#i guess thats the thing about the category im trying to describe

[hypogryffin]

genuinely curious by what you mean by "jewish (factual)" in your tier list. i can assume for a couple what you mean (sophia as an example) but i dont see how the others could be like jewish-coded! interested in hearing your thoughts

link to the first post for claritys sake, but this is the tier in question:

ok so for clarification: i made the tier list a little while ago and then scheduled it for later to keep uploads consistent, something i usually do all the time but am not for this discussion for now. this means that by the day the tier list posted, i was already a few weeks or so divorced from the actual creation of it, so some of my opinions have changed (as i said in the og post, i was unsure on a good portion of the characters even when i first queued the list), and some of my reasonings behind placements have been lost to time and my silly little goldfish memory.

bc of this, as of now as im trying to find a distinct line between "jewish (factual)" and "jewish (based on vibes)", the criteria for "factual" is sort of murky. some placements in the category were serious, but a lot of them were also entirely for joking reasons, and i had moved on as soon as i was done laughing to myself without coming back to it.

all this is to say, i have no idea how to summarise it, so im going to explain everything i can remember about my thought process at the time so you can see where i was coming from.

SOPHIA:

yup 👍.

ok so for the uninformed, sophia is the name of a gnostic figure and the specifics change depending on the context of which ur referring to her in, but in judaism specifically sophia was given as a translated name for chokmah which is like a being thats like really important in kabbalah and considered like. this sort of i guess personification of divine wisdom?

anyways this is a concept that i doubt im anywhere near the first person to bring up, so im not gonna spend a lot of time on it like i will the things i havent heard other people talk about. like the whole "good friend of humanity" thing! judaism puts a lot of emphasis on kindness and care for other people and i think its important that thats so big for her character and for how jewish she can be read as. she is also jewish because i like her :^).

TATSUYA:

suffers endlessly because g-d hates *him*, specifically, and he hates g-d right back. jewish.

that was a joke. ok so right out the gate i think the whole "fighting hitler" aspect of IS should count for something during the discussion of which characters are jewish. like just putting that out there. anyways tatsuya is jewish because of eternal punishment. specifically, you know how hes like super into "atonement" and repentance? bro would really have benefited from going to a high holidays service lemme tell you. and he does it in a specific way thats like. his atonement is actively trying to repair what hes fixed right like hes not doing what hes doing to be redeemed, hes doing it because its his responsibility to fix whats been broken. i just idk how to explain it properly but thats a thought process your rabbi talks you through in jew school yknow?

also theres this thing called tikkun olam, which literally translates as "repairing the world". so it means more like. doing ur best as a citizen to improve community and country, or general social work. but just considering it as taking the literal translation, then its just like... yep. that sure is what hes doing isnt it

also, killed hitler. hashtag work

KATSUYA:

placed here mostly because being tatsuyas brother, theyd probably be at a similar "level" of religiosity. however there are some unique things i want to point out here;

katsuya like embodies the idea of "tzedek tzedek tirdof" like. its unfortunate hes a cop but for a cop hes a pretty good person? hes pretty uncompromising on right and wrong, and in a way that totally lines up w tzedek tzedek tirdof as its described in the torah.

extra emphasis on his compassion, as in theres like that core facet of judaism, the tikkun olam, where people have a moral obligation to help others; not just do good as oneself, but also stop other people from doing bad. that last bit doesnt really matter, cuz im bringing it up so i can talk about katsuya as a police officer to clear his dads name and try and ensure a better future for his brother. he gave up his dreams for them.

i mean, when i say "giving up his dreams", im kinda laughing to myself bc theres no way he ran it past his parents bc if he looked his jewish mother in the eye and said "i want to be a pastry chef" he would not make it out of the room alive. hed go "my dream is to become a pâtissier" and his mom would immediately be like "no its not its to be an accountant" and that would be the end of the discussion

also, i think he would make some of the best fucking challah in the world. hed make matzo ball soup that could make you jizz your pants just looking at it. look me in the eyes and tell me that he doesnt actually go nuts at rosh hashana when he gets to make the round challah with the raisins in it and stuff or whatever else. there is such a crystal clear vision in my mind of him rocking this apron my dad used to have that says "real men make latkes". it was pink and ugly as sin and i think it would be katsuyas most prized possession.

LABRYS:

her name is fucking labrys obviously shes a jewish lesbian. next.

/j i will actually talk about this. like not mentioning the only survivor of her upbringing, which isnt a one to one considering the death match portion of her backstory but still close enough to feel um. relavant to jewish culture. she acts very...stereotypically jewish?

its not entirely the accent, but it is...part of it. so like i know its like a new jersey accent and that the stereotype is new york, i guess? but im not american and i dont rlly know the difference. they look close enough to each other on a map tho so i think it counts

but also shes like kinda confrontational in a way i specifically associate with jewish people or jewish characters? like not really bitchy but argumentative right, shes got this really sarcastic or mocking sense of humour. and girl kvetches with the best of them.

(also, side note: since i made the original list, i found out that the voice actress for aegis in p3 reload, dawn m bennett, is actually jewish! if i were to remake the tier list, aegis would be moved up from "vibes" to "factual" because of this. mentioning that here because of the sister thing :).)

JOKER:

kills g-d which is the jewish dream. this is a another joke.

someone in the replies of the tier list said something abt a possible reason being that he has an "abrahamic figure" as his ult. persona, which could be a good point if satanael was actually an abrahamic figure! but it is not. like ok im not a history guy but satanael is a name used in the 2nd book of enoch, which arguably could be part of jewish "canon" (i know this is actually the term for it but fandom has rotted my brain and it sounds terminally online to use it in terms of real life religiosity) but most rabbis agree it like is not, and theyre kind of who im listening to on this, and quick google search says even in christianity, enoch is debatable? idk

so like satanael isnt in the torah. and if anyone says "oh its just like another name for satan so technically--" shut up i know. satan isnt real in the torah either. ok like "satan" is used as a term, but not as like the specific dude that like rules hell. hes just like at most a specific dude who is not a devil/cast from heaven or whatever, but instead is a lawyer. more often its a concept, something representative of like the urge to go against g-ds will or a kosher life, this "evil inclination" which everyone is born possessing and grapples with when trying to be a good person. NOT THE SAME AS THE CHRISTIAN SATAN. WHICH IS WHAT P5 WAS GOING FOR. SATAN IN JUDAISM IS NOT A "super demon lord" or whatever they call it in the text of the game

satanael isnt an abrahamic figure and i dont think satan is either cuz its so different between religions and honestly i think calling things abrahamic religions, at least w the context i hear of it, is like kind of a misnomer or just kind of generally misleading cuz judaism christianity and islam are all so different and if were talking about this i think whoever invented the term judeochristian should eat a sheet of glass for it because whenever i hear those terms its very clear the person saying it means just christianity but theyre trying to be inclusive without actually putting the work in and thats not the point of this.

ok if im honest, as i think abt it joker isnt like. really... super jewish, in a way that you can point out? its just like... this overall vibe im having trouble explaining which is probably also like super influenced by how much i like him. i want to say that this strict sense of right and wrong that remains uninfluenced by the rest of society is something that clearly creates or maybe just intensifies this like. empathy for other people that reminds me of this concept in judaism which i cant remember the hebrew name of rn but i think its most commonly translated to english as "lovingkindness", one word? or that the whole idea of the phantom thieves can be contributed to tikkun olam. but, on the other hand, even if lovingkindness is what i personally consider one of jokers core character traits, the other one is pure, blinding rage.

im not going to go super into it, because im a few years rusty of torah study bc its only really consistently done in my community for kids preparing for bnai mitzvah cuz of how few people we have in our congregation. but from what i remember, my interpretation of the exact limit between righteous and sinful anger is a bit more... lax than the average jew's, or at least the average rabbi's, meaning mine, lol. either way anger is almost always seen as sinful because its an emotion that can like. turn you from g-d, its the same thing that invokes that "evil inclination" we just talked abt. so, joker textually feels this rage that arsene, his other self, literally refers to as "sacrilegious", something that very clearly states that he is willing to *knowingly* commit sins for this rage and is perfectly capable of causing undue harm to others for it, which is exactly the reason why judaism warns of anger. this means jokers anger is distinctly against jewish teachings.

again, im really lax, my familys reform (/lh) and i think there are some parts of this characterisation that make me feel this rage is overall constructive, especially considering that is what feeds his constant practice of lovingkindness and tikkun olam, but it being such a huge facet of his personality (made worse bc as a silent protagonist, you really have to search to get away from this trait) brings him down on the Jew Scale(tm).

in short, now that im really discussing this id probably move him to incredibly jewish based on vibes or even to just "jewish" no further classification. but even w the undying sinful anger thing i cant not think of him as jewish and i dont think its just bc hes one of my favourite characters of all time.

also that hair texture looking really familiar is all🤔🤔. all im saying that is in the tutorial, instead of "frizzy hair", morgana deffo should have been calling them blondie and jewfro /j /j /j

EDIT AND JOKERS KITCHEN!! JOKERS KITCHEN!! FOOD AS A LOVE LANGUAGE!! IN P5 YOU MAKE FOOD FOR YOUR FRIENDS AND YOU PUT LOVE INTO IT

MORGANA:

i know i put morgana before joker in the tier but i think in order to rlly discuss morgana we needed joker first bc part of my reason for putting them in the same tier is because they really are a pair, do not separate.

anyways, morgana does have a lot of the same problems as joker when it comes to being difficult to pin down. his inclination to tikkun olam is similar, sort of even greater than jokers depending on personal characterisation of joker, but instead of this discrepancy of his jewishness being anger, the ethical conundrum with morgana is sort of. arrogance? like, i have trouble figuring out how to really put into words how i feel abt morganas "lovingkindness", because it is so hard to understand where hes at in terms of empathy?? like. fucking. idk hes definitely a very caring person but its not exactly like

ok i cant figure out how to say it moving on. i used the word arrogance even though i dont really think thats right, because morgana has never seemed haughty. his "arrogance" is really just him making up for an inferiority complex caused by the amnesia thing, its not as if he genuinely totally believes himself to be above the others. but like no matter what it stems from, the way he behaves and his personal pride hurts people. ie the okumura arc, or his entire relationship w ryuuji. he speaks ill of others, belittles them to bring himself up, etc. arrogance and excess pride is as condemned as anger in judaism if not moreso, since its even less useful/constructive to be "arrogant" than it is to be angry. OH ok so what i meant with the hard to figure out his empathy thing is this actually!! hes very caring and has a really notable respect for human life but its always at war with his need to prove himself, so even if when you think about it its like Oh Morgana Is A Really Caring Person, which makes sense because he was created from human desire and as such is really in touch with what people need, the desperation he has to be seen as "worthy" comes off as wanting to be seen as "above", even if it means trying to get the people around him as being considered "below" him.

tldr so if it was just those two traits i think id have to move morgana lower on the list, alongside joker.

HOWEVER. speaking directly to the other jews in the crowd, but morgana is totally textually a golem, right? like not exactly, obviously, but think about it. morganas a being of the velvet room because he was created from "the dregs of human hope" (canonical line from yaldaboath that i think about more than what can be considered healthy tbh), whose job is was and always will be to protect and guide the trickster and his community, the phantom thieves. hes a golem right? am i insane? am i seeing things? i dont care, im not giving up on this interpretation, so morgana is factually and canonically jewish cuz of it.

ZEN:

i do not remember.

as of today id probably move him to either jewish no other classification or not jewish. my b guys. anyways

JUN:

life is indescribable torment, and then hes also got additional, mostly unrelated, mommy issues. judaism 101.

also his suspenders when he was a kid are the most young jewish lad shit in the history of ever like i have seen that exact outfit on a young boy every time i go to temple, and each time it is a different kid

ok more seriously, i really do think juns story-- specifically his relationship with memory-- can easily be extracted into a jewish narrative. like nyarlathotep messed with his memories and convinced him that the other members of the masked circle killed maya right. and so the way he fanatically reminded himself of the past was a mix of trauma and active manipulation. but if i think abt it a certain way i also can see it as like. ok so in judaism memory is really important and like a lot of the time during for example passover, youre meant to refer to yourself as being a jew in egypt, saying "we" instead of "them" and such. but im specifically meaning how important memory/remembrance is in grieving. jun in his grief for mayas perceived death "kept her alive" in a way. she was never forgotten, and so she never died. even though the entire masked circle forgot, from trauma or fear or guilt or whatever, jun held on, remembering her, and so she survived. joker took peoples dreams but his actions also caused them to be completely be forgotten. they were alive, but they were robbed of their ability to be remembered at all, and so they were as good as dead even still breathing and talking.

retroactively, this idea enforces tatsuyas jewishness, considering the entire story of eternal punishment. he refused to forget the masked circle, even though it hurts.

anyways back to jun, i also think the whole repentance thing is important too. he hurt people in his anger and sorrow and spends the rest of his life (until the world is reset at least lol) atoning for his wrongdoings.

also, i know i said kid him is super jewish looking, but he has not gotten better as hes grown up. 17y.o him is exactly the guy your bubbe will pull up on facebook and be like "this is the grandson of my friend or whoever! you should go on a date with him, hes your age! he looks a bit gay but hes a very successful doctor! ...and hes JEWISH YAKNOW...." and ur like "ok bubbe"

ERIKO:

i actually do not recall exactly why she is in this tier specifically. the only thing i for sure remember was that i at least partially placed her here bc of her fascination with the occult.

HIKARI:

ok this one was kinda me goofing. its the whole extended family thing like whats more jewish than being actively discouraged from a creative career for something "safe" and "normal?" bro the aunt might as well have dropped the "being a doctor is very respectable" line in the song.

but like even without that, wanting to be a director or associated with film? hitting her with the jew beam. mazel tov babygirl.

[ethernetmeep]

i have an odd urge to speak a lot today. because of this, i’ve thought of a few different questions and what my answers would be to them. yes this is a little silly. i am separating this just so it doesn’t absolutely destroy someones timeline somewhere. read if you want

“what is your personal philosophy?”

ah, this is… a jarring one to start off with. nonetheless, i think its good to discuss! my personal philosophy is one not really falling under any blatant ones i know off the top of my head like nihilism or absurdism. although i agree with certain absurdism concepts, i like to sort of.. branch out. the following will be what i personally think, i guess;

i like to believe everything has meaning. every small microscopic organism, to the empire state building, to a small amount of chicken wire. everything has some beauty to it. even if it doesn’t have some which is blatant, everything has a sort of creative aspect of itself which is fascinating. i also like to believe things generally have a purpose. if something doesn’t have one which blossoms at the beginning, then a reason may appear in the future. who knows. i personally (someones name popped up when i typed that…? odd.) like to see everything in the world as being worth something, somewhere, somehow. i like to believe the world around me has the capacity to both be nice and hopelessly cruel. i believe everyone deserves the basic right to exist, even if i don’t necessarily agree with what they may believe. i like to think everyone deserves to be happy and live a comfortable life… of course, this comes off as a very kind of ‘peace’ narrative. you can’t always have peace; i know that. sometimes you have to fight to be happy, fight to live. its jarring, and i wish people didn’t have to do that; i wish we as people didn’t have to fight to be happy, that we were all allowed it from the get go. sadly that isn’t always the case. this might be a very odd answer so thats uh.. my bad. i just like the world around me although i realize its quite shitty. i most certainly have the capacity to be aware of many other human faults, but i like trying to put faith into things. if i can, anyway.

“do you consider yourself a good person?”

…haha, i should know better than to ask myself these questions. i think i’m asking the ones i wish i would get and simultaneously dread because they make me think and make me uncomfortable.

i.. don’t really consider myself anything. i don’t think of myself as good, nor do i consider myself.. bad. good and bad are feeble words we as humans use to try and put others into categories of being. i know this because i too have labeled others as good, although it doesn’t really do much besides surround a person with some loose narrative of what they may be like. i tend to flesh out when i say others are good people, however; i note their kind natures or kind actions and cite those as things which make them good in the sense they’re helpful and uplifting people to be around.

i… am…. Um. i.. don’t know. others say im a good person, but i wouldn’t label myself as quote good. that feels weirdly egotistical.

“what would you describe yourself as, if not good?”

just general things i do, i suppose. i consider myself someone who overthinks about many things, is abnormally sensitive, and is rather outgoing in the sense i like to help others. i guess im kind, but just because someone is kind doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good person… i’m just, like, existent. i’m nothing special, truly. i don’t think i ever will be something special, just kind of mediocre, and im fine with that

“do you consider yourself a lover or a hater?”

lover, indefinitely. this is ironic, considering i for the almost entirety of my life thought love was sort of just something people made up, but it’s accurate. i seem to forget you can love things but not love them in a romantic sense. im just so blatantly used to the romantic love that general love is sometimes less apparent in my mind. i’ve been getting better at recognizing the general kind of love people feel..

by used to the romantic love, i mean more so in media. as mentioned above, i thought for a good chunk of my life romantic love was just.. fake. not real. embellished, false. i thought it was some weird social normality which i was never in on; i felt like an outcast to the whole idea. when i realized it was an actual thing, i remember having an existential crisis over it.

anyway, yeah, lover all the way. i hate very little people and hate very little things. i guess with that in mind..

“why are you so forgiving?”

man, a question i ask myself every single day. asked myself, from myself. god this post is probably weird to read.

ummm, lets see… i had to be emotionally mature at a young age, and because of that i seem to be a bit more mature than others in my age range when it comes to social miscommunications and whatnot. i also have realized it takes an immense amount of energy out of me whenever i think about events for an extended period of time. when i feel something emotionally, i feel it. it hits like a tidal wave. as you could possibly tell from any of my ramblings, i tend to be obsessive over very small things. and compulsive. and uh.. well.. i mean, its both a genetics result and simultaneously from upbringing that i seem to have these tendencies. its jarring to admit, but its true.

i think i also am a bit rational when it comes to these things.. but simultaneously not? unsure. what i think is that im not like.. petty. others around me have seemingly held the anger/distain i likely should, but i haven’t held much of it myself. i’m not the kind of person to insult others because of simple personal happenings. i don’t talk of others with distain even when i have every right to. i talk about others neutrally and almost matter-of-factly. if thats a word. not even, though; i mean, i talk neutrally, yes, but i also am not blindsided by emotions either. if some Guy clocks me in the face and is an amazing musician, i’m still gonna be honest and say he’s an amazing musician. its not because I’ve forgotten he’s clocked me in the face, not at all, but because i want to be honest with what im saying. someone can do something flawed and still have good parts to them; one action doesn’t define who someone is. people change & all that jazz

“why are you so honest?”

uh.. i guess because i hate lying to others. it makes me uncomfortable; like im putting up a façade. i like being my true self and saying whats on my mind; i also like being literal. although metaphors and allusions are always fun, i also wish to be direct with things which are important to me or in general are best said directly. being quietly uncomfortable and laughing nervously doesn’t get a point across; if someones being a dick, i’m gonna say that to them. vice versa, if someone is being extremely nice & or friendly, i’m going to tell them that and let them know! its just the way i prefer to function.

with honesty in mind, i guess its also worth saying i don’t like saying things i don’t necessarily mean. it makes me uncomfortable. if i tell you something/give a compliment, then i probably mean it. i don’t just ask or say things for no reason… good example of this is uh, i don’t know, asking if a friend needs anything. i mean, i mean it; if they need something ill try and get it. same with asking if an acquaintance needs anything. if i didn’t want to ask, i wouldn’t. if i didn’t want to do something, i probably wouldn’t do it; im very direct in that regard

“are you still afraid of not being your own person?”

…yes.

ive gotten better at being more, shall we say, level-headed, but its definitely a fear of mine. i forgot if a sentence im thinking of was actually said or simply internalization of what someone else said. either way, it fucked with me; made me think i was just a puppet on someone elses strings. i was petrified of this, as ive been trying what is essentially throughout my entire life to be my own person, be ‘myself’. learning i apparently wasn’t this was like a slap in the face. no, was a slap in the face. i still am reeling from it, as you can probably tell, but i believe my best way of thinking is this;

inevitably, everyone is affected by someone. you get affected by your guardians, friends, peers. you make friends with those with similar interests, or gain interests from being introduced to them. thats simply how human relations work. thats fine, thats normal. inevitably, nobody is a quote clean slate. i am not the same person i was before i met savanna, because her being in my life changed the way i functioned. people change people, is what im saying.

yet, despite this, you still have free reign of what you choose to do. i on my own volition go out of my way to do things which are pleasing to me. i may like the same movie you do, but you and i are separate entities. different people. we aren’t carbon copies of one another, as no human is really meant to be so. everyone is meant to be themselves in whatever sense of the word.

..although i still understand why it was a fear, because i can sometimes feel a compulsion to look into things others enjoy as almost a prerequisite to being a friend. i tend to be afraid being myself is simply not enough for others, as i don’t see what i necessarily bring to the table that someone else cannot. i feel as if im easily replaceable, even with others telling me i am not. i think ive been getting better at looking into things solely because i want to, but sometimes i still feel worried im not being enough of a friend, i guess

this is… augh, very emotionally vulnerable. hey at least i did something for like an hour. i might go to bed early

[maamlet]

So i am someone who is made uncomfortable by the Q word and still feels it a slur. I however think it is a word that can be very inclusive to people who dont fall in certain "categories",i guess, in the gender and sexuality spectrum right. Its somewhat difficult. Its very true reclamation is a personal act but for me and my feeling towards this word, it almost feels as though feelings like that are generally ignored bc of people who do find it comfortable to indentify as this. I often get "well are we not supposed to identity as this then?" And things along this such as that I am trying to police words. How do you feel is the right, or more rather appropriate response? Is the evolution of these terms and language limited to "reclaiming" former slurs and the such?

buddy theres not a lot i can do to help because im entirely in the same space as you on this, mentally. like PERSONALLY i grew up in. fucking rural (and pseudo-rural) appalachia. so my relationship with that particular word is.  fraught, to say the least. now naturally i dont mind other people referring to themselves in that way, in the same way i dont mind people self-identifying as dykes or fags or whatever. BUT i think its pretty disrespectful to refer to the entire community as the same word, one which any of us who have lived in rural settings are going to have a troubled history with. not to mention! i know who i am, theres no confusion about it, and i have actively chosen NOT to use that specific word to describe myself, both due to my trauma from bullying, AND due to me KNOWING WHO I AM!!! thats not me. i am trans, i am a lesbian, i have chosen not to identify as queer. this should be my choice, but a bunch of stupid assholes want cishet freaks to have clearance to call us all a slur as a blanket term

[inkdemonapologist]

Okay but I do actually want to know both the things you love and the things you could rant about from DCTL?

OH BOY UHHHHHH okay lets see, I'm gonna see if I can do the "add a readmore after you post it" thing and see if that'll keep it stable.......

But also, much like Sammy, I am incapable of shutting up unless you strike me in the head with a blunt object, so uh, forgive my wordiness:

THINGS I ENJOY:

- DCTL gave us Sammy's ink addiction and like, if you had asked me before all this "what would you most like to see in a franchise?" I would not have answered "one of the characters drinks ink accidentally and then discovers that he can't stop" but boy that sure is my favourite concept that I LOVE to see handled literally any other way than how the book handled it!!!

- I like what it added to Tom and Allison and Norman!! Like, it's not big twists on their characters or anything -- we already knew Tom felt he was doing the wrong thing, so getting to see his CRUSHING GUILT over creating the machine isn't New Information, but it's nice to see and understand more of him; for all of them I feel a lot more attached to them after getting to see more of them as people.

- Like 90% of the "I LOVE IT" category for me is how the book handled Joey, and Buddy's relationship with Joey. The way Joey isn't a Sinister Mastermind Who’s Just Screwing With Everyone but just manipulative in a more mundane way -- someone who thinks of himself as just the guy with the vision to call the shots; he wants what he wants and this is how he's learned to get it; he exploits people not through devious schemes, but just by offering them something that they want or need and asking too much in return, expecting their loyalty for his favours. And the way he interacts with Buddy, making Buddy complicit with him and keeping Buddy off-balance and insecure while making him a favourite and treating him as Special is just PERFECT --  gives a lot of content to kind of extrapolate off of when pondering what must've drawn the others in and convinced them to ignore the red flags. I was initially frustrated with the idea of Buddy not being an artist and jUST DECIDING TO LEARN TO ANIMATE ON THE SPOT ("I've never done this before but I'm sure I can just do an artist's job" is a weirdly common throwaway thing in media and as an artist iTS A PET PEEVE) but actually the way they use his plagiarism to make him trapped in a lie in ways Joey doesn't even realise ends up being a neat echo of other employees (coughTOMcough), who were involved in much graver sins but suddenly felt they couldn't object or they'd lose their one chance, just like Buddy. There's a lot here that I think is really great.

OKAY THATS THE GOOD STUFF, LET'S COMPLAIN ABOUT SAMMY:

- Uncomfortable Bigotry Vagueness that we all knew was gonna be in this list -- I dunno man, a guy committing a microaggression and getting startled and defensive when he's called out for it doesn't necessarily completely ruin his character I GUESS, but the way this was handled is just SO WEIRD AND VAGUE that it's uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. "Is Tom black?" is a question I actually have to ask because the text sort of implies he is while also dancing around it and apparently Word of God said he's not??? which makes Buddy's comment nonsensical???? And I mean, you could go that route, since Buddy wonders to himself if Sammy talks to everyone like this -- HE ACTUALLY DOES!! Even within the text of the novel, he uses "Joey" instead of Mr. Drew, which is consistent with his audiologs in the game -- but that makes the writing suggest "this character THINKS this guy might be racist but actually they're reading too much into it and it wasn't racially motivated at all, he's just a jerk!!" wHICH IS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE ICKY??? Anyway like yeah I guess it's not inconsistent with his character that while Sammy Lawrence may not have any specific grudge against minorities he has probably not checked his privilege or done the work to challenge his own internal biases, but “Your Fav Probably Contributes To Systemic Racism In Ways He Hasn’t Considered, As Do We All When Our Assumptions Go Unchecked” is still a wild thing to wade through in a fun story about demonic cartoons

- but yknow so is T H E   H O L O C A U S T

- Sammy's voice is wrong. I'm actually okay with him being a weird awkward asshole, I already kind of assumed he was and that's part of why I like him!! but there's so many places he doesn't quite... talk like himself? And not just in terms of word choice, like -- so in his monologue at the end, he's described as talking so quickly that his words are "tumbling out faster than he can speak them," which initially seems fine; like yeah, that's a Standard Scene we're familiar with, the person who's been Driven Mad With Insight becoming more and more manic as they try to convey it -- until I tried to imagine it and realised that Sammy doesn't talk like this. That's a really consistent quality I always notice about his voice; whether he's almost giddily excited in prophet mode, or he’s his irritated and overworked human self, or he's violently angry and his voice has that echo effect -- he always speaks very deliberately. He enunciates carefully. There's some circumstances where I'd buy this as showing that he's Not Himself, but I feel like those would kind of need to be in the middle of his transformation, not at the end of it.

- In fact a lot of the scenes with Sammy kind of have this feeling -- that it's not necessarily an exploration of Sammy as a character, but that he is filling a trope or archetype role here. Once he's fully transformed he excitedly describes the process as more of a mental compulsion, which is in contrast to his weird yeerk-infected behaviour when trying to get ink from Miss Lambert. Both of those scenes don't seem wrong on their own because they fit tropes we know -- but they feel weird when you try to fit them together.

- I also just in general am not a fan of the ink acting like a weird yeerk. It can be a parasite I guess but when it starts overwriting and puppeting people and crawling around to enter their body that's just a completely DIFFERENT kind of supernatural story and it’s not what im here for!!!

- THE FREAKIN!!! HE WILL SET US FREE!!!! WHY????????? SAMUEL LAWRENCE WHAT IS HE SETTING YOU FREE FROM??????? Sammy has No Motive for any of what he's doing, other than just Ink Made Me Do It. The whole thing that was INTERESTING about Sammy as a character is the contrast between this frustrated, ornery musician with no specific love for the cartoons he works on, and the manically devoted cultist he becomes. What happened in the middle there? What made him desperate enough to shift his mindset so much? "Something supernatural made him do things that don't benefit him in any way" is a very boring answer to this question!!! Susie was a victim who implies that her transformation has forced her to do things she didn't want to do, but we can still see her motive -- she wanted to be Alice, so she took a sketchy offer to try to get what she wanted. Even now, her violence echoes that goal -- to be a more perfect Alice. What did Sammy want? WHO KNOWS. Even in his ink-addled state at the end, we don't understand what he hopes the Ink Demon will even do for him, and in fact he seems to be responsible for creating the very scenario he's begging Bendy to reverse in the game.

- [sighs loudly into my hands]

- Overall I'm left wondering if the author just..... didn't like Sammy Lawrence? And I don't mean that in the sense of him being a rude jerk -- like, Joey is not a good person, but the author seems to be interested in him and in what makes him tick. There doesn't seem to be that same interest in Sammy. Sammy's role in the story is that of a monster, transformed into something murderous, unable to prevent or choose it. He's not a victim of anyone but the ink, no one had to manipulate him or figure out how his brain worked or what he wanted or what he feared or give him any reason to do the things he does -- ink got in his mouth and overwrote his personality. And we don't even get to see that change, not really. He starts out angry and defensive and continues being angry and defensive up until his very last scene, denying his ink-stealing but not really much else. We see all his prophetic sketches but we never see hints of this in him, we never see him start to act more excited and hopeful, we never see him seek out the demon he desires to please. Why do we never see Sammy struggling between his dismissive angry front and a building religious fervour he can't quite suppress? We don't get to see any of the in-between. There's no interest at all in why or even what it looked like as Sammy became what he became, when, to be honest, I suspect interest in precisely that is one reason he's such a big fav.

- It's funny, in a "cries into my hands" kind of way, when Sammy is just knocked in the head while monologuing and immediately removed from the story without further mention, like...... that sure is the pattern with him, isn't it, he just tries very very hard and never actually gets to matter, but it also fits right in here, too, in this book that doesn't want to think about his motives -- he rambles nonsensically, explaining nothing, gets one trademark phrase, and then is hastily removed so the story doesn't have to think about him anymore.

...................I think that's most of it.

...

Y'all............ I'm not ready for Sent From Above.......... I'm just not.... I'm not emotionally ready...... like..... Sammy has to be in that right..... he’s Susie’s boss and she has that big crush on him..................................... I’m not ready

[cowboy-kin]

god time to get kinda personal on tumblr bc idk where else to talk abt this but (thinking out loud abt things like attraction sexuality identity and labels)

i dont feel attracted to anyone. like any person i would describe as "hot" in reality is just like "hey you look super cool" and theres nothing sexual abt it, i dont feel any type of physical desire towards them. theres so many things that could explain this but its too much to unpack and i realize the "why" doesnt rlly matter when it wont change how i feel

what worries me most abt this is the labels i chose not being applicable to me anymore, like im lying and taking something thats not mine. the thing is even since i started IDing as a lesbian there was always a lingering feeling that it doesnt rlly fit? like it didnt feel right? but "butch" has always been something ive connected with, even before i starting calling myself a lesbian. its not something i wanna give up

thats kinda why lately ive rlly disliked applying labels on myself. like i understand theyre there for ppl to find each other and build communities but as far as identity i just wanna be me. i wanna be ok with not having labels to identify with bc labels arent what determine "who" i am. and even then i feel much more defined by other things in my life than i do by my sexuality, like family and culture and interests and even gender (another long topic altho my feelings towards gender are a lot less vague)

idk i still prefer women over men i guess like i dont see myself being romantically intimate with a man, but when it comes to sex i just dont click with anyone. and i dont think im ace bc i still like sex but so far theres no one im attracted to enough to want to be physically intimate with (i also believe that sexual attraction is a lot more broad than what society portrays and trying to categorize all that into “ace” and “not ace” is just a disservice to everyone, bc when ppl inevitably dont fit into either category we just end up with endless micro-labels that complicate everything and make ppl feel like theyre abnormal and dont belong anywhere when theyre just being human but, again, thats another topic) (also before this gets taken out of context im not saying asexuality isnt real)

in the end im not concerned about not being able to “find someone” bc im not broken up abt being single. my issues lie more with identity and labels and whether or not i found the “correct” ones

[bpd-italy]

me: i have 8/9 symptoms of bpd and the one symptom i don’t have is one i don’t even have access to because i’m only sixteen and i want to go to therapy so i can get a proper diagnosis and hopefully get treatment so i can stop ruining my own life and feeling like shit everyday.

my parents: no u just need to go outside and get some fresh air!!! u dont have bpd ur too sweet n innocent to have bpd everyone knows people with bpd are crazy psychos uwu ur normal precious baby girl just read the bible god will help u <33333

me, describing an in depth bpd symptom i have to my parents that Normal People do not deal with:

my parents: oh everyone does that honey!!! you’re normal stop trying so hard to have problems!!! not everything needs a label!!!!!

oh gee it’s almost fucking like the reason i’m so persistent on naming things is because i RECOGNIZE I HAVE A PROBLEM AND WANT TO FIX THE PROBLEM SO I CAN ACTUALLY TRY TO ENJOY THE LAST TWO YEARS OF MY CHILDHOOD I HAVE SINCE I DIDN’T GET TO WHEN I REALLY WAS A CHILD

i can literally tell my mom until im blue in the face how i have all these bpd symptoms like splitting, black and white thinking, abandonment issues, uncontrollable emotions, mood swings, fps, feeling wrong and evil, chronic feelings of emptiness, recklnessness, oversharing, spontaneous suicide attempts and self harm, paranoia, obsession with literally anybody who shows me kindness, etc. but she’s just like “oh honey youre just normal not everything needs a name!!!!!!!!!”

like oh ok i guess we dont fucking need a name for breast cancer since it’s just cancer and it’s not like it makes it easier to identify things by giving them names right???? yep mental illness consists of only depression and anxiety nothing more there’s only two categories yep uwuwuwuwu

it’s not like i lost my best fucking friend who i trusted with my life and then left me with even more trust issues and tried to kill myself three times in one week because of my bpd symptoms or anything!!! it’s not like i’ve been cutting since i was ten fucking years old and need more than just a bottle of medication and sunlight to fix my fucked up brain and years of being told i’m wrong and should die until i was convinced they’re right and genuinely can’t learn to love myself

nope it’s just depression and anxiety cause everyones got depression and anxiety and nothing else fucking matters

oh and how about next time i try to talk to you about my ocd you dont fucking go “oh honey everyone does that!!!”

no mom not everyone has fucking intrusive thoughts about having sex with children or elderly people thats NOT FUCKING NORMAL THATS WHY ITS A MENTAL DISORDER HAVING A GROSS THOUGHT SOMETIMES IS NOT THE SAME AS HAVING CONSTANT INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS THAT YOU KNOW YOU HATE BUT CAN’T PUSH THEM AWAY AND END UP CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOR TO ACCOMODATE TO THE THOUGHTS OR ELSE ~SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN~ OR ~THE THOUGHTS WILL BECOME TRUE~

but no you’re neurotypical as they fucking get so it doesn’t matter what i say your psychology degree means shit in this situation and you don’t seem to get that you can’t be a therapist to a person you already know :///

my medication helped my ocd tremendously but nothing has happened to help my bpd symptoms. i haven’t even gotten a fucking diagnosis so for all i know it could be something else but i’m literally 99% positive it’s bpd and i want. fucking. therapy. some kind of medication to fix my mood swings may help but it won’t magically fucking fix my brain.

and my dad’s convinced i just need to talk to him and don’t need therapy bc “he had it worse” and “knows more pain than me” and other utter fucking superior complex bullshit why do you think i dont fucking talk to either of y’all you think since you were physically abused somehow you have it worst and nobody else is allowed to hurt lmfao if you really knew pain youd know that pain isn’t a fucking competition

all my mom does is blame the fucking computer like yes the computer contributed to my problems. 3+ fucking years ago. taking it away now doesn’t mean fucking shit it’ll just make me even more isolated than i already am since i’m fucking homeschooled and have no goddamn friends and severe social anxiety.

[lechet]

flower answers

1) 💖 have you ever been in love? are you in love rn?

there is different loves, there is fresh, new infatuated love, wild and all-consuming, and then there is old love, quiet and content to be left alone; i have been both! i am nothing right now. 

2) 🌹 what do you think are the most romantic flowers other than roses?

i dont very much like flowers tbh like as gifts. orchids are pretty. carnations are A++ nice. i dont like roses!! at all!! 

3) 🍫 do you have a favorite chocolate or sweet?

lindor truffle chocolates are amazing

4) 💗 how do you show you care? what do people do that makes you feel loved?

talk to me!! for me them, i talk to them too. i dont do much. i dont woo too good. nothing ever happens so we dont try anymore with anything.

6) 🍰 what’s your favorite dessert to eat? do you have a favorite to make?

dessert huh. they got those lil tiny desserts from olive garden for like 2.99, those things are /great/. tres leches cakes are good too.

7) 💘 you would fall in love with someone who…

i like geeks, i guess. i like video games. i like people not making fun of my shit. HM. i dont know? i havent been in love in a while

8) 🌷  what’s your type?

someone that’ll - god - yeah. i dont!! im not sure!!

9) 🍨 describe your ideal first date, what about it makes it perfect?

i hate dates. ive been on like 2 dates. once was to the movies. the guy - GOD THATS ANOTHER STORY he was my teacher in high school we’ll tell yall about THAT shit thats a wild one - put his arm around me literally the whole time in the movie theatre and it was the most uncomfortable thing, second guy took me out to eat and when i told him actually i wanted to just be friends he completely stopped talking to me, so that was great.

10) 💝 what gift would you like to receive? what type do you like to give?

i dont want nothin thank u !!

12) 💋 lipgloss, lipstick, or chapstick?

c...chapstick? i dont wear the other stuff. i use chapstick as medicine... do people wear it as an Accessory why is it in this category 

14) 💓 what do people do that makes your heart skip a beat? what makes your heart melt?

im not sure if this is suppose to be spicy or not so im not sure how to answer. im sorry. i let u down

15) 💐 how would you woo someone? how do you flirt?

“i put on my robe and wizard hat”

17) 💫 do you get crushes easily? what makes you fall for someone?

not generally, i guess, i do like for em to be a little bit, Rough, god its been so long since i was last in a relationship?? i dont know anymore

[combustitties]

I wanna ask all 👀

1. First sex experience?

i was like.. less than ten and my friend asked me to touch his ding dong

2. Celebrity threesum?

oh god idk kjdfgxjch

3. Would you ever have a devils threesum?

urban dictionary says this is legit just a threesome w two other guys so uh Yeah I Guess. why does that get a fancy name.

4. Ever been rimmed?

nah. idrk if i’d like it either jkgdfjkhnb

5. Would you ever rim someone?

??? maybe

6. Weirdest sexual experience?

my friends and i stole her mom’s vibrator and used a bunch of lotion in a plastic cup as lube and masturbated together. wild.

7. Weirdest solo sexual experience?

i was jackin it in the shower once and i think i mightve squirted but i dunno bc SHOWER it felt like a water balloon popping in my vagooter

8. Every have a one night stand?

nope

9. Thought on r*pe play?

hmmmmmmmmm,,,, i dunno like so long as it’s between consenting adults who cares but for myself i dunno if i’d like it?? like. the loss of control and consensual non-con w safewords sounds chill but i dunno like actual roleplay would b. unpredictable.

10. As a guy, what do think is a female’s idea penis?

11. What’s your ideal penis?

my boo’s tf

12. Ever have sex in public?

technically i blew a friend in middle school on a creek trail thing.

13. Describe a sex fantasy that you want to try in detail.

wow i’ve suddenly forgotten everything ive ever thought

14. Do you consider your genitals attractive?

nahhhh

15. What bra size do you find yourself most attracted to?

i don’t think i have a preference

16. Favorite sex position?

shrug emoji haven’t had enuf to develop a preference

17. Least favorite sex positions?

^

18. What makes sex ‘bad’ to you?

if no one’s enjoying themselves

19. Ever have sex with someone loud?

i’m sure he could get louder 👀

20. Have you ever thought a partner faked an orgasam?

i?? don’t think so???? god i hope not??

21. Have you ever faked an orgasam?

nope

22. Thoughts on accidental anal?

how do u accidentally stick it in the butt

23. Have you ever had sex with food?

technically i tried to use a hot dog in a condom as a dildo when i was. uh. young and stupid.

24. For giving oral to a female, you prefer them to ride your face, or them laying down (or other)

ive never done lol idk

25. Weirdest thing someone’s ever said to you during sex?

???????????? nothing comes to mind.

26. Ever prematurely cum?

pffft is there such a thing? all orgasms good orgasms. i wonder what the world record for fastest orgasm is. lmao lets beat it (HA accidental pun.)

27. Do you prefer you or your partner to cum first?

my partner ndfgkjdfnh

28. Ever have a kink a partner thought was weird?

? i? don’t know????? 👀👀😫😫

29. Thoughts on drunk sex, or sex where your sober and your partner semiconscious?

i can’t stand being sober around not-sobers bc issues but if consent was given for those circumstances prior and we’re both fukt up then um yes pls

30. If your partner made you a sex toy from their genitals would you be creeped out or…?

gimme gimme gimme

31. Ever have a safe word, if so, what was it?

i never used it with anyone but, hyacinth. i like the traffic light system more tho.

32. Thoughts on partner sharing?

gut reaction is grr but w plenty of communication and negotiation and talking i don’t think i’d have a real problem w it. i don’t think i’d want another partner tho.

33. Weirdest sex story you’ve heard?

oh god idk

34. What gives you the most confidence during sex?

being not sober and the lights being off or v dim

35. What feels better for you sex or oral sex?

sex :o

36. Do you like sloppy blowjobs?

giving them hella

37. Which feels better blowjob or blowjob and hands?

38. Most viewed porn categories?

rough, and sex machines.

39. Thoughts on knife play?

hnnnnnn sharp shiney good. idk about the actual cutting tho i’m recovered from s.h kjdfgkdljf

40. Can you be intimate if your pet is in the room?

yea so long as he’s not up in my grill

41. I’d you ever had the chance for a threesum with twins would you do it?

...probably not?

42. Are you ok with your partner owning sex toys?b

?? tf yes

43. Are you ok with your partner using toys to finish after sex?

hella. no bad feels just whatever works ^_^

44. Are you ok with your partner mastubating. (Instead of going to you for help)

duh tf i don’t own them

45. Are you a fan of cuddles after sex?

YES

46. Do you care how many sexual partners your partner had?

no????

47. If you had the chance to join an orgy, would you?

...not sober

48. What’s your thoughts about watching porn with a partner?

hmmmmm. nice.

49. Are you ok with your partner watching porn to get off? (Instead of going to you?)

again, yes, wtff

50. As a guy, do you consider your girlfriend kissing other girls as cheating?

51. If you and your partner broke up for a week but got back together how would you react finding out they had sex during that time?

i mean. i dunno. if we were legit broken up with no intention of getting back together then whatever.

52. Are you ok with your partner posting nudes online?

yes what is up w these possessive ass questions

53. Has anyone ever said the wrong name during sex with you?

not that ive noticed dkfjgvdfjkhn

54. Ever had sex to just get it out of the way?

no???? wtf was this written by a Straight

55. Have you ever had sex in your parents bed?

NO GJKFGH

56. Favorite place to cum?

anywhere anytime lol

57. Do you prefer your partner to a Bush or shaved? (Which do you find more aesthetically pleasing)

whatever they want lol idc

58. How old were you when you first bought condoms?

my mom bought me some when i was like 12 it was mortifying. i still have yet to purchase them myself. WAIT NO YES I DID i was like 13 and it was for a friend bc she was too embarrassed.

59. Have you ever tried flavored condoms?

i haven’t but i wanna yummm lollipop without the cals

60. Would you ever let a stranger watch you and your partner have sex?.

uhhhhhh. not unless we were being paid

61. What’s the worst thing that’s aroused you?

i used to be really fucking embarrassed about my daddy kink

62. Would you ever have sex with a guy who had a spliced dick?

wh. okay i have to google this.

UM. OKAY. I GUESS?? WH.

63. Would you ever have sex with someone with genital piercings?

sure why not

64. Thoughts on sleep sex?

GOD yes. esp on the receiving end but all around a+

65. How easily do you get aroused?

aroused in general p easily ig? but im ace so idk i don’t ever feel like i NEEED it

66. Explain the time you got aroused at the worst time?

any time in public bc i blush too easily

67. Have you ever received oral from someone with a tongue piercing, did it feel any different?

i has not

68. Have you ever accidentally hurt your partner during intimacy, how? And did you continue after?

i? think i totally kneed him at least once. but ya

69. Ever 69 :p

not YET

70. Would you ever give someone oral underwater?

YES pool sex or hot tub sex is a kink of mine ever since i got off with a hot tub jet. and breath play. so like hella. i have a sensory issue with water on my eyelids tho and i don’t think goggles are all that sexy sooo njdfgjkfhn

71. Would you ever have sex on the beach?

idk maybe. that’s a lot of sand to keep track of.

72. Do you prefer your own touch or a partners?

not my own ksjdnfjkgh

73. Why do men slap their penis on their partner? Does it feel good???

i dunno WHY but it feels somewhat objectifying in a good way to ME so likeee

74. For mastubating do you use lube?

nah

75. Is there some place you don’t like being touched during intimacy?

my sides feel hurt really easily like even if u poke it it HURTS i think it’s a medical thing but ive never brought it up at the drs. and my ears. that’s weird.

76. Do you prefer your partner to knead you head or pull your hair?

uh both? both yes? both good

77. Has a condom ever fallen off during sex?

lowkey sjkdfhnzskjghfh

78. Have you ever lost arousal during intimacy, did you keep going?

no??? like im generally always turned on gettin it on n it’s a gr8 time but my meds just fuck with my ability to actively get off UGH

79. Have you ever gotten cum in your eye?

no *knocks on wood*

80. Weirdest compliment you’ve gotten?

ive had people compliment my feet and that’s not my kink so i think it’s kinda weird.

[uncle-spice]

89 sexy questions

1. First kiss? 7th grade at a concert at the park near my house. 💜 2. First time masturbating? Probably 8th grade when my friend goated me into buying a sex toy. 3. First sex toy? A pink 7 inch vibe First kink tried? With or without a partner? With was breathplay, and without was tying myself up. 4. First time doing oral? The summer after freshman year at my boyfriends house. 5. First time having sex? Also in the summer after freshman year at my boyfriends house 6. Biggest turn on? Probably touching of my sides or lower back.. 7. Biggest turn off? Idk long nails? Or when someone takes too long to cum 8. Quickest way to get horny? Honestly im nearly always so just lots of touching or fondling can get me there 9. Weirdest thing that ever turned you on? Probably rape bc thats pretty weird 10. Top 3 places to be touched? Sides, spine, butt 11. Ultimate fantasy? Being dominated by a hot boi who’s down for whatever. 12. Do you like the idea of a three or moresome? Eh.. i mean if they’re hot i gues, and down for making me the center of attention. 13. Do you send nudes? Do you like receiving them? Not often. And most of the nudes i get are gross or have tic tac dicks so i usually dont bother but i do take nudies just for myself 14. Sex or masturbation? Hard choice, but probably sex. 15. Spit or swallow? It depends if im deep throating or not and what he tastes like. Either way ill probably swallow. 16. Cut or uncut dicks? Cut but i dont judge as long as its a cute boi that can use it well 17. Rough or sensual sex? A bit of both? Passionate is a better word for me. 18. Oldest person you’d sleep with? As of right now? Probably 22 19. Loud or quiet partners? Eh, depends where we are. I dont want you waking my roommates but if no ones here i wanna hear if im doing a good job or not. 20. How much foreplay do you like? As much as my partners up for 21. How much teasing do you like? A lot but not to the point where i dont get rewarded in the end.. 22. What is too big for you to take? Idfk a 18 inch horse dick? I’ve taken at the most 8 inches. 23. Do you do hookup or only sleep with a partner? 24. Partner though i wouldn’t decline a hookup 25. How much kissing do you like during sex? Lots lots lots 26. What’s the most attractive part of the body Idk I’m a big fan of legs, noses and hair 27. Favourite place to have sex? Cars or the bedroom for me. Though ive really wanted to fuck at a concert.. 28. Would you have sex in public? Depends if its a legal area, and if others are gonna be grossed out or not 29. Last place you had sex? My ex’s house 30. Where would you most like to have sex? A car or concert 31. Do you like spontaneous sex, or do you need to be in the mood? I’m usually up for spontaneous sex but if i dont feel good you better put that dick back where it came from me so help me 32. Could you go through with a hookup at a strangers house Probably 33. What’s your biggest kink? Idk if i can answer that but domination, breath play and roleplay are my top 3 34. What’s your limit? Weird shit like furries, shit and stuff like that. 35. Are you okay with name calling in bed? Yes yes yes. 36. Would you do any BDSM? Yessss as long as i dont die i guess 37. Do you prefer to tie somebody up or be tied up? Being tied up. 38. Favourite type of bondage? Light stuff like scarves or bandanas 39. Do you like orgasm denial/forced orgasm? Eh sure. 40. Do you like overstimulation? Ehhhh 41. Do you like having pain involved? Yaz 42. Do you like biting/being bitten? Both both both 43. Have you ever been made to/made somebody beg for it? Eh i made my ex beg though i really wish someone else were man enough to make me 44. Do you have any strange or extreme kinks? Eh, im sorta into water sports and choking. But thats about as far as it goes in the “extreme” category. 45. Have any roleplaying preferences? Well im super into non con. But I’m also into play a school girl/boy, I’ve done a starwars one, and maybe some daddy/son play 46. Do you own sex toys? How many? Yes and 3 not including lubes 47. Favourite Sex Toy? Probably my newer pink vibe 48. What do you masturbate to? Either music porn or my imagination i guess 49. How often do you masturbate? At the max 2 times a week 50. How often do you use sex toys to masturbate? Nearly every time 51. Do you masturbate with penetration? Yeah dood 52. Do you go for multiple rounds or settle at one or no orgasms? Usually when i have sex I’ll try going for more rounds but when it comes to masturbation if i feel satisfied ill stop. 53. Do you enjoy giving oral? Yes! I love giving oral!!! 54. Do you prefer giving or receiving oral? I prefer giving but getting it isn’t half bad either. 55. What makes you orgasm the fastest when receiving oral? Idk hearing them moan against me? 56. Do you have a preferred technique for giving oral? I like taking my time and kissing and licking and doing it real sweetly 57. Can you deepthroat? Yes but its not my facorite thing in the world to do. 58. Do you do anal? Yes! With proper build up or with toys 💜 Top or bottom? 59. As much as I’d love to be a bottom, i usually have to take over as a top bc there aren’t many guys who actually like being a top. 60. Favourite position? Idk with my legs up or doggy style 61. How often do you do unprotected sex? Nearly everytime ive had sex (i know it was dumb but i haven’t had sex in quite a while and ive learned from those mistakes) 62. How loud are you in bed? Eh im pretty noisy, but mostly loud mewling and gasps 63. Do you enjoy having nipples played with? Not really bc im trans and I’m really self conscious about my chest. 64. Do you like/dislike/love/hate cum? Love!!! 65. How good are you at dirty talk? Not.good.at.all. 66. Do you get sleepy after an orgasm? Depends. Some times im real tired but others i feel like i could run a marathon. 67. Do you like wearing/seeing people in lingerie? I like wearing it when im alone though I’d be way too embarrassed to wear it around my partner 68. Do you masturbate or have sex with clothes on? Yes! 69. What’s your favourite style of underwear? Boxers i guess 70. Are stockings/thigh highs a turn on? Yes! 71. Ever had somebody say no to a kink you suggested trying? Not really though one guy tried getting me to do raw anal and i noped out real quick 72. Do you trim, shave or leave pubic hair untouched? How do you prefer partners? Depends if im in a relationship or not. If i am i will trim if not i wont. Though i do lile my partners with some hair. 73. How many orgasms can you have in a day? Idk i never counted but more than 2 74. How many other people know your dick/bra size? Not many?? 75. What do you wear to bed? Usually a t shirt and boxers 76. Do you eat ass? Do you like having your ass eaten? No, and I’ve had my ass eaten and it wasn’t great and was kind of uncomfortable tbh 77. Try to describe how orgasm feels for you. It’s a mix between a fun burn and having to pee. 78. Have you ever been to a strip club? How was it? If not, would you? No and i probably would if i had people to go with. 79. Fun questions!Do you name your genitalia? No but if i did it’d probably be an Adam 80. What would be your stripper name? Pussy boi 81. Any funny sex stories? Well me and my ex were having sex in his swimming pool and his mom came outside and couldn’t see the lower half of me, and thought we were hugging and was like “awwwe” and i was dying bc it felt really good and i couldn’t do anything and he wouldn’t stop moving his hips. 82. What food if any would you use during sex? 83. Idk whipped cream or something i can lick off 84. Would you give somebody a sex toy as a gift? Yes and i have 85. What’s the weirdest porn you’ve ever seen? ET porn. Look it up and be horrified. 86. Do you often get horny in public? Yes. 87. Ever used something that isn’t made for sex in the bedroom? I’ve used a baseball bat and i have no regrets 88. Have you ever walked in on somebody or been walked in on? Yes by my mother and my ex’s mother but we usually pulled away close enough to make it seem like we weren’t doing anything 89. Do you have any friends you’d sleep with? Oh hell yes. Many. Though of course I’d never tell them that…

[seagreenflowers]

for your consideration this pride month:

A non-binary, bisexuals probably homophobic opinions on gender and sexuality

for starters, i’d like to say this is just my personal opinion and i don’t expect anyone to actually read this other than maybe one friend i have on tumblr and people i specifically send it to, but in the event that this blows up because ya know, it’s the internet: I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s gender expression, sexuality, person opinions, labels, or thoughts on the community. this is just how i personally view everything concerning LGBT from my lived experiences.

to begin, i think that there are two main opinions from people in and outside the community over the number of labels we use and they generally fall into these categories either: “we have too many, these fucking snowflakes” and “i don’t really care, you do you” there are very, very few actually “”snowflakes”” that use the terminology we’ve all seen and had opinions about. therefore, why is it still in use? why do they have their own pride days in the month? well, from what i can see, my best guess is the definitions of everything are very muddled and the minute differences are expanded upon in ways that simply do not make sense to me.

for example, the sheer number of words we have for an attraction to multiple genders, while they all have their own differences, why can there not just be an umbrella term and people describe their individual sexual desires to the people they need to define it to. just to make my case here’s the words i’ve found:

bisexual

pansexual

omnisexual

polysexual

queer

all of these words have a basic meaning of attraction to more than one gender that it is inconceivable to me why we need all of them. if there’s discourse around how bisexual doesn’t just mean two, then why does poly exist? and if there’s discussion about bisexuals not always have a gender preference then why do pan and omni have distinctions? to me personally, in a perfect world, we need zero labels, but how we live today, we need the labels. if straights and gays aren’t equal and we take away the distinctions, they’ll never be equal. but stemming from that, i have qualms with words like this that feel like preferences over an actual distinction in sexuality. because the argument from the community (which i 100% agree with) is that you don’t Choose sexuality, things that feel like Choosing demean the entire system. things like bi where you see gender feel to me like “when looking for a partner, i Choose based on gender” definitionally and maybe that’s a misinterpretation of the word choice because in dating and sex everyone has to experience choice, that’s consent, but really you fall in and out of want instead of saying “i’m looking for a 5’4 blonde girl that has freckles” because as much as you can have a wish list it will never be fulfilled in the way you intend because people don’t bend to specifications. and maybe that thought process of not looking for a gender or a set of attributes makes me pan, but that’s not how i identify, so this is where we get to the point. if people don’t identify with the words that most describe how they actually feel because there’s another word that explains them, why do the words exist in the first place!

this is why it took me 4 years to actually come to the conclusion that i was bi. 1. because of the sheer number of words to describe how i was feeling but 2. if bisexuals can have any split between male and female attraction (doesn’t have to just be male and female but for examples sake) if i am not split 50/50 that would fall into the realm of poly and omni. and 3. girls are cute but are girls like date cute or are girls just like delicate cute (but that’s beside the point)

now i think i continue to beat a dead horse if i go into discussions about asexuality and all of its subgroups 1. because i’ve proven my point with multiple gendered love and 2. that’s not my community i would get something wrong and that’s not my intention. but GENDER!! FUN!!

so anyway that i go into this is going to sound offensive and it will get kind of rude but it’s out of pure inability to comprehend most of this. if someone wants to educate me, go right ahead.

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENDER IDENTITY AND GENDER EXPRESSION

gender identity is the gender you feel. the sex. male, female, non-binary.

gender Expression is how you interpret that label. things like demi girl and gender fluid feel in this category to me because you Cannot in any case change gender day to day. period.

you are allowed to dress more masculine and feel more comfortable masculine one day and feel more comfortable feminine another. that’s not your gender changing!!!!! that’s just PREFERENCES!!!!!!! that’s Choice!!!!!!

what i’ve always understood in my heart the way to tell if you’re feeling a shift in expression or in identity is these 3 categories: perception, privates, personality. the three Ps (i did just come up with this)

are you worried or uncomfortable with someone using a certain name or set of language that hints to gender (such as queen v king) [the pronoun discussion is for later i don’t find it appropriate to include it here] this is perception

do you dislike something being a part of your body, not because you find it ugly, uncomfortable, or unnecessary but because you Want the Parts of Another Sex. for example there’s a difference in “oh i wish i didn’t have a uterus because i hate periods” and “i wish i didn’t have a uterus because the thought of that being a part of my body makes me feel sick because i want *male anatomy*” that is privates

and finally, personality. just because you’re a tomboy doesnt make you trans. just because you like dresses or skirts as a boy, doesn’t make you trans. everyone’s personality and individualism is what makes this difficult. you’re allowed to have interests that are “of the opposite gender” that don’t make you trans.

and something that i feel is an important distinction and will lead us into the pronouns portion, and this sounds rude but it’s not, it’s the truth. there are a lot more people that claim ftm than mtf. there just simply are, and the problem with that arises with a lot of women are upset about the condition of being a woman in today’s society, with all the pressures, expectations, lack of rights, etc etc that they would rather be perceived as a man. they would rather be a man to avoid the constant taunting of women and as much as that’s relatable, being fed up with the human condition of womanhood DOES NOT MAKE YOU TRANS. all of the “she/they non-binaries” that arise today that have no problems with being identified as a woman in public, that have no want to change their physical bodies because they want the ones of the opposite sex, and act Like A Woman *are not really trans* because that demeans every aspect of what it Actually means to be trans and honestly it’s kind of insulting to be someone that experiences extreme gender dysphoria to just see people with the desire to be less of a woman out of, here’s this again, Choice, when really they’re mad about society. and oh boy is it completely valid to be mad about the conditions of women, and it is valid to identify as she/they or he/they. it’s just, the distinction between people that actually experience gender dysphoria and the ones that don’t like the way that boobs make the world interact with them.

ALSO WHAT THE FUCK ARE NEOPRONOUNS????? i don’t get it. i’ve never understood it and i don’t think i ever will but like, bold claim, furries and otherkins aren’t Part of the lgbt community???? and i might be mislead on what neopronouns actually are but the only time i’ve seen them actually used are in cases with otherkins and the like wanting to be referred to as pronouns that correspond with their *preferred species* which is a whole other can of snowflake worms that i don’t have time to get into today but like,,,in my humble opinion, i feel as tho he she and they kinda cover the spectrum. you’re fem identifying, she/her. boom, solved. ur masc identifying he/him. lovely, awesome. you feel in between, they/them. great. excellent. you have kinship with both femininity and androgyny she/they (or vice versa he/they) but like IM NOT CALLING SOMEONE LIKE “”BUNSELF”” CAUSE YOURE A BUNNY. THATS NOT HOW LANGUAGE WORKS???? this is only a phenomenon of the english language because most latin languages DONT EVEN HAVE A THEY/THEM FOR EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONS. and we have the AUDACITY to come up with this stuff???? i don’t- i don’t get it. like i speak spanish (i’m not a native, i’m still learning so don’t roast me if i say something incorrect) and it’s nearly impossible to find a way to refer to yourself as a they/them because the words simply don’t exist. i’m lucky enough to be okay with he/him pronouns but in languages and cultures were every single thing you interact with is labeled with a gender there’s simply no time to come up with and incorporate things like Neopronouns when we can’t even find a way to express the basics in another language... and the whole point of the LGBT community is to be inclusive to everyone no matter their sexuality, gender, race, ethnic background etc etc but this is something that quite blatantly leaves out most of the World.

anyway, these are some of my opinions. feel free to ask questions and ignore typos. once again i’m open to education, but this has been my ted talk.

[i-just-really-like-ladies]

Hey op, I saw your post about discovering you were autistic. Something similar is happening to me except I haven't gone for a diagnosis yet. Would it be okay for you to talk about how you knew?

For me there are things that...fit really well, that hit very close to home, but others not so, so Im not sure if whatever it is that I've got (because clearly, something is there.) I'm not very sure if the autistic spectrum can be so wide as for me to be included in it.

Any tips?

Of course, happy to help.

For me there were three kind of bigger indicators.

First, and after discussing this one with my therapist, it seems to be very consistent across autistic people: I've always felt different. Like I knew that I was at the very least slightly off in comparison to other people. (Please excuse the phrasing, I couldn't think of another way to put it properly).

Second, linked with the first: I have always experienced this thing I like to describe as 'not feeling like a real person'. All that really means is that I see the way other people are out laughing boldly with friends or joking or just straight up experiencing the world, and I think "man, I wish I could be a real person." And it always made me sad because I was consciously realising that I cannot and do not experience the world in the same way most neurotypical people do. It was just this huge feeling of otherness. (My therapist indicated that this is very common)

Third: masking. Now, this one made me feel bad for a really long time because I had no clue what was going on until my ex-girlfriend was like "oh, yeah, that's masking." For me, one of the biggest ways I mask is to copy mannerisms and speech patterns of people I'm around. I do it the most when I really like someone (friend like or romantically) or when a person makes me so extremely uncomfortable that I guess my brain is like "you need to mimic them for safety reasons." The reason this one bothered me so much is that I always felt like I just couldn't have my own personality, why was I always copying other people, surely they've all noticed and think I'm a fucking weirdo. It was very upsetting until I learned it was masking. Finding that out has helped me to accept it when I do it, even though I am trying to mask less.

So, those are the big three. There are lots of other minor things. I have ocd, which very commonly goes hand in hand with Autism. I got that need for rigid schedule and following the same patterns almost daily (slight variations are okay, but people planning stuff and not telling me when I've already set up my personal schedule for the day in my head, big no no). I eat the same foods on repeat and have an extremely difficult time changing it up. When I like food or dislike it, the primary reason is texture. (My fiance actually pointed this one out. Apparently I talk about the texture of food a ton).

I'm sure you've probably come across information about the emotionality of Autistic people. The common trope is that we are very emotionless. However, thats not accurate at all. There are two main big categories of where we can fall: tending to not feel emotions very strongly (the trope), and feeling emotions very intensely, more intensely than neurotypical society says is appropriate 🙄. I fall into this category, and I hate it because I have spent so much time trying to just not feel my emotions because they are so intense and my expression of them is 'inappropriate' that it has caused a great many mental health issues for me. So the eye roll face is because I think that the appropriate expression of emotion dictated by most of society is stupid. Along with this one, I have a hard time verbalizing and verbally identifying how I am feeling. As a result, I tend to just tell people I am upset. My therapist says this is somewhat common amongst Autistic individuals. I cannot recall the reasoning she gave for it being common, but I am including it because it was brought up in the process of discussing all this.

I also have this huge tendency to overexplain my reasons for things I've done or said because I do not want to be misunderstood/I have experienced misunderstanding so many times that I learned to do this at some point (I consider this to be part of my masking). This one seems to be pretty common, at least from tiktok. I've seen a lot of Autistic people on tiktok mention it.

Side note in relation to this but still relevant to the post imo, I hate that society tends to think you are lying the more detail you provide. I have a tendency to find all details absolutely vital. So when telling someone about what happened in a situation, I relay as much information as I can. Apparently, that means you are lying. It frustrates me a lot.

In that same vein, another thing my therapist said is fairly common: many Autistic people like to ask why continuously. Not as in just repeating "why," but rather that someone will say "I don't know" or provide an answer, but we often are still seeking a further reason. I've done this my entire life, and booooy does it aggravate people. For me it is just that I want to know the reasoning behind things. I want to know as much information as possible about the topic, and, as mentioned above, I tend to find every single detail absolutely important. That just leads to continuously asking why.

So another one for me, of which I am unsure the commonality: I have a very difficult time maintaining friendships unless I see someone most days of the week. I would say about 5 out of the 7 makes it the easiest for me, but it has worked out on less than that, rarely. The reason for this is that I forget to talk to people when I cannot physically see them. I mean, I just don't think about it for weeks on end. Then I will for a second, but won't message them because I'm doing something, and then forget about it again for ages. Part of this is that I prefer in person communication because I can try to read people's body language and facial expressions. The other part is tone of voice is more clear in person than via text. Now, this one bothered me when I was trying to figure out if I was autistic because it is common for Autistic people to not recognise facial cues and body language the same way as neurotypical people. Turns out, according to my testing results paperwork, i just have a higher ability to recognise facial expressions than most people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. So, I just vary a bit from the average.

Within this same vein is the commonly known 'eye contact issue'. The stereotype is that we cannot and do not make eye contact. This is so false. Many Autistic people do not make eye contact well, yes, but not all. For example, I do. I told one of my brothers I was getting tested for Autism and his response was, and I quote literally here, "I don't think you're Autistic because you make eye contact." What he didn't know is the reason why I make eye contact. I do it because I was taught repeatedly that it is how you show people you are listening. So, basically, I'm masking when I make eye contact because I'm solely doing it to show someone I am listening to them. In fact, 😆 I commonly am sitting there telling myself to make eye contact in order to indicate that I am present and interested in what the other person is saying. I also have a harder time masking this way when attempting to talk about things that are important and emotionally relevant to me. In therapy, I rarely make eye contact with my therapist because it is so difficult to talk about things in general that I cannot also make eye contact. Lastly, for this one, the more comfortable I am with someone, the less I make eye contact with them. My fiance, for example, not very common at all that I do it.

There is also the very common special interests phenomenon. The media tends to show this as a math or science thing, but it really isn't. I follow one tiktoker whose special interest is bugs and, I believe, art. I highly recommend her. Her handle is: soundoftheforest. For me, it's language/linguistics and ancient egypt, Greece and Rome. Really, I'd say ancient anywhere history, but those are the big three. Egypt has been my longest interest, besides language. I actually remember the moment I was like "this is it for life." I was 7 and had finished my library books but was bored at daycare. So I went to the book shelf and picked up a book about King Tut. It was the page I read about the day Howard Carter found the tomb. And I just knew me and Ancient Egypt were meant to be forever. As for language, I've literally always been fascinated by it. I started speaking very early and with more complex words than is usual. And I just continued to love language from there. I ended up studying ancient Greek and Latin in college. Also, I info dump about these all the time, almost anytime I possibly can because they're so fucking cool. 😁

Another side note, it is common for Autistic individuals to have delays in speaking, I just did not. It is not something required for the diagnosis. It is just very common.

This one is a little bit weird, and might just be a me thing, but I've discussed it with my therapist. She indicated that it very much aligns with Autism. I cannot, or can but with extreme apprehension and knowledge that I will leave depressed; I simply cannot go into buildings of certain lighting, age, and design. It seems to be buildings that look and/or feel like they were built in the 1960s or 1970s. We haven't really figured out why that is a thing, but it is. I once didn't bother to finish applying for a job to teach Latin that I'd basically been guaranteed so long as I sent in the app because when I went for the interview I saw the building and knew I could not teach there, even part time, because the building would depress me constantly. It's a weird one, but if you have anything at all where you just cannot do it because you know it will affect you like this, I'd bring it up in discussing potentially being Autistic.

I nearly forgot to mention this one, but you've probably heard about the sensory issues that many Autistic people deal with. I have some with touching things, but it is less common an issue for me than my sound sensitivity issues. I am very sensitive to sound. If I had to give a 4th big reason, this would be it because I get overstimulated and overwhelmed by sound multiple times a day. Its rough. If you also have this issue, I cannot recommend enough noise cancelling headphones and chew stim toys when you don't have your headphones. It's really helpful.

This last one I'm going to mention is something that I think I do just to help prevent burnout from masking, but is also part of me specifically. I am an introvert. So that plays a role in this. I spend the vast majority of my time completely by myself. I do mean even when at home with my fiance. We are often in different rooms. I have no problem with it. It doesn't feel like it is bad for our relationship, thankfully. I just prefer to be alone most of the time. The more time I spend around people, the more time afterwards I need alone. That is partially my introvertedness but also me needing to because I am socially exhausted from masking and trying to read all the social cues and not make weird errors when in social settings 😳, which I do a lot. I think I just default to spending time by myself when I am not required to engage with people in order to ensure that I can later. Plus, in discussing this one with my therapist, we concluded that I do this at least in part to prevent burnout and overstimulation.

As for the testing itself. I discussed this with my therapist for a while when waiting to get tested, and by the time I did get tested, I had a nice long list of stuff to bring up. I would definitely recommend compiling a list of the symptoms/signs you feel are indicative for yourself. It was very quick after I first brought it up in therapy that I decided I needed the official diagnosis for myself. So my therapist gave me recommendations of who to see. I also looked myself because the recommended people were so booked they couldn't even schedule further out. Once I got it scheduled, I had to wait like 3 months for the appointments. So, if you are seeking the official diagnosis, don't give up because it's a long wait. From what I've seen others saying, it's pretty common to have to wait a bit to be seen.

There were 3 appointments, an intake, a testing, and a feedback appointment. The intake appointment involved me talking to the doctor about my experiences and why I thought I might be autistic. She asked me a few questions about the more commonly known signs of autism if I did not mention them. The testing appointment took about 4 hours and involved a self report personality assessment, several verbal and memory activities, a teaching activity, two story telling/creating activities, and (the part I thought was most difficult) an activity in which I had to identify the emotion being expressed by just the eye and eyebrow area of black and white photos of people. I also had a take home assessment for someone who knew me really well. It was related to executive functioning abilities and emotional regulation abilities. I cannot speak on the feedback appointment because of technical issues resulting in not actually having that appointment. I have rescheduled it and will be doing that later this month.

If you have anything more specific you want to ask me about, please do. I am happy to answer.

[vitalmindandbody]

White man pathology: within the fandom of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

Stephen Marche goes on a superhighway expedition and enters the fray at back-to-back Iowa conventions and gets a view of US politics from the perspective of his whiteness

The perimeter

You find your whiteness properly at the American perimeter. Most of the time being white is an absence of troubles. The police dont disturb you so you dont notice the police not riling you. You get the job so you dont notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with crooks. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open metropolis in “the worlds”, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic importance and the inert virtue of endurance is the most prominent endowment of the British territory, so if you squint you are able to profess the ancient categories are scattering into a cloud of enlightenment and intermarriage.

Not at the border.

My sons Guyanese-Canadian teacher and the Muslim Milton scholar I went to high school with and the Sikh writer I squabble about Harold Innis with and my Ishmaeli accountant, we can all be good little Torontonians of the middle class, avoiding the differences we have been trained to respect. But in a auto in the carbon monoxide-infused queue waiting to enter Detroit, their beings diverge drastically from mine.

I am lily-white. They are not. They are susceptible. I am not.

Heres the thing: I like the guards at the American margin. Theyre always friendly with me, decent, even pleasant firm. At the booth in between the never-was of Windsor and the has-been of Detroit, the man I happened to draw had a gruff belly and the mysterious air of intentional inscrutability, like a troll under a connection in a fairy tale.

Where are you pate? he asked.

Burlington, Iowa.

Why would anyone ever choose to go to Burlington, Iowa? he requested philosophically.

Im going to see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Then, because it did seem to require an explanation: Theyre handing rallies within got a couple of dates of each other.

Why would anyone ever choose to go hear Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?

I didnt argue, because it was the border, but I could have said that the police chief of Birmingham estimated that 30,000 beings evidenced up in Alabama to see Donald Trump in August and that in Dallas, he had replenished the American Airlines Center, and that his equivalent, Bernie Sanders, has generated equally unprecedented quantities enormously more than Barack Obama outlined at comparable instants in the 2008 campaign.

Im strange, I said instead.

At this detail he asked me to roll down my opening. But it was all fine. Like I replied, Im white.

As I drove through the suburbs of the spoils of Detroit, across the I-9 4, one of the ugliest freeways in the United States, the old-fashioned familiar lightness fluttered to my mettle. I enjoy America. America is not my mother. Canada is my mother. But America is an unbelievably splendid, amazingly sugared rich maid who lives next door and believe that there is falling apart. I cannot help myself from loving it.

For people who love to dwell in contradictions, the US is the greatest country in “the worlds”: the country of the free is built around bondage, the member states of law and order where everyone is entitled to a gun, a region of unimpeded advance where they cling to backwardness out of sheer stubbornness. And into this glorious morass, a new inconsistency has recently announced itself: The white people, the privileged Americans, the ones who had the least to fear from the powers that be, the ones with the most wonderful directions to brighter futures, the ones who are by every metric one of “the worlds largest” lucky groups in the history of “the worlds”, has begun to croaking off in stunning numbers.

The Case and Deaton report, Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21 st Century, describes an ever increasing death rate for middle-aged American lily-whites comparable to lives lost in the US Aids epidemic. This spike in mortality is unique to white Americans not find work amongst other ethnic groups in the United States or any other white population in the developed world, a mysterious blight of despair.

In one style, it was easy to account for all this white American fatality medication and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver illness and cirrhosis according to the report. It was not so easy be held accountable for the accounting. Why were middle-aged white-hot Americans boozing and medication and shooting themselves to death? The explanations on offer were pre-prepared, fully plugged into confirmation bias: “its been” their own economies or it was demography or “its been” godlessness or it was belief or it was the outage of their own families or it was the persistence of antique qualities or it was the lack of social programs or it was the dependence on social programs.

Case and Deaton call it an epidemic of hurting. Fine. What does that signify?

On the I-9 4, you do find yourself questioning: what the fuck is wrong with these beings? I symbolize, aside from the speedy slump of the middle class certainly. And the rise of precarious run and the fact that the basic way of life requires so much sedation that nearly a quarter of all Americans are on psychiatric drugs, and somewhere between 26.4 and 36 million Americans mistreat opioids every day. Oh yes, and the mass shootings. There was more than one mass hitting a period. And the grey terrorists targeting black churches again. And the regularly exhausted videos evidencing the police assassinating black people. And the police in question never being indicted, let alone being sent to jail.

And you know what Americans were worried about while all this shit was raining down on them? While all this insanity was wounding their beloved country? You know what their number one perturb was, according to referendum after poll after referendum?

Muslims. Muslims, if you can believe it.

The American fantasy is dead but Im going to make it stronger!

My body is white and it is male. It is six hoof towering and weighs 190 lbs. It is 39 years old and it has had to start flowing. It has had to start weighing calories. There is a tingle in the joint of my right thigh, so I try not to think about my torso. The tingling emanates and moves. I know my person is going to kill me.

A man who horror suffering already sustain what he fears, as Montaigne mentioned. Thats one on why males expire very young than dames six years younger on average in America. Ninety-two percent of men say they wait at least a few dates to see if they feel better before they go to a medical doctor, but I know what they mean by a few days. They represent a few more dates that forms sense. It is hard to have a male and lily-white torso and to conceive of its weakness. In the same sigh, my mas cannot accompanying itself to believe it is the personification of power, although it was undoubtedly is in any rational accountancy of social status. It feels like a mere body. It experiences mortal.

Ive never been to a residence as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Picture: Darren McCollester/ Getty Images

Ive never been to a place as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Whenever I go to America its New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Florida. In Burlington, at Jerrys Main Lunch, the signature dish is the red-hot mess, eggs and bacon cooked right into the hash chocolate-browns. The carbohydrate shakers all have white crackers in them, to prevent clumping a classic bit of common-sense American know-how. The hot mess is yummy. Why dont they construct these everywhere? Why isnt there a series of Jerrys Main Lunches providing hot mess all across the midwest?

The answer is in the rest of the town: everything thats going to leave have so far been left Burlington. The beautiful brick houses downtown are mainly vacant. The most interesting street is the road out of town.

The Memorial Arena, on the banks of the Mississippi, filled up early. Trump wasnt communicating until 6pm but by 4.45 the parking situation was gruesome. Outside the building, the hawkers who follow Trump on the road, occurrence to contest, sold T-shirts and buttons, three for $10. We shall overcomb. Cats for Trump, the time is Meow. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Inside, every fanny had been taken and the storey filled soon with a standing room only bunch. Burlington is 10% pitch-black. The rallying was 99.99% white.

The people who attend political rallies in America are a specific genre of humanity, like the ones who stand outside in lines for nightclubs. They know where theyre supposed to go and how theyre supposed to behave when they got to get. They have gear.

An elderly dame sat beside me wearing a sequined stars-and-stripes-hat she clearly takes out for precisely these parties. Yall from Illinois? she questioned. Im not but I can extend. She goes to all the rallyings, she justified. Shes been a Republican her whole life, an active Republican, an Iowa Republican. For 30 years, shes been in crowds like this one. She plans to go, one time in their own lives, to the national gathering. Like going to see the Stones. When the organizers delivered around mitt signeds speaking The Silent Majority, she grabbed a dozen so she could overtake them around to others.

Cheerful helpful maidens were half the crowd. Furious and absurd followers were the other. They wore T-shirts with whole paragraph written on them: I am a United States Armed Veteran. I formerly took a SOLEMN OATH to represent the CONSTITUTION against ALL enemies, foreign and Domestic. Be advised No one has ever allayed me of my functions under this Expletive!

There were cars in the parking lot slathered with bumper stickers. We the peoples of the territories are 100% FED UP! So if firearms kills people, I guess pencils miss incantation statements[ sic ], automobiles drive drink and spoonfuls see beings fat. Im straight, republican, Christian, and I own a handgun. Is there anything else I can do to piss you off? A picture of Obama with Does this ass stir my gondola look big? The Republican mode for 2016 is furious aphoristic feeling. Behind slapstick, nonsensical storm: America is the greatest country in the world but America is falling apart, government is the problem which is why authority must solve it.

This was a Trump production so naturally there was a VIP section. A door guarded by bald, unsmiling mortals, the bouncers who stand forever as the bored sentinels of indifferent fame. A swinging door at the side of the stage received and gave the best-looking parties, the ones with the buffed neutrality of political professionals, the women whose faces have been tautened to a perma mope, the men who get their whisker slash before every event.

The woman beside me Stars n Stripes Hat was wearing a pewter elephant pendant. A young girl in a shining orange dress passed out of the VIP entrance wearing an elephant pendant encrusted with diamonds. Elephant chandeliers were a theme, I noticed, and elephant pins and elephant sounds and elephant T-shirts. They came in all different rate objects and in all different styles: round elephants suggestive of French cartoons from the 1960 s, and strange pseudo-sexual shimmies, and with 1920 s straw boater hats conducting processions. There was one kind of elephant you couldnt meet. An elephant that actually looked like an elephant. A realistic elephant might serve as a memento to the hundred elephants killed for their bone every day. A naturalistic elephant would be inherently environmentalist. The elephants must all be fabulous.

Like any good show, there was a warm-up behave. In reality, there are two three if you count the recitation of the assurance of devotion. The first was Tana Goertz, an Iowa woman who had been runner-up on the third season of The Apprentice. What a good-looking army, she pandered. She attested for Trump as a woman( He enjoys girls !) and as someone who had returned to Iowa( How could you live in New York City if you didnt desire parties ?). She promoted the idea which is at the core of every last event that Trump does, that simple contact with the man draws boom. When youre in the Trump train youre going places! She marched off to polite Iowan applause. The mob are more likely to, all things considered, instead have listened to the Elton John music playing on the speakers instead, but at the least she made international efforts.

A more standard promotion follower followed. Sam Clovis hosts a conservative radio substantiate and is a tea-party activist who has operated and lost a bunch of Iowa Republican postures. He precisely started right in with it. Trump was one of the greatest servicemen to ever tread the look of this earth, a good front the crowd could have tittered but instead they saluted, thus proving that “theyre not” paying attention or would immerse anything. Clovis compared Trumps recent speeches to Reagans A Time for Choosing at the Goldwater convention in 1964, which must have been, to his way of thinking regardless, roughly like equating it to the Sermon on the Mount.

Clovis knew what the crowd had come to hear and he gave it to them. America and Americans will be first again! A collective shriek shook the Burlington Memorial Arena. They so badly wanted to be first again. First in what was unclear but emphatically first.

After the thunder croaked, the crowd was ready for Trump. But, showmanship. Trump let the tension build; the indignant absurd men as well as the joyou, helpful ladies called. Trump! Trump! Trump! I could just suspect the amusement the softened din of his chanted appoint, from backstage, must have been bringing “the mens”.

When he ultimately took the stage, the crowd surged; their phones surged. It was an debauchery of phones. The humanities behind Trump examined the crowd with their phones. The cameras in the back were recording everyone preserving each other. Trump was the only party not hampering a screen, the absence that raised hunger. He started roaring, as everybody in the crowd stopped to check the footage they had assembled.

Trump started out with the time he knew would appear on the report the next morning Joe Biden had put out of the hasten and Trump approved of his decision because Biden never had a chance and Trump wanted to face Hillary. The mainstream media adroitly handled, Trump embarked his disquisition on the subject dearest to his mettle: his own success.

The Burlington rally labelled the 100 th period he had contribute the canvas. He spoke the polls, canvas after canvas. He paused only to ask the crowd how enormous the polls were. Beating Hillary nationwide do you desire that? The audience approved of his approval numbers. And so he moved on to the more qualitative aspects of his greatness. His adversaries precisely werent wins. I pronounce from the intelligence but I likewise pronounce from the heart, he spoke, rambling like a rich know-it-all uncle Im producing back the jobs from China! with brief digressions into self-pity: Macys was very disloyal to me. They dont sell my ties anymore.

He described, in twists periodically frank and self-deluded, the greatnes of his own capability for political manipulation. He talked to the people “hes been” spinning about how cleverly he was rotating them. So he affirmed Im a good Christian and that if he became chairperson were going to be remarking merry Christmas, but then he couldnt stop himself from recognise the cleverness of his Christian electioneering: I stepped onto a stagecoach with a bible, everybody likes me better. Trump introduced meta to Burlington, Iowa. And he did not disavow the crowd that preference of personality they wanted. What would he say to Caroline Kennedy, the ambassador to Japan? Youre fired! Youre fired!

A few spectators started to move out to beat trafficking in human beings and Trump shouted about the silent majority and about how he says what nobody else dares to suppose and about how he will end free trade and how Mexicans are car thieves( big shriek) and how he craves a piece of the action from the Keystone pipeline and how hes going to help womens health and how America used to be emulated. The American Dream is dead but Im going to make it bigger and stronger! he hollered. At this moment he appeared to me the route every fame I have met in the flesh does, like a living idolatrou idol awaiting sacrifice, a puff-faced Baal. Were going to acquire so much better, he predicted before leaving the stage to Twisted Sisters Were Not Disappearing to Take It.

Trump followers at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. Photograph: Scott Morgan/ Reuters

I remained to watch Trump work the line. Up open, in person, the fuzz is still much intricate than it appears on screen. Its building is tripartite, great significance polyvalent. First and foremost, there is the comb-over, although it can be called a comb-over simply in the sense that the mall in Dubai with a ski mound inside it can be called a structure. It is hair as state-of-the-art engineering stunt, with the diaphanous quality of a cloak out of Norse legend or some supernatural near-weightless metal are set out in an advanced German laboratory. It swims over the skull, an deed of disregard not only against aging and loss but against duration and seat, against reality.

Behind the technological presentation of the comb-over, as counterpoint, the back is as conventional and old-fashioned as a haircut is also possible. Its a classic ducktail. Its such a classic that I have just been construed it in movies set in the 1950 s. Not movies from the 1950 s I should be clear, but movies from the 1970 s about the 1950 s. In between the comb-over and the ducktail, between the two follicular cavities representing the modernistic and the atavistic, the fantastical and the wistful, there is a third tranche. Even in person you have to look closely to catch sight of it. It projection, somewhat but only slightly. It is the real the members of the fuzz, the human role, the actual mane. It is the hinge of Donald Trump.

As Trumps campaign for the Republican nomination has unfolded, in all its unlikeliness, he has shaken handwritings with hundreds of thousands of Americans, and posed with numerous thousands for hundreds of thousands of selfies. And among those many thousands , not one has reached up to mess up his whisker. Though he regularly raises up the physical figures of his antagonist , nothing of the other campaigners even mention the fact that he seems foolish. Trumps hair is an act of defiant social pre-emption: announce me a phony. I dare you. I fucking dare you.

A few hardcore followers lingered on the fringes, just like at a concerted effort. Everybody else had floated into the parking lot and the cities middle of Burlington was soon returned to its emptiness. A Trump show is good value for the money, specially since its free. They dont even ask for donations.

The thought from Fun City

The morning after the rally, it has become clear that Iowa may be the bramble in Trumps path. A gossip over an wayward tweet has cloudburst.

He accuses the offense on a young intern. But the eight-point rise of Carson must be galling. Trump possesses the weakness of anyone who lives by the strength of their results. Ensues go. When the results are down , where are you? Who are you? Trump is in the business of acquiring. Does Trump losing even subsist?

I had a daytime between Trump and Sanders, and all I had to read was a pdf of Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, which I had agreed to look at for a book of the month team. After another hot mess at Jerrys Main Lunch, and a run to blaze it off, I invested a era at the Motel 8 in Burlington reading, while across the street, the Winegard factory, manufacturing satellite dishes 24 hours a day, thudded like a center without syncopation. Did you know you can buy a six carry of brew and a bottle of bourbon for precisely a little over 20 bucks in Iowa? What a big country.

The title of Between the World and Me comes from a Richard Wright poem called White Man, Listen ! and it was never going to get much whiter or more male than me in the Motel 8 sipping bourbon and brew, on my iPhone, with the Jays and Royals spotlights flickering in the background and the thud of the satellite dish factory in the background.

The urgency of the book, the vitality of the historic resource at play, rose like brandishes into crests of temper tumbling over their own force. It was all of a piece. And it all made extremely relentless sense. Between the World and Me is one of those notebooks that possess the strong certainty of a natural phenomenon as if it accrued out of the ether that surrounds us, a crystalline organisation of the scandalize that defines the moment. To criticize is beside the point. Its only there.

To me, the key section in Between the World and Me, originates after Coates has been on television justifying to the multitude the frantic consequences of yet another police assassination of a pitch-black son.

I came out of the studio and strolled for a while. It was a calm December day. Class, feeling themselves lily-white, were out on the street. Infants, invoked to be lily-white, were wrap in strollers. And I was happy for these parties, much as I was heartbreaking for the emcee and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized so why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my mas, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most sumptuous reverie. I have seen that dreaming all my life. It is perfect homes with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, blocking associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but preferences like strawberry shortcake.

Right then, speaking that aisle, I knew that white people were going to cherish this volume. What white people implore more, they require it, they require it to live is an alibi from their whiteness, an flee from the unfairnes of their existence. There are numerous alibis available depending on how much idiocy you can tolerate. You can say to yourself or to others that black people are stupid and lazy; you can say that you dont experience pigment; you can call your uncle a prejudiced so everybody knows youre not; you can share the latest critique of brutality on Twitter with the word THIS; and now you can tell a pal that she certainly has to read Between the World and Me.

Because that Dream of Whiteness, the dream of treehouses and rookie scouts that smells like peppermint and can still smell the strawberry shortcake, is a perfect alibi. Who lives that dreaming? Somebody else are now living it but not me , not anyone I know , no one I could see in Burlington. Thats a dream that belongs to somebody else. Always to somebody else.

It certainly didnt belong to the Winegard factory workers who were drifting to their autoes at the end of their change. The whiteness of my macrocosm was my iPhone and the vapours of bourbon and beer, and video games from last-place night and the tingling in my thigh. The tickling in my thigh was my mas the reality I cant look at because Im too afraid of my fatality.

To me, best available doubt ever asked about race in America has always been the one that James Baldwin questioned, when an interviewer wanted to know if he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America. What white people have to do is is an attempt catch out in their own centers why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, he enunciated. If you invented him, you, the white people devised him, then youve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. The obsession of eggheads over issues of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr active or passive resistance was moot; the pressing question was why white people were blowing up churches filled with children.

Whiteness is a spiritual aberration, obviously by the return ye shall know the tree. And on the question of lily-white pathology, what good reactions has America induced since Baldwin would like to request that topic in 1963? And now that white-hot pathology has returned to waste away its legion, unexamined and strange, a golem.

In the evening, I finished the book and didnt want to think about my white-hot and male mas anymore, or the tickling in my thigh.

Across from my hotel, the Fun City complex contained an resemblance midway, a bowling alley, got a couple of bars, a replication diner and, tucked in between a inn and a spa, the Catfish Bend Casino. The poker chamber is dingy but serviceable. A game started at six. I wanted to play. I wanted to find out how much enjoyable can you have in a home called Fun City.

The youngest person at the table, Curved Baseball Hat, changed beans and corn. A male with an furious mustache led the conversation, a three-day whisker beside him contributing an occasional digression. The rest of us sat cooking softly in the juices of our addictions, like in any casino. Everybody at the table knew everybody else, except for me and a black welder in municipality for a specialist job. It was happy hour in Fun City, and brew was a dollar. Everybody told a mess of them. And I seemed just how luck it is to be in America, despite politics, despite everything. Cheap beer and frank beings and an honestly flowed activity in a clean chamber. Even compared to Canada, the unthinking prosperity of the place is dazzling.

Three Day Beard had appreciated Trump the night before, and Angry Mustache asked his opinion.

I think he could acquire, Three Day Beard suggested carefully, “as if its” a review, as if it were all you could allege of him, that he might have a chance to take the conference of presidents, for what it was worth.

Dont matter, told Angry Mustache. No content “whos got” in, Washington simply devastates them.

He might be different because he doesnt necessity the money.

Angry Mustache paraphrased a statistic, which I subsequently check and will prove to be bullshit, that all congressmen become millionaires by the time theyve been in power for a year. Everybody agrees with Trumps central advantage is that he comes pre-corrupted.

Its not even the money, Three Day Beard said. They get there. They all have these schemes and intentions. They cant do anything. Three Day Beard nearly pitied the legislators.

Its all interrupted, included Angry Mustache as a kind of dedicated, the style youd position any historic detail, like Germany lost the second world war or Frances Farmer was once a star.

The view of American politics in Fun City is snug despair. It is despair not just at who happens to be in influence but at whoever could ever be in power. It is despair not simply that the system is busted but that any organisation, imaginable in the present iteration of the United States, would turn out to be just as ruined. The choice is a alternative between frailty and dures. The reply was not change but a shrug.

Curved Baseball Hat, the person who originates corn and beans and who had fragile discovers of clay in the lanulae of his fingernails, requested information about an old gamble hall that used to be in municipality, and the recollections of the style Burlington used to be flowed constructs that had been knocked down, dames that were once beautiful and were now dead, riches made and vanished.

Eventually the pitch-black participate, who has said almost nothing except his calls and folds and develops, busted out.

Did you see that guys fingers? Angry Mustache expects when he had left. He gestured an inch past his centre paw. We were all, it was made very clear, in a chamber of grey humanities. You know what they say. My friend worked in the prison and he mentions its all true-blue. I guess thats why they say formerly you go black.

The residual of us nodded or smiled or said nothing, searching down at the cards. Now that we had all shown how white we were, it was a friendlier room. We knew that none of us would object to the misery of the others. What if the responses to Baldwins question is as banal as it appeared to be in Fun City? What if it white people draw the nigger to prepare themselves a little less lonely?

And I said nothing. I offered no fighting, though the line between “the mens” in Fun City and the cop killing a black brat in the appearance was not difficult to tracing. Here was my alibi that evening: I am Canadian. Which means I am a snoop from nowhere. Or perhaps I am a coward or something in between a coward and agent from nowhere. Its a reasonably threadbare alibi regardless. Whose isnt?

Conversation strayed back to Trump. It was more respectful.

I can see Trump, articulated Angry Mustache. Hes not the worst that Ive heard anyway.

Im starting to like that physician, Three Day Beard lends as an afterthought.

That doctor, Ben Carson, proposes a flat levy of 10% that would placed the US government, reckoning conservatively, in a$ 3tn-deficit. He believes that Joseph built the pyramids to store cereal, and he believes that Hitler never would have risen to influence if the German people were armed, and that Obamacare is worse than bondage, and that Americans are living in a Gestapo age.

I said that he hoped that Coates had some crazy programme, some utopian fiction for communards in Georgia, or the return to one motherland or another, but he only wants the end of white supremacy. He precisely requires white people in America to grow up, to yield their inhumane sense of illogical supremacy. I cannot imagine why they are able to. Its merriment to suck and to play placards and to dream what Donald Trump would say to the Mexican president the day after he was elected, or whether Ben Carson would prepare the flat tariff at 10 or 12%. The eventual alibi is stupidity it lies closest to innocence but if you cant cope stupidity, craziness does nearly as well.

I aim , nothing of its happens now anyway, right? Whoever gets elected, its just going to be stalemate and outrage anyway, right? Did I mention that beer payment one dollar? A single, lonely buck.

Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out!

The Bernie Sanders rally in Davenport was the exact antonym of the Donald Trump rally in Burlington and yet precisely the same in every detail. Make America Great Again was replaced by Feel the Bern. Hawkers sold bolts, three for $10. They read Bernie Sanders is my feeling animal and Cats for Bernie and I subscribed Bernie Sanders before it was cool. Davenport, at least near the Adler Theater, “re the same” Brooklyn-outside-Brooklyn that has quelled every corner of the world that is not a strip mall. The tattoo creators of Davenport do not go hungry. The cornfed hipsters at the Sanders rally look like they have probably attended “states parties ” at which person played a bongo. They may even have attended a literary learning.

Bernie Sanders at a town hall session in Ottumwa, Iowa. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/ AP

There were hype servicemen as with Trump, more, although in this case the latter are twentyish women in glasses bellowing Feel the Bern! and Were Going to Improve a Change! Individual with a camera from NBC expected the working group who has brought their precocious juveniles because they want them to be engaged in the political process Can I get you guys to look like youre excited about Bernie? They carefully targeted their glass on the floor, out of see, to oblige.

The same specter of angry white people recurs Saunderss rally, the same appreciation of longing for a country that was, the two countries that has been taken away. The Bernie crowd made homemade signs instead of fabricated ones, because I guess theyre organic. They brandished them only the same. They were going to a display. They wanted to be a good audience.

The fundamental difference between the Trump and Sanders army was that the Sanderss crowd has more coin, the natural significance of the American incongruity system: rich white people can afford to think about socialism, the poorest of the poor can only rendered their rage.

Sanderss opening act was a congressional wannabe, Gary Kroeger. He hadnt been on The Apprentice but on Saturday Night Live, a forgettable lesser performer from the largest date between 1982 and 1985. He started off, naturally, with a half-assed gag: the fresh patchouli in the air is great. The sign language translator offered a mild smile to expres it was a laugh. Then, after a brief foray into left-wingery, calling America a social democracy also known as a republic, Kroeger took a big selfie with the crowd behind him: Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out! he wailed. Everyones phones rose up to take pictures of themselves in a illustration mimicking a photo from the Oscars: such was American socialism in the year 2015.

A few desultory ensembles followed, performing an mixture of leftwing anthems from various historical leftwing pushes. They harmonized on The Auld Triangle, a prison ballad that was covered on Inside Llewelyn Davis. The vocalist from Alice in Chains( recollect them ?) did an electrical version of I Wont Back Down. An old The Clash song, Jail Clang Doors, was sung by the subject of the first verse, Wayne Kramer. And it was all, so obviously, a nostalgia number, the self-indulgence for a longing of a season when music inspired politics, when activism owned an artistic look, and vice versa.

Eventually Bernie strayed out. The phones disappeared up. The phones went down. Enough is enough, he wailed, leaving blank what theres “ve had enough” of. And then he talked about how he wanted to end the war on drugs and campaign investment improve and government that isnt for plutocrats, and how they were going to build a revolution( such an embarrassing term to listen expressed out loud ), and America was going to be a social democracy, by the people of the people.

Sanderss exasperation was the principal fact to be communicated, more than any political material. Trump was about winning again. Sanders was about having lost. The vagueness of American politics is what amazed the outsider. Its all about sensations and God and bullshit. Sanders actually emitted the following sentence out loud: What were saying is when millions of people are working together to rehabilitate both governments we can do astonishing situations. Nothing asks what he made. None asked for numbers. They applauded. Better to take it in the intent in which its thrown, like a Catskills resort comedian.

Sanders prompted me of a line from Seinfeld, perhaps because Larry Davids SNL parody was only a few days old. The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. When Ben and Jerry make a Bernie Sanders ice cream, I hope its chili and ginger: the delicious hot smell of nasal-passage clearing outrage.

Sanderss speech was much shorter than Trumps. There had already been the music, I guess. I had the impression, as with Trump, that I had traveled many hundreds of miles to look at a mortals mane. Bernie Sanderss hair is as much a statement as Trumps. It consider this to be the “hairs-breadth” of a tenured professor whose wife has stopped nagging him to get a haircut because the nagging doesnt handiwork. You couldnt muss Sanders hair. The ill is just as much an aesthetic as the comb-over. I symbolize it ever searches the same. Somebody is cutting it to sink that course over the ears.

The view from Tampico

As despair has suddenly spread like a fantastic mist over the white people of America, as the white people die off in their extraordinary quantities, the commenters are astonished, a little bit, but they have no plan of action. No policy proposals aim at reforming the lives of white people.

How could they? If you believe the Case and Deaton report, white people are victims of their own advantage literally. Their cherished claim to own guns, and the enormous increased number of the ownership of weaponry, means that their suicide strives are more effective. They have more access to opioids because doctors are more likely to trust white people with them. They have the money to draw themselves lonely and booze.

I recollect reading a piece from buzzer robs formerly, the kind that circulates on Facebook because it chimes somewhat unique in its predictable virtue. The first act of violence that patriarchy requests of males, she wrote, is not savagery toward dames. Instead patriarchy requisitions of all males that they involve is psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional specific areas of themselves.

Her compassion is admirable, glorious even, but also inaccurate. No one is more psychological than a piece-of-shit white man. They are sentimentality personified. How else can so many be moved to violence over the absence of a Christmas tree on a Starbucks cup?

That dream, that white reverie that smells like peppermint and penchants like strawberry shortcake, comes with a cost of shit. If you take shit, if you eat shit, if you live through the shit, if you live the stupid wars and the meaningless errands, you should be sure of who you are and what you deserve. And “if youre not” sure and you have not received what you deserved, why did you take and eat and subsist all that shit?

Un-harvested corn stands south of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Image: Nati Harnik/ AP

In the aftermath of that spate, the choice, I belief, is either to be proud to be grey, which is a word of lunacy, or to fantasize a post-racial cosmopolis, which is a kind of make-believe, or to be ashamed. So much easier to forget those choices, or to shelve endlessly the choosing, or to debate the difficulties of preferring infinitely, because grey male flesh is not under mortal threat, as the chassis of pitch-black men or the flesh of the status of women. Our organizations are safe. Our torsoes are the threat.

In medieval empires, the territory involved the existence of a doubled figure, one for the real world and one for the symbolic. There was the flawed and mortal person of the king, which sobbed and shat and screwed and died, and then there was the Body of the King, sacred, pure, indestructible.

Race generates us all double mass, double consciousness in WEB Du Boiss phrase, whatever you want to call having to live mortally through the judgement of others. The brand-new grey distortion, the sickness at heart, the pathology, may simply be the arrival of the awareness of two bodies: the dizziness and nausea that arrive with the onset of doubled eyesight.

Because they have to be like everybody else, their mettles are breaking in half.

The morning after the Sanders rally, I noted enough forte to look in the reflect at my grey and male organization, to probe its mortal and symbolic quality. At the angle of my groin, where it had been tingling, a dark-brown patch spilled like spoiled milk down my scalp. A wide-cut chocolate-brown spot determined like post-climate change Florida in the angle of my thigh. Instant, I knew I would die. And the next minute I started driving back to Toronto, to my bride and children, body of my flesh.

Bernie Sanders wants a revolution to overthrow casino capitalism but the problem, or maybe only the first trouble, is that the American beings enjoy casinoes. They cant construct them fast enough. On the road from Iowa, I transferred at least a dozen, a dozen Fun Cities of various types of shapes and sizings, enduring various gossips about Trump and Sanders. The highways of Illinois are a unique vision of the workings of human rights hope a roughly boundless mart for addiction and its dry. Strip clubs or fried chicken or gambling or faith or rehab or cancer treatment. The I-9 4 communicated right to the unwounded mas the promise of handled carbohydrate and pussy, or saving from them.

There was one other entertainment on the route dwelling: Ronald Reagans birthplace in Tampico. The glamour of the landscape around those towns, for some reason, has never been properly glamorize. There are no tourist buss to these fields, as there are to the ocean or the mountains, but the landscape is every bit as sublime. Reagans childhood extended in the loin of the Continent, the splendid hinge between the industrial core of the Great Lakes and the agricultural heartland. The historical recognition of his presidential tombstones has been consumed by fantasies of small town life but it is a landscape of whitewashed houses against the undulating emptiness, a country roiling with nightmares. You can depict Reagan as a boy in these fields, fantasy of movies and America vast screens on which he had been able to activity himself. The superhighway moves like a flow of praying through an ancient dream.

The ancient nightmares are still so vivid here. In the United States, 240 -year-old writings can be recited by soul by people who cannot be described as trained. Documents written by men who owned slaves are spoken of as if we are able to solve the problems of today and tomorrow and any imaginable future no matter how remote.

Thomas Jefferson was held that the Constitution should expire after 19 times, so that the dead would not have ascendancy over the living. That fate seems to have arrived. The Americans are in constant disputes with haunts and their the talks with dead beings are most powerful, most relentless, at precisely the points where they are most ludicrous. They nation defiantly that all men are created equal when any casual observer of life knows they arent. They claim that men and women should be judged by the content of their reference, when nobody can know the content of anothers character. These dreamings, these inabilities, are the absolute and real organization of their nation. And the reveries are so entrancing that its ambiguous whether the problem is that the Americans think you are, or that they dont. Its supremely childish, either way.

Back in Toronto, my bride took a look at the chocolate-brown spot on my groin and mailed me to a doctor, and medical doctors told me it was a rash from leading too much, and I had been given the greatest gift anyone can hope for, in this time and this lieu. I had been forgiven, for a while, for my body.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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