#ngozi please confirm

[isamadazaro]

check please is super cute until you realize half of them talk like jfk

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brendan O'Neill

Published: Nov 11, 2023

One of the weirdest things about identitarian activists is that they hate being asked where they’re from but they love telling you where they’re from. Politely inquire about their ethnic or cultural origins and they’ll damn you as a racist. ‘How dare you, I’m as British as you!’, they’ll yell, either to your face or in a column in the Guardian in which they’ll document at great, yawn-inducing length the horror of having some dim pleb ask about their family origins.

Then, in the next breath, before you’ve even had a chance to splutter your apology, they’ll tell you their entire ancestral history. You’ll know where their great grandmother was born, the exact quantity of melanin grandad had in his skin, which maternal haplogroup they belong to, as revealed by 23andMe. Just don’t say ‘Oh, that’s where you’re from’, because they’ll call you racist again.

This political schizophrenia of taking offence at the question ‘Where are you from?’ while simultaneously feeling a burning urge to tell the entire world where you are from was best captured in the Ngozi Fulani controversy. You remember Ms Fulani: she’s the black charity worker from Hackney in London whose ‘racist’ run-in with long-serving royal aide Lady Susan Hussey hit the headlines last year. Lady Hussey’s crime? At a Buckingham Palace do, she asked Ms Fulani where she is from. Call the cops! What a bigoted old bat.

Not so fast. Ms Fulani was adorned in African threads at the palace. She frequently decks herself out in the Pan-African colours and Africa-shaped earrings. To constantly suggest to the world that you are from somewhere else and then reach for the smelling salts when someone asks ‘Where, exactly?’ is a bit much, no?

Now, in literary form, Afua Hirsch has done the same thing. Ms Hirsch is an author, broadcaster and writer for the Guardian. Her first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was all about the horror, the sheer indignity, of ‘The Question’. The question, of course, is ‘Where are you from?’. I am asked this ‘every single day, often multiple times’, said Hirsch. Really? Where’s she hanging out? It feels like a ‘daily ritual of unsettling’, she wrote. Oh, please. If I penned a sad book every time someone asked me, on account of my very un-British name, ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’, or ‘Where were your parents born?’, I’d be the most prolific author in Christendom.

Now, we have Ms Hirsch’s second book, Decolonising My Body. And you’ll never believe it: it is an eye-wateringly detailed answer to… The Question! Here’s my question: if Hirsch hates being asked where she is from, why has she written a whole tome on where she is ‘from’?

I now know more about Ms Hirsch’s ethnic and cultural origins than I do about my own. To her credit, she admits that this is because she comes from a staggeringly privileged background. I ‘know quite a lot about my ancestors’ and ‘there’s a privilege attached to this’, she says. Her African ancestors were not the ‘enslaved’, but rather were ‘antecedents about whom written records were kept’. Fancy. As someone who knows next to nothing about his colonised forebears – largely thanks to the Potato Famine of the 1840s and the catastrophic fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922 – I confess to feeling envy while reading Ms Hirsch’s comprehensive tale of her origins. How the other half live, eh?

When I say her new book is detailed, I mean it is detailed. In her first book, she told us off for being nosey about her family origins; in her new book, she’s telling us about the time she got her butthole lasered. She finds herself in ‘the undignified position of spreading my butt cheeks under the chill of a laser clinician’s hosepipe-like nozzle, as atoms are excised, electrons rise and fall, and light beams are making their way into my crack’. The whole thing cost her £1,000. They must be paying well at the Guardian if contributors can splash out a grand on having their anal fluff zapped.

Surely we need to talk about how easily the identitarian elites can shift from exasperation at being asked ‘Where are you from?’ to absolute blaséness about telling the world what their ringpieces look like. Don’t you dare ask where my family is from but please listen to me describe the hair follicles on my arsehole. Excuse me, what?

As its title suggests, Hirsch’s book is a somewhat narcissistic endeavour. It’s all about her body. More specifically, it’s about how empire and colonialism interrupted the mystical traditions through which Hirsch’s African ancestors marked and celebrated their bodies – with tribal tattoos, menstrual festivals and whatnot – and how Hirsch now wants to rediscover all that stuff.

She says she wants to ‘decolonise’ her body of its ‘Western’ expectations – thinness, hairlessness, white-defined attractiveness – and let it become more African. Imagine how time-rich, and literally rich, you would need to be to spend so much energy obsessing over your own flesh and skin. To publish a book about decolonising the body of a privately educated Guardianista while everyone else is wondering if they have enough cash to keep the lights on speaks to the pathological self-regard of the new elites. In this era of economic, military and moral crises, Hirsch is going to have to work a lot harder to convince me that the fact that her period ‘still often takes me by surprise’ is something we need to know.

Hirsch’s argument is that she has been violently ripped from the ‘magical’ traditions of her African history by colonialism and capitalism. So where her historical forebears held menstruation ceremonies and celebrated women for having hairy legs and insisted upon the tattooing of female flesh, our new era heaps shame on women for bleeding, discourages female hair growth, and idolises ‘pure’ over ‘marked’ flesh. None of this is quite right though, is it? Period chatter is everywhere these days. You can’t so much as click on Instagram without seeing some feted female influencer showing off hair-covered shins that would make Peter Sellers wonder if he should reach for some Veet. As for tats – not having a tattoo is the great shame in the 21st-century West. What, you haven’t had a tribal slogan pasted on your pasty flesh by a needle-wielder in Camden? What’s wrong with you?

And yet our body-decolonising Ms Hirsch perseveres, regardless. To counter the evil West’s disdain for old African tribes’ celebration of menstruation, she takes her poor daughter to a tribal period shindig in south London. They have to traverse the South Circular, ‘one of the most congested roads not just in London, but in the world’, and Hirsch, under instruction from the London-based tribal priestess, must wear all-white clothing, which in this case means a ‘floor-length summer robe, made from soft sheets of cotton’. Still, at least it connects Hirsch to her tribal lineage, even if her daughter, by Hirsch’s own admission, would rather be anywhere else.

Hirsch’s favourite word is ‘conditioning’. She thinks women like her – women of non-British origins – have been ‘conditioned’ to discard the tribal rituals their elders engaged in. Perhaps. Or perhaps black women and all women in London in 2023 would just rather buy some tampons for their pubescent daughters than subject them to an old-world menstrual ritual in a posh garden in south London. Who can tell?

Hirsch says ‘the forces of globalisation’ lead to a situation where ‘people like me’ – people of colour – have been ‘conditioned’ to behave and think in a particular way. That is, in a Western way. There’s a darkly ironic twist here. Hirsch’s obsession with the idea of ‘conditioning’ means she ends up viewing African-origin people in a similar way to how old colonialists viewed them – as vacant-brained entities swayed this way and that by the messaging of their superiors under capitalism. It smells like neo-colonialism disguised as anti-colonialism.

Hirsch thinks that even she – an expensively educated, successful writer – has been ‘conditioned’. She wonders if her submission to laser hair-removal is a craven acceptance of Western culture’s white-supremacist loathing of female hair. ‘Why do I keep on coming back’, she wonders, ‘to uncomfortable and expensive appointments, just to squash the capillaries which nature, in its wisdom, wanted us to have in our nether regions’? Again with the nether regions. She ends up staring at her vagina and reminiscing about her lost hair. She beholds the ‘pathetic little tuft of hair clinging to my bikini area, with a forlorn sense of having banished something that may have loved me’. I cannot imagine ever having a deep thought about my pubes – is that only me?

Who is responsible for the fact that even Hirsch, with all her education, has done things to her body that she later thinks she shouldn’t have done? It’s Charles Darwin. It’s always Charles Darwin. On the thousands of pounds she’s spent on ‘pink-packaged razors’ and ‘painful, expensive waxing’, Hirsch says, ‘The person I do blame… is Charles Darwin’. You might think of Darwin as the most important scientific figure of the period of Enlightenment, the brilliant man who revealed to us the truth of both nature and humanity, but to Ms Hirsch he’s the bloke whose ‘paradigm-shifting work on evolution’ led to the inexorable destruction of ‘attitudes to body hair [that] were as diverse as the cultures [they were] rooted in’.

In short, Darwin’s exploration of the origins of species, of the origins of man, helped to nurture a colonial discomfort with tribal culture. Imagine witnessing the epoch-shaping discoveries of a man like Darwin and thinking: ‘He’s the reason I feel compelled to get my butthole lasered.’ The narcissism of it, the anti-Enlightenment of it.

Anti-Enlightenment is the right phrase for where Hirsch ends up. Throughout the book she dabbles not only with tribal cultures – which, in my view, declined and fell for good reason – but also with astrology and even witchcraft. She quotes authors who bemoan the disdaining by ‘intelligent persons’ of ‘witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies’. It falls to her sensible-sounding parents to keep a check on her descent into pre-modern hysteria. Her father, the esteemed geophysicist Peter Hirsch, responds to her pleas that a planetary ‘conjunction’ in the sky must be a sign that she should change her life by saying: ‘It’s just from our arbitrary viewpoint that the planets appear close together… It doesn’t mean anything deeper.’ Yes, dad!

Her mum is even better. Asked by Afua why women of African origin don’t wear ‘waist beads’ anymore, her mum essentially says: ‘Because we have nice knickers now.’ Hirsch discovers, alongside the wonder of menstrual rituals and tribal tats, that wearing beads across one’s belly is a great African way to demonstrate a) that you are fertile and b) you have a chunky ass. Why don’t you wear them, she asks her Ghanaian-British mum? To which comes the glorious reply: ‘As soon as we heard about Marks & Spencer’s underwear, we stopped wearing beads…’ Exactly. All those desperately poor African ladies who hold up their sanitary / undergarment equipment with beads around their bellies would love a pair of comfy high-street knickers, even if wealthy writers like Afua Hirsch frown upon such basic desires. Give me good underwear over tribal realness any day of the week.

Fundamentally, this is a daft book. It bemoans Western capitalism while singing the praises of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Rihanna. (And the people, black and white, whose labour is exploited by Oprah’s media machine and Rihanna’s make-up machine? Shush! Don’t mention them.) It attacks cultural appropriation while telling the tale of this hyper-privileged Londoner who gets ‘adorned’ in the fashions of ancient Africans.

I hate to be the one to ask this, but how is it any different for a privately educated woman of colour from Wimbledon to experiment in the cultures and jewelleries of African nations than it is for a right-on white ‘appropriator’ to do the same? It would be like me donning the animal skins my ancestors wore as they searched high and low for grub in the wilds of pre-modern Ireland. ‘Wanker’ would be the cry of friends and family if I were to put on the rough uniform of my tragic, regressive forebears.

Hirsch’s retreat from modernity into the witchy traditions of old is some rich lady shit. Anyone who can traipse through London to attend menstrual rituals and traverse Africa to examine beads and pants is clearly someone with too much time on their hands. And that’s the rub. Identity politics is a fundamentally privileged pursuit. Indeed, it is the means through which the well-off launder their class privilege and turn it into oppression. There is nothing in Ms Hirsch’s plush, lovely life that can be described as oppression – apart from being asked The Question, of course… – and so she plunders ancient communities for little pieces of victimhood she might claim as her own. And thus is her cultural power in the here and now fortified, with more of that hottest currency of all: ethnic suffering.

Hirsch’s book confirms that the new elites have retreated from reason, fleeing from Enlightenment into the tattooed arms of fashionable tribalism. ‘Educated people, and people like me, [were] brought up to learn about, understand and respect science’, she writes, but now many of us are ‘following our curiosity’ and embracing ‘systems of ancestral knowledge’. Yes you are. From ‘decolonise the curriculum’ to the upper-middle-class fads for everything from African jewellery to Tibetan spiritualism, the right-on and rich are turning their backs on modernity and its gains and knowledge. Knock yourselves out. The rest of us, however, who have no cultural clout to gain from dabbling in magic and other ancient bullshit, prefer science, civilisation and comfortable undergarments.

==

These people are fucking bonkers. They think they're the most fascinating and enlightened people on the planet, when they're just the most mediocre, narcissistic people, using big, empty, academic, jargony words to hide the fact they're completely fucking insane.

For the record, Hirsch's ancestors are Norwegian, German-Jewish, British and Ghanaian. So her appropriation of African aesthetics isn't actually any more meaningful than espousing her Norwegian viking ancestry.

We have to stop giving these lunatics oxygen.

[builtlikeastickofcelery]

What the heck IS the kegster neck touch I'm scared to Google it

so glad you asked dear anon! the kegster neck touch refers to a panel from Check, Please! a webcomic/graphic novel duology by Ngozi Ukazu, (you can read it here!) said panel is near the end of chapter 7 (assist), but here it is for you with Ollie and Wicks circled, CLEARLY NECK TOUCHING, the implications of which suggest they have just kissed, but they're relegated to the background in favor of bitty, holster, ransom and shitty who are main characters.

despite not being a strong focus in the story, Ollie and Wicks are confirmed to be married or at least own a home together (but pretty much the whole fandom agrees that they got married due to the many hints to their relationship put in by Ngozi). thus, the kegster neck touch is regarded as the first among many indicators of their relationship and holds a special place in the hearts of many fans. I'll put some tags for you to explore :]

[fortnitereigen]

completely underrated thing about check please was the ongoing straightbait. like with the full story out and hindsight its obvious shitty and lardo are together but there were YEARS there where people were begging on their knees for confirmation and ngozi was consistently just like "teehee ;•P"

[thelegendofjenna]

okay so I backed the check please year four kickstarter SOLELY because I wanted Madison. I already own the comics physically in their published, non-kickstarter form. But I wanted this secret sexy extra story that ngozi has been hyping up. so I paid $10 for a digital copy of year four (again, a comic I already own physically), and did the $20 add-on to get Madison. I just assumed that Madison would be a digital comic, but now they're fulfilling orders and I'm being asked to give a shipping address and pay $12 for shipping, so apparently I am getting a physical copy. So once I pay for shipping I will have paid a total of $42 just to get access to Madison. and in a tweet, ngozi seems to have confirmed that it will actually be available for purchase on its own, after kickstarter rewards have been fulfilled.

Like, I'm happy to support ngozi and art should be paid for and everything but this is more than I thought I was getting into lol

[stolligaseptember]

ngozi really just said the attic is for loving and stable and functioning couples and that nurseydex can’t interact until they’ve gotten their shit together.

[halftheway]

I THINK THE LAX BRO WHISKEY WAS KISSING IS CHAD L. FROM THE CAPTAIN'S MEETING

[awesomerextyphoon]

Don’t Tell Me

This is for @cockslut-padalecki​’s Not My Ninth Challenge. My prompt was Stucky x Reader with Royal Au and No Doubt’s Don’t Speak for the lyrics.

Summary: You loved them with all your heart, but now you must wed another.

Pairing: Stucky x Black Female Reader, Brock Rumlow x Black Female Reader

Word Count: 1,893

Rating: 18+ / Explicit

Warning: Angst, Implied Smut, Threesome, Mild Depictions of Violence, and Forced Marriage

A/N: This might be my saddest fic yet. I hope this isn’t too much of a downer for you, @cockslut-padalecki​. Happy Birthday and Congratulations on 9K followers!

Dividers are by the lovely @firefly-graphics​

Back to Masterlist

“Rise and shine, Your Highness! Today’s the big day!” Sabine, your closest handmaiden, announced.

You covered your head with your pillow in irritation, “I don’t want to!”

Sabine sighed, “You have to get up or the guards will come and force you out of bed.”

With an annoyed huff, you got up and stretched, “Let’s get this over with, Sabine.”

You had been dreading this day for weeks. Today was the day you were to wed Brock Rumlow, ruler of the Triskelion Empire. You didn’t want to marry him. He was boorish, cruel, and violent.

But most of all, you didn’t want to marry Brock because your heart belonged to Steve Rogers and James “Bucky” Barnes.

  It started when you were six years old. You were sent to Brooklynd to be King Joseph’s ward as part of a peace initiative (you later found out it was because of a failed coup and your mother wanted you safe).

King Joseph, Queen Sarah, and the court loved you. Only Prince Steven and his best friend, James Barnes Duke of Shelby, gave you the cold shoulder.

It sucked because they were the only ones near your age. You tried to win them over with baked goods from your homeland, trinkets and toys Queen Sarah said that Steven would love, and some of your favorite books. Nothing worked until you had enough and confronted them.

Steven was about to enter the stables with James when you caught them. You just wanted to ask why they were avoiding you, but as your mother warned you got violent and socked James with a left hook. It got to the point that the guards had to split up the three of you.

Queen Sarah had an unusual and embarrassing punishment: the three of you had to sit in a circle and hold hands for one hour under the stern eye of the governess and the queen herself. The air was thick with tension until the governess farted. You tried your hardest not to laugh, but you help yourself. Soon Steven and James joined in the merriment.

You were best friends ever since.

 “What do you want for your bath, Your Highness?”

“May I have the Rose, Hibiscus, Black Pepper, Lemongrass oils for the bath, and the Amla/Coconut Oil mixture for my hair, please. Thank you, Ngozi.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

Once the oils were applied to the bath, you sunk in sighing from the nearly scalding water; its warmth giving you a peace of mind that has been denied to you for weeks.

You wondered how it got to this, then you frowned at the bitter memories symbolized by the single piece of jewelry under your pillow.

  The three of you became thick as thieves. Always helping each other in defending one another whether it be fighting off Steve’s bullies with Bucky or telling the snobby rich girls to stuff it whenever they said you weren’t feminine enough.

Joke’s on them because you passed all of your etiquette classes with flying colors.

Though something happened when you turned thirteen; you started seeing your best friends in a new light. You noticed how Bucky’s shoulders were broadening, Steven’s full bottom lip, the dazzling blues in their eyes, or how their laughs.

Sabine, your closest handmaiden, and friend, confirmed it; you were falling in love with them.

You were scared at first; you didn’t want to ruin your friendship with them. So you started avoiding them by spending time with Duchess Natalia and Marchioness Monica as they were the only female peers you could stand.

You would sneak glances at them when you thought they weren’t looking, but they were.

It went on like that for a year until Bucky had enough and confessed to liking you. You were relieved that he returned your affections, but was taken aback when Steven grabbed Bucky’s hand and pulled him in for a kiss. Turns out they’ve been a secret item for six months.

They both loved you and wanted to make it work.

And it did, for a time. You spent a great deal of time together. Though they were a few close calls since your mother instructed Queen Sarah not to let you court anyone and Steven and Bucky couldn’t go public just yet.

It didn’t matter; you just wanted to be near them. The three of you would sneak kisses by moonlight, write secret love letters, all the fun, and mushy stuff. Your relationship reached a new level when Steve and Bucky presented you with a vibranium and dragon’s gold alloy promise ring with ruby rose and emerald leaves. The three of you vowed to be together forever.

It was pure bliss; you didn’t want it to end.

  “Life had other plans, huh?” you muttered to yourself as your handmaidens were making the final body preparations before you got into your gown.

  Your mother, Queen Ketandu, had written to you and Queen Sarah requesting that you return to Abia in order to complete your studies and take on royal duties. You cried in Bucky’s arms for hours before he had to return to his quarters the morning before your departure.

It wasn’t long before puberty hit you like an airship going at full speed (late bloomer). You became famed for your beauty with scores of suitors, but you rejected them all. Only Bucky and Steve would have your hand.

One of the suitors, Brock Rumlow of Triskelion took it especially hard. He vowed he would have your hand, but your cousin, Samuel Wilson, said to pay him no mind.

You were only able to communicate with Steve and Bucky via phone or letters. It took you four years to return to Brooklynd, but it was not a joyous occasion. King Joseph had passed and Steven was to be crowned king within the fortnight.

Both of them had changed so much, especially Steve; he was nearly unrecognizable. He towered over nearly everyone (only Bucky, Thor, Loki, and M’Baku were taller), broad shoulders, rich tawny pink skin, and a face that could make nearly all the women (and some men) swoon.

He looked like the kings of old, even more so than his father.

Bucky wasn’t slacking either with the way many of the courtiers were ogling him; admiring him for his rugged, yet prim presence.

They were Rulers of Paradise and you were to be their queen.

The three of you finally made love that night. It was your first time, so they decided to be gentle and showered you with kisses and affection. Steve and Bucky worshipped your body as if it was the last thing they would enjoy before the afterlife.

It was as though you were dreaming.

  “Here’s your wedding gown, Your Highness.” Zara, another handmaiden, exclaimed.

“Thank you, Zara.” You tried your best to not let the tears fall. This day was never supposed to happen.

Why did your dream have to die like this?!

  The first crack in your fantasy came with the news of your older brother’s assassination and the outbreak of a civil war. Your sister-in-law begged you to come home.

Your airship was to leave first thing in the morning.

You raced to inform your lovers of your departure. One of the servants said that they saw Steve in his mother’s rose garden. Thinking it was Steve being shy and needing some rest, you ventured into the garden only for fantasy and your heart shatter completely.

In the rose garden under the central archway was Steve on one knee proposing to Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter with Bucky looking on with a smile and the full moon behind them.

Everything froze at that moment.

Why?! Why did they do this?! Were your feelings a joke to them? Did they ever love you?

Unable to hold back your despair, you shrieked at the ideal romantic scene before you.

Steve tried to explain the situation and Bucky almost caught you, but you ran away before you could hear them.

You left for Abia that night.

  “Now ladies,” Lady Bente, the wedding planner bellowed, “remember, this is Emperor Rumlow’s big day. There’s no room for failure.” She didn’t need to say what would happen if you tried anything ‘funny’.

“I know. How can I forget the threats?” grumbled as Sabine put the final touches on your wedding outfit: an off-the-shoulder A-Line Tulle Wedding Dress, a Hand-crafted white gold Baroque tiara inlaid with pale sapphires, diamonds, and pearls, and matching earring and necklace.

Looking in the mirror, you almost didn’t recognize yourself. The dress accentuated your curves and the jewels made your face glow. You were a vision.

Too bad it was for a man who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy everything you hold dear.

  Barely six months after you returned from Brooklynd, Abia conquered by the Triskelion Empire. Their ambassador informed the council that the empire will let Abia continue as a client state if you married their emperor, Brock Rumlow.

If not, Triskelion would raze Abia to the ground and take her citizens as slaves.

The council implored you as Triskelion forces had Sam captive and Abia’s army was running out of supplies.

With a heavy and broken heart, you accepted Rumlow’s terms.

The wedding was to be in a month.

  You took one last look at yourself in the mirror, “Too bad Rumlow isn’t getting a virgin.”

“Goodbye, Your Highness.” Sabine whispered, “Now, don’t you start crying after all the work I put into ya!”

“I know it’s just not fair. I have to lose you, too?” Rumlow made it clear that you were to leave your old world behind, including your closest friend and confidant.

Sabine pulled you in for a hug, “I know it’s not. It’s been a pleasure and delight being your handmaiden and friend.”

“Alright, everyone! Line up! The wedding is about to begin!” Lady Bente ordered.

You gave your friend one last glance before the doors shut behind you, “Goodbye Sabine.”

  The cathedral was spectacular.

Bouquets of roses and elven tulips adorned the pillars. The banners of Abian and Triskelion colors were delicately placed creating an ethereal atmosphere.

Rumlow really outdid himself.

Dignitaries from far and wide were in attendance. You saw your mother, uncle, Sam, and your sister holding her ten-month-old son.

Rumlow took your hand with a triumphant smirk. You could say that he was handsome if you didn’t want to claw his eyes out.

“You look ravishing, darling.”

“I hate you.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Dearly beloved and exalted rulers, we are gathered here today to join the Triskelion Emperor and the Second Princess of Abia in holy matrimony.”

You closed your eyes in resignation. No one was coming. Maybe Brock wouldn’t be so bad.

“If anyone has any reason as to why these two should not be married.”

Then you remembered how he threatened your mother and uncle when after Abia surrendered. His twisted smirk was enough to make your blood boil.

“Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

The cathedral was silent for a few minutes until the doors were blown off their hinges and several guards were flung to the opposite wall behind the altar.

Everyone turned to find smoke and debris. An inhuman roar filled the venue terrifying the guests.

Two figures emerged from the smoke and your eyes widened in shock.

“We do.”

[dexondefense]

There’s a lot of hysterical side plots happening in Check Please right now and honestly the entire dynamic of the Haus after Bitty leaves is killing me but right now my FAVORITE part is that Tango and Ford might be sharing a room. Like I have no confirmation of this beyond someone telling me Ngozi said so and I’m just gonna accept that as the truth because it’s so goddamn funny. This is unlimited comedic potential. 

Tony Tango “The Slut” Tangredi is gonna share an attic room with either a curtain or a very flimsily built wall separating him from Ford and that’s just gonna be a thing they deal with. The option for Whiskey and Tango to share a room -the obvious choice- was right there but Bitty HAD to connect to Whiskey in some way before he left so he doomed Ford to this shit. Whiskey refuses to switch. Denise “I would have banged a LAX bro too if I knew it meant I got my own room” Ford. 

It doesn’t matter if Ford is straight, bi, a lesbian, or ace, because no matter what the situation is this is an absolute nightmare. She doesn’t even know where he finds all these girls. He’s somehow at once both the dumbest and smoothest man she has ever met and she knows WAY too much about his personal life. He had a threesome one time. She didn’t even know that happened in real life outside of Hollywood coke parties. 

Nursey: I haven’t gotten laid in forever Tango: Haha me neither. Ford: It’s been five days. Tango: Oh wow I didn’t think it had been that long. 

Dex offers to try to turn the shed out back into another room. She considers it. 

[checkdispleased]

hi, i love the podcast! (Parse iii episode was transcendent.) I have a kind of specific question: when do we learn that jacks overdose was on purpose? I formed the idea in 2015 that it was part of a pattern of suicidally unwise but not specifically suicidal benzo abuse, which I assume was jossed? But it’s also connected to my other question: what do you two think about jacks relationship to drugs? Sry if you’ve already answered either of these!

thank you so much!!! <3 <3 <3 

I am not the podcast’s resident good rememberer, so Sekrit almost certainly has more accurate information to add, but as I remember, Ngozi implies Jack’s overdose was purposeful in two places: one I cannot currently remember (sorry); the other, which I can definitely confirm, is in Y4′s secret Parse strip, 4.19. while passive-aggressively feeding Parse pie, Bitty angrily says, “You called [Jack] worthless...after knowing he took time off because––how he almost took his own––because he almost believed he wasn’t worth anything.” 

tragically, Ngozi, as far as I remember, has never confirmed Jack’s anxiety meds were benzos, although fandom talked about this fairly endlessly and I personally am hard-pressed to figure out what other anxiety meds would have caused this specific reaction and life-threatening danger besides benzos + alcohol. my suspicion is that she didn’t actually think as deeply about Jack’s specific drug use as the fandom does, and was using the anxiety meds as a kind of symbolic figure, unlike me who loves to write long tumblr essays about the specific psychotropic drugs Jack takes and their likely impact on him! 

I’m sure Sekrit has more to add about Jack’s relationship to drugs since we pretty regularly talk about Jack’s heroin use in the MFA AU we keep egging each other into writing more of, but I personally think even within canon that he’s an addict - not only in the sense of, like, he’s addicted to drugs (although he was/is), but also like, he’s at 0% or 110%, he’s committed to hockey in a fanatically bizarre way, and he is the central figure around which Bitty’s enabling appeasement flutters. you know what I mean? regulation and moderation are not really words that describe Jack, and given his history of misusing his meds in some fashion, it’s easy to imagine that he would continue to misuse substances and/or the glorified self-harm of hockey to fulfill the black hole where his dad should have loved him better. 

je blague, je blague, but also, we all read 1.10, right? 

all that said, I think Jack probably smoked weed and drank alcohol as a teenager, and probably mixed alcohol and his meds in a dangerous way. given my impression that he was pretty into partying, I think it’s really easy to imagine other things, too - everyone I knew was into molly, coke, and adderall right around the time Jack was in the Q, so it’s easy to transfer that into the Rimouski scene. presumably these things are all over Samwell, too, and coke and opioids are both pretty notoriously part of professional hockey, so it’s not like he’d lose access to any of this except while in rehab and possibly under his parents’ roof. we don’t get a lot of canon information about Jack’s anxiety treatment, so while the comic clearly wants us to believe that the power of Bitty’s love helps Jack get his anxiety under control I think it’s just as easy to read Jack as self-medicating off-screen - it would at least explain why his personality disappears after he and Bitty start to come out to everyone! 

I don’t mean to be dismissive when I say: once an addict, always an addict. and I don’t mean that in the medical model of addiction, exactly; I just mean that Jack, given that he is a giant weirdo with an insane life and at least sometimes debilitating levels of obsession and anxiety, would likely keep seeking external methods of emotional regulation, whether it’s through a particularly accommodating RN with a prescription pad or through continuously breaking his teeth on hockey pucks so that the endorphin rush - and maybe also the short-term oxy scrip - get him through the day. 

am I projecting for various embarrassing personal reasons? oh, almost certainly. but hey! that’s what fandom’s about. that, and fanfic; I am excruciatingly slowly writing a fanfic about this and have been my entire time in Check Please fandom, so more from me on this...someday, probably after some other real dark shit I got on the burner. 

[prepnursey]

while we're on the topic of what is canon (re: lardo's sexuality), i want to talk about holster's religion.

He's not canonically Jewish. The only "proof" we have is word of god, an extra of him as a kid with a menorah and a Christmas tree behind him, but nowhere in the comic itself is he confirmed Jewish.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't as a fandom consider him Jewish, absolutely not! But it is a reminder that actually, there is no representation of non-Christian religions in the comic.

Due to the large amount of extra content published by Ngozi and her frequent interactions with the fandom, the line between actual canon and word of god is especially blurry in the Check, Please! fandom, but just like Dumbledore isn't gay in the books, Holster isn't Jewish in the comic

[cosmoscourge-a]

[CW: I talk a bit about Mao Zedong and apologism for him here.]

Maaaaaan I really went and put everything wrong with me into Tobias, even him falling under the influence of an authoritarian dictator has something to do with it lol. My abusive mom is also a BIG-time Mao Zedong apologist who I swear is trying to brainwash me into her views, like there’s this song praising Chairman Mao that she literally will not stop singing around the house and she keeps insisting to me that Mao has a “good side” that I can “learn from” and that he is some sort of a “savior” to Tibetans and to China……Also last I checked she doesn’t care as much as she should that Mao killed 30+ million people. I’ve brought it up to her before and that didn’t change her view of Mao at all. And she has the nerve to tell me that when the Chinese government was trying to brainwash her as a kid, she “wasn’t paying attention”…

I can totally imagine Lotor feeding Tobias a similar sort of lies, though he was not as bad as Mao. Like for literally two years, Tobias was basically constantly monitored by Lotor to make sure he didn’t go anywhere he “wasn’t supposed to” aka any place that could teach him some of the horrible things that Lotor was doing, and he was only let out into the real world once Lotor felt assured that he wouldn’t do anything against him. During that time Lotor would have completely omitted or downplayed the bad things that he had done or said things like “people will say X about how I’m horrible, but you mustn’t believe them.” He would have fed Tobias all sorts of propaganda about how they were the saviors of Dispara’s many nations, but when Tobias actually went to those places he started seeing more and more that Lotor didn’t save them, he only threw them under a new kind of torment. He would also have learned that instead of allowing all the “liberated” nations to truly rule themselves like Lotor had told him, the rebellion was installing puppet heads of state that pretended to their people and to the world they were independent…And he was shattered, just shattered, when he realized that this was the regime that he had basically been helping to prop up.

What makes Tobias different from me in this situation is that thankfully, with me, my mom does not directly serve in an authoritarian regime and only started expressing her views around me LONG after I had already been taught the truth. I also have the blessing of the Internet to fact check my mom’s bullshit claims any time I want and to help me argue against her. On the other hand, Tobias was basically sucked into a world whose current state he didn’t know the truth about because of how isolated Wilhelmine had made it (and how good Lotor’s propaganda machine was), and his entire formative experience there was shaped by the lies that an ACTUAL authoritarian dictator was feeding him in an EXTREMELY controlled and monitored environment. Like. Kid was basically under house arrest from ages 12 to 14 and he was trained so fucking hard that he didn’t even become aware of it until long after Lotor’s death. He didn’t even know that he was strategizing directly for the war, for fuck’s sake, and he definitely did not have the resources to do his own research and formulate his own opinion. And while at some point he started to suspect something was wrong, he would have had a longer, harder journey toward the truth if people like Viktoria, Ngozi, Psyche and Allura weren’t there to validate and confirm this instinct. 

Still, though. Any time you see me writing anti-authoritarian things……Please know this is only one of the reasons why my hatred of dictatorship is PERSONAL.

[problemsofabooknerd]

I was wondering if you had any recs for queer YA contemporary books with happy endings. I just feel like everything always ends sad and need some happiness in my queer life. 😂

OMG YES of COURSE I do!! I do not make it my business to ever read queer YA that ends sadly. I’m too gay and sad for that lol. I’ll list some fave queer ya that ends happily and I’ll mark with a * if it has a POC as the lead. 

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour (f/f, lesbian mc)*

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver (nonbinary lead, nb/m romance)

Check, Please!: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu (gay lead, m/m)

I Was Born For This by Alice Oseman (trans guy lead, lots of anxiety & depression discussion, other mc is a hijabi girl who I personally saw as ace but it isn’t confirmed) *

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman (bi girl lead, gay/pan/demisexual side characters, also lots of anxiety & depression discussion)*

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (gay guy lead, m/m)

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (lesbian mc, some f/f but the point is mostly Juliet’s journey with feminism)*

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst (two bi girl leads, f/f)

Starworld by Audrey Coulthurst & Paula Garner (unrequited love between a girl and her friend, but it’s all ok and ends happily even with the rocky stuff that happens for the rest of the book)

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde (f/f, bi girl lead, also has autistic rep with the other mc)*

Style by Chelsea M. Cameron (f/f, both mcs are lesbians, one of the mcs has a disability)

Chord by Chelsea M. Cameron (f/f, queer girls, sequel to above)

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate (f/m with a bi girl lead)*

Final Draft by Riley Redgate (f/f, pansexual girl lead)*

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann (f/m, biromantic ace girl lead)*

How To Make A Wish by Ashley Herring Blake (f/f, bi girl lead)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (gay boy lead, m/m)*

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding (lesbian lead, f/f)

Autoboyography by Christina Lauren (bi boy lead, mc is also Jewish, m/m)

Running With Lions by Julian Winters (bi boy lead, m/m)

That’s just a few to help you get started! I do have more books about trans characters who get happy endings, but most of them are fantasy/sci-fi so I left them off this contemporary list. If people are after those, send me a message and I’ll give you more recommendations! 

[kiss--me-please]

I need some help

I just got the email from kickstarter/Ngozi that they're ready to ship (yeahy!!). But what the hell means I should confirm my address? I just locked in to PledgeManager and the shown address there is correct and no button to confirm anything in sight. Is this enough? Do I have to do more? I'm so confused and feel incredibly dump and please please help me out

[eriskay]

update discourse: two things

please do scroll right past this if you can't be bothered to read yet another post like this one. I know I've skimmed through more than my fair share already, so. I feel you. have a great day.

okay.

1. I love all my sons equally. I love Nursey and Dex. I think they're both a little stupid right now, but I see where they're both coming from. I think they're both flawed, but I don't think either of them were horrible villians in 4.8. full disclosure: when I finished reading the update I was kinda smiling and shaking my head, thinking oh god, these idiots. wonder what'll happen next.

THAT BEING SAID.

2. I resent the idea that Ngozi 'set the record straight' or whatever when she posted her blog post about the update. and like, don't get me wrong, no disrespect whatsoever to Ngozi, she's a wonderful and talented creator who makes a kick ass comic for free. Ngozi rocks. no, I resent the general idea that when an author of any work publishes a comment on their intention behind a certain scene or series of events, they've somehow confirmed the canonical interpretation of that part of the work. I don't think that's what Ngozi is trying to achieve with her blog posts and I don't think that's how we should necessarily view them. the way I see it, the canon is in the comic. everything that is indisputable in the comic is canon. everything that is up to interpretation in the comic... is up to interpretation. and if your interpretation of the work does not align with an extra piece of information the creator provided on a blog, or in an interview, or something similar, then it just means that your interpretation of the work isn't the same as the creator's original intention.

but your interpretation is still valid. it's what the story made you think and feel when you read it. it's what you felt the characters expressed in that moment. can anyone take that away from you?

no.

see also: any statement ever made by j k rowling in interviews. and don't even get me started on george lucas.

I do love Ngozi's blog, though. I love to know her thoughts on the comic as it progresses, and it does give us interesting hints about updates to come, hints at what the canon might become at a later stage. but for me, the additional comments on the blog are not canon in and of themselves.

that's it, two things. thanks for reading. hope you have a great day.

[check-comma-please]

SO I DID A THING…

This is basically a timeline of major events in OMGCP That I created, at first to help myself, but then I decided “why not post it? Other people may find it helpful”. Not going to lie, the Check Please timeline can be a little confusing, considering the comic is still taking place in 2016. Obvs that’s not Ngozi’s fault bc the updates take time, so it’s understandable that the comic isnt present day… anyways I’ve done extensive research on the following information. And I’m like 95% sure that it’s all correct but some things are speculation and assumptions. I’ve used blog posts, tweets, and the actual comic to figure out the below information. It’s not a big deal and maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but idk it really interests me and maybe it will interest others????? Like I said before, a lot of this is speculation so FEEL FREE to correct me on any false info. ALSO!!! If any of you have links to the canon confirmation of some of the things that I’m not 100% sure about, PLEASE link them to me. FINALLY, if anyone wants me to link them to some of my references for this, then just ask and I’ll be more than happy to send you them. So with that: these are (what I consider) to be the major events in the time line of Check Please! Hope I got it all right!

**Edit!!!!: I messed this up originally. I screwed up some birth years and now I’m back to fix them. So don’t be alarmed if you reblogged this and now its different. Im like 99% sure that I’m changing it to all true info.

Birthdays

Jack- 1990 (birthday august 3)

Kent Parson-1990 (birthday july 4)

Holster-1991 (birthday unknown)

Shitty-1992 (birthday dec 19)

Ransom-1993 (birthday march 28. I am very confused because according to the wiki, ransom was born in 1994. However, a tweet from Bitty on March 28th, 2015 says “happy 22 birthday rans!” which would place his birth year in 93. Also a very early piece of artwork says that ransom is 20 in the beginning of his sophomore year, which further indicates being born in 93. Long story short? Don’t believe everything you read on the wiki)

Lardo- 1994??? (birthday unknown but according to the wiki, Lardo is currently 23 years old as of April 1st, 2018 (when I’m writing this). However the wiki can not always be trusted.  We know her birthday is around Ransoms but we don’t know when exactly. Her and Rans has a combined birthday party (Keagster) on Easter Sunday 2015 (which technically was April 5, 2015….Idk if I should be that technical but whatever) so I’m kind of assuming that her birthday is around Late March/Early April….as for her birth year? All we are told is that she is a sophomore with rans and holster. so I’m assuming that she was born in 94 because its the easiest assumption to make, but i could always be wrong)

Bitty: 1995 (birthday may 5)

Nursey: 1996 (birthday feb 14. There is not a ton of supporting info that suggests Nursey was born in 1996. The wiki’s reference is a tweet from Ngozi, replying to a private account so I cannot view the tweet. Basically I don’t have a great argument for Nursey being born in 1996 so once again, I’m ASSUMING. Please send me any info that you have on Nurseys birth)

Dex: 1995??? (Birthday October 26/27, I’ve seen both dates. However I’ve yet to find ANY canon confirmation that either of these dates are his birthday. Everyone just kind of says that its his birthday?? Idk if anyone has canon info or something please link me to it because I can literally not find anything about Dex’s birth. Also its been pointed out to me that he could be born late in 1995, however I originally assumed he was born late in 1996. It depends on wether he was held back a year or pushed forward.I have no clue it honestly could be either.)

Chowder: 1995?? 1996?? (October 11. I’ve seen people on tumblr saying it’s on the 10?? Idk according to Bitty’s tweets its on the 11th. Also the birth years?? Its the same situation as Dex… He could either be born in 95 and held back a year, or 96 and pushed foward )

2008: Jack and Kent are both 18, playing in the Q

Spring 2009: Jack and Kent win memorial cup. Jack overdoses. Kent is drafted to the Aces.

Fall 2009-Spring 2011: Jack is in rehab/ coaching peewee/taking SATs

Spring 2011: Aces win cup( Ngozi tweeted saying that Jack enters Samwell after the Aces win the cup, If Jack graduates in 2015, then he entered SMH in Fall 2011, therefore the Aces winning in Spring 2011)

Fall 2011:Jack enters samwell (21) Along with shitty (18, turning 19 in dec) (grad class 2015)

Spring 2012: SMH is in the ECAC and are knocked out at some point after the first round. Jack is named captain for the 2012-13 season

Fall 2012: Ransom (19) , Holster (21), and Lardo (18) all enter samwell (grad class 2016)

Fall 2012-Spring 2013: Now this is all kind of fuzzy. Sometime between the Aces winning the cup(Spring 2011) and before Bitty enters Samwell (Fall 2013), Kent Parson comes to the haus to visit Jack. However we can assume it happened at some point during Jacks sophomore year (Fall 2012- Spring 2013) because in a blog post (or was it one of Bitty’s tweets? I can’t remember. Anyways) Holster says that “He [Kent] remembered my major” so clearly it was sometime after Holster, Rans, and Lardo all enter samwell, and were there to meet KP. Unless KP visited during Jack’s freshman year and Holster was just there for some reason??? Seems unlikely and unnecessarily complicated. So let’s just say that KP came during Jacks soph year)

Fall 2013: Bitty (our beautiful ray of sunshine) enters Samwell (18) along with minor characters, Ollie and Wicks (grad class 2017)

Spring 2014: Samwell knocked out of ECAC championship. Johnson graduates and Bitty gets his dibs

Fall 2014: Nursey (18), Dex (17??18???once again, unconfirmed), and Chowder (17??18??) (aka the frogs) all enter Samwell (grad class 2018). Jack (now 24) is looking to be drafted. Kent (also 24) shows up at Epikegster (December 2014). Bitty (now 19) has crush on Jack. (I really don’t know why I included their ages in this part I just sometimes forget how old Jack actually is)

Spring 2015: Shitty is accepted to Harvard Fucking Law. SMH makes it to final four championship, but loses. Jack signs with the Falconers. Ransom and Holster are made Co-Captains for the 2015-16 season. Jack (24) and Shitty( 22) graduate. Lardo and Chowder get their dibs. Jack and Bitty kiss after graduation.

Summer 2015: Jack spends 4th of July with Bitty in Georgia. Later that summer they start dating.

Fall 2015: Whiskey and Tango (tadpoles) enter Samwell along With Ford (grad class 2019) Jack and Bitty tell the team about their relationship (December)

Spring 2016 (as of April 1st, 2018, the comic is currently taking place in Spring 2016): Jack is given an A on the Falcs (assistant/alternate captain). Ford is appointed as manager for the 2016-17 season. SMH is knocked out of ECAC tournament in the first round. Bitty is made captain for the 2016-17 season. Lardo(22), Ransom(23),and Holster (24??25?? depends on his birthday.) all graduate. Nursey, Dex, Ollie, and Wicks all get dibs. Bitty turns 21. The Falcs win the cup. Jack and Bitty kiss and come out to the world.

Currently Jack and Kent are both 26, Holster is 24??25?? (Like I said I don’t know when his exact birthday is. If his birthday is after the events of the year 3 finale, then he would still technically be 24) Shitty is 24, Ransom is 23 and Lardo is  22, Bitty is 21, Nursey is 20, and Chowder and Dex could both either be 19 or 20 (like I said i still don’t know whether they are 95′ babies or 96′ babies, since I only have birthdates and not canon birth years. ALSO!! It should be noted that since there are no canon birth years for Chow or Dex (at least that I know of), there is no way to be certain of their ages. I mean, theoretically, Chowder could be older than Bitty, and just entered college late. Same with Dex. But just to make thing easier on myself, I’m going to assume that all of the frogs are around the same age.)

The comic is currently taking place in 2016, two years behind real time. IF it was present day (April 1st, 2018) in the comic then

Jack: 27

Kent: 27

Bitty: 22

Ransom: 23

Holster:24/25 (depending on his bday)

Shitty: 23

Lardo: 23/24 (depending on her bday)

Nursey: 22

Dex: 21/22

Chowder: 21/22

Now Bitty’s tweets….

At first I was really really really really confused about how Bitty’s tweets work in the timeline. But Its actually really simple??. Bitty’s tweets start in June 2014, basically right after the end of Bitty’s freshman year. They pretty much all follow the correct timeline (the most recent tweets are from May 2016, about Rans, Holster, and Lardos graduation). Basically if you see a tweet, the date stamp on it correlates directly to the comic. I’m not sure if Ngozi just had the entire comic figured out two years ago, and tweeted everything back in 2016 (which seems far fetched) OR if Ngozi just changed the date on her computer back to 2016 and then sent out the tweets (which seems much more likely. Still, this is all speculation ). It doesn’t really matter though because regardless, the tweets line up with the timeline. I HIGHLY recommend reading all of Bitty’s tweets before Ngozi locks the account again for year 4. They add so much more to the story and are basically just extra details that make the comic even more immersive.

And I’m pretty sure that’s it?? Until of course year 4…. but yeah once again don’t take my word as law. Also, like I said already, if I got something wrong, please just let me know. Also if I said something confusing, just ask. :)