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lilyclawthorne · 3 years

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Keeping Up A-fear-ance's Thoughts

I finished writing this shortly after 3 am after watching the new episode like three times because I simply had too much energy about it and I have so many thoughts because I simply live for clawthornes and also I tried to break it up with more photos this time sorry not sorry if it's a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

YOUNG EDA!! let me just say I am quite a fan of opening with a flashback like we've done here and the last episode

"we have never seen a curse like this before" Lilith you had shit luck picking out curses huh

"cut it out if we have to" goddamn Gwen let'a calm the fuck down a bit.

anyways we've only really seen young Eda as a wild and confident and happy little child so I appreciate seeing this side of her with the anxiety and fear she's feeling here. I love seeing what the curse stuff was like for her as a kid

Gwen: I raised a perfectly fine kid

Me: no you didn't look at her she's got anxiety

I'm guessing this is their backyard or just some woods behind their house?? wonder if the portal was placed there by another elder family member.

lmao I can't even begin to imagine what small Eda experiencing the human realm was like for the first time

Gwens giving me "I can't accept that my child is disabled/chronically ill/etc." here. y’know the kinda parent that'll put their kid through hell over something they probably will find a way to learn to live with (which Eda did do)

ok that's it I humbly request to know the story behind the fang now (also the noise she made when she put it in was freaking cute)

new dress! new boots! new dress! new boots!

..yikes that fridge is empty

"calm down the curse acts stronger when you're stressed" Eda do you know who you're talking to here

confirmation losing limbs is in fact a side effect of the curse!! (y'know since Eda originally said it just happens when you get older)

please I love these sisters they're so sweet and make me wanna go 🥺

"suddenly curious about my past" "always. always curious" Luz says exactly what we all think

witchlet?? sweet flea?? she's got pet names for them 🥺 (although idk how much I'd like to be referred to as any kind of flea sorry Lilith)

ok Gwen is very much not close to what I expected and I'm kinda grateful for that

she's more like super caring but still managed to royally fuck up which was my original head canon for clawthorne parents so uh that's cool. but literally, look at their body language, Eda's pissed, Lilith's sad and making herself small. she's clearly messed up with her parenting on both of them along the way.

"who knows what they put in those nasty concoctions?" mama clawthorne would be a fucking anti-vaxxer wouldn't she

ok I side with Eda here more than Luz and Lilith. just because Luz misses her mother, or Lilith hasn’t seen their mom in so long doesn’t mean Eda has to feel all grateful for the presence of Gwen, especially if the woman has caused her a lot of trouble over the years

I feel like the fact that its actually both Lilith and Gwendolyn have spent their whole lives dedicated to trying to find a cure could probably have held some kind of weight on Eda at some point. Even though she shouldn't feel guilty or responsible for that, I still feel like it's gotta suck knowing these people have spent so much time on something you know is likely never gonna happen, all for you.

Lilith 😞 her mother really just didn't pay attention to her all these years

hey if this guy does some next level healing magic then why isn't he more well-known, huh? why’d it take so long to come across him?? Gwen do you know what the fuck you're doing cause I think you don't

Lilith just because you're depressed about your mom doesn't mean you have to bring king down too 😠

SUPER irrelevant but is anyone else just bothered by the way Lilith is holding her spoon?? that doesn't seem like a comfortable way to hold a spoon. also is she left handed??

"knife season came early" EDA WHAT DOES THAT MEAN. is this a boiling isles things or is this a it’s common for people to throw knives at you thing

also I want to be surprised Eda fell for the apple blood signs but I am not 😔

Luz please trust you're gut on this one and not mama clawthorne

ok now I need to know why the fridge was empty but they had 18 cartons of ice cream this is why you guys don't have food you're wasting it all on ice cream.

wow never thought I'd see the day hooty became the voice of reason

also, night market ice cream?? are they implying this ice cream is like, edibles of some sort?? Lilith does seem kinda high here ngl. idk man but at least she wants to stand up for herself so good for her.

PLEASE kings just offering her ice cream while she transforms

"first in a series" Gwen honey oh no. you've been duped. I think we can see where Lilith got her naïveté from huh.

Also, nice snatch Luz 😊

anyways love how this show is basically making fun of moms who refuse to give their kids proper medical treatment or listen to medical professionals here

EXCUSE ME why do we know Gwen's palisman's name before we know Lilith's?????

"I am a mother who'll do anything for her daughter" you're mom who's suffocating obsession with one daughter has left the other neglected and is currently causing her to turn into a full on beast ya dummy

Eda DOES have a right to be upset. it sucks that her own valid emotions that she should get to feel will cause her while body to betray her.

PLEASE I’M SO GLAD LILITH’S BEAST DESIGN LOOKS LIKE HER AND IS NOT THE THING FROM THE TRAILER THAT IS ACTUALLY IN EDA"S HEAD WHEN SHE’S TRANSFORMED

but also why is she SO massive?? also anyone concerned that this is her first transformation and the light glyph trick wouldn't even work??

Gwen look at what you've done, you've fostered feelings of inferiority in one daughter causing her to feel the need for sibling rivalry that the pure instincts of the raven beast cannot suppress no matter how much their sisterly relationship had improved.

HOW COULD YOUR OTHER DAUGHTER ALSO BEING CURSED BE A PART OF THE PROCESS GWEN??

"after Eda was cursed, I joined the beast keeping coven" woah woah WOAH. you're telling me you only joined because of trying to help Eda. that covens existed, before Eda got cursed, and you very much weren't a part of one. combine that with "some words for belos" she has and do I smell wild witch theory still plausible???

anyways at least mama clawthorne is getting some sense into her head here

Morton c'mon help a girl out, that's some dang good art too what the heck dude

ok fine mama clawthorne to the rescue

no pls not raven beast Lilith crying im crying now

Gwen: I raised a fine and self-sufficient child

Me: no you didn't look at her. she's got, SO MUCH.

GODDAMN THATS SOME POWER. ngl this only adds fuel to the fire in my head that there was some kinda reasoning these sisters were torn apart, that someone felt they'd be too powerful together (and they were probably right)

"I heard you but I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't do anything" may be just because she's not used to the curse but again part of me is concerned that because she couldn't pull herself out of it even a little bit like Eda did that there's something wrong there. but she also could've been stressed beyond reasonably calming herself down too.

ok but this is sweet

NOOO im so sad Lilith's leaving :( I literally cried ok

"you lived here?" fine OKAY king that was hilarious even if im sad about this

"reconnect with dad" excuse me where the fuck has this man been in the middle of all of this. curse shit is going DOWN and he's just chilling at home.

I am curious about people's thoughts regarding the whole Lilith regression thing and the fact that she's literally going to be living with her parents again. I feel like it could help nurture that inner child she's been reverting back to and help her out a LOT. but I could also be concerned about it feeding into the regression and making it worse?? idk and this show probably ain't getting that actually deep into psych anyways

"some day my hair is gonna be big enough to do that too" Luz I cannot wait for the day. also mood, I wish I could do that too.

alright who's holding the fucking pen for hooty we need a volunteer RIGHT NOW so we can remain in contact with Lulu

NOT THE ONLY HUMAN? my bets on the real azura rip never mind she said he

Titan’s Blood?? interesting. If the blood of the titan is around I wonder what that means regarding the titans existence, and how long its been since the titan fell.

AHH BABY LUZ PHOTO

ALSO WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?? They're really gonna spring that on us like this??? Camila's gotta notice somethings wrong right??? Unless any differences she just chalks up to the camp?? oh god :(

well, anyways lumity shippers come get yo juice next weekend

anyways im gonna need to add a NOT canon compliant tag on that one Gwendolyn fic I wrote because it definitely do not comply anymore

#toh #the owl house #owl house #keeping up afearances #keeping up a-fear-ances

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stonertransdad · 3 years

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Life Update since I hadn't been on here in forever

The pandemic was/is wild! Lockdowns started literally around the time we were going to the fertility specialist to get her pregnant. I lost my job to COVID in March shortly before we did the procedure, but we decided there's never really a good time to have a kid. Why not during a global pandemic when one of us in unemployed? (BTW, I don't recommend having a kid during a pandemic. Not being able to go to all of the appointments and having to sit in the parking lot was brutal.)

Let's talk about May friends...it was rough. (TW for mention of suicide btw. I'll post a gif where it's safe to start again if you wanna skip over it.)

So May 1st is the anniversary of my father's suicide. It had been 4 years. I found his body and since he wasn't married, I had to handle his affairs and arrange his funeral. May 1st, 2020 my wife and I had a Zoom game night with our friends and I got drunk because everyone was drinking (except my wife because she was pregnant). After our game night at like 2am, I had a psychotic break. I threatened to kill myself numerous times. My wife tried to talk me down, but eventually called the cops to take me. I thank her for that because looking back, that was the moment I knew something needed to change. I was convinced the cops were gonna kill me because I'm a trans dude in rural West Texas. I legit took the phone out of my wife's hand, hung up on 911, and yeeted her phone across the backyard and tried to hop the fence. Eventually the cops came and talked me down. They took me to the hospital an hour away in handcuffs (for their protection I did nothing wrong). They took me to the religious hospital that I was born in. So when they looked up my info by my name and date of birth from my driver's license (I only changed my middle name) literally all my paperwork and my bracelet had my deadname and wrong gender despite all of my legal stuff saying male with my new middle name. I mentioned it to them and they didn't care. They misgendered me the entire time I was there. I had hit my head hella hard on the bath tub when my wife was trying to snap me out of it, did the hospital even check me for concussion? Nope. I had punched so many things and my hand and wrist were swollen and discolored. Did they check out my hand and wrist? Nope. I was there for over 10 hours before I was able to convince them I was okay and that it was just the alcohol. Did I mention during that 10 hours I was literally out in the hall on a gurney with no mask and this was when COVID was running rampant in Texas (the first time)? I heard people die that night. I had nothing to distract me because they took away all of my personal items and clothes. My wife picked me up and we went home and I have been sober ever since. It's not the first psychotic break I've had with alcohol in my system. Alcohol just doesn't agree with me, but I'm finding new things to replace it with.

TW has been lifted...it's safe now.

A couple of weeks after that I began teletherapy because I had been on the same mood stabilizer and anti-depressant for almost a decade. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense that I felt like it hadn't been working for at least a year. This is a reminder to check in with your doctor if you feel like your meds aren't working. You may just need a different dose or a new med. There's no shame in that. I bounced around on various medications trying to find the right combo, some side effects scarier than others, but we got there. Before this, I had been diagnosed with ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. My therapist threw out my Borderline diagnosis and said it was CPTSD instead, which made sense.

Fast forward to December because my wife was pregnant, I was unemployed still, and we did absolutely fuck-all because the global panini was still raging.

Our son was born on December 3, 2020. He weighed 5lbs 9oz and scared the ever loving shit out of us. He wasn't breathing when he was born so they called NICU in ASAP. I'm freaking out because I can hear and see what's going on while my wife was asking if he was okay as they put her guts back in place to sew her up. 5 or so minutes pass and a nurse asks if I want her to take some pictures. I'm like is he okay, he still hasn't cried. She's like "oh yeah, he's chillin." This goon was being held by a nurse and was just looking around not crying or anything. Chillest baby ever (he still is btw). I held him next to my wife's head until it was time to go back to the room. Little dude did have to spend 4 nights in the NICU because he couldn't keep his sugars or temperature regulated, but he was healthy otherwise. He's now 4 months old and is starting to sit up on his own a little bit and he's OBSESSED with standing. He's still a little guy, but very healthy and growing like a weed. He saves my life daily.

So after being unemployed for over 9 months, I started a new job working in a call center. I absolutely hate talking on the phone. It gives me anxiety and throws me into panic attacks, but I had been putting out hundreds of job applications since I lost my last job and this was the first offer I got. I wasn't really in a position to turn it down since my unemployment had ran out 2 months prior. It was 2 months of training, then we'd be on our own. I got thru the training and thought I could handle it...until they started putting us on live calls with someone helping us if we got stuck. My mental health hit the lowest point it had in a few years and my wife was terrified she was going to lose me. She convinced me to quit on February 28th (not because I didn't want to, but because I'm a stubborn ass who felt guilty). My meds got tweaked a little bit more dosage wise during this mess.

Starting about mid-February, I was experiencing severe shakiness, tremors, and spasms. I've always been a shaky person and never really thought too much about it, but at some points I could barely feed myself, or get a drink, or hold my son. On March 7th, I tried to make an appointment with my doctor about the weird symptoms I was experiencing, but she was out of town and her next opening wasn't until the 31st. My body said that won't work and my wife rushed me to the ER on the 9th...I had begun having seizures that day. I had no previous history of seizures. Got to the ER and had a seizure literally as I was walking thru the door, so they rushed me straight back. They took some blood and that was literally it. No MRI. No CT. They pumped me full of Ativan and said it was just a panic attack and to go home and chill.

Spoiler Alert: It wasn't just anxiety. I was having 20+ seizures a day. On the 10th, my wife rushed me to a different hospital...the good hospital over an hour away. First we had to drop off our gremlin with my mom to make things a little easier. Yet again, I had a seizure as I walked in the door and was taken back immediately. I don't really remember much because they kept pumping me full of Ativan and morphine because I had been in excruciating pain from the number of seizures I'd had. I do remember them doing a CT pretty quickly after I got there. Then they weren't happy with the results of the CT, so they took me to get an MRI, which showed possible signs of Multiple Sclerosis (but I didn't find that out until AFTER the notes showed up in my patient portal after being home a few days, so I raised hell...more on that later.) They did a 24 hour EEG on me and it showed nothing abnormal. Also, EEG glue is a bitch on your hair and scalp. After looking at everything and given my previous mental health history, they diagnosed me with Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures, or PNES. It is a subset of Functional Neurologic Disorder, or FND. I couldn't walk well anymore and had to use a walker when I was discharged. I was in the hospital for 3 days.

When I had my follow-up appointment on the 23rd, I asked why the possibility of MS was never mentioned to me since it was very clearly in the notes. The doctor didn't have an explanation. He called in a referral to neurology so I could get a 2nd MRI to confirm MS and marked it as high priority. He also didn't take my pain seriously. My pain levels had been at a 5 or higher every single minute since they took me off of the morphine in the hospital. He told me to keep taking prescription strength doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol, which I had been. I let him know I had been and it didn't even take the edge off the pain. He ignored me. Leading up to this appointment, I had also added urinary incontinence to my growing list of symptoms and was forced to wear diapers so I didn't have to do laundry all the time. The doctor also took me off my ADHD meds because they were lowering my seizure threshold. He also took me off of my sleeping meds and nightmare meds for the same reason I'm assuming.

I kept my appointment on the 31st with my primary doctor because she's been my doctor for 5 years now and I knew she'd take my pain seriously. She did. She immediately wrote me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and Tylenol 4. She also told me that my referral had been rejected by neuro. She said my case wasn't a good one for what she called a "wallet biopsy" and the doctors in neurology could be real assholes. She immediately sent the referral to other locations to get an approval. I am still waiting on that despite it being marked as high priority. She wrote me a prescription for a wheelchair because we both agreed my wheelchair was not enough for particular days.

Yesterday my wheelchair was finally ready for pickup, so my wife drove me to go get it. I'm still unable to drive due to my seizures and my tremors and twitches as it's predominantly in my legs and arms. I am an ambulatory wheelchair user now. Some days I can go short distances without my walker, some days I can't go without my walker, some days I can't even get out of bed, and some days I will be using my wheelchair. Don't judge a book by its cover, not all disabilities are visible. I have managed to keep my daily seizure count down in single digits and have even had a few seizure free days. They are still incredibly taxing on my body. I feel like I can't ever replenish my spoons fast enough to keep up with anything in my life.

So all in all, life has been chaotic. We are moving from Texas to New Mexico in the next few weeks, which should be interesting considering I can't overdo it without throwing myself into seizures. We will be closer to my mother-in-law so she can help us with our son and I can start resting a bit more on the more difficult days. Being a stay-at-home dad with an invisible illness has been one of the most challenging things I've done in my life, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

Sorry this is so long. I just wanted to update my followers since it's been over a year since I posted before a few days ago.

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w-ngs · 3 years

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jan21

hello 2021! you did not get off on a good start. let’s try and be a little better, okay?

i didn’t read much this month (and probably won’t be for a long while because of school), but it was a wild month. well, you’ll see.

***

crooked kingdom, leigh bardugo — oh my god???? i completely forgot that i read this before i left for school and almost didn’t include it in my monthly wrap-up????? how dare i forget this masterpiece.

it was great. i loved it. i think overall, i preferred 6oc because heist stories are my guilty pleasure. but romance-wise... let’s just say kaz and inej have made it to my top 10 ships. but also i read through this so fast because i had to finish it before i left that half the story is kinda just not in my brain lololol

the most intriguing part of the entire story was the anti-wraith. her character kind of came out of nowhere, and i’m not really sure she had much of a purpose than being someone who could physically match inej. i guess she was also anti in the sense that she had no respect, just ruthlessness, which is the opposite of inej and what she stands for. but i don’t know if the anti-wraith was significant enough of a character to really be considered a foil.

i don’t really give spoiler warnings because hardly anyone reads these other than myself lolol but big spoiler ahead. skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. cuz i accidentally spoiled it for myself before reading and i kinda ruined it for myself lmfao.

poor matthias. he was there, and then he was gone. i feel terrible for nina. they were finally on the same page, and then he had to act all saint-like and trigger some idiot into killing him. and matthias finally came to terms with what he’d been taught and what he was trying to teach himself (#charactergrowth), so he wrapped things up neatly for himself before the bye-bye. but nina, she finally got her guy on her side and they were supposed to change the world together. sigh.

and of course, we got kaz. he’s my favorite. how could he not be, with his trauma and desire to overcome it but not letting it define him and still maintaining that evil genius act he’s so good at. it definitely hit harder in this story, the extent of his trauma. it made him more real, too. both sides of him coexist, and one could not exist without the other. he’s crazy, in nearly all senses of the word. also crazy in love, the mfing idiot. ugh, i love vulnerable kaz. i love what inej brings out in him, how she knows just how hard to push without driving him over the edge. also i saw a tiktok (this app is gonna come up a lot more in the next few reviews fsjdsdfkjdf) with a photo of them kissing with a towel between their mouths because he can’t touch her but he desperately wants to and what a perfect solution is that their... bathroom scene had me holding my breath. or at least taking very shallow breaths. it was intense. so intimate, i felt like i shouldn’t even have been there. ugh, the cute little babies. uwuwuwuwuwu

one last note. leigh bardugo is a very good writer, plot and characters and all. everything flowed much more smoothly in this book, and once again i was impressed by the detail provided. you go girl. i can’t wait to see the tv series development.

a 10/10.

***

the shadows between us, tricia levenseller — literally what did i read lmaooo. this is my first tiktok book recommendation. and it. was. boring. boring characters that didn’t make much sense. boring plot. i skimmed it after the first 50 pages cause it was so boring. that’s it bye.

a 3/10.

***

manacled, senlinyu — um. wow. i literally......... even hours after finishing it my brain is still ridiculously scrambled. edit: it’s about a month later and sometimes random scenes and images still pop in my head for no reason and then i feel all twisted inside again. i love it.

so, this is not a published book but a dramione fanfiction on ao3. i don’t read fanfics that often anymore, mainly because i’d rather read other things, not because i don’t like them. but i found this one because a tiktok that showed the illustrations in the story and i was so blown away by the fact someone would illustrate an entire fanfic that i just had to read it. and i have no regrets. it’s kinda long and a biiit wordy for me at times but holy shit that hit like a mother trucker. and i haven’t read dramione in ages, not since... years. so this really hit different.

the illustrations are beautiful. they’re what dragged me into the story in the first place, so, of course they are. but i’d literally spend minutes looking at every detail in amazement at how perfectly the emotions were captured and the lighting casting the perfect shadows and just… everything. i know nothing about drawing but my eyes were truly blessed.

i think integrating the handmaid’s tale with the hp world was ingenious. i would never have expected that. and wow. the relationship between the two, it’s…….. i can barely put it in words in my mind, and it’s even harder to articulate on paper. complex, but at the same time not, simply the desire for the other to stay alive. timeless. destructive. their only defense from the harsh reality of their situation. desperation at its most desperate, their one and only survival method. depressing. it’s so depressing. i was so sad, the angst almost too much at times.

the flashbacks were insanely intense. and i thought the handmaid section was bad. it was awful to read. i could hardly bear it, it was so dark at times i didn’t know how either of them got through it all. i mean, they barely did. the near-death scares, the constant need to create a blank slate within yourself in order to not overwhelm yourself with crushing emotions… wartime sometimes has a tendency to sound romantic, but theirs wasn’t anything near romantic, and i appreciate that the author chose to be very real about it.

at the beginning, and in the middle when we went through the flashbacks, i was afraid the love would be toxic. and, well, it kind of was at some points. but in a time like that and a situation like theirs, it would be hard to not have a toxic relationship. i was glad that in the end theirs was a good love, the kind that sustained and kept them alive and got them through until the very end, because it was what they needed from each other. and, of course, my favorite part of it all was draco’s ceaseless possessiveness that only seemed to grow, never fade. i love simpy men.

they deserve each other. i was afraid at the end they wouldn’t, that one of them would die—that draco would die because hermione basically did once already for him, so he would have to “return the favor”—also she was pregnant so there was no way she’d be the one to die—idk many theories. but at the end i’m so glad they both ended up alive. after everything, they deserved it.

i did nothing for two days straight but read this book. except eat. and barely sleep. and i have no regrets.

a 9/10.

***

bloodlines, richelle mead — dang. i used to be obsessed with vampire academy when i was in middle school. i even watched the terrible movie that released because of it. and now i can’t believe i really thought that was peak literature lmfaooooo

i remember adrian being such a funny and interesting character that i picked up bloodlines to see if it was gonna be as good as i remembered it was. i was disappointed. it was just... well let’s just say there wasn’t enough to get me invested in the characters as i used to be. i think what it was is that adrian’s characterization was so weak. he wasn’t as ~quirky~ as i remembered him to be haha. the plot was also way too slow-paced, and a little too easy to guess. maybe if i was 12 again i’d be going crazy over it like i used to. but i’m not a pre-teen anymore and my brain craves stuff along the lines of manacled—destruction, death, angst that wants me to pull my own heart out to stop it from hurting.

a 5/10.

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deniigi · 4 years

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Last Mike piece kind of combining a handful of different requests.

It’s a long one and is under the cut.

(Note, contains some stereotyping--I love Mike but I don’t imagine him as a super sensitive or culturally aware type of guy.)

Thanks to everyone who sent in asks!! And who has read and commented on stories up until this point.

You’re all darlings and stars and I appreciate you immensely. Truly immensely. It is a pleasure to read your comments and reactions and to have met so many lovely humans through the work.

---

keeping brothers

Mike comes to SF to demand retribution for not being invited to Matt and Foggy’s wedding. He crashes into Sam and finds in him a challenge that is perhaps even too great for even Mike Murdock to overcome.

---

Foggy was not presently receptive to advances.

This was unfortunate. Especially since revenge was needing to be taken here over dear, dear Matthew going forth with a wedding without even inviting his only, humble brother to sit in the pews.

Mike had picked out a suit and everything.

It was yellow.

Everyone loved yellow.

He’d gotten a hat to go with it.

Everyone loved hats.

Matt, however, seemed to have other ideas and went on and on about how he was planning on an August wedding and he’d tell Mike in the next month or so what the decided date was and what the color scheme was, and so on and so on. And yet, somehow, by the time May was rolling to a close, with months left until the auspicious August date, Mike got a furious call from the Sister who, for once, had found it in herself to contact him first and who was also offended on Matt’s and Dad’s behalf that Mike had failed to show up to his own twin’s wedding.

She didn’t yell. No of course she didn’t. But she told Mike that God was watching him and that he should consider how he was going to make it up to his brother.

His brother.

Hmph.

More like his little shit wombmate.

Oh, Mike would make it up to him alright.

Dearest, darling Matthew lived in San Francisco these days and while Foggy was not receptive to Mike’s usual charm and wit, he did say that Mike was welcome to stay at the happily married couple’s house for the night.

Foggy felt guilty when Mike explained the phone call from Mom and the whole unworn suit situation. He said that it was wrong of Matt to have lied to him and that an apology would be forthcoming, but in the meantime, if Mike could keep an eye on the dogs and the apprentice while he went out to find his beloved husband, that would be great.

Mike, of course, promised he would.

He chose not to mention that dogs were the foul scum of the earth on his personal hierarchy of creatures and things.

He also chose not to mention that children were right below dogs on said hierarchy. After all, not everyone in the world needed to know his business.

Matt’s dogs were…disgusting.

Mike didn’t get it.

The number of times Mike had moved Matt to the other side of the pavement to keep him away from dogs (out of brotherly love and fear of the neighborhood kids knowing that his little bro was a crybaby) had long passed countable means.

And yet.

These things.

Hazel was alright. Mike got why Matt was obsessed with her. She was ginger. They were ginger. There was an unbreakable bond there.

But Tuesday?

Just why?

She was old. She was pale. She looked sad all the fucking time.

Mike tried to throw a tennis ball for her, but after he’d pried the wet, nasty thing out of her mouth, she just watched it bounce and roll onto the living room carpet before looking back up at him like he’d just shot Bugs Bunny dead on the carpet and tried to feed him to her.

“You ever considered therapy?” he asked her. “Maybe anti-depressants?”

She said nothing.

She just looked sad.

“How about a walk?” he asked.

Hazel flung herself out of the kitchen and crashed into the bottom of the island on her way.

Mike could appreciate that level of enthusiasm. Tuesday watched her and the slowly looked back up at him. Her tail swung exactly once.

“That’s it?” Mike asked her.

The tail drooped.

Fuckin’ A.

Look who’s Sandra D., huh?

The door rattled open and both dogs suddenly leap into action. Mike threw hands over his ears at the sudden explosion of barking.

“HEY,” he snapped at them.

They carried on yowling and bustling, racing each other down the stairs. Mike stood up and begrudgingly accepted that he was gonna have to chase these slobbering idiots out into the street, but froze.

A person was down there at the bottom of the stairs with bags slipping off their shoulders. They were laughing and petting the dogs. Cooing to them.

Mike decided that he wasn’t in the mood for housecleaner chatting. He was here for the express purpose of shaming Matthew in his own home.

He took a step back, but not soon enough. The black hair down there snapped up and made eye contact.

“Oh, hey Boss,” the cleaner said. “You’re home early.”

How to respond? How to respond?

This appeared to be an opportunity.

“Wasn’t busy,” he said in his best, stiff, huffy Matthew impression.

The kid cocked his head to the side a little.

“Really?” he asked. “Huh. Wild. Did you already take the girls out?”

Housecleaner and dogwalker? Come on, Matt. You ain’t that busy.

“Negative,” Mike said.

“Oh. Okay, I’ll take them then,” the kid said. “Jia and Chunhua want to meet them, is that cool?”

Um.

But

Why.

“No can do,” Mike said. “They’ve been poorly behaved.”

The kid stopped with his hand on the downstairs closet door. He turned his head slowly back up the stairs, this time frowning.

Mike decided that he was going to make a drink.

You know. A “drink.” For protection. Against suspicion.

“You feeling okay, Bossman?” the kid called up the stairs.

“Just fine, thanks,” Mike called back from the kitchen. He found a safe place behind the counter and hunkered with the muzzle of his piece over its edge.

Surely, this guy knew Matt’s ‘leave me alone’ tone. Mike had it imprinted across his heart and his impression of it, he knew, was flawless.

The sound of rustling eased downstairs for a moment, and the creak of a door opening followed it. The dogs did not come back up the stairs. Mike started to stand up.

Perhaps the suspicion had passed?

The sound of a door opening downstairs destroyed that dream and the sound of the kid hiking upstairs with intention followed the shattered its remaining fragments.

And like.

Damn.

There were two ways to go about this.

Way 1) Shoot the kid, hide the body, hire new household help for the brother.

Way 2) Engage full and complete Matthew impersonation.

Tricky, tricky, tricky.

One of those involved paperwork and speed interviewing. Mike stowed his piece and made a show of picking through the cabinets for a glass. He was careful to feel around at the bottom of the glasswares’ stems.

He heard the footsteps stop behind him and could practically feel the kid’s eyes burning holes into his back.

“You need a Tylenol or somethin’, Teach?” the kid rumbled.

The hair on the back of Mike’s neck stood up.

He’d fucked up.

He didn’t know how he’d fucked up, but he’d fucked up.

Damn.

Poor little shit. Dyin’ on a kitchen floor was just one step above dying on the toilet.

“I’m good, thanks,” he said to the cabinet contents.

“Are you?” the kid asked.

Pushy.

Stop asking questions, boy, and start prayin’.

“I am,” Mike said, closing the cabinet firmly. “Is there a reason—”

He turned around.

Blue, glowing eyes stared right through him.

“What’s the matter, Teach?” the kid asked sweetly. “Never seen me before?”

Oh.

Shit.

Mike never claimed to be Matty.

Ever.

He wasn’t there for the whole cult-training thing. He only became aware of it after the fact. Of course he’d noticed the change in behavior and the personality shift and yadda yadda yadda. But he couldn’t have done anything about it. He’d just been a kid himself, not to mention that he’d been busy being shipped out to a thousand different foster families and group homes while Matty had been shuffled through a series of special needs placements. They were broken apart and thrown back together all the fucking time while every social worker and home and institute claimed to be trying to ‘keep the twins together.’

As a result, one day Mike woke up and learned from the paper that his twin was secretly a devil in disguise.

It had been kind of neat, actually. Matty’s devil fought crime and Mike’s devil did crime.

What a pair!

The contrast! The tension!

Delicious, all of it.

And while that was very good aesthetic-wise, it unfortunately meant that Mike was woefully unprepared to fight a dog-walking, house-cleaning marital artist on kitchen tile.

The kid was strong. And fast. And fuck, could he land a punch. Or eight.

He’d snatched Mike’s gun and chucked it in the sink within seconds of this conflict beginning, and while Mike had a height and weight advantage on him, someone had taught him how to go for the kidneys and the knees.

Christ.

Mike was going to have to knock him out.

He didn’t want to.

Matt’s kitchen was already a disaster. Adding blood to that had not been part of the shaming plan.

Welp.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

He managed to get the kid locked into an elbow and pulled up with the intention of giving him a head start in the napping arena, when the front door slammed open. The kid simultaneously sunk his teeth down into Mike’s forearm.

Mike shouted before he knew he was and suddenly there were dogs everywhere and people talking over each other and one second, Mike was reestablishing his grip on that mangey little mutt, and the next the kid was gone and he was staring into Matt’s furious grimace.

A glass rolled around on the counter by the sink.

“Oh,” Mike said. “Well, fancy meeting you here.”

“Sensei,” the kid cried, trying to push past Matt’s side to get in front of him.

“That’s enough,” Matt said to Mike’s face, but really to the room at large. The kid stopped.

Sensei, he’d said.

Oho.

Ohohoho.

Mike might have misjudged things here.

“Go clean yourself up,” Matt ordered him, pulling back out of his braced form and catching the kid when he tried to get in front of him again.

“Righty-o,” Mike told him pleasantly. “Just one question—”

A muscle in Matt’s jaw jumped. Mike decided that that was permission.

“Does your little whelp there got all his shots?” Mike asked him.

Sam.

This kid’s name was Sam. And he was not household help. He was apprentice and employee and he was fucking sharp.

Matt kept grabbing him and forcibly manhandling him back onto the couch to keep him from lunging at Mike with intent to kill.

Mike didn’t know what to make of any of this.

When Foggy had said ‘apprentice,’ Mike had assumed that some 14 year old would be arriving for lessons in MMA in the garage or something.

He had not expected this guy.

“Fuck you,” Sam snapped at Mike when Matt told him in hushed tones to settle down or go downstairs until he could.

Wow.

Mike was almost…impressed?

“Samuel,” Matt said in a voice that gave Mike shivers because it sounded exactly like Dad.

Holy shit.

Sam and his glowing blue eyes jerked and then stared up at Matt in hurt betrayal. Matt sensed it somehow and softened.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Thank you for protecting the house. There’s just a misunderstanding here.”

Boy, was that an understatement.

“He’s impersonating you,” Sam told his teacher. “He was cursing Tuesday.”

Eh?

Oh.

That.

“He’s not impersonating me,” Matt said calmly while Foggy made aggravated sounds at the state of his kitchen. “He’s my twin.”

Samuel went slack and stared up into Matt’s sunglasses. He swiveled his head back to Mike. Mike tapped his own glasses down and winked.

Sam bared teeth at him.

Hm.

Unfriendly.

Yes. Like the dog.

Why did Matty collect such things?

“Sam,” Matt said, apparently aware that this type of Sam-silence was not a benevolent one.

Cowed by the warning, Sam’s new tactic for dealing with Mike abruptly became hiding from him. He wriggled out of Matt’s hold and tucked himself up against his back instead, peeking out to squint severely at Mike as though daring him to come any closer.

Matt sighed.

“What do you want, Michael?” he asked, holding his head in his hands while the sound of glass being swept rang out from the kitchen.

Mike hummed and leaned his chin on his palm.

“I think we both know what I want,” he said.

Matt took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“Hostile,” Mike noted disapprovingly at the now-empty doorframe.

“He’s not always this way,” Foggy assured him.

Mike scoffed.

“Little shit bites,” he said.

“Where do you think he learned that from?” Foggy asked.

Ah.

Matty.

Mike saw now.

“Matt’s not even trying to include me in his life anymore,” Mike sighed. Foggy matched his posture on the other side of the now-clean kitchen counter.

“Sam is a soft spot,” he said.

“Psh. He shouldn’t be. If Matty wanted a nephew, all he had to do was say so. I’m sure I’ve gotten some broad or ten knocked up over the last twenty years,” Mike pointed out.

Foggy’s silence was judgmental. He was lookin’ kind of thin.

“Bad timing?” Mike asked him.

“More like tasteless,” Foggy told him.

“Maybe tasteless, but not untrue,” Mike volleyed back with a winning smile.

Foggy pursed his lips at him.

“Matt and Sam are already bonded, Michael,” he said. “It’s going to be far easier for you to accept Sammy than it is to get Matt to accept one of your eight thousand love children.”

Mike huffed.

Always a double-standard in this family.

So Sam was definitely trying to kill him. Or at least run him out of this place.

There was broken glass in the guest bathroom. There was a rug suddenly on the stairs in the middle of the night. There were wet, disgusting tennis balls waiting to be stepped on in the house’s hallways.

Sam allegedly slept downstairs, but Mike didn’t think he was sleeping.

“You’re accusing my apprentice of sabotage, now?” Matt deadpanned to him over breakfast.

“He’s jealous. He doesn’t like the idea of there being two of you,” Mike told him reliably.

Matt reached out and felt around for Mike’s forehead. He held his hand there like the fucking dick he was.

“Hm,” he said.

“I ain’t lyin’,” Mike told him.

“Hm,” Matt said again, taking his hand back to stuff a piece of toast in his mouth.

Mike heard a door open downstairs and then a burst of babytalk towards one of the dogs.

It cut off abruptly.

Mike looked over his shoulder towards the staircase and sure enough, the most favored blue-eyed boy of the household was down there, glaring up at him. He waved. Sam gave him the finger and hauled the dogs off with him to go make his own breakfast in the downstairs kitchen.

“He’s adorable, Matty,” Mike said without intonation.

“I am aware,” Matt said. “I like to keep him around. Really draws in the ladies.”

Hm.

Sam hid. Mike became aware of this on the third day of staying over that he managed to wrangle out of Matt and Foggy in return for their inhospitality over the weekend and the whole wedding situation.

The boy was always in his room or going or coming from the house. He did not touch the stairs.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” he asked Matt.

Matt didn’t even turn his way while he brushed Hazel’s fur.

“I mean, he doesn’t love to come up here in general,” he said, “But yeah, no. He especially doesn’t love you.”

Hm.

“I’m gonna bond with him,” Mike decided.

“Please don’t,” Matt said immediately.

“I’m gonna,” Mike said.

Sam blinked slowly at him once and then twice.

Then he picked up his plate and mug and made to leave for his room.

“Hold on now, partner,” Mike said, blocking the doorway with an arm. Sam’s eyes flicked up to the arm, then back to his face. Then up to the arm again.

“I think we both want the same thing here,” Mike continued. “You clearly love my brother. I appreciate that. I love my brother too. And if you’re gonna be stickin’ around, me and you should get onto more even footing, no?”

Sam turned his head to the side and ducked right under Mike’s arm into the hall. His bedroom door closed with a thunk.

It locked.

Mike blinked at the window he had been standing in front of.

Little shit.

This kid was a little shit.

“Mike, he’s just not about you,” Matt sighed. “It took him months to warm up to me. He’s not that kind of person.”

Bullshit.

He was what? 18?

18 year olds could be bought.

Matt’s lip twitched.

“He’s 24,” he said.

Oh.

Well.

Same difference. 24 year olds could be bought too.

Matt smirked.

“Alright, do your worst then,” he said.

He invited Samuel out for Vietnamese coffee. There was a place close by. It seemed to be quiet enough.

Sam stared at him and informed him that he was Chinese, thanks, not Vietnamese and all Asians weren’t the same, by the way.

Mike didn’t know what to say.

“Do you not like coffee?” he asked.

“I don’t like stereotypes,” Sam told him. “And I don’t like you.”

He shut his door.

“If we do East Asian food, then we let Sammy pick where we get it,” Matt told Mike dutifully.

That was like, fine. But also wasn’t that equally presumptuous?

“He’s got much stronger opinions on it than we do,” Matt shrugged. “And certain places don’t have things that he likes that we don’t know very well.”

…right.

“So I should let him pick,” Mike translated.

“I think you should leave him alone,” Matt told him.

Well, they both knew that wasn’t happening, but it was a sweet thought, little brother.

“You have a compulsion to feel liked,” Matt said offhandedly.

“You have a need to be hated,” Mike sighed.

Matt glared.

The stalemate remained intact.

Sammy. Samuel. Sam.

He told Mike to call him Mr. Chung or Blindspot. Nothing more, nothing less.

Mike thought ‘Sammy’ was very cute.

It sounded nephew-like.

Sam told him that he wasn’t his nephew because Sensei wasn’t his dad because he already had a deadbeat, missing father, thanks. He wasn’t looking for another one.

Mike was getting the feeling that Sam was angry with him.

Matt wandered downstairs afterwards and knocked on Sam’s door and was allowed admission. For like. An hour.

Them double-standards, man.

Matt announced that Mike was coming with him and Sam to walk the dogs. He bribed the kid with a promise of a bagel. Mike watched this happen.

Sam stared long and sad into Matt’s unseeing face exactly like Tuesday. Matt patted him on the head in consolation and he did not (did not) bite his hand (unlike the damn dog).

“Half an hour, kiddo,” Matt told him. “Then bagel.”

Sam was from New York, it turned out. Not Shanghai or Beijing or Hong Kong. And apparently it was rude to ask or assume the latter.

He liked bagels as much as any decent New Yorker did, and Matt knew this about him.

“Only for the bagel,” Sam told him.

“Only for the bagel,” Matt agreed. “I’ll buy and you can put whatever you want on it.”

“Egg,” Sam said definitively. “And peanut butter. And sriracha.”

Matt tried not to wince.

“Whatever you want,” he said.

Sam was pleased with his submission.

“Is it cold outside?” he asked.

Sam loved the dogs. Mike suddenly understood why he and Matt got on so well now.

This kid had little care for drool on his hands and had a killer arm. The dogs raced after his lobbed tennis balls like their lives depended on it—even the old lady.

Matt said nothing.

He was busy acting as a buffer. He elbowed Mike in the ribs after the fifth throw or so.

Mike remembered the mission.

“Where’d you learn to throw, Sammy?” he asked.

Matt clutched at his face with a hand.

Sam side-eyed Mike without moving.

“Sam,” he said firmly. “Or BT. Or Chung.”

“Sammy suits you,” Mike told him. “Where’d you learn to throw?”

Sam furrowed his brow.

“My mom,” he said.

Oh, nice.

“She play baseball?” Mike asked.

“Archer,” Sam said stiffly.

“Very cool. Very cool.”

Annnnd that was it. Hm.

“Teach, why’re you lettin’ this guy hang around?” Sam asked out of the blue.

“Familial obligation, minor guilt, fear of maternal retribution,” Matt listed out dutifully.

Sam picked up the proffered ball and with it, accepted this answer. He chucked the ball and watched the dogs run.

“Are you a devil too?” he asked the field.

Mike blinked then realized the question was for him.

“Sort of,” he said.

“Definitely,” Matt sighed.

“What’s your thing then?” Sam asked. “You carry. Why?”

Why?

Because Mike Murdock wasn’t being caught out in the cold, no siree.

“My choice of company relies on, how shall we say, some rather poor communication,” he went for.

Sam hummed.

“So you’re a crook,” he said.

Matt choked on a laugh.

“A crook? No, no, kid,” Mike said. “You got me all wrong. I’m what you call an opportunist.”

Sam lifted an eyebrow.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Sure. Why’re you such a dick?”

Wow.

No respect for his elders, truly.

“It’s the trauma,” he deadpanned. “And the older sibling burden.”

“You don’t look older than Sensei,” Sam pointed out.

“Well, looks aren’t everything, sweetheart,” Mike told him kindly.

Sam frowned.

“Why do you wear a hat?” he asked.

“Because I’m fantastic,” Mike told him.

“Oh, I get it now,” Sam said.

Mike straightened his back.

“Do you?” he asked.

“You’re just a fuckin’ clown,” Sam said.

Okay, so Mike might just have to throw this one.

Matt wouldn’t stop laughing at him and it was his job to make Matt miserable, not the other way around. Any more of this and Matt would forget his place.

“Your son is out of line,” he scolded Matthew. “Doesn’t respect his elders. Doesn’t play well with strangers. You need to socialize him.”

Matt found that even more comical.

He wouldn’t say why. Mike had to interrogate Foggy, but that was difficult because Kirsten showed up and was gorgeous and too good for Matthew, so that had to be addressed with full and complete attention.

Kirsten leaned over and took Mike’s hat and patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sam’s never been disrespectful for more than five minutes at a go the whole time we’ve known him, Mikey, we’re learning more and more about him each day that you’re here.”

Which was.

Hm.

Not sexy.

But he would deal with that once Sexy herself gave him his hat back.

He got a job on in Miami that night and had to cut his visit short. Matt was not sorry to see him go. That was pretty typical.

Sam had no opinions on his leaving. He stuck his head upstairs and said bye, but nothing more than that.

Mike felt bitter.

It had been a long time since he’d left a job feeling unsatisfied.

No closure.

Matt wasn’t supposed to be better with people than he was. That was their trade off. He wasn’t allowed.

“I’ll be back, and I’ll crack him,” He threatened his brother on the way to the airport.

“I have no doubt that you will,” Matt said patronizingly. “And I am sure that he’ll be waiting for your return.”

Yeah, well.

He better.

#fic #long post #inimitable verse #I won't post another long piece like this for a while i'm so sorry mobile folks #ficlet #It def is not a ficlet but for the tag #mike murdock #matt murdock #samuel chung

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ninety6tears · 4 years

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More disorganized thoughts on Dublin Murders (eps 3-6)

(As before, lots of books-centric talk and speculation that may be spoilery.)

I feel like I should begin by giving Phelps a bit of credit in that it does seem clear enough, even in the changes from French, that she is an enthusiast and has probably read this series over and over aside from professionally. There are times when I smile because it’s so obvious she’s a fan, but then there are other moments...we’ll get there.

I feel like it’s always a little...bad or whatever to bag on child actors, but ugh, with the exceptions of some minor ones I just can’t with these miscast kids. I can’t with that cheesy decision to have Adam yelling and yelling when they find him in the woods (the nail-breaking catatonia was so much creepier, come on). This slightly deranged stuff with little Cassie and Lexie is another quick shortcut for the viewers who can’t piece together psychological implications for themselves--it’s that stuff that makes me wonder if relying on a lot of voiceover would have actually been more subtle. Yes, Cassie had an imaginary friend when she was little because she felt alone after her parents died, but that isn’t spelled out in a couple clauses like I just did, or like the series basically does in two minutes with a strangely emotionless scene they were so proud of we had to watch it twice just in case the ins and outs of her formative trauma wasn’t clear enough.

How depressing to think of a kid buried with their favorite color when kids change their minds about their favorite color every few months. That being said, my mom somehow always kept it straight! Something’s not right in that house, man.

The thing with McCabe being haunted about Knocknaree till his death and leaving crackers notes in the evidence is a little corny but I like it. And like, Rob saying it’s irrelevant but clearly being shaken to hear that...and Christ, that bit later on when he makes up a probable suicide for Adam Ryan...boy.

Oh my LORD can we talk about how Rob is so cold with his mom?? Cassie was more affectionate with her than he was. That scene is so sad, it’s perfect. And no shit, when she told Cassie she wasn’t a good liar, I scoffed at that...and then she told Rob and they both laughed about it <3 <3

It’s been commented on, but Rob has a key to her place? He comes over to wake her up with coffee, and he’s about to leap in his car and come to her after she sees Lexie’s body, because of course he would have (while Sam awkwardly tries to approach her over her shoulder, lolll). Their platonic intimacy, I just... <3<3<3

LOL @ O’Kelly reacting to Lexie the way more people probably would: “Are you all on ketamine?! Am I the only one looking at this?!!?”

“You get to know his tell.” That’s mean for my Cassie but

I gotta say, I’m less annoyed than I was when it happened but still annoyed that Rob and Cassie sleeping together happened with her emotions as the catalyst rather than his. Like it makes enough sense if you believe the whole complication was going to happen sooner or later, but it really backs away from the part of In The Woods where Rob is at his most absolutely naked vulnerability and is clearly capital ‘t’ Triggered and it might significantly compromise how sympathetic he can be, and what his development does with male trauma. At least they do make him cry later, and remembering witnessing the rape works as a stand-in for what brings that on, but it’s undeniably disappointing to not see him go through that raw breakdown with Cassie in a way that feels in multiple ways like a tragically brief lapse in his walls.

Sam? Goading Cassie into admitting she slept with Rob after they’d fallen out and then saying “Fuck you, I have to work with him”? More likely than you think. Nah, I don’t know, these two were practically incapable of being harsh with each other in the novel and it’s...unexpected. It’s interesting because it’s like here we are treating Sam’s idealization of Cassie as more obviously a Problem while it was more just an annoyance in The Likeness, but I don’t really see book!Sam having this level of breakdown like he hardcore has been in denial that Cassie has probably done some stuff she’s not proud of, so they’re very different in my mind.

HOLLY, though. Holly actually knows Cassie like in the fanfic I’d like to read. Frank’s cheesy Dad shirt! This is the shit that makes me feel that Phelps is a Fan. But like, what is her deal with The Likeness because she doesn’t seem to dive into the things that a lot of the fans love about that book at all? I know they’re short on time (because of who’s choice to condense these in one miniseries, I’d like to know) but there’s a reason the book takes its time with the prep of the operation. With this, we mostly get some cursory stuff about where the kitchenware goes and one bit with a videotape and like...I have no clue how Cassie thinks she knows what Lexie is like, and because of that weird-ass talk with Sam where she seems disconnected from reality about where she came from and Frank showing little concern about how to instruct her to do this and the totally anti-climactic way she arrives at Whitethorn House and they just SKIP TO THE NEXT MORNING like it’s all no big deal, it’s almost like we’re not supposed to care or even think about the central fulcrum of suspense and audaciousness that made the premise of the book so fucking good.

But that’s not even half the problem, because the Whitethorn characters are just kinda lost on this take. So far I either haven’t noticed or haven’t much liked the cast’s performances of them, their connections are simplified to who's banging or wanting to bang who right away, and there’s a sad shortage of actual non-awkward warmth before we get to those fissures of ugliness and resentment. And you know, the worst of it is that Cassie doesn’t give a fuck. She wants to nail one of them to the wall, she believes from the beginning one of them did it, and that’s a completely different story that doesn’t really need all this surreal gothic pomp which is already a lot to swallow in the same season as In The Woods. She and Frank are totally on the same wavelength and that’s fun to watch because sometimes that’s the fundamental note of their sense of intense history in the book too, but in The Likeness, Frank has this contempt for the residents that says more than he realizes about himself, and she has this desire to protect this strange family from the inevitable which says something about her and everything she’s been through, and that comes around in so many ways that I doubt they’re going to suddenly establish in the last couple episodes, unfortunately.

I will say though, while I figured that pulling these two relatively insulated high-concept stories together wouldn’t work and it doesn’t seem to be working, I am enjoying how much it emphasizes the thematic threads and imagery shared between them, even things like doubles/twins. Even though at least one of Rob’s hallucination sequences doesn’t land right for me, I love the visuals always emphasizing that insurmountable intrusion of the woods and the feral world, most literally realized in that horrifying car crash in slow motion. It makes me think of Scorcher’s “Wild stays out” bit--inevitably it doesn’t~~

And at the same time, Cassie leaving Rob to go under is a different way of approaching that pile of angst that I’m finding interesting and I look forward to seeing how they tie everything back in.

Though I did kinda like that one scene with O’Kelly, I have a big bone to pick with that “Mackey gets people killed” thing, because...no? Dead operatives don’t get “results.” You’re not a badass like Frank Mackey is supposed to be if you can’t pick the undercover types and teach your cops how to not get killed, because you get to that point by being good at not getting yourself killed. Mackey even says at one point in Faithful Place with some defensive pride that his moles don’t end up dead. Frank is shady and opportunistic and manipulative, but he is not a fucking idiot, and making him hold the bad-guy ball to just shrug about the gun in ordeI’r to remove--even more!--the emphasis on Cassie’s increasingly compromised and reckless decisions is not something I’m happy with (I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure about this, but she keeps it from him in the book, right?).

Hmm: “If anything happens to her I'll fucking kill you” vs. “Maddox is a survivor.”

Also: “She looks at Daniel the way Sam looked at you.” Aww, Frank, you bastard.

I forgot to say last time that Rob having a roommates-with-hate-sex-benefits thing with Heather is just...yeah, that could happen. But what was up with her not even noticing he looks like he needs an ambulance, lol

I stopped at quite a cliffhanger so I think I’ll just end this here.

#dublin murders #dublin murder squad #cassie maddox #frank mackey #rob reilly #rob ryan #tana french #Layla very occasionally liveblogs #yeah sorry I can't figure out how to do a cut on here anymore

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iluxia · 5 years

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This mug is trending in my hospital right now. Legit it's more popular than me. I am sharing it this morning, post-shift and full of matcha latte, as a part of my effort in fulfilling my civic & professional duty of getting you all to just

GET THE DAMN FLU SHOT!!!

If you have insurance, it will be free somewhere (CVS, Walgreens, the grocery store, or your doctor’s office if you haven’t done anything that prevents you from showing your face there). If you don't have insurance, vaccinefinder.org can get you to somewhere that won't cost you an arm and a leg. Alternatively, here is a table of how much it'll cost you at the usual places in the US for the quadrivalent formulation as an uninsured consumer.

As for my vaccine spiel: I’m sure you’ve read all the articles swimming around in media about this, so I won’t go into the usual why’s. (Yes, for those outside of the USA, here people debate about something as elementary as why should we vaccinate.) I will, however, pull apart a few excuses anti-vaxxers use as shields, excuses I have personally heard before. (Full disclosure, I am a physician.)

"The flu shot makes people sick immediately after vaccination because the vaccine introduces the flu virus into the body, so it actually impedes the immune system from working properly! It doesn’t work!”

This shows very poor to non-existent understanding of how vaccination & the immune system works. The flu vaccine contains inactive, dead virus parts. It introduces your immune system to what the virus looks like; remember the third Harry Potter movie, where they posted pictures of Sirius Black the Death Eater Fugitive on pamphlets to warn the wizarding world about him so they know what he looks like? It’s exactly that. The faster the immune system can recognize an intruder, the faster it can kill it.

“The flu shot has other ingredients in it (like mercury) that cause various side effects from depression and memory loss to cardiovascular disease, ADHD, and autism.”

The flu vaccine used to contain a preservative called thimerosal (ethyl mercury), which is NOT the same as methyl mercury (the toxic kind). Let’s review a little chem here, as painful as those long-buried memories are. Thimerosal is a stable preservative that has been in use in tons of things since the 1920s. There is more mercury in breastmilk than there is in a single flu shot, guys.

A dude named Andrew Wakefield and a few of his buddies published a whack case series in the Lancet in 1998 suggesting that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, preserved using thimerosal, predisposed behavioral regression & developmental disorders in children. But the sample size was 12 patients. Twelve. That is negligibly tiny. Obviously they didn’t do their power calcs. And it was a case series - the least reliable type of research you can publish because a case series is anecdotal. Their “data” did not show strong correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism; indeed, their analytical model wasn’t even constructed to examine that hypothesis. Multiple epidemiological studies followed hot on the heels of this paper, refuting its wild claims, but the damage was done & the publicity was already on fire. It sparked a huge anti-vaxxer movement that is responsible, frankly speaking, for the recurrence of eradicated diseases such as measles, which is deadly to little children. [ You can read more about this whole debacle here. ] It was all about the MMR vaccine at first, but “MMR” disappeared and eventually it became “all vaccines cause autism.” This is what happens when you combine poor health education, an irresponsible publishing journal, and an immoral media. The Lancet only formally withdrew this paper from publication in Feb 2010. To this day, I find it difficult to trust the Lancet.

The studies that came after Wakefield’s stupid one all refuted Wakefield’s claims with stronger data, proper analyses, systematic reviews, and actual fucking power calcs, like actual fucking researchers.

Finally, we don’t even fully understand autism. How can you definitely claim that one specific thing can cause it? Remember: correlation =/= causation.

“The CDC promotes flu vaccines because they have financial ties & get kickbacks from Big Pharma. It’s all big business. The flu vaccine doesn’t work.”

Bars and clubs will promote alcohol to you because they get kickbacks from the breweries. It’s all big business. Does that mean that the alcohol doesn’t work?

Why are you okay giving Big Pharma your money for vitamins you don’t really need (most people don’t really need multivitamins, it just makes your pee expensive) but you can’t give them money for life-saving, pandemic-fighting vaccines that COST LESS?

And since we’re talking about business, you should know that vaccines are actually not profitable for pharmaceutical companies, because they have to make entirely new batches EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. The overheads on that must cost $$$$, I mean, they have to pay the researchers a living wage, and it takes months to make the vaccines. Come on, we all know the real money is made with ridiculously expensive life-saving medications such as insulin and the EpiPen. Duh.

Health is worth more than money, honey. Spend a day in a hospital hooked up to a ventilator with tubes coming out of every orifice and you will never deny this.

“I still get sick after the flu shot. It doesn’t work for me.”

The flu has various strains every year, and the vaccine is only made with the strains they (the researchers) predict will be the most widely distributed across a certain population. It involves a lot of statistics. Does this mean that you should skip the shot? No. Statistically, your chances of getting the most virulent, widely distributed strain is HIGHER than your chances of getting a different strain the vaccine isn’t made with. That statistics course really matters, you know.

Yes, you get a different type of flu vaccine depending on where you are in the world. The northern & southern hemispheres get different vaccine formulations because they typically get different strains. This is also why a flu strain from, say, southern China or India is fucking TERRIFYING for Europe or the US, because we likely will not have any immunity to that shit. (And vice versa.)

The flu virii evolve every year. They get more virulent, more adaptable, and more insidious every time. And do you know how they evolve? Because some asshole somewhere had partial/augmented immunity and the virus evolves under these conditions. This asshole was sick with a different strain of the flu before, but doesn’t believe in the flu shot, so he doesn’t get the one issued this year. He then gets maybe mildly sick with the new flu strain, while his wife is still sick with the previous flu strain he carried. The two strains are exposed to each other and under these conditions, the virus can evolve by mutation or genetic reassortment. Cross-exposure to other viral strains (antigenic drift) is a mechanism for viral variation & results in newer, deadlier strains that both partially immune people (infected before with other strains) AND vaccinated people cannot fight off. Then it spreads to their kid, who spreads it at the daycare, and those kids give it to their parents, who spread it at work... this, folks, is how you get an epidemic.

Vaccination really only works to eliminate a disease when you unilaterally vaccinate the entire population across the board. (As best as you can, anyway.) The vaccine will never work 100% - there is always a margin of error - but if you cover the entire population, your margin becomes more acceptable. Whereas if only some people get vaccinated, then you open up chances for viral mutation.

By the way, you might FEEL sick immediately after the flu shot, but you aren’t sick. That’s your immune system sucking your entire body dry of resources, making your muscles ache & giving you fatigue as it revs up & prepares brand new antibodies for this new virus. This takes a toll on your body, but you can combat the “sick” feeling by exercising lightly, hydrating very well, eating clean, and getting some sleep.

“My child already has a disease that lowers their immune system. If I give them the shot, that’ll completely deplete their remaining reserve. They might get a different infection and die!”

Again, a poor understanding of immune biology. 100% wrong. I give flu vaccines to immunodeficient patients with HIV, transplant patients who are taking immunosuppressants, and patients who are taking meds like Humira (immunosuppressing side effect). In fact, I prioritize the vaccine for them. They, above everyone else, need to be prepared for the coming strains of flu. I am giving their immune system time to prepare. - Of course I will monitor them closely & take appropriate precautions to prevent them from contracting other infections. I’ll support their physiological needs while they convalesce. But immunosuppression is no excuse. (That being said, have a conversation with your physician. Dosing, type, and timing of the vaccine can vary depending on your individual situation & condition.)

“Evidence now suggests that ingredients in flu shots can actually cause serious neurological disorders, like Guillain-Barre syndrome or similar neuromuscular diseases thought to be of autoimmune origin.”

In 1976, the CDC published that there was a risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome happening after a patient got a flu vaccine IF they have had the swine flu vaccine before. The risk was calculated to be 1 in 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) did a scientific review on this issue in 2003 and concluded that the people who got the swine flu vaccine in 1976 were at increased risk, but otherwise, there has been no significant change or increase since then. Did you get the swine flu vaccine in 1976? No? Okay, go get the flu shot.

It is true that there have been observed cases where neuromuscular disorders like Guillain-Barre or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) seems to be triggered, or occur after the patient gets the vaccine. We don’t fully understand how or why. I have treated these patients (they are relatively rare, I see maybe 1-2 every year) and they recover well provided competent care at a good hospital. Look out for research on this, but until we definitively know a causative link, it’s foolish to skip a perfectly safe, proven, and highly recommended vaccine to avoid a very narrow “maybe.”

If you have questions, guys, I will answer. Drop me an ask or PM me. But please, please spread the word and get vaccinated.

If you get scared or doubt your decision to get the shot, remember that the only reason we are not all dead from smallpox (it was an epidemic) and cholera (a pandemic) and rabies (from all your pets) and typhoid (also a pandemic) and the fucking black plague is because of that 5ml of liquid in that tiny little syringe.

Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines cause adults.

GET. THE. SHOT.

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sweet-xoxo-thatcares · 3 years

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Yo, I might just be polysexual....

Cause I don't like the idea that my partner could take hormones and it changes their sexual orientation to wanna have sex/romantic options with men.

When this wholeeeeeee entire time, you said dick was a no no to you before hormones.

I just don't like it when people I grew attached to start changing up on you, like now I'm being compared to men, when you used to be anti-dude.

And the voice change, sucks. Especially when I fell in love with your voice too.

But I gotta let go of people if they don't wanna be here and if I'm not being appreciated the way that I should be.

I shouldn't have to worry about rejection or sexual competition just because you got a sex change. We ain't together, so it's not my problem.

I can catch plenty of other fish in the sea who wanna commit to me. Instead of tripping on you, getting treated like I'm not all that when your gf look like brick compared to me, using me as an appetizer, then fucking her like its wild passion....but with me you wanna have rules and restrictions. Fuck that. Sex was made for bonding, not hurting or limiting someone to make them come back for more. You sound cheap.

Plus if you wanna try out a dude or a trans female, do it while you single instead of leading your gf on, like you only attracted to women....bullshit.

No wonder you was tryna make me into a stud, when you knew I was just a femme/tomboy when you met me.

Fuck off tryna change people to fit yo tastes, cause even you don't know who you wanna be. As if changing your name to something else and growing a mustache will really show people you've changed.

When literally, you're still just as toxic as you were before you transitioned. You still don't think there's something wrong with your bullying behaviors towards friends, women you hook-up with, and your own personalities?

You really need help. Start off with your dad, that I hope you don't become.

I'm glad I stopped falling on the floor for you to treat me like shit. I don't agree with your sexual lifestyle and how you expect your partners to watch you fuck somebody else, and even sleep with other people with you, cause you get anxiety about doing it alone. You weird bro.

And I can't get involved into that. I'm monogamous. And you ain't. That's it. You a guy, now.

I ain't gonna tell you who to be, but I do know them hormones change more than just your clit into a dick, and growing some hair. There's a reason why some people like testosterone and some don't.

It's all good. You living your life the way you want to. I'm not gonna stop or tell you what to do. I'm living my life the way I want to and I'll grow into the successful woman I've always wanted to be.

I'm not gonna let your words or influences continue to question me, my health, my gender, my sexuality, and my personality.

Cause I don't have to change for you to your liking to be accepted. And neither do you.

So let's stop this. Let's end this. We don't have to grow up to be each other's ideals. We don't have to accept this in order for us to be together, if I don't like the lifestyle that you keep a secret at home. I won't be anyone's secret lover anymore. I want the world to know who I love.

And it won't be you anymore. Cause its not you. You're not you anymore. And the person I wanna marry and have kids....if I wanna have kids....you ain't even close to what my father taught me is a good father, a good role model, a good friend.

And I'm glad this shit is over. This shit is done. I no longer have to pretend to be ok, force myself to say I'm ok just so you won't like anymore. I don't have to be afraid to be abandoned and rejected by you anymore. And I don't have to kiss your wife and eat her pussy if I don't want to anymore. I don't have to pretend to like her, just to keep peace for you, to sleep for you. I did too much, for what I thought was the right way to sacrifice myself, to do it for love. But really I did it for you and your bdsm, overbearing sex addiction.

You were never the person I thought you were. You always wear masks to be more godlike, cause you don't believe in anything. You wanna be worshipped and praised like one, a king, a ruler to your own made up fantasy throne, with your basic bitch fiancé, who has to remind herself that she's a bad bitch in order to not feel less incompetent. Because both of y'all have egos. And both of y'all are depressed.

Have fun making little shits together. I'm tired and exhausted of this evil co-op, cult, relationship. Fuck off demons. 🖕

0 notes

tedfashionski · 4 years

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Finking, Finking.

Hi, welcome to my ted talk. (That is the only time I will ever make that joke. This is Fashionski Finks. Expect radically low standards of self-involved rantiness with zero research or accountability from here on out). For a while there I seriously thought that the covid-19 quarantine was going to result in people being increasingly placid and accepting of creeping extensions of the police state. But here I am, getting depressed again, not about the protests, which I love, but more about my relationship to in-group pressure dynamics. One of the problems with being a relentless contrarian is the discomfort of my impulse to rebel against groups even when they’re championing the right thing. I have to find my own way to fight against the system as an outsider. No gods, no masters, no fucking peer pressure. I’ll never be happy joining a chorus line. I don’t sign fucking petitions (they’re just lists for the NSA). I do donate, but like fuck will I do it performatively. I can’t go to protests cus I get panic attacky in crowds. I empathise pretty strongly with outsiders of all stripes but believe ridiculously excessively in the public good of criticism, and have a nostalgic love of trolling (I like to think I’m gentle with it though). Bring back the troll! We need that fucker, he’s a sign of a healthy internet. I’m writing this blog thing as an extension of my need to vent my extreme negativity. TBH I never expected to get any followers with ted twitter and the bizarre welcomingness of the hf twitter community totally wrongfooted me. I’m not nice. Ted isn’t meant to likable. He’s my dark side. I was meant to be using this alt as a way to terrorise the nice nice (secretly cruel) fashion people. I’m gunna try and up that aspect more. Just bear in mind, my complaints are largely about the system, but if I see you perpetuating fashion’s entrenched anti-intellectualism or its insidery bullshit, I’ll come for you with a little meta-bomb with your name on it. Maintaining my misanthropic tone does take work tho, like, deep down in some twisted part of my psyche, I guess I do actually want to be liked. It’s fucked up.

I suppose it’s only fair to explain this Ted fursona. Like, new concept, who dis? Why all the furry porn? …..because I just think it’s hilarious. Every time I think about the furries I cackle (not at them, mind). I just love the mad corruption of pure Disney aesthetics into hardcore pornography. That’s anti-authoritarian as fuck. I love the sincerity of their culture. The way the crazy fetish aspect means they’ll never be fully blandified by mainstream acceptance. The way it’s so cringe but so delightful. And more seriously, I’m interested in how a culture of mostly gay male nerds developed to the point where they’ll invest 10k in custom fursuits and support eachother’s independent businesses in ways that the fashion community completely fails to do. The fashion world sucks. There’s so many correlations there that I want to investigate: the newness (furries date from around the 70s, fashion culture in its self-aware state dates from the late 19th C – both very young fields); the centralisation/decentralisation; the hierarchy (furries can be pretty catty, I have discovered in my research, and we all know what fashion people are like); the adoption of new identities; the cis-boy gayness aspect (I’m increasingly tired of the extreme nasty hierarchy of certain CSM queens. It’s all very UGH. Just, fuck those particular bitches.) There’s more to the furry love, but I’ll explore it in future posts.

More importantly, why Ted fucking Kaczynski? I’m not like, actually a terrorist. (….yet. tehehe. NO, seriously I like non-maiming violence. Fuck yeah to property damage. Fuck yeah to disabling the system in extreme way. But no to wooden IEDs. Think of my shitty jokes that fail to land as my hand-crafted bombs). I think I like the shitness of Ted. He was just an epic fail of a terrorist. I’m a little white girl living in London. I’m not actually a primitivist, as much as I crave a hut in the woods. I did go to an elite school though. I had some really shitty experiences in the fashion industry in my early 20s, and I watch my friends who are relatively successful in that system and I get so angry on their behalf at their poor treatment. They think I’m too angry. Fuck that. They should be more angry, and the fact that they can’t be angry at their extreme precarity and the fact they’re still insecure and terrified of being ejected by the system after all their investment and skills they’ve built up is BULLSHIT. I’ll be double angry for them, I’m not invested in that system. I don’t need it to pay my rent. I’m free, motherfuckers, and I’m coming for the abusers and exploiters. If you’re a complacent industry figure not fighting hard from within, uggghhhhh fuck you. Yes, YOU. Soooo, I relate pretty hard to the MK ultra stuff. (go look him up, he was basically tortured and experimented upon by the elite). But there’s a pretty big chasm between my views and his, and I’ll try to be clear about the extent of my interest in his extreme beliefs. I haven’t even finished reading the manifesto. Basically, I watched that shitty show on Netflix with sam worthington around the same time I watched Joker (that movie fucked me up) and thought it’d be a good outlet to larp online as a terrorist. There’s the angry white alt-right school shooter aspect, which I’m still figuring out, cus I’m non-binary and I was raised by nutso trumpy right-wingers, who I barely speak to anymore, and I struggle to get along with people generally. There’s sad, self-pitying rage here. I empathise with the angry white dudes too much. I feel guilty about it. That’s good ground for artmaking (yes, shamefully, this…is…art. Sorry). I modelled this fursona a little after my brother, who I spent years living with and arguing with and trying to lift out of his scary racist youtube rabbit holes. This is actually quite an emotional thing for me, cus I did the ‘talk to your fascist family’ thing. And I completely failed. I realised his right-winginess wasn’t lessening, I wasn’t gaining ground, and in fact my excessive empathy and desire to reach out to the relative most similar to me in character meant his extremism was rubbing off on me. Making me more resentful and depressed. Feeling powerless. I was being too kind-hearted and forgiving of his masculine impotence. So I’m exploring some personal shit here. But Ted is also a cute lil fuzzball teddy bear. He means well, but me being super autistic and faily at social skills means he’s kind of a dick, cus I am. I’m going to try and further develop this character, this POV, and this post is the only time I’ll explain the divide between him and his creator (moi). The ‘I’ on the twitter and here is Ted Fashionski, I need that space between me and him. Masks give us this freedom to be more ourselves. Internet culture has lost a lot of its wild brutal anonymity in the last decade or so, now everyone’s afraid of making mistakes. How the hell do you grow if you’re not allowed to fuck up? This is a vital outlet. He’s become an important part of my life and I have to say, I love being Ted Fashionski. He’s like Paddington Bear who just escaped form Guantanamo or something.

I get pretty fatigued as a matter of course. I’m a long-term depressive since childhood. I have a difficult time keeping my hard-on for living. I don’t get suicidal really but I do struggle with extreme fatigue. I sleep a lot. I often fall into spirals of self-hate. And as someone who utterly believes in revolutionary leftist politics, I beat myself up about not doing enough. I’m so middle class and english and white. I was raised in such a chauvinistic and complacent culture; I don’t even know where to start. I’m wading my way through post-colonial literature and beating myself up for finding it boring and uncomfortable. It’s hard to force yourself to acknowledge your culture is The Bad Guys. It’s easier to fall into fanstasies of supremacy and butthurt misunderstoodness. And it’s not like my depressive brain needs any encouragement to hate me. My trajectory is ever leftwards, but I remember the righteous fury of being right-wing. I get it, that was me. We need more paths back from fascism, more comprehension of why people are that kind of shitty. I talk less, and less well, the more depressed I am. If I’m talking, it means im feeling a lot better. Just, fyi.

Give me a minute to be critical here. With the George Floyd protests, a lot of the cool guys on fashion twitter has gone blazingly hardcore on the political side. But there’s this troubling rhetoric about ‘no return to normal content’ or ‘this isn’t the time for fashion’. Like fuck it isn’t. This is a key problem with fashion culture right here, we have this received perception of fashion as empty escapism. Escapism matters in fashion, yes. But seriously, talking about the surfaces of things does not equal not caring about deeper meaning. What the fuck. Clothes are a connective tissue, a membrane between us. They’re emotional and powerful. We can talk about things that matter THROUGH clothes. I speak fashion, pretty fucking well. Most people who work at fashion magazines are morons with no understanding or respect for their subject. They’re incapable of doing it justice, and that’s deliberate. On this tumblr you’ll see rants and reviews of fashion and other artforms, always interpreting through a fashion lens. cus it matters, cus it’s a vital part of the culture, cus just because something has a glittery, seductive surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t communicate or contain depth. There’s no going back to ‘normal fashion content’, yes. Normal fashion content is a fucking psyop to divert legitimate interest in aesthetics amongst largely non-academic dyslexic visual types away from careful thought/feeling and towards empty consumerist commericiality. The traditional fashion media wants you to express yourself and your interest in the zeitgeist through buying more shit. Another fashion world is possible. Let’s destroy the old and build a new one, one where surface and spirit are connected and true and fashion can’t be abused in service of evil industrial monopolists.

/end rant. TLDR: angry fictional teddy bear with tin-foil hat and an eco-anarchist fetish says no to stupid fashion and yes to the renewal of conceptual fashion. Also, Fuck White People.

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wellmeaningshutin · 7 years

Text

Short Story #57: Theatre.

Written: 3/5/2017

Look, before I start telling you about what happened, I’m going to be very honest. I do not understand theater at all. I just don’t get the appeal of it, but it always seems like there’s something I’m missing out on, because everybody keeps making a fuss about it, so I’ve tried very hard to understand the appeal. Maybe its just hard for me to suspend my disbelief, so every time I see a play, reenactment, or whatever, I just see a bunch of actors in costumes saying words that they’ve memorized, and the whole thing is just so alien to me. Maybe I don’t understand why people would spend so much time trying to memorize movements, words, etc, like you have so much time in your life to do what you want to do, but these people spend most of their time trying to perfect like an hours worth of events, repeating them over and over. Its like they’re stuck in some strange time loop, where they’re cursed to keep repeating the same events in their lives, screaming inside at the horror of their cyclic existence. What kind of person would you have to be to do that, what had to go wrong in your life? I could be wrong about that being the reason, because, now that I think of it, I don’t care very much for improv either, so maybe I just hate people, but if I hated people then why would I care about their interest in theater?

Maybe I don’t understand people, especially since I can’t even form a clear reason for not liking theater. Maybe I just haven’t seen a play that has been good enough to spark my attention, especially since Shakespeare reminds me of being bored in high school, and most of the shows that I’ve been to have been reproductions of his work. Also, how come there always has to be a scheming, drunk character in his shows? What’s up with that? And how come people just walk around, saying their thoughts out loud, explaining stuff to the audience that they should be thinking to themselves. Yeesh, I can go on about this for a while, so let me just talk about what I meant to talk about. Sorry for wasting your time, officer.

So, because of this desire to understand this questionable form of performance, I started seeking out more and more forms that diverge from the normal expectations. Wow, that sounded pretentious. What I was trying to say, is I wanted more obscure and experimental stuff, I wanted to see what it was like with the more underground theater. Its the same way I got into books, because what I learned in college is even though people will talk their heads off of the importance of them, the classics can be boring as hell. Have you ever read the Inferno? Its just a guy walking around in the dullest version of hell, talking about all sorts of figures at the time. Like, its basically just fan fiction. However, I did find this not very well known book about a dog who knows the true meaning of life, but like it can’t tell anyone, not even other dogs, since evolution has only left it with the resources to communicate vague emotions. That book made me realize that I love reading, but I just hate the classics, the shit that everyone is supposed to agree is good. However I’m rambling again, and I need to get back to the point.

I think it may be a side effect of these anti depressants that I’m on, mainly since after my father killed himself life has seemed, right, thank you. Actually if you could keep doing that it would be great, reminding me whenever I’m getting off track, and going on and on about stuff that won’t make it on to the report. Because I know your time is very valuable, and this should be as quick as poss- oh, right, thank you again.

So, I end up going to that show, it took place in some large house, and it was one of those shows where the actors go about their business and you follow them from room to room, watching the drama as it unfolds. It was supposed to be the opening night, and some girl, with plenty of facial piercings, had told me that it was going to be really great, like a modern masterpiece, and I figured why not? Thinking about it, I’m not sure if she had reliable opinions on theater, and I could’ve just been attracted to-oh, okay, sorry.

The show was about some family drama stuff, like the typical things that people feel are so raw to talk about, so off limits, but really its the same things that everyone mentions when they want to feel like they’re covering taboo issues. So basically, some couple is fighting because the girl had an abortion, there’s a character that’s addicted to heroin, one of their dad’s turns out to be gay and its a big shock, that kind of stuff. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was actually supposed to be the point of it all, it was supposed to be like one of those typical dramas, but then again I’ve only seen one or two of those dramas, so who am I to say what they’re all like? A lot of them can be pretty good, probably, and how would I never know it if I haven’t seen it?

Don’t worry, I’m starting to catch myself. I can tell when I’m drifting away. Actually, could you write “THE PLAY” on a piece of paper and put it in front of me? If I could stare at that, it may be enough to keep me on track, enough to keep me focused on the issue at hand.

Thank you, this is perfect.

So, the play keeps going on and it gets pretty boring, like I can tell the other spectators know where this is all going, and the acting is melodramatic, so its hard to even connect with any of the characters. I know I have trouble doing that in general, but I was whispering with another spectator and that’s what they told me, and they seemed like they were able to appreciate the art. At one point, the heroin addict is giving this long monologue, and then the gay dad has to reply and its really confusing, like it didn’t make any sense as a response to the speech that was just given. Then, everyone realizes that, hey, the guy just skipped a couple lines, and it looks really, really bad. Unprofessional would be the best word to describe it. And you can see that the actors are pissed off at the actor playing the dad, and they’re trying to stay in character but oh man does it seem tough for them. Gay dad is trying to improvise an explanation, but its really just pretty pathetic, his embarrassment really didn’t help him, and that’s when the heroin guy broke character and tried to attack him.

The addict chased the dad around the house, threatening to kill him for ruining the show, but for some reason I’m completely out of it, and still kind of confused about what’s going on. That’s how I realized it might be part of the show, and I was whispering with some guy, he had a mustache I think, and we were trying to figure out if we should leave, intervene, keep watching, or what. It was really pretty confusing, especially when the other actors looked scared, but then they tried to keep going with the show to calm everyone down, and so the daughter is giving a monologue to her husband, who is addicted to online pornography, about something, I couldn’t even hear it, all I could hear was one of the actors screaming, “I’ll kill you you son of a bitch! This was supposed to be my big break you rat bastard!”

As somebody who doesn’t understand theater, I can tell you that the show was really not helping with that. What was the point of all of this, these actors pretending that their show was falling apart, like if I wanted to see a bad show, wouldn’t I go see a bad show? There was a rock opera about Anne Frank opening on the same night, and I was figuring that I might as well have gone to that. Yet, maybe its just me. My ex wife could have been right, maybe its just hard for me to see meaning in anything, but then again that was only because she was trying to get me to join that new age cult of hers. She wants to follow some guru to some walled off compound where she can survive off of roots, do intensive farm work, all to harness positive energy, but I’m the bad guy, right? I’m the one who is broken because I don’t want to join some wacko cult. And then she has the gall to bring my dead father into it, and tries to get custody of-

Oh yeah, sorry about that. It was my fault. No, no, the paper really is working, but I looked up at the clock to check the time, and then I forgot about the play, but I’ll get back to that now. Again, I’m sorry about that.

So, the actors are still trying to continue the story, and the one guy is chasing the other around, and then finally the frantic pair starting yelling in weird ways, so most of us decided to go check out what was happening, because we couldn’t even hear the other people. Seeing that actor get stabbed to death, and all that blood that spilled out everywhere, that was when everybody started to wonder if it was a part of the play or not. I think some guy fainted, he was build like a pickup truck, but he must have been afraid of blood or something, because down he went. It was like somebody chopped a tree down. Even the other actors came in and freaked out, and the murderer is standing there, knife in hand, covered in blood, trying to tell everyone that its okay, and not to worry.

Somebody, I think, called the police around this point in the show, I think that’s the reason the call went out in the first place. I’m only guessing it was here, because some crying woman had went out the front door, and it would make sense if she was the one who dialed 911. She missed the best part, though, because the only time I had a laugh when I’ve been to a show, was when that wild eyed, blood soaked, knife wielding man, with the body at his feet, started to try to get back in character and tried to continue their show. The other actors weren’t having it, and they just had their hands over their mouths, too shocked to even respond to the situation. And the guy starts yelling at them to say their lines, but the don’t even move, so he starts trying to do their parts for them, even the parts of the guy he murdered, and it was great.

A lot of people judged me for laughing, they thought it was real and were just starting to react. Hell, one guy questioned if he should try to restrain the one man show, but somebody else pointed out that he was armed, and who knew if there were any diseases in the blood he was covered in, so most people went into the living room to figure things out, even the other actors did. I know that the actors mentioned something about calling the cops, but that was also part of the show, but I’ll get into that later. Meanwhile, me and this older woman, like in her 60’s, an aged hippy type, are the only ones watching the guy’s performance, and we’re just cracking up at it. He starts to forget the other people’s lines, and the woman explained to me that it was probably because it wouldn’t make sense for the actor to remember every line, since they mainly just knew their own, and the ones that they were supposed to respond or react to.

So, while he’s messing up these lines, he starts to pretend to get mad at himself, and he does this comical routine where he starts slapping himself on the forehead, insulting himself with these asinine names, and you can see the actor who is playing dead trying not to laugh. Like, his body is shaking and everything because the other guy is just being so ridiculous, but the whole time all of the other spectators are taking the whole thing very, very seriously. In order to not get the dead body to explode into laughter, which I’m not sure if this was a part of the show or not, the madman starts shifting gears and recites some scenes from some Shakespeare play, putting on a deep voice, using all of these exaggerated movements, and it just killed me.

And then the police came in, but I think it was the fake police at this point. They started talking about how they received a call about a murder, that whole routine, and all of the audience members are freaking out, saying stuff like “Yeah he’s in there, go get him” “Please do something about it” and all of that panicked behavior. I probably don’t have to explain it to you, huh? You look like you’ve seen your fair share of trouble, you look pretty tough and seasoned. I know you probably get this all of the time, but I really have to ask, have you ever shot anybody? No? Really? Huh. It seems like cops have to kill people every day, every day it sounds like there’s some big violent crime out there that you guys have to deal with, or there’s some incident where you guys shoot somebody that was minding their own business, but-

What? What do you mean that you mostly just talk to people? Taking statements, filling out paperwork? No, that can’t be right, what about the high speed chases, the junkies who threaten your lives every day and- no shit? Are you messing with me? So, really, you really spend more time giving people tickets and directions than you’ve ever spent in a dangerous situation. Well what was the most dangerous- oh okay, I’ll get back to the story then..

So, the fake cops come into the kitchen to see the whole commotion, and the blood soaked guy is down on one knee, saying “Out, out brief candle. My whole country for a candle, doth it be so-” or something along those lines, I can’t remember it word for word. They take a look at the scene, like a long, real hard look, and they turn to the crowd behind them and demand to know who made the call. The guy is still doing the bit during all of this. A woman in the back raised her hand, which confused everyone, but I think that was because she was the one who actually dialed 911. And one of the actors raises their hand, and one of the fake cops starts lecturing them about how much of a nuisance it is to make fake calls to 911, and how you could go to prison for it, and the actor is looking really worried.

Then, one of the cops pulls out their fake gun, and puts it right against the temple of the actor who was supposed to call. He says, “Does this seem like a joke to you? This is how it feels when you make prank calls, not to funny is it? What if I killed you, would you think that was funny? Huh?” The audience started to freak out at that point, and everyone started yelling, cell phones were pulled out to record it, and I was lost once again. I couldn’t hear what the murderer was saying, due to all of the commotion, and this whole new layer seemed to have lost me. And then things got more confusing when more fake police showed up, but this time it turned out to just be you guys. That’s kind of the gist of everything that lead up to your arrival.

Is that all?

Oh yeah, the reason why I’m in the hospital in the first place. Well, if you knew the general theme of everything leading up to you guys getting called, why did you let me ramble on about the play? I can start to believe that your jobs really aren’t that interesting, if you let me talk about all of that thespian nonsense juts so you can put more time between now and when you have to write up all of that paperwork. I had a cousin who used to work for the IRS, and his job doesn’t seem too far off from what you guys do, like the main difference is you guys get to go outside and carry guns. I never understood why they never gave IRS agents guns, though, because they always get all sorts of threats, and you think they would need some way to protect themselves when they were out in the world, but then again the suicide rate would probably sky rocket due to the tedium of the job. That’s why I think my father did it, like he was so sick of his job, but they made it so that he would have to work five more years if he wanted a decent retirement fund, and he just couldn’t last that long. How’d he do it? Oh, well he was a simple man, and he just leaped right in front of a train, it was the most exciting way he could think of dying, he wrote that in the note, but it was too good of a jump and both of his legs were torn clean off, so he sat there at the side of the, the..

No, no I don’t need a tissue, I’m fine. Lets just talk about something else. Like, I get that we’re nearing the end of what you need for the report, and you really don’t want to write it, but I think its time for me to finish. My antidepressants are wearing off, and so is the pain medication, and I’d really just like to rest as soon as I can. No, the doctors aren’t aware that I’m taking-but no more stuff to get me all sidetracked. What happened to the officer who kept trying to get me all focused on the story, now why are you suddenly causing me to be distracted?

Okay, so when you guys came in and were confused by the scene playing out, with the fake cops and all, it really just got too confusing for me, so I decided to step outside and smoke a cigarette, just to wait it out until there was a point in the show that would make more sense, but after I was finished smoking I probably would’ve just left. However, and this is the reason I’m lying here, some crack head comes up to me and starts demanding that I give him some money, or he’s going to have to do something that he really doesn’t want to do. I start fishing around in my pockets to comply, but he says I’m taking too long and just starts jabbing at me with something that was really sharp, I think it was like a screwdriver or something, and it was hard for me to react to it because my hands were in my back pockets.

So, the fucker doesn’t even try to get my money, because somebody starts to come out of the house, and he just scurries off into the night, leaving me to bleed out for no reason. He was about five foot four, had a round, swollen nose, Caucasian, shaved head, scar on the right side of his lip, that’s all I can remember. Now, what you should put in that report is that the convoluted play created a dangerous environment for me, because not only was it in a bad neighborhood, but because of the whole way it was set up, the people who came out and saw me just thought it was still a part of the whole show. So I’m lying there, full of holes, bleeding out all over the plays, begging for them to call an ambulance, begging for them to get the police that are inside, to get the man who stabbed me, and the whole time they just watch and talk about how crazy the show is, and how many levels there are, while I’m grabbing at their feet, crying because they won’t listen to me, and I really thought I was going to die. It really seemed like the end.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writers on Tumblr #Theatre #Acting

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unnamedjournals · 5 years

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Let’s Try This Again.

For the very few people who actually used to follow this page and the one or two that have followed since I dropped off the map, I’m not dead yet. Keeping a journal only when I wasn’t doing well wasn’t the plan, for the record. I could explain but to be honest I don’t remember all that clearly why I stopped except that I know it was probably a lot of reasons. I didn’t feel like it was helping, I couldn’t make time or energy, forgot over and over and over and fuck it, whatever.

It’s been almost two years? Over two? I don’t know, I didn’t do the math before I started writing and now I can’t scroll to check the date and time on the last entry. Doesn’t matter.

Good hell a lot’s happened and changed since then.

Let’s see... uh.

A lot of this happened concurrently and intermingled but I’ll do my best to make heads and tails of it.

Broke up with the guy I was dating in previous entries. Found out a whole lot about him recently. I was upset when he ended it but now I see I dodged a bullet.

Briefly (like a week) dated another guy, things happened, we tried to be friends for about a year and change after it but more things happened and long story short he’s not allowed to be around me at game anymore. A story for a different time. It’s a doozy.

I quit the delivery job. I didn’t feel safe driving under that much stress with the zoning out thing. Still do that by the way, it’s actually gotten worse. As it happens there was a panic attack about that just two hours ago, fancy that. I’ll come back to that though.

Started LARPing a hell of a lot more, kinda took over my weekends for a while there and I had to cut back some. I’ve played some really awesome roles though.

Turns out I’m bi? Happy Pride Month everyone. Yeah figured that out mid 2017, dated a fantastic woman for three months. Didn’t work out by no ones fault, but the only thing I regret is how poorly I handled the end of it. She was the first time I’d fallen in love, and it ended way too quickly for me, and I made a right mess of it. I’ve been meaning to apologize for the last year, but again, that’s a story for a different time.

Oh right, on the zoning out bullshit. I went to a neurologist. Two actually because the first was a sexist sociopath. So the first sent me to get a 15 minute EEG (brain wave scan) that came back saying I had Partial Complex Seizures. He then made some very sexist comments and I left. The second neurologist said he agreed with seizures but based on all my symptoms it sounded more like Absence Seizures. Buuuuuut he wanted to do another EEG to be sure, this time for 24 hours. I had to wear a shit ton of wires taped onto my head all attached to a box that I brought home and carried with me everything. Kinda cool, kinda sucky. But I did it, and even had two episodes during it that I marked down the time and what I was doing. Test came back totally clean. No sign of seizures at all. Doc said he was at a loss because I made a perfect story for Absence Seizures but completely lack the neurology so there wasn’t really anything he could do. I did just last month get diagnosed with ADHD though so that’s probably a good portion of where it started.

I finally let go of a person in my life who was doing more harm than good. She got married yesterday. I wasn’t there. Eventually I will stop being bitter about the things that went wrong, and eventually I will stop thinking about how she is or how things might have been different if I could have stood up for myself better. Not today apparently, but eventually maybe.

I began paying attention to politics. Gonna stop there on that one, but long story short there is a part of me that now hates my father for the words that come out of his mouth.

I dropped the community college classes I was taking because I was too depressed to manage. And then started again the next semester because I thought I found a career option. Switched that career path twice before deciding to just get my associates and work from there. I only went for two semesters, but at least I didn’t drop half way through this time. I stopped going for a year, absolutely positive that I would never go back. I was just going to start working full time and build a career on experience. Didn’t really work. I’m now signed up for fall classes in apparel construction to eventually lead into a career in costume design with specialties in historical fashion and LGBTQ+ fashion needs. But there’s some emotional shit in the way, because of course there is. More on that soon, probably its own entry.

Started a new relationship after I had time to heal from the previous. We were both nervous about dating again after the hurt from our lasts and we thought we would take it slow. Slow didn’t really happen. It’s been a year and seven months yesterday, and in that time we’ve said I love you more times than I can count, we’ve fought for each other, we’ve fought with each other, we’ve cried together, we’ve laughed for hours, they moved in with me and my parents, we’ve made big plans, we’ve made small plans, we’ve lost and changed plans, they moved out of my parents house, we’ve put our relationship on the line, and we’ve nearly broken. The last few months especially have been messy. Even a summary would need it’s own entry.

A little over a year ago I started having persistent and ever worsening pain all over my body. Every part of it. Even there, wherever you just thought of. My primary care doc sent me to a rheumatologist, and last June I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. And again by second opinion in November. For the unfamiliar, fibro is hard to pin down as a diagnosis because for so long it wasn’t really a “real” condition. It was doctors going, “Well it’s not arthritis and it’s not lupus, so I don’t know what to do but I have to tell the patient something.” And a lot of times, it still is that. But it is actually a condition with characteristics. Think of it as the whole nervous system is in fucking overdrive. Some days are better or worse than others, and where on your body can shift around, but I don’t know that I’ve had a single day in the last year and change that I wasn’t in pain somewhere to some degree. I’ve been to more doctor appointments in the last year than I think I’ve had in my life leading up to this. It’s terrible and comes with a million other symptoms. Like migraines. I get migraines now. Mostly from auditory overload, but bright light can add to it. And guess what else comes with it. It’s commonly called Fibro Fog, which is problems with concentration and memory loss. Remember how I said the zoning out thing was getting worse? Yeah. Fucking great. So I’ve got ADHD, depression, anxiety, and now fucking chronic pain all doing the strong arm clasped hand meme of making me forget shit left and right. And my shoulder and fingers have been hurting from typing but I can’t stop or I won’t have the nerve to finish and post this.

I turned 21 the other week. Great. Finally. Moving on.

The Crash finally hit.

I spent the first year constantly worried it would, but somewhere along the way things actually started looking good. Like not 100% of the time, but like even when outside things were bad I didn’t want to die because of it. I was handling the curve balls and enjoying life and taking a step forward every day. I didn’t always know where that step was going but I was taking one and I was damn proud of myself. And then last week. Yike. Trigger warning imminent, skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to read about thoughts of suicide. Last week was the first time in so long, so, so long, that I imagined my own death in detail. That I came up with a plan. That I imagined carrying it out. How far down this spiral I would have to go before I killed myself. How I would feel if I got there and made that decision. And I’ve thought on it multiple times since then. I won’t describe it now, but I will say that it’s a new plan than I had before. I’ve always picked my plans on the likelihood of them working and what damage would be left with my body if I failed, but also clean up for whoever would find me. The current idea is a trade off. Worse in the way of clean up but better success chance I think and the same in the way of damage in the case of failure. (I wonder if it’s weird that I’m so clinical about this.) I haven’t said these words out loud yet to anyone.

My mom and partner know I’m more depressed than I’ve been in a long time, so much so that I’ve considered looking at anti-depressants, but not the full extent. I want to talk to my therapist first but getting a hold of her for the phone check in last week didn’t work. Turned into phone tag. My next in person appointment is Thursday but I’m going to leave a message for her tomorrow asking if we can scoot it up because I don’t know that I can make it that long.

Uhh. Yeah. I think that covers the recap. Fucking hell, it’s been a wild ride.

1:44AM Sunday, June 16, 2019

#anonymous journal #unnamedjournals #depression #tw: depression #tw: suicide #chronic pain #fibromyalgia #tw: suicidal thoughts

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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5 Ways The War On Drugs Has Always Been Racist As Hell

Sometimes drugs can ruin lives, and sometimes they’re simply a fun Friday night. It’s a complicated subject, and we’re not going to take a side. We will, however, point out that a lot of so-called anti-drug efforts which authorities have put together over the years have mostly been excuses to harass minorities. We’re talking about how …

White Employers Got Black Employees To Use Cocaine, Then Panicked About It

Cocaine used to be just another food additive which could be found in everything from children’s pain medication to pop. You’d think its 1914 ban would’ve come down to “Holy shit, we’re putting cocaine in everything, what the hell were we thinking? It must have been all the … oh.” But while people were aware of the dangers of cocaine abuse among middle- and upper-class white Americans, that’s not why it was banned. Instead, lawmakers were driven by the early 20th century equivalent of a racist chain email from your grandpa. There were stories of black Americans supposedly abusing cocaine, gaining superhuman strength, and using that strength to attack white men and sexually assault white women.

Wiki Commons Using up precious cocaine earmarked for white children.

If you’re wondering what happened to the “black people gain drug-based superpowers and use them to commit crime” chapter of your history book, then obvious spoiler alert: It wasn’t really happening. What was happening was that cocaine use among black laborers was widespread. Its recreational use was tolerated, and sometimes white employers were explicitly giving it to their workers, in both cases because they believed it would make the employees work harder. We, uh … we used to be pretty dumb when it came to drugs.

Somehow, the “let’s give our workers coke” strategy backfired, as ridiculous stories began to spread. In 1914, The New York Times ran an article claiming that “most of the attacks upon white women of the South are the direct result of the ‘cocaine-crazed’ Negro brain” and “Negro cocaine fiends are now a known Southern menace.” While “Negro Cocaine Fiends” would be a great ironic album title, there was, shockingly, no evidence of crazed black people running wild.

While widespread use of cocaine probably wasn’t great for anyone’s disposition, “news” reports claimed that cocaine made black men hallucinate taunts and abuse, as well as gain incredible accuracy with guns and immunity to bullet wounds which would stop or kill a sober man. Holy shit! Why wasn’t cocaine being used in secret supersoldier projects? Oh, right, because it was all bullshit. But the 1914 ban was passed anyway thanks to those myths, and not out of fact-based concerns about the health risks of cocaine. (Because white people could handle their coke, goddammit!)

If you want a silver lining, the ban largely put a stop to lynchings of black men based on the “We think he’s high on coke, so he probably raped someone or whatever” clause. It also, uh, fueled nasty, often lethal stereotypes about impoverished minorities and drugs for decades to come, but that’s something, right?

Banning Alcohol From Native American Reservations Has Its Roots In A Myth That They’re Genetically Unable To Handle Booze

Yeah, there’s a running trend of white people thinking other people react differently to intoxicating substances. You may have heard the still-prevalent idea that the genes of Native Americans make them biologically prone to alcohol abuse. Supposedly, when Europeans introduced Natives to alcohol, their bodies didn’t know how to handle it and a tremendous cultural struggle with alcoholism ensued. No sir, it wasn’t the depression and trauma of watching their friends and family die while their culture and lifestyle were extinguished which contributed to alcohol abuse — it was biology! Not whitey’s fault, so deal with it.

William Faden “After all, they did trade Manhattan for four six-packs.”

It is true that Native Americans experience problems with alcohol … at a rate equal to white people. But thanks to stereotypes, we tend to view alcoholism among Natives as a moral failing endemic to their culture, while an alcoholic white guy is some dude with a problem who doesn’t reflect on other white people. Natives do experience more alcohol-related health problems than whites, but that’s because as a group, they have inferior access to healthcare, healthy food, etc. — a problem which is a subject for a future wacky comedy article.

For governing whites, prohibition laws on Native reservations were seen as a quick and easy way to address alcoholism. Natives can’t handle their booze, so cut them off and punish those who try to keep drinking. But Natives tended to see prohibition as white people trying to force a solution on them … to address a problem which they also forced on them. It’s like if someone smashed your car window and then took away your driver’s license because they said you were a bad driver for letting your window get smashed.

But even if the root causes are horrible stereotypes, prohibition is still meant to help, right? It’s certainly an improvement from the days when laws against selling booze to Natives were lifted so settlers could turn a tidy profit from alcohol abuse. But “meant” is the keyword there. If you treat Native American alcohol abuse as a unique and more desperate problem than it is among other people, you create brand-new problems. Stereotypes about Natives and alcoholism can make them too embarrassed to seek medical treatment, and it can also lead to Natives who have never touched a drink in their lives getting rejected from jobs. Hey, do you think those kind of bullshit economic punishments might contribute to alcohol abuse?

Also, a total ban on alcohol leads to people getting arrested for possession of a single beer, even though the stigma of having a criminal record is going to do someone more harm than one can of Bud Light. In one especially depressing incident, one cousin stabbed another to death over a bottle of beer, which A) might not have happened if beer wasn’t illegal, and B) is a clear sign that prohibition isn’t working. Could the truly atrocious living conditions on many reservations be contributing to incidents like that? Nah, they probably just can’t handle their firewater, right?

America’s War Against Opium Was Fueled By The Fear Of Race-Mixing

Another trend in antique drug laws is a baseless belief that minorities were stealing away white women and enabling the heinous crime of race-mixing (and implicitly, the equally heinous crime of white women not having sex with racist white dudes, even though they were totally nice guys who had their best interests at heart). Exhibit #317-B is San Francisco circa 1875, when Chinese immigrants, mostly railroad and mine workers, liked to unwind after a long day on the job by smoking opium. Hey, we’ve all been there.

The Bancroft Library “Mondays, right?”

White locals accused the Chinese of taking jobs from them during a rough economic downturn (technically true, but they were performing dangerous labor for shit pay, which is the kind of job that white locals tend to turn down or not even be offered). That complaint somehow morphed into accusations that opium dens were “girl traps.” The Chinese supposedly lured white women and teens into their dens with opium-laced candy and other treats until they were addicted and willing to have sex for more, which maybe says more about the people dreaming up such accusations than anything else.

So San Francisco outlawed opium smoking in 1875. But this was a nationwide belief. In New York City in 1883, a local worrywart set up surveillance teams to keep an eye on suspected opium dens which were supposedly corrupting white women. Tellingly, this surveillance was done by people from other neighborhoods, as most local whites didn’t have an issue with their Chinese neighbors. But they called the police whenever they suspected a stranger’s vagina was in peril, and a series of raids uncovered … a 19-year-old woman. Singular. Who didn’t appear to be an addicted sex slave. Claims that girls as young as ten were escaping before the police showed up were unproven, probably because they were super-duper made up.

But troublesome “facts” didn’t stop people from declaring that “hundreds of American girls” were becoming “associates and then slaves of the Mongolian” (old-timey racists weren’t big on demographic accuracy). So by 1909, Congress had made opium smoking, and only smoking, illegal nationwide. Drinking and injecting tinctures — how white Americans liked their medicinal and recreational opium — was still totally cool for a while, presumably as long as you pinky swore not to seduce dozens of sex slaves with the contents of your medicine cabinet.

Alcohol Prohibition Was An Anti-Immigrant And Anti-Black Panic

Prohibition and the events leading up to it had all sorts of complex causes. But one of those causes was a bunch of tedious people getting together to complain about immigrants — specifically the still-viewed-as-extremely-anti-American Germans and Irish and their love of beer. Because when history is at its worst, the masses are swayed to the side of the people complaining about beer instead of enjoying it.

In 1855 Chicago, the mayor and his followers were concerned about the influence of foreigners who took jobs and pledged spiritual allegiance to one of the most dastardly villains in history: the Pope. Gasp! They were especially distrusting of Irish and German immigrants, who liked to hit the pub on Sunday, their one day off. The Chicago Tribune called Irish Catholics “depraved, worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the community.” We’re assuming that “sot” was a harsh burn back then.

So Chicago dusted off an old law which required taverns to be closed on Sunday … but only enforced it in immigrant communities. Chicago also sextupled the price of an annual liquor license to $300 (about 7,800 modern dollars) to try to drive immigrant bars out of business. 200 tavern owners were brought up on charges, and when the first one went to trial, there were massive protests, because you don’t fuck with a 19th century working man’s booze. One protester was killed, the mayor’s political career tanked, and the laws were eventually repealed, but it wasn’t the end of anti-letting-immigrants-drink sentiment.

The Prohibition movement was in full swing during World War I, and as you hopefully remember from history class, Germany was on team Not America. So Prohibitionist propaganda linked beer and brewing with Germany, and therefore treason. Prohibitionists also connected drinking with the Irish and other immigrants, with one congressman calling foreign drinkers the “degenerate vote” which “overwhelmed the liberties of free people” and were a “menace to our institutions.” Irish Americans were accused of being unpatriotic if they opposed Prohibition or the war, which silenced dissent.

Meanwhile, in the South, “colored only” saloons were declared “centers of vice, schools of iniquity, and hot-beds of crime.” Prohibitionists dressed the movement up as concern for those poor black people who were spending all their money and “[feeding] their animalism,” but they also accused black saloons of threatening the safety of white women and children. Because who knew what those dastardly blacks were planning when whites couldn’t keep an eye on them?

Again, Prohibition was complicated, but to some proponents, taking away one of the joys of minorities while making them less scary to the sort of people who wring their hands a lot was a big plus. One Southern Prohibitionist even argued that getting rid of saloons could prevent a race war and keep black Americans from rampaging through the streets, because ready access to alcohol was obviously the only reason black Southerners might get mad at white Southerners.

Numerous Government Officials Have Confirmed That Laws Against Drugs Are Based On Race

So far we’ve only given you historical examples, but you know what they say about history repeating itself to screw over minorities. Here, for example, is a 2015 interview with a former DEA agent who says they were told not to target drug sellers and users in rich areas, even though drugs are as prevalent there as anywhere else. The reasoning was that rich (read: mostly white) people have connections to lawyers, politicians, and judges who could make life a living hell for the DEA, while people in poorer areas (read: generally nonwhite people) wouldn’t be able to fight back.

You can find comments like that throughout American history. In the ’30s, Harry Anslinger, one of the big shots behind cannabis laws, said, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” and, “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” It’s admittedly kind of refreshing to hear someone be openly racist instead of trying to dress it up as being “for their own good,” although it sounds like Mrs. Anslinger probably had an unsatisfying marriage.

Ironic, considering her husband was named “Anslinger.”

Now let’s skip through time to a 2016 article on a 1994 talk with John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top advisors and a Watergate jailbird. He told Harper’s, “The Nixon White House had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” He then presumably twirled his mustache and demanded one billion dollars, or else he would melt the ice caps.

The Nixon administration’s official line was that they were responding to a heroin epidemic and an uptick in the smoking of jazz cigarettes, as we believe the cool kids still call weed. And to be fair, several of Ehrlichman’s children and colleagues called bullshit on his statements, suggesting he either never said them or was being sarcastic (the writer who talked to Ehrilchman thinks he was serious and trying to atone). Nixon did establish drug education and addiction treatment programs, but also signed off on no-knock searches and is on record as referring to black Americans as “little Negro bastards” who “live like a bunch of dogs.” Again, drugs are complicated. You’re welcome to draw your own conclusions.

But while you’re reaching those conclusions, keep in mind that the drug war is incarcerating African American men at a rate about four times worse than black South Africans were during apartheid. Oh, and thanks to drug laws, there are more black men in the prison system than there were black men enslaved in 1850. So … maybe a change in strategy is in order here.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

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