deep and urgent and blithely oblivious to the handful soldiers with guns still half-raised towards them.

No seriously, this is the only part of this fic I wrote out-of-secuence because I needed to make sure the words were safe.

And of course then he impales her.

I don’t think I actually thought about that when I first came up with the idea. Of course he needed to get her out of there somehow, that was obvious. I considered having him just melt the body, but this was more fun.

The soliders, at this point, are pretty much convinced that everything is going to be fine, so having their suspicions towasds demons confirmed so suddenly and violently is a shock I was happy to give them. For entertainment purposes.

Honestly, that entire scene is such an emotional rollercoaster for them I a so happy I decided to have it from their point of view and not his or hers.

Gard’s arguments against murdering the scientists is actually something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

There are fics out there where Alcor shows up and takes over court cases one way or another, but probably, if a demon got involved with that, it would have rather nasty consequences for everyone involved. You can’t trust your evidence when there’s a demon involved. You can’t trust that the person you just sent to jail was actually sent to jail because they hurt someone, and not just because the opposition made a deal with a demon. If you can solve it without letting anyone know Alcor has a stake in the result, please try to do so.

Anyway, anyone who’s ever had insomnia knows that a lifetime of nightmares is a worse fate than death. And much more poetic in this case. I don’t actually care about letting Alcor get his revenge in this one, it’s Incandescence who needs it.

I considered Having an epilogue where Incandescence was a witness at the trial against the scientists, but decided against it. I still think the idea is funny as heck.

And then the Flock was upon her, dozens and dozens of gleeful faces, pressing up to greet her, to welcome her home, to touch her just to make sure she was truly there, and the Master dropped to the ground with them and laughed and cried and laughed.

And all was good.

In the end, this was a better ending.

#transcendence au #DVD commentary #I hope people are enjoying these #because it is the most self-indulgent thing I've done in a long time #and I am loving it so much

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