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katyawriteswhump · 4 months

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Kiss me better (Steddie holiday drabble)

Written for @steddieholidaydrabbles, day 26 prompt, ‘Who did this to you?’

For Eddie, being an immortal sex demon has its advantages, especially when your boyfriend is left for dead. Also posted on my ao3

WC: 985. Rating: M (bordering E?)

CW: Sex, possible VERY temporary character death. Tags: Whump, magic au, Incubus!Eddie, hurt Steve, fluff.

***

Eddie finds Steve near the lake, crumpled on his side. He rolls Steve over, and his own blood congeals to ice.

Shiiiiit!

Steve’s apparently senseless, his face white as the winter frost. Eddie fumbles for a pulse, finds it—sluggish, fitful—near the telltale twin puncture wounds on Steve’s throat.

Steve’s lashes flutter. “Eddie? Sssorrry I stood you up, maaan.”

You’re seriously apologising for skipping our date? “Who did this to you?”

“Haa…gr…”

Hargrove! Eddie shouldda wasted that showboating vampire long ago.

Steve’s breaths are shallow gasps. He isn’t trying to hide his terror—so yeah, it’s super-bad. There’s barely a spot of blood on him. Billy’s pretty much chugged the lot.

“Eddie?” The whites of Steve’s eyes flash up and he falls completely limp.

Shiiiiit! Plural!

Okay, you got this, Munson.

Eddie rises, cradling Steve in his arms. He unleashes his wings, flies back to the trailer, sits with Steve on his bed…

…and kisses him.

Eddie’s magic stirs, tingles from his lips into Steve.

“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty.”

Eddie despairs, tastes his own salty tears. Then… Steve’s lips warm and soften. Eddie detects the whispering ghost of a breath, and Steve tentatively kisses back. Eddie plunges his tongue deep, and it all gets yummily messy.

Drink my power, Babe, to Hell with the consequences.

When Eddie pulls away, Steve’s awake. Woozy, though: “That was tooootally hot, dude.”

He’s no longer scared or in pain—a cool bonus feature of Eddie’s glamour. His skin is waxy, though, his pulse weak, and he’s still slumped boneless against Eddie.

The kiss wasn’t enough.

“Stevie. Uh, you know I said I was into you, but not into… full-on sex. You cool with me changing my mind?”

“Suuuure. Totally love you.” Steve faintly giggles: “You’re… gonna have to do… the h-heavy lifting… for a change.” He shudders and his head lolls sideways.

“Steve? Steve!”

Eddie knows what he must do.

***

Riiiight, so me and Eddie are having sex.

Steve hasn’t a clue how he got here, should possibly be freaking out. He’s drunk or high, or… Screw it, this is mega-hot. He’s lying on his back, knees hitched up. His gorgeous boyfriend is butt naked, and taking him with slow, deep strokes, striking sweet spots Steve never knew he had.

“Uh… wow?”

Eddie stoops, captures Steve lips in a brief but searing kiss. “Love you, Babe. Couldn’t lose you.”

Huh?

Eddie laps Steve up with thirsty eyes, which seems to strip him naked, even beyond his skin. Steve gasps, squirms: “Gnnng, Eddie. Too good… gonna…” Fuck! Don’t want this over too quick.

“You’re doing great, Babe. Ride with it.”

“Damn!” Steve bites his lip.

He hasn't come yet. Wave after wave of pleasure crashes through him. Eddie’s fucking and filling him, kindling an insatiable itch that builds and builds. If he’d realised sex with a guy was gonna be this crazy-awesome, he’d have had his gay cherry popped years ago.

He reaches up, touches Eddie’s face. Eddie’s loving gaze seems to sweep him into a deep, raging whirlpool, and it’s kinda overwhelming. Steve closes his eyes, and it gets freakier. Eddie’s sexy tats rear up in the darkness—bats swirl, puppets dance, and that skull cackles, ape-shit mental.

The weird shit briefly knocks him from his ‘gonna-come-soon’ happy place. Then Eddie’s lips recapture his, and they’re totally at one. Steve comes hard, with the merest friction against his dick. Simultaneously, Eddie shoots his load, flooding Steve with a crazy, tingly warmth that somehow jets to his deepest veins.

Steve floats. Totally blissed out.

Next thing he knows, Eddie spoons him from behind, cocooning him in a warm fuzz.

“That was epic,” says Steve. “Why d’you stall so long?”

***

When Steve awakes, Eddie sits on the bed, shirtless, twisting his rings. He notices Steve stir and jumps as if slapped.

“Steve! How you doing?”

“Good. I think.” He can’t remember last night. He’s not hungover, though. “Uh, kinda sore?” Woah! He recalls the AWESOME SEX and cackles. “That’s on you, Munson.”

“Sorry,” mumbles Eddie.

“What for?” Steve raises himself on an elbow. The room spins then settles… then panic strikes. “You gonna dump my ass?”

“No! No way.” Eddie gets up, starts pacing. “Look, there’s a teeny chance you died last night. And that this morning, you’re a vampire. Sired—uh, that means sorta enslaved—to Billy Hargrove. Or a minor sex demon. Sired to me. Or perhaps still human. Jury’s out. Not sure if you actually passed, or if I snatched you back in time.”

“What?” Steve’s panic surges. “No, no, no! Last night was a bad trip. Good trip?” He scrapes his hair from his face. “I’m confused.”

“Stevie, Hargrove is a vampire. He drank from you, left you dying. I saved you by… Listen, usually I leech life-force through sex with humans—that’s why I was hesitant to jump your bones. In a fix, though, I can pass life on. Bit of a headache, my overlord’s gonna be pissed. Totally worth it.” Eddie stops pacing, raises his hands kinda defensively. “Babe, I’m an Incubus.”

“A whut?”

“Immortal sex demon?”

Eddie unleashes some feathery black wings, which brush to the cluttered walls of his room, lightly strumming his guitar strings. Steve backs into a corner, blanket hugged before him.

The wings vanish.

Eddie dumps his ass back on the bed, leans beside Steve. Steve’s trembling with shock, cold sweat beading his brow. Talk about mind boggling! “Did you fuck me back to life, dude?”

Eddie shrugs. “Possibly.”

Steve’s close to losing his shit. He should totally split; like, flee the state. Instead, he flings his arms around Eddie, smacks a kiss on his boyfriend’s angst-ridden face.

“Chill,” says Steve. “I’m sure as heck not sired, or whatever, to Hargrove—I wanna get naked with YOU. Evidence suggests I’m still a brainless teen.”

“Babe, it’s risky—”

“Jesus! I’m fine.” Steve ignores his inner screams of terror, pushes Eddie flat against the pillows and kisses him stupid.

#steve x eddie #steddieholidaydrabbles #steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve harrington whump #steddie fluff #stranger things fanfic #steve harrington hurt/comfort #steddie fic #steddie fanfic

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twenty-faces · 3 months

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🎭 Welcome to our system blog 🎭

Quick view: plural blog | diagnosed traumagenic DID system but very pro all system origins as well as self dx | no DNI

Follows from: @tennisthemedhatesex

✂️ More about us under the cut ✂️

Collective Names: Crow, Hal, Joule / Joulean, and Howl. For this blog, Twenty is also fine.

Fun fact: the only names out of these that were not chosen by me are also the weirdest. My mom almost named us Joule (double pun because she's a jeweler, and my dad is a physicist and chemist, so it's the name Jewel but spelled like the unit of energy) but my dad vetoed it. I'll die mad about that. Howl has a WHOLE TON of lore behind it, but in short: because my ex-girlfriend tried really hard to assign kin Howl Pendragon to me and because I was mostly raised by a wolf.

Collective Pronouns: fi/fien/fiend/fiends/fiendself, they/them, any neos our alters use

This blog is Twenty Faces themed for ~reasons~

There's 20 of us + favorite character of all time + why is he me. like why are we so similar fr + I think 20 is plural coded. there's so many reasons for this. watch trickster.

Alters: (I apologize for how long this is)

Keiko: Sign-off: ~K | Emoji tag:🧸🌈 | Pronouns: bon/bonk/bonks/bonks/bonkself, fizz/fizz/fizzs/fizzs/fizzself, strawb/strawb/strawbs/strawbs/strawbself, joke/joke/jokes/jokes/jokeself | Identifies as: a kid | System roles: child alter, euphoriamate, battery | Main system

I made banners 1-4. The others are by: @/angryuserboxes @/mogaispiderpunk @/sweetpeauserboxes and @/another-userbox-blog

#pinned post #intro post #system intro #plural system #plurality #multiplicity #did system #endo safe

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castle-dominion · 10 months

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castle 5x18 the wild rover

plot heavy episode, at least backstory heavy for ryan. I was SO excited during my family watch when I realized this was the episode. I'd seen gifs & read fics & I was stoked. I'll only be able to watch part of it today since I need to leave for work.

Me, a baker: Nice! The crime scene: Me: Not nice!

HOW did he say the name? Jordan can be a man... KB: Castle, I know nothing. Nothing is a dear friend of mine and this is not nothing.

He is SO defensive lol sleep interrogations XD KB: Who says I haven’t already?

Lots & lots of fabric EW CASTLE CRIME SCENE NOT EVEN DEAD MAN'S CUPCAKE BUT BLOOD SPATTER even tho there was likely none there

11.30 or 23.30? Good for him knowing his cars Haha dough. I thought esposito made that pun intentionally Quick maths? (why did I pluralize it?)

Only twice a week? Oh yeah lol this guy has access to all sorts of products & chemicals & machines as a baker.

Hey we get to see ryan's apartment! Jenny (O'Malley) Ryan: Which means you should probably … Me: *confused* Me: *FIGURES IT OUT AFTER I REMEMBER WHAT SORT OF DOCTOR THEY ARE GOING TO* It wouldn't be your fault hun, even if it is your problem. These two are so so cute. Ok I'm clipping that.

RC: I'm going to ignore that Maybe he was planning a new location

Ooh irish mob, remember finn rourke & detective slaughter & the previous episodes where anything was mentioned Ok so the way we count syllables is weird. Irish gaelic (gaelge) has two letters because it gives buffer room between consonants. S is often sh usually when followed by an e or an i or smth, & mh or bh are just like th or ch, it changes the way it is pronounced, usually to a v, sometimes to a w depending on where u are. It is pheonetic! Just a different language! This is the part of the episode I realized what we were watching!

She only knows his as jimmy the baker. She looks so anxious here.

Ryan is back good for him. RC: How did the thing go … with the uh, you know. Do the thing with the thing and give the thing to the doctor. I could clip that lmao ESPOSITO SHUT UP Clip this now His eyes He is not even really kissing her *slaps him twice* THIS WAS .. FUN Edit: someone has it already

youtube

lots of clips now heheheh

*asks esposito bc obv he would know*

Love the b plot "this is normal" Man looks mad Only sees bobby s now instead of earlier when he looked at the murder board FRIENDS BACK IN THE DAY? WHAT KIND OF CREW?

UNDERCOVER!?!?!?!?!?!?!? RC: I love complicated!

Why wouldn't you want to leave tho? for her? or for more? Clipping that too "cop"

"just the wife" bro? gay.

Of course he's heard of kevin ryan, even tho it has been 7 years, this is his case! They're impressed & esposito is mad that he didn't tell him

Why would you write down all your illegal stuff like that? I've met ppl who /want/ to make spreadsheets but don't, & ppl who write their stuff but in code Ryan acting like he still knows her, acting like he's still in the mob like "she wouldn't snitch"-- in fact it was weird how she kissed him like girl it has been seven years of COURSE he has moved on You left & she fell on hard times!? Oh no now he feels guilty/ Another jimmy who is a rat? She can... You only found her bc of phone records YOU walked away ryan He is protecting her Wow that's messed up a bit Like with the Ben kid, doesn't want to send someone in unprotected

SOD: Look at you, telling the truth. >:(

You? You are not on the crew bro Yeah BACK THEN not NOW Ryan ryan my dude careful, you don't know if your oconnell cover is still good

Clipping this quote: How long has law enforcement been after that bible? Fifteen? Twenty years? Huh? These guys are drug dealing parasites. When are you going to get another shot to wipe them all out? Look, you want the bible. We want Bobby S for murder. Siobhan wants to keep breathing. Everybody wins. I can do this.

not this one tho SOD: What are you doing? Are you out of your mind? KR: I was Fenton. I can be him again. SOD: Don’t get yourself killed on my account. KR: All right, yeah, you hate me. I get that and I deserve it. But do you want to be put in Witness Relocation or not? Yes or no? SOD: nods. Agent Walker: Detective? Were you serious about that offer? KR turns to him. He thinks for a second & then nods.

Yeah 7 years is a long time bro, he's right course there's a new heirarchy thats how things work they change over time like seven years Martha acting lessons Sad, his wife won't kiss him goodbye Castle & esposito & beckett too watching him in there getting an ID card Nooo they are cutting his hair Wow ugly hair but hey nice outfit, even if it doesn't look like smth he usually wears But I legit cut my own hair a few days after this episode & we actually have similar hair again XD The "I am fenton o'connell" lines throughout that was hhhh I am clipping this right now right now lsdjfskdfj but I have to get ready for work in 15 minutes edit:

youtube

I clipped it but I didn't have to

Love how esposito is the taxi driver lol also question: what if he was walking down the street one day & saw someone from the old crew? What then? I mean it's new york nobody looks at anybody but still Of COURSE you don't like it

JE: (sighs) I don’t like this, bro. You don’t have a wire. No locator. ((but u have a cell phone that they can track right?)) KR: If I did, Bobby S would find it. This is the way it’s gotta be, man. ((I haven’t mentioned yet but I like how they call him bobby s, maybe there is a bobby r or a bobby m somewhere)) JE: What’s the name of Agent Walker’s informants who’ll vouch for you? KR: The Mason brothers. Matt and Tony. JE: Where did you do your last stretch? ((interrogating him lol, but r u allowed to know this?)) KR: Elmira, for man 1. Can even tell you my cell number. I know what I’m doing, okay? JE: isn’t convinced. JE: What about Siobhan? KR: Our plan is solid. (he nods like he’s convincing himself, too) I got this. KR: hands him so cash to keep his cover. KR: See you on the other side, partner. JE: Mm-hmm.

Called Kelly's but Siobhan owns it lol also, nice place, must actually run nicely, owning a bar or restaurant takes a lot of work

Tbh it looks like nobody recognizes him. Like he expects to be recognized (after seven years) & ppl are like "what are you standing there for?" not "do I know you?" Oh & NOW people are recognizing him

Siobhan meeting again but pretending it is the first time in years lol. Clipping the punch As long as she keeps her hands off of me

Pushes him back a bit & trying to touch her Maggie got married since u knew her (so siobhan maybe "fenton" got married since you knew him, why would you assume that you can still kiss him after all this time?) How much of that was acting? bc they've already met each other again so they can't just "be" themselves they need to meet each other & then they can be who they are. also funny how she is literally an fbi informant & she was mad that he was a cop

Finally back & able to finish this after like a week ugh & it's already 11.30 bc I couldn't wake up

JE: I’m telling you, man. He’s not the Ryan I know. And I’m not just talking about the haircut and the clothes. It’s like he’s a different dude. ((That's the point)) RC: That’s what he’s supposed to be. He’s in character. He’s Fenton. That’s good. JE: Yeah, but what if he’s not good enough? After seven years he’s gotta be rusty. And these Staten Island boys are no joke. ((That is a good argument...)) Don't want to clip this, but I COULD

Define Yonkers what if it was NOT bobby s tho?

So valid bestie (not clipping it but yeah I NEVER take my phone in when I go to confession. But why was it on when he handed it to liam?) "What'll the missus think?" you know what? I WILL clip this. he's such a Different Person

Bobby is SO pissed at fenton He knows... btw what is up with the accent? I can't tell but it's def there Who's Ben Gideon? Ah & there is where the mason brothers come into play

Wild Rover from the song he was always a rat lmao btw my man has some weird glass sculptures that are shaped like guns & it is,,, something alright Prodigal son? Irish catholics my beloved this is going to be clipped right here Liam SO wants to lol HOLY CRAP trust, brotherhood, fuck-ed-up-ed-ness, this is great. He looks so "hhhh" once he hugs him & liam is just there & omg sdjfah

That wink he gives to siobhan, I could clip that if I wasn't low on time

Clippin this tho If I wasn't watching this with my family I would have literally pulled out my bible from my jeanjacket pocket to find this verse but I knew what it was going to be. But seriously who has them memorized? I only have, like, three verses memorized IF that. this is the day that the lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it psalm 118:4 & the lord said "let there be light" & light was made genesis 1:3 Only the wicked run when there is no-one chasing them; the righteous are as bold as a lion proverbs 28:1 except I didn't know the corresponding verse for that last one. & ofc everyone knows the corinthians one about love, 1:13, & that one from John (I had to look it up bc I didn;t know the quote nor the verse but thankfully it is famous enough that I got it) 3:16

Check it out, as you should.

What's between these two? Oh wait yeah it is the problem with Jordan. RC:Ah. Perhaps Bobby S had an accomplice. A cold-blooded, murderous sheep. 14 grand? wowie. Yeah THAT was too much fiber, it was DEF planted.

How do you communicate?

Also it has been a night already at least, where is fenton staying? where was he staying before he waltzed into the bar? transcript is incorrect, it is "you know" not "yo" but w/e. Also ryan my man why take off your hood now? Man could use a hat, probs one of those hats that all my irish canadian shetland canadian french canadian ukranian canadian metis fiddle friends wear, it would fit in fine

Esposito hkhjdfkghfjh reminder to myself: talk about the clip when u post it bc there is too much to talk about jshskdjfhskjdhfsjkfhs

He loves her, honestly. But don't kiss her He got her a toy at a ring toss uwu "unlike you" but don't kiss her oh thank goodness

lmao he says waceway not raceway ALL OF THE METRO CARDS!?

I like how they are all old-style phones EXCEPT for his who's fast eddie? Also Liam just standing there (man looks good tho, I like his shirt) & btw when DID ryan learn to play such good pool? (I feel bad for the audio director battling with the visual director over the pool balls) These two REALLY ARE friends who's keane? Also why is liam allowed his phone? & keane just said there WAS a rat, he might have said "u got a rat but you were wrong abt who it was" bobby's eyes what went ALL the way around, was that on purpose? bc that's heck of math there hit the head? Is that another version of hit the hay?

walking right in, I thought For Sure someone would be there NO WHAT IF IT IS THE WRONG SAFE OH NO THE MONEY IS WRONG HE'S GOING TO NOTICE oh thank goodness he didn't look over to see if the bible was there, but he KNOWS smth is up

*o'connell leaves from that same room* who calls someone sport except for dads? Take a ride? Jesus carrying his own cross Ok THAT was sus af, but I mean, if I was a drug supplier then I would also be scared, even if I was not an undercover pig.

(I thought that was the time he did the thing, you know, got the thing off of liam & made the connection, but in the next scene esposito is calling him, calling ryan's phone ofc but still)

Why did Jenny come here? Did they call her here? Love, my dude. Ah yes, not one single reason, many of them Ah HERE is esposito on the phone

I realized this the other day & didn't have access to tumblr & I wasn't even watching but Ryan/fenton Asks Liam Out Loud

fenton/ryan is so short compared to liam also I was SO excited seeing this scene bc I had seen it before in gifs & stuff

Ok so she got nabbed by the cops two days ago so fenton has only been back for two days? they totally could have made this a two part episode. Anyway my point was two days ago & suddenly fenton oconnell shows up mysteriously again & is talking with siobhan, of COURSE they know he's in on it

Oh to PROVE he knew nothing heck man this is a heck of a story (also if he pulled it out of his waistband u know he had no bullet in the chamber & safety on, so you SHOULD check the gun.)

My man would shoot bobby s? a man fenton considered to be a friend even if ryan was trying to take him down? Is that... legal?

Siobhan saying that is not helping his case (& he cocks the gun but he really should not, JUST IN CASE it was already cocked & had a bullet in the chamber, you could have just clogged the gun.) & the music is so good

So... so shoot him yeah lol ofc it was empty

Why r u just giving away your full name lol b'y idk if u can place em under arrest when it is liam, keane, bobby s, & some other ppl too & then also reverse pick pockets? voice so deep when he yells, love it, & calls him javi, I've seen a clip of this so I know it exists & I don't need to clip it myself but I'm tempted to. Maybe later if I don't have to give back these CDs as soon as I thought. Edit: found a clip

that moment of fear,,,, hoo

esposito's gun lol He just knows she's on the other side? Castle just there lmao

ngl I half expected ryan to kiss bobby s. Judas betrayed jesus with a kiss. (& for the last time, judas did not want jesus to die, he just wanted to get jesus away from this town bc there were problems brewing, judas was the finance guy of the disciples, he got mad about mary maggie using perfume on jesus's feet instead of selling it & giving the money to the poor, judas was not the evil double crosser ppl make him out to be) ryan looks almost sad sending bobby away & seeing siobhan. edit:

youtube

Also is it freaking dawn? Lucky ryan, changing back into a suit, not only that but a matching three piece suit. He is going overboard in that direction to feel more like himself instead of going no vest just tie or no tie just vest, or jeans no dress pants, or dress pants with a random jacket, this man wanted it to be on the far end of his style spectrum.

Castle & the football reminds me of that time castle Did Not catch the baseball & it crashed into smth & nobody acknowledged it

No like it-- what was it? What (from the diner) are you specifically apologizing for? The tone? not listening? What specifically was the apology in reference to?

Lady macbeth lol & that's why liam was so loyal even after this

No what is jordan ABOUT? Bro I thought james bonde & your dad's book inspired you to be a writer. Markiplier moments. Holding her <3 He remembers his name bc you told him bro

SOD: I was hoping you’d come. KR: I wanted to say goodbye this time. SOD: Goodbye makes me feel like I’ll never see you again. KR: You won’t. ((OOF)) *her face falls, but she knows it has to happen* KR: Tomorrow you’ll be in a new city. Have a new name. You’ll get to start over again. SOD: Why did you do this? Risk your life for me? KR: You know why. SOD, nodding sadly: This Kevin Ryan guy? I wish I would have met him sooner. KR: laughs She leans in to kiss his cheek. He knows he has to leave, and he doesn’t look back when he does. She sighs heavily before she gets back to packing

Also his coat with the collar like that? nice

Finally back home! lmao the music sdjfhsjdfskldfklsdjf clipping this now this is great & fun She's pregnant I'm so happy for them! I am afraid of the passage of time but I am so happy for them! hsdjakhsdkjhfjdh & they are so adorable

What a great great episode! It totally could have been a two-part-er imo, but the alexis kidnapping one took precedent & tbh that's valid. I just really enjoyed this one. As did most of the fandom.

#castle 5x18 #castle 5x18 spoilers #castle 5x18 quote #castle s5 spoilers #kevin ryan centric #the fenton o'connel episode #Youtube

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xtrablak674 · 1 year

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My Gender Was Never Binary

[Entry from Ello Blog - Friday, January 12th, 2018, 10:26am, edited for clarity]

I had some vivid dreams this morning, but woke to the warm sunshine peeking into my apartment, cultivated my social media garden and finally processed a video on the seven gigs of space I have on my tablet, now I forgot what all those dreams were about. So I will not be starting there today.

One thing that is on my mind after looking through my notifications on Flickr this morning, is that I have a curious set of followers. Some people fav my photos because they think my shots from the back are of a woman or someone woman-like. Then I have a distinct audience who loves for lack of a better word "trannies". I am using this word because in this context it's important, it's not meaning necessarily transgendered people, albeit I think some of those people who like these photos are indeed transgendered like myself. In this instance, it's meaning transvestites.

"Transvestism is the practice of dressing and acting in a style or manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex. In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional or ceremonial reasons."

-Definition from Wikipedia.

Before it was politically incorrect to use the word tranny, for me it was an amalgam word that encompassed a number of things, transvestites, transexuals and drag queens. It was sort of the catch-all phrase for all of these, because they all TRANSgressed normal gender boundaries.

For years a former friend would call me Tranny Sue, it would take me a few more years to realize that he detected my non-traditional performance of gender long before I recognized it, there was language for it and in his joking, he was pointing out a truth.

Within the last few years I have learned to accept my genders, and albeit I don't shout it from the mountain tops, or necessarily need validation from outside sources, I realize now after much objection that my being non-binary puts me dead ass center under the transgender umbrella.

To be honest I kicked and screamed to not be here, but my friend Q who is just as non-binary as me, and my niece thought e looked just like her Uncle T convinced me that regardless of me not wanting to bogart the transgender movement by being non-binary, that still puts me on the transgender spectrum, yes I know it's not a spectrum but I love using that term because gender isn't static its ever-changing and actually quite fluid.

I think it's still hard for people to understand that transgender isn't about the genitals. I think the general American public is still struggling with the matter of transgender, which is who you go to bed as, not who you go to bed with. I can understand their confusion, not that transgender people haven't been around for centuries, but the fact that as a movement it's relatively new and the language isn't consistently the same.

This is my biggest pet peeve with the gender fluidity movement, that there isn't a set standard. I understand people want to define themselves, and use all the flowery language they can muster, but I find these things get way more confusing when we don't have some common language we can agree on. Like pronouns, I only recently learned about Spivak pronouns, also from my friend Q and just from a logistical standpoint I think the many different variations on the pronouns get confusing as hell. Take people who use 'they', I can barely conjugate Spanish words to now have to conjugate 'they' into plurals and past tenses. I realize if its something we did more regularly it would come easier, but right now it doesn't, ergo confusion and a lot of mistakes.

I have always been loose with pronouns loving to call my gay friends 'she', not because they were necessarily effeminate, even though I did have a few friends who opened their mouths and a pocketbook fell out, but more so because being queer is going against gender norms which is highly couched in a patriarchal heteromantic notion of how gender is performed. Saying SHE is like giving a finger to all that heteronormativity.

When Anna Sale from the Death Sex & Money podcast recently asked me which pronouns I preferred I gave her a binary choice and I did this because for me it's just easier to switch between the two. Possibly my position will change on this when media, film, and television has caught up to and understands that gender is no longer a binary and never really was.

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crosbytoews · 2 years

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february tbr

here are the books i’m reading right now and plan to read this month. i firmly believe that we should be reading books by black authors year round and not just in february, but like a lot of readers i am prioritizing books by black authors this month.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

this is my current read! it’s about an estranged brother and sister who find out about their mother’s secret past after her death. it’s part contemporary and part historical fiction and so far i’m enjoying it a lot!

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

another current read! i’m listening to the audiobook for this. it’s a YA dark academia about two black students at a prestigious high school high school being targeted by an anonymous poster revealing their secrets gossip girl style. so far it’s very intriguing and i’m going to listen to it while i work on my puzzle later :)

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

i just got the ebook from the library and hope to start this today or tomorrow. it’s a story of a killer on death row told by his mother, sister, and a homicide detective. people say it’s a dark story with beautiful writing and i’m excited to get into it!

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

i got this from book of the month a couple months back and haven’t gotten around to it yet. it’s about two fathers avenging their gay sons who were killed in a hate crime. i’m expecting this to be violent and action packed and probably sad too. yay!

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

this is about a girls field hockey team near salem massachusetts in the 80s who get magical powers. i heard it’s told in first person plural and weird and i am always down for a weird read.

Beach Read by Emily Henry

this will be a re-read for me. i have the audiobook on hold from the library. i loved this book the first time i read it but it made me cry so i’m a little apprehensive to face that pain again. it’s an enemies to lovers romance about a woman who moves next door to her college nemesis. she’s a romance writer and he’s a literary fiction writer and they decide to switch genres. it deals heavily with grief which was what made me cry the first time. i recently re-read people we meet on vacation via audiobook and loved it so i’m hopign this will be a similar experience!

#becky's book club

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mw-draws · 4 years

Text

Praxeus rewatch time BABEY!

Jodie Whittaker narrate my life challenge

also, how did I miss that this is set in like,, 10 years in the future ldjdkd

smh jake, you can't go round tackling kids

omg gf's

jesus fucking christ, that poor girls face got clawed right off

love how when we first see 13 she's a complete disaster

nEED SOME HELP OVER HEEeEeeRReEEe

Gabriela checking out Ryan's abs - bi rights

oh god, this bits so gross

mans just fucking exploded, holy fuck

"despite the fact that was overly alarming.... don't be overly alarmed" yeah, don't think that's gonna work doc

"and a talking cat" y'know, casual

Ryan Sinclair, the great bird detective

I really love this look on Ryan? Big coat is a good look on him

that operating room bit gave me mad World Enough and Time flashbacks

who are we kidding, it's probably the same set skfjkfjfkf

that Praxeus shit looks so gross wtf

I love Gabriela with my entire being

people fucken explode and 13's like "okay"

"unplug him and get him out!"

"you said that wasn't safe!"

"situation's changed! get out!" why is this so funny to me

lshskd 13 just appearing like "👁️👄👁️hello"

"haven't factured you into this. too busy thinking about that cat" ldjfkfhf

I FUCKIG LOVE THIS MUSIC. I NEED THIS FUCKING SOUNDTRACK IN MY LIFE

wishy coat wishy coat wishy coat

omg, conflict

Yes. Yaz and Gabriela are now girlfriends

I don't make the rules

the Doctor has no time for this guys surprise

like "wtf is going?" "stfu, I'm concentrating. be surprised somewhere else"

13's hair is so fucking prettyyyy

the tardis has got a fucking Nokia ringtone. I love this bitch

graham's like "can we not have a marital spat right now?"

"that's why you smell of dead bird! I thought you changed your shower gel" ksbdkdj bitch you can talk, you don't even wash your clothes

"doc! Adams in a bad way in there, I think we made a mistake unplugging him from all that stuff in Hong Kong. or maybe you just wanna stand out here watching birds" lmao graham's having NONE of it

I love Gabriela's wee theme, omg

"Ryan, could you dissect this bird for me?" nbd

Graham and Ryan dumbasses unite

"do you have any idea what it's like to be married to someone that impressive" OH NO GRAHAM'S FACE. HE'S THINKING OF GRACE. STOP THIS. THIS IS BULLYING AHHHDHFHHF

"didn't teleport into an active volcano! result!" yaz, you say that as if that's happened before.

"autons?" oh my heart

"did she say brains? plural?" ldjdldj

"hey, doc, that's not a thought - that's a random phrase" graham's so sick of her shit kdjfkjfj

"excuse me. I'm not full of plastic."

"you're full of something" KDHDKDBDKNC RYAN

"hey, doc, let's get rid of this bird cause it really, really smells"

"no." dkdjjd

"see what the bird's natural enzymes are doing?"

"oh yeah. clear as mud!" dkjfjf

everyone is so sick of each others shit, I can't deal with them dknfkfjf

"oh, I'm a sucker for a scientist" 13 out here being a massive lesbian

her EYES OH NY GOD

"thanks for coming for us, eventually" okay yaz, I know she's got a Time machine but she didn't take t h a t long ldjdkfn

"look at you going off on your own and not getting killed" the Doctor's had too much experience with companions going off on their own and dying and that the bar is on the fucking floor

yaz is so disappointed that she didn't find a planet, bless

"ooh, wait, I'm having half a thought" me

suki just fucking explodes and 13's like "fucking, goddammit, not again"

THE GAYS GET TO LIVE

"tiny flaw" *explains quite a massive flaw*

"that's a bit more than a tiny flaw, doc" Graham really is having none of it

YES GAY

"what can I say? I'm a romantic" THEN MENTION YOUR WIFE OR SOMETHING >:(

I can't believe the gays got to live, well done Chibnall

omg I love Jodie's voice sm

I really liked that ep, wasn't as big and surprising as fotj obviously, but still v good. I'd give it an 8/10

#next week's looks so fucking freaky I'm looking forward to it #I can't believe that's us over half way through series 12 #it's gonna be a long ass year without it :((#like #I really wanna know what happens #but at the same time #I really don't want it to end #why can't we have longer seasons chibs #why cut it from 12 to 10 #a lot more could be done :(#doctor who #13th doctor #jodie whittaker #dw series 12 #praxeus #team tardis #dw spoilers #doctor who spoilers

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nyctolovian · 5 years

Text

It’s Pride, ya dingus!

“Allow me clarify this,” Nahyuta said, holding his hand up. “You met Prosecutor Gavin during investigations with no idea of who he is, had several cases with him, went out with him multiple times on what you now realise are dates—”

“Might be!” Apollo loudly corrected. His face heated up quickly as he slid off the sofa and onto the floor, pressing a Pokémon cushion to his face. He added in a mumble, “Almost dates, I mean.”

The sight was not too unlike what Apollo would do when he was younger and caught in something embarrassing. Nahyuta repeated, “What might be almost dates, and then realised you were six feet deep in love with him when you once woke up drunk on his sofa. Is that right?”

“You know,” Apollo said, forming air quotes, “I think ‘six feet deep in love’ is a bit of a stretch.”

“I will treat that as a confirmation,” Nahyuta said dismissively, earning himself a Pokémon cushion to the face. Snickering, he sent the Swellow flying back at his brother. “You are such a brat,” he huffed. “But, at least that clarifies some things. When you first said that you had feelings for Prosecutor Gavin, I hadn’t considered that you had developed said feelings while interacting with him in real life.”

“What do you mean?” Apollo narrowed his eyes at Nahyuta.

“What I meant to say is that I assumed you might have been one of those fans to his music.”

Wrinkling his nose, he replied, “Have you heard his stuff? It’s migraine-inducing.”

The soft sigh of relief did not go unnoticed. Perhaps Apollo wasn’t the only person in the world who had strong opinions about Klavier’s music.

Nahyuta fiddled with the beads between his fingers. “I suppose this means we can rule celebrity crush entirely out of the list.”

“Even if I had a celebrity crush, it’s not going to be Klavier Gavin.”

Somewhere in Japanifornia, a rock star may have let out a sneeze.

“Actually,” Apollo mused aloud, pressing his finger to the center of his forehead, “what makes it so hard for me to figure things out is kind of because I’ve never had a celebrity crush. Isn’t it pretty common to figure out things out that way? ‘I know I swing whichever way because I thought so-and-so celebrity is hot.’ Right?”

Nahyuta hummed. “I suppose so, yes. That was partly how I found out I was pansexual as well.”

Apollo groaned. “Meanwhile, I’m stuck here with Prosecutor Gavin as my only lead.”

“You are making this sound like a case.”

“Well, it sure feels like it. The case of Apollo’s missing sexuality. It’s been missing for 24 years, I heard.“

“Missing?” Nahyuta laughed. “Well, I’m sure we can find it, Detective.”

***

“Borrowing the speech mannerisms of your country, I must say: I’d tap that.”

Apollo didn’t bother shooting him the withering glare again. It was clear that any signs of exasperation merely fueled Nahyuta to annoy him further. However, feeling the insistent expectant look from his brother on the back of his head, he relented and sighed, “Pass.”

Nahyuta swiped his finger across his phone screen. “What about her?”

Between a yawn, he said, “I’m serious when I say I don’t have a type, and I don’t find anyone hot. We’ve been doing this for a shit ton of people.”

“Language!”

“I’m an adult. I can swear however the fuck and whenever the fuck I want in my own fucking house.”

Nahyuta sighed and shook his head. “Now you are simply using that putrid language just to annoy me. Pray tell then, Apollo, do you kiss Prosecutor Gavin with that filthy mouth?”

“... Shut up.”

Eyes lighting up, Nahyuta typed into his phone and pushed it towards Apollo. “How about this? Surely you find attraction to him.”

On the screen was a quick search for “Klavier Gavin”. The result was a collage of pictures of said man in various states of undress and with hair that ranged from the usual drill to professionally tousled. Apollo shook his head.

“Satorha!”

“Did you just–”

“How could you possibly not find him attractive? Don’t you have feelings for him? If that were the case, how could you not find him... in any form or manner enticing?”

“Entici–“ Apollo huffed. “I mean, he looks good. But I wouldn’t call him ‘enticing’ or ‘hot’ or whatever.”

“I must ask. Do you know the definition of the English word ‘hot’?”

“Yes! I’m not a dumbass, Nahyuta!” Apollo shouted. He whipped out his own phone and did a quick search. “So, for the record, there has been absolute no one who has been able to do any of this.”

“Urban Dictionary? Really?”

Apollo sputtered, “It was the most direct with the definitions, okay? How the hell am I supposed to know what dictionary dot com means by ‘sexually attractive’.”

A smirk stretched Nahyuta’s lips in the most irritating way possible. Apollo could almost hear the murmurs of the peanut gallery that tend to accompany the sinking feeling of saying something stupid in court.

“Look, I needed to know what my college friends were talking about, and it frustrated me when I couldn’t keep up. So I did my research,” he snapped. “Now shut up!”

Despite the huff that hinted that he still had a lot more to say about this matter, Nahyuta let his pitiful flushing brother off the hook and scanned through the words on the screen instead. “None of this? At all?” he asked.

After a rapid mental check off through the list for the nth time, Apollo pulled back. “Yeah.” He slumped back, hugging Swellow to his chest. “None of it. I mean, I know what sexy and beautiful and handsome is. But it’s on a surface level.”

Gently, Nahyuta cocked his head.

“It’s like,” Apollo pouted and pressed his finger to the space between his brow, “if you looked at a music score and saw all the complicated music notes and said it’s hard. You don’t really get how it’s hard because you don’t even know how to read scores, but you know it is probably difficult.”

“I see. So this is similar to what you feel about the concept of hotness?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that makes things difficult.”

“Thank you for finally seeing my problem!” Apollo groaned, throwing his head back.

“Then, is our starting point Prosecutor Gavin once again?”

“Unfortunately, yup.” Apollo straightened up and frowned. “Alright, maybe I’m gay, and I’m just making everything overly complicated!” He was silent for a moment, then, crumbled when he couldn’t convince himself. “I don’t know!” he yelled, clutching the Swellow cushion closer to himself.

“Let us take this step by step. Am I right when I say that you’ve only ever fancied men?”

Apollo flailed his arms in frustration before settling on, “Technically yes!”

“Technically?“

“It could also be someone who isn’t a man.”

Loudly, Nahyuta sighed. “Have you ever fancied anyone who isn’t a man?”

A soft “no” slipped through pouting lips.

“Then, this is mere conjecture.”

Apollo struggled to find the words and fiddled with his bracelet. “But it doesn’t click.”

A long pause. “I am afraid you’ve lost me.”

Apollo chewed his lip. The bracelet was starting to rub his skin red as he spoke, “Because if you’re heterosexual, you like people of the opposite gender. And if you’re homosexual, you like people of the same gender. It’s plural.”

Frustration was seeping into Nahyuta’s voice. “Whatever do you mean?”

“People is plural! If I were gay, I’d like men, right? Plural men, right? But I don’t!”

“But you said you’ve only ever fancied men.”

“One man! Singular! I’ve never liked anyone like this. All weird and embarrassing.” Like a car doomed to crash, he couldn’t stop. “It doesn’t feel right to call myself gay because I don’t like men. Men is plural! It means I’ve looked at other men and was attracted to them! But I’ve only ever liked Klavier Gavin!” Then, his face burst with heat at the realisation of the words that just left his mouth, and he buried his face in the Swellow cushion. “You didn’t hear any of that.”

The doorbell rang.

“Shit,” he breathed. He scrambled clumsily to his feet, still clinging to his cushion, as he opened the door. It was his neighbour.

“Hey, kid,” the middle-aged woman said, rubbing his eyes. “Could you keep your gay crisis to an acceptable volume?”

By some miracle, Apollo felt warmer still as his mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish, and not a very bright one at that. He floundered about but the woman didn’t wait for him to regain composure.

“Look, puberty is rough and we all love Klavier Gavin, but it’s very late. Some of us are trying to sleep here, alright?” She yawned and spun around. “G’night, kid. Quit screaming.”

With that, she went back to her flat before she could even hear Nahyuta’s wheezing chuckles and Apollo’s pathetic whine, “But I’m twenty-four this year.”

***

“Okay,” Apollo said, actively keeping his volume lowered. “So far, I could be,” he listed off on his fingers, “depressed, taking libido-inhibiting meds, tied down by previous relationships, a late bloomer, or setting my expectations too high.”

“Are you depressed?” Nahyuta asked without looking up from his sudoku game.

“I don’t have the other symptoms.”

“Are you taking any libido-inhibiting medication?”

”Unless someone’s been slipping me pills while I’m asleep, I’m not on any medication. And if we’re going down the entire list, I’ve never been in a relationship; I’d be one hell of a late bloomer if I were one; and I’m not even setting any expectations.” Apollo swiped to the next page. “Huh, this is new. So there is this word. Asexuality.”

Nahyuta quirked an eyebrow. “Asexuality? As in a lack of sexuality? I think I have heard of the word before. I never bothered to look into it, however, since it did not concern me at the time.”

Apollo typed the word in the search bar. “Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity,” he read aloud.

“So do you experience this lack of sexual attraction to others?”

“If that explains why on earth I can’t seem to understand what ‘hot’ even means,” Apollo muttered as he opened Wikipedia.

He scrolled through it silently and moved on to different sites while Nahyuta continued to solve the Sudoku puzzle beside him.

At the third Sudoku puzzle, Apollo spoke, “So apparently, people are still unsure if this is a real sexuality. Some people say it’s a disorder and a dysfunction of sorts.”

When Nahyuta stuck out his hand, Apollo gave the phone to him. “Well, there always seem to be people who have something to say about the validity of almost every other sexuality. Homophobes, biphobes, or transphobes for instance.”

That drew a shrug from Apollo. “And, it’s also a spectrum... It varies from person to person and moment to moment for some. Aroflux... demi... gray... Oh, and some people have differing sexual and romantic orientations too. Like aro ace? Pan ace? Gay ace? Damn, it’s basically a mix and match.”

“But do you find that asexuality applies to you though?”

Did it? Apollo asked himself. While reading the experiences that asexual people had shared to the web, he found himself nodding along. He had let out a few huffs of laughter at the humorously recounted incidents of confusion, exasperation and joy. They were millions of inside jokes — inside jokes that he could understand.

“Yeah. I think it applies to me,” he muttered. “But then... what does that make Klavier Gavin? A contradiction?”

Nahyuta hummed in thought, tapping away on his own phone.

“Hold up.” Apollo smacked the sofa. “But it’s not like I find him sexually attractive. So he isn’t a contradiction. He kind of supports the fact that I’m ace. So I just never have sexual attraction at all. Even with Klavier Gavin.”

“Well, you could be one of those people whose sexual and romantic orientation differ. Similar to the ones you mentioned just now. Bi ace and so on.”

“Could be, huh.” He scrolled through the page, searching. Then, he found the word.

Only after building an emotional connection. He recalled the way he gradually became a little more immune to glimmerous things, the way the purple turned less obnoxious and more endearing, and the way rev of a motorcycle engine grew from a source of annoyance to something that hinted to a more tolerable day and a night of laughter.

“Yup. Demiromantic sounds right,” he decided.

Nahyuta hummed. “Well, don’t you suppose that the case is solved, detective?”

“I’m a demi ace.”

The words tasted weird on his tongue. It was unfamiliar and he didn’t even know if he was saying it right, but it felt good to have a word for the things he experienced, and also perhaps the things he didn’t experience. From the inability to understand the world’s frothing obsession with other people’s naked bodies, to the frustration at why it seemed like the world saw everything as sexual, to the awkwardness of using the word “hot” or “sexy”. It clicked for Apollo, like a gear slotting into place. It made sense to him. And it finally felt like there was... a word for himself.

It felt pretty good.

A/N: Hell yeah. ACE Attorney.

#ace attorney #asexual apollo justice #asexual #demiromantic apollo justice #klapollo #fanfic #my writing #pride month whoop!#ive waited TOO LONG FOR THIS #finding home

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mentalcurls · 5 years

Text

6.5 Effettivamente

I’ve been waiting for this clip ever since 3.4 Argentina (which took place a month ago today btw), but in my soul I’ve actually been waiting for this coming out since forever.

my 💔 poor 💔 heart 💔 broke 💔 seeing Martino watch his friends interact from afar

they’re relaxed and comfortable with each other, their relationship is as close as ever while Marti’s relationship with them is in tatters, he barely speaks to Gio and that’s it

this is even worse than the picture Gio posted on IG on Tuesday, when Martino was supposed to go to Elia’s to prep for the exam and didn’t go

my 💔 poor 💔 heart 💔 breaking 💔 again because, despite Giovanni’s reassurances on Monday, Martino doesn’t believe Elia has forgiven him so he chooses to stay away from him... and let’s not forget Elia sits next to Marti during classes

Elia leaves, Martino finally approaches Giovanni, but he looks like he’s going to his death, look at his face, my poor baby

has he ever been bluer?

deep breaths baby, deep breaths

HE DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING? LEAVING THE FIRST MOVE TO GIO (who doesn’t disappoint thank God)? SO HE COULD HYPOTHETICALLY IGNORE HIM?

JEsus, the awkwardness between them kills me

the seconds of silence between the greeting and Marti asking the first question, Martino licking his lips and swallowing like he’s gathering the courage to say something monumental despite it being a silly, innocent question

THE STILTED CONVERSATION oh God why, I’m hurting

“Ma non penso che ti interessi, no?” (But I don’t think you’re interested, right?) is Martino twisting a knife into his own wound because he’s saying: you don’t want to go out with the radio guys, you don’t want to get involved into something I’m doing (and I like, because we’ve seen he’s putting more effort into it with the Virginia Woolf thing on Wednesday - though it might also be something to keep his mind occupied on something that is not his crumbling relationships), you don’t want to spend time with me

I mean, Marti obviously knows, intellectually, that Gio doesn’t want to go to radio things because of Eva and because it’s just not his thing, but deep inside it’s just another refusal, one which Martino preemptively steels himself for

That “se… se ti va puoi… puoi venire da me” (If you’d like you can come to mine) is said in the same tone Martino has when he tells Filippo he’s seeing a boy in 5.5 Pride and when he asks Sana about homosexuality and religion in 4.3 Evoluzione

“Pizza, mortazza e City-Real” ICONIC

Marti asks Gio to hang out with a half smile (!!!) but Gio remains impassible and Martino’s smile falls

when Giovanni asks about their score, it’s as good as a YES FINALLY, it’s the rebuilding of the bridge between them and Martino smiles fully possibly for the first time in weeks because that’s their game, their ritual, their friendship going back to normal

WHEN THEY LEAVE THEY’RE BOTH SMILING AND TEASING EACH OTHER my heart sings with joy

Marti and Gio who are still laughing and making fun of one another while playing FIFA

(FIFA is a big bonding ritual for the boysquad, it’s the way they settle bets, it’s one of the topics they tease each other about, they play tournaments when they don’t know what to do, they keep long term score of who’s best and it’s something they all love, it’s a place of comfort for them)

(FIFA is a football/soccer game, which is imho significant as the setting Marti picks for his coming out, he’s trying to reinforce the idea that he’s still a guy who loves “boy things” like sports and videogames, despite his sexuality - as well as trying to reinforce that he’s still the same guy who played the previous 47+56 games he and Gio kept score of)

(the fact that Gio hesitates before starting to play FIFA again after Martino tells him he likes boys probably ups the level of panic in Marti’s head, because what if he’s gonna be excluded from something as important for their group and as “masculine” as FIFA now??)

(when Gio starts to play again AND ASKS MARTINO ABOUT NICO AT THE SAME TIME it’s such an important thing for Marti because he finds out can have it all)

I would like to thank not only God but also Jesus and LudoBesse for the closeups of Ludovico Tersigni’s face when he smiles 🙏

Their knees touching just gets to me, for no real reason, and I kinda wish we were able to see if they kept touching for the whole time or if Marti retracted after coming out

EFFFFFFettttttivaaamenteeeeee (make it last longer c’mon, Marti, I know you can)

is it me or does Marti look a tad disappointed when Gio asks him if the person he likes is Emma? maybe it’s just nerves

Marti who keeps stealing glances at Giovanni, checking in constantly

Gio senses Martino is uncomfortable, especially after the “ma non l’hai capito?” “no non si capisce un cazzo” (“don’t you know?” “no, I can’t understand you for shit”) exchange, and cracks the Sana joke to make him relax a bit, you can see he’s trying to keep a straight face long enough to speak without giving himself away (he should learn to deliver jokes from Nico, I mean, he kept a straight face for the whole Maddalena and hypertrichosis thing)

“Non *swallows* non è una ragazza” (It’s not *swallows* it’s not a girl) POOR BABY DEER HE CAN’T EVEN SPEAK his throat must be so dry, he must be trying to keep breathing normally so hard, he’s probably shaking and THEN HE CLENCHES HIS JAW

once again Marti is steeling himself for the worst

and Gio just goes... slack, is the best way I can think to describe it, for a second. I don’t think it’s surprise? At least not for the gay thing, maybe for the fact that Marti actually confirmed it for him. It may also be relief

it’s just a second, then Gio gathers himself and thinks, looks at Marti who can’t meet his eyes

“Sono io?” (mind, non-Italian fans, it’s not a “Is it me?”, it’s more of a “It’s me?”)

I LIVE FOR MARTINO OVERCOMPENSATING WHEN HE DENIES IT to hide the fact that he did, indeed, crush on Gio for a long time 😘

the smiles. their smiles. Marti is slowly relaxing, Gio is finally understanding what’s going on with him and they feel like THEY’RE FINALLY FRIENDS AGAIN✨

Marti thinks it’s over, the three most important things he can see Gio wanting to know about (why’s Martino hurting, that Marti is gay and that he’s not in love with him) are out there and cleared between them now, and Gio smiled! And had nothing bad to say! Except he won’t play. Uh-oh.

HA, Giovanni Garau, patron saint of best friends, does it again! He’s put together all the little pieces, all the scraps of interaction, all the tiny moments when something he couldn’t quite pinpoint happened and BAM! He gets it, he knows.

Martino’s wry smile and nod

Gio mirroring him and nodding as well, halfway between “Okay, I can see it” and “Dude, well done, I’m actually kind of impressed”

and then Gio comes in like a wrecking ball against toxic masculinity and compliments Marti on his choice of man

Marti who acts like he’s never even noticed whether Nico is attractive or not

Marti looks so embarrassed, he should have been blushing (FE_CESARI UR GOOD BUT WHERE ARE MY BLUSHES ARE YOU A REDHEAD OR NOT????)

I wonder how closely Gio is mirroring the comments Martino usually makes when Gio himself tells him he’s attracted to a girl, maybe even when he told him about Eva? He tries his best to be supportive even though he doesn’t really understand, the exact same way Marti has always been supportive of him despite not understanding girls’ appeal

“Che fate, state insieme, uscite, COME STAI?” (What’s happening there, are you togethere, are you dating, how are you?) COME STAI GUYS most supportive best friend ever

“È un po’ strano lui” (He’s kind of weird) is such a weird way to put it? I mean, sure, you could say Nico acted weird, but not for the reasons Martino gives Gio, imo; he’s “weird” for changing schools in his last year, for his granddad’s puppets, for asking Marti to ditch a party he himself had asked him to and for dragging him to an abandoned pool of all places; Marti instead describes his as weird for appearing undecided, for seemingly stringing him along

is that a hint of disgust, almost, I detect in Martino’s voice while he quotes Niccolò’s text? Is he that fed up?

Gio makes a sound at that, that I can’t decide if it’s just an encouragement for Marti to go on, or if it’s an “okay, got it” while he plans Niccolò’s demise for daring to string Martino along

still, Giovanni sides with Martino but doesn’t tell his best friend he’s better off without Nico or make any threats of retribution or promises to fight for Marti’s honour or smth, because he’s a supportive pal who will trashtalk Marti’s s.o. when he acts like a dick but will still support Marti’s feelings for him and believes in Martio’s ability to take care of himself

I have Questions about Luchino’s voice message, specifically: who was this message sent to?

not Gio directly, because Luca asks “Voi c’avete”, second person plural

did he send it to the group with all four guys? but Marti’s phone didn’t ring, so either he’s got the group conversation muted (💔) or Luca sent it somewhere else

is there a group with only Gio, Elia and Luca in it to whom the latter could have sent the voice message? again, my 💔 heart 💔 breaks 💔

anyways, Marti is the best bro because despite not talking to Luca for two weeks he still offers up his notes

Gio taking advantage of Martino leaving without pausing the game to score on him lol

Gio asks Martino what he’s found while Marti is looking at the flipbook thingy... how much do you want to bet that by the time Marti answers nothing with that big smile on his face, Gio has seen the thing, what Marti was doing with it and the way he was smiling and he’s put everything together without Marti saying anything? that’s why he doesn’t press, as much as in recognition of the fact that Marti already opened up to him so much today

I 100% love the way both Marti and Gio start their sentences when they’re saying something important with “Comunque” (Anyways) as if it’s just a continuation from one long conversation between them, or as if they’re just stating for the record something that is obvious

Marti was definitely not expecting at all Gio to actively tell him he’s better than whoever Niccolò’s girlfriend is on principle, which in my experience is a very common best friend thing to say, and that hurts

Gio grabbing Marti by the neck and ruffling his hair is such a friend/brother thing to do, it’s a fond and exasperated thing in the way only siblings’ touches can be, halfway between an attempt to strangle you and a caress

This clip was so beautiful, the friendship between Giovanni and Martino is so beautiful, their ship is so beautiful! I’m so happy and so thankful for LudoBesse 🙏

#skam italia #martino rametta #giovanni garau #skamit #king giovanni garau the best most supportive pflag mom friend™#6.5 effettivamente #a. writes

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aion-rsa · 5 years

Text

DC's Sasquatch Detective is Exactly What It Sounds Like

https://ift.tt/2EnylWy

The fun Snagglepuss backup story spins off into Sasquatch Detective #1.

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News Jim Dandy

DC Entertainment

Dec 10, 2018

There's something inherently charming about the high concept behind Sasquatch Detective, Brandee Stilwell and Gus Vasquez's story about exactly what it sounds like that first appeared as a backup in Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. We're not talking about time travel paradoxes or closeted panther playwrights examining the birth of the gay rights movement in America or a rich orphan who likes to beat on poor people for "justice." She's a sasquach. And she's also a detective. It's admirably straightforward.

And if you read the stories, you'll see that the charm doesn't end with the hook. Tanya Lightfoot is enthusiastic and competent and earnest and fun and endearing in a way that you don't often see in comics these days, and she feels like she's just sophisticated enough to not be an all ages character that we're swearing "really works for everybody."

In Sasquatch Detective #1, DC collects all the backups from Snagglepuss and adds in a new origin story for Tanya from Stilwell and Vasquez, but my favorite part is probably the note from Stilwell about the titular cryptozoological investigator's origin as a concept that fleshes out her existence in a way that somehow made it even more likeable. And then we meet an entirely wholesome family of sasquatches (sasquatchi? Sasqui? Sasquatch? Can you help in the comments with the appropriate plural for "more than one sasquatch?") in this exclusive preview DC sent us to share with you.

Tanya's parents, also Bigfoots (Bigfeet? No, I'm pretty sure it's Bigfoots), are sort of the respected town elders for Northern California wildlife. Her mom is a tennis pro and her dad the golf pro, teaching neruotic, flatulent animals the finer points of WASP sports. They're also just a generally well adjusted family - they spend time with each other, snack together, watch TV together. But they're sasquatches.

Here's what DC has to say about the book:

SASQUATCH DETECTIVE #1 written by BRANDEE STILWELL

art by RON RANDALL and GUS VAZQUEZ

cover by BEN CALDWELL

Before Tonya Lightfoot became Los Angeles’ most decorated detective, she was a wee sasquatch roaming the Appalachian mountains, fed a steady diet of tennis and golf (as both of her parents are pros at the local country club) and CSI episodes. But her idyllic life of pranking campers and squatching around the local golf course hits a bump in the fire road when Bigfoot hunters come to the dense forest. Would Tonya back down in the face of adversity? Not yeti! But experiencing this abominable anti-sasquatch sentiment gives her the determination to leave her home behind—she heads to the dangers of the city. After all, it’s hard to fight unconscious bias, but crime is something America’s sassiest sasquatch is ready to tackle. This special features a new 30-page lead story plus the backup stories from EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES #2-6.

Check it out!

from Books https://ift.tt/2EcC6Np

#aion-rsa #Books

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cruising-utopia · 4 years

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Introduction: Feeling Utopia

José Esteban Muñoz begins this text by explaining that he perceives queerness to be an ideal that we seek to achieve rather than something we “are” or something that “is.” It is to be found in the future, to be reached for from the limitations of the past and the present. Muñoz suggests that aestheticism is the manner in which we achieve futurity; he explains that the queer aesthetic is used to “map social relations” and that it is a “performance” as a “rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (40).

Muñoz borrows from Kant and Hegel in his thinking, as well as the Frankfurt School in terms of Marxist utopianism, yet credits his strongest thinking to Bloch’s “The Principle of Hope,” where the philosopher discusses the concept of utopia quite deeply. Muñoz dismisses Bloch’s questionable perspective on queerness as he posits to use Bloch’s theory to open a new mode of queer thinking--that of idealism. Quite usefully, Muñoz explains how he hopes to explore Bloch’s idea of “concrete utopias” that he historically places around the Stonewall riot in 1969 (43-44). He also uses associative and personal work in his study.

Muñoz places special importances in Bloch’s contemplation (and astonishment) as he looks at Warhol and O’Hara as introductory examples of his queer utopianism (beginning in 47) because they offer an ‘out’ to Bloch’s “darkness of the lived instant” (48) through their (seemingly performative) happiness. He specifically looks at Warhol’s Coke Bottle and O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You” (links below). Muñoz seems very invested in the quotidian and its manifestations as queer utopianism, as he says “Both queer cultural workers are able to detect an opening and indeterminacy in what for many people is a locked-down dead commodity" (53).

He continues by mentioning Austin’s concept of the felicitous and its inability to be fulfilled (are we really doing something by saying something? what are the implications of the act of speech? etc). Muñoz clarifies that he seeks to challenge political idealism, the “antiutopian” sentiment, and the “antirelational” (57-8). He seeks to engage in queer social relations. He mentions Nancy’s concept of the singular plural and uses it to extend the idea that queerness as ontology might only be understood if it is simultaneously conceptualized as both relational and antirelational. In particular, he believes that Bersani and Edelman’s antirelationalisms are useful in his work, where he says that “My argument is therefore interested in critiquing the ontological certitude that I understand to be partnered with the politics of presentist and pragmatic contemporary gay identity” (60).

He continues by mentioning more scholars and their relevant theories, such as Sedgwick’s Reparative hermeneutics, Virno’s modality of the possible, Felman’s radical negativity, and Jameson’s anti-antiutopianism. In his subsequent exploration of Eileen Myles’ Chelsea Girls, Muñoz further extends the argument he began with O’Hara and Warhol’s quotidian Cokes--Myles’ quotidian service actions with Schuyler, in Muñoz’ analysis, solidifies the notion that this queer relationality is transformed by a potential futurity.

He smartly recognizes his critiques (such as using Bloch over Benjamin, or not considering Foucault’s History of Sexuality as usurping Marcuse) and mentions that he has made his theoretic decisions so as to focus on scholarship outside of what is currently popular or well-read in queer studies. He then contextualizes Marcuse’s relationship with Heidegger, and mentions more theorists (Halberstam, Freccero, Freeman, Dinshaw, Gopinath, Dolan, Berlant). He mentions that his work lies solidly in the realms of queer feminist and queer of color forms of thinking. Ultimately, Muñoz tells us that he hopes to reformat our conceptions of utopia and approach queerness through this fresh lens.

(some) Important Texts that Muñoz mentions:

Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, 3 vols., trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

Jill Dolan, Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

Frank O’Hara, Having a Coke with You (click title to access link)

Andy Warhol, Coke Bottle (click title to access link)

Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Flowers) (below)

J.L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words.“(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).

Leo Bersani, Homos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).

Muñoz is clearly well-situated in his exploration of queerness and performativity though critical theory. He must mention about twenty theorists/theories (that do provide an excellent framework and a pot for future reading, I might add). This introduction seems most useful as a contextualization of his utopian theory, explaining his approach to queerness in Cruising Utopia. Personally, what I find most important is his notion that futurity comes from the quotidian--queerness is seemingly implicated in the transformation of the quotidian into an act of being, or of identity. This suggests that queerness is a complex, deep inaction of being. As I keep reading, I will keep Muñoz’ strong leaning on Bloch as the center theory on my mind, while considering how elements of the quotidian enter his explorations.

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mycroftybusiness · 7 years

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The art of erasing queer subtext German translations of Sherlock Holmes

When I first came to tumblr for reading all the fantastic analysis of the Sherrlock Holmes stories and adaptations, I was quite confused. Of course I read the Holmes stories before, well, most of them, but a lot of the quotes I read here didn't sound familiar at all. I thought, well, I must have forgotten that or didn't read properly. That doesn't sound like me, but I never picked up my (german) copy and looked it up. One evenening, I sat over a glass of wine with my friend and she denied the gay subtext of the Holmes stories so vigorously, that I felt like proving my point and so I took her copy and wanted to show her some of the evidence. To my suprise, i could not find it. Starting with the „Quick. Hide if you love me“ part in „the dying detective“ wich was translated to „Hide if you want me to be thankfull forever“ (Verstecken Sie sich, wenn Sie sich meines ewigen Dankes gewiss sein wollen). That made me curious and I bought a copy of the original english ACD stories.

I will now start to read along with you, in german and in english to see what had been changed and why.

First, we have to note, that the most common german translation is the one by Adolf Gleiner, Margarete Jacobi, Louis Ottmann and Rudolf Lautenbach. It is an early translation (the first in some stories) and is used until today. I had a look at five different copys of the translated canon, modern ones and old ones, but they all had that translation. There is one other common translation by Gisbert Haefs, but I don't have it, so I can't say anything about that. Maybe someone has read those.

Then we have to note some general problems with translating from english to german, wich is not only true for Holmes but also for many other stories. There is, for example the „Sie“ and „Du“ problem. „Sie“ is the formal, polite way of saying „You“ wich one would use to adress strangers or respected people or people you don't now well, „Du“ is the more intimate way of saying „You“ which one would use if you are adressing friends or family or people of your own age if you are younger than 25. Of course, it is always hard to get the point in a movie, book or series when people stop to use „Sie“ and start using „Du“, for it requires a permission or invitation in the spirit of: „Please, you can say „Du““ which is a big deal. In the Holmes stories, Watson and Holmes always talk to each other using „Sie“ and it is hard to create this natural intimacy between two people who do that. In translated english stories, it became quite normal that two people use „Sie“ even when they know each other quite well, especially in stories written before the 1950s. Even children adress their parents as „Sie“. Maybe it was just a way of showing how posh the English are.

Then we have the trouble of words with a slightly different meaning in both languages. But we will see that when I point out some examples.

When I read through the first three stories (TheGloria Scott, The Musgrave Ritual and The Spraceled Band) I recognized some parts that were translated pretty wrong and had to come to the conclusion, that it was done on purpose. By the third story I knew which part would have been changed before I even looked at the translation.

Examples:

The Musgrave Ritual:

The „certain quiet primness of dress“ that a lot of people refere to by pointing out a queer reading of the canon was changed to „In his appearance he showed a certain accuracy and punktuality“ which is not the same and they could have used many german expressions wich would have been closer two the point. (German: Was sein Auftreten betraf trug er eine gewisse Genauigkeit und Pünktlichkeit zur Schau). But I see, that it is not easy to catch that exact meaning for the word „quiet“ is not really used in german in that manor.

Holmes „mischivious eyes“ were changed to „smart smile“.

„He (Musgrave) was a dandy“ was changed to „He emphasised his suit“. Wich is understandable because the term „dandy“ hadn't been used in Germany.

Fun fact: The term „woman“ refering to Rachel Howells was changed to „Weib“ (a deprecative term for woman) or to „Mädchen“ (girl) on various occations.

The Gloria Scott

In this story, Holmes speaks to Victor Trevor using „Du“. That might be because of their age.

Then they left out were Holmes was going the day the dog bit him, („I went down to chapel“).

„before the end of the term we were close friends“ was changed to „before I recovered, we had formed a friendship“ (German: Ehe ich wieder auf den Beinen war, hatten wir Freundschaft geschlossen.). And there is a term for „close friends“ in german (enge Freunde). There is no reason to change that.

But these two stories aren't the interesting part. Let's move on to „The spraceled band“

It starts with minor changes in the description of Holmes (They changed „love of his art“ to „Love of his work“) and in the way Holkmes adresses Watson („my dear fellow“ was translated to „My dear boy“) but they mix up the boy/fellow thing in every way, all the time.

Then, when Holmes wakes up Watson, Watson accompanys Holmes down to the sitting room in the english version, while in the german translation, Watson follows Holmes to the sitting room. They could as well have translated the sentence word by word. But they didn't.

Holmes intruduction of Watson („This is my intimite friend and associate Doctor Watson before whom you can speak as freely as before myself“) stayed the same. I wanted to point that out.

When Holmes says that „(The gun) and a toothbrush are all we need“, the translator went through some trouble because he obviously was concerened about the singular. Instead of just changing it to plural, he invented a comb, so you can read the german sentences as plural or singular. Its hard to explain... („Wenn wir Kamm und Zahnbürste mitnehmen, haben wir alles was wir brauchen“).

When Holmes and Watson go to „the Crown“, they engage „a bedroom and a sitting room“ in the original version, while in the german version, they get „two rooms“. Well, I guess that is not exactly wrong, but it is not the whole truth either.

These are not the big ones, those will come later on, when we read more stories. But you can find this sort of changes in every Holmes story, while the rest of the story (For example the Cases) are translated with a certain accuracy.

Why did they do that? Well, I think they realised how strong the subtext is and didn't want that to come out. I don't think they said:“Oh my god, this is so gay, let's not write that“, I think they thought: „Well, if I translate it word by word it sounds wrong in german, to intimate. I have to look for less strong words or discriptions.“. Maybe it was because of differences in german and british culture at that time. But they clearly changed most of the parts which one could read as „to intimate for friends“.

Thanks to @handl0ck for talking to me about this and to @astudyincanon for encouraging me to write it down... and sorry for the mistakes. I am still learning.

#why if not to erase the subtext #musg acd #glor acd #spec acd

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demuchoscolores · 4 years

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MMXIX/méli-mélo

Inicié el año en San Miguel de Allende preguntándole a Darío si me veía muy putona. Me desperté comiendo los chilaquiles más ricos del mundo. 9:50. Darío soltó el volante para bailar vogue mientras conducía en carretera. Cactus de regalo. Tulio no había leído jamás a Quiroga. Conocí a Sadturnito y dijo que parecía gobernadora de algún lugar; Michoacán, por ejemplo. Tulio conjugó en primera persona del plural la invitación a pagar la cuenta de Bruno y Violeta ¿Los invitamos? Él pagó todo, yo sólo dije que sí y sentí amor. Le pinté el pelo morado a Darío. No fui a ver a Ed Maverick. Dinosaurios come ensaladas con mis alumnos. Tulio me sorprendió varias veces pidiéndome que me asomara a mi ventana porque él me estaba esperando de sorpresa. Tulio ayudándome a revisar los exámenes de mis mandriles y lagartos. Rogelio y yo horneamos en mi casa. Postal de Turín. A Tulio no le gustó mi restaurante favorito. Me volví a tatuar. Cociné para Tulio y lloró de amor. Darío se tatuó y tuve que ir a comprarle una coca porque su presión arterial caía. Empecé a subir de peso. Me corté el cabello (sí me arrepiento). Recibí un retrato a lápiz; me encanta contar esa anécdota. Sexo en un estacionamiento. Todos los pájaros me recuerdan a ti. Paloma en el Sanborns. Postal de Rogelio sentado con sus piernas cerradas y yo formando un ángulo de 70º. Tulio mostrándome un pedazo de tierra preguntándome si quería hacer mi nidito con él. Algunos papás me conocieron en estado de ebriedad en unos XV años. Me veía fantástica. Love Letters of Great Men. Sube y baja en la peñuela. Mueganitos. Extrañé mucho a Tulio cuando se fue a Europa. Robo pactado del anillo que guardaba en mi bolsa morada. Por primera vez en mi vida vi a mi mamá peda. El changueo de Kipling valía más por la conversación que Tulio tuvo en su L2 para obtenerlo. Manicura por primera vez con mi mejor amigo. Lore chuleándome la piel. Isis es mi alumna favorita. Los dibujos que Tulio hacía cuando niño. Perritos en azoteas. Volví a ver a Sergio, aquel alumno que tuve en el 2017, el que lo cambió todo. Me robaron mi bolsa en un dominós pizza. Fui a un taller de directivos y yo era la más joven; el director a mi izquierda olía a cola. Boliche con Tulio. Detectives y ladrones de gatitos. Darío se mudó. Di clase con un perrito en mi salón de avanzado. Robamos una planta del Alicia café. Octubre 20; al día siguiente Tulio me dijo que él quería su espacio. Yo nada más quería un apapacho. Army de Ellie Goulding. Darío y yo usando los mismos tenis mientras lloro en la vendimia. Amigos que se salen de bodas y terminan overdressed en taquerías y cafeterías para brindar consuelo. Búsqueda desesperada fallida. Suicidio en la mano, o en la bolsa de la mochila. Terapia. Mommy issues. Bullying cósmico. Quiero que Aranza y Luis anden. Club de cuervos. El primer vin chaud del año fue con Tulio. Me voy a cambiar de trabajo. Sentí muchos nervios cuando fui aceptada. Le hice la manicura a Darío y se puso nervioso cuando mi papá lo vio; pero mi mamá es gay friendly. Matching socks con Darío. Me subí a una rueda de la fortuna por primera vez. Oso gigante que mide más que yo como regalo de aniversario. Piernas entrelazadas debajo de las cobijas.

diving deep.

#marianatienelunares

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dangkynhanhieusanphamcom · 5 years

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Counterculturalism Rightly Understood – Law & Liberty

The subtitle of this book signals its countercultural thrust, as well as indicates its inspiration in the thought of the nineteenth century American Catholic social and political thinker, Orestes Brownson (1803-1876). He wrote about, and put into currency, the notion of “the unwritten Constitution.” Brownson “thought a humane political order must be reflective of a people’s history, as well as their deeper cultural, philosophical, and theological assumptions about humans, society, and God. This unwritten constitution of a people must anchor their extant constitutional settlement.” Therefore, to understand America, and American constitutionalism more broadly, one needs to consider the necessary, the chosen, and even the providential, connections between the written Constitution and the complex social order it presupposed. Hence the book’s title, A Constitution in Full.

The dual authorship of the book indicates the authoritativeness of the treatment of Brownson one can expect, as well as the pathos of the book. Both Lawler and Reinsch are experts in Brownson’s complex and subtle thought. With great sureness they expound and apply it to today. Alas, only one is still here to read reviews of the book. Peter Lawler died suddenly a couple of years ago. Fortunately, he had already contributed his allotted portions of the book, so, after deliberation and consultation, Richard Reinsch went ahead and performed an act of intellectual and personal friendship to bring the collaboration to fruition. We are in his debt. This is a fitting last word from Lawler.

Principled Eclecticism

Since Lawler was involved, two features were bound to characterize the book. It would be eclectic, at points quirky, and it would emphasize the human person. These features work well together since persons are unique in any number of ways, including quirks. The eclecticism shows up primarily in the choice of authors enlisted along with Brownson to understand and update American constitutionalism (in the larger Brownsonian sense); and in the recommendations offered by the authors to contribute to the great end of shoring up its foundation and lodestar, “American liberty” rightly understood.[1] The counsels come from the left as well as the right of our political divide, but from the past as well. In this there is an echo of Plato’s notion of the statesman as an ingenious weaver, together with Chesterton’s notion of tradition as the democracy of the dead: they get to take part in our deliberations.

To illustrate the authors’ efforts in this regard, one can instance their argument designed to reconcile post-Obergefell marriage opponents in a common commitment to the next bone of civic contention, religious liberty. The basis of the argument is a distinctive understanding of human or personal dignity as relational. Since gay and lesbian couples have been given access to the traditional institution of marriage because of the relational dignity they claimed, they and their supporters should recognize that attachment to traditional religious beliefs, and to the practices and communities they inspire, is an equally valid exercise of the human person’s relational freedom. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Another recommendation, this one made with the help of the once well-known conservative thinker Wilmoore Kendall, is that Congress reassume its leading role in our constitutional republic. Neither the imperial presidency nor (especially) the imperial judiciary is appropriate to our democratic pluralism and the need for regular compromise. Congress was the American institution designed for representation in an extended republic, for face-to-face debate, and for plausible compromise: let Congress be Congress!

These two examples illustrate the general character of the authors’ proposals, starting with their conciliatory spirit and aim. They make good sense within their framework, they have genuine appeal on any number of grounds, but, alas, they stand little chance of being implemented in today’s polarized climate. It’s hard, therefore, to differentiate a hopeful recommendation from a present-day indictment. That they wrote the book indicates that the authors don’t despair of America. Still, there is a significant gap between the positive teaching they present and the contemporary America it addresses. How hopeful they really are, either for the adoption of their recommendations or for America as a land of humanly estimable freedom, is unclear. The reader is not especially reassured when they note that Brownson himself was “without effect” in his day.

The Relational Human Person

The human person in his or her relational reality is the alpha and omega of the book, and the concept does a lot of work, both critical and constructive. Early on, in “A Brownsonian Prologue,” we’re told that

Brownson argued that every human is, by nature, a relational person who exists with others to work, to love, and to pray. These higher ends of humans provide the principles that limit government precisely because these relational ends cannot be defined by law; they are above the state. Humans’ need to provide for themselves and those they love means that government cannot subjugate economic freedom. A person’s need to love and serve others, most notably in family life, means that the family cannot be undermined by government, and humans’ need for meaning and purpose, their desire to know the truth about themselves with others, equates to religious freedom. The term “relational personhood” that we use in this book stems from Brownson’s understanding.[2]

This is a deceptively straightforward passage. Merely restating its core elements—person; (human) nature; ends; relations; freedom; freedoms; the state—indicates as much. The passage sketches an anthropology and gestures toward a theory of the state appropriate to that anthropology. To begin with, there’s a connection—a natural connection, one that is inherent in the subject—between human persons, their given natures, their constitutive relations, and the precious endowment of freedom. Freedom is thus a part of a whole, not the whole itself. Such freedom should be recognized by government, but not indiscriminately or by itself. Human freedom is naturally structured and personally appropriated, it is not divorced from ends or obligations. A sign of this is freedom’s natural division into kinds. These, however, have a common root in human nature and in the nature of the person. The latter therefore are the predicates for the “American liberty” that the state should serve. In short, freedom presupposes a personal anthropology, it doesn’t simply define one.

Equality Under God

Brownson in his day, and the authors in ours, employ this understanding to criticize alternative accounts of the human and to point the way to better practices, institutions, and constitutionalism informed by the relational truth of the person. In his day, Brownson dealt with Southern racism and Northern humanitarianism and their oppositely false understandings of liberty and equality. In the light of the relational person, Brownson could detect nuggets of truth in both. The aristocratic southerners were right when they affirmed the special standing and unique significance of the human person, but were terribly wrong to deny them to blacks; while northerners, despite being right to affirm human equality, with their unduly abstract views of equality tended toward human sameness, in some cases, to pantheism. Human equality does not mean homogeneity or individual indistinctness, it means the equality of distinct persons under God.

Reinsch and Lawler follow Brownson’s lead in this aufgehoben endeavor. Contemporary partisans therefore have the pleasure of seeing their opponents’ ox gored and the pain of having the one-sidedness of their own view exposed. Examples? Conservatives who think that freedom plus productivity is the American ethic (think Romney) and liberals who think that freedom plus self-expression is. These two views are combined in technocratic libertarianism (or neoliberalism), but all three leave out the person’s civic relationship and his even more constitutive relationship with God. Both of these enter into the definition of the American person.

If one thinks these claims are mere platitudes, he might reflect upon contemporary debates over immigration and borders, or over anti-discrimination and religious conscience. In these contexts, they do have significant cash value, lending weight to one side of the debates, without being dispositive. Further Brownsonian teachings concerning a citizen’s loyalty to the “territorial sovereignty” of the country and the country’s principled commitment to the spiritual liberty and lives of its citizens further tip the scales.

America’s Bête Noire

The main opponent of Brownson and the authors, however, is the theory of radical individualism, the human person understood too abstractly, merely as the individual with rights. It appears to be the congenital American bête noire. Brownson’s critique of Jeffersonian “Lockeanism” is remarkably relevant, as our authors show, and illumines today’s aggressive individualism, whether in economic life, in culture, or in law. In fact, later conservative arguments that dealt with the progressivism that emerged after Brownson, to the effect that radical individualism leads to collectivism, an increase in state power, and the marginalizing of intermediate institutions, receive fresh impetus from Brownson’s critique of the theory and practice of the autonomous individual. One especially acute irony was that Progressivism itself indicted “individualism” or “rugged individualism.”

The last point leads us beyond Brownsonian personalism to social and political and constitutional matters. The authors treat them all, some more than others; they do so, however, out of a recognition or apprehension that Lockean individualism is ascendant today and increasingly so. Several years ago Lawler coined a memorable phrase in this regard: it’s imperative to keep Locke in the locked box. The radically individualist view of man must not be allowed to become our authoritative public dogma. If it does, American liberty will be gravely impoverished and, predictably, tyrannical in its implementation.

Tocqueville’s Middle Class Americas

It almost goes without saying that Tocqueville is one of the authors enlisted to help in this grand endeavor. Lawler’s earlier The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty (1993) can be seen as a precursor and companion to A Constitution in Full. In the first chapter of this book, to understand “What Distinguishes America?” entails reading Tocqueville and Brownson together. Tocqueville complements Brownson’s notion of the unwritten or providential constitution by talking about the premodern aristocratic and Christian inheritances that enriched and elevated American democracy.

Tocqueville also nicely limns American middle class democracy in three possible iterations: at its best, at its most characteristic, and in its decline. In the best case, American democracy retains vital connections with extra-democratic elements; in its natural state, it “honestly” follows its utilitarian bent (with spasms of higher aspiration); and, in the degradation of its principles, one finds a leveling egalitarianism and liberty understood as mere emancipation and self-assertion. All three versions can contribute to assessing the health of the American body-politic. The assessment, of course, will be complex and ongoing: some parts exhibiting democratic health; others, business as usual (as Coolidge had it, “The business of America is business); still others, morbidity and worse.

There is a host of other Tocquevillian contributions as well. His Pascalian understanding of man, “the angel in the beast,” a truly paradoxical mix of material and spiritual components, complements Brownson’s relational understanding. This anthropological view in turn helps to illumine the middle class character of American society. In a society absent masters and slaves, every angel must work for his beast. That of course gives a certain bent to the angel in man. Thank God, said Tocqueville, for the sabbath, when the American democrat can rediscover his inner angel.

The middle class also serves as a center from which to consider the other two classes, elites and have-nots. Today, its well-documented distresses cast a negative light on their purported superiors and the social compact they have offered, while the fact that many of its members only have a tenuous hold on their status, or are slipping beneath it, sheds disquieting light on it and on what is beneath. In this connection, the authors update Tocqueville’s fear of an emergent “industrial aristocracy” to encompass today’s technocratic globalists who make productivity the measure of man and see their rule as the opportunity to script the lives of the unproductive. The description indicates their judgment.

The Countercultural Brownson

It is Brownson’s thought, however, that is the constant template for our authors. Two Brownsonian themes are particularly countercultural today. “Providence” and “civic loyalty” were central to his political thinking, one drawn from Christianity, the other (with suitable modification) from antiquity, together they formed the pillars of the unwritten constitution. They are the opposite of, and antidotes to, “political atheism” and merely “contractual,” interest-based, views of social coherence. When their meaning is drawn out, they refer to a grateful acknowledgement of America’s participation in a providential order, in an order of civilizational history (the west), and an order of distinct nation-states. Perhaps the three things most under assault today in the progressive west: traditional religion, the nation-state, and western civilization, are held together and held up by Brownson. Belief in the universality of Providence helps moderate the biases of human and political particularity, while the “territorial sovereignty” to which we are loyal as citizens is the incarnation or embodiment proper to political life.

Christianity’s main contribution to free politics, however, is found in its teaching of the relational human person, made in the image of the Trinitarian, or fully relational, God, together with its own corporate and catholic character. The church is a universal, trans-political community that allows the political community to recognize its own nature, one that is essential to human well-being, but limited in its aims and authority. Just as the triumphant Roman general needed someone who reminded him of his mortality in the midst of heady victory, so the democratic state needs the church to remind it of its moral foundation in the truth of the human person and its subordinate authority under a truly sovereign God. So argued Orestes Brownson, so argue our countercultural authors.

Before I end with a word on Peter Lawler, I need to repeat and emphasize “our authors.” Both get credit for this fine countercultural book’s contents. Richard Reinsch deserves special credit for his act of intellectual and literary friendship. Given his amply demonstrated philia, I doubt he would mind if I turn to Lawler at the end.

A Fitting Finale

It’s corny but true to say that Lawler and Brownson were a match made in heaven. In them, we have two learned Catholic political philosophers who analyzed, criticized, and wrote prodigiously to improve the America they both deeply loved. Both lived through terribly divided times and employed their faith and their cultivated reason to try to knit together a divided country. However, both thought that this healing would require a refounding, an explicit recognition of the truth of the human person. Brownson was not successful in his attempt, there’s no sign that Lawler will be in his. However, neither thought his task demanded success, but rather fidelity to the truth. This is the lesson I take away from their lives. I’m also reminded of an earlier saying: that a prophet is not without honor, except in his own land.

[1] Following the lead of Tocqueville’s “self-interest rightly understood,” Lawler was in the habit of qualifying his understanding of any number of things as “X, Y, or Z, rightly understood,” for example, Postmodernism Rightly Understood.

[2] Brownson combined theory and observation in coming to his understanding of the relational person. “[I]nspired by Catholicism, [Brownson] embraced French philosopher Pierre Leroux’s (1798-1871) principle that all persons live in communion with God, humans, and nature.” But “the anthropological understanding of a human’s relational personhood, [w]as [also] revealed in multidimensional social, familial, religious, and economic life.” One way that our authors put the matter is that American practice required a superior theory to account for it than was available in the North, the South, or even in the Declaration of Independence.

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mycarolinaherrerablog-blog · 5 years

Text

Algunos cambios actuales del español: acentuación (III parte)

Este material se ha diseñado con el propósito de conocer algunos de los cambios que ha sufrido el español desde la acentuación, ortografía, morfología y sintaxis. En ese sentido, se realizará una revisión teórico-práctico para que el estudiante conozca tales variaciones y logre aproximarse a un uso adecuado de su código.

(Material elaborado por la profa. Lina Carolina Herrera-Pacitto 2017)

3.- Morfología:

3.1.- El género: los ciudadanos y las ciudadanas, los niños y las niñas.

Este tipo de desdoblamientos son artificiosos e innecesarios desde el punto de vista lingüístico. En los sustantivos que designan seres animados existe la posibilidad del uso genérico del masculino para designar la clase, es decir, a todos los individuos de la especie, sin distinción de sexos: Todos los ciudadanos mayores de edad tienen derecho a voto.

La mención explícita del femenino solo se justifica cuando la oposición de sexos es relevante en el contexto: El desarrollo evolutivo es similar en los niños y las niñas de esa edad. La actual tendencia al desdoblamiento indiscriminado del sustantivo en su forma masculina y femenina va contra el principio de economía del lenguaje y se funda en razones extralingüísticas. Por tanto, deben evitarse estas repeticiones, que generan dificultades sintácticas y de concordancia, y complican innecesariamente la redacción y lectura de los textos.

3.1.1.- Todas los sustantivos designados a cargos, títulos, profesiones u otras actividades, acabados en masculino –o harán el femenino en –a. Por tanto, lo normativo es formar femeninos como: médica, ministra, catedrática, catedrática, entre otros. Debe existir concordancia con el artículo: la médica/*la médico. También en otros sustantivos como peatona, tutora, truhana, baronesa, alcaldesa, sacerdotisa, lideresa, consulesa, juglaresa, choferesa, fiscala, entre otras.

3.1.2.- Los sustantivos acabados en –o pertenecientes al ámbito militar no cambiará, sino que el artículo designará el género gramatical: el/la cabo, el/la brigada, el/la teniente, el/la brigadier, la capitana (aunque admite la variante capitana), entre otros.

3.1.3.- También funcionan normalmente como comunes los que proceden de acortamientos: el/la fisio, el/la otorrino. Al igual que la contralto, la soprano, la contrabajo.

3.1.3.- Las palabras agudas (sustantivos y adjetivos) terminadas en masculino –or, -ón, -án, -ín, -és hacen el femenino en –a: sultán→ sultana, feligrés→feligresa.

3.1.4.- Todas las palabras masculinas cuya terminación sea distinta a la vocal –o, serán comunes en cuanto al género: la agente, la detective, la comandante, la monarca, la guardia, la policía, la periodista, la fisioterapeuta. También se admite las variantes la jefa/la jefe, la presidenta/la presidente, la cliente/la clienta, la dependiente/la dependienta, la juez/la jueza, la aprendiz/la aprendiza.

3.1.5.- Género ambiguo: el/la maratón, el/la tiroides, el/la internet, el (sitio)/la (página) web.

3.2.- El número: singular y plural. En español hay dos marcas para formar el plural de los sustantivos y adjetivos: -s y -es. Existe asimismo la posibilidad, aunque no es lo normal, de que permanezcan invariables. La elección de una de estas opciones debe ajustarse a las siguientes reglas:

3.2.1.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en vocal átona o en -e tónica. Forman el plural con -s: casas, estudiantes, taxis, planos, tribus, comités. Son vulgares los plurales terminados en -ses, como cafeses, en lugar de cafés, o pieses, en lugar de pies.

3.2.2.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en -a o en -o tónicas. Aunque durante algún tiempo vacilaron entre el plural en -s y el plural en -es, en la actualidad forman el plural únicamente con -s: papás, sofás, bajás, burós, rococós, dominós. Excepto noes y otros. También es excepción el pronombre yo cuando funciona como sustantivo, pues admite ambos plurales: yoes y yos. Son vulgares los plurales terminados en -ses, como sofases.

3.2.3.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en -i o en -u tónicas. Admiten generalmente dos formas de plural, una con -es y otra con -s, aunque en la lengua culta suele preferirse la primera: bisturíes o bisturís, carmesíes o carmesís, tisúes o tisús, tabúes o tabús. En los gentilicios, aunque no se consideran incorrectos los plurales en -s, se utilizan casi exclusivamente en la lengua culta los plurales en -es: israelíes, marroquíes, hindúes, bantúes. Por otra parte, hay voces, generalmente las procedentes de otras lenguas o las que pertenecen a registros coloquiales o populares, que solo forman el plural con -s: gachís, pirulís, popurrís, champús, menús, tutús, vermús. El plural del adverbio sí, cuando funciona como sustantivo, es síes, a diferencia de lo que ocurre con la nota musical si, cuyo plural es sis. Son vulgares los plurales terminados en -ses, como gachises.

3.2.4.-Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en -y precedida de vocal. Forman tradicionalmente su plural con -es: rey, pl. reyes; ley, pl. leyes; buey, pl. bueyes; ay, pl. ayes; convoy, pl. convoyes; bocoy, pl. bocoyes. No obstante, los sustantivos y adjetivos con esta misma configuración que se han incorporado al uso más recientemente —en su mayoría palabras tomadas de otras lenguas— hacen su plural en -s. En ese caso, la y del singular mantiene en plural su carácter vocálico y, por lo tanto, debe pasar a escribirse i: gay, pl. gais; jersey, pl. jerséis; espray, pl. espráis; yóquey, pl. yoqueis; póney, pl. poneis; escay, pl. escáis. Son vulgares los plurales terminados en -ses, como jerseises.

3.2.5.- Voces extranjeras terminadas en -y precedida de consonante. Deben adaptarse gráficamente al español sustituyendo la -y por -i: dandi (del ingl. dandy); panti (del ingl. panty); ferri (del ingl. ferry). Su plural se forma, como el de las palabras españolas con esta terminación, añadiendo una -s: dandis, pantis, ferris. No son admisibles, por tanto, los plurales que conservan la -y del singular etimológico: dandys, pantys, ferrys.

3.2.6.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en -s o en -x. Si son monosílabos o polisílabos agudos, forman el plural añadiendo -es: tos, pl. toses; vals, pl. valses, fax, pl. faxes; compás, pl. compases; francés, pl. franceses. En el resto de los casos, permanecen invariables: crisis, pl. crisis; tórax, pl. tórax; fórceps, pl. fórceps; exprés, relax, unisex. Es excepción a esta regla la palabra dux, que, aun siendo monosílaba, es invariable en plural: los dux. También permanecen invariables los polisílabos agudos cuando se trata de voces compuestas cuyo segundo elemento es ya un plural: ciempiés, pl. ciempiés (no ciempieses); buscapiés, pl. buscapiés (no buscapieses), pasapurés, pl. pasapurés (no pasapureses).

3.2.7.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en -l, -r, -n, -d, -z, -j. Si no van precedidas de otra consonante, forman el plural con -es: dócil, pl. dóciles; color, pl. colores; pan, pl. panes; césped, pl. céspedes; cáliz, pl. cálices; reloj, pl. relojes. Los extranjerismos que terminen en estas consonantes deben seguir esta misma regla: píxel, pl. píxeles; máster, pl. másteres; pin, pl. pines; interfaz, pl. interfaces; escáner, pl. escáneres; metrobús, pl. metrobuses. Son excepción las palabras esdrújulas, que permanecen invariables en plural: polisíndeton, pl. (los) polisíndeton; trávelin, pl. (los) trávelin; cáterin, pl. (los) cáterin. Excepcionalmente, el plural de hipérbaton es hipérbatos.

3.2.8.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en consonantes distintas de -l, -r, -n, -d, -z, -j, -s, -x, -ch. Se trate de onomatopeyas o de voces procedentes de otras lenguas, hacen el plural en -s: crac, pl. cracs; zigzag, pl. zigzags; esnob, pl. esnobs; chip, pl. chips; mamut, pl. mamuts; cómic, pl. cómics. Se exceptúa de esta regla la palabra club, que admite dos plurales, clubs y clubes. También son excepciones el arabismo imán, cuyo plural asentado es imames, y el latinismo álbum, cuyo plural asentado es álbumes, robots, cómics, e/los campus; el/los lapsus; el/los tórax, entre otros.

3.2.9.- Sustantivos y adjetivos terminados en grupo consonántico. Procedentes todos ellos de otras lenguas, forman el plural con -s (salvo aquellos que terminan ya en -s, que siguen la regla general: gong, pl. gongs; iceberg, pl. icebergs; récord, pl. récords. Se exceptúan de esta norma las voces compost, karst, test, trust y kibutz, que permanecen invariables en plural, pues la adición de una -s en estos casos daría lugar a una secuencia de difícil articulación en español. También son excepción los anglicismos lord y milord, cuyo plural asentado en español es lores y milores, respectivamente.

3.2.10.- Plural de los latinismos. Aunque tradicionalmente se recomendaba mantener invariables en plural ciertos latinismos terminados en consonante, muchos de ellos se han acomodado ya, en el uso general, a las reglas de formación del plural que rigen para el resto de las palabras y que han sido expuestas en los párrafos anteriores. Así pues, y como norma general, los latinismos hacen el plural en -s, en -es o quedan invariables dependiendo de sus características formales, al igual que ocurre con el resto de los préstamos de otras lenguas: ratio, pl. ratios; plus, pl. pluses; lapsus, pl. lapsus; nomenclátor, pl. nomenclátores; déficit, pl. déficits; hábitat, pl. hábitats; vademécum, pl. vademécums; ítem, pl. ítems. También constituye una excepción la palabra álbum. En general, se aconseja usar con preferencia, cuando existan, las variantes hispanizadas de los latinismos y, consecuentemente, también su plural; así se usará armonio (pl. armonios) mejor que armónium; currículo (pl. currículos) mejor que currículum; podio (pl. podios) mejor que pódium. Las locuciones latinas, a diferencia de los latinismos simples, permanecen siempre invariables en plural: los statu quo, los currículum vítae, los mea culpa.

Referencias

Gómez, L. (2010). La normativa académica actual: cambios destacados. España: Ediciones SM

Real Academia Española (2016). El género. [Documento en línea] Disponible: http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?id=Tr5x8MFOuD6DVTlDBg [Consulta: 2016, octubre].

Real Academia Española (2016). El plural. [Documento en línea] Disponible: http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?id=Iwao8PGQ8D6QkHPn4i [Consulta: 2016, octubre].

Real Academia Española (2016). Normas de escritura de los prefijos: exmarido, ex primer ministro. [Documento en línea] Disponible: http://www.rae.es/consultas/normas-de-escritura-de-los-prefijos-exmarido-ex-primer-ministro [Consulta: 2016, octubre].

Real Academia Española (2016). Palabras como guion, truhan, fie, liais, etc., se escriben sin tilde [Documento en línea] Disponible: http://www.rae.es/consultas/palabras-como-guion-truhan-fie-liais-etc-se-escriben-sin-tilde [Consulta: 2016, octubre].

Real Academia Española (2016).

Tilde en las formas verbales con pronombres átonos: deme, estate, mirándolo, etc.

[Documento en línea] Disponible:

http://www.rae.es/consultas/tilde-en-las-formas-verbales-con-pronombres-atonos-deme-estate-mirandolo-etc

[Consulta: 2016, octubre].

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itsnelkabelka · 6 years

Text

Speech: How Global Britain is helping to win the struggle against Islamist terror

When in the course of a prolonged and vicious struggle you eventually record a success, then it is essential – with due humility and caution – to celebrate that success. So I draw your attention once again to the defeat of Daesh in Raqqa, and the victory of the 74-member coalition – in which the UK played a proud part.

It was 3 years ago that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood forth in the pulpit of Mosul’s biggest mosque and vowed to “conquer Rome” and “own the world”. At one stage his domain had 10 million inhabitants, suffering under what may be remembered as one of the most depraved regimes in history.

They picked on the innocent. They hurled gays from rooftops. They enslaved women and children. They used the town square to crucify and behead anyone who dared oppose moral codes that I would call mediaeval if that were not an insult to the comparative civility of the Middle Ages.

And when they made their last stand in the football stadium in Raqqa, it may not surprise you that they fully lived down to expectations. They did not fight like lions, or die wrapped in their sinister black flag. They put up their hands and allowed themselves to be driven away in white buses.

And it is a pleasing irony that in the end they were out-shot, out-fought and out-generalled by a force that contained significant numbers of female Kurdish soldiers, the very women whose freedom they regarded as a Western abomination, and most of the fighters who inflicted this defeat were Sunni Muslims – the very people who Daesh purported to represent.

We should hail the fall of Raqqa and Mosul; because 96% of the so-called ‘caliphate’ is now gone, along with their pompous pretensions to statehood. Al-Baghdadi is a fugitive.

We have helped to disable the machine that drew in recruits from across the world, from Luton to Mindanao. They no longer have the land for training camps or a tortured population to plunder and tax.

We should offer ourselves this limited congratulation: that we have prevented a terrorist group from controlling territory in the Middle East.

And yet we know that we have not destroyed Daesh: not in Iraq, not yet in Syria, and certainly not across the world. We may have temporarily smashed the machine but we know the components are invisibly reassembling themselves.

They are even now seeking each other out in countries where governance is weak. They are there in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, northern Nigeria; indeed for 5 months of this year the Islamic State (so-called) in the Philippines occupied Marawi City until they were driven out.

They are capable of operating even in places where government is comparatively stable, as they have tried to do in Tunisia and Egypt. A hundred of the foreign fighters in Syria came from Malaysia.

And of course we see their impact here in western Europe, in the concrete and steel chicanes that have been installed around our public buildings, in the endless boustrophedon queues at airports, in the recent attacks in Manchester and London.

We know that they are simultaneously moving up and down on the ladder of technological ambition. They are working on new bombs of all kinds, and new ways of eluding detection. They are enlisting everyday objects as terrorist weapons.

And I am sad to say that it has become all too commonplace to read that somewhere on our continent, someone chooses to announce that God is great while launching an attack on passers-by. In this country, MI5 and Counter-Terrorism Policing are now running well over 500 live operations – a third more than last year.

So now is the moment to draw confidence from our success against Daesh; and to consider how we are going to prosecute the struggle.

To answer that question – how do we win – we need to understand first who, or rather what, we are fighting. Because even if we were to capture every single Daesh fighter, even if all the jihadis in the world were either imprisoned or vaporized in drone strikes, we would still have failed to defeat the enemy.

This is neither a war against a conventional Westphalian state, nor do these terrorists have any remotely negotiable objectives. It is a struggle not against a religion but an idea, a perverse ideology.

So it may be more useful to switch metaphors. Perhaps we should think of a fight not against a military opponent but against a disease or psychosis – even though that metaphor is itself imperfect. The notion of a disease or contagion fails to do justice to the moral agency of the terrorists.

They have decided to take this path; they and they alone are responsible for their crimes. Perhaps we can say that as with every other form of criminal behaviour, we have to look at the social and emotional factors that combine to make people dedicate themselves to such comprehensive nihilism.

I appreciate the inadequacies of the phrase “Islamist terrorism”. If I could think of a better one I would use it. But we need to understand exactly why this type of terrorism has become associated with Islam in a way that 1.5 billion Muslims find both insulting and infuriating.

It is a very ancient idea, and common to virtually all religions – including Christianity – that any kind of worldly setback (military defeat, political humiliation, even economic decline) must be the mark of some divine disfavour. For thousands of years human beings have postulated that the correct response must be to propitiate the Gods or God by some act of piety.

(Think of Agamemnon: he wanted a more favourable wind for his ships at Aulis. He believed he was being punished for a transgression. So he did what he thought was the obvious thing. He killed his daughter.) It is this same sort of expiatory thought pattern that persuades people to engage in movements that could be broadly described as puritan or fundamentalist.

In the last 150 years we have seen how a small number of Islamic thinkers have responded to what they see as the humiliations of the Muslim world. And this same logic applies to the individual as he or she is radicalized. Because of course the world is full of people who feel that they are not successful, or not powerful, or not in control of their lives.

And then suddenly – in a mosque, or in a prison, or increasingly online – someone hands them what seems to be this emotional universal spanner. They are told that all their disappointments are caused by their own refusal to adopt a jihadist ideology.

And they are told that if only they will turn to this extreme and violent theology then all their troubles will be gone and their lives turned upside down. And suddenly the world around them that had previously seemed to be alienating and intimidating now seems itself to be contemptible and corrupt; and deserving of reform by the application of their holy rage.

The process is not only very fast – Islamist jihadism has been compared in its addictive power to crack cocaine. It is also very hard to reverse.

And so we need to stop the spread of this malady. We need to confront it and wipe it out in all the ungoverned spaces where it breeds: in the Middle East and north Africa, in the foul rag and bone shops of the internet, in our own country, where it exploits the very freedoms of our liberal democracy, and in the wildest and least governed space of all, the human heart.

There are interlocking ecosystems of terror, domestic and international, contaminating each other online. We can stop both cogs turning. We can greatly reduce the threat. Yes, we can win.

But we need to understand not just whom we mean by the enemy. We need to understand who we are. Who are ‘we’ who are going to win?

There is an unedifying narcissism in the whole use of this first person plural, because I am afraid that all too often the term ‘we’ is taken to mean the West: it means the so-called advanced liberal democracies of Europe and America – and if that is all we mean by ‘we’ then the cause is hopeless.

Look at the death tolls from suicide bombs that now rate barely a paragraph in our papers, in Iraq or Somalia. Who are the principal victims of this global disease?

It is not Westerners, in spite of the recent increase in terrorist attacks. The number of global terrorist victims has risen from 3,361 in the year 2000 to 25,673 in 2016; and the overwhelming majority of those victims, 98%, were innocent Muslims living in Muslim countries.

Since October, we have witnessed 2 of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history – in Mogadishu and Sinai – and of the 823 who died virtually all were Muslims; in Sinai the target of the atrocity was a mosque filled with Friday worshippers. The tragedy of their families was identical to the tragedy of the bereaved families in Manchester or London – and the perpetrator was the same enemy that we face in Britain.

But if we are going to win, then we need to scrap the idea that Western foreign policy is somehow the principal cause of the problem. It is a fallacy that is at once glib, egotistical and which simply feeds the narrative of the jihadis.

Yes it is true that we have made horrendous mistakes – even when our intentions have been broadly good.

Sir John Chilcot concluded: “The Iraq of 2009, when British troops withdrew, certainly did not meet the UK’s objectives as described in January 2003. It fell far short of strategic success.” That must be a competitor for understatement of the century.

In removing Saddam Hussein, without any clear programme for succession, we not only helped to cause chaos. We sent a troubling signal around the Muslim world.

Saddam was a monster, a mass murderer, but he nonetheless stood at the apex of the Iraqi political system and in toppling him with a flip of our fingers, we seemed to suggest a contempt for national political institutions in the Middle East and North Africa. In the last 15 years we have learned the hard way that these institutions – no matter how flawed – are more easily destroyed than rebuilt.

And so I am with the consensus that the war in Iraq – certainly in the absence of a clear plan – was a mistake.

But that war did not create the Islamist terrorist threat: far from it. It is almost as if people have forgotten that the 9/11 massacre – in which 3,000 died at the hands of Osama bin Laden – came before the Iraq war, not after it.

And to assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples – Swedes, Belgians, Finns, or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh – with no such history in the region.

There is no consistency or no logic in this bashing of the West. We must not play their game. The truth is that, if anything, the Western powers have been bit players in a kaleidoscopic struggle between dynasties and sects and tribes and interests in which, over the last 30 years, Islamist extremism – and in many cases terrorism – has been manipulated in order to serve some political end. Actually, the end is always broadly the same. It is the survival or strengthening of the regime.

But there are several distinct types of manipulation. There is simple appeasement, by which some governments – at least in the past – have condoned the financial support of highly dubious mosques or madrasas and turned a blind eye to preaching of hate or violence to buy the domestic support, for instance, of a conservative and reactionary clerisy.

Next there is the ingenious device of the false alternative, by which regimes will artfully contrive a choice, which they present to their own people and to the rest of the world. You either accept me, they say, with all my blemishes – cruel secret police, terrible human rights record – or else the Islamists will take over and we are back to the Middle Ages.

The most egregious recent exponent of this false alternative has been Bashar al-Asad. From the very beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011 Asad worked assiduously to sharpen the dilemma. He contributed to the very creation of Daesh. He let their leaders out of jail and bought their oil. Until this year, he usually avoided fighting Daesh, reserving his most ruthless aggression for the civilian population of Syria.

And after 6 years of this Morton’s fork, and 6 years of slaughter, we have to accept that the gambit appears to have paid off.

We have never been able to answer the question, ‘who should follow Asad’, because the prior challenge has been to get rid of Daesh, to defeat the Islamist terrorists. And yes, we celebrate the defeat of Daesh in Raqqa, but Asad has meanwhile recovered most of operational Syria.

That is how Islamist extremism has been for decades used as a tool for self-preservation. It’s either me or the maniacs, a regime will say: which do you prefer? And the world says, well, in that case I suppose we had better hold our noses and have you.

In some cases, let us be frank, this arrangement works better than in others. Some governments, without being necessarily democratic, are able to hold things together without too much repression. But sometimes the lid is jammed down so hard on the pressure cooker that the resentment builds, and a campaign for political freedom becomes indistinguishable from a campaign for Islamist control.

So we end up with a lose-lose situation. If you have a chaotic state, then you have a breeding-ground for terror. If you have a strong but repressive state, then you also have a potential breeding-ground for terror.

And last there is a method of manipulation that even more pernicious than the false alternative. I mean the concept of ‘forward defence’, whereby a government or its agents will covertly support terrorist groups abroad: either to weaken that government’s neighbours; or to diffuse any threat from those neighbours – real or imagined, or to export its own jihadi problem outside its borders.

Or, most destructively of all, the objective may be to engage in a regional campaign for influence by exploiting the weaknesses of states, and by promoting fanatical or semi-fanatical militias to force other states to respond.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of these conflicts, you cannot credibly argue that they are the fault of the West, let alone that they are now being driven by Western powers. On the contrary, you could argue much more persuasively that the problems we are seeing today have been exacerbated not so much by Western meddling as by our aloofness.

We called on Asad to go. We set the red lines of what we would accept in his treatment of the Syrian population. And then we did nothing about it. We willed the end, and failed to will the means – leaving the pitch wide open for Russia and Iran.

I am afraid that we must now adjust to reality, but we do not walk away. We must collectively re-insert ourselves in the process because it is Western cash that will eventually rebuild Syria, and that can only happen in the context of a political transition away from the Asad regime in which the Syrian people – including the 11 or 12 million who have fled – are allowed to vote on their future in UN-monitored elections.

We can and should do more to resolve the conflict in Yemen where a humanitarian catastrophe is looming, and where Saudi cities are now facing the terror of Houthi missile attacks.

We have the opportunity to bring together the factions in Libya, who should seize this moment to put aside their differences for the good of that country.

The UK has played an important part in uniting the world around the plan of the UN envoy, Ghassan Salame.

We need more engagement, not less, because if you look at events since 2013, when the British and the US decided not to intervene in Syria even after Asad had used chemical weapons, you could not say that we managed to insulate ourselves from the region.

On the contrary, Europe had a tumultuous and tragic flood of migration from Syria. We are still seeing huge flows via Libya and the tempo of domestic terrorism would appear if anything to have increased.

We cannot create some Maginot Line in the Mediterranean. We cannot just seal off the whole of the Middle East and North Africa and give them 50 years to sort themselves out.

The problems will only get worse, not just for the Muslim countries who are in the frontline of the struggle but for us in Western Europe.

Above all, we must not be afraid. The easiest way to lose a war on terror is to be terrified. We cannot afford to let them change the way we live our lives – no more than is strictly necessary. We should not minimize the threat we face. Neither should we exaggerate.

For whatever else it may be, Islamist terrorism is simply not an existential threat to Britain.

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It is a scourge, a disease, a malaise; but we can get on top of it, because for all its allegedly instant addictive power – there are in reality only a tiny, tiny minority of people who are going to be remotely vulnerable to its bombastic lunacies.

Anyone who actually went to Raqqa discovered that it was a hopeless and unsanitary dystopia. There proved to be a very limited market for that way of life.

We can defeat this scourge at home and abroad; we can stop both cogs turning at once.

We are working to get their videos down from the internet, and thanks to the efforts of both the Prime Minister and of Amber Rudd, we are beginning to see more co-operation from the internet companies, with hundreds of thousands of items removed.

We are going to continue the work of the Prevent programme, which is designed to spot vulnerable people and protect them from radicalization, and – despite its detractors – Prevent has had its share of success.

At the same time we in the UK, Global Britain, are helping to reverse the spread of the disease overseas, and in its most hideous and dangerous manifestations that will mean surgery. It will sometimes mean military action of the kind we have taken in the skies above Raqqa and Mosul, where the UK has been among the biggest contributors to a highly successful campaign of tactical air bombardment, second only to the US.

Contrary to some of the assertions you will have heard recently, I can tell you that every day around the world I can tell you that British serving men and women are putting their lives at risk to roll up terrorist networks, to expose what they are doing, to thwart them and bring them to justice.

And they are doing it not just on behalf of the British people, but for the sake of everyone. They are making good on what the Prime Minister has rightly called the unconditional commitment of the British people to the security of our European friends – not just in this continent but beyond. We have the best in the world – and they will be with our allies for the long term.

People should be immensely proud of the work of this country in the danger zones and the breeding grounds of terror. I have myself seen British forces training Nigerians to tackle the maniacs of Boko Haram. I have seen how we are helping the Libyans to tackle the people traffickers and gun-runners, and to stop the terrorists regaining a foothold in Sirte.

But we cannot win until whole populations are immunized from the virus, until the Muslim world is no longer vulnerable to the cancer. That struggle will only be over when across that huge arc of territory, from south Asia to the Middle East, we have managed to end the political manipulation of extremism and terror, and end the baleful logic of the false alternative.

We – and by ‘we’ I mean not just we the West but the whole Muslim world who will be the winners when there is a powerful and visible third option: neither the tyranny and repression of undemocratic governments nor the chaos and backwardness of Islamist regimes, but the real and viable possibility of pluralist, generous and tolerant societies that allow space for free speech and independent non-governmental organisations.

We all understand the reasons why this third alternative has been so rare and so hard to achieve. There is no tradition of secular political parties in many Muslim countries, and often the biggest, most efficient and most politically savvy competitor for political space are the Islamists.

The most effective of all is the Muslim Brotherhood. We must be clear-eyed about this organization. It manifests itself in different ways in different places.

It cannot be denied that Muslim Brotherhood parties represent a body of public opinion, if not the overwhelming current: in some countries they hold seats in parliament; in Tunisia they were part of an elected government.

We in the UK have received representations from friendly governments in the Middle East that would like us to ban that organization. In 2015, after long consideration, the government decided that the Muslim Brotherhood did not meet the threshold for a proscribed group.

But it is plainly wrong that Islamists should exploit freedoms here in the UK – freedoms of speech and association – that their associates would repress overseas, and it is all too clear that some affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood are willing to turn a blind eye to terrorism.

It was disgraceful that when the Pope visited Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood should call him “the Pope of terrorism” and accuse the Egyptian security forces that were tasked with guarding him of being “Christian militias.” They have repeatedly sought to obscure the crimes of Daesh. Even when Daesh had claimed an attack on St Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria, on Palm Sunday, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman blamed the Sisi government.

Of course we should challenge Egypt’s government when its standards on human rights and the rule of law fall short of their own country’s constitution – and suppress the open society that Egypt needs in order to succeed – but that is no excuse for the kind of poisonous rhetoric we are seeing from the Muslim Brotherhood. They are exculpating the true culprits and encouraging terrorism by making wild claims about the Egyptian government.

That is among the reasons why this government is applying greater scrutiny to the Muslim Brotherhood: of their visa applications, of their charity work, and of their international links.

And if there is to be that third alternative, neither anti-democratic tyranny, nor Islamism, but pluralist and tolerant then we need to intensify our current work – the development aid programmes in which Britain, and DFID, leads the world.

We are helping by backing human rights groups and NGOs, and helping above all to change one of the most destructive imbalances, one of the greatest barriers to social and economic progress: the cultural and intellectual repression of women.

It is great news that women are finally going to be able to drive in Saudi Arabia – where they already comprise a majority of university students - and the world is willing on that brave programme of reform. But almost a third of Egyptian women cannot read. In Pakistan the adult female illiteracy rate is 60%.

And it is not just women who are being starved of intellectual sustenance. There is currently only one university in the Muslim world that makes the top 200.

Imagine the difference if those universities began to take off, in a spirit of real academic freedom. Imagine the growth in pride and confidence as those universities in Cairo, in Damascus, in Baghdad, in Tunis began to move up the world rankings, to take once again the positions of huge intellectual eminence that those cities occupied in the Middle Ages. Because in the end this is all about self-confidence and belief, not just in universities but in all national institutions.

One of my heroes is the 14th century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldoun. He was a great historiographer and economist – he showed that low taxes mean high yields long before Arthur Laffer – he’s one of the founders of sociology.

He identified what is called ‘asabiyyah’, the cohesive loyalty to a group or tribe or sect or movement that propels a dynasty to power. And he showed how time and again that loyalty eventually breaks down, and the dynasty is swept away – usually by violence – in favour of another group.

That is why my friend the Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, says that the problem of the Muslim world is that there is not enough nationalism.

Now nationalism is not a fashionable concept in some circles. But it can be immensely valuable. If people have a sense of loyalty and duty to their country, and to its institutions, then those institutions will endure and they will help to promote equity and fairness and respect in society because they command a devotion that goes beyond the narrow selfish imperatives of ‘asabiyyah’.

That is why Britain seeks everywhere to help countries to develop their own respected national institutions: an independent judiciary and army, proud national educational institutions, a national broadcaster and independent national journalists, and a legislature that protects the sovereignty of the people.

And more than anything else it needs people who can tell that national story, build a narrative of success that embraces everyone, brings people together Shia and Sunni in a project that transcends sect and tribe and class.

We are in need of a new school of leaders, women as well as men, and of course the UK can and is helping with our hundreds of Chevening and Commonwealth scholars every year. Never forget that of the current crop of kings queens, presidents and prime ministers, 1 in 7 was educated in this country. Our soft power brings together the development funds and expertise that can help produce the social, educational and political change that will immunize populations from Islamist terror.

And look at the reality of UK hard power: the second biggest defence budget in NATO, one of the few countries capable of deploying air power more than 7,000 miles overseas.

Look at the reality and we are not retreating from our role overseas. On the contrary we are learning what that retreat has cost us in the past. British foreign policy is not part of the problem; it is part of the solution.

And above all we will win when we understand that ‘we’ means not just us in the West but the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who share the same hopes and dreams, who have the same anxieties and goals for their families as we do, all of us, who are equally engaged with the world and all its excitements and possibilities, who are equally determined to beat this plague.

We can beat it together. And we will.

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