#narratively speaking who would you have voted for in high school

[dwellordream]

“…Now, if people are taught anything at all about medieval history it often is English medieval history. People with absolutely no other frame of reference can often tell you when the Norman Conquest of England took place, or the date of the signing of Magna Carta even if they don’t know exactly why these things are important. (TBH Magna Carta isn’t important unless you were a very rich dude at the time, sooooo.) If you ask people to name a medieval book they’ll probably say Beowulf even if they’ve never read it.

Here’s the thing though – England was a total backwater in terms of the way medieval people thought and was not particularly important at the time. How much of a backwater? Well, when Anne of Bohemia, daughter of my man Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (RIP, mate. Mourn ya til I join ya.) married King Richard II of England in the fourteenth century there was uproar in Prague. How could a Bohemian imperial princess be sent to London? How would she survive in the hinterlands? The answer was she was sent along with an entire cadre of Bohemian ladies in waiting to give her people with whom she could have a sophisticated conversation.

This ended up completely changing fashion in England. Anne is the girl who introduced those sweet horned headdresses you think of when you think of medieval ladies, riding side-saddle, and the word “coach” to England, (from the Hungairan Kocs, where the cart she arrived at court the first time came from). Sweetening her transition to English life was the fact that she didn’t have to pay a dowry to get married. Instead, the English were allowed to trade freely with Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire and allowed to be around a Czech lady. That was reward enough as far as the Empire was concerned. That’s how much England was not a thing. (The English took this insult very badly, and hated Anne at first, but since she was a G they got over it. Don’t worry.)

If England was unimportant why do we know about English medieval history and nothing else? Same reason you’re reading this blog in English right now, homes. I’m not sure if you know this, but in the modern period, the English got super super good at going around the world an enslaving anyone they met. When you’re busy not thinking about German imperial atrocities in the nineteenth century it’s because you’re busy thinking about British imperial atrocities, you feel me? So we all speak English now and if we harken back to historical things it gives us a grandiose idea of English history.

Say, then, you are trying to establish a curriculum for schools that bigs up English history, as is our want. Ask yourself – are you gonna want to dwell on an era where England was so unimportant that Czechs were flexing on it? Answer: no. You gonna gloss right over that and skip to the early modern era and the Tudors who I am absolutely sure you know all the fuck about. The second colonial-imperialist reason for not learning about medieval history is that medieval history doesn’t exactly aggrandise the colonial-imperialist system.

Yes, there are empires in medieval Europe. In addition to the Holy Roman Empire there’s the Eastern Roman Empire, aka the Byzantine Empire, whose downfall is often pointed to as one of several possible bookends to the medieval period. You also have opportunists like the Venetians who set up colonies around the Adriatic and Mediterranean, or the Normans who defo jump in boats and take over, well, anything they could get their hands on.

Notably, when these dudes got where they were going, they didn’t end up enslaving a bunch of people, committing genocide, and then funnelling all resources back to a theoretical homeland. The Normans settled down where they were eventually creating distinctive court cultures, and the Venetian colonies enjoyed a seriously high level of trade and quality of life without major disruption to local customs. Force was certainly used to take over at the outset, but it wasn’t something that resulted in the complete subjugation and deaths of millions halfway around the world from where the aggressors started.

No, the European middle ages are a lot more about local areas muddling along with smaller systems of rule. That’s why you have distinctive areas like say, Burgundy or Sicily calling their own shots and developing their own styles and fashions. Hell, even within imperial systems like the Holy Roman Empire Bavarians or Bohemians saw themselves as very much distinct peoples within an imperial system, not necessarily imperial subjects first and foremost.

You know where you would go to find some history that justifies huge imperial systems that require constant conquest and an army of slaves to keep them afloat? Ancient Rome. Remember how you got taught how great Rome was? How it was a democracy? How they had wonderful technology and underfloor heating, and oh isn’t that temple beautiful? Yeah, that’s because you were being inculcated to think that the ends of imperial violence justifies mass enslavement and disenfranchisement.

In reality, Rome wasn’t some sort of grand free democracy. Only a tiny percentage of Romans could actually vote. Women of any station certainly could not, and even men who were lucky enough to be free weren’t necessarily Roman citizens. Freedom here is particularly important because by the 1 century BCE 35 – 40% of the population of the Italian peninsula were slaves. Woo yeah democracy. I love it. And that’s not even taking into account all those times when an Emperor would suspend voting altogether.

Those slaves were busy building all the grand buildings your high school history teacher was dry jacking it about, stuffing the dormice that the rich people were reclining to eat, and basically keeping the joint running. Those slaves also necessitated the ridiculously huge army that Rome kept going because you had to get slaves from somewhere after all, so warfare had to be continuous. How uplifting.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this Roman nonsense is pretty much exactly what was going on during the modern colonial imperial age. You can say whatever the fuck you want about how free and revolutionary America was, for example. That doesn’t change the fact that only a handful of white property owning men could vote, and that the entire project required the mass enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Native Americans. That’s why you’ve been taught Rome is great. It helps you sleep well at night on stolen land because, really, haven’t all great societies done this? I mean without a forever war against anyone you can find, how will you keep a society going?

Our imperialist ideas about history lead to some weird historical takes. People love to tell you that no one bathed in the medieval period when medieval people had pretty much exactly the same sort of bathing culture as Romans. People laugh at medieval people believing in medical humoral theory despite the fact that Romans believed exactly the same thing and get a total pass on that front. The Roman ban on dissection is often taught as a medieval ban, shifting Roman superstition onto the shoulders of medieval people.

On-going Roman warfare is reported in glowing terms with emphasis on the “brilliance” of Roman military technique, while inter-kingdom warfare in the medieval period is portrayed as barbaric and ignorant. The Roman people who were encouraged to worship emperors as literal gods are used as an example of theoretical religion-free logical thinking, while medieval Christians are cast as ignorant for believing in God even when they are studiously working on the same philosophical queries as their predecessors. None of this makes any fucking sense.

But here’s the thing – it doesn’t need to. In a colonial imperialist society we have positioned Rome as a guiding light no matter what it’s actual practices and that’s not a mistake. It’s a design that helps to justify our own society. Further, this mindset requires us to castigate the medieval period when rule was more localised and systems of slavery had taken a precipitous dive. If only there had been more slavery, you know? Things might have been so much better.

Historical narratives and who controls them are always in flux. That old adage “history is written by the winners” comes to mind here, but that’s not exactly true. What the winners do is decide which histories are promoted, taught, and broadcasted. You can write all the history you want and if no one reads it, then it doesn’t really matter. That’s the gap that medieval history has fallen into. Colonial imperialism hasn’t figured out how to weaponise it yet, so it’s ignored. You could write this off as a “so what”, of course. Sure, maybe teaching the Roman Empire as a goal is a negative, but is ignoring medieval history really that bad a thing? You will be unsurprised to learn that I definitely think it is a bad thing, yes.

Ignorance about the medieval period is one of the things that is allowing the current swelling ranks of fascists to claim medieval Europe as some sort of “pure” white ideal. Spoiler: it was not. However, if you don’t know anything about medieval society how are you gonna argue with some chinless douche with a fake viking rune tattoo?History is always political. We use it to understand our world, but more than that we also use it to justify our world. Ignoring it helps us prop up our worst impulses, so let’s not.”

- Eleanor Janega, “On colonialism, imperialism, and ignoring medieval history.”

[flying-elliska]

one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

[fireemblems24]

I am so glad you pointed out the imperialist vibes Edelgard has sometimes. As someone who lives in a country who was basically occupied ahem conquered because they said "we have better ideas that will improve your lives" and had our culture absolutely shattered, one of the main reasons why I disagree with Edelgard so much is because of that. She thinks her point of view is superior and the most morally right and I really don't like it whenever she sounds so confused about people defending their homeland. Especially that one line she has with Dimitri in Chapter 17 ffffff—

Like, girl, they have the fucking right to disagree with you please stop sounding so confused as to why they can't see eye to eye with you gahhhhh

I would be more tolerant with the war if she had say, did diplomacy before it? But she tried to had Dimitri and Claude killed in Part I (the prologue). I would also understand her better if the war was a last resort and the other leaders were corrupt and all that. But they're not. Many of the students (who have power because many are noble heirs) outside her house are heavily affected by the nobility and Crests (Sylvain, Ingrid, Mercedes, Lysithea, etc.) or at least understanding of the problems caused by them (Dimitri). It's so frustrating how so much of this can be prevented if she just talked about it.

Also, to those who said she wants the change to be quick, even with war it won't be. The fucking war basically caused continent-wide damage. It's going to be so hard to actually fix this. Hell, there's definitely going to be an eventual rebellion by former Kingdom / Alliance people or sympathisers. It's not going to be as clean cut as the game or some pro-Edelgard people make it to be. Not everyone is going to agree with her, whether she takes over or not. She just destroyed the stability of the continent and while yes, she can rebuild it again, it will still take time and who's to say future leaders won't be corrupt? Also, a hierarchy will always exist, whether she likes it or not. Especially if she plans to set up a meritocracy. Meritocracy is going to usually end up giving power and privilege to those with already pre-existing privilege as they the opportunity to show off their merits or develop those skills. Poor and disabled people are going to have difficulty as they don't have equal opportunity to develop skills and accomplish stuff. I'm generalising, but it just ends up as a hierarchy, again. Not only that, it also has ways to enforce discrimination.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, she needs to long term plan out her systems. I apologise since I have bad memory but as far as I remember, the game doesn't give us too many details on how she wants to establish her system. All I remember is she does the war > Church / Rhea out of power > Establish her government > ???. Someone please clear this up for me because I'm confused.

...and again really, diplomatic reforms are an option. Yes, they're much more tedious. Yes, they take so much more longer. Yes, sometimes it feels impossible to accomplish. But did she not even consider it as an option?

All in all, I do like Edelgard. But I really wish the game let us go against her while we're with her? I wish it wasn't just general "agree with Edelgard" for CF. I remember someone pointing it out to me before that it would've been really great if she had someone in her house who does the same role Felix does in AM... which is basically disagree and call out the lord's shit. And they pointed out Ferdinand could've probably been that character for CF. And I kinda agree? I really think CF would immensely improve if Edelgard had a challenger / foil to her beliefs similar to how Felix does that for Dimitri.

Anyway, sorry for the very long ask lol. I like Edelgard and I agree with some of her morals and ideals such as the crest system being bad but....she's done so dirty asdfghjkl. I do think she's written well enough to incite these emotions in me, and she makes for a good antagonist. As a protagonist lord however.... yeah.

First off, sorry it took so long to respond, but I wanted to give an equally throughout response. 

While I haven’t gotten to chapter 17 yet, I can attest to the notion that Edelgard’s rhetoric is eerily similar to Imperialist propaganda. I do understand this is fiction, and that it’s okay to hand-wave/enjoy things in fiction that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t in real life. Crimson Flower has its charms and parts I enjoy. Edelgard is an interesting character more hampered by things that plague Three Houses as a whole than anything else, but it’s still worth examining how dangerous her rhetoric is. Because, unlike you, my country sits at the opposite end - the Imperialist nation selling that rhetoric to its citizens, and, unfortunately, at the time I bought it - which makes me really sensitive to this. 

I’m from the US and I’m specifically speaking about the US’s invasion of the Middle East. I was in middle or high school, just barely a teenager, and naive and ignorant enough to believe what my leaders said. Because guess what? I bought into it out of misplaced and ignorant (and racist) compassion. I was horrified at the idea these people were suffering unfairly just because of where they were born whereas I got all these promised privileges just because of where I was born. I really thought the US would go in there and give them democracy and everything would be great. Looking back, I realize they were lying, that we’ve only made things worse, that it’s horribly racist to assume the US was just inherently better, and I’ve sense then gained access to fast-speed internet, traveled, matured, etc . . . and thankfully this all happened before I had any actual power to do anything like vote. But to this day I’m beyond pissed off they used my own compassion against me to line their own pockets. It was ignorant and racist, but it was all based in concern that others didn’t have the same quality of life I had and a growing realization of my own privilege. And that’s what I hate so much. It didn’t sound evil. It sounded good. It used people’s good will and compassion against them and twisted it into evil for their own causes. 

I don’t think Edelgard is after Faerghus and the Alliance because she wants oil. I think she honestly thinks she’s doing good. And, if this were real life, I think that makes her rhetoric even more dangerous than a corrupt politicians’.  Because everything else is still the same. She’s being ignorant, nationalist instead of racist in this case, and honestly thinks her moral superiority will improve everyone’s lives even if it means ravaging the entire content in war. She is dangerously naive and ignorant. 

Maybe I’d support her more morally if I believed for an instant the general populace welcomed the changes she wants to bring, if the leaders she fought against weren’t open and wanting change themselves, ect . . . But the dialogue indicated her presence inspires people running and screaming in terror, not welcoming her presence (see the chapter where you kill Claude). The Kingdom is still fighting tooth and nail against her. She’s not supported. Her changes aren’t wanted. And she hasn’t bothered to learn a single thing about the cultures she’s determined to squash under her heal nor the leaders heading them. 

I also think I’d support her better if we had a clearer idea of what her plans were. But CF has shifted from Edelgard speaking about interesting ideas and classism to evil dragon overlords and chastising Byleth for making her blush. The decision to side with her or Rhea is not choosing between two ideals, but an emotional, spur of the moment thing. Edelgard’s early supports with Byleth attempt to convince the player to side with her not based on political ideals, but on feeling sorry for her. 

CF gives you no choice but to agree with everything Edelgard says (as you said, there’s no “Felix” or a “Lorenz”). It wants you to support her war without question, and therefore you don’t get any answers to questions like - if this is really just about Rhea, why are we invading the Alliance? Because they won’t hand power over to you? Why didn’t you just stick to the Empire to enact your changes? In the end, you’re left with what sounds more and more like an entitled Imperialistic princess with absolutely no idea how ignorant she is hell bent on conquering what she thinks belongs to her based on a conspiracy theory. 

All that said, I do think Edelgard has interesting ideas and isn’t wholly wrong, just how she goes about it is horribly wrong. And I fully believe the core issue is how CF has dropped the ball big time writing wise, because diving deeper into her ideas and not her crush on you would go a long way. So would shifting the narrative away from evil boogey dragon lady must die and everyone else is wrong and I am superior and right and more towards a clashing of ideals, this route could’ve been a lot more and seemed a lot less ignorant, naive, entitled, and Imperialistic. 

[flamencodiva]

Patria Y Vida

Gotta get this off my chest. No you don’t have to read, but given the current climate, if you do, be aware of who I am and where I come from. Also remember that while you may “know me” (some of you actually do) you don’t. 

I have been going back and forth with this ALL DAY. Things on the Island have gotten WORSE. And the police are literally going into people’s homes and dragging them into the street to kill them. The people do not have guns; those are reserved for the government. All they have are rocks and sticks. 

I couldn’t sleep last night, worried about my oldest brother Alain, who has THREE kids, his oldest son Yadriel, who is 19, his daughter Yadrielis who JUST TURNED 16, and his infant daughter Yadianis who is nine months. Then I have my Other Brother Michael, who has one son Jairo who is also 19. And while they don’t live in the major cities, it is still worrisome because the protests started out in the countryside before moving to the major city. 

The last I heard from Jairo was yesterday at 6:11 pm, and I don’t know if it was because he got lucky and found an area with wifi for a bit or something else. But after that, it was radio silence.  

I’ve had a history of trying to explain to people what I, as a first-generation Cuban-American, grew up hearing and seeing. It is how I shape my political views here in the US, which is NEITHER right or left. Nothing is Black and White, and if I try to explain that, I am called a racist, a conservative cunt, and an oppressor. 

People don’t really KNOW oppression at all. I know oppression because it is happening to my family and to the people that try to compare Cuba to the US. It is NOT THE SAME AT ALL. 

Cuba only has one political party, ONE. You either Vote, or you go to prison. 

In the US, you vote, or you don’t, that’s it. There are no penalties, except you have to live with the policies of someone you didn’t like for four years.  

What is happening in Cuba IS NOT BECAUSE OF THE EMBARGO. THAT IS PROPAGANDA BULLSHIT! 

The GOVERNMENT HOARDS EVERYTHING TO SUPPRESS THE PEOPLE TO THEN BLAME OTHERS AND NOT THEMSELVES! 

The embargo DOES NOT BLOCK MEDICINE AND BASIC NEEDS! That would be a violation of the Geneva Convention if anyone ever paid attention to their history teacher in school instead of worrying about Sally and how she’s getting her hair done for fucking prom. 

I have all this worry and anger in me. Worry for my family: that includes my brothers, their children, My aunts (my dad’s sisters), and their children, and the ENTIRE ISLAND! 

I wish people would stop making this an us vs. them issue because, seriously, it’s pissing me off, and it is NOT the same as the protests that go on here in the states, SO DON’T EVEN TRY TO COMPARE.  

I am sick of having to defend my views based on how I have seen my family’s country treating them. I am tired of having to hold my tongue when people take information and use it for their own political narrative. 

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE ANYMORE; IT IS A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE, AND THE MORE OF YOU THAT STAY SILENT AND CALL US CIA OPERATIVES ARE KILLING THE PEOPLE ON THE ISLAND WITH YOUR RHETORIC JUST AS MUCH AS THE POLICE ON THE ISLAND ARE.

Get off your fucking high horse and learn! Listen to the people who have experience! To the people who have Primary and Secondary knowledge and trust that we know what the fuck we’re talking about because we are ACTUALLY LIVING IT! 

And as I edit this after getting off the phone with my dad, I can say that a cousin of mine has a still operational landline. My aunt (who is here in Miami, my dad is the oldest of 11. 6 of them are here, the rest are back on the Island.) was able to speak with him, and everything is okay so far. Everyone is safe. So that is one thing off my plate of worries. But I will never stop worrying, and I fear for their health and what they need! 

People need to realize that those of us here sent provisions to help as much as we could.

[confetti-cupcake]

4, 5, 13, 47 💕

Thanks so much for the ask Jenwyn! 💕💕💕

4) what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread?

If this is counting plots that I've started on, definitely my Survivor fic. Whenever I get into a new show or fandom, I always think of how the characters would do on Survivor. It's my favorite reality show of all time, and it's always been my dream to write a fic that's essentially a full season of the show in a narrative format. Growing up, I'd always draft out fictional seasons of Survivor with original characters and find like stock photos of people that looked like what I pictured the castaways to be like lol. At one point in high school, I even drafted out and wrote part of a season that involved characters from Nickelodeon shows. And the second I watched 9-1-1, I knew I needed to explore this with them, because I think a lot of the characters would actually be really good at it!

I'm going to amend your question a little to why I haven't finished it and experience deep existential dread — in short, the existential dread is completely tied to how best to execute it. So back when the pandemic started, I had a ton of time on my hands, and I wanted to make a real meal out of the story. I had what I felt was a great beginning, a fitting end, and had some really fun stuff in the middle linking it all together. Although I love Buddie with all my heart, I love all of the main characters on 9-1-1 and I wanted it to be a mini character study on everyone (including Lone Star people). I wanted at least one scene from each character's POV, I wanted to explore relationships between characters that don't interact in canon, I wanted to give every single person on the cast a meaningful and satisfying story arc, I wanted to tell the complete story of each vote out, and of course, I wanted there to be a Buddie love story. So I wrote like 120k words of it, and then set it aside for a while because I wasn't sure how much of a crossover there would realistically be between 9-1-1 fans and Survivor fans. Well, turns out, there is a decent amount! So I revisited it. And now... it all feels like a lot. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a majority of people who go into the fic will only care about Buddie. Will they really care about a scene told from Michael's POV? Or from Michelle Blake's POV, for example? Will they really care about how Athena or Paul or TK play the game? I definitely care — but at the end of the day, I do want people to read this thing and not glaze over for 75% of the story 😂

So the dilemma I'm essentially facing now is which audience I should cater the story to — the 9-1-1/Survivor fans (who are fewer in number, but would probably be invested in the scenes of all the characters and the actual outcome of the game), or Buddie fans (who are higher in number, but may just want to cut to the chase of Buck and Eddie getting together)? The full story is definitely the one I'd prefer to write and would be most fulfilling for me personally, but it would also be loads more work, and for possibly a lot less "return on investment", so to speak. We'll see! It's something I ponder over every day, honestly. If anyone reading this has any strong opinions on the subject, please let me know!

5) have you ever made a playlist about something you were writing as an elaborate means to procrastinate when you could have been actually writing and if yes drop a link, son

Answered here! Be forewarned, it's all Survivor soundtrack music and will not be everyone's cup of tea. That being said, I feel like the "emotional" songs are incredibly beautiful. They really set a tone, even outside the context of Survivor, and unironically bring a tear to my eye. I usually put them on when I'm trying to really dig deep and articulate very profoundly sad or hopeful emotions.

13) talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you.

When I was new to Tumblr, I had a lot of stuff written, but really wanted a second opinion on it. So I put out a call for beta readers that would be willing to help me. I expected zero response, and if by some miracle somebody did reach out, I wasn't sure of the quality person I would end up with, since I was essentially asking for the help of total strangers. I struck gold because not one, not two, but three amazing people reached out to me offering to help, and have been completely invaluable in giving me honest feedback on my writing. I really feel like the quality has grown a lot since I started working with them, and I always look forward to their comments when I send them a new chapter 😊

47) what story are you most proud of?

Right now, I am most proud of my Are You The One? AU. I feel like all nine matches are pretty well thought out, and I've had so much fun dropping in little subtle hints about who's paired with who. I really want to finish it soon, if for no other reason than I want to see people play along and try to solve the logic puzzle! I'm proud of the amount of planning and forethought that went into it to make the puzzle playable and the story (particularly the Buddie part) satisfying, and I really hope it all pays off!

Send me another ask from this list!

[sou-ver-2-0]

Sou Hiyori and Kanna’s Sister Parallels

In my short time in the Your Turn to Die fandom, I haven't seen anyone discuss the similarities between our Sou Hiyori and Kanna's older sister Kugie. This subtle parallel is one of the many fantastic writing details in this game, and it happens to be my favorite one. So I wanted to talk about it! 

I love the irony that the characters in YTTD draw a more obvious parallel between Kugie Kizuchi and the game's protagonist, Sara Chidouin. Both Sara and Kugie are high-school aged girls, and Sara often plays the part of Kanna's big sister, leading Kanna to project her feelings for Kugie onto Sara. Although this is sweet, it's still a superficial parallel. Sara and Kugie play the same role, but how similar are they really? If you choose to chat with Kanna on the first day of Chapter 2's storyline, Kanna will tell you the truth about her adoptive sister. Instead of idealizing her, Kanna paints a more complex picture of a flawed young woman. Unlike Sara, Kugie bullied Kanna when they first met. It took time for the pair of them to feel like real siblings. On a deeper level, Kugie's own mini-character arc is very different from Sara's arc, but it perfectly mirrors Sou's arc!

Both Kugie and Sou have a cruel streak and they each make rash judgments about other people. However, they eventually reveal with their actions that they truly love Kanna deep down. While Sara can make the choice to abandon Kanna, both Kugie and Sou would die for the girl. Because of the striking parallels I see between Kanna's memories of Kugie and Kanna's present relationship with Sou, I want to believe that Kugie was just as willing as Sou was to die in order to save Kanna's life. Kugie's story effectively acts as a microcosm of Sou's story. So let's take a close look at it.

KANNA: ...Sara... / You're just like... my sister.

SARA: Huh...?

KANNA: Your strength... and your kindness... / ... / But my sister... / Wasn't always kind from the moment we met.

SARA: (The moment they met...?)

If you speak to Kanna during negotiation time on Day 1 of Chapter 2, the girl begins her story by telling Sara that she's just like her sister, since Sara shares Kugie's "strength and kindness." However, she admits that her sister "wasn't always kind from the moment we met." This is the first major difference between the two girls, and it's what clued me into the idea that Kugie's story might be a metaphor for Sou's story instead. It's also an early moment in which Kanna reveals that she's not as naive as people think she is. She's aware that Kugie was flawed, just like she's aware of Sou's flaws. She keeps choosing to believe in their capacity for good, even as she understands that they are capable of hurting her. 

  Following this revelation, we come to a notable choice.   

1. CHOICE: You aren't blood-related?

SARA: ...Kanna. Are you and your sister not blood-related...?

KANNA: ...Right...

2. CHOICE: Guess I win

SARA: I was nice from the start, so guess I win.

KANNA: Ah... Even the way you say weird things like that is just like my sister...

SARA: (Strangely, that just got her more emotional...)

Sara can either ask "You aren't blood-related?" or smugly observe "Guess I win." Either way, Kanna will steer the conversation back to her adoption by the Kizuchi family. But the choice to declare "victory" over Kugie here fascinates me, since it's easy to connect this competitive sentiment to Sara's relationship with Sou. While Sara and Sou are obviously in a competition for their lives, what ends up mattering more is their competition for Kanna's affections. In both cases, Sou is painfully aware that he's the underdog with "zero percent chance of success." Sou is sure that Kanna would choose Sara's life over his life, if she were forced to make that awful choice.

For Sou, who believes that Kanna loves him less, his moral dilemma is whether to support Kanna in spite of this. The fact that he supports her unconditionally in the second Main Game speaks to his strength of character. He proves that he truly values Kanna more than his own life. For Sara, who already feels comfortable in the "victory" of Kanna's devotion, the moral question becomes whether the player will make choices that are worthy of the girl. Will you help Sou protect her? Or will you decide that Kanna's life is worth less than Sou's hacking skills? Sara's choice determines whether she truly shares Kugie's "strength and kindness."

I'll come back to Kanna's feelings on this "competition" later. For now it's enough to say that she recognizes that competitive streak in Kugie too, and that memory makes her "emotional." It shows how she loves these three characters even when they say "weird things." Again, Kanna is aware of Sara, Kugie, and Sou's flaws but still feels affection for them. That's just how it is when you love someone.

Kanna continues her story:

KANNA: ...See, Kanna's adopted.

SARA: ...!

KANNA: She came to her current family from an orphanage when she was little...

SARA: So you had different parents, too?

KANNA: Mom and dad were really kind... / Kanna... was determined to always smile, childishly thinking "I can't trouble them." / ...And Kanna's sister didn't seem to like her...

Here, Kanna reveals that she has always had the type of personality where she tries hard to please others. She was worried about being a burden long before the Death Game, but for a more ordinary reason; she's adopted. She's always been self-conscious. Her ongoing heartbreak and anxiety comes from a deep place of worrying that her big sister doesn't love her. This informs her current relationships with both Sara and Sou.

At this point, the narrative shifts to a flashback of Kanna's memories.

MOM: Stop it, Kugie! Why do you do such cruel things?!

KANNA: No, it's fine! Kanna's not angry... She's not, really... / Look, see! Ahaha... Ehehehehe...

KUGIE: ...What're you always laughing for?

KANNA: Huh...?

KUGIE: ...You're creepy. I hate it.

DAD: Hey, stop that! Apologize, Kugie!

Kugie calls Kanna "creepy" and even says that she "hates" that part of her. Sara can't ever say such cruel words to Kanna; the worst you can do as a player is speak sternly to her sometimes. But Sou absolutely can say cruel things. He has called Kanna "stupid kid," "dead weight," and a "hindrance" in front of the entire group. And just like the Kizuchi parents scolded Kugie for her mean words, our group members condemn Sou for his mean words.

Now, we know Sou wasn't actually speaking his heart with those words. He didn't have malicious intent. (In fact, he was trying to save Kanna's life.) Sou said those words because he wears a mask to cover his true self. That's the essence of his character. He tries to sound tough and logical to force people to take him seriously. He assumes that once he lets his guard down and shows weakness, everyone will vote to kill him. He becomes a bully because he's insecure.

What if Kugie was also wearing a mask when she bullied Kanna? Not because of the Death Game like Sou, but for a more ordinary reason. Maybe she was simply trying to sound "cool." Maybe Kugie bullied Kanna because she was also insecure, and it would be easy to take out her insecurity on a little girl like Kanna. Kanna is an awkward child who speaks in the third person and laughs for no reason. It would be easy for an older girl to look at Kanna and think, "At least I'm not as embarrassing as that." Even though we don't know Kugie as well as Sou, I think it's a logical assumption.

KANNA: Even then, I kept on smiling... I didn't... want to make sister out as a villain. / But one day, when it became unbearable... I ran away from home.

This is the saddest part but I love it because it's a direct parallel to what Kanna says about Sou! 

During the Second Main Game, when Kanna confesses that she took the Sacrifice card from Sara, she says, "Kanna...Kanna...!! She didn't want to let Sara die...!! And also...!! She didn't want to make Sou a murderer...!!" 

The things Kanna does for these two!!

In other words, there comes a point for both Kugie and Sou where their actions are so harmful that Kanna feels like she has to throw herself away to thwart their "villainy." She runs away from home. She takes the Sacrifice Card. Because she doesn't want these two people she loves to become villains.  

We continue Kanna's story with another flashback. This time, it's accompanied by visual imagery of a small Kanna sitting by herself and crying while hiding her face under a bucket.

KANNA: ...sniff... sob...

KANNA: (narrating) I couldn't go home. I didn't want to... Thinking that to myself, I sat in the park with a bucket on my head and cried.

This is Kanna at her most vulnerable. She is isolated and alone. She has given up. 

In the present day, Kanna has many hopeless moments like this since she has just lost her sister, the person she loved most. We can judge any of the game's characters by how well they treat her, the most vulnerable among them.

In Kanna's memory, there is a character who comes to speak with her at this time. A little boy who tries to joke with her and cheer her up. Kanna only remembers him as "Brat," but to the player, he looks an awful lot like a small Joe Tazuna! The following confrontation between Kanna, "Brat," and Kugie is my favorite part, because it leads to my favorite parallel.

BRAT: Hey! Whatcha doin'? / What's with the bucket?! Yer funny!

KANNA: ...sniff... sniffle...

BRAT: Huh? You cryin'?!

KANNA: ..........

BRAT: ...Alright. / *He lifts his shirt over his head.* How's that! Ehh?! Look at me! C'mon! Funny, right?

KANNA: ...uuuuu...

VOICE (KUGIE): What're you doing?!

BRAT: ...Huh...?

KUGIE: How dare you put a bucket on her head and tease her!! Beat it, you!!

BRAT: I-I wasn't teasin' her!

KUGIE: Liar!! Kanna's crying, isn't she?! D-Don't... be so cruel to my little sister!!

KANNA (narrating): ...That was the first time she called me "little sister"...

In the scene, "Brat" greets Kanna and tries to cheer her up by being a goofball. However, Kugie sees this and gets the wrong impression. She assumes that the boy is hurting Kanna and she rushes to her little sister's defense. As a result of Kugie's actions, Kanna finally sees Kugie's true loving heart.

This is, beat for beat, exactly what happens when Sou confronts Sara about Kugie's smartphone. Just like Kugie wrongly assumed that Joe was bullying Kanna, Sou wrongly assumes that Sara tampered with Kugie's smartphone to make it seem like Kugie hated Kanna. Even though Sou is wrong--Sara was trying to fix the smartphone, just like Sou was--this is the first moment that the player can see Sou's true heart. We learn that Sou's reasons for targeting Sara aren't due to him being some scheming mastermind; he's simply suspicious by nature and he makes rash judgments. He acts the way he does because he genuinely believes that Sara is dangerous. And for the first time, we see how deeply Sou cares about Kanna. We see him stand up to Sara to defend her. Then we see how he wrote a message full of love and hope on Kugie's phone. 

When Kanna finally receives the phone, she cries "tears of salvation" over Kugie's new message. But Kugie's words are really Sou's words. And by the time we reach Chapter 3, we learn that Kanna knew the truth the whole time.

(KANNA): Kanna was always with her big sister. / Because she loved her a lot… / But Kanna was always just a bother to her… / Even that time when it mattered most, she couldn't do anything. / So she thought she was hated… / But that message... made her remember. / That surely, her big sister was watching over her… / That she had to stay strong on her own… / But, well… / The truth is, she knew… / That it wasn't her sister who wrote that message… / *Kanna remembers Sou's face.* .... / ...There's people who tried to protect Kanna. / There's people who worked to encourage her. / So... she doesn't want anyone else to die. / Because... they're all such kind people...

In the game, Kanna shares these thoughts with the player in the aftermath of Sou's death. This is the scenario in which Sou gets to complete the same arc as Kugie. They both sacrifice themselves to save the little sister they love so much. I'm sure that Kugie would have been grateful for Sou's help in writing that message and saving Kanna's life.

I'll finish sharing the rest of Kanna's story about Kugie: 

KUGIE: ...You still crying?

KANNA: S-Sorry... sister...

KUGIE: ... / ...So you cry too, Kanna.

I think the wording of that last sentence in English is interesting. The obvious interpretation is that Kugie realizes that Kanna has been secretly crying and hiding her true self all this time. But on another level, I wonder if Kugie is admitting that she herself "cries too"? That would confirm Kugie's insecurity. And it would make this a moment in which Kugie sees herself in Kanna, just like it's implied that Sou sees his "weak self" in Kanna. In any case, this "unmasking" of Kanna's true heart is a good parallel for Sou's story as well. Kanna also hides her feelings like he does.

KANNA: ..........

KUGIE: .......... / Kanna... I'm sorry...

KANNA: ...Sister...

KUGIE: Mom and dad are worried, so let's get home quick, okay?

KANNA: O... Okay! Eheheh...

It is possible for Sou to apologize to Kanna in the prologue of Chapter 2, Part 2. His wording is more ominous than Kugie's, though he keeps Kugie's sentiment about returning home: "...Sorry. / Just relax. If you’re obedient, I’ll tell you how to survive."

Continuing with Kanna's story, the narrative shifts back to the present day.

KANNA: ...Ever since then, my sister and I got along really well.

SARA: I see...

KANNA: Without any blood relation... Kanna and her sister got along really... really well... / ..........

I love this line because it can apply to Sou as well, since he isn't blood-related to Kanna either. All of Kanna's protective siblings commit to her well-being by their own choice.

SARA: Kanna...

KANNA: Kanna... will definitely go home...! Because she needs to tell mom and dad...! / Determination... / A kind of determination... much too heavy for a girl her age to bear. / ...I should be going soon. Sou might wake up, after all... / Thank you very much... Sara.

Kanna ends her story with a determined speech to return home and honor Kugie's memory. As we read earlier, Kanna gives a similar determined speech in the aftermath of Sou's sacrifice. Later in Chapter 3, she further expresses a desire to honor Sou’s memory, saying “I want to know more about the man who sacrificed himself for me.” This is Kanna at her strongest! This is a Kanna who wants to live!

I mentioned earlier that I would come back to Kanna's feelings on the "competition" between Sou and Sara for her affections. Because Sara resembles Kugie physically, everyone believes that Kanna would choose Sara over Sou. Kanna even says that Sara is "the person she most wants to live." That is Kanna's emotional appeal to save Sara from being voted as a candidate. In the event that Kanna dies, Keiji rubs Kanna’s words in Sou's face at the beginning of Chapter 3, leaving Sou desolate.

But it's important to note that Kanna's choice was always to save both Sara and Sou. To say that she would abandon Sou discredits what actually happened. After Kanna makes an emotional appeal to save Sara's life, she shrewdly makes a logical appeal to save Sou's life. And when Sou tries to direct the votes to Kanna, thinking she has the Sacrifice card, Kanna easily thwarts his efforts by simply telling the truth. Kanna was the only character who chose to be honest about the Sacrifice Card, because she never intended to let anyone else die for her. 

Kanna's choice was to reject the “competition” outright. She doesn't even take it seriously. Her reasons for taking the Sacrifice card were twofold: to save Sara's life, and to save Sou's soul. It's never a real question for her which person she values more. She would have died for them both.

This matters because Sou doesn't parallel Kugie in such an obvious way like Sara does, but the parallel is still there. It's subtle enough that Sou can't even see it. He never feels confident in Kanna's affection, which is why he ordered her, "Kanna. / Don’t you betray me." He can't see what's right in front of him: that Kanna cares about him as though he were her own brother. 

In contrast, Sara feels self-conscious about the comparisons people draw between Kugie and herself. She always feels awkward about it. She is fully aware that Kugie was her own person, and Sara can only pretend to understand what she was like. I really like the way that the manga treated this issue. Although the manga cuts out many of the excellent character moments from the game, it adds more focus on Kugie.

Sara thinks to herself, "I don't know...how many regrets that person had..." which neatly foreshadows that Kugie would have regretted bullying Kanna. Speaking of regrets also reminds me of Sou, who--in the route where he dies--regrets not trusting everyone sooner.

I wanted to end this piece on a happy note, so I'll just say that I like to imagine that Sou and Kugie would have gotten along! Maybe they would even be able to see through each other's masks and help each other. They could work together to protect Kanna, and the Player could choose whether Sara joins them.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Florida has just become the first state in the Union to mandate that high school students learn about the crimes of communism.  The subject is indeed very important, and too little known. The problem is that the new legislation, like other recent Florida measures, itself recalls certain evils of communism.

As of this coming school year, high school students who wish to graduate from a Florida school must pass a class in U.S. government that includes "comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States."  

Any high school teacher is going to sigh at the awkward circularity of the "principles essential to the principles" formulation.  As Orwell tried to remind us in "Politics and the English Language," though, vague formulations demand our critical attention.  This weird phrasing serves a sinister purpose, one that becomes clear later in the law.  The point is that the United States is to be defined as free and democratic, regardless of what Americans or their legislators actually do.  American is free and democratic because of a miraculous investiture from the past.  Complacency is therefore patriotic, and criticism is not.

The law presents "totalitarianism" as an ideology.  Totalitarianism is not an ideology, so Florida teachers are henceforth legally required to teach nonsense.  To be sure, one can find historical figures who referred to themselves as "totalitarian" in a positive sense, but in general the term has been used as analysis and critique.  In use for about a century now, "totalitarianism" has generally been used as a category that brings together regimes with very different ideologies, drawing attention to underlying similarities.

As such, totalitarianism can also be a tool for self-critique, since it draws attention to political temptations that make different systems possible.  The most important book about totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt, presents Nazism and Stalinism as possibilities within modern politics.  When in Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt wrote about conspiracy theories, she was writing not only about Nazi and Soviet practices, but also about a human failing.  When she wrote about narratives where we are always right and they are always wrong, where we are always innocent and they are always guilty, she was describing a universal risk.  When she wrote of people who were simultaneously gullible and cynical, for whom “everything was possible and nothing was true,” she got uncomfortably close to contemporary American reality.

By defining totalitarianism as a foreign ideology to be contrasted with American principles, Florida legislators have denied students not just the knowledge of what the term actually means, but also the possibility to appeal to a rich body of thought that might help them to avoid risks to freedom and democracy.

Unlike totalitarianism, communism is an ideology.  Its ideological character is visible in its approach to the past: communists transformed history, an open search for fact and endless discussion of interpretation, into History, an official story in which one's own country was the center of world liberation regardless of what its leaders did.  The party was always right, even if what the party said and did was unpredictable and self-contradictory.  The most important communist party still in power, the Chinese, takes this line today.  To question the revolution or the inevitability of the system is to fall prey to "historical nihilism."  In April 2018, a Chinese memory law accordingly made it a crime to question the heroism of past leaders.  What we have is good and right because we inherited it from glorious dead revolutionaries, and we must not question what the government tells us about our glorious dead revolutionaries.

We have our own official story of revolution. The Florida board of education has recently forbidden teachers from defining American history "as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."  That narrow formulation rules out most of reality but crams in a good dose of mysticism.  Nothing is ever entirely new, and nations arise from many sources aside from principles.  The board of education’s claim is political rather than historical: Everything good comes from the past, and we must not question what the government tells us about its righteousness.  If there is only one story, and you have to tell it, that is not history but History.  The point is not that the American Revolution is the same thing as the Chinese Revolution. The point is that we are treating it the same way, describing it in dogmatic terms that we enforce in memory law. And that is deeply worrying.

The same spirit is in evidence in that Florida communist law.  Deep in the past, it instructs us, is where we find freedom and democracy.  Freedom is not something to be struggled for by individuals now, but magically "inherited from prior generations."  That phrase should give pause to anyone who cares about freedom.  If you seriously think that freedom is something that you can inherit, like a sofa or a stamp collection, you are not going to be free for long.

In the law's logic, democracy is not actually allowing people to vote, but some silent tradition that somehow exists whether or not real Americans can vote in reality.  Despite what actually happened between the eighteenth century and now (slavery, let's say, or voter suppression), we must close our minds to everything but those mythical "principles essential to the principles."  The facts give way to an underlying logic, impossible to articulate, that demonstrates that my country is better.

The Florida communism law requires that someone (it is hard, given the awkward phrasing, to say who) must "curate oral history resources."  The curation will involve the selection "first-person accounts of victims of other nations' governing philosophies who can compare those philosophies with those of the United States."  There is something humiliating about turning real people into poster children for American exceptionalism.  Refugees from other countries past and present have individual and complex stories, which cannot usually be reduced to tales of American superiority.  Edith P., a Holocaust survivor, speaks of waiting for hours every day in front of the American embassy, which denied her family a visa.  American schoolchildren read about Anne Frank, but no one tells them that her father applied for an American visa.  Leon Bass was an African American soldier who saw a German concentration camp.  He had something comparative to say about "governing philosophies," but it would not survive curation.

America today is not an especially free country.  Our own non-governmental organization Freedom House, relying on our own preferred notions of freedom (civil and political rights) ranks us in fifty-eighth place.  In other words, it would theoretically be possible (and it would certainly be valuable) for the Florida board of education to solicit testimonies from people from fifty-seven other countries where people live more freely than here, who could explain why they have not moved to the United States.  They could compare their countries' "governing philosophies" with that of the United States (favorably, unfavorably, who knows: they are free people).  But we know that this will not happen.  Such an application of the Florida communism law is unthinkable, because the Florida communism law is not about freedom.  It is about repeating that America is the best country in the world.

Self-absorption is not anti-communism.  Anti-communism would entail listening to history rather than History, and educating individuals who can make up their own minds.  You don't get freedom from the flock.

Another familiar communist trick can be found in a recent directive by the Florida board of education.  The trick has to do with leveraging victory in the Second World War.  Beginning in the late 1960s, a certain version of the Second World War became an important part of communist ideology.  In the Soviet Union, and also in today's Russia, any wrong done by the system was explained away by the fact that the Red Army had defeated the Germans.  The fact that Nazis were evil made the Soviets good.  The fact of having resisted the Nazis made one's own system unassailable.  This communist technique has now, uncannily, resurfaced in official Florida pedagogy.

In the recent school board directive, we learn that "examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons." This repeats the Soviet (and Russian) logic.  We don't deny German crimes, and therefore we are innocent of any crimes ourselves.  Indeed, anyone who suggests that we look at our own history: well, they are like Holocaust deniers!

Another sad resemblance concerns voting. Freedom involves educating people about the past as it was so that they can make up their own minds about what the future should be.  Democracy involves giving people the vote in the meantime.  The Soviet Union held elections, but they were ritualistic and fake.  When Soviet power extended across eastern Europe after the Second World War, local communist parties rigged elections.  Thus authentic anti-communists would make sure that their own elections were not rigged, and that all citizens could take part.  But the Florida communism law was passed in circumstances that suggest a lively interest in making voting more difficult.  In 2019, the Florida legislature enacted pay-to-vote legislation that effectively disenfranchised people that Floridians, in a referendum, had voted to enfranchise the year before.  The Florida communism law came into effect this 1 July, hard on the heels of a new Florida voter suppression law.

I have spent decades teaching and writing about communism, and I certainly think that young people should know about communist systems and their policies of mass killing.  But declarations of superiority do not amount to a pedagogy, nor to an anti-communism worthy of the name.  The content of the Florida communism law, and the Florida voter suppression law, and the board of education directive on race, do not suggest that Florida lawmakers and administrators have learned much about what was wrong with communism.  

These measures reveal American weaknesses that make American tyranny more likely.

* * * * *

When I went to High School in Florida [many decades ago] all Seniors had to take a class called “Americanism vs Communism.” As I recall, most students slept through the class. I thought that it was insulting propaganda - using an inadequate text that was filled with poorly written boilerplate and boring poorly made films.  If the right wing wants to inflict propaganda on teenagers it should invest in decent writers and film makers.  They are very poor in the literacy department.  I was 16 at the time and unsophisticated but I could still tell that what i was being taught was a waste of my time.

[chromalogue]

Alive.  Healthy.  Chugging along.  Still rubbish at communicating.  

*

I spent the holiday season making approximately 20 different kinds of cookies.  It was supposed to be more but I ran out of time and spoons.  Some of them, like salted double chocolate cookies and plum slice (which turned out to be a. crabapple slice and b. wildly popular to the point where I didn’t get any) were very successful, and some, like rye flour wreaths and poppyseed sablés, were a bewildering waste of time.  But I do have nice pictures of everything.  And way too late for me to make anything to order, a couple of people got in touch asking for baking and goodies, and it was nice to have something to give them.

*

Highlights from last year’s books include Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer, Aminatta Forna’s Happiness, and Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent.  

Right now, among other things, I am reading and very much enjoying Paul Féval’s 1867 novel La Ville-Vampire.  It is Ann Radcliffe RPF with all sorts of wry observations about the exotic and ever-so-slightly-wrongheaded character of the English people (you know, the way English gothic novels wrote about the rest of Europe), and it is a delight.

*

A few months into the pandemic, I got in touch with one of my best friends from Toronto, because she really needed to watch The Witcher.  Since then, we get together on a phone call every Thursday or Friday and watch stuff.  I turn off sound and put on subtitles, and hear her audio through the phone, so if it’s not perfectly synced it’s okay.  We’ve also been through She-Ra, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, The Dragon Prince, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Adventure Zone: Hootenanny, a surprisingly good high school production of Phantom of the Opera, and we’re just starting Raising Dion.  

Will and I loved the heck out of Lupin.  

And the Roku Channel has Hunter, which I loved as a tween.  I’ve been watching it for the nostalgia and because it’s a kind of show I don’t even think they make anymore, i.e. a show I can have on while doing something else and not worry about what I’m missing.  But JEEZ.  Every terrible (both narratively and morally) cop show trope you see being mocked, picked apart, critiqued, or lampooned?  It’s here, and it’s so darned earnest, and it explains so darned much.  Poke it a little and Reaganomics dribbles out (trickles down?).

Some enterprising soul also put the whole of Jul i Blodfjell (Christmas on Blood Mountain) on YouTube, and my soul sang.  I’d heard bits and seen the odd clip, so I was keen to watch.  Fellow North Americans, this is a genre I never even knew existed, even though I’d seen a previous example from Ylvis: the Julekalender.  There’s an episode every day of December, until the 24th.  And this is a slasher murder mystery comedy Julekalender.  The episodes were about twelve minutes long, and when I was trying to decompress after a whole gruelling night of Christmas cookies, and just needed to sit down long enough to shove some bread and cheese in my mouth and chug a smoothie before going to bed, these were just the thing.

*

We’ve heard, not necessarily that vitamin D makes COVID better but that vitamin D deficiency makes it worse, so I asked Will if he wanted me to get him some, and he said sure.

“Do you want the grownup kind or the fun kind?” I asked, because I had been sharing my vitamin D gummies with him and he seemed to like them.

“The grownup kind,” he said, in a tone that suggested it was a silly question.

So I got him some of the flavourless kind you’re supposed to swallow.  And when I brought it to him he was like, “Oh...  I thought they’d be gummy.”

*

The community group is not feeling super great.  The new chair has been micromanaging.  After the second e-mail that left me so furious I couldn’t sleep, I replied to the effect of, “When you coach me on how to do work I did professionally for years, I feel like you’re sending the message that I’m not a good fit for this organization.  I don’t disagree, but we can’t afford to lose members, so let me serve my term to the best of my abilities and I’ll be out of your hair.”  

He apologized, said he definitely valued my skills, and told me that he was changing our procedures so that those skills would no longer be needed.  When I said I’d like to see how the committee felt about changing those procedures, he brought it to a meeting, let two people speak in favour, and then was like, “Welp, everyone agrees with me, it’s a done deal!”  No vote or anything.  Just a decree.

THEN he got in touch to ask me if I would do THE SAME THING I’VE BEEN DOING ALL ALONG, THAT HE JUST HUMILIATED AND BULLIED ME OUT OF, but ONLY FOR HIM.  

Virtually everyone who knows what happened thinks I should resign, and maybe I should.  But we had been working for three years when this dude came on, and he does not get to own this project, and his bad behaviour does not get to take it down.  And I mean, he’s been pretty consistent in underestimating me and minimizing my work, so he probably forgets that some of my previous experience comes from workplaces a lot more toxic than this one.  I’m equipped to deal, and now that he’s flipped the bully switch, there are a bunch of friendly small-town softening behaviours that I’d adopted for meetings here, that I feel empowered to discontinue.

*

When I mentioned offhand to my dad that last Valentine’s Day Will and I had gone out for dinner, and this year it seemed unlikely, so I was gonna have to think of something, my dad said, “You two like mussels, right?  Why don’t you invite him over here and we’ll have mussels?  Your mom will eat some.”

So yeah.  This Valentine’s Day we’re planning a super romantic dinner with my parents.  

*

At 159 800 words on the new thing.  Now all I need to do is research Viking legal codes.  Good times!

[cxhnow]

Chloe x Halle Talk Police Brutality and Postponing Their Album

“The way our music has evolved is exactly how we're evolving as young women.”

Four days before the release of their sophomore album, Ungodly Hour, Chloe x Halle addressed their fans to let them know they’re postponing it. In a video posted across their social channels, sisters Chloe, 21, and Halle Bailey, 20, sat shoulder to shoulder at their home in Los Angeles, surrounded by hovering green trees, and tried to sum up their range of emotions after witnessing a global uprising against police brutality.“In honor of all of the lives lost in police brutality, we felt like it was right to postpone, and fully shine our attention and our work on them,” Chloe said, with both a shake and clarity in her voice, in the video to the duo's 2.7 million followers. Halle added, “Music has been used for a long time to bring us joy and healing in difficult times like this.” Just weeks before, George Perry Floyd, a Black man living in Minneapolis, died in police custody while a white officer’s knee was pressed on his neck. As video of his killing spread, and after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, protests sparked around the world demanding accountability and allyship with the Black Lives Matter movement. On the day Chloe, Halle, and I spoke by phone, Tony McDade, a Black trans man in Tallahassee, Florida, was fatally shot by an officer. In Los Angeles, where the sisters live, protesters strung their bodies together to temporarily shut down the 101 freeway. In Atlanta, where they were born, six police officers were charged after being accused of using excessive force on two Black college students who were tased and pulled out of their cars days earlier.During a time when fans are more critical of how celebrities engage in civil rights activism, Grammy-nominated musicians and actors Chloe and Halle Bailey don’t tiptoe. They urge fans to sign petitions, donate, vote, and recognize Black life, early and often. They celebrate Black joy year-round. This is what their followers have grown to expect from them. Chloe and Halle have always had something to say, and it just so happens to be an important time to speak up.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the unbreakable confidence it takes to be a female pop artist if you aren’t one. Thankfully, Chloe and Halle have each other. For decades, the bond among members of Black singing girl groups has given audiences soulful and fun music. In the '90s, groups like SWV, En Vogue, and Zhané made upbeat R&B music that made you want to dance with your homegirls. Now, contemporary duos like KING, Van Jess, and Ibeyi stand out for their rapturous vocals enveloped in dramatic production. Chloe x Halle add to this legacy by singing, writing, and producing ethereal music that resonates with the girl next door.Yet there are distinct differences in the duo’s vocal style; they don’t try to match each other’s voices to create some sort of uniformity. Rather, they play off of rhythm and song pacing to meld their voices. When they do sing choruses and bridges together, their voices, albeit distinct, create layered, otherworldly melodies.The duo’s sound is often described as angelic, giving leeway for some to describe them as two women without sin. Chloe and Halle want to shatter this idea because it’s not realistic. “For Ungodly Hour we were so excited to just flip the narrative of being the perfect angel and show the other side[s] of us.…," says Halle. "The dark side, the naughty side, the things that happen that you don't see behind the scenes.” 

The majority of the 13 songs on the album are about navigating messy situations — sometimes ones that you have caused. In the midst of trying to be a better friend or romantic partner, you know that you’ll always be imperfect, and decide to love yourself anyway.“I've always been a jazz head," Halle says. “I don't know why, but there's something about the pain and the love and the heartbreak that you can truly feel through the essence of those songs that are sung by Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald.” As of late, Chloe’s “really, really been inspired by '90s music and early 2000s production,” a vibe you can hear and see in “Do It,” the second single off of Ungodly Hour.“We wanted to show our sensual side because we are growing as young women, but we still kept it classy and cute,” Chloe says. “It was just really fun for us to do that. We also wanted to start dancing this era, and just something really simple. And it makes us so happy to see everyone doing that dance on TikTok.”Chloe expands on how the name of the album and title track came about after working with the U.K. duo Disclosure: “We wrote this song [the title track “Ungodly Hour”] with Disclosure, and we had the best time,” she recalls. “I forgot what I was watching, but I heard the phrase ‘ungodly hour’ and wrote it in my notes. [It] kind of stuck out to all of us, and we were like, ‘What can you say with this?’ We all came up with this sentence: ‘Love me at the ungodly hour,’ which means love me when I'm at my worst; love me when I'm not all dolled up and made up. Love me when all my insecurities are out on the table.”’

“We started writing about when you're in a situationship with a guy and the chemistry is there, and you know the love is there and your connection is so deep, but he's not going all in," she continues. "For some reason he doesn't want to commit. He's entertaining other options, and it's just saying, ‘You know what? I love myself enough to walk away and put the brakes on this and to pause this. So when you decide you like yourself, when you decide you need someone, when you don't have to think about it — love me at the ungodly hour.’”Other emotionally complex tracks on the album include “Forgive Me,” a haunting song inspired by Chloe’s own life, after she discovered a guy she was involved with was going back and forth between her and another young woman. “I Wonder What She Thinks of Me” is a song that tells the story of the new love, the one a man gets with after he’s broken up with his ex.The vocalists are eager to make music that grows with them and becomes more layered as they do. “The way our music has evolved is exactly how we're evolving as young women,” Chloe says. The chromelike wings they turn around and show on their album cover, worn with black, latex dresses, are symbolic of their strength and power.When I ask what they hope for in the future, the Bailey sisters seem at ease. Chloe would love to work with BTS: “They're performing — it's top-notch. I'll sit at my computer and watch all of their music videos and all of their performances.”“Awards would be nice," she adds. "Being at the top of these Hot 100 lists would be beautiful and amazing, but as long as I'm growing and I'm a better version of myself tomorrow than I was today, I am content.”

The duo is used to releasing music during times of political duress. Two years ago, when Chloe x Halle were part of our music issue for the release of their debut album The Kids Are Alright, the world was grappling with an immigration travel ban enacted by President Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement, and pressing climate change legislation. That album was an intonation from the sisters to young activists approaching human rights issues head-on: “Do it while you young. Don't let them turn you numb. Don't let them get you strung. Ooh, let me put you on,” they sing on their first album's title song.“I was 15 through 17, and Chloe was 17 through 19 during the making of the album,” Halle says of their debut project. “We were still very young. We were still trying to figure out what we wanted, and I think that showed in the music.”As artists, the singers say their first album was about proving they could play an active, hands-on role in the production of their own music in an industry dominated by men. As two teenage women, it was about showing the world that, although they didn't have all the answers and weren’t sure what was lurking around every corner, they had the guts to find out. At that point in their careers they had been signed to Beyoncé’s Parkwood for five years and had released one other project, the Sugar Symphony EP, in 2016. But aside from opening tour performances and high-profile appearances, they hadn't become household names.

Now, amid a health pandemic and a country in unrest because of its history of white supremacy, Chloe and Halle are navigating being famous and also having a distinct voice. While finding ways to take care of themselves, the sisters are also promoting an album from their home, in the rooms where they first honed their craft as writers, instrumentalists, and producers. “We've kind of gotten back to our roots and started doing what originally got us started," Halle says, "which is doing YouTube covers, interacting on social media, and connecting with our beautiful fans through there.” A lot has changed in their personal lives as well. They're private about the details, but say they’re learning more about guys and finding themselves in relationships and situationships. They’re experiencing more love, heartbreak, and the misguided antics of boys. "We have to take our power back as women and not allow ourselves to be played,” Chloe riffs.In January, the third season of their Freeform show, grown-ish, dropped. In the college-centered comedy, led by Yara Shahidi, Chloe plays Jazz and Halle plays Sky, ambitious twin sisters who attend the fictional state school Cal U. Jazz is balancing being in love with her boyfriend Doug (played by Diggy Simmons) and schoolwork; Sky is focused on being a track star while navigating her interracial relationship. Like the sisters in real life, their characters are witty, impeccably stylish, and proud of their Blackness. But unlike Chloe and Halle, they’re far more overt about their love lives — often kissing in hallways and openly discussing their sex lives — and unfiltered opinions.Before stay-at-home orders went into place, Chloe and Halle had been expanding farther into Hollywood, and pursuing separate film projects.In July 2019, it was announced that Halle is set to play Ariel in the live-action The Little Mermaid. Many saw Halle’s breakout feature-film role as a huge win for inclusion, but, like clockwork, people on social media found an issue with the revamped iteration of Ariel being played by a Black woman. Halle spoke out on the discourse, telling Variety at the time, “I feel like I’m dreaming, and I’m just grateful. I don’t pay attention to the negativity. I just feel like this role is something bigger than me. It’s going to be beautiful.”

Halle remains grateful, but says of the negative criticism, “We've always learned to just keep our heads up no matter the situation. No matter what anybody has to say about you...just keep pushing.”

Like Halle, Chloe is also expanding her acting chops in feature projects. In December, Chloe wrapped filming for her role in the horror film The Georgetown Project, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Simpkins. “I'm really protective of my energy, I'm very spiritual, and I love God,” she says about the thriller. “So I was constantly praying when I was on set. But surprisingly, the energy on set was so positive. And I learned so much by being around all of these Oscar-winning actors.”

Humility is a running trait between the sisters. They don’t hide their confidence, but are also God-fearing and incredibly gracious. They’re media-trained and polite, but also find a way to be frank. They say this album is a “whole different world” for them as they reveal more of their personalities, while exploring what it means to be grown women.

“We are learning to embrace who we truly are,” Chloe says about their music evolution. “Our insecurities, our sexuality, owning our power. I'm grateful that we are given a space where we can do that comfortably. And I'm grateful for our parents, because they instilled in us that we need to be strong and independent young women.”

[things2mustdo]

Last week I expounded the idea that we should take the time to ponder about emotions. These matter much in prompting us to take action or not to, to think about something or not to. Sustained emotional states can lead us to pedestalize girls, ignore our own needs, or refraining from caring about our own interests, whereas others push theirs every day. They can also allow said girls to go shamelessly after short-term pleasure, or be complacent to rapefugees while shrieking and finger-waving against men of their own kin.

Pondering passions and emotions does not mean getting led by them at the expense of critical thinking. Rather, it is the exact opposite, as it allows us to spot the shrewd ones who want to push our emotional buttons, as well as being freer to take more thoughtful and actually less emotion-determined actions. Once we have gained awareness of passions, we can decide which ones we want to stimulate and why.

Following this idea, I made some suggestions of how and in whom we could stir positive emotions such empathy, hope, and love. Today I will do the same with four other passions or emotions: admiration, shame, humility, and fear.

1. Admiration

Society, I think, should admit some victimhood to those who were raised as weaklings or acted cluelessly out of good intentions. Women in particular should be more empathetic and nurturing towards nice and beta males—as long as their empathy does not extent out of admitted boundaries—hence taking an opposite direction from the egotistical, uncaring orientation a lot of them currently harbor. Of course, this should not equate to validating too much the unhealthy, unmanly men: women should also be trained into validating more manlier men. And here admiration comes into play.

As Nassim Taleb put it, we are living more and more in an “extremistan” where those at the highest level take the lion’s share while the resources diminish quickly down the ladder. Girls today tend to admire only the most famous or high-status people, which leads them to despise the ninety-nine per cent. This exasperated hypergamy should be tamed so that the average man, as long as he achieves the minimum and/or is upstanding and dutiful, gets his fair share. A more “democratic” but still conditional distribution of girls’ admiration would reward actual good behaviour for men and decrease the intramasculine competition.

Girls should also admire—and not mock—proper feminine role models. Upstanding mothers, females taking proper care of themselves and so on ought to be at least esteemed by the average girl.

2. Shame

Shame arises from measuring our actions against moral standards and discovering that they fall short. If our actions fall short and we fail to notice, we can ‘be shamed’ or made to notice… Shame is normally accentuated if its object is exposed, but, unlike embarrassment, also attaches to a thought or action that remains undisclosed and undiscoverable to others. (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.4, p.38)

A particularly strong emotion, shame usually comes as a blow, makes one lose face or composure, to eventually feel guilt or remorse. Just like other strong emotions, it has been used with consumed malignancy by the Left.

Leftists created a narrative where whites are held entirely responsible for dreadful historical phenomena such as slavery, the Holocaust, an oppression of “minority” groups, or “racism.” As these phenomena are constantly talked about and expanded, whites are also supposed to feel a correspondingly boundless guilt. The sheer power of guilt can explain why so many whites have been afraid to stand up: being shamed as a “racist” or “Nazi” can be enough to endure rejection from one’s family, lose reputation and employment.

Shame can be aroused through two levers: the standards one agrees with, and one’s purported responsibility. Both levers have been skillfully used to unshame the liberal-favored groups. As for the standards, feminists attacked what they called slut-shaming while also shaming relentlessly manly behavior, and as for the responsibility, pretty much all those who claim to identify with a “minority” tend to deny all by slipping it over the majority’s shoulders.

This is how you get persistent offenders or Jihadi families expressing neither shame nor remorse, whereas the productive, working, and normally sociable person gets nagged for being white. In the Current Year, better be a true rapist who can evade responsibility and shame by invading Europe than a young virgin of European descent.

What we should do here sounds pretty obvious in theory though it will be much harder to carry on in practice, as people evidently hate being shamed, especially when they have been accustomed of blaming everything on the others.

Shame the fatties, shame the arrogant snowflakes whose unwillingness to respect is all too obvious, recall the self-determination of anti-white liberals and criminals. They all made free choices. They should carry all associated responsibility.

As for us, we must keep our face straight, never make clueless concessions to skillful framers or hysterical SJWs. If they appeal to moral standards, put forth your own as legitimate. If they appeal to your purported actions or responsibility, emphasize theirs—and how it cannot be boiled down to external factors.

Even dogs and cats are considered responsible by their caretakers so they can be punished for bad behaviours and learn: likewise, granting certain people or groups a constant de-responsabilization amounts to give them a free pass for destroying everything. Criminals of said groups have agency, and the liberals who gave them a pass to plunder and kill whitey are responsible as well.

Shame can also arise from being associated with something or someone deemed as despicable. The liberal policy of distinguishing sharply between terrorists and documented aliens, in spite of how much the latter to house the former, allows for the latter going without shame even when they are closely associated with terrorists—whereas every white is threatened with shame if he has a “-ist” or “-phobic” acquaintance.

Turn the table. Shake off the burden from the disenfranchised majority, and put it back on those who have been acting with impunity for too long.

3. Humility

Current Year girls’ overinflated ego is enough, notwithstanding economic or racial factors, to explain a host of social problems. Blinded by it, girls ignore how much they are determined by their own cravings, short-term desires, or by the latest fashions around. They drink loads of booze, fuck with random strangers, reframe their story as a “rape” later so they can blame it all on the guy. They never learn to cook, clean, take care of something else than their Instagram account and corporate career. (Speaking of corporate: isn’t it striking that so many men are badly in need of employment, sex, and have almost nothing, whereas spoiled corporate drones believe they can have—take—it all?)

Ego makes one lose any sense of proportion or balance. It leads to complacency, merciless exploitation of others, refusal to take responsibility, and open despise.

Augustine of Hippo wrote that humility was at the foundation of all other virtues. This makes sense. If one’s ego is inflated, one does not feel the need to practice virtues and feels entitled to never be ashamed of her shortcomings—that are easily denied or blamed on someone else. Ego also leads to wasting resources on luxury, parce que je le vaux bien, as says a famous brand of cosmetics, instead of focusing on self-improvement or caretaking.

Though girls should be the first to have their ego smashed, as the survival of basic family units depends on it, bloated ego is a general disease in our age. Men too can be sold the idea that, say, being a smug urban elf is a proof that one sides with progress and civilization whereas they are actually weak, dependent and unable to fix anything by themselves. It’s not all about our individual selves.

4. Fear

Readers asked for it, so, here it is. Fear is a very powerful emotion, to the point of prompting one to freeze, flee, abandon a previously planned course of action, or never even think to consider an idea or an action. The Left has been using it in two different, albeit complementary, ways.

First, it has constantly accused conservatives to “play on fears,” implying irrational or unjustified fears, when they dared to ask serious questions or making realistic assessment. When the 1965 Immigration Act was voted, democrat senators pretended that opening up the borders would not change the ethnic mix of America and that any suspicion it might happen was “highly emotional.” In France, the socialists and mainstream righters alike have been carrying the same accusations. Here the Left accused any doubt to be a hint of unjustified and intolerable “fear.”

Well, what happened since? Doesn’t it look like every “fear” from the right was justified—especially since the post-WW2 Right has always been incredibly wary, not to say coward, when it came to criticize the Left’s moral high ground?

Second, the Left has also been keen on doing exactly what it accused the conservatives to do, namely, stirring fear about political bogeymen. Liberals invented “rape culture” or “patriarchal oppression” when men actually became weaker. They associated to “Nazism” any white person who assumes his race should basically survive. They shamelessly bludgeoned whom they could call “white supremacists” as if defending one’s right to live in peace against hordes of thugs and violent parasites was equal to being Hitler himself.

Whites were led to fear their own supposed “authoritarian” tendencies, as the shrewd Jews who intrigued through the Frankfurt school put it (see Kevin MacDonald, Culture of Critique, chap.5). Whites were led to fear some of their fears—better have one’s daughter killed by Muslims than expressing concerns about them to other whites, because racism is so evil, boo.

When I was younger, I noticed the local thugs had a huge advantage over us normal people: they were much more fearless. They had this devil-may-care, provocative attitude, which made them potentially dangerous to the bourgeois prude beta male and attractive to females. Not incidentally, the first movie of the French essayist Alain Soral Confessions d’un dragueur (“Confessions of a Womanizer”) shows a young Arab with decent pick-up experience taking a young middle-class white boy under his wing as to help him escape from virginity.

Feeling fear is a necessary step in life. Fear appears greatly useful when there is something to flee from or watch as a potential hazard, but being too fearful or afraid of the wrong things can be a serious liability. Never trust a liberal who either points finger at you for being “fearful” or tries to paint you as dangerous and justifying his own fear-mongering.

On the flip side, being feared by others is not always a negative. Some people need to be afraid to respect you: if you try to treat them correctly or let free rein to your innate generosity, they will harm and exploit you. Such people, just as everyone around who may be tempted to disrespect, should be kept in check by a minimal fear. Better be feared and respected than getting tread upon.

Conclusion

Frame and unframe whatever matters when you have to, as you have to. The left cursed us by locking us into an always negative framing: when we fail, whatever the reason, we are despised as weak or “losers,” and when we succeed they say we are “privileged” and “oppressive.” In both cases, the chosen framing leads to negative emotions associated to us—no matter what we actually do.

Fortunately, it is always possible to turn the tables, provided we keep a tight frame, and change these emotions as well. For example, when we are weak, we should elicit empathy, be noticed for our good intentions or noble infirmities, and when we are strong, we should elicit admiration and trust.

Think, frame, feel positive about us and about what we do. Get rid of those who won’t.

Read Next: 3 Emotions Men Should Master

https://www.returnofkings.com/99453/3-more-emotions-men-should-master

Passions and emotions are an almost bottomless pit. Start digging there and you will find new ones, or new relations between this and that tidbit of emotional content. So-called Enlightenment philosophers who tried to theorize the passions—something that had been done at greater length, actually, by Thomas Aquinas—could never agree on how many there were or even how much they exactly mattered in the course of life.

Whether or not you have been reading my last two pieces on the topic, remember this is about mastering passions in the most general sense. This is not only about emotional restraint or seduction. Our own emotional states are the first in line, but mastering the passions is also about spotting what other people are feeling, how they can be led to a specific course of action, and what tends to make them tick. Mastering the passions is far from evident, it rather takes times and experience: the concepts and directions I am providing here aim at giving some conscious clarity about things that are by nature a bit muddy.

Artists, though they often suffer from mental problems, are skilled at painting a particular vision in vivid colours, allowing their public to share a specific point of view and emotional state. This is something the elite know very well. Critics trashed Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged because they could see themselves painted there as passive-aggressive cultural parasites. Rand’s novel was more cogent, and attracted more heat, than her barely original “philosophical” pieces today sold at the cheapest price on the second-hand book market.

More recently, the movie The Fall (2004) got backlashed by some of the mainstream media on the grounds that it depicted Hitler as “too human.” While seeing actor Bruno Ganz pondering, eating, talking to his closest company or getting angry, the viewer could perhaps feel a bit of empathy to him. Which is, of course, unacceptable to a Left that clings to the idea of a crazy, careless, “inhuman” dictator to be forever cast as an embodiment of evil. Hollywood directors do not like witnessing others competing with their own emotional mastery.

We need artists, as well as qualified cultural critics, to take some distance from the mainstream propaganda disguised as entertainment and expand an alternative culture and artworks. Emotions explored in the present series can be used just that way.

1. Gratitude

Gratitude denotes a trained and refined disposition. Being graceful means “recognizing that the good in our life can come from something that is outside us and outside our control” (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.8, p.61). It focuses on positive things we already have and that cannot be ascribed to our sole merit or efforts.

The traditional world, whatever the particular cultural or religious form it was embodied into, always emphasized the necessity of being grateful. You owed your existence to God, to your family and your community. None of these goods were actually deserved, which meant you had to be grateful for them and repay them by being a dutiful member of the community as well as a dutiful father for your own children. A lot of prayers and ancient rites imply a thanksgiving for what one already has.

Moving later in time, it is striking to see that modern progressivism breeds the exact opposite mindset. The ideology of rights make many goods granted, not a “thank you for” but an “I have a right to.” Neophilia (the relentless pursuit of novelty) always casts a bad shadow on what has been around for some time, as if what was coming later was always better.

Advertisement, gossip culture, economic growth pressure, quest for victimhood lead to envy and always being more or less frustrated with what one already has, regardless of what it is. By leading us to always want more, progressivism makes us oblivious to what we already have or how it does not stem from pure individual merit—and, when it flatters the ego, it makes us complacent and far from cultivating the art of being thankful.

Turning our backs from the modern, ungraceful mindset is easier said than done. To start with: loud-mouthed girls should be remembered they owe their nice, luxurious workplaces to the men who built them, LGBTBBQ should thank their heterosexual parents and ancestors for their very lives, anti-white black activists should remember they would not even exist had their ancestors not benefited from their white colonizers healthcare technology. Feel free to expand the list. Ultimately, I think, every person who is modern or westernized enough can be outed as ungraceful for something.

2. Trust

A famous study showed that multiculturalism was closely correlated with defiance and a lack of trust in each other. Provided that we enlarge a bit our definition of multiculturalism, this absolutely makes sense. Some ethnic groups are especially prone to violence, and some “minority” groups are rewarded for freely accusing the silent majority, but the hegemony of political correctness made it a taboo. Communities have been fragmented by individualism, i.e. each person looking to take as much as she can, and by an “antiracist” white guilt that soon became an intra-white generalized suspicion of “racism.” People do not identify anymore with the larger society and often cannot even identify with a smaller community—which makes everyone else a potential enemy.

Yet, without trust, life becomes unbearable. If you can’t go to the streets without the possibility of getting mugged by, say, BLM activists, or go to a family meal without the prospect of a lukewarm struggle with aging leftist parents, or have a relationship with a girl without the possibility of her making a false rape accusation, there aren’t a lot of things you can do on the long run. Without trust in other people, you have to trust the complex of big corporations, NGO, and State institutions we call the system—and be dependent from it for things as basic as food and shelter.

Only trust in each other can make life sustainable and long-term projects workable. To re-create trust, we have to make people accountable and bound to precise rules, reward good behaviours while punishing bad ones. Actions must bear consequences. But before neomasculinity gets into power, men should strive to establish a reputation through reliability, persistence, and a strong mindset. I could wager you have been more trusting of your Facebook friends last years than of the mainstream media, the former conveying more trustworthy information than the latter.

3. Desire

Modern capitalism and progressivism always ran on desire. Want cheaper prices? More goods? Better goods? More TV channels to watch? More monies? More ego and thinking you are the hot shit? Well, just buy in X or do some work for Y, and here it is… um, nah, you just have to do some more, and some more, and some more. In the end, you forgot why exactly you are doing what you’re doing, or why you started to watch TV. But it all started with you led to perform something, no matter how surreptitiously framed as spontaneous or normal it was.

The system plays on desires in three ways. It sets things to be desired, things to be feared or never desired at all, and things to be consummated without end. Things to be desired include everything the advertisement wants you to desire, like a revolving credit, a new sofa, an SUV or whatever, as well as the next step of “progress” as it has been elaborated on the top of the pyramid.

Things to be feared are where the system wants you to be resigned and fatalistic: did you ever feel sad to see all these girls losing themselves into a sea of fat, bitching, and SJW-propaganda spouting? Too bad, that’s globalization, resistance is futile, move on! At last, things to be consummated are mainly produced to keep you busy and programmed though you are not really practising anything beyond staring at a screen.

Lately, an important shift has been happening between the first and third ways to play on desires. Decades before, the average consumer had to desire owning more junk or being part of the “progress”: the system needed him to work and monitor his peers. Today, the junk is already everywhere, PC culture is already hegemonic, and the average American worker is no longer needed. Active desire is not needed anymore.

Thus, the system has shifted into making the average Joe more passive. Instead of actually desiring more, the consumer should be content with surrogates of everything—pseudo-group identity with team sports, pseudo-sports with football and basket on TV, pseudo-sex with porn, pseudo-life with video games, pseudo-family life with animals, pseudo-expertise when the average libtard obnoxiously parrots the media on everything. This is Brzezinski’s tittytainment in a nutshell.

Even if you don’t give up on having a real life instead of a surrogate, the system will still want you to desire things only for yourself, thus retreating into individualism, instead of trying to actually weight on the world. Either you surrender to “the progress” or you try to ignore it before it comes for you. As if nothing could change.

Don’t let the elite frame the world according to its own interests. Desire self-realization and weighting on the course of the world. Of course, our female counterparts should desire being loving, caretaking, and definitely on our side.

To conclude this series

Once again, it is hard to sketch in a few words what could be done with passions or emotions. What I have mostly dwelled into is how those already in power manipulate them and what we could do as to take them back. If you find the topic worthy of interest, you can expand it in two directions: first, documenting yourself on a particular passion or emotion, and second, using some by stirring it with a certain aim in mind.

In the former case, I would recommend Neel Burton’s Heaven and Hell (quoted several times in the course of this series) as a point of departure. In the latter, being creative or simply assertive is up to you. Whether this looks more like efforts or self-persuasion or artistry does not matter much.

Here, as well as in seduction, a tight framing is key. Whatever the topic, no vocabulary and no picture are really neutral, which is a problem as our perception and thinking orientation are often conditioned by these. The mastery of emotions is reinforced—and reinforces—the mastery of representations. If this sounds far-fetched, let me provide some examples of use, examples you are absolutely free to expand as it suits you.

In the comments space, several guys here have been giving a very negative portrayal of the nice guy: he would be a fake, a “sneaky bastard,” a “jerk.” So guys who want to get laid or have their own interests, just as everyone else, are jerks? This looks like internalized feminist thinking. In my opinion, nice guys should elicit empathy, which goes through a positive portrayal emphasizing their willingness to respect the girl or how they were likely raised by an unmanly culture.

A recent ROK piece about mainstream media has shown how these are making a conscious effort to hide and de-legimitate white victimhood: they paint vividly any crime where the victim is non-white and the perpetrator is, but mention no detail or do not mention at all any crime perpetrated by non-white(s) on white(s).

The same pattern appears in the movie Elysium (2013), when the (of course) white villain mentions children she wants to protect from a mass of brown invaders, yet these children are never shown and consequently stir no empathy from the average watcher, whereas the brown-skinned are vividly depicted as humane and not responsible for their own poverty.

Analyzing these phenomena is fine, but ultimately insufficient. Creative people on our side have to provide an alternative that includes mastered emotions. Picking up girls is part of, and gives some experience in, this wider game.

[averyjarhman]

Greetings. Witness Former FEMINISM Embracing Christa Marie Winchester Eloquently Explain Why She Decided To #WalkAway from Feminism, As Well As Values and Ideology Espoused By America's Democratic Party.

"I have been holding off with my story because I wanted to keep free the stage for those who are newly transitioned from the Democrat Party in the days before the election. My story is quite relevant, but it has been some years now since I transitioned. I was raised in a home where politics were rarely discussed. Looking back, I now understand that we were of conservative values, but I had no awareness of this or, of anything political for that matter, while growing up.

After graduating high school, I drove myself to a new state and began putting myself through college. It did not take very long for me to notice that politics was not only "a thing" on campus, but it was a big enough deal that my college math professor found it an important regular topic in class. My peers all felt the same way about just about everything and so I fell hard and fast into group-think acceptance. This was particularly robust because America was seeing the very first African American President on the ballot and oh boy, did I latch onto the emotional arguments in his favor!

I voted for President Obama in my freshman year of college. I systematically cataloged every narrative that I heard my peers mimic from the mainstream media and I spat that montage of surface level understanding at anyone who expressed a different opinion. I noticed how frustrated I would become when opposite opinions would back me into a corner where I had no parroted response to pull from my proverbial file cabinet. It was in one of these moments where my competitive nature took over and I would start the transformation to become an intellectual.

I went out to find information to support my liberal views-- REAL information that the conservatives couldn't argue. I dug and searched and read article after article and then...four years after I voted for Obama, I found myself rooted in conservative values once again. There was no information to back up my view as a registered Democrat. There were gaping holes in arguments that I could not explain and I could not ignore and through seeing this, I gravitated quickly back down to reality. I am now 32 and I have become that calm, centered and grounded political mind that once enraged my liberal 19 year old self. There is great comfort and credibility that comes from truth and there is very little of that in today's Democrat party.

Looking back, I acknowledge only one regret from my liberal past and that is the embrace of a new culture in feminism pushed for political exploitation. I was never a "feminist" activist but I was a product of the mentality that women can carry a man's heavy load as well and as far as he can-- that women should be independent and need not seek a partner because she can handle her own life and all that it entails.

Now, I know and I understand that not all women seek men and I respect those people's humanity. I mean no disrespect when I say this:

If there is any wisdom that I may share that perhaps many of you beautiful ladies do not already know, it is this: your femininity is beautiful and these attributes are things that you have which men do not have. Just as we women do not have some attributes that men are given. We balance one another out and that is what is so fantastic. Treasure that unique beauty, grace, elegance and kindness that God has given to you and receive your partner for those qualities that God gave to him.

Due to this feminist movement, I pushed myself to meet and exceed a man's standard-- I became a Wildland Firefighter, learned construction and ran my own handyman business for which I shortened my first name to "Chris" in order to get more work. I broke horses (and myself), hauled truckloads of firewood split and stacked, worked on my own vehicles and all the while I let my natural talents fade to the background. I did not wear dresses, heels and I did not let anyone help me or see my vulnerability because weakness was not acceptable in the feminist culture.

Now, I am 32 with more land than I have time, more things in need of repair than my hands have hours to fix, more paranoid sleepless nights than restful ones, and all of those aspects of who I really am and what I really want, those aspects that I put to the background because that was for "weak women", are the very things that I wish for the most. I managed to become a model replacement for the other half of my life that should be filled appropriately to bring so much joy and relief-- that replacement that I have become is for a partner who is present physically, emotionally and intimately.

Feminism pushed by the Democrat agenda quite honestly ruined my life. I wanted to be married, but this union has been made to look like a regression of a woman's rights. I wanted to be the graceful and elegant wife to a good man who cares for me, but this has been made to demonstrate a woman as meek and subservient. I never wanted to break my back like I have for 18 years but this has been made into a glorifying picture of perfection for the feminist revolution once depicted by a pin up girl in the 1940's rolling up her sleeve and flexing her bicep.

I realize that my experience with the Democrat's feminist movement is not one size fits all but my point here is quite the reverse. Who you are at your core, not anywhere in between, is precisely who you need to be true to. Regardless of pressures that may be skipping along the surface, the gifts bestowed to you are beautiful and you must resist downplaying them because a "movement" discounts them. I pray each day that our youth will wake before they are swallowed like I was swallowed. Walk Away has provided a group where this is possible and I only wish I had been able to stumble upon something similar all those years ago.

I support our President Trump, our Veterans and this beautiful country-- America as founded. Here, everyone is indeed created equal and we use our gifts accordingly within the framework to keep the harmonious balance of Freedom and Liberty. To fight for this, do not be afraid to speak the truth. Remain respectful and kind, but do not let fear stop you from doing, or saying, what is right and true. Everything that you may encounter as you stand for your beliefs will be worth it in the end.

God Bless you all." ~Christa Marie Winchester

https://www.facebook.com/groups/OFFICIALWalkAwayCampaign/permalink/4016075181745693/

☮️♥️🇺🇲 EndHate

[lastsonlost]

Just when you thought this story could not get any more disgusting.

Now we have one slimy disgusting trash person being offended by a whole group of slimy disgusting trash people.

The Des Moines Register reporter fired in the wake of a scandal involving offensive tweets — posted by a viral star he interviewed and then his own — broke his silence Friday, telling BuzzFeed News he had been “abandoned” by the newspaper after following standard editorial practice by performing a social media search on the person he was profiling.

“This event basically set my entire life on fire,” reporter Aaron Calvin said.

Calvin, 27, was dismissed by the Iowa newspaper Thursday evening following criticism online in the wake of his article about 24-year-old casino security worker Carson King.

On Sept. 14 at the Iowa State University vs. University of Iowa football game in Ames, King had appeared in the background of ESPN’s College GameDay holding a sign that said “Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished,” along with his Venmo handle. After King received $600, he announced he would instead donate his growing beer fund to a local children’s hospital. The fundraiser soon went viral, and Venmo and Anheuser-Busch offered to match the donations. King wound up raising over $1 million, and he was quickly catapulted into being a local legend and viral internet hero.

Upon the fundraiser hitting the million-dollar mark, Calvin decided to profile King, whom he’d already covered in several stories. But soon Calvin, who worked as a BuzzFeed employee between 2013 and 2014, found two racist tweets King had posted when he was 16. Calvin wrote that the tweets, which have since been deleted, were jokes “comparing black mothers to gorillas and another making light of black people killed in the Holocaust.”

Calvin told BuzzFeed News it’s standard practice at the Des Moines Register to background check people they profile through court records and social media. “I was reminded by an editor to background Carson...and I found a few tweets that he published in high school that were racist jokes,” he said. “I knew if I found them, other people would find them as well.”

Des Moines Register executive editor Carol Hunter declined to comment for this story, but referred BuzzFeed News to an op-ed she published in which she called “backgrounding” an “essential” part of reporting. “The process helps us to understand the whole person,” she wrote.

Calvin said his editors told him to ask King about the tweets, so he did. "He was deeply regretful, and I recognized that these were not representative artifacts of Carson,” Calvin said.

In writing his profile, Calvin said he decided to include just a “brief mention of these tweets and his apology at the bottom of this profile, after the glowing synopsis of his charity.” The reporter said he felt an obligation to share the information he’d uncovered with the public, but thought he did so in a “thoughtful” way that showed the tweets no longer showed King’s worldview.

He also maintained he did this with the full blessing and awareness of senior editors. “Throughout this entire process of the discovery and inclusion of the tweets, the editor knew, the editorial board knew, and the executive editor knew how I’d included them and handled them for the article, and as far as I knew, approved of that,” he said.

On Tuesday night, before the profile was published, King held a press conference to apologize for the tweets, which he said had been found by a reporter. He said he wrote the posts when he was a high school sophomore and had been making reference to the show Tosh.0.

“In re-reading it today — eight years later — I see it was an attempt at humor that was offensive and hurtful,” he continued. “I am embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16 years old. I want to sincerely apologize.”

Anheuser-Busch cut ties with King after the press conference. King said he did not blame Calvin, saying that he appreciated that he’d pointed out the tweets and had simply wanted to apologize. “The Des Moines Register has been nothing but kind in all of their coverage, and I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me,” he tweeted.

Upon publishing the story, Calvin said he was immediately met with criticism from people across Iowa who accused him of trying to denigrate a local hero.

But any media ethics debate about the newsworthiness of tweets written by someone when they were a teenager was soon swept aside by a tidal wave of harassment, doxing, and death threats Calvin received.

Soon, influential right-wing media figures also began circulating screenshots of Calvin’s own past offensive tweets that had been uncovered. In posts dating back to 2010, Calvin had used “gay” as a pejorative, written “fuck all cops,” and spelled out the word “niggas” twice when he was quoting others, including a Kanye West lyric. “Now that gay marriage is legal,” he wrote in one 2012 tweet, “I’m totally going to marry a horse.”

Calvin told BuzzFeed News these were “frankly embarrassing” tweets that he “would not have published today,” but said they had been “taken out of context” and were being used to “wield disingenuous arguments against me.”

Calvin said editors at the Des Moines Register directed him to apologize in a tweet, which he said he agreed to do because he was “afraid and just trying to comply with what I was being told so I could possibly hold onto my job.”

In the tweet, Calvin apologized for “not holding myself to the same high standards as The Register holds others.”

“I regret publishing that tweet now,” Calvin told BuzzFeed News. “Because I was never trying to hold Carson to any kind of ‘higher standard’ or any kind of standard at all. I was trying to do my job as a reporter, and I think I did so to the best of my ability.”

As soon as the story broke, Calvin said he began receiving a barrage of death threats. He said HR reps at Gannett, which owns the Des Moines Register, forbade him from speaking to the media and told him to leave his apartment for his own safety. They offered to put him up in a hotel, but he stayed with a friend instead.

“I recognize that I’m not the first person to be doxed like this — this whole campaign was taken up by right-wing ideologues and largely driven by that force,” he said. “It was just a taste of what I assume that women and journalists of color suffer all the time, but the kind of locality and regional virality of the story made it so intense.”

On Thursday, while he was speaking to police about the death threats, Calvin said he got a call from Gannett representatives. “They told me they were going to offer me an option — that I could resign or I could be fired — with no severance,” he said. “It was really a semantic difference, I guess, so I chose to be fired.”

A Gannett spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the company does not comment on personnel matters.

In her op-ed, Hunter, the executive editor, wrote they were now evaluating how reporters perform background checks on subjects and what information should be published from those checks. She said their focus was partly on “the shift in social media culture and how activities on those platforms reflect upon a person’s newsworthiness in general.”

With regard to Calvin’s firing, Hunter wrote that they “took appropriate action because there is nothing more important in journalism than having readers’ trust.”

King did not respond to a request for comment on Calvin’s dismissal.

Calvin said he hasn’t heard from Gannett or his newsroom leaders since his firing, but said some of his former coworkers have reached out in support.

Though Calvin said he regrets his tweets, he thinks they were taken out of context by bad actors to make him look like a racist and homophobe. “As I said when I was speaking with Carson, I don’t think people’s past social media statements should be made to make blanket characterizations about them,” he said.

He also expressed his frustration about the “false narrative about me ‘canceling’ Carson.”

“Carson was never in danger of being canceled — there was no attempt or intent to quote-unquote ‘cancel’ him,’” Calvin said. “He’s raised hundreds of thousands more dollars since this happened. The governor of Iowa declared a ‘Carson King Day.’”

(“You can make a mistake in your life, and still go on to do amazing things,” Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted Wednesday. “@CarsonKing2, thank you for reminding us all of that! #IowaProud.”)

Calvin said he’s still afraid to go out in public and is still staying at his friend’s house. He isn’t sure what he will do next, but hopes he can keep reporting.

“I’m just taking it day by day,” he said. “I feel like I’m a good writer and a good reporter and I was doing my job to the best of my ability.”

Calvin said he also still deeply believes in the “necessity of local journalism.”

“Frankly, it’s really disappointing to me to be abandoned by my former employer,” he said. “I still in a lot of ways support the Register — I just wish they had believed in me.”

Have you ever read so much bullshit that it made you almost vomit in your mouth?

This motherfucker just try to roast a man's life and is now trying to play the victim after he got a dose of his own hypocritical medicine.

Also BuzzFeed is in rare form today. We have both the right-wing Boogeyman, online harassment and women and people of color being in votes for pity points.

Did you ever see obvious manipulation look so obvious?

[livesbeneath]

i'm so sorry for asking so many but .. 1-10 for the ilitw ask meme? i love reading about the mc's relationships with the characters bc it always differs between players :')

it lives in the woods mc ask meme. 

pls don’t apologize u made my ENTIRE DAY!!!! i love learning abt people’s mcs too!  (putting some of this under a read more bc it’s gonna get long)

what is your mc’s name? gender? orientation? ethnicity? any other tidbits you feel compelled to share?:

my mc’s (full) name is harley maura blanco! she’s a cis female, bi, white, and the only daughter of two super successful entrepreneurs.   she has absolutely zero clue what she wants do with her life, and while school doesn’t particularly engage her, she isn’t really a slacker.   lives most of her life in her head, more street smart than book smart.  collects pins as a hobby!

rank the members of your friend group in order of who your MC was closest with to who they were least close with:

this one is SUPER hard just because she’s pretty close with all of them for different reasons.  here’s a subject to change list:  dan, noah, ava, lily, lucas, andy, stacy. 

thoughts on dan pierce and your mc’s relationship with him:

other than jane, dan was the one that harley was arguably the closest with as a kid. neither had siblings, so they sort of became each other’s brother and sister. after their mishap on halloween of dressing as the same character, they made it a tradition to do so every year.    the split from dan was really hard. she never resented him for climbing the social ladder and succeeding in high school, but she also never picked up on him struggling, which is something she kicks herself for endlessly. when she gets that text from him at the start of the book, she’s terrified, but also excited deep down that dan would message her after so long.    even if they didn’t speak much until his rescue, they were never on bad terms.  she dies mere hours after really reconnecting with him, but feels more relief after she saves him than she does at any point in the story. 

thoughts on noah marshall and your ,c’s relationship with him:

noah and harley’s relationship kind of serves as the crux of my ilitw narrative.   she had an innocent crush on him as a kid, something he resented due to how jealous he was of her relationship with jane.    these feelings come back to bite her in the ass full force after they reconnect at the start of the plot.   her and noah have just always been on the same wavelength, part of the same crowd, with the similar morals and ways of thinking; there are plenty of fish in the sea, but she wants the one emotionally unavailable fish.   both of them harbor that guilt over not being able to protect jane,  and that is what makes harley almost reach out to him a handful of times before the plot actually kicks in.   the betrayal stings her harder than anything else, as she really thought they were getting to a place where they understood one another, but she still can’t find it in herself to be 100%b angry with him.    she chooses to die in his place because even after everything,   she loves him. 

thoughts on andy kang and your mc’s relationship with him:

andy is the one that makes harley laugh the most.   he brings out her livelier side and reminds her that she does know how to have fun,  which is something she kind of forgot was possible after becoming so withdrawn.    it can be assured whenever they’re together that harley is 10/10 the one that’s going to egg andy on in his antics.    even in the time that the two of them were apart,  harley was always silently cheering andy on from the sidelines.   the true testament to their friendship comes with how quickly they were able to pick up where they left off as kids after not speaking to each other pretty much at all in the ten years between jane’s death and redfield’s resurgence.    there are maybe 20 minutes of awkwardness between them before they go back to cracking jokes and being stupid together,  and when andy is kidnapped and hurt,  it’s the sight of him being dragged through those doors that superpowers harley into becoming the hero of the night. 

thoughts on ava cunningham and your mc’s relationship with her:

as someone who is a bit offbeat, harley appreciates how unapologetically herself ava is.   they bond over the fact that they aren’t like the masses and they they, in return, don’t really care what the masses think of them.    even though ava is seen as unapproachable to most, harley actually finds her pretty easy to talk to once she gets past the initial fear of starting a conversation with her, and once they’re back on common ground during the plot,  that fear vanishes entirely.    they have a lot of similar views and share that “brave even in the face of death” mentality,  meaning that ava is one of the people harley tends to go to first about most things.    through that,  they talk a lot on the regular about stuff other than redfield as well.    harley is,  quite frankly,  terrified for ava when redfield gives her powers.    she sees ava as one of the group’s MVPs due to her knowledge of the supernatural and her all around badassery,  and is sick at the thought of losing her to those very things. 

thoughts on lucas thomas and your mc’s relationship with him:

despite their obvious aesthetic differences at first glance,   harley and lucas balance each other out perfectly.    lucas is,  truly,  harley’s impulse control, and he helps her think through a lot of her good ideas to make them into rational good ideas.   in return,  harley knows how to sort through lucas’ problems to make them more manageable and imposes her more easygoing attitude on him when he needs it.   harley has never held any grudge against him for becoming popular,  as she mostly just saw him as an incredibly hard worker.   for the longest time (until finding out about his struggles) she admired his work ethic, and definitely voted for him in every class election and similar situations.    harley and lucas probably confide in each other  /  keep each other in check more than anyone else in the team.    lucas was one of the gang members that harley spoke to the most throughout the ten year lapse,   each conversation a short,  friendly burst as they went opposite directions socially. 

thoughts on stacy green and your mc’s relationship with her:

stacy is the member of the gang that, at the START of the story, harley feels she understands the least.   the constant association of her with cody, britney, and jocelyn puts a very sour taste in harley’s mouth  -  even if stacy herself isn’t doing any of the bullying,  she doesn’t say anything.    their relationship reaches that deep place when stacy vents out to her that she’s being blackmailed by britney,  which kicks up harley’s instinct to protect her friends.   the two are pretty opposite in most ways,   but their differences strengthen their friendship more than anyone else in the group.    even when stacy doesn’t think of herself as a good person,  harley does,   and lifts her up at every opportunity she possibly can because she knows what stacy is capable of.    emotionally,   they are an outlet for one another about their respective social circles.   physically,  they are two of the most unassuming yet strongest fighters on the team,  and work very well together in a battle setting. 

thoughts on lily ortiz and your mc’s relationship with her:

lily is unequivocally,  the one member of the original group that harley talked with the most throughout the ten year span between jane’s death and redfield’s awakening.    both of them were deemed to be Losers by the popular kids,   but both of them were open enough to seek each other out again from time to time,  which explains how easy it is for them to talk at the start of the book,  even if they didn’t necessarily consider themselves “friends” during that gap.    harley is very protective of lily solely because she knows lily is good enough to give second chances to people like britney,  but she never babies her,  simply giving her advice when she sees fit out of the goodness of her heart.    lily is one of the group members that harley actually feels most comforted by when she realizes how thin she’s trying to stretch herself to keep everything intact.    all danger aside,  harley and lily just genuinely think the other is so cool. 

thoughts on connor green and your mc’s relationship with him:

in my narrative, harley and connor’s relationship serves as one of the foils to her relationship with noah.   she didn’t pay too much mind to him when they were kids,  often just thinking of him as stacy’s sill older brother,   but they take an obvious interest in each other all those years later.    harley doesn’t quite realize that 1. connor has a crush on her, because no one’s ever had a crush on her before or 2. that what she does could be considered flirtatious, because she’s never flirted with anyone before.    any romantic feelings she has are reserved for noah,   but she does value connor’s friendship a great amount and thinks he’s extremely cool.     they share a lot of similarities,  from not really knowing what they want to do with their lives to their generally unbothered dispositions,  but what connor really wants is to,  as things get more dire,  save harley.    what he doesn’t realize is that harley is the hero of this story. 

[troubleswift22]

Posted this on Facebook, but wanted to share here as well.

Alright so I don't like to post politics on my Facebook for many reasons(and was hoping to post some cool personal updates), but I think I need to speak out on some things that i've been wanting to talk about for years(but have been afraid to do so due to antagonizing people that I am close with in my life). If you have time, please please read as i'm about to say some things i've been wanting to get out for years and i'm about to get real vulnerable here about some subJects that I can no longer be silent about......

The state of the world we are in right now is far too dangerous to ignore, and i'm sick and tired of people in my life who are defending Trump and who have no idea what's going on other than their own personal beliefs they get from Fox News. I'm going to hide this post from family and a bunch of people, but if you see this and are a huge Trump Supporter or something and disagree, we can have a civil debate in my messages, or feel free to remove me if you are going to be rude about it(or ignore it, like I probably usually do for you.) I simply don't have the time, energy, or resolve to get into a long argument, but it is what it is. Feel free to leave a comment though, Just be nice. 

As the protests are going on now in Kenosha Wisconsin after the shooting of James Blake, a far-right militia member about an hour or so ago murdered 5 protesters. These protesters were not causing any damage or any problems, and I saw this as it was happening live on Periscope, no media spin attached.  As many other cities have done, they are fighting for the simple reason that Black Lives Matter, and enough is enough. I'm sick and tired of seeing new names being added to an ongoing list of innocent black lives being murdered. Breonna Taylor. Philandro Castille, Trevon Martin, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, and many more names. Seeing the video of what happened with James hit me even hard then George Floyd for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that gun-shots were featured idk. While I understand the convenient narrative being pushed that rioting is bad, as Martin Luther King Jr says "A riot is the language of the unheard".  Anyone who knows me knows I don't condone violence, as i'm a huge pacifist, and have even had this used against me in my life to take advantage of my kindness. However, who is really listening to black lives when they do try to speak out? Collin Kapernick sat down during the national anthem, he got criticized. So he changed to kneeling, still criticized.  People were(and still are in many instances) peacefully protesting, and many still aren't being heard. I'm studying Psychology as an Undergrad, and it makes sense that when people aren't being heard they tend to lash out and violence often ensues.  That's what tends to happen when your community constantly is having trauma inflicted on them.  I'm not condoning it, but maybe we should listen to people who have been trying to get our attention for years and do something to fix the root cause of this issue.

Most politicians on both sides don't care. Just like Trump didn't care when he's personally made decisions that affect either myself, many of my friends I have made both online and offline, as well as my basic sense of empathy for humanity.  A sampling of these actions include trying to remove DACA, eroding LGBT rights or attacking those in the LGBT community, Trans-Military Ban, Muslim Ban, promoting violence through his Twitter, ruining the mail system that many people rely on for basic needs, saying that there were "good people on both sides" in Charlottesville when Heather Hayer(a Bernie supporter) got run over by a car by Neo-Nazis, gaslighting anyone who disagrees with his views, among others.  It's not a political issue. I don't care if you support Republicans because you believe that "Socialism is a bad economic policy that would ruin our country" or something like that. I'm a Libertarian Socialist, but that's beside the point, vote for who you want. But when Trump systemically comes for my friends and attacks those I love and care about, I'm not going to stay silent. 



Finally, this also ties into my religious faith. Growing up as a Christian, I grew up with the teachings of Jesus Christ and i'm sick and tired of so called "Christians" using their beliefs to try to Justify voting Trump, because they want "A conservative maJority on the Supreme Court" or are "Pro-Choice", or "Mike Pence is a strong Evangelical." Trump is the biggest con artist this country has ever had, and I can't believe so many people I love and care about are falling for this. He doesn't care about Evangelicals. He doesn't have love in his heart, and Jesus would probably be out there with the protesters right now fighting for Change. I had to fight with whether I was still a Christian for many years after graduating High School, due to seeing how so called "Christians" and people I love have so much hate in their heart. I have Just recently reconciled with the fact that there are many other Christians Just like me who want to do what's right. Innocent people are dying from Covid due to our president. He's trying to divide us up in order to win, as that's all he has left. I've been called not a "true Christian" due to my views(which is literally a logical fallacy by the way), and i've gotten so much hate from people due to being Bisexual, a Libertarian Socialist, and a Christian who is mostly alienated from those I grew up with. But idc anymore. I'm not arguing to vote for Biden at all, I personally don't like either candidate. But please, don't vote Donald Trump. I don't know what else to say, but seeing constant hate and divisiveness has really being causing some awful depression lately, and I needed to share. 

I'm going back to bed, and then continue working on my Junior Year Psychology courses that I started Monday with UCF Online. I have known since 2017 I want to work in Mental Health, and we need/will need it more than ever. This post might have a lot of spelling and grammar errors, and normally I would spend time proofreading my post more. But it doesn't matter. Innocent people are dying every day, things like that are insignificant. Make sure you use your platform to do what you can to change the world. Silence is complicity. Black Lives Matter. LGBT lives matter. If you are also a Christian, please consider your actions and how they might be impacting those around you. Because for all you know they are absolutely heartbroken, and have reconsidered whether their morals are in line with the Christian faith. If I can share something as vulnerable as this publicly on Facebook(which could get me in huge trouble with my family), then you can put a little effort in to make some change. Register to vote by mail at vote.gov. Vote the day(or within a few days of) when it arrives, or early-vote/ drop it off to ensure it's counted. Finally, make sure to have these tough conversations with those you care about. Remember it's supposed to be uncomfortable, as creating change around you shouldn't be comfortable.  If you read all this, please stay safe, wear a mask, and consider how your actions affect those around you.


In solidarity,


Alex Morgan

[donnerpartyofone]

while i’m apparently still in confession mode for some dark reason: 

after i told that awful story yesterday about the degrading one night stand that an older male friend spent a year bullying me into, i started thinking about all the cliches that are sold to us about the sexuality of precocious young women: what it means for us to navigate the devious emotional traps set out by the jealous and covetous world around us. what i mean is, there’s this whole gothic narrative that never stops circulating, involving beautiful, talented, intelligent, sensitive young women who are advanced enough to start exploring their own desires independently, but not experienced enough to identify the (typically) older male predators who hunt them. these men take advantage of their uninformed curiosity, leveraging their prey’s desire to grow up faster in order to control, possess, and abuse them. while this narrative is inherently criminal, society never seems willing to fully denounce it, preferring to preserve its erotic potency for a wide and slavering audience. the iconography of this narrative is mostly derived from Lolita–

[which btw our cultural failure to see that book as anything other than a “love story” is really disturbing and speaks volumes about our willingness to project our grossest ideas wherever we want, even when other interpretations (like “black comedy”) are abundantly available]

–a mature but fragile adolescent with that /special something/ innocently hypnotizes a genteel older man whose sophistication belies his uncontrollable animal desire for her, which is less His Problem than it is a natural response to her beauty and charm; a  forbidden love affair ensues. when i was young, i swallowed this concept hook line and sinker, hoping it would happen to me some day! i hated dumb little boys my own age, and i felt that if some Humbert Humbert type were to flatter me with his highly curated attention, then i would know that i had truly arrived.

“sadly”, i made it through high school and college without ever knowing that validating thrill. i wasted the latter half of my 20s on an abusive relationship with a guy two years younger than me, who often argued that he should be allowed to wreck my life however he wanted because he was “less mature” than i was and deserved more leeway. as i turned 30, i met the extraordinary person i would marry. i felt a profound sense of relief, entering my 30s; i had finished with so many of my old delusions, and the pulverizing pressure to have The Time of Your Life throughout one’s 20s had finally lifted. i looked back on my youth, thinking of it as a period of dreary, pointless misery in which “nothing really happened”, good or bad. but recently, when i started to think about it with greater focus, i realized that some shit really DID happened to me. i had just completely ignored it, because i thought of it as the fruits of my own bad taste. 

throughout junior high, i had a bizarre rapport with a guy in his early 20s–”nothing happened”, as they say, but this guy was sort of a freak and a loner, and i’m probably lucky that there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for something TO happen. then my supposed best friend, jealous of even this non-event in my sad little existence, forced a relationship with a 30 year old man out of nowhere, and competitively abused my ears with a lot of gnarly details about their horrible sex life. then in high school, my first two boyfriends were both pretentious manipulative dickheads in their 20s who really had no business bothering someone who wasn’t old enough to vote. some of my friends suffered from the same problem, though we all just felt like we were becoming independent young women or something. then there’s some other stuff with an older classmate who was abundantly aware of how emotionally unstable i was, and took appalling advantage of that for a long time, and i probably won’t ever be brave enough to talk about it. then in college i briefly “dated” a guy around 50 with whom luckily nothing bad happened before i got rid of him, but like, it really wasn’t cool, looking back–he made me feel incredibly obligated, and as he only informed me mid-stream, he was married with children. then i spent the rest of college getting dragged through the mud by a guy in his 30s who used his professional clout and well-honed manipulative abilities to “take my virginity” (a phrase and concept i hate, but which applies here), which he was very excited about; it would have been best if he had just abandoned me after that, as so many assholes do, because he then cultivated a long tawdry and extremely damaging soap opera between us, the only point of which was to make trouble for his actual girlfriend, who was ALSO much younger than him. and the end of college and slightly after, i developed another intense connection with a man a few decades older, who would never quite initiate a relationship, but who was insidiously manipulative and made me feel terrible when i eventually got a real (age-appropriate) boyfriend, as if i owed him something; i later found out he did the same thing to another girl that i know, who is substantially younger. the terrible one night stand, previously discussed, was just a gross little footnote to this disgusting history…

…but the thing is, i never, at any time, felt like i had taken part in the overheated archetypal drama that society has built up around may-december romances. i didn’t even see myself as a victim of the bad behavior of adults, of people who should and did know better; i just felt separate from the whole thing, even though i had fantasized about it so much as a kid. the thing is, at the same time that the Lolita narrative is inappropriately romanticized, it does provide an opportunity to see the girl as a potential victim, a Little Red Riding Hood who enters a perilous erotic negotiation with a Big Bad Wolf. because i didn’t see myself as the heroine of my own iteration of this overly familiar story, i didn’t recognize the degree to which i’d been exploited by people who knew to use my youth and inexperience against me. i just blamed myself. and the reason for all this is really sad: i simply didn’t feel attractive. in my mind, the vulnerable nymphet was always delicate, doe-like, elegant; clothes hung on her alluring frame in a way that created a dizzying paradox between her youth and her emerging maturity; she could dance, play music, or write touching poetry; she was preternaturally irresistible even to “good men”. she had to be liv tyler in STEALING BEAUTY (*barf*) or some shit; only somebody that compelling could star as the doomed princess in society’s well-loved fairy tale about statutory rape. personally, i perceived myself as ugly, awkward, socially burdensome, and most importantly, the kind of girl who should count herself extremely lucky to be the center of anybody’s attention, even temporarily. because i didn’t see myself as a damsel in distress who deserved protection and sympathy, i failed to spot my own victimization. i thought of my history of increasingly negative and abusive encounters with older men as a matter of bad luck, bad judgment on my own part, and ultimately, “the best i could do” if i wanted any kind of affection. so i guess the irony is that if i had identified myself as a desirable dolores hayes type, then yes, i would have been in serious danger of fetishizing my own mistreatment–but on the other hand, i would have had a more realistic framework for understanding the sinister thing that was happening to me. unfortunately, the other side of the misogyny coin–not the side that turns you into a sex object, but the side that excludes you from feeling sexually worthy at all–prevented me from noticing that that awful Little Red Riding Hood cliche had already happened to me several times over.

tl;dr - when misogyny convinces you that you have nothing to steal, then it’s hard to tell when misogynists are trying to rob you.

it’s funny to start recognizing this only now that i’m approaching 40. i see a lot of young women on tumblr heroically fighting to strike a balance between enjoying their kinks and avoiding the corrupt elements in their communities–all the while trying to stay aware of how their personal history and mental health plays into this drama. some of them are way farther along in that philosophical journey than i was at their age, and i really admire the work they’re doing. i’m writing this more for the ones who don’t even know that they’re already a part of this struggle, because they haven’t learned to see themselves as desirable enough to be included in it. that is to say, i wrote this for myself; but i have a sneaking suspicion that someone else out there needs to hear it, too.

This post brought to you in part by the very beginning of CABIN IN THE WOODS, which, while not a deep film in any way, features a salient moment in which College Girl #1 tries to tell College Girl #2 that the professor who took advantage of her is a scumbag, and College Girl #2 defends him, humbly and maturely replying: “I knew what I was getting into.” The blood freezes in my veins when I think of how many times I said something like this about someone who did not deserve my defense. If you got dicked over, literally and/or figuratively, by someone older, sober-er, and/or more experienced than you, then this is your gentle reminder that you really cannot be accused of knowing what you’re getting into.

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

Title: saw your face and got inspired Pairing: Mohammed Razzouk/Amira Thalia Mahmood Summary: Amira’s getting ready for another year of university when she meets a special someone who knocks her fully off her feet. My @yousanaexchange gift for the awesome, super sweet and super smart @thickskinandelasticheart I tried really hard to make it enemies-to-lovers as per your request but it might be a bit more of dumbasses-to-lovers. Either way, I hope you like it! I really enjoyed writing it. Special shout out to @naslostcontrol for reading it over and making sure it was fit for public consumption 😊

It's not like Amira planned to end up in this situation, it just kind of spiraled out of control. She's never been scared to speak up or voice her opinion, but she's realising that they've been arguing for 15 minutes at this point and the rest of the group is starting to shift in their seats and look at their phones. Amira takes a deep breath, then stares into Mohammed's frustratingly sparkly eyes and calmly says, "Look, I just don't think it's fair to demand emotional labour from oppressed groups in order to educate those who don't give a single shit." She shrugs and then looks over at Faizal, the president, and says, "Uhm, sorry, this really wasn't relevant for the meeting."

She can see from the corner of her eye that Mohammed's head is tilted as he stares her down from across the room. As if she's going to be intimidated by that? What a dick.

Faizal smirks, rolling his eyes, "oh, so we're allowed to move on now? You're finished now?"

Amira smiles angelically, simply adding, "Yep."

The meeting was supposed to be about what kinds of educational events the islamic society wants to do, and Amira thinks all the suggested options cater way too much to the Alman desire rather than intra community issues and needs. She's honestly sick and tired of having to sit through the same kinds of panels discussing whether or not islam is actually feminist/sexist/peaceful/violent/homophobic and so on, she's sick of force-feeding Almans hours of information and sharing her lived experiences only to be met with the same kind of liberal 'color blindness' bullshit she's faced since kindergarten. She deals with enough of that from her fellow students, professors, even the girls from time to time. The islamic society was supposed to be a place where she could chill and hang out with "her people". Faizal decides that they'll postpone the decision making another few weeks and in the meantime asks everyone to make sure they send in suggestions, so the future votes can be as democratic as possible.

Amira takes that as a slight dig, because she knows her opinions aren't really popular among the group. She came into the society looking for friends from within the community but she's managed to clash with most of the group in some way, either with her views or more likely the way she presents them. Nothing out of the ordinary, to be honest. She honestly understands the point of inclusive or educational events, but she would just love it if they could do something else as well. She'd love for them to go beyond what makes the university look good and woke, and do some important things. Create real change. The way German society still isn't okay with hijabis in certain careers is only one of the issues that she's passionate about, but the rest of the society seem to be fine with focusing their attention and resources on holding Eid barbecues and islamic panels where everyone always agrees on everything. She wants to do something that makes a difference. Something that matters. Maybe this society isn't the place for her, after all? Maybe Amira should be focusing more on the campus political parties in the next semester? The meeting wraps up and there are always snacks at the end, so Amira pours herself some tea and grabs a pastry. It's only Tuesday but her mum's been texting her all day about coming to the mosque this Friday. She's really running out of excuses that aren't the truth, but it feels too complicated and ungrateful to put into text and send to her mother, so she just replies with an affirmative.

Faizal comes over to her, giving her a fond but exasperated look. "Dude, I know you've gotta be tough to handle politics, but like. I think you need to relax just a tad. You-" He cuts himself off when someone walks behind Amira to get to the cups. "So, now you've met our charming Amira, eh?" he says to this person, grinning way too widely for Amira's comfort. Sure enough, she turns around and is face to face with Mohammed. He's frustratingly perfect-looking up close, even though his hair is stupidly swoopy and his eyebrows are huge. He's grinning at Faizal in a way that feels condescending as hell. Awesome. Amira sighs, ready to say something mean so she can excuse herself from this entire narrative.

But Mohammed beats her to it. "Yeah," he says softly, this time directed at her rather than at Faizal, "The girl with the coldest gaze." Amira really doesn't like his tone. It's condescending and smug. "It's been an enlightening but terrifying first encounter, Frau Bundeskanzlerin." He mimes a tiny bow, still fucking smirking, and then walks off. What a dick.

- - - - -

Amira has a lot going on in her life. Apart from her combined history and political science degree and her part time tutoring job, she's a sister, a daughter, a friend, and apparently a severely underpaid life coach. She's sat with Sam and Matteo in the campus coffee shop, drowning their sorrows in pastry and trying to get some work done at the same time. She attempts to listen intently to Matteo's latest crisis while she watches Sam sketching for a project. There's something going on with knitting and apparently it's all about dimensions and angles. It's kind of interesting, honestly, with the geometry of it all. But it's mostly making her feel a bit dizzy because of how circular Matteo's anxieties are.

Amira can't help but interrupt, "Matteo, habibi, you know I love you?"

"But shut the fuck up?" he asks self-deprecatingly, scrunching his face up, still dragging one hand harshly through his hair.

"Hä? No, no. I was going to say that we've had this exact conversation before. And, remember how I told you that there's nothing wrong with going to therapy, even just to try it out."

Matteo clenches his jaw, dragging his hand down his face, then letting it drop limply onto the tabletop. He'd gone once during his gap year, but after he'd decided to study programming he claimed he felt "much better" so he never went back. David's been worrying about him, and has tried to involve Amira in his plan to get Matteo to therapy. Along the way they've found that it's truly not possibly to get Matteo to do anything Matteo does not want to do. Amira still prays that he'll find peace and get help, but she's really stopped nagging him. However, when he brings up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated she can't help but speak up and repeat the suggestion. Maybe he'll eventually take the advice.

David arrives and drops down next to Matteo. He's working on a short film outside of his studies and is currently storyboarding, which of course means that Matteo is going to do anything he can to disturb the creative process. It might be cute how they devolve into play fighting even after multiple years, but Amira honestly just finds it ridiculous. Sam is asking about Amira's studies, nodding along to Amira's story about the world's most boring professor, when the impossible happens. Mohammed walks up to the table, wearing the cafe's  apron, asking if they've got any empty cups they want to get rid of. Sam thanks him, being friendly in a normal way. Amira's just frozen. Before he leaves, he gestures to Amira's full black outfit complete with black nails, then to her phone which is lying on the table with the case side up, proudly stating 'Black is my happy colour' and says, "Black suits you." Then he turns and jauntily walks into the back, with his tray of dirty mugs. Amira can feel her face heat, which in turn pisses her off. Thankfully, at least no one else can tell she's blushing.

"God, what a dick," Amira huffs.

"Hä? Amira!" Sam laughs. "He didn't even say anything bad?!"

"He commented on my looks? Is that seriously necessary?"

"God, Amira, don't be such a manhater. He was just appreciating your aesthetic. I'm sure he's a totally nice guy. I mean, he's really attractive, and you know incels are always fucking ugly."

Matteo apparently tunes into the conversation at this point, "hey! What's this about hating men? Men are totally awesome!"

Amira narrows her eyes at him, gesturing to where he's stretched across David, keeping him from his sketchbook and holding David's pen high in the air so David won't be able to reach it.

Matteo straightens up, puts David's pen back. David grabs it with a wink in Amira's direction. "I mean, sure, we're stupid, but all men aren't?"

- - - - -

Whenever she says she's busy, Amira's mum gets annoyed with her, so Amira finds herself at a random event at her local mosque. There's some kind of lecture, and then supposedly there'll be food after. Amira can't help but notice that neither of her brothers were nagged into attending, but that's fine. She's somewhat excited to see the girls she used to hang out with all the time, but now only really sees occasionally at the mosque. Or at someone's wedding, which there have been a lot of. She's officially the last one out of her Sunday school group to be married, not that she would have expected anything less. Aunties have always told her she'd have a hard time finding a man to put up with her "strong opinions".

Amira grabs a mug of tea, and is about to scan the room for her girls when an older couple appear. She vaguely knows who they are, thinks they're parents of one of Omar's friends from school. She says hi, and tries to make some polite small talk. Then, the woman goes, "Oh, we heard your brother's getting married!" and Amira realises what's about to happen. She pastes on a polite smile and replies, trying to look around for someone who can save her from this conversation. The husband continues on to jokingly ask if she's next, and Amira keeps the smile on her face when she says, "Oh, I'm focusing on my career first. I still have another a bit left until I graduate." The wife pats her husbands arm and points out that Amira is studying politics. He chuckles and asks, "Are you still doing that? And what are you going to use that degree for? Are you planning on being the first German chancellor with a hijab? While somehow managing a family, as well?" They both chuckle, in a kind of 'oh how silly of her' way. The wife says, "No, Amira, habibi, I think it's great that you're getting yourself educated. They always say that an educated woman teaches a whole village."

Amira sighs, draining her mug. "I don't know about a whole village," she laughs dryly, then says a somewhat polite goodbye and hightails it out of there. When Amira finds her friends, Nadia's talking about her new husband, complaining that he expected her to know what to buy his mother for a 50th birthday present. Someone else is laughing and saying, "Well, wasn't he always a bit distracted?" Amira remembers him well from school and cannot imagine that he has since grown out of his fuck-boy phase into a good husband. While the girls chat about their awful spouses, Amira's attention drifts and she somehow ends up on Mohammed. With a woman in a hijab and two younger kids. She feels a bit unsettled, even worse when they lock eyes across the room and Amira feels her face heat. Mohammed looks confused but then gives a tiny wave before he turns back to the kids.

When Amira snatches her eyes back onto her friends, everyone's looking at Amira. "Hä, sorry?"

Nadia rolls her eyes, "We were just wondering if there's anyone special in your life?"

Amira barks out a laugh, "Wow, no, I'm way too young to get married." She might have forgotten to censor herself there for a second. "Um, I mean, I'm going to graduate first, but I'm looking into post-grad right now, so. It's not a priority yet."

- - - - -

Amira gets home from the mosque annoyed. Over the weekend she goes to a boxing class, and afterwards decides to focus on her studies, and figure out what she's going to do about the islamic society and everything else later. And what she's going to do about everyone at the mosque constantly asking her about her future, all now that your brother is getting married, isn't it your turn next, dear? She's got a few really interesting classes going on at the moment and she heads to her first tutorial which is on European politics. She sees a few familiar faces and chats until the professor shows up and they all file into the room and pull out all their notes. Amira's rooting around in her bag for a pen to lend to her neighbour, when she hears the door open and a smooth voice say, "sorry I'm late". The professor, a really nice but very old white man chuckles and says, "no worries, we haven't quite started yet." Amira reflexively looks over to see who it was, locks eyes with Mohammed, and firmly looks away. This is fine. There are always new people in tutorials, and sometimes you recognise them from around campus. No big deal. Amira passes the pen along and logs onto her computer. She's always been an achiever, and she's not planning on letting herself get distracted by anything. As always, she raises her hand to answer the first question the professor asks, but is surprised when she looks over and sees Mohammed already raising his hand and speaking. Even worse, he's saying the exact thing Amira was going to say. She drops her hand, cracking her neck and stretching out her shoulders, and makes sure to be the first one to raise her hand at the next opportunity instead. Game on.

- - - - -

As much as Amira tries to focus and center herself on what she's trying to achieve, her education and all the things that matter in her life, she can't help but feel unsettled. Every time she has a politics class, Mohammed is just there, raising his hand a split second before Amira and constantly just arguing and disagreeing with her. Whenever she goes to an islamic society meeting, Mohammed is there and yet again, frustrating her and disagreeing with her. She keeps up with her routine, prays and goes to boxing with Sam or Hanna, and tutors, and studies. But she keeps getting distracted, while studying and while praying and even while boxing. All because of one annoying guy. She's heading over to her brothers' shared apartment on a Friday night to drop off a text book for Essam on her way to Mia's place for "girls wine and cheese night". She's got two essays almost due and would genuinely love to get a start on those, but the girls won't let her sit at home on a Friday night while doing research for school. Sam had said it's out of the question, mom.

Essam opens the door, while stuffing his face with pizza. Amira plops her bag down on the floor by the door and shakes out her shoulders. When she looks up, Essam's got a confounded look on his face, "Are you carrying around bricks?!"

"I wish," Amira mutters pulling out the book he needed and dropping it on the ground, letting it thunk. "Gimme some pizza."

Essam snorts and gestures into the apartment, "Bad week?"

"You don't even know. The most annoying guy is in my class. And literally everywhere I look. Such a fucking pain in the-" They turn the corner into the open plan kitchen-dining-living room, and who's sitting at the breakfast bar, handsomely typing away at a computer? Mohammed, of course. At this point, Amira should be fucking expecting it.

Essam grabs Amira a slice and, upon seeing her bewildered face, goes, "Oh, you haven't met! This is my pal, Mohammed, he's the guy who's gonna take over Omar's room after he gets married. My soulmate, yadda yadda."

Mohammed smiles at Amira, "We've met, actually," he says. Amira swallows around her bite, trying to smile since she can't speak due to the chewing. "Through the islamic society," Mohammed adds, shrugging. Amira tries to read off his face whether he heard her ranting as she entered, or not. He doesn't look very offended, so she figures he probably did not.

"Huh," Essam says, nodding. He turns to Amira, "Hey, sorry, you were venting. Something about a really annoying guy?"

Mohammed leaves about twenty minutes later, apparently heading home for dinner. Amira waits approximately 2 seconds after she hears the door close, until she's rounding in on Essam. "How did you not tell me about Mohammed?!" She demands, not realising how ridiculous that sounds, until it's too late. Essam stares at her like she grew a third eye.

"I don't tell you every time I make a friend, Litschi! What the hell?"

Amira shakes her head, pacing. "That's Mohammed," she says. Essam nods, looking towards confusedly at the now closed front door. "No, Fruchtzwerg, it's Mohammed. The annoying guy who appears in every fucking part of my life, and frustrating the hell out of me. It's Mohammed."

"Oh shit."

- - - - -

Essam's confused about the entirety of Amira's story, because Mohammed never argues and Mohammed's the nicest guy ever and most confusingly Mohammed? Is in the islamic society committee? Really? Amira's at a loss. Essam claims to know the guy, but either he doesn't know anything about him or Mohammed's just different with different people. And that's always a bad sign when it comes to guys. Obviously guys lie, and Amira's had enough interactions with guys from all over the place to know not to trust one at first sight. Not that she would want to trust Mohammed for any reason. She just doesn't want her brother to be scammed or anything. It would suck for Essam if Mohammed turns out to be a shitty person.

Amira eats most of Essam's pizza while she fumes over Mohammed's occupation into yet another aspect of her life. She really doesn't know how she's supposed to handle all this exposure to his dumb face. And then Essam points out that Mohammed's going to be in Omar's wedding, so Amira needs to somehow settle a truce with the guy, which is just perfect.

That Sunday marks some anniversary of Kiki and Carlos' which requires a house party. Amira arrives after her prayer with some vegetarian pizzas from down the road. She catches David and Matteo chatting, or probably more likely making out, right inside the front door, and then gets encased in a monster hug from Sam. They chat over pizza, and then, who comes through the door after Jonas? At this point, it should not even surprise her. Mohammed walks through into the living room, waving awkwardly as he gets introduced to everyone. Sam and David seem to already know him, and Matteo, too. Amira is just lost. Even more surprisingly, Essam walks in after them. He waves excitedly at Amira, and Amira really longs for a time where all the different parts of her life were neatly compartmentalised and never met each other at house parties. Next, she's gonna have to introduce her parents to Kirlos or something equally ridiculous.

"He's very cute, huh?" Sam asks Amira, jabbing her playfully with her elbow. Amira rolls her eyes reflexively. "Oh come on, Amira, he's cute. And he's wholesome. You always say I need to date more wholesome men."

Amira shrugs. "But you know a lot of arabs are racist," she mumbles, taking a swig of Pepsi to calm her suddenly agitated nerves.

Sam snorts, "Yeah, thanks, I know. I can be careful, mom."

Kiki and Mia walk over, with Kiki looking between Amira and then Essam and Mohammed. "The blond guy was waving like he knows you," Kiki points out, while Amira curses Essam's entire personality and existence, "Are these guys like your relatives?"

Sam busts out giggling, asking Amira in a silly voice, "Do you know all the arabs in Berlin, Amira dear?" When Kiki looks shocked, she adds, "No, Kiki, I'm kidding, don't worry, sorry, sorry," all while still giggling. Amira thinks back to the time when Kiki had asked Sam if she and boy Sam were related.

"Ha-ha," Amira mutters. "I actually do know them, though. The blond one is, unfortunately my brother."

"No way!" Mia gasps, slapping Amira's shoulder. "You're nothing alike."

"Alhamdulillah," Amira mumbles, setting Sam off into another bout of giggles. Mia smiles, but manages to restrain herself. Amira huffs, adjusting her scarf. "No, he's not that bad… he's just loud? He's my younger brother so of course he annoys me".

"What about the other guy," Mia asks, "You know him, too?"

Sam hums, "Hot, right?"

Mia's appraising Amira very intently and Amira really hates it. She shrugs, "He's a friend of Essam's, I don't know him very well."

Essam appears at her shoulder with Mohammed in tow, and they all get introduced. Essam flirts way too much with Kiki, and Amira tries to melt into the ground with secondhand embarrassment. Eventually Carlos drifts over, probably to show Essam that Kiki is taken, which is just cringe worthy on its own. Amira catches Mohammed's eye just as Carlos wraps his arm firmly over Kiki's shoulders and Kiki looks back at him confused. Mohammed looks like he's trying really hard not to laugh, and he raises his eyebrows, pinching his lips together. Amira shrugs, mouth lifting into a smile before she can stop herself. She pulls her eyes away, anywhere else. Her eyes settle on Jonas trying to teach Matteo some chords on the guitar, and Hanna chatting animatedly with David in the corner next to them. Then, she overhears someone daring to besmirch the name of Mohamed Salah. She looks up, locking eyes with a grinning Mohammed. Carlos is saying something ridiculous about Manchester United, and Amira truly cannot believe the joy she's seeing in Mohammed's eyes. Or the way he's confidently nodding along with Carlos' unbelievably incorrect rant. Sam and Mia look lost, but Essam's grinning gleefully at Amira. As the middle child in a family of strong opinions, he's grown up to become the most neutral person Amira knows, and watches sports mostly to see how riled up Amira and Omar get. "You must have an opinion on this, Litschi, as someone who has a life-sized cardboard cutout of Mo Salah in their room?" Essam's making himself sound like a beat reporter, looking around the group to make sure he has everyone's attention.

Amira clenches her jaw, knowing that she'll never live that nickname down now that the girls have heard it. She can see Sam mouthing it, looking delighted. "You bought me that cut-out, Fruchtzwerg, but yes, I do have an opinion on Mo Salah, the best football player of this generation."

Her argument doesn't quite convince the boys, but then her Maghrib alarm goes off and she slips away to Kirlos' bathroom followed by their bedroom. She's perhaps making a lot of effort to walk without stomping, but having to be at a party with her idiot brother is just really fraying on her nerves. She's never had to interact with him and her friends at the same time. She knows that he thinks she's acting weird, and so will the girls, probably. The'll think she's too harsh on him, or something. Amira's really not a massive fan of praying in her friends' bedrooms, but it's better than a bathroom so she'll take it. She can hear literally everything that's going on in the party, the bass vibrating the walls and floor, and honestly doesn't know how she's meant to be able to focus on anything except that new Zara Larsson song that Kiki's doing a cover of.

When she walks back into the living room, she can't help but feel frustrated about the way she always misses random chunks of parties. She'll come back from praying and catch the girls in a joke that falls flat when they try to explain it to her. You had to be there sometimes feels like the story of her life. The groups have rearranged since she left. Kirlos have ended up on the sofa, with Sam and Mia still talking to Mohammed, while Essam seems to be bonding with Matteo. God help them all. Amira walks over to Sam, because she's still holding Amira's drink. Not for any other reason. She can't help herself, so she asks Mohammed if he's not going to go pray, knowing full well that Essam won't. His smile falters, but he shrugs and says, "I'm not really going to bother in these circumstances," gesturing at the loudness of the party.

Amira can hear Essam's carefree laughter, bristles at the ease and lack of tension in Mohammed's shoulders and she truly doesn't mean to, but she ends up saying, "So you just pray when it's convenient for you?"

Amira can hear Sam make a noise of awkwardness next to her, and she knows she's out of line, knows she has a tendency to attack first, but she's bone-tired and frustrated and nothing she does or is expected to do is ever easy or convenient.

Mohammed, eyes hard, replies, "I thought Islam taught you not to judge. And I don't know if you know, but Germany has laws that regulate a person's right to practice religion how they want, or not practice at all, thank you very fucking much." He looks disappointed at her, which hurts more than she'd like. And then he turns and leaves. Amira feels like the whole party has quieted down, like everyone saw that, but in reality only Sam and Mia did. Though Essam will probably hear about it later.

"Ouff," Sam whines, "Amira, that was harsh".

Amira groans. "You okay?" Mia asks, looking concerned. Amira sighs, squishing her eyes shut.

"Fuck."

"You look like you need a drink," Sam points out. Amira laughs, desperately. "Let's make you a fabulous mocktail. I'm too tipsy to solve anything right now."

- - - - -

Amira wakes up in stages, first noticing the offensive brightness of the room, and burrowing deeper into the covers to try and avoid facing the day. She and Mia went home with Sam and ended up falling asleep and Amira can hear Sam and Mia chatting away, though in hushed tones. She can't help but groan as she stretches. It's far too early.

"Morning, Litschi!" Mia calls, and Amira groans louder. She forgot about that.

The girls let her wake up while they get some tea and wrangle together breakfast. Amira stares at the ceiling and pointedly does not check her phone. She does, however, get up to pee and then pray. When she gets back the girls have managed a decent spread with the leftovers in Sam's fridge.

"We should talk about Mohammed," Sam points out. Mia nods. "You were really mean." Mia nods again.

"You like him, don't you?" Mia's got her knees up, chin resting on them. Amira sputters in response.

"That's a yes!" Sam cheers, giggling.

"It's not," Amira sighs. "He's just a douchebag. Like, he's so flippant about important stuff. Like religion. And he's constantly appearing everywhere I go and annoying me."

"But you still went off on him pretty harshly," Mia points out.

"Maybe he's not muslim?" Sam suggests.

Amira shrugs, mutters, "if he's not then I definitely won't like him but he's in the islamic society, so I doubt that's actually the case. Even though he's maybe not a very good muslim."

"He's there, too? Like, is he stalking you, or?"

Amira sighs, shaking her head, "No, he's just in the islamic society and in my politics class and living in my brother's apartment, and also apparently he now goes to my mosque, too?!"

"Don't forget he's pals with Jonas, too," Sam mentions, laughing. "Listen, there must be a reason this handsome but annoying man has entered your life. Maybe you just need some patience."

Amira groans, but Sam pushes on, "No, Amira, you always hate guys on sight. Like with Alex," she gestures at Mia and Amira does feel bad because she's never really owned up to that, "or with Jonas, with Stefan. Guys lie and all that."

Amira honestly can't argue with that, and she hates it. Mia's been quiet for a while, and looking thoughtful, but she then gets this sparkle in her eyes. Amira hates that even more.

Later that day Mia texts her:

(Not to play devil's advocate but, don't you think it's possible that you're hiding a bit behind the 'bad muslim' thing? Because I think you guys have some incredible chemistry)

That text might haunt Amira for a while, even if she sends Mia a very stern reply.

- - - - -

Amira's chatting to her dad on the phone later that night, and she'd been trying to finish her assigned reading for the week but she kept getting distracted. She honestly felt pretty shitty about how she'd treated Mohammed. She'd had a whole heap of small frustrations building up and she had just accidentally unleashed them all straight into his bothersome face even though most of her frustrations were not at all his fault. She knew she had to apologise, and she genuinely wanted to but she struggled admitting to her brothers that she'd gotten an actor wrong because she hates being wrong. She's always right, so she's really not good at admitting fault.

"Amira, habibi, are you doing something else while we're talking?"

"Huh? Sorry, dad, I'm just a little distracted."

"Ah, I see, well, tell your old man and he can solve all your troubles."

"Hah, thanks, dad. I don't know if you can solve it, though. I was pretty rude to someone for no reason and now I have to apologise to them."

Amira's dad hums. "Was this the same boy as the annoying one in the islamic society that your mum told me about?"

"Yes," Amira mutters. Her parents truly seem to not keep any secrets from each other.

"Hah, well, you've always been very proud, kiddo. I always loved that about you. You know your worth and you don't take shit from anyone. But, before you get too comfortable, you're also terrible at admitting when you're wrong."

"Wow, thanks, dad."

"You get that from your mum, you know. I truly do think it's a good thing, but I hope you don't feel like you always have to be perfect. You've always been strong but it's good to be vulnerable, too. It's hard, sure, but good things do happen when you let your guard down just a tad."

"Ugh, dad, that was so sentimental."

Her dad laughs, "Yes, habibi, I know, I know. Let's switch topics. Tell me about the lecture you had this morning."

- - - - -

Amira is really not in the mood for an event, but even she can agree on the importance of this specific one. It's taken a lot of organisation for everything to work out, and it involves 4 societies (which is also partly why David is involved) and spans a month with one focus each week. This week's fundraising focus is the charity Jonas volunteers for, which does a lot of work with refugee integration in Berlin. She arrives a bit earlier because she promised David and Jonas she would, even though her mother is frustrated with her for not coming to the mosque for some kind of "women in islam" lecture held by a panel of men. Kiki's asking the group chat for a pre-party and since Amira is arriving at the club, she just turns the sound off and heads in, following the music to where she expects to at least find Jonas. She sees Matteo and David hanging out by the stage, where Jonas of course is sat on a stool with his guitar. Jonas sees her and calls her over and while she's approaching she takes in the other figures in the room. She mostly sees people she's never seen or people she's possibly passed on campus before. But then she sees Mohammed standing behind Jonas, by the mic, singing quietly and chatting to Jonas about something, brows drawn. He doesn't seem to notice her, so she keeps approaching.

"Study partner!" Matteo whisper-calls out, turning around to grab and open a coke bottle for Amira, "come join the soundcheck squad."

Amira accepts the drink and asks what they're up to, trying to avoid Mohammed's eyes now burning into the side of her head from where he's still chatting to Jonas.

David wiggles his eyebrows at her, "oh, we're just waiting for the jam session to pick back up. They weren't sure on which key to use, or something nerdy like that." He turns to look at Mohammed, who rolls his eyes, but Jonas starts playing. The room is filling up, there are a few people working behind the bar and some others decorating and moving tables around. Everyone's chatting to themselves and no one is really paying any attention to the stage, where Amira assumes the boys ended up helping Jonas with "soundcheck" in order to avoid manual labour. Amira truly hates being a cliche, but when she first hears Mohammed's voice, goosebumps erupt along her arms. She crosses them across her chest, gripping the coke bottle. David's swaying along and he and Matteo whoop encouragingly at certain notes and lyrics. Amira can't help but grin at their contagious hype, but when she turns her attention back to the stage, Mohammed's looking straight at her. She can't help but swallow, caught out, but looks right back, never one to back down.

Dragging along, follow in your form

Hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn

Remember me, love, when I'm reborn

As the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

Amira can feel her face flushing as she narrows her eyes at Mohammed. He just smirks back at her, and finishes the song. The boys clap and cheer so loudly that they draw the attention of some official looking person with a clipboard, who sighs and huffs and splits them up. David and Matteo grab Amira to head towards the back and David turns on the way to yell some more compliments towards the stage. As they walk, David hums, "You know, Hozier is a man that I'm sure you would agree is an exception to the general rule of male shittiness."

Matteo snorts, mutters, "fucking Hozier…" but David carries on. "He doesn't write boring love songs. He doesn't get intimidated by confident women. To be honest, he loves a strong and terrifying woman-"

Matteo interjects to say, "It's one of those 'choke m-'" but thankfully gets interrupted by David clapping a hand over his mouth before Amira needs to bleach her entire brain and soul.

David sighs and hands Matteo a box of string lights that are supposed to go up somewhere. Matteo takes them with a wink and walks back into the event room. David shrugs, looking at Amira. "Anyways, Mo's got a good voice, right? I keep telling him, but he acts like it's no big deal."

Amira immediately feels suspicious. "How do you all know each other?"

"Huh? Oh, Jonas met him at some kind of open mic, jam thing. I don't really know. And then Jonas and Matteo, you know. We went to one of Jonas' gigs and Mohammed was there." David gestures in an encompassing way, like he's trying to say the rest is history.

- - - - -

The girls all arrive and 'ooh and ah' over how magical the location looks. Amira has to admit that it's nice, even if she's slightly on edge due to how often she keeps bumping into Mohammed while turning a corner. Sam happens to be next to her one of these times and she sighs and goes, "He's so charming. How is he so charming?!" Amira sighs and switches subjects by asking about Sam's nephew, which is honestly the most effective subject change ever. She even gets adorable baby photos out of it.

Later on she's walking from the bar with Mia, when Jonas announces a new song and Amira spots Mohammed by the stage. Based on earlier, she really can't handle another song so she slips away into the back garden. She can see Mia shrugging and looking questioningly at her through the large open doors, but she plants her feet and starts up a conversation with a girl she knows from her European History class. A few minutes later, Mia appears at her side, looking like the cat that got the cream. Amira tries to drag the conversation out, but she and this girl, Anna?, really don't have much in common so she leaves shortly after. Mia's arms are crossed, shit-eating red lipped grin and all.

"How's it going with Mohammed?" she asks.

Amira huffs, assuring Mia that there is nothing going, but she'll apologise when she gets a moment, thank you very much. Of course this is when Amira's Maghrib alarm goes off. Mia looks like she wants to protest, but in the end she realises she can't really argue with it so she just gives Amira her unimpressed tm look when Amira starts backing away, to find somewhere to pray. She was planning to scout out a good location while helping to set up earlier, but Mohammed had ruined those plans for her by distracting her with his face and voice. She asks one of the bartenders and gets led to the staff room, which has an adjacent but tiny bathroom. She's honestly had to settle for worse, even if the staff room could really use a lockable door. She decides to just hurry, and hope no one interrupts her.

Afterwards, she feels centred and calm, like always. She touches up her makeup, and quickly checks her phone. Sam's sent multiple messages to the group chat, the most recent being:

omg how sexy is mohammed's singing voice?! how is he so charming???????

Amira pockets her phone as she opens the door, but hits something. She pauses for a second and tries again. This time the door opens smoothly. Standing on the other side, running a hand through his stupid hair, is Mohammed.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "I was heading to the bathroom and one of the bartenders was about to head in, so I-" He waves a hand at the door.

"Oh," Amira can't help but feel stunned, because she definitely doesn't deserve that level of consideration from him of all people. They stand in a slightly awkward silence, Amira looking everywhere except at Mohammed. She realises she's being a bit childish about it so she squares up, clears her throat. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry about my behaviour." She dares a glance up at Mohammed's face. He looks annoyingly smug, arms crossed over his chest. He waits her out, smirking. "I perhaps judged you a bit early. And harshly. It's.. It doesn't happen ever, really, but, I guess… I was wrong. Sorry."

Mohammed nods slowly, looking off to the side. "No harm done. So, listen-"

The door separating the club space from the staff space slams open and a frazzled bartender startles at the sight of them, looks confused. Amira takes this as a perfect opportunity, explaining herself, "Oh, sorry, I was just praying, you know," while gesturing at the locker room behind her and also her head. When the bartender nods, still confused, Amira hurries out to find the girls.

- - - - -

Amira's back at her parents' house for a weeknight dinner. She's helping set the table because her parents don't want her near the food, but she also does not want to sit and chat at the table since Essam's started the night by badgering her about Mohammed in front of their mother.

"Seen Mohammed any more?" Essam asks with a grin when Omar arrives. Amira sends him a look that could kill from across the table. Her dad perks up, "Oh, Mohammed's a good kid. You know Mohammed, Amira?"

Amira sighs, "Yeah, we have a class together, and some friends in common."

At this, Omar looks thoughtful. "You'd like Mohammed," he says, as if it's only just occurring to him, as if the gears are starting to turn.

Her dad latches onto this idea, "Yeah, that's a good point! You're very similar, Amira, stubborn but very smart." He pats her on the shoulder as he walks back into the kitchen to help their mother with the cooking.

When Amira walks back with a stack of plates, Essam's gleefully feeding Omar blackmail material about how Amira had unfairly snapped at poor Mohammed in front of everyone. "I was planning to try and convince them to date but Amira hates him."

"Hä? What did he do?"

"Thanks, Essam," Amira sighs, "He didn't do anything, he was just arguing in favour of stupid shit, and-"

"Like what?"

"Just… He keeps advocating for inclusive events in the islamic society. Having all our events open for everyone even though that always means a whole bunch of people appear and demand us to hold them by the hand and explain every single thing that's going on. Every single event. I'm sick and tired of having to educate ignorant white Germans who can't just google it. That's not why I joined the islamic society."

Omar hums. "Mohammed grew up in Syria, you know," he points out. "He didn't have to grow up in a country full of Almans who know nothing about islam and require hand-holding. So, maybe he just has a higher tolerance for that than we do?"

It's a fully reasonable argument, which Amira kind of hates. She hasn't really ever asked Mohammed anything, barely even spoken to him except to argue with him or be hostile to him. "Yeah, okay, sure. We're just not compatible people, that's all." Essam snorts. "Listen, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm not going to ever date a guy who isn't a proper muslim, so that's that. Leave it."

They both look confused. "What do you mean 'not compatible'? And why would you think Mohammed's not religious? He's in the islamic society, isn't he?"

Amira shrugs, "He doesn't pray? He's- I don't know, Essam said-"

"I was surprised he was on the committee, because he's been struggling. But what even is a proper muslim, Amira?" Essam asks, with a grimace. "If Mohammed isn't then I've barely been one lately either, but you don't hate me for it?!"

"No, of course I don't hate you."

"You said my crisis was valid, and I can assure you that Mohammed's was valid, too. Is this why you snapped at him?"

Amira groans, "I don't hate him… I just. Lost my temper, I don't know why. It wasn't like I snapped on purpose. He just aggravates me. He just keeps aggravating me for no good reason." She realises she's been gesturing pretty aggressively, so she drops her shoulders and lets her hands fall to her side. "What do you want me to say?"

"Oh my god, you like him."

- - - - -

Of course, it all comes to a head at Omar and Nour's Henna night. The girls have all been invited and some of the boys (specifically Jonas and Carlos). Amira had tried to convince her brothers that she absolutely did not have any feelings for Mohammed, but it seemed as if she was not very convincing. At least, she managed to get them both to agree to leave her alone and definitely not mention anything about it to the guy in question. And Amira knows they wouldn't dare cross her. During the night she has managed to mostly avoid the aunties and uncles that have been giving her far too wide smiles all night, and she's managed to duck out of several conversations before she had anyone ask her when's your turn, habibi and ended up snapping at anyone. She's chatting to Jonas and Hanna in a decently secluded corner, teaching Jonas the accurate pronunciation of all the sweets he's eating. He's shockingly good at it, and he's really pleased about that fact.

Then, there's a tap on her shoulder. Hanna's eyes widen, and she gently but firmly drags Jonas away. Amira feels this sense of doom impending, but she's also got a few hardcore butterflies appearing in the depths of her stomach. She turns, and there's Mohammed. He's got a piece of baklava in the palm of his upturned hand and he grins at her.

"Frau Bundeskanzlerin," he mutters, doing a really douche-y bow. Amira can't help but laugh, and glances around the room. God, everyone can see this, Amira thinks, even though realistically no one is looking in their direction, but instead talking to the future bride and groom.

"What's your deal?" is what comes out of her mouth.

Mohammed snorts, smile faltering just a little, "my deal?"

"It's really not cute to be flirting with a girl if you're not even fucking religious, you know. Do you know how fucking impossible and rare it is to even have decent interactions with men as a hijabi without them wanting to save or objectify you? It's literally not something that happens. I am sick and tired-"

"Wow," Mohammed mutters, though grinning, popping the piece of baklava he was supposedly presenting Amira with into his mouth and chewing. "What have I done to deserve this utter annihilation?"

"What have you done? You're impossible to read. You're debating in the islamic society one day, then you're not a practicing muslim, then a day later you're in the mosque. What's your deal?"

Mohammed rolls his eyes, crosses his arms in front of his chest. "I'll hold a full length lecture on my relationship with islam in the morning, if you want, but as for what my deal is, I've been trying to ask you out on a date." He shrugs one shoulder, like it's obvious.

Amira splutters in surprise. "You've…. what?"

"It's not my fault you're distracting. You know, you're the one who's impossible. I've literally been in love with you since you gave me that stink eye in ISOC. I think you're amazing even though you're infuriating and judgemental as hell."

"Hmm, we'll agree to disagree."

Mohammed bursts out laughing, "What? No, we definitely won't! Come on!"

Amira notices, from the corner of her eye, that a few aunties and girls she knows from elementary school are taking an interest in them and then she realises how close they've drifted during their conversation. "Shit, people are looking at us."

Mohammed hums, looks around. He shrugs, takes a demonstrative step back. "There we go, much more appropriate."

Amira rolls her eyes, cheeks aching from smiling. "So, your method of flirting is just being oppositional, then?"

"Might be… It worked, though, right?" Amira snorts. "Maybe I should've been more direct and asked for an audience through your secretary?"

It shouldn't make Amira giggle, because it's not really funny, but she still giggles like a schoolgirl she definitely is not. "Hey, Mohammed?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want to go out with me?"

Mohammed bursts out laughing, "I'd love to."