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didanawisgi · 4 years

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CAN WE PULL BACK FROM THE BRINK?

Sam Harris, June 18, 2020

In this episode of the podcast, Sam discusses the recent social protests and civil unrest, in light of what we know about racism and police violence in America.

This is a transcript of a recorded podcast.

“OK…. Well, I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts for this podcast for more than a week—and have been unsure about whether to record it at all, frankly.

Conversation is the only tool we have for making progress, I firmly believe that. But many of the things we most need to talk about, seem impossible to talk about.

I think social media is a huge part of the problem. I’ve been saying for a few years now that, with social media, we’ve all been enrolled in a psychological experiment for which no one gave consent, and it’s not at all clear how it will turn out. And it’s still not clear how it will turn out, but it’s not looking good. It’s fairly disorienting out there. All information is becoming weaponized. All communication is becoming performative. And on the most important topics, it now seems to be fury and sanctimony and bad faith almost all the time.

We appear to be driving ourselves crazy. Actually, crazy. As in, incapable of coming into contact with reality, unable to distinguish fact from fiction—and then becoming totally destabilized by our own powers of imagination, and confirmation bias, and then lashing out at one other on that basis.

So I’d like to talk about the current moment and the current social unrest, and its possible political implications, and other cultural developments, and suggest what it might take to pull back from the brink here. I’m going to circle in on the topics of police violence and the problem of racism, because that really is at the center of this. There is so much to talk about here, and it’s so difficult to talk about. And there is so much we don’t know. And yet, most people are behaving as though every important question was answered a long time ago.

I’ve been watching our country seem to tear itself apart for weeks now, and perhaps lay the ground for much worse to come. And I’ve been resisting the temptation to say anything of substance—not because I don’t have anything to say, but because of my perception of the danger, frankly. And if that’s the way I feel, given the pains that I’ve taken to insulate myself from those concerns, I know that almost everyone with a public platform is terrified. Journalists, and editors, and executives, and celebrities are terrified that they might take one wrong step here, and never recover.

And this is really unhealthy—not just for individuals, but for society. Because, again, all we have between us and the total breakdown of civilization is a series of successful conversations. If we can’t reason with one another, there is no path forward, other than violence. Conversation or violence.

So, I’d like to talk about some of the things that concern me about the current state of our communication. Unfortunately, many things are compounding our problems at the moment. We have a global pandemic which is still very much with us. And it remains to be seen how much our half-hearted lockdown, and our ineptitude in testing, and our uncoordinated reopening, and now our plunge into social protest and civil unrest will cause the Covid-19 caseload to spike. We will definitely see. As many have pointed out, the virus doesn’t care about economics or politics. It only cares that we keep breathing down each other’s necks. And we’ve certainly been doing enough of that.

Of course, almost no one can think about Covid-19 right now. But I’d just like to point out that many of the costs of this pandemic and the knock-on effects in the economy, and now this protest movement, many of these costs are hidden from us. In addition to killing more than 100,000 people in the US, the pandemic has been a massive opportunity cost. The ongoing implosion of the economy is imposing tangible costs, yes, but it is also a massive opportunity cost. And now this civil unrest is compounding those problems—whatever the merits of these protests may be or will be, the opportunity costs of this moment are staggering. In addition to all the tangible effects of what’s happening—the injury and death, the lost businesses, the burned buildings, the neighborhoods that won’t recover for years in many cities, the educations put on hold, and the breakdown in public trust of almost every institution—just think about all the good and important things we cannot do—cannot even think of doing now—and perhaps won’t contemplate doing for many years to come, because we’ll be struggling to get back to that distant paradise we once called “normal life.”

Of course, normal life for many millions of Americans was nothing like a paradise. The disparities in wealth and health and opportunity that we have gotten used to in this country, and that so much of our politics and ways of doing business seem to take for granted, are just unconscionable. There is no excuse for this kind of inequality in the richest country on earth. What we’re seeing now is a response to that. But it’s a confused and confusing response. Worse, it’s a response that is systematically silencing honest conversation. And this makes it dangerous.

This isn’t just politics and human suffering on display. It’s philosophy. It’s ideas about truth—about what it means to say that something is “true.” What we’re witnessing in our streets and online and in the impossible conversations we’re attempting to have in our private lives is a breakdown in epistemology. How does anyone figure out what’s going on in the world? What is real? If we can’t agree about what is real, or likely to be real, we will never agree about how we should live together. And the problem is, we’re stuck with one other.

So, what’s happening here?

Well, again, it’s hard to say. What is happening when a police officer or a mayor takes a knee in front of a crowd of young people who have been berating him for being a cog in the machinery of systemic racism? Is this a profound moment of human bonding that transcends politics, or is it the precursor to the breakdown of society? Or is it both? It’s not entirely clear.

In the most concrete terms, we are experiencing widespread social unrest in response to what is widely believed to be an epidemic of lethal police violence directed at the black community by racist cops and racist policies. And this unrest has drawn a counter-response from law enforcement—much of which, ironically, is guaranteed to exacerbate the problem of police violence, both real and perceived. And many of the videos we’ve seen of the police cracking down on peaceful protesters are hideous. Some of this footage has been unbelievable. And this is one of many vicious circles that we must find some way to interrupt.

Again, there is so much to be confused about here. We’ve now seen endless video of police inflicting senseless violence on truly peaceful protesters, and yet we have also seen video of the police standing idly by while looters completely destroy businesses. What explains this? Is there a policy that led to this bizarre inversion of priorities? Are the police angry at the protesters for vilifying them, and simultaneously trying to teach society a lesson by letting crime and mayhem spread elsewhere in the city? Or is it just less risky to collide with peaceful protesters? Or is the whole spectacle itself a lie? How representative are these videos of what’s actually going on? Is there much less chaos actually occurring than is being advertised to us?

Again, it’s very hard to know.

What’s easy to know is that civil discourse has broken down. It seems to me that we’ve long been in a situation where the craziest voices on both ends of the political spectrum have been amplifying one another and threatening to produce something truly dangerous. And now I think they have. The amount of misinformation in the air—the degree to which even serious people seem to be ruled by false assumptions and non sequiturs—is just astonishing.

And it’s important to keep in mind that, with the presidential election coming in November, the stakes are really high. As most of you know, I consider four more years of Trump to be an existential threat to our democracy. And I believe that the last two weeks have been very good for him, politically, even when everything else seemed to go very badly for him. I know the polls don’t say this. A large majority of people disapprove of his handling this crisis so far. But I think we all know now to take polls with a grain of salt. There is the very real problem of preference falsification—especially in an environment of intense social pressure. People will often say what they think is socially acceptable, and then think, or say, or do something very different in private—like when they’re alone in a voting booth.

Trump has presided over the complete dismantling of American influence in the world and the destruction of our economy. I know the stock market has looked good, but the stock market has become totally uncoupled from the economy. According to the stock market, the future is just as bright now as it was in January of this year, before most of us had even heard of a novel coronavirus. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. And a lot can happen in the next few months. The last two weeks feel like a decade. And my concern is that if Trump now gets to be the law-and-order President, that may be his path to re-election, if such a path exists. Of course, this crisis has revealed, yet again, how unfit he is to be President. The man couldn’t strike a credible note of reconciliation if the fate of the country depended on it—and the fate of the country has depended on it. I also think it’s possible that these protests wouldn’t be happening, but for the fact that Trump is President. Whether or not the problem of racism has gotten worse in our society, having Trump as President surely makes it seem like it has. It has been such a repudiation of the Obama presidency that, for many people, it has made it seem that white supremacy is now ascendant. So, all the more reason to get rid of Trump in November.

But before this social unrest, our focus was on how incompetent Trump was in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. And now he has been given a very different battle to fight. A battle against leftwing orthodoxy, which is growing more stifling by the minute, and civil unrest. If our social order frays sufficiently, restoring it will be the only thing that most people care about in November. Just think of what an act of domestic terrorism would do politically now. Things can change very, very quickly. And to all a concern for basic law and order “racist”, isn’t going to wash.

Trust in institutions has totally broken down. We’ve been under a very precarious quarantine for more than 3 months, which almost the entire medical profession has insisted is necessary. Doctors and public health officials have castigated people on the political Right for protesting this lockdown. People have been unable to be with their loved ones in their last hours of life. They’ve been unable to hold funerals for them. But now we have doctors and public officials by the thousands, signing open letters, making public statements, saying it’s fine to stand shoulder to shoulder with others in the largest protests our nation has ever seen. The degree to which this has undermined confidence in public health messaging is hard to exaggerate. Whatever your politics, this has been just a mortifying piece of hypocrisy. Especially so, because the pandemic has been hitting the African American community hardest of all. How many people will die because of these protests? It’s a totally rational question to ask, but the question itself is taboo now.

So, it seems to me that almost everything appears upside down at the moment.

Before I get into details on police violence, first let me try to close the door to a few misunderstandings.

Let’s start with the proximate cause of all this: The killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. I’ll have more to say about this in a minute, but nothing I say should detract from the following observation: That video was absolutely sickening, and it revealed a degree of police negligence and incompetence and callousness that everyone was right to be horrified by. In particular, the actions of Derek Chauvin, the cop who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes, his actions were so reckless and so likely to cause harm that there’s no question he should be prosecuted. And he is being prosecuted. He’s been indicted for 2nd degree murder and manslaughter, and I suspect he will spend many, many years in prison. And, this is not to say “the system is working.” It certainly seems likely that without the cell phone video, and the public outrage, Chauvin might have gotten away with it—to say nothing of the other cops with him, who are also now being prosecuted. If this is true, we clearly need a better mechanism with which to police the police.

So, as I said, I’ll return to this topic, because I think most people are drawing the wrong conclusions from this video, and from videos like it, but let me just echo everyone’s outrage over what happened. This is precisely the kind of police behavior that everyone should find abhorrent.

On the general topic of racism in America, I want to make a few similarly clear, preemptive statements:

Racism is still a problem in American society. No question. And slavery—which was racism’s most evil expression—was this country’s founding sin. We should also add the near-total eradication of the Native Americans to that ledger of evil. Any morally sane person who learns the details of these historical injustices finds them shocking, whatever their race. And the legacy of these crimes—crimes that were perpetrated for centuries—remains a cause for serious moral concern today. I have no doubt about this. And nothing I’m about to say, should suggest otherwise.

And I don’t think it’s an accident that the two groups I just mentioned, African Americans and Native Americans, suffer the worst from inequality in America today. How could the history of racial discrimination in this country not have had lasting effects, given the nature of that history? And if anything good comes out of the current crisis, it will be that we manage to find a new commitment to reducing inequality in all its dimensions. The real debate to have is about how to do this, economically and politically. But the status quo that many of us take for granted to is a betrayal of our values, whether we realize it or not. If it’s not a betrayal or your values now, it will be a betrayal of your values when you become a better person. And if you don’t manage that, it will be a betrayal of your kid’s values when they’re old enough to understand the world they are living in. The difference between being very lucky in our society, and very unlucky, should not be as enormous as it is.

However, the question that interests me, given what has been true of the past and is now true of the present, is what should we do next? What should we do to build a healthier society?

What should we do next? Tomorrow… next week…. Obviously, I don’t have the answers. But I am very worried that many of the things we’re doing now, and seem poised to do, will only make our problems worse. And I’m especially worried that it has become so difficult to talk about this. I’m just trying to have conversations. I’m just trying to figure these things out in real time, with other people. And there is no question that conversation itself has become dangerous.

Think about the politics of this. Endless imagery of people burning and looting independent businesses that were struggling to survive, and seeing the owners of these businesses beaten by mobs, cannot be good for the cause of social justice. Looting and burning businesses, and assaulting their owners, isn’t social justice, or even social protest. It’s crime. And having imagery of these crimes that highlight black involvement circulate endlessly on Fox News and on social media cannot be good for the black community. But it might yet be good for Trump.

And it could well kick open the door to a level of authoritarianism that many of us who have been very worried about Trump barely considered possible. It’s always seemed somewhat paranoid to me to wonder whether we’re living in Weimar Germany. I’ve had many conversations about this. I had Timothy Snyder on the podcast, who’s been worrying about the prospect of tyranny in the US for several years now. I’ve known, in the abstract, that democracies can destroy themselves. But the idea that it could happen here still seemed totally outlandish to me. It doesn’t anymore.

Of course, what we’ve been seeing in the streets isn’t just one thing. Some people are protesting for reasons that I fully defend. They’re outraged by specific instances of police violence, like the killing of George Floyd, and they’re worried about creeping authoritarianism—which we really should be worried about now. And they’re convinced that our politics is broken, because it is broken, and they are deeply concerned that our response to the pandemic and the implosion of our economy will do nothing to address the widening inequality in our society. And they recognize that we have a President who is an incompetent, divisive, conman and a crackpot at a time when we actually need wise leadership.

All of that is hard to put on a sign, but it’s all worth protesting.

However, it seems to me that most protesters are seeing this moment exclusively through the lens of identity politics—and racial politics in particular. And some of them are even celebrating the breakdown of law and order, or at least remaining nonjudgmental about it. And you could see, in the early days of this protest, news anchors take that line, on CNN, for instance. Talking about the history of social protest, “Sometimes it has to be violent, right? What, do you think all of these protests need to be nonviolent?” Those words came out of Chris Cuomo’s mouth, and Don Lemon’s mouth. Many people have been circulating a half quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about riots being “the language of the unheard.” They’re leaving out the part where he made it clear that he believed riots harmed the cause of the black community and helped the cause of racists.

There are now calls to defund and even to abolish the police. This may be psychologically understandable when you’ve spent half your day on Twitter watching videos of cops beating peaceful protesters. Those videos are infuriating. And I’ll have a lot more to say about police violence in a minute. But if you think a society without cops is a society you would want to live in, you have lost your mind. Giving a monopoly on violence to the state is just about the best thing we have ever done as a species. It ranks right up there with keeping our shit out of our food. Having a police force that can deter crime, and solve crimes when they occur, and deliver violent criminals to a functioning justice system, is the necessary precondition for almost anything else of value in society.

We need police reform, of course. There are serious questions to ask about the culture of policing—its hiring practices, training, the militarization of so many police forces, outside oversight, how police departments deal with corruption, the way the police unions keep bad cops on the job, and yes, the problem of racist cops. But the idea that any serious person thinks we can do without the police—or that less trained and less vetted cops will magically be better than more trained and more vetted ones—this just reveals that our conversation on these topics has run completely off the rails. Yes, we should give more resources to community services. We should have psychologists or social workers make first contact with the homeless or the mentally ill. Perhaps we’re giving cops jobs they shouldn’t be doing. All of that makes sense to rethink. But the idea that what we’re witnessing now is a matter of the cops being over-resourced—that we’ve given them too much training, that we’ve made the job too attractive—so that the people we’re recruiting are of too high a quality. That doesn’t make any sense.

What’s been alarming here is that we’re seeing prominent people—in government, in media, in Hollywood, in sports—speak and act as though the breakdown of civil society, and of society itself, is a form of progress and any desire for law enforcement is itself a form of racist oppression. At one point the woman who’s running the City Council in Minneapolis, which just decided to abolish the police force, was asked by a journalist, I believe on CNN, “What do I do if someone’s breaking into my house in the middle of the night? Who do I call?” And her first response to that question was, “You need to recognize what a statement of privilege that question is.” She’s since had to walk that back, because it’s one of the most galling and embarrassing things a public official has ever said, but this is how close the Democratic Party is to sounding completely insane. You cannot say that if someone is breaking into your house, and you’re terrified, and you want a police force that can respond, that fear is a symptom of “white privilege.” This is where Democratic politics goes to die.

Again, what is alarming about this is that this woke analysis of the breakdown of law and order will only encourage an increasingly authoritarian response, as well as the acceptance of that response by many millions of Americans.

If you step back, you will notice that there is a kind of ecstasy of ideological conformity in the air. And it’s destroying institutions. It’s destroying the very institutions we rely on to get our information—universities, the press. The New York Times in recent days, seems to be preparing for a self-immolation in recent days. No one wants to say or even think anything that makes anyone uncomfortable—certainly not anyone who has more wokeness points than they do. It’s just become too dangerous. There are people being fired for tweeting “All Lives Matter.” #AllLivesMatter, in the current environment, is being read as a naked declaration of white supremacy. That is how weird this moment is. A soccer player on the LA Galaxy was fired for something his wife tweeted…

Of course, there are real problems of inequality and despair at the bottom of these protests. People who have never found a secure or satisfying place in the world—or young people who fear they never will—people who have seen their economic prospects simply vanish, and people who have had painful encounters with racism and racist cops—people by the millions are now surrendering themselves to a kind of religious awakening. But like most religious awakenings, this movement is not showing itself eager to make honest contact with reality.

On top of that, we find extraordinarily privileged people, whatever the color of their skin—people who have been living wonderful lives in their gated communities or 5th avenue apartments—and who feel damn guilty about it—they are supporting this movement uncritically, for many reasons. Of course, they care about other people—I’m sure most of them have the same concerns about inequality that I do—but they are also supporting this movement because it promises a perfect expiation of their sins. If you have millions of dollars, and shoot botox into your face, and vacation on St. Bart’s, and you’re liberal—the easiest way to sleep at night is to be as woke as AOC and like every one of her tweets.

The problem isn’t just with the looting, and the arson, and the violence. There are problems with these peaceful protests themselves.

Of course, I’m not questioning anyone’s right to protest. Even our deranged president can pay lip service to that right—which he did as the DC police were violently dispersing a peaceful protest so that he could get his picture taken in front of that church, awkwardly holding a bible, as though he had never held a book in life.

The problem with the protests is that they are animated, to a remarkable degree, by confusion and misinformation. And I’ll explain why I think that’s the case. And, of course, this will be controversial. Needless to say, many people will consider the color of my skin to be disqualifying here. I could have invited any number of great, black intellectuals onto the podcast to make these points for me. But that struck me as a form of cowardice. Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, these guys might not agree with everything I’m about to say, but any one of them could walk the tightrope I’m now stepping out on far more credibly than I can.

But, you see, that’s part of the problem. The perception that the color of a person’s skin, or even his life experience, matters for this discussion is a pernicious illusion. For the discussion we really need to have, the color of a person’s skin, and even his life experience, simply does not matter. It cannot matter. We have to break this spell that the politics of identity has cast over everything.

Ok…

As I’ve already acknowledged, there is a legacy of racism in the United States that we’re still struggling to outgrow. That is obvious. There are real racists out there. And there are ways in which racism became institutionalized long ago. Many of you will remember that during the crack epidemic the penalties for crack and powder cocaine were quite different. And this led black drug offenders to be locked up for much longer than white ones. Now, whether the motivation for that policy was consciously racist or not, I don’t know, but it was effectively racist. Nothing I’m about to say entails a denial of these sorts of facts. There just seems to be no question that boys who grow up with their fathers in prison start life with a significant strike against them. So criminal justice reform is absolutely essential.

And I’m not denying that many black people, perhaps most, have interactions with cops, and others in positions of power, or even random strangers, that seem unambiguously racist. Sometimes this is because they are actually in the presence of racism, and perhaps sometimes it only seems that way. I’ve had unpleasant encounters with cops, and customs officers, and TSA screeners, and bureaucrats of every kind, and even with people working in stores or restaurants. People aren’t always nice or ethical. But being white, and living in a majority white society, I’ve never had to worry about whether any of these collisions were the result of racism. And I can well imagine that in some of these situations, had I been black, I would have come away feeling that I had encountered yet another racist in the wild. So I consider myself very lucky to have gone through life not having to think about any of that. Surely that’s one form of white privilege.

So, nothing I’m going to say denies that we should condemn racism—whether interpersonal or institutional—and we should condemn it wherever we find it. But as a society, we simply can’t afford to find and condemn racism where it doesn’t exist. And we should be increasingly aware of the costs of doing that. The more progress we make on issues of race, the less racism there will be to find, and the more likely we’ll find ourselves chasing after its ghost.

The truth is, we have made considerable progress on the problem of racism in America. This isn’t 1920, and it isn’t 1960. We had a two-term black president. We have black congressmen and women. We have black mayors and black chiefs of police. There are major cities, like Detroit and Atlanta, going on their fifth or sixth consecutive black mayor. Having more and more black people in positions of real power, in what is still a majority white society, is progress on the problem of racism. And the truth is, it might not even solve the problem we’re talking about. When Freddy Gray was killed in Baltimore, virtually everyone who could have been held accountable for his death was black. The problem of police misconduct and reform is complicated, as we’re about to see. But obviously, there is more work to do on the problem of racism. And, more important, there is much more work to do to remedy the inequalities in our society that are so correlated with race, and will still be correlated with race, even after the last racist has been driven from our shores.

The question of how much of today’s inequality is due to existing racism—whether racist people or racist policies—is a genuinely difficult question to answer. And to answer it, we need to distinguish the past from the present.

Take wealth inequality, for example: The median white family has a net worth of around $170,000—these data are a couple of years old, but they’re probably pretty close to what’s true now. The median black family has a net worth of around $17,000. So we have a tenfold difference in median wealth. (That’s the median, not the mean: Half of white families are below 170,000 and half above; half of black families are below 17,000 and half above. And we’re talking about wealth here, not income.)

This disparity in wealth persists even for people whose incomes are in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. For whites in the top 10 percent for income, the median net worth is $1.8 million; for blacks it’s around $350,000. There are probably many things that account for this disparity in wealth. It seems that black families that make it to the top of the income distribution fall out of it more easily than white families do. But it’s also undeniable that black families have less intergenerational wealth accumulated through inheritance.

How much of this is inequality due to the legacy of slavery? And how much of it is due to an ensuing century of racist policies? I’m prepared to believe quite a lot. And it strikes me as totally legitimate to think about paying reparations as a possible remedy here. Of course, one will then need to talk about reparations for the Native Americans. And then one wonders where this all ends. And what about blacks who aren’t descended from slaves, but who still suffered the consequences of racism in the US? In listening to people like John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes discuss this topic, I’m inclined to think that reparations is probably unworkable as a policy. But the truth is that I’m genuinely unsure about this.

Whatever we decide about the specific burdens of the past, we have to ask, how much of current wealth inequality is due to existing racism and to existing policies that make it harder for black families to build wealth? And the only way to get answers to those questions is to have a dispassionate discussion about facts.

The problem with the social activism we are now seeing—what John McWhorter has called “the new religion of anti-Racism”—is that it finds racism nearly everywhere, even where it manifestly does not exist. And this is incredibly damaging to the cause of achieving real equality in our society. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the evil and injustice of slavery and its aftermath. But it is possible to exaggerate how much racism currently exists at an Ivy League university, or in Silicon Valley, or at the Oscars. And those exaggerations are toxic—and, perversely, they may produce more real racism. It seems to me that false claims of victimhood can diminish the social stature of any group, even a group that has a long history of real victimization.

The imprecision here—the bad-faith arguments, the double standards, the goal-post shifting, the idiotic opinion pieces in the New York Times, the defenestrations on social media, the general hysteria that the cult of wokeness has produced—I think this is all extremely harmful to civil society, and to effective liberal politics, and to the welfare of African Americans.

So, with that as preamble, let’s return to the tragic death of George Floyd.

As I said, I believe that any sane person who watches that video will feel that they have witnessed a totally unjustified killing. So, people of any race, are right to be horrified by what happened there. But now I want to ask a few questions, and I want us to try to consider them dispassionately. And I really want you to watch your mind while you do this. There are very likely to be few tripwires installed there, and I’m about to hit them. So just do your best to remain calm.

Does the killing of George Floyd prove that we have a problem of racism in the United States?

Does it even suggest that we have a problem of racism in the United States?

In other words, do we have reason to believe that, had Floyd been white, he wouldn’t have died in a similar way?

Do the dozen or so other videos that have emerged in recent years, of black men being killed by cops, do they prove, or even suggest, that there is an epidemic of lethal police violence directed especially at black men and that this violence is motivated by racism?

Most people seem to think that the answers to these questions are so obvious that to even pose them as I just did is obscene. The answer is YES, and it’s a yes that now needs to be shouted in the streets.

The problem, however, is that if you take even 5 minutes to look at the data on crime and police violence, the answer appears to be “no,” in every case, albeit with one important caveat. I’m not talking about how the police behaved in 1970 or even 1990. But in the last 25 years, violent crime has come down significantly in the US, and so has the police use of deadly force. And as you’re about to see, the police used more deadly force against white people—both in absolute numbers, and in terms of their contribution to crime and violence in our society. But the public perception is, of course, completely different.

In a city like Los Angeles, 2019 was a 30-year low for police shootings. Think about that…. Do the people who were protesting in Los Angeles, peacefully and violently, do the people who were ransacking and burning businesses by the hundreds—in many cases, businesses that will not return to their neighborhoods—do the people who caused so much damage to the city, that certain neighborhoods, ironically the neighborhoods that are disproportionately black, will take years, probably decades to recover, do the celebrities who supported them, and even bailed them out of jail—do any of these people know that 2019 was the 30-year low for police shootings in Los Angeles?

Before I step out further over the abyss here, let me reiterate: Many of you are going to feel a visceral negative reaction to what I’m about to say. You’re not going to like the way it sounds. You’re especially not going to like the way it sounds coming from a white guy. This feeling of not liking, this feeling of outrage, this feeling of disgust—this feeling of “Sam, what the fuck is wrong with you, why are you even touching this topic?”—this feeling isn’t an argument. It isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the basis for your believing anything to be true or false about the world.

Your capacity to be offended isn’t something that I or anyone else needs to respect. Your capacity to be offended isn’t something that you should respect. In fact, it is something that you should be on your guard for. Perhaps more than any other property of your mind, this feeling can mislead you.

If you care about justice—and you absolutely should—you should care about facts and the ability to discuss them openly. Justice requires contact with reality. It simply isn’t the case—it cannot be the case—that the most pressing claims on our sense of justice need come from those who claim to be the most offended by conversation itself.

So, I’m going to speak the language of facts right now, in so far as we know them, all the while knowing that these facts run very much counter to most people’s assumptions. Many of the things you think you know about crime and violence in our society are almost certainly wrong. And that should matter to you.

So just take a moment and think this through with me.

How many people are killed each year in America by cops? If you don’t know, guess. See if you have any intuitions for these numbers. Because your intuitions are determining how you interpret horrific videos of the sort we saw coming out of Minneapolis.

The answer for many years running is about 1000. One thousand people are killed by cops in America each year. There are about 50 to 60 million encounters between civilians and cops each year, and about 10 million arrests. That’s down from a high of over 14 million arrests annually throughout the 1990’s. So, of the 10 million occasions where a person attracts the attention of the police, and the police decide to make an arrest, about 1000 of those people die as a result. (I’m sure a few people get killed even when no arrest was attempted, but that has to be a truly tiny number.) So, without knowing anything else about the situation, if the cops decide to arrest you, it would be reasonable to think that your chance of dying is around 1/10,000. Of course, in the United States, it’s higher than it is in other countries. So I’m not saying that this number is acceptable. But it is what it is for a reason, as we’re about to see.

Now, there are a few generic things I’d like to point here before we get further into the data. They should be uncontroversial.

First, it’s almost certainly the case that of these 1000 officer-caused deaths each year, some are entirely justified—it may even be true that most are entirely justified—and some are entirely unjustified, and some are much harder to judge. And that will be true next year. And the year after that.

Of the unjustified killings, there are vast differences between them. Many have nothing in common but for the fact that a cop killed someone unnecessarily. It might have been a terrible misunderstanding, or incompetence, or just bad luck, and in certain cases it could be a cop who decides to murder someone because he’s become enraged, or he’s just a psychopath. And it is certainly possible that racial bias accounts for some number of these unjustified killings.

Another point that should be uncontroversial—but may sound a little tone-deaf in the current environment, where we’ve inundated with videos of police violence in response to these protests. But this has to be acknowledged whenever we’re discussing this topic: Cops have a very hard job. In fact, in the current environment, they have an almost impossible job.

If you’re making 10 million arrests every year, some number of people will decide not to cooperate. There can be many reasons for this. A person could be mentally ill, or drunk, or on drugs. Of course, rather often the person is an actual criminal who doesn’t want to be arrested.

Among innocent people, and perhaps this getting more common these days, a person might feel that resisting arrest is the right thing to do, ethically or politically or as a matter of affirming his identity. After all, put yourself in his shoes, he did nothing wrong. Why are the cops arresting him? I don’t know if we have data on the numbers of people who resist arrest by race. But I can well imagine that if it’s common for African Americans to believe that the only reason they have been singled out for arrest is due to racism on the part of the police, that could lead to greater levels of non-compliance. Which seems very likely to lead to more unnecessary injury and death. This is certainly one reason why it is wise to have the racial composition of a police force mirror that of the community it’s policing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that this will reduce lethal violence from the side of the police. In fact, the evidence we have suggests that black and Hispanic cops are more likely to shoot black and Hispanic suspects than white cops are. But it would surely change the perception of the community that racism is a likely explanation for police behavior, which itself might reduce conflict.

When a cop goes hands on a person in an attempt to control his movements or make an arrest, that person’s resistance poses a problem that most people don’t understand. If you haven’t studied this topic. If you don’t know what it physically takes to restrain and immobilize a non-compliant person who may be bigger and stronger than you are, and if you haven’t thought through the implications of having a gun on your belt while attempting to do that—a gun that can be grabbed and used against you, or against a member of the public—then your intuitions about what makes sense here, tactically and ethically, are very likely to be bad.

If you haven’t trained with firearms under stress. If you don’t know how suddenly situations can change. If you haven’t experienced how quickly another person can close the distance on you, and how little time you have to decide to draw your weapon. If you don’t know how hard it is to shoot a moving target, or even a stationary one, when your heart is beating out of your chest. You very likely have totally unreasonable ideas about what we can expect from cops in situations like these. [VIDEO, VIDEO, VIDEO]

And there is another fact that looms over all this like the angel of Death, literally: Most cops do not get the training they need. They don’t get the hand-to-hand training they need—they don’t have good skills to subdue people without harming them. All you need to do is watch YouTube videos of botched arrests to see this. The martial arts community stands in perpetual astonishment at the kinds of things cops do and fail to do once they start fighting with suspects. Cops also don’t get the firearms training they need. Of course, there are elite units in many police departments, but most cops do not have the training they need to do the job they’re being asked to do.

It is also true, no doubt, that some cops are racist bullies. And there are corrupt police departments that cover for these guys, and cover up police misconduct generally, whether it was borne of racism or not.

But the truth is that even if we got rid of all bad cops, which we absolutely should do, and there were only good people left, and we got all these good people the best possible training, and we gave them the best culture in which to think about their role in society, and we gave them the best methods for de-escalating potentially violent situations—which we absolutely must do—and we scrubbed all the dumb laws from our books, so that when cops were required to enforce the law, they were only risking their lives and the lives of civilians for reasons that we deem necessary and just—so the war on drugs is obviously over—even under these conditions of perfect progress, we are still guaranteed to have some number of cases each year where a cop kills a civilian in a way that is totally unjustified, and therefore tragic. Every year, there will be some number of families who will be able to say that the cops killed their son or daughter, or father or mother, or brother or sister. And videos of these killings will occasionally surface, and they will be horrific. This seems guaranteed to happen.

So, while we need to make all these improvements, we still need to understand that there are very likely always to going to be videos of cops doing something inexplicable, or inexplicably stupid, that results in an innocent person’s death, or a not-so-innocent person’s death. And sometimes the cop will be white and the victim will be black. We have 10 million arrests each year. And we now live in a panopticon where practically everything is videotaped.

I’m about to get further into the details of what we know about police violence, but I want to just put it to you now: If we’re going to let the health of race relations in this country, or the relationship between the community and the police, depend on whether we ever see a terrible video of police misconduct again, the project of healing these wounds in our society is doomed.

About a week into these protests I heard Van Jones on CNN say, “If we see one more video of a cop brutalizing a black man, this country could go over the edge.” He said this, not as indication of how dangerously inflamed people have become. He seemed to be saying it as an ultimatum to the police. With 10 million arrests a year, arrests that have to take place in the most highly armed society in the developed world, I hope you understand how unreasonable that ultimatum is.

We have to put these videos into context. And we have to acknowledge how different they are from one another. Some of them are easy to interpret. But some are quite obviously being interpreted incorrectly by most people—especially by activists. And there are a range of cases—some have video associated with them and some don’t—that are now part of a litany of anti-racist outrage, and the names of the dead are intoned as though they were all evidence of the same injustice. And yet, they are not.

Walter Scott was stopped for a broken taillight and got out of his car and tried to flee. There might have been a brief struggle over the officer’s taser, that part of the video isn’t clear. But what is clear is that he was shot in the back multiple times as he was running away. That was insane. There was zero reason for the officer to feel that his life was under threat at the point he opened fire. And for that unjustified shooting, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. I’m not sure that’s long enough. That seemed like straight-up murder.

The George Floyd video, while even more disturbing to watch, is harder to interpret. I don’t know anything about Derek Chauvin, the cop who knelt on his neck. It’s quite possible that he’s a terrible person who should have never been a cop. He seems to have a significant number of complaints against him—though, as far as I know, the details of those complaints haven’t been released. And he might be a racist on top of being a bad cop. Or he might be a guy who was totally in over his head and thought you could restrain someone indefinitely by keeping a knee on their neck indefinitely. I don’t know. I’m sure more facts will come out. But whoever he is, I find it very unlikely that he was intending to kill George Floyd. Think about it. He was surrounded by irate witnesses and being filmed. Unless he was aspiring to become the most notorious murderer in human history, it seems very unlikely that he was intending to commit murder in that moment. It’s possible, of course. But it doesn’t seem the likeliest explanation for his behavior.

What I believe we saw on that video was the result of a tragic level of negligence and poor training on the part of those cops. Or terrible recruitment—it’s possible that none of these guys should have ever been cops. I think for one of them, it was only his fourth day on the job. Just imagine that. Just imagine all things you don’t know as a new cop. It could also be a function of bad luck in terms of Floyd’s underlying health. It’s been reported that he was complaining of being unable to breath before Chauvin pinned him with his knee. The knee on his neck might not have been the only thing that caused his death. It could have also been the weight of the other officer pinning him down.

This is almost certainly what happened in the cast of Eric Garner. Half the people on earth believe they witnessed a cop choke Eric Garner to death in that video. That does not appear to be what happened. When Eric Garner is saying “I can’t breathe” he’s not being choked. He’s being held down on the pavement by several officers. Being forced down on your stomach under the weight of several people can kill a person, especially someone with lung or heart disease. In the case of Eric Garner, it is absolutely clear that the cop who briefly attempted to choke him was no longer choking him. If you doubt that, watch the video again.

And if you are recoiling now from my interpretation of these videos, you really should watch the killing of Tony Timpa. It’s also terribly disturbing, but it removes the variable of race and it removes any implication of intent to harm on the part of the cops about as clearly as you could ask. It really is worth watching as a corrective to our natural interpretation of these other videos.

Tony Timpa was a white man in Dallas, who was suffering some mental health emergency and cocaine intoxication. And he actually called 911 himself. What we see is the bodycam footage from the police, which shows that he was already in handcuffs when they arrived—a security guard had cuffed him. And then the cops take over, and they restrain Timpa on the ground, by rolling him onto a stomach and putting their weight on him, very much like in the case of Eric Garner. And they keep their weight on him—one cop has a knee on his upper back, which is definitely much less aggressive than a knee on the neck—but they crush the life out of him all the same, over the course of 13 minutes. He’s not being choked. The cops are not being rough. There’s no animus between them and Timpa. It was not a hostile arrest. They clearly believe that they’re responding to a mental health emergency. But they keep him down on his belly, under their weight, and they’re cracking jokes as he loses consciousness. Now, your knowledge that he’s going to be dead by the end of this video, make their jokes seem pretty callous. But this was about as benign an imposition of force by cops as you’re going to see. The crucial insight you will have watching this video, is that the officers not only had no intent to kill Tony Timpa, they don’t take his pleading seriously because they have no doubt that what they’re doing is perfectly safe—perfectly within protocol. They’ve probably done this hundreds of times before.

If you watch that video—and, again, fair warning, it is disturbing—but imagine how disturbing it would have been to our society if Tony Timpa had been black. If the only thing you changed about the video was the color of Timpa’s skin, then that video would have detonated like a nuclear bomb in our society, exactly as the George Floyd video did. In fact, in one way it is worse, or would have been perceived to be worse. I mean, just imagine white cops telling jokes as they crushed the life out of a black Tony Timpa… Given the nature of our conversation about violence, given the way we perceive videos of this kind, there is no way that people would have seen that as anything other than a lynching. And yet, it would not have been a lynching.

Now, I obviously have no idea what was in the minds of cops in Minneapolis. And perhaps we’ll learn at trial. Perhaps a tape of Chauvin using the N-word in another context will surface, bringing in a credible allegation of racism. It seems to me that Chauvin is going to have a very hard time making sense of his actions. But most people who saw that video believe they have seen, with their own eyes, beyond any possibility of doubt, a racist cop intentionally murder an innocent man. That’s not what the video necessarily shows.

As I said, these videos can be hard to interpret, even while seeming very easy to interpret. And these cases, whether we have associated video or not, are very different. Michael Brown is reported to have punched a cop in the face and attempted to get his gun. As far as I know, there’s no video of that encounter. But, if true, that is an entirely different situation. If you’re attacking a cop, trying to get his gun, that is a life and death struggle that almost by definition for the cop, and it most cases justifies the use of lethal force. And honestly, it seems that no one within a thousand miles of Black Lives Matter is willing to make these distinctions. An attitude of anti-racist moral outrage is not the best lens through which to interpret evidence of police misconduct.

I’ve seen many videos of people getting arrested. And I’ve seen the outraged public reaction to what appears to be inappropriate use of force by the cops. One overwhelming fact that comes through is that people, whatever the color of their skin, don’t understand how to behave around cops so as to keep themselves safe. People have to stop resisting arrest. This may seem obvious, but judging from most of these videos, and from the public reaction to them, this must be a totally arcane piece of information. When a cop wants to take you into custody, you don’t get to decide whether or not you should be arrested. When a cop wants to take you into custody, for whatever reason, it’s not a negotiation. And if you turn it into a wrestling match, you’re very likely to get injured or killed.

This is a point I once belabored in a podcast with Glenn Loury, and it became essentially a public service announcement. And I’ve gone back and listened to those comments, and I want to repeat them here. This is something that everyone really needs to understand. And it’s something that Black Lives Matter should be teaching explicitly: If you put your hands on a cop—if you start wrestling with a cop, or grabbing him because he’s arresting your friend, or pushing him, or striking him, or using your hands in way that can possibly be interpreted as your reaching for a gun—you are likely to get shot in the United States, whatever the color of your skin.

As I said, when you’re with a cop, there is always a gun out in the open. And any physical struggle has to be perceived by him as a fight for the gun. A cop doesn’t know what you’re going to do if you overpower him, so he has to assume the worst. Most cops are not confident in their ability to physically control a person without shooting him—for good reason, because they’re not well trained to do that, and they’re continually confronting people who are bigger, or younger, or more athletic, or more aggressive than they are. Cops are not superheroes. They’re ordinary people with insufficient training, and once things turn physical they cannot afford to give a person who is now assaulting a police officer the benefit of the doubt.

This is something that most people seem totally confused about. If they see a video of somebody trying to punch a cop in the face and the person’s unarmed, many people think the cop should just punch back, and any use of deadly force would be totally disproportionate. But that’s not how violence works. It’s not the cop’s job to be the best bare-knuckled boxer on Earth so he doesn’t have to use his gun. A cop can’t risk getting repeatedly hit in the face and knocked out, because there’s always a gun in play. This is the cop’s perception of the world, and it’s a justifiable one, given the dynamics of human violence.

You might think cops shouldn’t carry guns. Why can’t we just be like England? That’s a point that can be debated. But it requires considerable thought in a country where there are over 300 million guns on the street. The United States is not England.

Again, really focus on what is happening when a cop is attempting to arrest a person. It’s not up to you to decide whether or not you should be arrested. Does it matter that you know you didn’t do anything wrong? No. And how could that fact be effectively communicated in the moment by your not following police commands? I’m going to ask that again: How could the fact that you’re innocent, that you’re not a threat to cop, that you’re not about to suddenly attack him or produce a weapon of your own, how could those things be effectively communicated at the moment he’s attempting to arrest you by your resisting arrest?

Unless you called the cops yourself, you never know what situation you’re in. If I’m walking down the street, I don’t know if the cop who is approaching me didn’t get a call that some guy who looks like Ben Stiller just committed an armed robbery. I know I didn’t do anything, but I don’t know what’s in the cop’s head. The time to find out what’s going on—the time to complain about racist cops, the time to yell at them and tell them they’re all going to get fired for their stupidity and misconduct—is after cooperating, at the police station, in the presence of a lawyer, preferably. But to not comply in the heat of the moment, when a guy with the gun is issuing commands—this raises your risk astronomically, and it’s something that most people, it seems, just do not intuitively understand, even when they’re not in the heat of the moment themselves, but just watching video of other people getting arrested.

Ok. End of public-service announcement.

The main problem with using individual cases, where black men and women have been killed by cops, to conclude that there is an epidemic of racist police violence in our society, is that you can find nearly identical cases of white suspects being killed by cops, and there are actually more of them.

In 2016, John McWhorter wrote a piece in Time Magazine about this.

Here’s a snippet of what he wrote:

“The heart of the indignation over these murders is a conviction that racist bias plays a decisive part in these encounters. That has seemed plausible to me, and I have recently challenged those who disagree to present a list of white people killed within the past few years under circumstances similar to those that so enrage us in cases such as what happened to Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Walter Scott, Sam Debose, and others.”

So, McWhorter issued that challenge, as he said, and he was presented with the cases [VIDEO, VIDEO, VIDEO]. But there’s no song about these people, admonishing us to say their names. And the list of white names is longer, and I don’t know any of them, other than Tony Timpa. I know the black names. In addition to the ones I just read from McWhorter’s article, I know the names of Eric Garner, and Michael Brown, and Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile, and now, of course, I know the name of George Floyd. And I’m aware of many of the details of these cases where black men and women have been killed by cops. I know the name of Breonna Taylor. I can’t name a single white person killed by cops in circumstances like these—other than Timpa—and I just read McWhorter’s article where he lists many of them.

So, this is also a distortion in the media. The media is not showing us videos of white people being killed by cops; activists are not demanding that they do this. I’m sure white supremacists talk about this stuff a lot, who knows? But in terms of the story we’re telling ourselves in the mainstream, we are not actually talking about the data on lethal police violence.

So back to the data: Again, cops kill around 1000 people every year in the United States. About 25 percent are black. About 50 percent are white. The data on police homicide are all over the place. The federal government does not have a single repository for data of this kind. But they have been pretty carefully tracked by outside sources, like the Washington Post, for the last 5 years. These ratios appear stable over time. Again, many of these killings are justifiable, we’re talking about career criminals who are often armed and, in many cases, trying to kill the cops. Those aren’t the cases we’re worried about. We’re worried about the unjustifiable homicides.

Now, some people will think that these numbers still represent an outrageous injustice. Afterall, African Americans are only 13 percent of the population. So, at most, they should be 13 percent of the victims of police violence, not 25 percent. Any departure from the baseline population must be due to racism.

Ok. Well, that sounds plausible, but consider a few more facts:

Blacks are 13 percent of the population, but they commit at least 50 percent of the murders and other violent crimes.

If you have 13 percent of the population responsible for 50 percent of the murders—and in some cities committing 2/3rds of all violent crime—what percent of police attention should it attract? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it’s not just 13 percent. Given that the overwhelming majority of their victims are black, I’m pretty sure that most black people wouldn’t set the dial at 13 percent either.

And here we arrive at the core of the problem. The story of crime in America is overwhelmingly the story of black-on-black crime. It is also, in part, a story of black-on-white crime. For more than a generation, crime in America really hasn’t been a story of much white-on-black crime. [Some listeners mistook my meaning here. I’m not denying that most violent crime is intraracial. So, it’s true that most white homicide victims are killed by white offenders. Per capita, however, the white crime rate is much lower than the black crime rate. And there is more black-on-white crime than white-on-black crime.—SH]

The murder rate has come down steadily since the early 1990’s, with only minor upticks. But, nationwide, blacks are still 6 times more likely to get murdered than whites, and in some cities their risk is double that. And around 95 percent of the murders are committed by members of the African American community. [While reported in 2015, these data were more than a decade old. Looking at more recent data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, the number appears to be closer to 90 percent.—SH]

The weekend these protests and riots were kicking off nationwide—when our entire country seemed to be tearing itself apart over a perceived epidemic of racist police violence against the black community, 92 people were shot, and 27 killed, in Chicago alone—one city. This is almost entirely a story of black men killing members of their own community. And this is far more representative of the kind of violence that the black community needs to worry about. And, ironically, it’s clear that one remedy for this violence is, or would be, effective policing.

These are simply the facts of crime in our society as we best understand them. And the police have to figure out how to respond to these facts, professionally and ethically. The question is, are they doing that? And, obviously, there’s considerable doubt that they’re doing that, professionally and ethically.

Roland Fryer, the Harvard economist who’s work I discussed on the podcast with Glenn Loury, studied police encounters involving black and white suspects and the use of force.

His paper is titled, this from 2016, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force.”

Fryer is black, and he went into this research with the expectation that the data would confirm that there’s an epidemic of lethal police violence directed at black men. But he didn’t find that. However, he did find support for the suspicion that black people suffer more nonlethal violence at the hands of cops than whites do.

So let’s look at this.

The study examined data from 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California. Generally, Fryer found that there is 25 percent greater likelihood that the police would go hands on black suspects than white ones—cuffing them, or forcing them to ground, or using other non-lethal force.

Specifically, in New York City, in encounters where white and black citizens were matched for other characteristics, they found that:

Cops were…

17 percent more likely to go hands on black suspects

18 percent more likely to push them into a wall

16 percent more likely to put them in handcuffs (in a situation in which they aren’t arrested)

18 percent more likely to push them to the ground

25 percent more likely to use pepper spray or a baton

19 percent more likely to draw their guns

24 percent more likely to point a gun at them.

This is more or less the full continuum of violence short of using lethal force. And it seems, from the data we have, that blacks receive more of it than whites. What accounts for this disparity? Racism? Maybe. However, as I said, it’s inconvenient to note that other data suggest that black cops and Hispanic cops are more likely to shoot black and Hispanic suspects than white cops are. I’m not sure how an ambient level of racism explains that.

Are there other explanations? Well, again, could it be that blacks are less cooperative with the police. If so, that’s worth understanding. A culture of resisting arrest would be a very bad thing to cultivate, given that the only response to such resistance is for the police to increase their use of force.

Whatever is true here is something we should want to understand. And it’s all too easy to see how an increased number of encounters with cops, due to their policing in the highest crime neighborhoods, which are disproportionately black, and an increased number of traffic stops in those neighborhoods, and an increased propensity for cops to go hands-on these suspects, with or without an arrest, for whatever reason—it’s easy to see how all of this could be the basis for a perception of racism, whether or not racism is the underlying motivation.

It is totally humiliating to be arrested or manhandled by a cop. And, given the level of crime in the black community, a disproportionate number of innocent black men seem guaranteed to have this experience. It’s totally understandable that this would make them bitter and mistrustful of the police. This is another vicious circle that we must find some way to interrupt.

But Fryer also found that black suspects are around 25 percent less likely to be shot than white suspects are. And in the most egregious situations, where officers were not first attacked, but nevertheless fired their weapons at a suspect, they were more likely to do this when the suspect was white.

Again, the data are incomplete. This doesn’t not cover every city in the country. And a larger study tomorrow might paint a different picture. But, as far as I know, the best data we have suggest that for, whatever reason, whites are more likely to be killed by cops once an arrest is attempted. And a more recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by David Johnson and colleagues found similar results. And it is simply undeniable that more whites are killed by cops each year, both in absolute numbers and in proportion to their contributions to crime and violence in our society.

Can you hear how these facts should be grinding in that well-oiled machine of woke outrage? Our society is in serious trouble now. We are being crushed under the weight of a global pandemic and our response to it has been totally inept. On top of that, we’re being squeezed by the growing pressure of what might become a full-on economic depression. And the streets are now filled with people who imagine, on the basis of seeing some horrific videos, that there is an epidemic of racist cops murdering African Americans. Look at what this belief is doing to our politics. And these videos will keep coming. And the truth is they could probably be matched 2 for 1 with videos of white people being killed by cops. What percentage of people protesting understand that the disparity runs this way? In light of the belief that the disparity must run the other way, people are now quite happy to risk getting beaten and arrested by cops themselves, and to even loot and burn businesses. And most people and institutions are supporting this civil unrest from the sidelines, because they too imagine that cops are killing black people in extraordinary numbers. And all of this is calling forth an authoritarian response from Trump—and leading to more examples of police violence caught on video.

As I hope I’ve made clear, we need police reform—there’s no question about this. And some of the recent footage of the police attacking peaceful protests is outrageous. Nothing I just said should signify that I’m unaware of that. From what I’ve seen—and by the time I release this podcast, the character of all this might have changed—but, from what I’ve seen, the police were dangerously passive in the face of looting and real crime, at least in the beginning. In many cities, they just stood and watched society unravel. And then they were far too aggressive in the face of genuinely peaceful protests. This is a terrible combination. It is the worst combination. There’s no better way to increase cynicism and anger and fear, on all sides.

But racializing how we speak about the problem of police violence, where race isn’t actually the relevant variable—again, think of Tony Timpa— this has highly negative effects. First, it keeps us from talking about the real problems with police tactics. For instance, we had the recent case of Breonna Taylor who was killed in a so-called “no knock” raid of her home. As occasionally happens, in this carnival of moral error we call “the war on drugs,” the police had the wrong address, and they kicked in the wrong door. And they wound up killing a totally innocent woman. But this had nothing to do with race. The problem is not, as some commentators have alleged, that it’s not safe to be “sleeping while black.” The problem is that these no-knock raids are an obscenely dangerous way of enforcing despicably stupid laws. White people die under precisely these same circumstances, and very likely in greater numbers (I don’t have data specifically on no-knock raids, but we can assume that the ratio is probably conserved here).

Think about how crazy this policy is in a nation where gun ownership is so widespread. If someone kicks in your door in the middle of the night, and you’re a gun owner, of course you’re going to reach for your gun. That’s why you have a gun in the first place. The fact that people bearing down on you and your family out of the darkness might have yelled “police” (or might have not yelled “police”; it’s alleged in some of these cases that they don’t yell anything)—the fact that someone yells “police” isn’t necessarily convincing. Anyone can yell “police.” And, again, think of the psychology of this: If the police have the wrong house, and you know there is no reason on earth that real cops would take an interest in you, especially in the middle of the night, because you haven’t done anything (you’re not the guy running a meth lab)—and now you’re reaching for your gun in the dark—of course, someone is likely to get killed. This is not a racial issue. It’s a terrible policy.

Unfortunately, the process of police reform isn’t straightforward—and it is made massively more complicated by what’s happening now. Yes, we will be urging police reform in a very big way now, that much seems clear. But Roland Fryer has also shown that investigations of the cops, in a climate where viral videos and racial politics are operating, have dramatic effects, many of which are negative.

He studied the aftermath of the investigations into police misconduct that followed the killings Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Lequan McDonald, and found that, for reasons that seem pretty easy to intuit, proactive police contact with civilians decreases drastically, sometimes by as much 100 percent, once these investigations get started. This is now called “The Ferguson Effect.” The police still answer 911 calls, but they don’t investigate suspicious activity in the same way. They don’t want to wind up on YouTube. And when they alter their behavior like this, homicides go up. Fryer estimates that the effects of these few investigations translated into 1000 extra homicides, and almost 40,000 more felonies, over the next 24 months in the US. And, of course, most of the victims of those crimes were black. One shudders to imagine the size of the Ferguson effect we’re about to see nationwide… I’m sure the morale among cops has never been lower. I think it’s almost guaranteed that cops by the thousands will be leaving the force. And it will be much more difficult to recruit good people.

Who is going to want to be a cop now? Who could be idealist about occupying that role in society? It seems to me that the population of people who will become cops now will be more or less indistinguishable from the population of people who become prison guards. I’m pretty sure there’s a difference there, and I think we’re likely to see that difference expressed in the future. It’s a grim picture, unless we do something very creative here.

So there’s a real question about how we can reform police departments, and get rid of bad cops, without negatively impacting the performance of good cops? That’s a riddle we have to solve—or at least we have to understand what the trade-offs are here.

Why is all of this happening now? Police killings of civilians have gone way down. And they are rare events. They are 1/10,000 level events, if measured by arrests. 1/50-60,000 level events if measured by police encounters. And the number of unarmed people who are killed is smaller still. Around 50 last year, again, more were white than black. And not all unarmed victims are innocent. Some get killed in the act of attacking the cops. [EXAMPLE, EXAMPLE, EXAMPLE]

Again, the data don’t tell a clean story, or the whole story. I see no reason to doubt that blacks get more attention from the cops—though, honestly, given the distribution of crime in our society, I don’t know what the alternative to that would be. And once the cops get involved, blacks are more likely to get roughed up, which is bad. But, again, it simply isn’t clear that racism is the cause. And contrary to everyone’s expectations, whites seem more likely to get killed by cops. Actually, one factor seems to be that whites are 7 times more likely to commit “suicide by cop” (and 3 times more likely to commit suicide generally). What’s going on there? Who knows?

There’s a lot we don’t understand about these data. But ask yourself, would our society seem less racist if the disparity ran the other way? Is less physical contact, but a greater likelihood of getting shot and killed a form of white privilege? Is a higher level of suicide by cop, and suicide generally, a form of white privilege? We have a problem here that, read either way, you can tell a starkly racist narrative.

We need ethical, professional policing, of course. But the places with the highest crime in our society need the most of it. Is there any doubt about that? In a city like Milwaukee, blacks are 12 times more likely to get murdered than whites [Not sure where I came by this number, probably a lecture or podcast. It appears the rate is closer to 20 times more likely and 22 times more likely in Wisconsin as a whole—SH], again, they are being killed by other African Americans, nearly 100 percent of the time. I think the lowest figure I’ve seen is 93 percent of the time. [As noted above, more recent data suggest that it’s closer to 90 percent]. What should the police do about this? And what are they likely to do now that our entire country has been convulsed over one horrific case of police misconduct?

We need to lower the temperature on this conversation, and many other conversations, and understand what is actually happening in our society.

But instead of doing this, we now have a whole generation of social activists who seem eager to play a game of chicken with the forces of chaos. Everything I said about the problem of inequality and the need for reform stands. But I think that what we are witnessing in our streets, and on social media, and even in the mainstream press, is a version of mass hysteria. And the next horrific video of a black person being killed by cops won’t be evidence to the contrary. And there will be another video. There are 10 million arrests every year. There will always be another video.

And the media has turned these videos into a form of political pornography. And this has deranged us. We’re now unable to speak or even think about facts. The media has been poisoned by bad incentives, in this regard, and social media doubly so.

In the mainstream of this protest movement, it’s very common to hear that the only problem with what is happening in our streets, apart from what the cops are doing, is that some criminal behavior at the margins—a little bit of looting, a little bit of violence—has distracted us from an otherwise necessary and inspiring response to an epidemic of racism. Most people in the media have taken exactly this line. People like Anderson Cooper on CNN or the editorial page of the New York Times or public figures like President Obama or Vice President Biden. The most prominent liberal voices believe that the protests themselves make perfect moral and political sense, and that movements like Black Lives Matter are guaranteed to be on the right side of history. How could anyone who is concerned about inequality and injustice in our society see things any other way? How could anyone who isn’t himself racist not support Black Lives Matter?

But, of course, there’s a difference between slogans and reality. There’s a difference between the branding of a movement and its actual aims. And this can be genuinely confusing. That’s why propaganda works. For instance, many people assume there’s nothing wrong with ANTIFA, because this group of total maniacs has branded itself as “anti-fascist.” What could be wrong with being anti-fascist? Are you pro fascism?

There’s a similar problem with Black Lives Matter—though, happily, unlike ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter actually seems committed to peaceful protest, which is hugely important. So the problem I’m discussing is more ideological, and it’s much bigger than Black Lives Matter—though BLM is its most visible symbol of this movement. The wider issue is that we are in the midst of a public hysteria and moral panic. And it has been made possible by a near total unwillingness, particularly on the Left, among people who value their careers and their livelihoods and their reputations, and fear being hounded into oblivion online—this is nearly everyone left-of-center politically. People are simply refusing to speak honestly about the problem of race and racism in America.

We are making ourselves sick. We are damaging our society. And by protesting the wrong thing, even the slightly wrong thing, and unleashing an explosion of cynical criminality in the process—looting that doesn’t even have the pretense of protest—the Left is empowering Trump, whatever the polls currently show. And if we are worried about Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, as I think we really should be, this is important to understand. He recently had what looked like paramilitary troops guarding the White House. I don’t know if we found out who those guys actually were, but that was genuinely alarming. But how are Democrats calls to “abolish the police” going to play to half the country that just watched so many cities get looted? We have to vote Trump out of office and restore the integrity of our institutions. And we have to make the political case for major reforms to deal with the problem of inequality—a problem which affects the black community most of all.

We need police reform; we need criminal justice reform; we need tax reform; we need health care reform; we need environmental reform—we need all of these things and more. And to be just, these policies will need to reduce the inequality in our society. If we did this, African Americans would benefit, perhaps more than any other group. But it’s not at all clear that progress along these dimensions primarily entails us finding and eradicating more racism in our society.

Just ask yourself, what would real progress on the problem of racism look like? What would utter progress look like?

Here’s what I think it would look like: More and more people (and ultimately all people) would care less and less (and ultimately not at all) about race. As I’ve said before in various places, skin color would become like hair color in its political and moral significance—which is to say that it would have none.

Now, maybe you don’t agree with that aspiration. Maybe you think that tribalism based on skin color can’t be outgrown or shouldn’t be outgrown. Well, if you think that, I’m afraid I don’t know what to say to you. It’s not that there’s nothing to say, it’s just there is so much we disagree about, morally and politically, that I don’t know where to begin. So that debate, if it can even be had, will have to be left for another time.

For the purposes of this conversation, I have to assume that you agree with me about the goal here, which is to say that you share the hope that there will come a time where the color of a person’s skin really doesn’t matter. What would that be like?

Well, how many blondes got into Harvard this year? Does anyone know? What percentage of the police in San Diego are brunette? Do we have enough red heads in senior management in our Fortune 500 companies? No one is asking these questions, and there is a reason for that. No one cares. And we are right not to care.

Imagine a world in which people cared about hair color to the degree that we currently care—or seem to care, or imagine that others care, or allege that they secretly care—about skin color. Imagine a world in which discrimination by hair color was a thing, and it took centuries to overcome, and it remains a persistent source of private pain and public grievance throughout society, even where it no longer exists. What an insane misuse of human energy that would be. What an absolute catastrophe.

The analogy isn’t perfect, for a variety of reasons, but it’s good enough for us to understand what life would be like if the spell of racism and anti-racism were truly broken. The future we want is not one in which we have all become passionate anti-racists. It’s not a future in which we are forever on our guard against the slightest insult—the bad joke, the awkward compliment, the tweet that didn’t age well. We want to get to a world in which skin color and other superficial characteristics of a person become morally and politically irrelevant. And if you don’t agree with that, what did you think Martin Luther King Jr was talking about?

And, finally, if you’re on the Left and don’t agree with this vision of a post-racial future, please observe that the people who agree with you, the people who believe that there is no overcoming race, and that racial identity is indissoluble, and that skin color really matters and will always matter—these people are white supremacists and neo-Nazis and other total assholes. And these are also people I can’t figure out how to talk to, much less persuade.

So the question for the rest of us—those of us who want to build a world populated by human beings, merely—the question is, how do we get there? How does racial difference become uninteresting? Can it become uninteresting by more and more people taking a greater interest in it? Can it become uninteresting by becoming a permanent political identity? Can it become uninteresting by our having thousands of institutions whose funding (and, therefore, very survival) depends on it remaining interesting until the end of the world?

Can it become less significant by being granted more and more significance? By becoming a fetish, a sacred object, ringed on all sides by taboos? Can race become less significant if you can lose your reputation and even your livelihood, at any moment, by saying one wrong word about it?

I think these questions answer themselves. To outgrow our obsession with racial difference, we have outgrow our obsession with race. And you don’t do that by maintaining your obsession with it.

Now, you might agree with me about the goal and about how a post-racial society would seem, but you might disagree about the path to get there—the question of what to do next. In fact, one podcast listener wrote to me recently to say that while he accepted my notion of a post-racial future, he thinks it’s just far too soon to talk about putting racial politics behind us. He asked me to imagine just how absurd it would have been to tell Martin Luther King Jr, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the path beyond racism requires that he become less and less obsessed with race.

That seems like a fair point, but Coleman Hughes has drawn my attention to a string of MLK quotes that seem to be just as transcendent of racial identity politics as I’m hoping to be here. You can see these quotations on his Twitter feed. None of those statements by King would make sense coming out of Black Lives Matter at the moment.

In any case, as I said, I think we are living in a very different time than Martin Luther King was. And what I see all around me is evidence of the fact that we were paying an intolerable price for confusion about racism, and social justice generally—and the importance of identity, generally—and this is happening in an environment where the path to success and power for historically disadvantaged groups isn’t generally barred by white racists who won’t vote for them, or hire them, or celebrate their achievements, or buy their products, and it isn’t generally barred by laws and policies and norms that are unfair. There is surely still some of that. But there must be less of it now than there ever was.

The real burden on the black community is the continued legacy of inequality—with respect to wealth, and education, and health, and social order—levels of crime, in particular, and resulting levels of incarceration, and single-parent families—and it seems very unlikely that these disparities, whatever their origin in the past, can be solved by focusing on problem of lingering racism, especially where it doesn’t exist. And the current problem of police violence seems a perfect case in point.

And yet now we’re inundated with messages from every well-intentioned company and organization singing from the same book of hymns. Black Lives Matter is everywhere. Of course, black lives matter. But the messaging of this movement about the reality of police violence is wrong, and it’s creating a public hysteria.

I just got a message from the American Association for the Advancement of Science talking about fear of the other. The quote from the email: “Left unchecked, racism, sexism, homophobia, and fear of the other can enter any organization or community – and destroy the foundations upon which we must build our future.” Ok, fine. But is that really the concern in the scientific community right now, “unchecked racism, sexism, and homophobia.” Is that really what ails science in the year 2020? I don’t think so.

I’ll tell you the fear of the other that does seem warranted, everywhere, right now. It’s the other who has rendered him or herself incapable of dialogue. It’s the other who will not listen to reason, who has no interest in facts, who can’t join a conversation that converges on the truth, because he knows in advance what the truth must be. We should fear the other who thinks that dogmatism and cognitive bias aren’t something to be corrected for, because they’re the very foundations of his epistemology. We should fear the other who can’t distinguish activism from journalism or politics from science. Or worse, can make these distinctions, but refuses to. And we’re all capable of becoming this person. If only for minutes or hours at a time. And this is a bug in our operating system, not a feature. We have to continually correct for it.

One of the most shocking things that many of us learned when the Covid-19 pandemic was first landing on our shores, and we were weighing the pros and cons of closing the schools, was that for tens of millions of American kids, going to school represents the only guarantee of a decent meal on any given day. I’m pretty confident that most of the kids we’re talking about here aren’t white. And whatever you think about the opportunities in this country and whatever individual success stories you can call to mind, there is no question that some of us start on third base, or second base. Everyone has a lot to deal with, of course. Life is hard. But not everyone is a single mom, or single grandparent, struggling to raise kids in the inner city, all the while trying to keep them from getting murdered. The disparities in our society are absolutely heartbreaking and unacceptable. And we need to have a rational discussion about their actual causes and solutions.

We have to pull back from the brink here. And all we have with which to do that is conversation. And the only thing that makes conversation possible is an openness to evidence and arguments—a willingness to update one’s view of the world when better reasons are given. And that is an ongoing process, not a place we ever finally arrive.

Ok… Well, perhaps that was more of an exhortation than I intended, but it certainly felt like I needed to say it. I hope it was useful. And the conversations will continue on this podcast.

Stay safe, everyone.”

#sam harris #philosophy #politics #controversy

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btgalaxy · 5 years

Text

Twisted

➳ pairing: yoongi x reader

➳ genre: mafia!au, angst, eventual smut, maybe fluff

➳ word count: 3.5k

Masterlist / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Chapter 8:

You wake the following day to the sound of shuffling at the end of your bed, followed by a dip in the mattress below your feet. You groan, scrunching up your eyes before squinting them open, adjusting to the spill into the room of artificial light.

“Taehyung?” You moan, willing yourself to sit up and greet the man sat pitifully on the bed.

He pushes his lips together, “Morning, duckie. How you feeling?”

You sit up fully and sigh, resting back against the headboard and allowing your head to lull backwards with your eyes closed, “Drained.”

“Understandable.” You attempt to wake yourself up, clicking your neck side to side and stretching your arms out in front of you with clasped hands. Taehyung watches you silently, gauging some sort of response, clearly to last night’s antics; Jimin’s showing up, Yoongi’s threatening you with a fucking knife. But you don’t want to respond to that- at least, you don’t want to respond to Tae. Yoongi, however, he deserves a good bollocking and you don’t want to waste any of that energy on Taehyung.

“Am I training today?”

Taehyung looks back at you, somewhat dumbfounded, “I- I think so- this afternoon I believe.”

“Great. I’ll warm up in here now.” You swing your feet out of the bed and head to the wardrobe of clothes, raking your fingers through your hair casually as you go. You begin fingering the fabric of the t-shirts as Taehyung interrupts you.

“You- you don’t want to talk to me?” He stammers, actually sounding a little hurt which makes you pause for a moment.

“I’ve nothing to say.” You return to the material in your hands, placing a white tee on the bed.

Taehyung moves to his feet and takes you by the wrist, ceasing your distractions, “Don’t lie to me, duckie. I’m your ally. Talk to me.”

He looks a little desperate with those pleading eyes, and you wonder why he’s suddenly so interested in how you feel. He didn’t seem to be that bothered when you first arrived and had you locked up in your room for days and days. You sigh, defeated.

“He just scared me a bit, is all.” You shrug, slumping down onto the mattress again where Tae joins you.

“I’m not surprised. None of us expected that he would bring a knife out.” He shakes his head disapprovingly, “I’m sorry you had to go through that. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I should never have tried to see Jimin.”

“Yoongi shouldn’t’ve tried to keep you away.”

You widen your eyes, “What?”

“You should’ve been allowed to see Jimin, I think,” he says, “I mean, whatever if he’s a prick, but you were with him for nearly a year, you deserved to see him.”

You wonder for a second how Taehyung knows how long you were together, but dismiss it as you’re consumed with other curiosities, “What was Jimin here for? For me?”

He nods, slowly, “He wanted to see you, he said he needed to speak with you urgently.”

“But Yoongi wouldn’t allow it?” You grow more furious as every second passes.

“There wasn’t much I could do to change his mind, duckie. And the second he saw you walking across the field- he was too angry.”

You struggle to contain the rising fury inside of you, willing yourself not to throw a tantrum and break the door for a second time to go and scream at the ignorant man probably sat feeling sorry for himself in his cushty little office. You close your eyes, trying to maintain a threatened sense of calm.

Your mind wanders back to last night, to everything that happened, to Jin’s words, “Also…” You trail off, thinking.

He watches you inquisitively, “Also?”

“I was wondering,” You swallow, “That- that ‘rule’ Yoongi was breaking, Jin mentioned it- what was he talking about?”

Tae visibly stiffens, smacking his lips together as he rolls his tongue across the front of his teeth. You almost regret asking after seeing his reaction, but the curiosity has been eating at you ever since you left Yoongi’s office last night. It didn’t seem Yoongi had any rules to follow, just rules to make, that he isn’t necessarily obliged to abide by.

“Jin implied,” Tae sighs, pausing for a second, “That Yoongi was putting his feelings first. He was being led by his heart, not his head. He wasn’t thinking logically he was-“

You lean forwards, encouraging him, “He was what?”

“He was allowing his feelings for you to cloud his judgement. So he made a crappy decision out of anger and jealousy, and then ended up taking it out on you.”

Your mind whirls to the library, to the leaning in. God, you’d almost forgotten after all the chaos. You were going to kiss him, to give yourself to him. Now that seems like a whole world away, although it was less than a day ago. What if Jimin hadn’t shown up? Would you have kissed him? Would you have forgotten everything you and Jimin had gone through to be with him? There’s so much racing through your mind you feel a little lightheaded.

“His feelings?” You question, playing dumb just for a moment longer.

Taehyung laughs slightly, “Duckie, don’t act oblivious. You know he feels something for you. I reckon he has had something since the beginning when you took out a chunk of Kook’s hand.” You wince at the memory. “I thought he didn’t know how to feel anything except sadistic pleasure and general anger and misery till you turned up.”

You unexpectedly flop back onto the bed, closing your eyes and bringing your hands up to cover your face. Why couldn’t you have just asked Jimin for a lift home that night? Why didn’t you just suck up your pride and tell him you had no other way home? Why can you be so self-important that you walk through the dangerous part of Seoul late at night by yourself because you won’t ask the man who broke up with you for one final damn lift home?

“Duckie?” Taehyung intrudes your thoughts before you become entirely engrossed with self-loathing.

You reluctantly sit up again, sighing, “I just can’t believe this.”

“Believe what? That Yoongi likes you?”

“Yes.” You wet your lower lip, “And that Jimin was here, and now they’re what- fighting over me? I feel like I’m back at school.”

Tae pushes at your shoulder light-heartedly, “I hope I’m the cool best friend.”

“You’re the weird one with no friends.” You deadpan.

He scoffs, “Sorry Miss Popular.” The two of you laugh. And it’s nice to laugh. You’re thankful he came in and spoke to you; now you know everything there’s at least some weight off your shoulders- in spite of the whole questioning yourself and your entire existence-, and it feels nice to know he’s on your side. After talking a little longer about it and being scolded for the broken door, Tae leaves to go and tend to his duties around the base.

Once dressed and having brushed your teeth you swing your hair back to look in the mirror, gripping at the sides of the sink. Keep it together. Focus on training. Forget about Yoongi. It’s a new mantra you recite in your head on a permanent loop to keep you distracted. You rake your hair back into a ponytail, still repeating the words firmly, then leave your room to head to the main training area, where Jin is already setting up your workout.

He nods his head to you as you enter, “Morning.”

You smile back awkwardly, “Morning.”

“We’re focusing on cardio again today. It’s gonna be tough- have you eaten?”

You suck in a breath, “Not yet, no.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing, “Then lets get you some food first then.”

Its like Jin’s got some kind of alter ego he’s suddenly decided to employ after last night’s antics. It’s bizarre the way he sits and watches you bite into an apple, squirming uncomfortably under his unrelenting gaze. You want to ask him to stop looking at you eat, but simultaneously you’re still a tad scared of him. And besides, what would you possibly say? Thanks for stepping in when your mafia boss was holding a knife to your throat and telling the whole world how its probably just hormones because he likes you? …Maybe not.

You put down the apple core, wiping your hands together, “Done.”

“More.” He pushes a bowl of watermelon slices towards you coldly.

“It’s alright that’s enough.” You push them back.

He clenches his jaw, looking towards the ceiling in an attempt to control his anger, “I said it’s going to be a tough day for you. You need to eat.”

He pushes it back, but you stop his hand, “And I said I’m done.”

“That’s not your decision to make.”

“Excuse you, when did you become some kind of nutritionist?” You retort.

“Fine. But if you start collapsing I’m not gonna be the one to carry you up to the infirmary.” And he gets up, storming back over to where the equipment is set up, taking some gloves and hastily strapping them on. You exhale, following pitifully behind him and mimicking his actions, walking over to the skipping rope for your usual routine.

“We aren’t starting with skipping today,” he announces, shoving you over towards a weights machine.

“I- I thought we were doing cardio?” You stammer, trying to slow down as he nudges you forward by the strength of his palm on your back.

“Changed my mind.”

Jin’s wraith is excruciating and you begin to regret not just eating the damn watermelon slices. He gradually increases the weight of the dumbbells you’re lifting every time you complain, won’t let you drink till he can visibly see the sweat dripping from your forehead and forces you to recite ‘I will do as I’m told’ as you run laps around the perimeter of the hall. You think he’s finding it somewhat amusing, actually, but a part of you doesn’t mind- better this than agonising over everything that’s happened these past few days with Yoongi and Jimin and what not.

Hours later after your sixth lap around the hall, even with your higher fitness levels after training for these past few weeks, your knees give way and you fall to the floor, breath drying out your throat as you hold a bottle of water to your chest, trying to find the energy to drink some. Jin’s dismissed you, wandering off to do his own thing, so you simply lay on the ground with your eyes shut, attempting to regulate your breathing after such a God-awful day of exercise.

You eventually find the energy to sit up, unscrewing the bottle cap and swallowing down as much of the liquid as you can manage, still panting between gulps. You turn to see Jin sat with a few men at a table, laughing together casually and it riles you up, fuming at the way he’s taken out his anger on you, bringing you to the brink of death you swear.

As you’re about to jump up and go scream at him with a sudden newly-found energy pumping through you, a voice startles you from behind.

“Y/N?” You stagger back, looking up to greet Yoongi’s face, with an undecipherable expression lingering on his features, making you anxious. “Are you- I mean, I need to talk to you.”

Your eyes widen fleetingly, debating with yourself whether it’s wise to just give him an outright no and sulk back to your room, contemplating why the hell he’d think it’s okay to just spring this on you out of the blue, but at the same time a part of you wants to hear him out, to hear his apologies and justification for what he did. It has been nearly 24 hours already: he must have some sort of an explanation ready by now.

You nod, apprehensively, “Sure.” You wet your lips as you stand up, nervously ambling towards his office as he follows behind you.

After walking awkwardly through the tunnels, it’s silent in the room, only interrupted by the dull droning of the clock on the wall, piercing through the thickening tension. Yoongi sits uneasily on the edge of his desk, pulling out a cigarette from one of the drawers and holding it between his lips. His hands shake slightly with the lighter, becoming more aggressive with it as he gets angrier with the small device.

Noticing his struggle, you step forwards, “Let me.”

He stops immediately, directing his gaze still at the silver box. You walk round towards him as his eyes turn to follow your trail, hesitating when you’re stood in front of him. Gently, you pry the lighter from his hands, easily grazing your thumb down the steel and sparking up a small flame. He leans forwards, smoke still between his lips, and you bring the light up to the end, bringing it to life.

He sucks in a breath, letting out a puff of grey as he pulls it from his mouth, “Thanks.”

You nod your head in response, clicking the top closed and placing it on the desk next to him, then taking a step back. He meets your eyes for a second, but you cannot bear it, and quickly turn to peer out the window, overlooking the base. Your eyes hover on Jin, still sat with a group of men. You almost forgot about the aching in the back of your thighs and the deadness in your arms. Prick.

“I’m sorry.”

You freeze at the words from Yoongi behind you, invading your thoughts. You’re unable to turn to look at him.

“I’m sorry I overreacted. As boss here I shouldn’t lose my temper like that I-“ He cuts himself off, clearly searching for the right way to phrase things.

You close your eyes, processing the words now resonating through the small, stone room and feeling your palms become clammy as your nerves get rattled. Do you forgive him? You can’t even think under the crushing tension pressing at your shoulders.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” You hear him move from the desk, approaching you. “I- I should’ve never-“

“Why?” You snap round all of a sudden, frowning at him, confused, encouraged by Taehyung’s words from this morning. “I want you to tell me why you did it.”

You know the answer: and you think he knows that you know, but nevertheless you want to hear it from him.

“Y/N,” he sighs.

“Tell me.”

The room becomes quiet again, Yoongi running his tongue over his lower lip frustratedly as his eyes flicker to the ceiling. You swallow back your anxiety, standing resolute with your arms held firmly at your sides and posing your chin up high.

“Because he wanted to see you.”

He seems to believe that is justification enough, with the finality in his tone, but you aren’t satisfied.

“Who did?” You press.

“Jimin.”

“Why were you angry.”

Yoongi seethes, nostrils flared and jaw clenched, “Because I didn’t want him to fucking touch you. I didn’t want him near you.”

Your stance falters for a second, “And why is that?”

“Y/N-“

“Tell me.”

He doesn’t respond, quietly fuming as he throws his cigarette butt to the floor and stamps on it, running his fingers through his bleached hair.

“Yoongi if you aren’t going to grow some balls and just-“

He doesn’t waste anymore time justifying himself to you, and instead presses his lips to yours.

You’re cut off so abruptly you’re instantly immobile, back pressed against the glass window and hands stammering awkwardly in front of you. It takes you a second to process, when suddenly you’re flittering your eyes shut, kissing him back.

He tastes like tobacco and his lips feel startlingly smooth against yours, working passionately, desperately. His hands find purchase on your waist, gripping you there possessively and rubbing his thumbs into your lower back as he presses himself against you, harder against the glass. You run your fingers up his forearms, to his biceps, and stopping on his shoulders, pushing forwards till your elbows rest lazily next to his neck.

The sound of cheering and whooping breaks the two of you apart for a moment, to turn and look down out of the window to the groups of men waving and shouting at you, Jin amongst them looking eerily silent.

Yoongi, however, seems unphased by this, yanking you round to sit you on the desk as he slides between your legs and crushes his lips back to yours before you even have a chance to speak, cupping your face in his hands. Your hands wander down to his waist, untucking part of his shirt and running your fingertips over the skin beneath the fabric, raking your nails into his back as he presses against your crotch.

Just as things begin to take a step further, a sudden banging at the door interrupts you.

You pull back, “The door-“

“Ignore it.” He moves into you again, but you dodge.

“What if-“

“I said ignore it.”

This time you let him against you again, rolling your hips upwards as he groans into your mouth and pushes you back against the desk, slowly leaning down to clamber on top of you. The banging at the door eventually ceases, and you immediately forget about it and lose yourself in the way Yoongi’s hands explore your body like an uncharted island.

He begins pressing kisses along your face and down to your neck, where you willingly crane your neck and push your hair to the side to allow him better access.

“I’m sorry too, just,” You wet your lips, “So you know.”

Yoongi hums in response, sucking against the flesh above your collarbone to leave a grand purple flower.

“I shouldn’t have run to Jimin.” You can feel him slow down as he runs his tongue across the dent of your neck, admiring his handiwork. “I don’t know what came over me- I didn’t think about everything, everything…” You trail off uneasily, panting slightly.

Yoongi manoeuvres himself to look at you, pushing some hair away from your face, “It’s okay. I know.”

As things simmer down, he gently shifts off of you, offering a hand for you to sit up again, his body positioned oddly comfortably between your legs.

“I really wanted to do that for a while now,” Yoongi smirks slightly, earning him a hard shove at his shoulder.

You press your lips together, looking over his face. God, you couldn’t have foreseen allowing this man to even touch you when you first arrived at Manes, let alone this. Although, something deep within you doesn’t seem to call for you to retreat, but instead to open yourself up to him.

You sigh, “I don’t really know what to say to you right now.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” He leans in, enough so that you feel his breath fan over your lips, “Just know that you’re mine, okay? No Jimin, no other men, just me, okay?”

You release a brief laugh at his possessiveness, rolling your eyes, “Whatever.”

He squeezes you firmly, “I mean it.”

“So do I.”

He moves down with a smile to give you another kiss, when the banging at the door returns. Yoongi groans and rakes a hand through his hair rapidly before pulling you off the desk and taking your hand to guide you over to the door as he swings it open.

“What do you want?” He snarls, as you begin to massage his hand cautiously in your own.

“Boss, I got a new report in- it’s waiting in the tech room.” The man you identify as Namjoon through the small crack in the door sounds worried, and it immediately sets your head into a frenzy as to what’s happened: if it involves Jimin, if Yoongi’s in danger. You don’t even want to think what’s waiting to be discovered in that report.

“I’ll be there in five.” Yoongi shuts the door on him rudely, sighing as he pulls you into him and buries his head into your hair.

“I’m going to have to sort this out,” he mumbles, finally looking at you with those chocolate orbs and analysing your features with an expression you’ve never seen him adopt before. “I’ll come see you when I can.”

He then kisses you goodbye; the way one does in some kind of actual relationship- and for a moment it doesn’t feel like this started out with you being abducted and held hostage as a motive for a rival mafia to stop intercepting drug deals, but instead just the start of a genuine relationship. Honestly, you aren’t sure which situation scares you more.

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#twisted #bts reactions #bts imagines #bts suga #bts mafia au #bts angst #bts fluff #yoongi smut #admin lottie

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squiddoodle · 6 years

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@lezzyharpy.....you blocked me but i’m going to reply cause your apprently 26..... And I can’t not address this cause fuck my brain.

-good fucking g-d how the fuck do you take “you cant claime to defend us while simultaneously mocking our beliefs” as a challenge. how are you misreading shit this badly - um well that’s not all of what you said. Like i’ve never heard an atheist say religious beliefs are children’s stories but I have heard them say they are fiction, comforting stories, fairytales/ myths... but anyone who thinks all religous stories are kiddish....really lets their kids read some violent stuff. And you claim believing that makes us antisemitic. Your saying not agreeing with you and thinking what your doing is a waste of time so personally want none of it , and not just you but all religion but “you do you” is insulting and mocking you!? You’re claiming that is being antisemic. There’s a huge diffrance between “ fine soccer a boring, pointless waste of my time and I have no interest in it and this is why but I can see you enjoy it and get fafillment out of it so go ahead i’ll cheer for you and be happy for you” vs “I hate everyone who plays soccer I think their the devil and we should ban soccer and beat up soccer fans. I think soccer is a illness. I think they are disgusting and not like us/ i’m going to sit back and let other people say and do that to soccer and soccer fans.” Also your acting like we think we’re better than you because we don’t belive in it.....largely....no... we are just AWARE we have unprovable things we like to belive that make us feel better and we know we could be wrong about everything we think we know, we are open to being proven wrong on facts and scientific proof would prove us wrong ..... that is litrally the soul diffrances. I don’t judge all my religious friends just one ones who think they are better than everyone else and are “at war” with everyone not as ““Enlighten as them” because of that religion. Your mocking atheist for acting like “Ohwiseones” and yet when I was religious and not the most mockly self righteous people I’ve known have all been religious. You mock us for acting like the “o wise one Knowing better” and yet that is the bases of every damn religion! “you are the chosen none dilousional ones god has taught better than silly unbelieving fools” ....and you are litrally talking to me like your all knowing and i’m dumb filth....

( for the record what was acturlly said v)

- if we ask that you not mock our beliefs that is not….. even remotely the same thing as saying you must have the same beliefs as us-

right it shouldn’t be but your making out it is. because apprently unless we act like you know better than us or likely that myth is equal to fact or agree that spending endless hour of your time and most your thought process worshipping a god that no one can prove exist and belive that this one specific book is full of wisdom truth and sense and agree that his rules are good and he is good you know just cause “he” says so in his book , unless we agree that that sounds like a good use of anyone’s time, and is the healthiest way to deal with life and nothing bad ever comes from it and none of it is asking you to belive some really bizarre unproven things and think that there couldn’t possibly be another way, or we’re just not honest about it and never express our view point ever about anything religious, then we’re antisemites ......that’s how the logic your putting here comes across.

-how are you this fucking dense - ... litrally insulting me... but ok: Or maybe apprently you don’t know what you’re implying?

are you really gonna ask how you were insulting while you compared us to dogs? -

.......ok first off you know that’s a well known saying/metaphor right? If I said “you’re look a gift horse in the mouth” you haven’t litrally done that ether and your gift is not litrally a horse or being compared to one. Second I “compared” us both to dogs...and i’m not a Jew....I was also a dog in that situation! ....or at least that’s how I was picturing it: one dog barking up the tree the other laying in the grass chilling watching out....a metaphor is not me acturlly saying we are dogs🤦‍♀️.....do you not understand sayings? ok without the saying, what I was saying is: from where I am stood I think your using a lot of time on effort on somthing that’s not real and to me it seems a bit silly but i respect that it makes sense to you, so long as no one really gets hurt, I’m not going to judge you or stop you, i’m just going to mind my own business but be ready to go after anyone who does judge you or try to stop you......so yeah that really wasn’t a insult but apprently you want to stretch for them so...

- and yea i brought up jews specifically cuz im jewish you dipshit, and as for your “oh woe is me how could i have possibly known”…

your reading comprehension is fucking pathetic-

ok first off again the only one throwing insults here is you, the only one calling an actual person names is again you. The only one not trying to understand the other persons point of view or why they said somthing is you. Second you listed “Jews, Muslims and minority faiths” and then use “our”..... grammatically that means yeah you’re likely at least one of those, but it doesn’t specify which. Also I wasn’t ...“woe is me”...ing... i really don’t know where you got that level of drama and victim playing from. I just didn’t want to assume, I had figured you probally where Jew but you could just be a Muslim who cared more about Jews them themselves, or another majority faith, 🤷‍♀️ Hell you could even be a troll pretending to be a Jew, I litrally don’t know you so I have no idea who you really are and have to take your word on stuff just like you do me. And you didn’t fully clarify so I didn’t just assume. And all i’m saying is funny how quickly your dropped your “defence” of Muslims and other faiths and how your not answering my questions about how you view other faiths and beliefs.

-take a fucking step back, reread the original post, and consider what it is about a jew asking that people not mock our beliefs while claiming to support us that made you feel so fucking targeted, and while youre at it, question why you think a call to not mock our beliefs is a call that everyone must hold our beliefs. if you wanna talk about projection youve got some serious fucking introspection to do first-

here’s the thing, it wasn’t that part, alone, as you are declaring it now. Cause by the rest of what you said i’m pretty sure your not talking about things like insulting charactures and stereotyping of Jews right? Your not talking about someone crashing a religous ceremony or mocking it, or laughing at /ripping off your religious clothing ,or Phyically trashing your book ,or visiting your temple and violating the rules or yelling their own views and how stupid everything is during the sermon, or telling you Jews are demons (or somthing not human and insulting) ,or Acturlly picking on you for being a Jew or any stuff like that? Cause yeah ok those are mocking and insulting, gross and deeply disrespectful,. That would be a horrific way to treat you and I’m not defending any of that, I would want to punch anyone who did those or alike to you. Heck I would even defend you if someone outwardly called you dumb just for believing in the possibly of a god because who fucking knows, nothing in life is 100% certain other than we here and we’ll die.

But that’s not on the lines of the exarmples you have, which to me seem very dramatised and exsadrated anyway. But by the rest of what you said i’m betting you’re talking about people saying stuff like “ i’m not gonna lie I think it’s kind of daft that you think snakes could litrally talk but if that’s what you want to do ok” or “ok I think it’s kind of silly to waste your life trying to please someone you don’t even really know is there but it’s your life” and “ you know there’s a good chance you only belive what you do cause you where brought up to” ...and those aren’t mocking you they’re disagreeing with you and expressing a diffrent point of view. They might be hard to hear but that doesn’t make them insults, it doesn’t mean that person thinks less of you! over all i, and i’m pretty sure most on the left, would never really mock you only express our own point of view of things, we might mock and insult you back if you first mock us or try to convert us and won’t take our no and reasoning for an answer, cause your being really fucking rude then. But if you say your going to the temple most of us we’ll say” ok have a nice time” and mean it! if you say you need to pray about somthing we’ll say “ok cool go ahead” and mean it!( though some might Be uncomfortable depending on context Ei if your just going to pray away cancer and not get treated), if you ask us if you can pray for us or somthing most of us will be cool with that but we’ll be honest about how we view religion too and we’re not going to agree that everything in your religion is wise, super healthy and sensible, we not going to lie and tell you we think any of it is true . We don’t think religions are true, at best to us it is a heavily myth based self written history you want to belive in, but if it brings you a sense of fulfilment then we won’t judge you we’ll support your right to belive and practise that because we all have our things like that; so please tell me what is insulting, mocking and wrong with that?! Religous people often belive i’m ether a demon tricked fool or some rebelling monster who wants to sin and deny god so I can wallow in my evilness.....now those are pretty insulting, but when religous people just think what I belive is dumb and wrong 🤷‍♀️ Cool we deeply disagree but ok. It’s not insulting, sure I might agrue why I have that view ,but they just don’t agree on my view of things. and if you find that insulting or mocking then logically you just have a problem with anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with you

-but you can do that introspection on your own, im not in the mood to continuously coddle you assholes while you stumble fecklessly through learning basic decency, so learn that shit behind a block- again the only one throwing insults or being “undecent” to anyone is you. The only one belittling here is you. And blocking helps nothing but ok i’m still going to write this reply cause your sense of logic bugs the crap out of me. Have fun thinking anyone who dosen’t think religion is truthful and pumped with wisdom is antisemic .....I really hope you get my point some day though cause thinking that way can’t feel good. i have litrally 0 hate or hosititly towards you,or any Jews for being active Jews, or your faith or your right to practise it in any land, so on, and that goes for all religions. but you can keep being mad at me cause you think people who think organised religions are largely a scam,or the old books are more myth than fact, hates you or thinks less of you and has a problem with you or your faith existing .....really don’t but 🤷‍♀️ i’ll still help you stand for your rights against those who acturlly do hate you and are hostile towards you and your right to faith.

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chuckling-chemist · 6 years

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A Milkshake for Two

((I needed to feel better so I wrote fluff. Specifically flustered dorks who can’t fucking spit it out and still won’t. There’s probably way too much dialogue. It happens. Also, if you did read the tailoring drabble I posted not long ago, this happens only a night or two before that fic. As such, they’re 14ish sweeps and this is considered ‘modern day’ in the scheme of things.))

“Pallia, please don't make such a fuss, it's unkind to your features.”

“Unkind? Careen if you're going to do everything you can to make sure your guests don't talk to me, don't act like it's ssssssome idiotic attempt at my appearance!” Pallia yelled. “The only reason I'm here anyway is because Mayola practically begged me.”

The few trolls walking into the room stopped. They didn't seem to know what to do. Pallia couldn't say she blamed them. When you're invited to a fancy formal ball, you don't expect one of the guests to end up in a screaming match with the other. In particular, you don't expect it in some dark green restingblock hiding in the back of the hive, away from everyone else.

Careen raised a perfectly plucked brow. “Oh? Are you absolutely certain you aren't chasing after someone else?” she asked. “One of your hivemates, perhaps?”

“Who?” Pallia asked. “Who am I, someone wholly uninterested in quadrants, chasing?”

Careen was silent as she crossed her arms over her violet corset-style top, glaring daggers. “We both know who I'm talking about.”

Pallia rolled her eyes. She did, it was true. And it hadn’t been the first time Careen accused her of seducing (could an asexual troll even seduce someone?) him and dragging him down. “Then tell Mayola I'm sssssorry I sssstill can't tolerate your presssence to help her get through thisssss fucking party.”

She didn't let Careen answer, instead marching out of the room, only stopping briefly to apologize to both Mayola and a goldblood in dark sunglasses (hiding his psionic to keep from being a battery) who Pallia actually spent the party with, that she was leaving early due to outlying circumstances. Mayola didn't buy it for a second, and it took some promising of meeting up later before heiress let her go. But at least she left it at that. Pallia was glad; this goldblood was interested in theoretically assisting with research, and she would happily accept a computer engineer on her team. She wasn't sure what he'd think about all this, and didn't particularly want to know.

From there, she found herself sitting alone in a back corner of a late-night Sandyhorn diner, furiously texting Aisral about the whole event.

Fucking Careen. She deserved... something. Something worse than Pallia occasionally yelling at her after Careen manages to go out of her way to ruin her night. This time, from Careen going out of her way to interrupt her rather pleasant conversation with the goldblood. He seemed massively uncomfortable by the whole thing, and Careen nearly made him stay as witness to “Pallia’s natural violent nature”. At least she managed to get him out before the blow up.

And most obnoxiously of all, she never blew up. Careen would become snide and condescending, but she didn't get angry the way Pallia was used to. She could deal with yelling and violence. But the constant treatment that she was a wiggler, talking over her and accusing her without any further explanation? It infuriated her like nothing else. She wasn't sure how anyone put up with it, much less people like Mayola or Dontoc -- the former who had to for political reasons and the latter who just….liked her. Somehow.

She sighed, rubbing her forehead as Aisral sent a flurry of furious messages. She knew why Dontoc liked her -- sort of. And logically it made sense. Isolation, social or otherwise, did things to a troll that society never wanted to acknowledge. Maybe if she were in the same position, repeatedly told she was a useless excuse of her caste for a good chunk of her life, she would have reacted similarly. But then again, wasn't she? Simultaneously, she always had Aisral and Dontoc….didn't. Not for a while, anyway. So she had no true frame of reference.

It certainly didn't help that Careen seemed absolutely convinced there was something going on between them for reasons that frankly made no sense. The two were friends, yes. And they lived together. And for Pallia to say Dontoc wasn't that geeky cute she preferred, or how charming he became once he relaxed, was a lie. That being said, the two barely even saw each other anymore, down to her not even seeing him at the whole ball. Or that their relationship lasted long enough to surpass the 3-4 sweep threshold in which losing interest was most likely. If anything, Careen should be less concerned now than she was sweeps ago, and yet she became more erratic and defensive with each passing sweep.

But, if she had to really reason it out, if she had to fill the red quadrant and didn’t use the moirallegiance to make it past pailing seasons, and if Dontoc were available, and if he were somehow okay with the whole asexual thing, he wouldn’t be a bad partner. He wouldn’t even just be a good partner. She’d have a matesprit who she could curl up and watch bad movies with, someone who went along with even the most seemingly inane of decisions (including the multiple times. She’d have a best friend for a matesprit. What could be better?

It was a shame their friendship put her back on Careen’s radar.

“Excuse me dear, is this seat taken?” a posh, distinctly familiar voice asked. Pallia jerked her head up, finding the tired smile of Dontoc standing at the end of the table. His hair looked just as messy as usual. Pallia didn't have the energy to say anything, she just waved him down. He slid down toward the end of the booth, the whites of his suit standing in stark contrast to the dark colors of the diner.

“Did Aisral text you?” she eventually asked.

“Actually this time you can blame Mayola. She made it her personal goal to find me and tell me you left,” he said. “I daresay no one has even realized I left.”

Pallia snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure at your anniversssary party they won’t noticssse you’re gone.”

“Careen certainly seemed extremely worked up and concerned with something I frankly held no interest in regarding Mayola. I highly doubt she will attempt to contact me tonight. But just in case-” He slid his hand into his pocket, revealing a violet phone covered in a light gray case. He pressed a few buttons and set it on the table, letting it vibrate harshly as the small legs curled into the blackened screen. “-I shall take the measures to ensure we are uninterrupted.”

Pallia smiled weakly. “Ssssshe’s angry at Mayola?”

Dontoc gave her a Cheshire cat grin. “Absolutely livid. I think she finally found out Mayola is taking this Heiress thing seriously.”

“Oh.” She exhaled, letting her shoulders droop for the first time since arriving. That took a weight off her. “Conssssidering she’s insssssissstent I’ve got ssssome kind of flusssssh crusssssh on you.” She groaned again and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ssssorry for the hissss. I know it’sss bad right now. Ssstill upssset.”

Dontoc blinked harshly several times, mouth opening and closing like a fish with his fins fluttering wildly in some kind of bizarre attempt at processing the information. Then, finally, he managed to squeak out, “Huh.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who’ssss confussssed,” she said. “Though I haven’t told Aissssral that yet. Will do ssssoon. Don’t worry I’m not gonna pussssh any of that on you.”

“Pallia, you so artfully avoid any conversation about Careen, I would truly be more worried if you did.” He frowned, gaze flickering down for a second before locking back onto her.

“You ssssay that asssss you bolt from the party to find me,” she pointed out.

He gave her a playful smirk. “Attempting to quiet Mayola does not count.”

“We both know that’s impossssssible.”

“Yes. It is. But if I do not attempt, then Aisral will certainly be upset, and she is still designing our costumes for Night of Frights. It would be dreadful of her to burn it two months before the date.” He quirked an eyebrow. “By the way, do you still wish to attend? I understand wishing to back out.”

Pallia crossed her arms. “Oh no. We’ve had thessse plans ssssince we ssstarted lissstening. I’m not backing out because of one bad night.”

“Should I be worried about your inclination to play an evil scientist working with the horrorterrors?” he asked dryly.

“At this rate, I’d file it under a possssibility,” she muttered.

Another smirk, one that she mirrored right back, however pitifully. Joking always put her in a better mood. “I feel like this should be nipped in the bud before it becomes a problem.”

“And how are you going to do that? Cassssst Allies?”

“Perhaps.” She watched as he craned his neck around to observe the empty room around them. As he stood up, he gave her a slight bow and added, “But I think I have a better idea.”

She cocked her head in confusion, mouth open to ask, but he was gone before any words could form. She watched as he approached the counter toward the same peppy brownblood that seated her not long ago. He glanced over at the table and waved shyly Pallia’s gaze dropped to the phone underneath the table, heat pooling to her face and down her neck.

“Sssstop letting Careen messsss with your nucleon,” she muttered. It’s just Dontoc. A troll who she had known for a solid four sweeps now. A troll who ducked out of more important events to spend time with her (like now), willingly went along all the times she wanted to drag him out of the hive, curled up in her lap like a purrbeast (and she had done the same), and happily assisted in experiments that went on far longer than they should have. The same troll who went out of her way to find her in a diner after she stormed out all because Mayola tipped him off. But that ignored their large caste difference...among other things.

Careen was looking for reasons to get hate her. That’s all.

She didn’t look back up until she heard his voice again. “Consider it a gift.”

“Consider wh--oh.” On the table next to her was a tall chocolate milkshake, whip cream and all. “Dontoc you really didn’t have to.”

“You looked miserable when I arrived. Truly the least I could do.” With an chuckle, he added, “However, of course I desired one myself.”

She sighed, leaning back in her chair. He wasn’t wrong: even with the joking, she felt miserable. Mentally she might have calmed, but she could still feel the blood rush through her body, putting everything on edge. Her throat still felt choked up, and she was afraid any minute she might end up crying, even his cheery tone. “You didn’t get one.”

He grinned and stuck a second straw into the milkshake. “Yes, I did.”

And there it was again. That creeping heat on her neck that froze her brain faster than the milkshake ever could. Granted, he must have been doing something right. The anger she felt over the whole situation froze with the rest of her thoughts, replacing it with...something else she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She propped herself up in in her chair to take a long sip from the milkshake, hoping to steady her racing thoughts. The milkshake was helping, if only as a proper distraction to whatever growing situation was at hand.

“Well you’ll have to hurry up or else it’ll be gone,” she eventually said. It was all that could come to her head. The rest was replaced with some awful combination of dissipating irritation and growing nervousness.

“I will be fair, I was not sure you would be okay with me drinking at the same time as you,” he admitted. “You seem ah…”

“Anxious?” She pushed the milkshake closer to him, forcing her to rest her lean over more. Her arms laid flat on the table as her hands wrapped around the bottom of the frosted glass. “It’s better than angry.”

“Not angry is good. Anxious is not.” He took the second straw and took a short sip. “We do not need two of me running around, I feel.”

“You’re doing fine right now for some reason,” she said.

“Oh trust me Pallia, I am still a complete mess of nerves at all points in this discussion.” He smiled sheepishly and placed his cool hands over Pallia’s on the glass, telltale tremors of nervousness not stopping until his hand completely overlapped. She shuddered the minute they touched, but whether it was because of the temperature difference or something else she wasn’t sure. “I have simply gotten better at hiding it vocally.”

Her gaze dropped back down to the table, glasses sliding down her face. She wanted to push them back up her nose, but simultaneously didn’t want to move. This was pleasant. Nerve-wracking, but...pleasant. If that were possible. “I dunno, you’re not generally so bold as to try to hold my hand in public unless we’re playing it up to get highbloods to back off.” She took another long drink. “...Are we?”

His fins fluttered. “Ah...no. But you’re are lower in caste, and as such your hands are pleasantly warm.”

“So you were looking for an excuse.”

Dontoc laughed before taking another sip. Between the two of them (or well, Pallia with a smidgen of assistance), the milkshake had almost disappeared in the short amount of time they sat down together. “It is chilly outside.”

“Says the troll who is drinking a chocolate frozen moobeast drink with me in a cold diner and admitted he wanted one himself,” she said lightly. “If you want physical contact you can just tell me.”

He smiled shyly. “Do you?” He paused, and expression, fins and all, dropped. “I can stop if I am making you uncomfortable. I...well, I know you have your preferences about being touched.”

Pallia bit her lip. She was far from uncomfortable. Really, the fact that this wasn’t bothering her in the slightest worried her more at this point. It was one thing to do this in the privacy of their own hive, where only Aisral could make quips towards them. It was another to have their faces sit inches away from each other, sharing a milkshake like matesprits.

God this is weird.

She must’ve been silent for longer than she thought. In an instant, he pulled everything away completely. He didn’t break his gaze - not completely anyway, as Dontoc seemed more focused on some spot above her than her - but his fins certainly flapped hard enough she could feel the wind. “I ah...sorry. I am afraid I must have gotten carried away in my attempt at bringing your attention away from--”

She reached over to take his hand on instinct before it retracted under the table. “No you’re fine! Honesssst!”

“Are you sure? I do not want to continue if you--”

She rolled her eyes. “Dontoc, you know me. I’m more than happy to tell you I want you to sssstop.” She gave him a warm smile. “But I get why you’d be freaked out. We haven’t exactly...uh…”

He nodded and ran his free hand through his hair. “No, I understand. Though ah...if you would prefer dear, we could possibly call it and go home.”

Pallia cocked her head. “You’re not going back to the party?”

“Yes, because I shall have fun with strangers more than with a dear friend.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Will you be okay? About everything with well-” he gestured vaguely in the air “-Careen?”

“Hopefully. If she’s more angry at Mayola right now, then I might not have to deal with her.”

Dontoc hummed and shoved his hand in his pocket. Had it always sounded so pleasant when he did that? She knew she enjoyed it, but more than that she enjoyed what it came with: long conversations with lots of back and forth. But this is the first time anything made her feel effervescent for the first time in hours. Or maybe he always did it to her, and she only just now noticed. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Her thoughts broke when he took her free hand again, sliding a cool piece of silk. She looked down to see the barest hint of what looked like a violet handkerchief. His handkerchief. “Take this,” he said. He sounded closer. He was closer. Back to the same closeness as with the milkshake. Close enough the seadweller chill combined with those fins made her shiver. “It should serve as a reminder.”

Pallia looked at him quizzically. “For…”

He sighed. “A reminder to Careen of our relationship. But also…” he trailed off for a second to trace a circle into Pallia’s hand. His face pointed toward the floor as he spoke, but she could still see those damned fins vibrate, “in the off chance something happens and we must part, I wanted you to have something tangible to remember me by, since you have given me much in that regard, and I...ah, not so much.”

She flushed, pulse racing. It’s just Dontoc, she told herself. Your friend with a pretty voice and face and is doing a really good job making me feel bashful for no good reason, but a friend. After all, why would you only feel flushed after 4 sweeps? Who does that?

“I’m not sure 12th Perigee gifts count for that.”

“I feel they do.” He looked back up at her, sheepish smile sending butterflies to her stomach for reasons that it absolutely shouldn’t have. “And well, and even then this is hardly much of anything. However,

Okay. Maybe she did have a flush crush.

That’s not good.

She looked at the table. A free finger traced the handkerchief. The increased tangling of their fingers was a secondary, but not unwelcome, effect. She sighed softly, but for due to the former or latter reason she wasn’t sure. “No, this is perfect.” She grinned, hoping it hid the growing awkwardness she felt. “Thanks.”

He laughed quietly. “I’m glad. You deserve something you love.”

They stood there in the quiet evening of the diner for a moment before Pallia finally separated to step away from the table. “If we don’t leave soon, it’ll be daylight.”

“Hm. You’re right.” He grabbed his phone and followed suit, standing next to her with a worried frown. “Erm, Pallia...do you mind if I fix something?”

She blinked owlishly at him. “Uh...sure.”

He snickered and pushed up her glasses. “It was starting to bother me.”

Pallia blinked harshly, letting out a small squeak when his hand came up. With everything else, she completely forgot they fell. “Oh, yeah. Guess they did. Thanks.”

His fins twitched in a perfect compliment to his tinted cheeks. “I-I mean, you look fine either way. I just ah, thought you might like to see better.”

“I would, yeah.” She giggled and leaned into him. He wrapped an arm around her upper back, just past her shoulders. “Makes getting home easier.”

His hand gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “I would hope,” he said pleasantly. “But come on, let’s go home.”

She leaned her head on his arm. Careen might have been right (for once). She did actually have a crush on Dontoc, and there was nothing either party could do much about. But that’s okay. She’d just take a break from him. Let the feelings simmer down. Maybe even dissipate.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. But she’d solve that later on.

“Yeah. Let’s.”

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#fantroll #fantrolls #homestuck #hiveswap #fanfiction #it starts pretty negative but after that it's dorks flirting #dontoc #pallia #some careen #best paired with Modern English's Melt with You #or Postal Service's Such Great Heights #my writing

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junkpoetic · 3 years

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Nine

I did not sleep at all that night. I kept hearing Elliot coughing and I couldn’t tell if it was in my head, or really him through the wall. I tried to think of pleasant things like the conversation with Juno, and sunflowers blooming in snowstorms. I got up to piss and stopped in my tracks when I thought I heard coughing, but it was nighttime silence when I really listened. I was exhausted by the time light revealed itself. Lorelei was picking us up in her Volkswagon van. The same kind of van that old hippies drive so you know that they’re cool, or at least that they once were. The van looked old, but it wasn’t. Like everything these days, it was something pretending to be something that once was. I don’t know why it bothered me, it really, but seeing their house last night and then seeing this van… I don’t know, I think I am still upset about everything with Elliot.

The rain was torrential enough that I questioned whether or not what we were doing was safe. Elliot was all in though. He looked the part too, and when he got in the water, he looked like he had been doing it for years. He always said that everything in life was feel and I truly believe that’s how things come so naturally to him. He felt truly everything. I feel like if you cracked him open like a pinata he would bleed sunshine and nightmares and everything in between. If I hadn’t seen him bleed, I would assume his blood was iridescent. In truth I am just having a hard time with seeing him so defeated in the bathroom. I can’t help but wonder how bad the diagnosis really is, and if there is help but he’s too proud or ashamed or whatever to ask for it.

I hated feeling the way I felt and getting hit by waves of grief when he was still very much alive. I tried to bury whatever stage of grief I was swimming through in order to feel better. It really was an exciting day ahead of us and my stupid brain was ruining it. I put my armor on as we neared Nauset Beach. The blustery air shook the hippy van back and forth on the highway as if it were a giant hand and we were in a matchbox car in some American boy’s bedroom. It’s hard not to wonder what that would be like, if we were just a simulation, a toy for some supernatural’s entertainment. I try to stop myself when I get to thinking that way as well. It’s quite easy to feel empty and insignificant, I don’t need to feed that monster. I had been falling through funnels of those types of thoughts a lot more since Cara left. It felt good to be away… I looked forward to documenting Elliot’s marathon and creating a plot to finally write a book and all of that came crashing down eleven miles in. I suppose I had several other plots to draw up now, I just feel ruined. At least I could take solace in the fact that time heals everything one way or another.

When I opened the sliding door of the van and stepped the wind nearly knocked me over. The adrenaline rush made laugh. Carrying our boards was damn near impossible. In fact, if you angled your board just right, and held on tight, you just might take flight. We walked up through the dunes toward the thrashing water. I had not seen waves like that before other than on television.

There was a certain comfort of being in the midst of the storm, like nothing could go wrong because everything is already going wrong. Like the feeling you can’t possibly fuck up any further. Although, I never felt the wind in such a way. It was spinning and spraying in all directions. Nothing felt right, everything felt bizarre, Elliot was laughing at things that weren’t funny, he acted like he had just snorted cocaine… I don’t care if he did, it was just weird. Juno Rafferty didn’t seem to want to leave my side which I didn’t mind, it was just uncharacteristic. Lorelei and Rami kept to themselves while Madeline was in street clothes being Madeline. Even the contrast of the ocean was off, the white waves breaking on the black water seemed off. The waves brighter than white like brand new teeth against a black so dark it was hollow.

Elliot and I went out together. It reminded of the first time we took the field together a million years ago in little league. We walked out of the dugout slowly refusing to crumble to our nerves that kept us prisoners. I played second base; he was at short. We had extra-large wads of Big-League Chew in our mouths and eye black beneath our eyes to go along with our high socks and greased up mitts. I remember looking over at him as we took the field for the first time ever… it was almost startling how focused he was. It didn’t take long for either of us to trip and fall on a rolling wave. Usually, we’d laugh at one another when something like that happened, but we didn’t laugh in that moment. I was surprised when I looked over and realized that I was a few steps ahead of him. Normally he’d be a few steps ahead of me, not hanging back in the balance using his board as a shield to fend off oncoming waves. When we found our position, that was when we waited. We stood waist deep in the black rolling water waiting. I won’t lie I was waiting for him to take the lead, because he always did, that’s I was used to. He was Batman, I was Robin, and it was always perfect that way.

I should have known something was wrong when he told me to go first but I got lost in the confidence of my own head. The confidence that Juno Rafferty put there… I was drowning in it, and it felt so fucking good to be drowning in confidence. I felt superhuman… I felt like Elliot. So, I went first… I gripped my board white knuckle tight trying my best to feel everything beneath me. The uneven earth, the sway of the water, the taste of the salt, and the smell of the wind… for moment everything stopped. I swear to God when I tell this, I mean everything stopped. The wind died. The water stood still like glass, I felt it would break if I moved, even the rain stopped, and this is where you won’t believe me… I saw the sun flicker and a rainbow appear. It was a moment so fast, and so intense, yet so clear. It was crystal fucking clear. And then I heard Elliot’s voice. He said something encouraging but I couldn’t quite make it out followed by something along the lines of “I am right behind you” and then he said the last word I would ever hear him say… Now! That was when the lump rolled with force and turned into a wave that carried me as I paddled. He said it again Now! And I popped up and believe me when I tell you that I was weightless. I road that monstrous green wave for what felt like miles and miles and miles. I road it all the way to shore and up the sand to the dunes. I kept it riding it through the dunes to the sidewalks and then through the side streets of Boston in the rain. Maybe it was the rain that made possible. Maybe it was the rain that carried me, but it didn’t stop there. Suddenly everything turned white, and then there was color everywhere and I was moving at an impossible rate. I thought about pinching myself to ensure that I wasn’t dreaming but I didn’t want to ruin the feeling that I felt. It was all things incredible. Every euphoric memory in my brain bled out onto a canvas before my eyes. I saw my wedding day, my days at college, I saw the night I lost my virginity, the first time I smoked weed, I saw my first kiss, I even saw my first dog… I saw Rocky. The last thing that I saw was my favorite memory… I saw the day that I met my best Elliot. I saw us, we were five. We were so untarnished and full of life. Our voices, I could hear them, so young and beautiful and our hair was so stringy and blonde. That was when everything slowed down and the tape began to fast forward so fast that it unraveled and fell off the spool. I no longer saw beautiful things. I no longer felt beautiful things, in fact I felt scared as came back to reality to the sound of alarm that Elliot had vanished. He was supposed be right behind me but only his board followed to shore. It bobbled back and forth between the crashing waves and the undertow for a while before Juno ran and grabbed it. She set it on the beach next me as I just sat and watched helplessly as the ocean devoured Elliot. Even I wanted to, I couldn’t move. My body, my soul… everything went numb.

I sat there helpless the entire time in the shallow as the rain fell on me while the waves continued to roll through me. I could no longer the cold. I could no longer feel anything at all. I watched rescue squads and divers arrive and listened to the sounds of panic. Choppers hovered above possible spots of disappearance attempting to illuminate the ocean in hopes of finding Elliot, but he was gone. Looking back, I knew it all along. I knew it because I could feel it. I ignored because I am human and that is what we do with things that are uncomfortable… we ignore them. Everything was so clear in hindsight. It was as if he knew the wave was coming for him and he wanted to go to first… I don’t if he was trying to protect me or what, but I always followed him, it was never the other way. I knew something wasn’t right when I looked and saw his surfboard trying to vomit a rainbow and eat a wave simultaneously… he never held back. He let me have his golden wave. He knew the black ones that followed would swallow him and he knew it would be quick and painless. He knew there would be no more coughing and no more illness. There would be no more nothing. Just what once was… and he got to end it on his terms. I should have known that he wouldn’t wait for death to coming knocking. I should have known he’d press eject on his own terms.

I got dropped off at my hotel later that night as the hard rain began to wane. Juno said she would try check in on me or at least call. I didn’t care either way. I took a long hot shower, I was going wait until the water went cold, but hotel water never goes cold. At least not this hotel. I had the water as hot as my skin could stand, I wanted to wash everything clean. I stood still in it until I could no longer stand it. Afterwards I put on grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt that we had purchased at Motion Surf days prior. It had the silhouette of a surfer riding in a barrel and the script on it read “A way to be free”.

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punapurreciator · 7 years

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My Favorite Ladybug Writers

So I pretty recently joined the Miraculous Ladybug fandom (about 4 months?) and I went on an absolute reading spree but Noticed a lot of the fic rec lists out there are pretty sparse or there's a lot of repetition. And I figured, ya know I just read nearly 300 fics over the last few months I might as well make some recommendations XD

So this is the first of possibly many rec lists Im going to put together for the Ladybug fandom. enjoy!

Quicksilversquared

This writer has 89(!!!) Fanfics out there for Miraculous Ladybug and they are pretty much ALL wonderful. The writing is excellent, characterization on point and there's never a boring moment. And the great thing is that most of these stories (even the serious/heavy ones) have some degree of playfulness to them. This writer never seems to let you walk away without a smile, and that's amazing.

Here are a few of my favorites:

The Cooking Contest - An out-of-class assignment leads to the entirety of the class participating in a cooking competition. …some people do better than others.

the Anniversary - The anniversary of Adrien's mother's disappearance was always difficult. He's sure nothing can make his day any less miserable… ...until a certain spotted superhero shows up.

the Crocodile Glasses - When knock-off copies of Jagged Stone's super-awesome Eiffel Tower start popping up, Jagged is not pleased. Still, it doesn't take long to come up with a solution- he just needs to release his own official line of sunglasses! And naturally, he needs one Marinette Dupain-Cheng to design them for him. Now, if only Marinette could figure out how to execute some of Jagged's more out-there ideas...

Hacking the Ladyblog - Chat Noir likes taking goofy pictures on patrol. That was normal. What was not normal was those photos showing up without any explanation on the Ladyblog.

Princess to the Rescue - Chat Noir gets into a bit of trouble when the akumatized magician Exodus the Spectacular overpowers him in a fight and Ladybug is nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, a baker’s daughter joins the fight. aka Marinette totally has Bo staff fight training and kicks some villain butt.

Cuddles in a Coat - In a lot of ways, Adrien Agreste isn't a normal teenage boy. He's a model, he has a bodyguard, he's secretly a superhero.... But just like any other teenager, he'll stubbornly refuse to admit when an adult was right. Even if he ends up freezing because of it.

Otoshigo Another talented writer is Otoshigo who seems to straddle the border of utterly adorable (see: For the Love of Shoujo ) and Slightly twisted (See: Benefactor ) or even dark. This writer can play the characters as the awkward blushing teens they are, and they can just as easily (and convincingly!!!) twist their perceptions ever so slightly toward something deeper (and slightly terrifying)

Some of the stories CAN be really weird and out there, but hey, read the tags so you know what you’re getting into and you won't have any trouble. (shrugs)

Some more of my favorites include:

27 Secrets - “Secrets,” Chat purred, waving the photo out like a little flag. “I want secrets. Twenty-seven pictures worth of secrets. And you’ll give them to me. One picture at a time.” [Shameless Marichat]

Caught and Captured - Adrien gets caught in a little lie, that somehow only spirals more and more out of control. Is there any way to pull himself out of it? Does he even want to? [Adrienette]

(Adrien acts like cat noir around Marinette and she thinks they've body-swapped. X3 This story Is simultaneously hilarious and heart-wrenching)

Marinette Saves the World - Through a series of unfortunate events, average and clumsy Marinette meets a boy from the future! Who says that he needs to have sex with her to save the world? Except no. Just... no.

(OMG this one!!! Drop what you’re doing and read it NOW!!! It's so freaking sweet and seriously romantic!!!)

Guilty Pleasures - An anonymous writer is a little too good at writing fanfiction and Marinette somehow gets roped into reading it. Problem is, now she can’t put it down. [LadyNoir]

Chat Noir: Calendar Edition - Marinette’s class has to come up with an idea to make some cash for their upcoming class trip. However, things go awry with their plan and somehow Chat Noir gets involved. All Marinette wants is to go to Nice with Adrien. Can she make it through this without losing her mind?

Clairelutra Next up is Clairelutra who seems to make it a goal to melt her readers to piles of goo with sexual tension so thick you COULDN'T cut it with a knife. (Almost all her stories are rated as at least T) but, (as much as I love sexual tension and smut in a fic) That’s far from all this writer brings to the table. Clairelutra is a master at grabbing a readers heart and "puppeteering" (puppeteer, haha) it any way she so chooses.

Whether she deigns to make you tear up and/or cry : ( see: river flows in you) Or gets your heart racing in her action scenes ( see: welcome to the show) or makes your toes curl during a kiss ( ALSO see: welcome to the show, and Bang Bang, and... ahem. well there are a lot.) And there's that (WONDERFUL AMAZING PRECIOUS) element of tenderness and longing in just about EVERY romantic scene that just KILLS me every time.

Anyway, some of my favorites of hers include:

gonna miss this someday - “I mean, am I just too clingy?” Chat asked her ceiling, reclining on her lounge and tossing a spare ball of yarn up and down as Marinette beaded with a vengeance. “I know it’s just one day, but I miss her.”(When Ladybug misses their nightly friend-date, Chat asks Marinette for girl advice.)

i think it’s time i told you (i’m a fan of your universe) - “...Something up, minou?” He didn’t answer her at first, staying silent as he opened his palm and stared at it. Or rather, stared at the ring in it.

Ladybug stared, almost unseeing, at the blood-red stone nestled in its bed of diamonds, and wondered why it suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe.

(It wasn’t necessarily an engagement ring, right? She... she would’ve known if he had a lover, wouldn’t she? Chat was too much of a hopeless romantic to not gush about a significant other to anyone who would listen if he had one... right?

It could be a memento or a gift or... something. Something that didn’t imply Chat was about to get married.)

“...Have you ever thought about getting married?” ...Or not.

you're really my dearest friend - Sometimes, the process of getting out is much more difficult than it really should be — but sometimes friends can help, if you let them.

we're the kids your mama warned you about - (A collection of PWP oneshots, mostly focusing on Ladynoir/the love square, as I try to teach myself how to sin.)

hot mess - (the sequel to Bang Bang ) ...What did one say to one's vigilante partner when said partner was in costume and he was in a bathrobe? What did one say to the lady who had pinned him to a wall and kissed him senseless, not knowing he was her partner? What did one say to the girl he had been in love with for years when he was alone with her in his room at night? "Come here often, beautiful?" Not that. Imthepunchlord Oh wow, here's a writer who knows how to balance playful with exciting really well. A lot of their fics are action/adventure driven plots and they know how to build up to that big fight at the end without making you spend half the fic dreading it. There's always too much happening for you to feel much besides excitement. Which, honestly, I LOVED about these stories. They keep the ball rolling at a great pace and never seems to rely on exposition when they can just show you something. And that lends itself to the feeling of being right there in the story with the character. (A MUST for any good action/adventure) This writer also knows how to stretch the rules with magic and the kwami juuust right to make everything fit and still be believable (a gift if ever I saw one)

Some of my favorites from Iamthepunchlord are:

Marinette and the Seven Little Gods - Marinette been down on her luck, waiting for the day karma would give her something good, something that would make her life better! She wasn't expecting karma to give her a box, a box with seven little gods in it.

Over the Wall - The accident, while unintentional, was costly. For her wrong doings against Chloe, Marinette is sent over the wall to die. But instead of death, she winds up in a strange, unnerving world. Good thing she'll have a cat to watch her back in this bizarre place. (inspired by a mix of movies and shows: Stardust, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, Secret of Moonacre, and Over the Garden Wall.)

Trouble in White - Finding your soulmate is supposed to be uplifting, and amazing, and just... miraculous. But for Marinette, it wasn't any of that. Her soulmate, he... he was... What does one do when your soulmate is an akuma?

The Ladybug and The Mer - When Captain Ladybug is lost at sea, she finds herself saved by one of the most dangerous sea beings in the world: a mer. (Merman Adrien AU)

Always a Hero, No Matter the Miraculous - (a LARGE series) it covers a big variety of Miraculous/kwami swaps. Including such favorites as:

Rise of Mariposa - Where Marinette is chosen by the butterfly to help Cat Noir in his fight against Harlequin who has taken possession of the ladybug miraculous for her own selfish gain.

& the short: Delicate Wings - Where Adrien is the butterfly helping ladybug fight the evil black cat from afar.

Kindness from a Stray - where Adrien and Marinette have kwami swapped (There are several shorts like this, all equally funny/cute)

A Declaration of Love - Adrien is the fox and Marinette is the peacock <3

(oh GOD I love this one. it's an all-time favorite. It’s very sweet and playful and its done so well that it just WORKS. I love the conflict of his feather allergy keeping Adrien (AKA Malin) from his beloved Belle Bleue XD)

Freedom_Shamrock If fluff is your thing PLEASE check this writer out!!! Freedom_Shamrock is a master of cuddles, snuggles, and hugs. Their stories just exude a soft comforting vibe that sinks into your bones and stays there for the rest of the day. But they are also INTERESTING. The conversations are memorable, The plots are intriguing and the characterization is lovely. If you want something sweetly romantic to read look no further.

Some of my personal favorites include:

Something Familiar - Marinette is a teenage witch, and it's time for her to find a familiar. (Witch AU, no kwamis, Adrien never got to go to school) ( HIGHLY RECOMENDED!!! Cutest cat!Adrien fic EVER )

A Little Light - (series) its basically an adorable series where Adrien notices Marinette on his own and asks her out. It follows up with their first date, some problems with dating while being a superhero, and then an accidental reveal. (every bit of this one is SO SO CUTE.)

Hugdrien (AKA: Adrien Needs Hugs) - (series) With this one the name pretty much says it all. It’s a series of stories where Adrien is having a tough time at home and Marinette and their friends/her family are there for him.

Miraculous Acts of Kindness - (series) this series is basically a slowburn MariChat fic XD It’s super cute and fluffy but also leads into Mature waters so be aware of that! BullySquadess @bullysquadess

Here's another writer who's clearly out to melt her readers with sexual tension But BullySquadess is out to do it with a goddamn VENGEANCE. (and she WILL make you laugh yourself to death getting there) Her stories are drop dead sexy and SUPER funny. It's the kind of well-built humor that has you cackling so loud people can hear you across the house and forces you to take breaks from reading just to BREATHE. I think the best part of this writers style for me is the hopeful longing she just pulls out of Chat like its the most natural thing in the world. It’s so so so so so sweet and it plays to his character perfectly. and she gets it just right every time. word of caution: the writer multi-ships so if you don't dig it then check the tags before getting invested. XD

My favorites of hers include:

The Ladybugs and The Bees - Ladybug and Chat Noir tackle teenhood! Watch our heroes face the realities of growing up- surviving puberty and akuma alike as together they navigate the unknown pitfalls of love and first-time intimacy. Also dick jokes. There's like... alot of dick jokes.

Oh man who hasn't read this one? It's been on like every fic rec list i could find when i first joined the fandom. But oh WOW does it deserve it. This sucker is 38 (!!!) chapters long so far (!!??) and I've read it THREE TIMES. I joined the fandom like FOUR months ago! And yet I keep coming back to this one becouse it's just SO GOOD.

Seven Minutes - Post-Reveal, Adrien and Marinette continue to play chicken with their feeling. Alya, however, has other games in mind...

Live by the Ladybutt - Chat likes Ladybug's Ladybutt. Ladybug likes that Chat likes her Ladybutt. Crack ensues.

Casual - Ladybug has grown exceptionally comfortable with her partner... which means Chat Noir is #suffering.

The Pitfalls Of Being a Wingman - We all know the classic Marichat tale, but what's happening behind the scenes of our favorite duo's love-making? (AKA Plagg regrets everything and it’s HILARIOUS) XDD

Cohabitation (And Other Disastrous Ideas) - These two best friends decide to move in together, what happens next will shock you! (Or not, considering all roommate fics end up the same anyhow.) thelastpilot

Oh man, all of this writer's stories have this element of almost poetic beauty to them that it's really hard to describe the style. There's never a word or a scene wasted with this writer. It's all about slowly building up that relationship brick by brick, SEEING the characters getting closer and closer with every new meeting and then finishing it off in a MASSIVELY fulfilling way. The humor is top notch too but it seems to take a backseat to the plot and considering how well done the plot typically is I have no problem with that.

word of caution- This writer multi-ships so If you're like me and looking for a specific pairing remember to check the tags! XD

My personal favorites of this writer include:

Won't Tell a Soul - Nino accidentally runs head long into the biggest most stressful secret he can imagine, but now that he knows the truth about Marinette he is determined to help her in any way he can. (Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng)

& Its sequel: The Weight of Jade - which shockingly (for this list) centers around Nino/Alya. This writer really knows how to get their characters across in all the best ways. This is one of the few times in fanfiction I really found myself really enjoying a side character's story and that's something HUGE.

Rainy Days - A storm rolls through Paris and refuses to let up, so when a water fearing cat is rescued by the kind efforts of his designing classmate he starts to pay a little closer attention to someone he should have always known better.

Quiet Ice, Silent Nights - Cat Noir is on a late night patrol when he catches sight of an elegant lone figure skater, and is surprised to discover it is his classmate Marinette.

Okay, this one is simply put, a work of ART. It is beautiful. The way the writer lovingly describes the ice skating and (spoilers: the piano scenes) makes you really FEEL the beauty of the moment. It’s so lovely.~ Seriously, drop what you're doing and read this if you haven't already

Paw Problems - (An alternate version of the Animan Episode) The class has taken a field trip to the zoo, but when Kim starts being a jerk and creates a major situation, are Ladybug and Cat Noir going to be enough to get everyone out on two feet? Or are the classmates going to need to get used to paws, hooves, and talons? Sadly, this one's unfinished. But let me say I LOVED the little snippets of humor in this, especially Chloe's animal form and Nino's reaction to it. XD KryallaOrchid The style KryallaOrchid uses is pretty similar to Quicksilversquared in that the stories all have some degree of playfulness and humor to them ( I love that in fics) but they also aim for something a little deeper too. this writer likes to play on the idea of rightness between the characters and builds off it as they go. (I'm all for the 'soulmate' vibe Adrien and Marinette have going on)

Some favorites are:

Tendencies - (series) Miraculous have side effects. From pats becoming a necessity to eating flowers, follow Adrien and Marinette as they come to terms with their new tendencies, and each other. Hawk Moth is coming.

This is a LOOOOOONG series and makes for a very entertaining read.

Sting - When Chat Noir inexplicably disappears, leaving Ladybug bee-hind to face Papillon on her own, a new wielder is chosen to keep the akuma from swarming. Ladybug is adamant she doesn’t want another partner buzzing around and why is this new-bee flirting with her? Meanwhile, Adrien just wishes Ladybug would stop bugging out and listen to him because his bee puns are fuzz-tastic.

I seriously went into this one thinking I wasn't going to like it and I ended up falling head over heels for it. Sting is SO worth the read. Watching poor Ladybug freak out over her missing partner (sending him voicemails wondering where he is and trying to reassure him she's not 'replacing' him with this new bee hero and that she's going to get him back ) Is so SO SOO heart wrenching and sweet.

(and thankfully Adrien DOES manage to get through to her that Chat IS 'Bumblebee’ fairly early on so we aren't left stewing in angst FOREVER)

Reflections - The mirror shows you how you truly are, but for a Miraculous holder, it shows what was. All Marinette can see is ghosts and she doesn’t want to become one. (A heart-wrencher for SURE but the ending was SO worth it.) ---

#Miraculous Ladybug Fic rec list #fic rec list #Ladynoir #Marichat #Adrienette #Ladrein #Favorite fic writers

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bunny-wan-kenobi · 7 years

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Bunny Fic Recs: The Top Ten Strikes Back!

My friends think my fanfic-reading habits are hilarious and bizarre--and I tend to agree. I read stories in very distinct and obsessive phases, like if I’m in a Star Trek phase I literally cannot bring myself to read a story from a different fandom. Can’t do it--that’s just how it is. My fic-craving phases (there’s no way to put this that won’t make it sound like a drug habit) can be as short as 2 weeks (sorry @ginny-of-course) and as long as 5 months (aka my last Star Wars phase).

This means any fic rec summary will reflect my fandom phases of that year, which is kind of a fun way to see all the twists and turns my journey took me and the characters I discovered (and rediscovered). So, in no particular order, here’s the top ten fanfics I read this year!

1. Bargaining by proantagonist (Thor): Faced with an eternity without his brother, Loki strikes a bargain to change the past. Post TDW. (Complete)

This story is AMAZING. Not only does it contain some of the best characterizations of Thor, Loki, and Odin that I’ve read, it deftly examines their relationships in all their complexity and contradictions. The relationship between Thor and Loki is captured beautifully and simultaneously heartwarming and tragic. The way Loki grows over time and learns trial by trial is especially rewarding so that every big choice he makes had me fist-pumping in pride because the story builds up these twists so well. Every single detail matters, and this story gave me so many things I never knew I wanted from a Thor story. I thought I had the fic figured out, and then the ending completely shocked me in the best possible way. I cried so many times reading this story, and its insight into Loki’s headspace and the dysfunction of family relationships is remarkable.

2. too wise to peaceable woo by theMightyPen (LOTR): Most marriages in Gondor are matters of convenience, especially among the nobility. But Dol Amroth is a different sort of place, with a different sort of royal family. Sometimes, Lothiriel is not convinced this is a good thing.(or, how in Middle Earth the too southern, too dark, too outspoken daughter of Imrahil ended up married to Éomer, son of Éomund) (WIP)

I could write an essay about everything I love about this story. Not only does it make a compelling, lovable heroine out of a character I had not given much to previously (Lothiriel), but it tackles race, class, and inter-cultural issues in Middle Earth with incredible nuance and emotional depth. The slow-burn love story at its center is developed organically and complements the exploration of family and friend relationships and world-building for Rohan culture. I appreciate so many intentional elements--like the friendship between Eowyn and Lothiriel, the complex politics of countries still recovering from war, and a woman of color coming into her own as a leader. The Rohan the author paints is a breathing place vivid in detail, and even the OCs are easy to love and root for. A truly wonderful love story woven into an intricate cultural landscape, this fic puts me on the edge of my seat waiting for updates.

3. The Gentlest Schism by SanwichesYumYum (GOT): Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. The war is over. Some of them hadn’t thought that they would outlive it. And yet... (WIP but ends at a satisfactory point)

This is a rare story that goes against your expectations and makes you linger in the disappointments and losses along with the characters. The premise is heartbreaking, and becomes even more tragic as you keep reading, but at the same time, it’s a beautiful testament to the resilience of love and the importance of family. I love the community the author cultivates on Tarth, the unexpected characters they weave in, and how this little island becomes an entire functional and complex world of its own. The second half of the fic gets a little repetitive occasionally and there is some explicit content, but it’s a really compelling read and one of my favorite Jaime/Brienne stories.

4. The Days and Steps series by CatKing_Catkin (Thor): Even after everything, Thor holds out hope that his brother can be redeemed. Now that he's away from the Chitauri, his mind is fully his own again. Not that he's home, even as a prisoner, maybe he can start to remember what it's like to have a family and a place to belong. Maybe he can even come to truly understand the other worlds as something other than a conqueror. (Complete)

After reading the last story in this series, I wept like a baby. These stories trace Loki’s excruciatingly slow healing process in such a realistic and moving way that the ending feels so, so earned. Again, it’s the family dynamics that shine here, in particular, a family actually processing and dealing with the ways they’ve hurt each other and the mistakes they’ve made. The realizations strike deep and the characterizations are rich so you become fully invested in this family’s journey.

5. Captains and Pawns by sian22 (LOTR): "The board is set and the pieces are moving." So Gandalf said, but what unseen hand made them move? How far back did the game start and with what unexpected results? The Lords of Gondor and Rohan find Saruman will use them for his own end and both the Steward's sons and Rohan's Prince and Lady must find their way. A tale from Faramir's birth until the fateful kiss. (Complete)

If you’re a Faramir fan, this story is for you. It’s a fascinating character-driven story that fleshes out a lot of the subtext in the events before and during the War of the Ring. It moves the narrative from Gondor to Rohan and we follow Faramir, Eowyn, and Eomer from childhood to adulthood, reminding us of the cost of war and also deepening your love for these characters.

6. Ad Infinitum by Stormontheocean (Dragon Age): After a bus accident, Liz wakes up in Haven, stuck in the fictional world of Dragon Age. How does a modern girl get by when she can't speak the language, and her expansive knowledge of the Blight and Kirkwall, but limited knowledge of Inquisition would only make her look more suspicious? Fake being deaf and mute, and hope not to get caught before she can find proof of her origin. But the best laid plans never work out as expected... (WIP)

Okay, I’m usually wary of self-insert fics, but this one put ALL my doubts to rest. It works. It really does, and it manages to make the OC main character (the stumbling block of many a writer) a completely three-dimensional and lovable addition to an existing universe. The first big plot turn of the story made me so unbelievably gleeful and excited that I won’t spoil it here but let me say--the story does not turn out in the way you expect. Even the slow-burn romance is believably developed, and this story cemented my love for Bull’s Chargers. A stand-out AU fic that is just plain enjoyable to read.

7. Jacob and Esau Say Their Goodbyes by LadyCharity (Thor): After Svartalfheim, Loki is still alive. In the end, it changes nothing.In which Thor hurts, Loki loves, and Jane learns how to lie. (Complete)

Let me emphasize that this was a near-impossible choice to make. I love every single one of LadyCharity’s Thor fics, but I decided to go with the one I think excels at every level. It’s emotionally devastating, poignant, and with brilliant characterization. I appreciate how succinct, poetic, and introspective the author’s prose is, and she just gets these characters and their relationships. Shout-out for her great development for Jane as well, who all too often gets overlooked in fanfic.

8. A Wreath of Thorns by LadyNormaOfTheWesterlands (GOT): In the aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards and the destruction of the Great Sept in King's Landing, new allegiances are forged and family ties will be tested, as two Queens dance around a blood-dripping throne and a new King rises in the North. The day of reckoning is getting closer, for princes and commoners, for friend and foe, while cold winds bring the longest of winters, and, with it, an enemy who doesn't respond to honour, nor love. Post-Season 6. (WIP)

There’s a lot to love in this understated story, which captures the POV of multiple GOT characters as events hurtle towards an inevitable culmination. It’s an introspective story, almost meditative in nature, and everyone is perfectly IC. It’s tragic, inspiring, and ultimately a great tribute to these characters.

9. The Native by StarTrekFanWriter (Star Trek): The relationship that started it all - Sarek/Amanda. How a logical guy like Sarek fell for a human, and why he would defy his people to marry her. Sybock & Spock will be featured. (Complete)

The beginning of 2017 was my introduction to Sarek/Amanda fic, and this was one of the standouts. I’m a sucker for stories that navigate the cultural differences, tensions, and development of interracial relationships, and this one does a great job immersing you in Vulcan culture. Amanda is also a really wonderful character, strong, empathetic, intelligent and you can definitely see why she and Sarek are so well-matched.

10. The Abduction of Eomer, King of Rohan and House of Sun by Lialathuveri (LOTR) (Complete)

Okay I kinda cheated here but I honestly could not choose between these. I like them for completely different reasons: The first fic is a hilarious series of misadventures that bring Lothiriel and Eomer together and the second is a much more serious development of a love story after an arranged marriage. The world-building in both stories is well-realized, and Lothiriel is simply a delightful character that I will read in ANY iteration.

More Bunny Fic Recs:

My Top 10

The Next Top 10

Game of Thrones

Merlin

Makorra

LOTR/The Hobbit

Captain Swan

Star Wars: Romance One-shots

Star Wars: Gen One-shots

Star Wars: PT Multi-Chapter Fics

Star Wars: OT Multi-Chapter Fics

#fic recs #thor #loki #got #lord of the rings #dragon age #jaime x brienne #star trek #bunny posts

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darkfromday · 7 years

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break time (12)

Prompt: Day 4 - Sleep

Pairing: Orchestrashipping (Yuuya/Reiji/Yuzu)

Holy shit, y’all. I’ve waited my entire life to post this. No one can see it but the cameras but I’m squealing and bubbling. It’s not the best orchestrashipping tribute, but at least I finally got to the fourth prompt and one of the first scenes I ever imagined for rare pair week?

*shrug* Onward!

(1) missed message from tomato_clown: hey no offense or anything babe but where the hell are u

Reiji sees this text the minute his quarterly profits meeting ends. The buzz has worried him for a good while, and now that he actually sees the text behind it he is... no less confused. Has something happened and Yuuya is in the middle of it? Or has he forgotten to do something important, meaning Yuuya actually is upset with him?

Just as he's typing out his response, another message buzzes in, this time from mellowdiva: Reiji, if you got any dumbass panicky-sounding messages from Yuuya, ignore them. Told him you were in a long meeting today but he heard none of it.

Relaxing some, he chuckles, leaving the office and lingering in the elevator without pressing anything. He mentally flips a coin, then texts his girlfriend back before their boyfriend. 'Thank you Yuzu, your text came just in time. Does Yuuya need anything?'

mellowdiva: Just you, like I do. Hurry home.

Reiji smirks, and hits "1F". As he descends, he shrugs off his suit coat, revealing the standard gray hoodie he still wears underneath, and folds the coat over the arm not holding his phone.

He texts Yuuya next: 'Heading home now. Don't worry.'

The Entertainment duelist doesn't respond until he's made it to his car and driver and settled in for the ride to his apartment. Since Reiji's officially off and away from work, Yuuya's bouncy message tone chirps from his pocket.

tomato_clown: sorry, just worried me when u were late. u work too hard.

Reiji knows he does. Consistent overtime, late night call-ins, weekend Skype meetings and reams on reams of paperwork... Akaba Leo's return was meant to alleviate his burdens, but so far it had done no such thing.

Still, he tries to be soothing in the way he's been trained to be by all his time dating a dork and a diva. That means sending memes that are gradually funnier the whole way across town.

Yuuya takes three showers, but he still feels like he's drenched with sweat instead of freshwater.

"Stop wasting our water," Yuzu scolds. "If you've had a bad day, stop anxious-texting your entire contacts list and talk about it."

"It's not that--" He flops down on the couch, talking to the ceiling instead of her. Today he won both challenge duels and preserved his place in the Pro League, bringing himself one step closer to eventually matching Reiji's record. It's not that he'd had a bad day today so much as he had one weeks ago that won't let him go.

Yuzu finishes drying the plates and puts popcorn in the microwave. Only then does she make it into the living room to join him on the sectional, sitting close enough to stroke his shoulder and change TV channels simultaneously. Her touch is one of two that helps him relax these days, and this time is no different.

"Dad and I... still haven't talked, since I moved in here. Since our fight."

Her pink eyebrows lift at the words, then beetle. "Uncle Yuushou's still upset with you for moving out?"

The fact that he'd been upset at all still grinds Yuuya's gears. His father left him and his mother for almost four years without any kind of warning beforehand, though he'd been given the chance to so warn. When he finally returned, smug as anyone who hadn't actually defeated his ideological enemy could be, he seemed to think that no apology was needed for upending the lives of his wife and son in the first place.

After all, Yuuya had learned to be courageous, right? And Yoko was always independent enough to manage, right?

It was the dumbest conclusion ever, because it all was so much more complicated than that. In those first few months of his father's return, Yuuya saw his mother jump at shadows, and keep her dissatisfaction with the lack of air-clearing to herself. But he couldn't so easily forget the years of being bullied and tormented, ridiculed by people of all ages.

Yuuya had started staying over at Yuzu's more, and then at Reiji's as the older boy opened up and welcomed him. Inevitably Yuzu started wondering where the hell he went and tailed him to LDS. By the time Yuushou and Shuzou thought to tail her, the three of them had grown very, very comfortable with one another.

This had sparked the real flame of Yuuya's rebellion. Living with his childhood friend and a rich billionaire was the perfect, if most bizarre, solution to the alienation he felt in his own home. Even Yoko's crying and Yuushou's piercing accusations hadn't stopped Yuuya from packing and fleeing.

Except now he can't stop thinking about how he'd heard nothing from either of his parents since.

Yuzu is quiet as he finishes updating her on all the nothing he's heard since he moved out. She's moved from playing with the remote to playing with his fingers.

"You know I'd try and help, Yuuya, but... well, since I left home too I don't know if Uncle Yuushou would listen to me."

"I just want him to understand," Yuuya says. "I can't stay there and pretend everything's like it was. I won't."

"I know."

"But mostly I want to stop thinking about it. Like, we're supposed to be spoiling Reiji today and all I can think about is fighting with my parents..."

He trails off, pensive. The popcorn starts popping urgently and Yuzu gets up to retrieve it.

Eventually she picks the conversation back up. "The day's not over yet. We still have time to have fun before the weekend. So relax, okay? Reiji and I are with you and we're not going anywhere."

Then she brings the popcorn over with herself, cuddling with him while still leaving room for one more. Yuuya basks in her close proximity and uses it to gradually adjust his mood, until he receives a new message from el_rei that makes him snort with laughter.

"What is it?"

"Our boyfriend is shitposting again."

"Ugh," Yuzu groans. "Yuuya, I've told you before to tell him to delete his account and stop texting us memes. Those things can't be called shitposts when they're actually shitty."

"Hey, I like his jokes!"

"You like everything he's ever done--"

"Nuh-uh, I didn't like him all that much when he was grumpy and wanted to fight and boss everyone around all the time."

"When he had the stick up his ass, you mean? You especially liked him then."

"No I--!"

Yuuya pauses. Actually thinks back. Blushes. "...okay, maybe I did..."

Yuzu always knows when Reiji has made it home, whether she's heard the purr of his driver's car or recognized his distinctive footsteps on the stairs to their landing. But she also knows that their CEO likes to feel in control of his own actions and how others perceive them, so she always allows him to 'surprise' them and knock.

She's still standing just inside when he knocks today, so she's fast enough to open the door and pull him in before he can even pull his knuckles back from the wood.

"Welcome to your night off."

Reiji smiles. His suit coat's already off, but he takes the time to hang it up by the door before taking one of her hands in his, holding it gently.

"How was your audition, Yuzu?"

Oh, that. She shrugs, having mostly put it out of her mind the minute she got here. "I did well, but Mikiyo was there auditioning as well, so..."

"So you'll get it," he replies encouragingly. Then he smirks. "I could call in a favor."

"You'll do no such thing."

Yuuya calls from the living room just then: "Yuzu! Did Reiji make it in?"

Reiji takes the liberty of responding himself, moving into the main part of their tiny space to greet their third. Yuzu, still holding his hand, feels a gentle tug and then follows him. Only when they arrive does she let go so they can wind around Yuuya, and so she can tease him.

"Yep. I was keeping him all to myself."

"You can't nap in the hallway, there's no room--"

Reiji kisses Yuuya, cutting his protests short. Yuzu nods approvingly, because yeah, I should've thought of that. Kissing is the best way to shut him up.

"You should sleep," their rich rent-payer says when he's done making Yuuya quit frowning and ruminating. "All your texts today made you sound drunk."

Yuzu snorts as Yuuya yelps indignantly and her two boys go for each other's throats harder than they have since last week's lie-in. It's playful though, so it's all good.

About a month ago she and Yuuya started dragging Reiji out of his leech-like CEO life and making him come home for naps and bad movies once a week, close to the weekend. Their most-stressed-by-far partner is still a bit stiff, but Yuzu thinks he's come a long way.

Like now--he's not afraid to touch them, kiss them or get close to them. As they turn on Jupiter Ascending, he even rests his head near their shoulders and then their laps, not bothering yet to bring the details of his long day into their space. There will be time enough for that later.

This life was not what Yuzu anticipated the day she watched Strong Ishijima try and bully her best friend to draw out his father, but she has learned to be grateful for the hand of fate. Though the war took a lot out of her (out of all of them), and she has to rest a lot more now, she enjoys taking life a day at a time with her bickering boys.

Plus, Yuzu's never slept so well in her whole life as she does with them now.

#arc v rare pair week #Arc V #orchestrashipping #Yuya/Reiji/Yuzu #Darkday writes fanfic #lateposting 2017 #if y'all hate it just don't tell me because I want this to be canon so badly #(whisper) it might even surpass pendulumshipping and lustershipping #WHAT WHO SAID THAT #YGO #I've uh... forgotten to tag my yugioh stuff with that ahaha...#the messages are just texts though I kind of combined the concept of Facebook Messenger with texts for some inane reason

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charlieism · 8 years

Text

Holding Hands

Hey friends! Here is a Prinxiety oneshot I wrote on Valentines day. If you read it I hope you think it’s good and that you enjoy it :) You can also find it on Wattpad and AO3.

Anxiety was screaming.

So was Prince.

WHAT HAD MORALITY DONE? IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE VALERIE THAT HE WAS USING TO SHOW THE OTHERS HOW TO GET A VALENTINE'S DATE!

NOT PRINCEY!

NOW THEY WERE HOLDING HANDS!

Anxiety hadn't even realised at first! He'd just assumed Dad had teleported Valerie over to him, it hadn't even clicked that it was Prince's hand he was holding until he realised that he was holding a hand that was slightly too big and slightly too rough to be Valerie's. And when he looked up at Prince, Prince just looked stunned. And then looked back at Anxiety, and they realised what was happening. And Prince started screaming. So Anxiety did too, once he got over the initial shock.

Anxiety was vaguely aware of Logic congratulating Morality, who seemed blissfully unaware of the chaos he had caused.

Evil.

Anxiety was still screaming. He looked from Dad to Prince to Dad to Prince, then realised they were still holding hands. He wrenched his hand out of Prince's hand, who recoiled like he'd been hit. They both flung a look of horror and barely concealed disgust at each other, before simultaneously rounding on Morality.

"Dad! How could you?" Prince wailed. Dad continued playing pat-a-cake with Valerie.

"How could I what, kiddo?" He asked cheerfully.

"For one thing, teleport me! I didn't even know you could do that! How does that even work? How do you teleport another person?" Prince exclaimed. "And secondly, make me hold hands with- with- with Anxiety!" He moaned. Anxiety shook his head vigorously in agreement. For all his mocking and teasing and flirting, Anxiety did not want to be near Prince. Enemies, remember? He just did that stuff to see Prince stammer or falter.

Hey, it worked sometimes!

Morality finally broke away from the clapping game, looking amused. Anxiety was outraged, this wasn't funny!

"But why not? You two are obviously perfect for each other." Anxiety choked on air and Prince stumbled over his own feet.

"E- excuse me?" He cried.

"What? No we aren't! What- why would you even think that?" Anxiety was bewildered; how the heck had Morality come up with that idea? However Logic cleared his throat.

"It's quite obvious, actually, although perhaps you two are incognizant of it." Dad blinked. Anxiety faltered and frowned.

"Uh, what?" Prince asked. Logic sighed.

"Nevermind. But the evidence is all there! It's a reasonable conclusion to come to, actually."

"What evidence? Anxiety and I are the least compatible personalities, I don't understand your reasoning."

"I second that." Anxiety spoke up.

"Would you like some examples? Because I can provide them." Logic snipped. "Take in the fact that yes, you two do often argue about everything, but you also come to an agreement and no argument is left to continue. Of course one could say that that's what all friend do, but you two are supposed to be enemies, correct?" Logic explained. Anxiety sneered.

"That doesn't prove anything." He said scornfully.

"I agree. With that sentence. And the statement it was trying to make." Prince said warily.

"There's also the flirting that we have to deal with. From both sides." Logic said dryly, and continued before Anxiety could protest. "And honestly, you two can't seem to get past the fact that you believe you are opposites and therefore should not interact to actually see that you are constantly interacting." Logic sounded 100% done, and it made Anxiety wonder how long he'd wanted to say that. Dad clucked his tongue.

"Also you two just look so cute together. Aw!" Morality was getting all heart eyed thinking about it.

Disgusting.

Anxiety glanced at Prince, who in turn gazed at him. They both looked each other up and down and wrinkled their noses. The silence in the room grew thick and heavy, settling on shoulders and dragging them down, until it felt like you could cut the air with a knife. Finally Prince jerked a thumb at the corpse of the weird dragon-witch-hybrid thing that was just lying on the floor.

"I, uh, should probably dispose of that now." The others nodded and Prince bit his lip before turning around and gingerly placing his foot on the monster's leg. A moment later they both faded from sight.

"You know, it is Valentine's day. You two would just be so perfect together." Dad sighed. Anxiety rolled his eyes.

"Anxi, seriously. It is painstakingly obvious to Morality and I that you two are basically in love already. Just ask him out!" Logic snapped. Anxiety frowned at him.

"You think Prince likes me?" Anxiety snorted, then backtracked. "Wait, no, you think I like Prince?" Logic raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

"No. I know you like Prince. And he likes you back so can you please get it over with and become boyfriends. Thank you." Logic turned to walk away, and Anxiety could hear him muttering under his breath.

"Goodness, it's like we're 12 year old girls, I am above this." He told himself indignantly, and Anxiety snorted. Logic scowled at him and grabbed Dad's arm.

"Come on, Morality, let's go." Dad smiled at Logic and nodded.

"Okay!" Then he turned to Anxiety. "Best of luck with Prince, although you won't need it. You'll be fine! Oh, gosh, I just love this all so much. They're so cute! Oh my goodness." Morality sighed happily, making Logic groan, and then they were gone, leaving Anxiety standing alone with his thoughts.

It was utterly ridiculous. Completely absurd. Bizarre, ludicrous, preposterous, laughable, all of that. Dad and Logic didn't know what they were talking about.

...

Did they?

Logic was rarely ever wrong, and Dad never got so passionate over something he wasn't sure about. Of course Logic was so unbelievably wrong when it came to Valentine's earlier. In fact they both had been hilariously mistaken. They were probably wrong this time, too. But it made Anxiety think.

Did he really hate Prince? No, of course not. He'd always known that; it was more like extreme dislike. The royal boy had his moments, Anxiety couldn't deny it. He wasn't all bad, although he could be much better. But maybe, like Logic had said, maybe that was just what he trained himself to think? To automatically reject the idea of Prince Sanders because they were polar opposites, and therefore couldn't be together? At all? It was possible. Like, Thomas was literally conditioned to shut the closet door before he went to sleep in fear of the demigorgon, of which probably didn't exist. Probably. So maybe, if he got past the immediate block of don't like Prince, too bright and cheerful and optimistic, maybe he would find something else? Found he... felt something else? Ugh, he sounded so whiny. It couldn't be true, and even if he did, there was no way Prince would ever feel the same way.

Right?

After all, hundreds of Fanders shipped them together, which was still weird, how did they even come up with that? And then there was Thomas, completely unafraid to approach the topic of, what were they all calling it, Prinxiety? Apparently even Thomas was kind of on board with it (although Anxiety thought that was kind of strange because they were both just sides of Thomas' personality, so he was basically shipping himself. Or whatever.) And now Dad and Logic. Could this many people really be wrong? Could they all see something that Prince and Anxiety were too ignorant, t̶o̶o̶ ̶a̶f̶r̶a̶i̶d̶, to see? Anxiety sank back into Thomas' mind to have a long think about everything.

Anxiety didn't know how long it had been, with just him and his tornado of swirling thoughts, but he'd come to a conclusion. Maybe he did like Prince. A little. Although Prince's never ending optimism, his abundance of joy and cheer, his fanciful imagination, wild ideas and often arrogant attitude could be annoying, they could also be endearing or refreshing. (Except for maybe the arrogance. Anxiety still thought Prince could tone that down a bit.) And yes, although the personalities technically all look the same... they don't. Anxiety didn't find Logic or Morality cute. They just seemed different. Prince was, well, hot. Anxiety wasn't gonna lie, the royal boy was charming. And maybe Anxiety, although it was immensely difficult to admit, maybe Anxiety had the tiniest of crushes on him. Anxiety couldn't explain it. Maybe it was just because Prince was so different to himself, it was like every time he had a conversation with Prince he got a new outlook on the world. And it was Valentine's day. Although if Prince said no, Anxiety would probably die of embarrassment, he made up his mind to go find him and possibly ask him out on a date.

It took a while, but eventually he found where Prince was. It was a place deep in the mind, a place where Anxiety had never been before, but he could feel that Prince was this way. All the personalities were connected, because they were essentially the same person. So if Anxiety concentrated hard enough, he could something faint leading him in the direction of Prince. The area Anxiety had wandered into was dark, shadows everywhere but where Anxiety stepped foot, the darkness cold and unforgiving. Anxiety had burrowed down as far as possible in his big black hoodie, the hood pulled right over his head. He was extremely anxious right now, all possible and impossible scenarios running through his head as he tried to see through the dark. Why was Prince here? What was this place? Gosh, Anxiety couldn't even see where he was going. He'd been wandering for ages through the shadows. He could be right about to step off a cliff and he wouldn't even k-

"ANXIETY! STOP!" Prince's voice boomed all around him, and Anxiety flinched violently, stumbling backwards and falling in fright. The shadows separated around him. After the heavy, impenetrable silence he had grown accustomed, to the sudden noise was a shock. Anxiety just sat on the hard ground in a daze for a few minutes, hand over his heart as he tried to steady his breathing. Soon, when he regained all his senses, Anxiety looked around and became aware of something that was glowing faintly making his way towards him.

It looked like it had a humanoid shape as it rushed in his direction. Anxiety suddenly realised it was Prince that shone in the darkness, running towards Anxiety. Anxiety tried to stand up on unsteady legs as Prince got closer. He was standing with his arms wrapped around his waist, as if he was holding himself together, when Prince reached him.

"Anxiety!" Prince immediately gasped, reached out to snag Anxiety's soft hoodie. "What are you doing here? Are you alright? You scared me!" Prince rushed. Anxiety was wide eyed with surprise.

"Um, I came here to find you. I'm fine? And what do you mean I scared you? You scared me!" Anxiety said defensively. Instead of Prince snapping back, as Anxiety had expected, he only looked apologetic, with a hint of fear laced in his expression.

"My apologies, Anxiety, but it was all I could do to stop you. You were about to walk off The Edge." Prince told Anxiety in a hushed time.

"What do you mean, walk off the edge?" He frowned at Prince, who bit his lip. "And why are you glowing?" Sure enough, Prince was still surrounded by a soft golden light that reached out in dim, sparkling beams, and disintegrated the shadows.

"I glow whenever I come here, so I can see where I'm going. I don't know how, it just happens. But Anxiety, you must be careful when you come here!"

"Why?"

"Because Anxiety we're on the edge of Forgetting." Prince seemed deadly serious, and suddenly Anxiety was afraid.

"What?"

"Forgetting. It's a big, endless chasm in Thomas' mind were all things that are forgotten fall into. If you fall in, Anxiety, you'll be forgotten, and there's no coming back. Why are you even here? It's extremely dangerous!" Anxiety gulped.

"Uh.. how far away from the edge was I?" He whispered. Prince shuffled away by only two steps and extended his arm. The faint golden glow was enough to illuminate a sudden drop, where the darkness seemed solid and absolute, impossible to see through or break, and endless, timeless sea of pitch black. Cold seemed to emanate from the chasm, making goosebumps rise on Anxiety's skin. He had been only a few steps away from his doom. It made Anxiety dizzy.

"Oh my goodness... wait, Princey, why were you here?" Anxiety questioned, stepping away from the fall. Prince moved with him.

"I was disposing of the corpse of the Dragon Witch, as I do with all monsters I fight. I push them in here, and they are gone." Anxiety stared at him.

"You come to this place every time you fight a monster? I don't- I don't even like it once! I want to leave! But you keep coming back? That's... actually pretty brave. And stupid. But, yeah, brave." Anxiety stuttered nervously, remembering that he didn't want to offend Prince. And it was the truth; the neverending darkness and danger of this place made Anxiety want to leave as quick as possible and never come back. But suddenly Prince smiled.

His smile was huge, full of delight, and it seemed to light up the shadows. Prince's eyes twinkled happily.

"You think I'm brave? Thank you! I always knew I was courageous, but to hear it from someone else is... a great feeling. Thank you, Anxiety. I do concede, though, it was brave of you to venture here in search of me. May I ask why you did?" Prince's joy and honesty kind of floored Anxiety for a second.

"Oh, uh, yeah, well... you were gone for a while, and... I just, uh, wanted to see if you were okay?"

"You... came to check on me? That's sweet. But we should get out of here." Then Prince grabbed Anxiety's hand, who flinched violently, and teleported them out of there.

When they appeared they were in the lounge, and Anxiety immediately tried to disentangle he and Prince's hands. Was it his imagination, or did Prince look disappointed when they let go? Anxiety kind of regretted it, holding Prince's hand was almost nice, considering he'd only done it briefly twice. But Anxiety suddenly realised that me might never get to again if he didn't tell Prince how he felt. What could go wrong?

Oh, so, so many things could go wrong, and every single one of them was flitting through Anxiety's mind as he tried to prepare himself to tell Prince. He could feel that he was already blushing, and he just knew he would stutter and probably chicken out, end up insulting Prince, who would then in turn hate him. Or just flat out laugh at him and deny him. Ugh, why was this so hard? It was Valentine's day, he had to do it today! If he did it tomorrow it would be stupid. This wasn't going to work!

Anxiety could feel Prince watching him worriedly as he debated in his mind just flat out telling Prince that he had a crush on him, but Anxiety knew he was crumbling to himself. He couldn't do it. He was too scared, too nervous, too anxious. Eventually he just looked at the floor. He almost wanted to cry. Why did everything have to be so hard, why couldn't he just ask? Why did he have to ruin everything? Anxiety always ruined everything.

But if Anxiety always ruined everything, then it was as if Prince always fixed it.

"Anxiety? What's the matter? Anxiety? Anxi? Are you okay?" Prince was asking concernedly. Anxiety shook his head, but said,

"I'm fine. Don't worry about it, Princey." Then there was a warm hand on his shoulder and a hand tilting his chin up so Prince could look him in the eyes- and suddenly Anxiety was blushing again.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fine, you don't always have to try to save the day, Prince Charming." Anxiety snapped scathingly, trying to divert the embarrassment he was feeling. Then he realised he'd been mean again. "Sorry." He muttered. When Anxiety looked back at Prince, though, he seemed pleased.

"It's alright, I know I don't have to try to save the day but I want to! It's rewarding and fun. And as for the nickname, well, I am quite charming." Prince threw a wink at Anxiety, who scowled halfheartedly.

"Yeah yeah, whatever." Prince just smiled.

"Anyway, since you seem fine again, I'm going to ask you something." Anxiety frowned at him.

"Yes...?" He asked tentatively, and Prince's face grew serious.

"What is troubling you? What is making your life difficult?" He asked. That sounded familiar for some reason.

"Uh... why do you want to know?" Anxiety asked slowly, cautiously. Prince's face hardened into a mask of determination.

"So I can kill it!"

"Um, what?!" Anxiety was stunned, and Prince looked genuinely confused.

"What do you mean, what?" He asked.

"What as in why would you kill whatever's bothering me?" Anxiety asked incredulously. "Last time you said that, which was just a few hours ago, you killed a dragon witch thing for Valerie and then married her. Therefore I'm assuming you don't mean the same thing. So what do you mean?" Prince looked thoughtful for a second.

"I mean to kill the thing that is bothering you.. because how else am I to win your heart?" Anxiety choked on air.

* * *

"What?!" Anxiety screeched. Had he heard that right? Was he dreaming? What was going on? Prince just looked mildly offended.

"I figure that you still hold some animosity towards me, and I intend to slay whatever is troubling you so that you may overlook our previous arguments and allow me to win your heart!" He proclaimed proudly. Anxiety could only stare at him, dumbfounded. Prince noticed and sighed.

"I've been thinking, Anxiety. So many people, oh what's the term, ship us? Including everyone we know. And I have found, deep inside myself, that I do not hate you. Rather I am in... like with you." Prince worded carefully. Anxiety had to be dreaming; how was this actually happening?!

"I- I don't- you are?" Anxiety stuttered, still disbelieving. Prince nodded gravely.

"I am. And I realise that you may not currently feel the same way, which is why I implore you to tell me what it is I must destroy to win you over." Anxiety couldn't believe it.

"You- You're not going to try to marry me straight away, are you?" Anxiety asked nervously. Prince shook his head.

"No, it seems to sudden in this case. Unless you want me to. In which case of course!" He smiled, and Anxiety hurriedly shook his head.

"Nope, no, no marriage, no thanks." He rushed to say. Prince was graceful enough to not even look disappointed.

"Very well then. But seriously, Anxi, what do I have to kill?" Anxiety sighed.

"Why do you think you have to kill anything?" He asked, kind of frustrated. Anxiety didn't like grand gestures, they made him, well, anxious. But he couldn't bring himself to be angry; not when his crush was admitting to liking him back on my goodness. However Prince seemed confused.

"But... I have to slay whatever is troubling you? How else am I to win your heart and take you on a date?" He sounded genuinely puzzled and Anxiety sighed.

"Oh, Princey." He murmured, facepalming. "You could just, oh I don't know, actually ask me out?" Prince looked shocked, like the idea had never occurs to him. I'm hindsight, Anxiety reckoned it probably never had.

"That... would work?" He asked tentatively. Anxiety nodded at him.

"Yeah, Pretty Boy, it would." Prince was evidently delighted, a bright smile creeping over his face.

"Then of course! Anxiety, it seems fitting that on this blessed day, the day of love, Valentine's Day, that I should finally profess my, uh, like for you, and politely ask to take you out for dinner some time. Do you accept?" Prince just had to go make it all dramatic and stuff. But somehow Anxiety didn't really mind, in fact it was kind of sweet. Hen Anxiety realised it was the first time he'd ever seen Prince look nervous, and his heart melted a little bit.

"Yes, of course I will you dork. I, um, feel the same. I'm case you didn't get that." Prince was elated, smiling so wide and so hard it was almost blinding, and Anxiety found himself smiling back at him.

The moment was interrupted a moment later when Misleading Compliment tire through the room, screeching something that sounded vaguely like 'adorable Valentine's love!' And then something at Anxiety. Within a second he had run back out, so quick he was a blur. Prince and Anxiety both had to freeze for a second and process that before Anxiety inspected what Compliment had thrown at him. Prince peeled over, trying to see what was making Anxiety smirk, and was rewarded when Anxiety thrust it towards him.

"Be my Valentine?" Anxiety asked, grinning but blushing under all that white foundation. Prince gently took the red card and opened it up; it was decorated with pale pink hearts and swirly, looping white words spelling out be my valentine?

It was basic. It was cheesy. It was adorable and Prince loved it! He clutched it tightly to his chest and positively beamed.

"Of course I'll be your Valentine!" He exclaimed, stepping forward and quickly drawing Anxiety into a brief hug, which he didn't really resist. Then Dad and Logic burst into the room.

"I knew it!" Logic shouted victoriously. Dad was just staring wide eyes at them, eyes flickering from their smiling faces to their now linked hands. Suddenly he swooned and started tilting. Prince and Anxiety recoiled in shock, and Logic darted back to catch him.

"Morality? Dad, are you okay?" He asked worriedly. Dad blinked heavily for a second, before springing up and running over to hug Anxiety and Prince.

"You're just! Both! So! Cute!" He yelled in joy. "Oh my goodness, I'm so happy you two are a couple now. You're so perfect together! And on Valentine's Day too, oh how romantic!" He cooed, and were those tears in his eyes?

Anxiety chuckled a little in disbelief, and Prince smiled at him. When Anxiety looked up and met his sparkling eyes he smiled back, and yeah, maybe Dad was right. Maybe everyone was right.

Maybe they were perfect together.

Finish

I hope you liked this oneshot!!!

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