#read a book take a hike talk to veteran
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Holidays 4.23
Holidays
Alfred G. “Alferd” Packer Day (Colorado)
Aragon Day (Spain)
Army Reserves Day (US)
Asian Corpsetwt Day [Every 23rd]
Boice Day (South Korea)
Book Day (Canada)
Book Day and Lover's Day (Spain)
Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day
Castile and León Day (Spain)
Children’s Day (Turkey)
Community Day (Spain)
Content Creator Day
Copyright Day
Day of Aragon (Spain)
Day of Books and Roses (Catalonia, Spain)
Drive It Day (UK)
Electric Mixer Day
English Language Day (UN)
Flag Day (England)
George Castriota Day (Albania)
Hawthorn Day (French Republic)
Impossible Astronaut Day (Dr. Who)
International Choro Day
International Creator Day
International Day of the Book
International Fibrodyysolasia Ossificans Progressive Awareness Day
International Nose Picking Day
International Pallas Cat Day
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day
International Share a Secret Day
International Sing Out Day
Jurgi Day (Ancient Latvia)
Khongjom Day (Manipur, India)
La Diada de Sant Jordi (Catalonia, Spain)
Linnaeus Day (Sweden)
London Marathon Day (UK)
Lover's Day
Movie Theater Day
National Bryan Day
National Email Day
National Grief-in-Public Day
National Lost Dog Awareness Day
National Lover’s Day
National Lugaw Day (Philippines)
National Read Me Day
National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (Turkey, Northern Cyprus)
National Take a Hike with Nick Day
National Vagina Appreciation Day
Navy Day (China)
Penny Day
Pet Tech CPR Day
Psychologist Day (Ukraine)
Public School Day
Sigurd the Dragon Slayer's Day
Slay a Dragon Day
Spanish Language Day (UN)
Take a Chance Day
Talk Like Shakespeare Day
Teach Your Children To Save Day
Veterans Day (Estonia)
Visalia Priora
Wild Hyacinth Day
World Book Day (UN; except Ireland, UK)
World Book Night (Ireland, Germany, UK, US)
World Laboratory Day
World Table Tennis Day
YouTube Day
Food & Drink Celebrations
Allagash Saison Day [original date]
Bavarian Beer Day
Biertag (Germany)
Cherry Cheesecake Day
German Beer Day
International Cava Day
International Reinheitsgebot Day
National Asparagus Day (UK)
National English Muffin Day
National Licorice Day
National Picnic Day
National Taffy Day
New Coke Day
St. George's Day (traditional end of Bavarian lager brewing season)
4th Tuesday in April
National Library Day [Tuesday of Library Week]
National Library Workers Day [Tuesday of Library Week]
School Bus Driver’s Day [4th Tuesday]
Weekly Holidays beginning April 23 (4th Week)
Global Road Safety Week (UN) [thru 23-29]
National Princess Week (thru 4.29)
Independence & Related Days
Australland (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized)
Conch Republic (Declared; 1982) [unrecognized)
Israel (a.k.a. Yom Ha’atzmaut; Declared; 1948)
National Sovereignty Day, Day 2 (Turkey)
Festivals Beginning April 23, 2024
Les Printemps de Bourges (Bourges, France) [thru 4.28]
London Marathon (London, England)
Feast Days
Adalbert of Prague (Christian; Saint)
Antoine Vollon (Artology)
Cervantes (Writerism)
Chance Day (Shamanism)
Cynical Bastards Day (Pastafarian)
Day of the Glorious Fuckup (Church of the SubGenius)
Feast of Hephaestus (Greek Blacksmith God & Brewer)
Felix, Fortunatus, and Achilleus (Christian; Martyrs)
Festival of Saint Sarah the Egyptian (Sara Kali the Black Queen; Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France) begins [until 25th]
George [England, traditional end of Bavarian lager brewing season] *
Gerard, Bishop of Toul (Christian; Saint)
Giles of Assisi (Christian; Saint)
Gerard of Toul (Christian; Saint)
The Goddess is Alive Day (Everyday Wicca)
Ibar (a.k.a. Ivor) of Beggerin (or Meath; Christian; Saint)
Ji-Young (Muppetism)
J.M.W. Turner (Artology)
J.P. Donleavy (Writerism)
Miltiades (Positivist; Saint)
Shakespeare Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)
Snood Day (Celtic Book of Days)
Toyohiko Kagawa (Episcopal and Lutheran Church)
Vinalia Urbana (a.k.a. Vinalia Prima or Priora; Ancient Roman wine festival)
Vulcan's Day (Ancient Rome)
Walpurgisnacht, Day I (Pagan)
William Shakespeare (Writerism)
Lunar Calendar Holidays
Full Moon [4th of the Year] (a.k.a. ...
Awakening Moon (Neo-Pagan)
Breaking Ice Moon (Traditional)
Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs (Traditional)
Egg Moon (Alternate)
Fish Moon (Alternate)
Flower Moon (Cherokee)
Gold Star Spouses Day
Grass Moon (Alternate, North America)
Growing Moon (Celtic)
Hunter’s Moon (South Africa)
Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Traditional)
Peony Moon (China)
Pink Moon (Amer. Indian, Traditional)
Planter’s Moon (Colonial)
Seed Moon (England, Wicca)
Southern Hemisphere: Blood, Harvest, Hunter’s
Wildcat Moon (Choctaw)
God of Medicine Day (Taiwan) [15th Day, 3rd Month]
Lucky & Unlucky Days
Prime Number Day: 113 [30 of 72]
Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]
Premieres
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter (Political Theory; 1948)
Benny & Joon (Film; 1993)
Black and Blue, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1976)
The Black Marble, by Joseph Wambaugh (Novel; 1978)
Cherrybomb (Film; 2009)
Dogville (Film; 2003)
Election (Film; 1999)
The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century, by Leoš Janáček (Opera; 1920)
Fall Out - Fall In (Disney Cartoon; 1943)
Frog Jog (Tijuana Toads Cartoon; 1972)
Gregory’s Girl (Film; 1981)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou (Autobiography; 1969)
Indian Summer (Film; 1993)
A Jolly Good Furlough (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1943)
Lemonade, by Beyoncé (Album; 2016)
Man on Fire (Film; 2004)
Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1597)
Nexus, by Henry Miller (Novel; 1959) [Rosy Crucifixion #3]
The Penguin Parade (WB MM Cartoon; 1938)
Ramones, by Ramones (Album; 1976)
Return to Paradise, by James A. Michener (Novel; 1951)
Shadow and Bone (TV Series; 2021)
Sita Sings the Blues (Animated Film; 2010)
Snow Place Like Home (Chilly Willy Cartoon; 1966)
Sticky Fingers, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1971)
The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever (Short Story Collection; 1979)
Symphony No. 1 in C Major, by Mily Balakirev (Symphony; 1898)
Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, by Mily Balakirev (Symphony; 1909)
Teen Titans Go! (Animated Film; 2013)
There’s Good Boos To-Night (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1948)
13 Going on 30 (Film; 2004)
Touch of Evil (Film; 1958)
Two for the Record (Disney Cartoon; 1954)
When I Was Cruel, by Elvis Costello (Album; 2002)
Who Scent You? (WB LT Cartoon; 1960)
Today’s Name Days
Adalbert, Georg, Jörg, Jürgen (Austria)
Toma, Tomislav, Tomislava (Bulgaria)
Adalbert, Đurđica, Đuro, Juraj (Croatia)
Vojtěch (Czech Republic)
Georgius (Denmark)
Georg, Jürgen, Jürgo, Jüri, Jürjo, Jürnas, Jüts, Ürjo (Estonia)
Jiri, Jori, Jyri, Jyrki, Yrjänä, Yrjö (Finland)
Georges (France)
Georg, Gerhard, Jörg, Jürgen (Germany)
Georgios, Giorgos, Thomas, Yorgos (Greece)
Béla (Hungary)
Giorgio (Italy)
Georgs, Jorens, Jurģis, Juris (Latvia)
Adalbertas, Daugaudas, Jurgis, Vygailė (Lithuania)
Georg, Jørgen, Jørn (Norway)
Adalbert, Gerard, Gerarda, Gerhard, Helena, Jerzy, Wojciech (Poland)
Gheorghe (Romania)
Vojtech (Slovakia)
Jorge (Spain)
Georg, Göran (Sweden)
George (Ukraine)
Brayan, Breana, Breanna, Breanne, Brian, Briana, Brianna, Brianne, Brielle, Brien, Briona, Bryan, Bryana, Bryanna, Bryant, Brynn, Bryon, Shirlee, Shirleen, Shirley (USA)
Today is Also…
Day of Year: Day 114 of 2024; 252 days remaining in the year
ISO: Day 2 of week 17 of 2024
Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 10 of 28]
Chinese: Month 3 (Wu-Chen), Day 15 (Ding-Si)
Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]
Hebrew: 15 Nisan 5784
Islamic: 14 Shawwal 1445
J Cal: 24 Cyan; Threesday [23 of 30]
Julian: 10 April 2024
Moon: 100%: Full Moon
Positivist: 2 Caesar (5th Month) [Leonidas]
Runic Half Month: Man (Human Being) [Day 14 of 15]
Season: Spring (Day 36 of 92)
Week: 4th Week of April
Zodiac: Taurus (Day 4 of 31)
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Holidays 4.23
Holidays
Alfred G. “Alferd” Packer Day (Colorado)
Aragon Day (Spain)
Army Reserves Day (US)
Asian Corpsetwt Day [Every 23rd]
Boice Day (South Korea)
Book Day (Canada)
Book Day and Lover's Day (Spain)
Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day
Castile and León Day (Spain)
Children’s Day (Turkey)
Community Day (Spain)
Content Creator Day
Copyright Day
Day of Aragon (Spain)
Day of Books and Roses (Catalonia, Spain)
Drive It Day (UK)
Electric Mixer Day
English Language Day (UN)
Flag Day (England)
George Castriota Day (Albania)
Hawthorn Day (French Republic)
Impossible Astronaut Day (Dr. Who)
International Choro Day
International Creator Day
International Day of the Book
International Fibrodyysolasia Ossificans Progressive Awareness Day
International Nose Picking Day
International Pallas Cat Day
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day
International Share a Secret Day
International Sing Out Day
Jurgi Day (Ancient Latvia)
Khongjom Day (Manipur, India)
La Diada de Sant Jordi (Catalonia, Spain)
Linnaeus Day (Sweden)
London Marathon Day (UK)
Lover's Day
Movie Theater Day
National Bryan Day
National Email Day
National Grief-in-Public Day
National Lost Dog Awareness Day
National Lover’s Day
National Lugaw Day (Philippines)
National Read Me Day
National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (Turkey, Northern Cyprus)
National Take a Hike with Nick Day
National Vagina Appreciation Day
Navy Day (China)
Penny Day
Pet Tech CPR Day
Psychologist Day (Ukraine)
Public School Day
Sigurd the Dragon Slayer's Day
Slay a Dragon Day
Spanish Language Day (UN)
Take a Chance Day
Talk Like Shakespeare Day
Teach Your Children To Save Day
Veterans Day (Estonia)
Visalia Priora
Wild Hyacinth Day
World Book Day (UN; except Ireland, UK)
World Book Night (Ireland, Germany, UK, US)
World Laboratory Day
World Table Tennis Day
YouTube Day
Food & Drink Celebrations
Allagash Saison Day [original date]
Bavarian Beer Day
Biertag (Germany)
Cherry Cheesecake Day
German Beer Day
International Cava Day
International Reinheitsgebot Day
National Asparagus Day (UK)
National English Muffin Day
National Licorice Day
National Picnic Day
National Taffy Day
New Coke Day
St. George's Day (traditional end of Bavarian lager brewing season)
4th Tuesday in April
National Library Day [Tuesday of Library Week]
National Library Workers Day [Tuesday of Library Week]
School Bus Driver’s Day [4th Tuesday]
Weekly Holidays beginning April 23 (4th Week)
Global Road Safety Week (UN) [thru 23-29]
National Princess Week (thru 4.29)
Independence & Related Days
Australland (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized)
Conch Republic (Declared; 1982) [unrecognized)
Israel (a.k.a. Yom Ha’atzmaut; Declared; 1948)
National Sovereignty Day, Day 2 (Turkey)
Festivals Beginning April 23, 2024
Les Printemps de Bourges (Bourges, France) [thru 4.28]
London Marathon (London, England)
Feast Days
Adalbert of Prague (Christian; Saint)
Antoine Vollon (Artology)
Cervantes (Writerism)
Chance Day (Shamanism)
Cynical Bastards Day (Pastafarian)
Day of the Glorious Fuckup (Church of the SubGenius)
Feast of Hephaestus (Greek Blacksmith God & Brewer)
Felix, Fortunatus, and Achilleus (Christian; Martyrs)
Festival of Saint Sarah the Egyptian (Sara Kali the Black Queen; Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France) begins [until 25th]
George [England, traditional end of Bavarian lager brewing season] *
Gerard, Bishop of Toul (Christian; Saint)
Giles of Assisi (Christian; Saint)
Gerard of Toul (Christian; Saint)
The Goddess is Alive Day (Everyday Wicca)
Ibar (a.k.a. Ivor) of Beggerin (or Meath; Christian; Saint)
Ji-Young (Muppetism)
J.M.W. Turner (Artology)
J.P. Donleavy (Writerism)
Miltiades (Positivist; Saint)
Shakespeare Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)
Snood Day (Celtic Book of Days)
Toyohiko Kagawa (Episcopal and Lutheran Church)
Vinalia Urbana (a.k.a. Vinalia Prima or Priora; Ancient Roman wine festival)
Vulcan's Day (Ancient Rome)
Walpurgisnacht, Day I (Pagan)
William Shakespeare (Writerism)
Lunar Calendar Holidays
Full Moon [4th of the Year] (a.k.a. ...
Awakening Moon (Neo-Pagan)
Breaking Ice Moon (Traditional)
Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs (Traditional)
Egg Moon (Alternate)
Fish Moon (Alternate)
Flower Moon (Cherokee)
Gold Star Spouses Day
Grass Moon (Alternate, North America)
Growing Moon (Celtic)
Hunter’s Moon (South Africa)
Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Traditional)
Peony Moon (China)
Pink Moon (Amer. Indian, Traditional)
Planter’s Moon (Colonial)
Seed Moon (England, Wicca)
Southern Hemisphere: Blood, Harvest, Hunter’s
Wildcat Moon (Choctaw)
God of Medicine Day (Taiwan) [15th Day, 3rd Month]
Lucky & Unlucky Days
Prime Number Day: 113 [30 of 72]
Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]
Premieres
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter (Political Theory; 1948)
Benny & Joon (Film; 1993)
Black and Blue, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1976)
The Black Marble, by Joseph Wambaugh (Novel; 1978)
Cherrybomb (Film; 2009)
Dogville (Film; 2003)
Election (Film; 1999)
The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century, by Leoš Janáček (Opera; 1920)
Fall Out - Fall In (Disney Cartoon; 1943)
Frog Jog (Tijuana Toads Cartoon; 1972)
Gregory’s Girl (Film; 1981)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou (Autobiography; 1969)
Indian Summer (Film; 1993)
A Jolly Good Furlough (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1943)
Lemonade, by Beyoncé (Album; 2016)
Man on Fire (Film; 2004)
Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1597)
Nexus, by Henry Miller (Novel; 1959) [Rosy Crucifixion #3]
The Penguin Parade (WB MM Cartoon; 1938)
Ramones, by Ramones (Album; 1976)
Return to Paradise, by James A. Michener (Novel; 1951)
Shadow and Bone (TV Series; 2021)
Sita Sings the Blues (Animated Film; 2010)
Snow Place Like Home (Chilly Willy Cartoon; 1966)
Sticky Fingers, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1971)
The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever (Short Story Collection; 1979)
Symphony No. 1 in C Major, by Mily Balakirev (Symphony; 1898)
Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, by Mily Balakirev (Symphony; 1909)
Teen Titans Go! (Animated Film; 2013)
There’s Good Boos To-Night (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1948)
13 Going on 30 (Film; 2004)
Touch of Evil (Film; 1958)
Two for the Record (Disney Cartoon; 1954)
When I Was Cruel, by Elvis Costello (Album; 2002)
Who Scent You? (WB LT Cartoon; 1960)
Today’s Name Days
Adalbert, Georg, Jörg, Jürgen (Austria)
Toma, Tomislav, Tomislava (Bulgaria)
Adalbert, Đurđica, Đuro, Juraj (Croatia)
Vojtěch (Czech Republic)
Georgius (Denmark)
Georg, Jürgen, Jürgo, Jüri, Jürjo, Jürnas, Jüts, Ürjo (Estonia)
Jiri, Jori, Jyri, Jyrki, Yrjänä, Yrjö (Finland)
Georges (France)
Georg, Gerhard, Jörg, Jürgen (Germany)
Georgios, Giorgos, Thomas, Yorgos (Greece)
Béla (Hungary)
Giorgio (Italy)
Georgs, Jorens, Jurģis, Juris (Latvia)
Adalbertas, Daugaudas, Jurgis, Vygailė (Lithuania)
Georg, Jørgen, Jørn (Norway)
Adalbert, Gerard, Gerarda, Gerhard, Helena, Jerzy, Wojciech (Poland)
Gheorghe (Romania)
Vojtech (Slovakia)
Jorge (Spain)
Georg, Göran (Sweden)
George (Ukraine)
Brayan, Breana, Breanna, Breanne, Brian, Briana, Brianna, Brianne, Brielle, Brien, Briona, Bryan, Bryana, Bryanna, Bryant, Brynn, Bryon, Shirlee, Shirleen, Shirley (USA)
Today is Also…
Day of Year: Day 114 of 2024; 252 days remaining in the year
ISO: Day 2 of week 17 of 2024
Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 10 of 28]
Chinese: Month 3 (Wu-Chen), Day 15 (Ding-Si)
Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]
Hebrew: 15 Nisan 5784
Islamic: 14 Shawwal 1445
J Cal: 24 Cyan; Threesday [23 of 30]
Julian: 10 April 2024
Moon: 100%: Full Moon
Positivist: 2 Caesar (5th Month) [Leonidas]
Runic Half Month: Man (Human Being) [Day 14 of 15]
Season: Spring (Day 36 of 92)
Week: 4th Week of April
Zodiac: Taurus (Day 4 of 31)
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Text
stucky fic recs
here are some stucky fic recs! as always, be sure to read the warnings for each fic <3
one shots
finding home | @thedamageofherdays
cap steve x modern bucky
After he is caught in a terrible rainstorm while hiking, Bucky is glad to find shelter at the cottage Steve shares with his daughter and his dog. Bucky ends up finding so much more than just a safe place to spend the night.
x | @dreadlockholiday
steve x bucky
Request: Bucky looking through a glossy magazine and saying something like "God, can you imagine being paid for just looking cute?" And without thought Steve replies, "you'd be a millionaire" and Bucky just blushes furiously while Steve's all like 😳 *oh no, I just said that out loud*
x | @dreadlockholiday (18+)
steve x bucky
Bucky finds his BFF Steve's sketchbook... and it's full of nothing but sketches of Bucky... naked.
sweethearts | @musette22
steve x bucky
Steve confesses his feelings to Bucky using sweethearts
my moon, my man | @musette22 (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
AU meet-cute. Strangers on a Train, but with less murder and more sexual tension.
make it till you fake it | AggressiveWhenStartled (AO3)
steve x bucky
“Ned,” Peter said, like a drowning man sighting land. “Ned. Captain America and the Winter Soldier are fake dating right now and it is the most painfully awkward and obvious thing I have ever seen, all of us want to die, Ned.”
things my heart used to know | Nightwing11 (AO3)
steve x bucky
In a world where soulmates can communicate telepathically with their partners, Steve Rogers has always had Bucky Barnes with him, a calming voice in a sea of turmoil. And, when Bucky falls off the train during World War II, Steve experiences deafening silence for the first time.
Now, after crashing a plane in the Arctic to save the world and being frozen for 70 years, Steve’s still trying to figure out how to live without Bucky there. His new friends are trying to help him adjust, to move on. And he thought he was doing better, he really did.
So, why is he suddenly hearing Bucky’s voice again?
catfish | @buckmebxrnes (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve Rogers is a famous movie star, known for his role as Captain America. Bucky Barnes is a bored law student who drinks too much wine. Bucky gets on match.com to boost his confidence. What he doesn't expect is a guy using Steve Rogers' pictures on a dating profile. Bucky decides to mess with the guy. After all, what idiot uses Steve Rogers' pictures on a dating site?
Not like it's really him, right? Bucky may need more wine.
let's go have fun | @sebastanbucky
steve x bucky
“Nat wanted me to-” Nat clears her throat and he rolls his eyes. “I wanted to tell you something.” He looks at Steve with a look he hopes says ‘play along’.
“Okay. What did you want to tell me?” Bucky has to take a deep breath to keep from laughing again, it helps with his performance as Nat nods encouragingly at him.
“I’m gay.” He says, making his voice sound shaky and weak.
the way you came around | sokaless (AO3)
steve x bucky
After a while, Bucky says, “You know, this song sounds like it was written for you.”
“That's funny,” Steve remarks. “I chose it because it reminded me of you.”
Steve gives Bucky an iPod full of his favourite songs from the 21st century to help him deal with his nightmares. Bucky has a new mission- to find out who Steve is in love with, because there are a few too many unrequited love songs on that iPod.
stuck on you | wearing_tearing (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
“Bucky? You don’t look so hot.”
Bucky makes a tiny little sound in the back of his throat, only to start coughing. Of course he doesn’t look hot. He’s sick and he’s dying and Steve obviously isn’t attracted to him.
you have the place next to my place | justanotherStonyfan (AO3)
cap steve x modern bucky
prompt: “We live in adjacent apartments and our bedrooms are on opposite sides of a very thin wall and one night I heard you crying and talked to you through the wall” AU
Captain America helps the Vet next door.
you’ve got (30) new matches | williamkaplans (AO3)
steve x bucky
When everyone finds out Steve's bi thanks to Bucky's recovering memories, Natasha kicks up her match-making into high gear. Steve has zero luck, but Natasha won't give up, especially when Sam (jokingly) suggests online dating. It isn't long before Steve finds someone, a someone who seems eerily familiar.
perfectly right wrong number | melonbutterfly (AO3)
cap steve x modern bucky
It all starts because Steve is too dumb to handle his smartphone.
A wrong number AU in which Bucky Barnes doesn't enter Steve's life (meaning: Bucky wasn't born until the eighties, but Steve is still Captain America) until Steve accidentally dials the wrong number. Wherein there is a lot of texting, some advice via Natasha and Darcy, a bit of pining, and a first date in an amusement park. Oh, and on top of being a disabled veteran, Bucky is a professional catwalker. Literally.
put your number in my phone | MacksDramaticShenanigans (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve tucks his phone back into his pocket and turns back to the computer. He only has to click a few times before he finds the link to the questionnaire and opens it, inputting the participant number before hitting next. The beginnings of the consent form fills the page, and all Steve has left to do now is wait for the participant— one James Barnes, according to the website— to show up.
Thankfully, Steve doesn’t end up having to wait very long. James Barnes shows up ten minutes early and knocks on the door before cracking it open and peeking in.
“Oh, hi,” he says, when he spots Steve sitting at the desk. He pushes the door open all the way and steps into the room just as Steve spins in the chair to face him.
“Um, I’m, uh, a bit early, but I’m here for the decision making study,” James continues, clear blue eyes flickering around the room before landing on Steve again. The skin between his eyebrows crinkles up a little, and god, Steve probably shouldn’t find his uncertainty as cute as he does. “Am I in the right place?”
wouldn’t it be nice | MacksDramaticShenanigans (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
"You are never going to believe what just happened," Bucky bemoans, shaking his head. He's at Steve's side in a moment and doesn't bother to give any warning before he dramatically falls into Steve's lap. Steve just barely manages to save his book from getting squashed.
"What is it?" Steve asks, matching Bucky's dramatic tone. "What am I not going to believe?"
"I just got off the phone with Natasha," he starts. "She cancelled on me!" Bucky throws his arms up, nearly smacking Steve in the face in the process.
Steve carefully places his hand on Bucky's forearm and lowers it away from his face.
"You're kidding," he says, a frown curving onto his lips at the news.
"I wish I was," he sighs. Bucky presses his lips together into a disappointed line and deflates against the back of the couch, slinking down Steve's thighs a little. "Who goes to Coney Island alone? How pathetic is that?"
Steve snorts, earning a glare from Bucky, and pats Bucky's thigh. "Aw, don't be such a sourpuss, Buck," he says. "Who said anything about going alone?"
all jokes aside | darksknight (AO3)
steve x bucky
"Before we know it Banner’s gonna be makin’ insinuations.” (Everyone "jokes" about Steve and Bucky being in a relationship until, eventually, they admit that they are.)
barnes & rogers and the goddamn truth
steve x bucky (teacher au)
There are three well-known facts at Shield High:
1. The history teacher Mr. Barnes is a stone-cold terror, and it’s not even because he only has one arm.
2. The other history teacher, Mr. Rogers, is a mysterious enigma, and it’s something to do with the body of a Greek God and contradicting stories of his past. (They’re all rumours, anyway.)
3. Mr Barnes and Mr Rogers hate each other.
Bucky wouldn’t have it any other way.
in the shadows | DragonWannabe (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky
Five times they thought they were almost caught, one time someone found out, and one time they didn't have to hide.
OR:
Bucky and Steve grew up in a time when people like them went to jail.
single and looking | Jaiden_S (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky
"Bucky held his place with his index finger and turned the magazine over to check the date on the cover. It was brand new, just out this month. An unexpected cord of anxiety tightened in Bucky’s chest. Single and looking? Frantically, he flipped back to the article. What exactly was Steve looking for? According to the article, Steve’s dream girl should be intelligent, altruistic, well-versed in current events and have a wicked sense of humor. Oh, and he had a thing for high heels and red lipstick. Bucky’s stomach churned as he re-read the article. Was that really what Steve wanted? Make-up and stilettos?"
A slightly sappy tale of two utterly besotted super-soldiers who excel at miscommunication.
these american dreams (ain’t no white picket fences left for me) | kariye (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky
In which Bucky has a house, a dog, an herb garden, and a serious case of insomnia. Welcome to Havensport, Indiana (population 8,294), where Tom’s Neighborhood Grocer stays open all night, little old ladies call the car shop to get their refrigerators repaired, and the heat of summer days and the length of summer nights can make you think that this perfect world will last forever.
i’ve been careless with a delicate man | paraxdisepink (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky
Steve lets SHIELD think he and Bucky were boyfriends so they’ll let him see the Winter Soldier in medical.
knock on wood | 74days (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve Rogers lives a quiet, steady life, until his next door neighbour moves in and starts having incredibly energetic sex every night.
All Steve wants is for him to move his bed away from the wall so the damn headboard doesn't knock a hole through his wall.
progressively bigger keys | spinawren (AO3)
steve x bucky
“A very little key will open a very heavy door.”
― Charles Dickens, Hunted Down
Steve and Bucky, it appears, have less need for a key and more use for a battering ram in trying to come out of the closet.
(The one where Steve tries to do one thing (one thing!) without causing a national ruckus, but the press are determined to see Bucky as Steve's best friend. And nothing more.)
stucky discover gay rights | Alicia_Borealis (AO3)
steve x bucky
“Then, why-” Steve stopped himself and looked at Bucky, who had tears rolling freely down his cheeks. “We’re- we’re not sick?”
“Wait, what?” Tony asked.
“Being a homosexual, it isn’t… wrong?”
-
The story of how Steve Roger's loved and lost Bucky, then how he got him back and then how he realised he was allowed to love him after all.
thursday nights with bucky barnes | Ellessey (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve has a comfortable, well-worn routine for his Thursday nights, until the old man who runs the laundromat breaks his hip.
Then Steve has Bucky instead.
to seek a nood-er world | jehans (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky
Send noodz
Steve has been staring at his phone for the last six minutes, eyes narrowed so much they’re almost closed at this point, trying to figure out what the hell Bucky means. Noodz? What the fuck are noodz?
Listen, Steve is at least marginally aware of modern pop culture. He’s heard of nudes — not that nudes are exactly a modern invention; artists have been creating them for millennia — and he does know that people tend to misspell words to be cute or funny. They did that when he was young, too. Because time is a flat circle, apparently.
But, wait—does that mean…?
No. Not possible. Bucky isn’t asking Steve to send him…nudes.
Right?
tied ‘round your throat | sleepypercy (AO3) (18+)
police officer steve x serial killer bucky
Steve's a small-town police officer trying to track a serial killer who's been in Steve's bed the whole time.
much tattoo about nothing | Deisderium (AO3) (18+)
cap steve x modern bucky
Steve Rogers gets a lot of email requests, but never one like this: James Barnes wants to use his healing factor to practice tattoos.
Turns out tattoos give Steve boners.
the perfect man | Ellessey (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Setting up a dating profile is decidedly not in Bucky's skill-set, but against all odds he manages to connect with someone who makes the one-night stand he thought he wanted feel like not nearly enough.
kiss me and take off your clothes | steveandbucky (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve Rogers is dared to send a dick pic to a blog which critiques dick pics (run by none other than Bucky Barnes). Hilarity ensues.
i can’t dare to dream about you anymore | steveandbucky (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve considers himself to be a pretty open-minded guy, which is why he can't quite understand why he feels so uncomfortable whenever he sees his gay roommate kissing guys. He's not homophobic, but how else can he explain the way his stomach twists at the sight?
It takes him a while to catch on.
exam room b | steveandbucky (AO3)
modern steve x nurse bucky
“Wait, what do you mean he asked for me?”
“He asked if the cute male nurse with the ponytail was working today. I assume he meant you.”
kickstart my heart | Kalee60 (AO3) (18+)
doctor steve x modern bucky
Bucky’s Wednesday wasn’t off to a great start. Not only did he wake up in a hospital with his annoyed best friend staring down at him, his treating Doctor just happened to be way too familiar, and the reason for that was slightly mortifying.
With misunderstandings in the air, a snarky nurse who is a pain in his butt and the ugliest neck brace known to man attached to his body. There was no way his Wednesday was ever going to improve. Could it?
you make me feel.. | kalika_999 (AO3) (18+)
cap steve x modern bucky
All Steve wanted was to take a breather, decompress after a mission and go out for a jog in the rain. He wasn't expecting to hide out in a bookstore filled with new and used books or that the employee that worked there thought he was an absolute loser and didn't even realize he was insulting Captain America.
nothing in the world that could stop it | rainbow_nerds (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Bucky just wanted to send his best friend a picture of his cat being an idiot while he was taking a bath. Was it really his fault for forgetting the full length mirror right opposite the tub?
rescue me and hold me in your arms | 74days (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Bucky is on the worst date of his life, and what he really needs of for this waitress to get the message he's sending her with his mind to rescue him.
She doesn't, but she does send someone to extract him from a night of torture...
odd ways | peterbparker (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
“And it would have been an amazing night with my son if he wasn’t distracted by the hot guy on the other side of the room,” Sarah sighed, shaking her head. “He’s been looking over at you for the past fifteen minutes.”
Bucky choked on the mouthful of beer he had just taken.
“What?” he croaked. Things were starting to make a little more sense now.
“Right?” Sarah said, waving her hand towards her son. “He completely ignored my garden stories because he’s been making eyes at you so I decided to come over and introduce myself.”
series
rare is this love (keep it covered) | @musette22 (18+)
cap steve x modern bucky
It’s 2014. Captain America has been out of the ice for three years and is trudging along, saving the world and trying to get used to living in the future. Steve thinks he knows how the rest of his life is going to pan out – a life of duty, which he chose when he signed up to be Erskine’s science experiment. But then, he meets Bucky Barnes: the out-of-this-world-gorgeous mechanic and war vet, who turns Steve’s life upside down and makes him question everything he thought he knew. Slowly, Steve comes to realize there is more to life than duty and punching Nazis. Just one problem though: how on earth does a 96-year-old virgin who only just realized he may not be entirely straight make the transition from crush to relationship? Cue healthy amounts of self-doubt, awkward flirting, pretty blushing, existential crises, emotional growth, and maybe, possibly, a sexual awakening.
coming up easy | @musette22 (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
“Listen, I was just thinking,” Steve says, his face open, eyebrows raised in a tentatively hopeful expression. “Why don’t you come stay at my place for a while? I’ve got an office that I barely use, and a change of scenery might do you good, right? Help you beat that writer’s block?” With a crooked smile, he adds, “I promise I’m not a serial killer.”
While Bucky would normally crack a joke about how that’s exactly what a serial killer would say, right now, all he can do is blink at Steve in surprise, heart tripping over itself in his chest. Steve wants him to come and stay at his place. In Massachusetts. Just the two of them.
"Oh," Bucky croaks. "I- Wow."
“I mean, no pressure,” Steve says hastily. “Totally fine if you don’t wanna. I just thought I’d offer, in case it might help, y’know?”
“Yeah.” Bucky ignores the little voice in his head that sounds an awful lot Nat and Becca, telling him he’s setting himself up for heartbreak. “I mean, if you’re sure, that would be amazing.”
4 minute window | @cesperanza
steve x bucky
"Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."
swapped | writeonclara (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
if u wanted my number u couldve just asked
u didnt have to steal my whole phone ;)
Steve stared down at his phone, confused. He didn't recognize the number – except, oh wait, he really did. That was his number. On his phone.
He flipped the phone over, then slid one hand down his face. Not his phone.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
[stupid fucking] brooklyn hipster bros | relenaflanel (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Bucky's mother gives him an ultimatum. Bucky doesn't respond well.
All Barneses are stubborn assholes, Steve observes, as though he doesn't see the irony of calling someone else stubborn. Or an asshole.
And Bucky can't even deny he is a total asshole for lying to his mother about dating Steve just so he doesn't have to bring someone else to her wedding, but damn if he's not going to give the lie everything he has.
brought to brightness | eyres (AO3)
cap steve x modern bucky
Army veteran Bucky Barnes has fallen in love with Steve, a guy he met online a few months after he returned from Afghanistan. Only problem is, he doesn't know Steve's last name or even what he looks like.
When his sister helps him send his story into MTV's Catfish, he's hoping they can help him meet Steve or, at least, let him move on with his life if Steve isn't real. Little does he know, Steve and Captain America have more in common than just a first name.
slide to answer | relenaflanel (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
"What do I do?” Steve appealed into the phone. “I’m freaking out.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. It lasted so long that Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear and frowned at it. Pay phones were old. Maybe this one wasn’t working despite the obvious dial tone when he picked up.
“Ok,” a stranger’s voice said over the phone. “First acknowledge the fact that you dialed the wrong number, but be quick about it because my cab is a few blocks away from my own plans and I’m about to drop some truth bombs on you.”
how to woo the winter soldier | writeonclara (AO3)
steve x bucky
“I think I’m ready to date again,” Steve said.
“What,” Natasha said.
“What?” Clint said, lowering his binoculars. He blinked at the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face, then followed his gaze to where he was staring dopily at—at the Winter fucking Soldier.
“Steve, no,” Clint groaned.
Or: Steve courts the Winter Soldier.
all these things that i’ve done | @not-withoutyou
steve x bucky
Steve was the patron saint of waiting too long. Bucky was atoning for his sins. Maybe they’d both been forsaken, abandoned by the light. Maybe they’d find a way back to each other again.
Post civil war, if things had gone differently.
find a way (to make it back home) | belwrites (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky (college au)
Fresh off a year abroad, Head Resident Assistant Steve Rogers finds his senior year of college to be full of changes, and he's not just talking about the growth spurt. He's more concerned with the fact that his best friend...isn't talking to him? Is dating his ex? May or may not be missing an arm?
In which Steve has no fucking clue what's going on, but he's trying, Bucky learns how to communicate with his best friend again, and everyone quietly panics about the future.
is it pretending if i already want you? | OhCaptainMyCaptain (AO3) (18+)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Based on prompt: Pretend Boyfriends AU where one of their families is always wondering why they're never in a relationship, so the other offers to pretend to be their boyfriend for some family event
the roommate | layersofart, Niitza (AO3)
cap steve x modern bucky
In which Steven G. Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, gets a roommate. Who rapidly turns into his "roommate"—in the euphemistic sense of the word.
It takes SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers an absurd amount of time to notice.
dear mr. postman | odetteandodile (AO3)
steve x bucky (modern au)
Steve and Bucky revive an old friendship, get married (but totally just as friends, for reasons), and navigate a few of the many trials of the heart that come with falling in love with your best friend.
fate will play us out | steveandbucky (AO3) (18+)
cap steve x modern bucky
Bucky has landed himself a job with Stark Industries. He doesn't know yet that the job is actually being the PR manager for the Avengers.
Bucky has also started dating Steve Rogers. He also doesn't know yet that Steve is Captain America.
Bucky's life is about to get a whole lot more exciting.
the avengers hate club | notebooksandlaptops (AO3)
pop star steve x modern bucky
Bucky falls hopelessly for Steve and starts an Avengers hate club with the lead singer of the Avengers.
songbird | chicklette (AO3) (18+)
modern steve x musician bucky
At 43, James Barnes is a washed up old man. He’s got a dozen Grammys in the hall closet, an agent that can’t get him a deal, a decade-old case of writer’s block, a moody teen-aged daughter, and the gorgeous actress Natasha Romanova for an ex-wife. Well, one of them anyway. He’s a man who’s given up on finding joy in his life, and if it wasn’t for his kid, he’d have probably found a way to quit the world a long time ago.
Enter Steven Grant Rogers, struggling twenty-something, orphan, and someone who has no idea who Barnes is, other than some musician his mom liked a lot.
The two men meet by accident, doing nothing more than passing the time in a quiet bar. But when a pap gets a shot of the two men embracing, Bucky takes it as a chance to finally come out as bisexual, and his agent makes him a proposition: Ten new songs and one very sweet boyfriend will get him a new record deal that will maybe, just maybe put him back on top.
Now all he has to do is write the songs, convince the kid, and not fall in love. Should be easy, right?
the right partner | LeeHan (AO3) (18+)
cap steve x ws bucky
Steve meets a beautiful man with a bright laugh on a sunny day in Italy. Captain America meets the elusive Winter Soldier moments later.
Date Bucky Barnes. Defeat the Winter Soldier. Bring down Hydra. How hard could it be?
#stucky fic#stucky fic recs#steve x bucky#steve rogers x bucky barnes#stucky#bucky barnes#steve rogers
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Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes [Tierna Davidson x Reader]
requested by anon: Idk if you’re taking requests or not but could you do a tierna x reader where reader’s kinda reserved and the team doesn’t know her super well but her and baby t just bond together and one gets the courage to ask the other out. And maybe they like hide their relationship just to mess with the team or something cause they were trying to set them up. If not then it’s perfectly fine. You’re a great writer!!
A/N: thanks anon! i honestly don’t know how this got so long... oops
You hesitantly make your way down the aisle of the bus, unsure where to seat, given that this was only your fourth camp and you didn’t necessarily have a designated seat.
Spotting an empty spot next to Tierna, you sheepishly ask, “Hey, is anyone sitting here?”
“Nope,” she gives you a kind smile, glancing up from her phone. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks,” you mumble, a small smile of your own tugging at your lips.
As you’re putting in your ear buds and turning on your music, Tierna curiously watches you. “So how you liking the team so far?”
“I love it. It’s honestly better than I could’ve imagined. Everyone here is so nice and welcoming and so willing to teach,” you ramble slightly nervously, scratching the back of your neck.
Ever since you’d gotten your first call up last year, your nerves hadn’t calmed down at all. You were a naturally reserved and quiet person, but being around the best players in the world only intensified your nervousness.
Given your shyness, none of your teammates knew that much about you. The only one who knew anything about, apart from your position, your hometown, and where you currently reside, was Alyssa. The veteran goalkeeper had taken you under her wing when you went pro at just nineteen and joined the Red Stars. The two of you immediately bonded, forming a sort of big sister-little sister relationship, as you were both so similar in the way you carried yourself on and off the field. So when you got your first national team call up, Alyssa was the one to show you the ropes and help you make the transition.
And although you played on the same NWSL team as Tierna, you’d never actually had a real conversation with the other woman, so neither of you knew each other at all.
“Yeah, it’s an incredible environment,” the defender agrees. “It really does become like one giant family.”
“Hopefully, I’ll stick around long enough to become a part of that.” You anxiously chew your lip. Being on the national team has been a dream of yours ever since you could remember, and now that you are presented with the opportunity, you were scared you were gonna do something to mess it up.
“I have a feeling you will,” Tierna muses, smirking. You can’t tell if she’s flirting with you or if she’s just being nice, but either way your face flushed red.
The three hour bus ride went by seemingly quick, as you and Tierna engaged in an easy flowing conversation, talking about topics ranging from the basic introductions to the incredible cinematography of The Queen’s Gambit.
You find yourself becoming increasingly comfortable and relaxed around the other woman, and you feel this is the start of a wonderful friendship.
—————
After a quick team meeting upon arriving to the hotel, Vlatko starts to announce roommates and distribute room keys.
“Tierna and (Y/N),” he calls out, giving Tierna two key cards.
“Looks like we’re roomies,” she beams, as she hands your key.
“Looks like it.” You grin, excited at the idea of spending more time with the defender.
Both of you were pretty tired, especially after a long day of traveling, so you each quickly jump in the shower and change into your pajamas.
As you slide into bed, Tierna, already under the covers, grabs the TV remote. “Anything you wanna watch?”
“I’m fine with anything.” You shrug, as you pull the blankets over your body. “Have you seen the docuseries on Netflix about the Challenger?” You ask, remembering her passion for space and aeronautics.
“I haven’t,” Tierna gasps. “Can we watch it?”
Your heart warms at the sight of her pure eagerness. “Of course! I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while too.”
You quickly set up your laptop, connecting it so that your screen projects onto the TV.
As the episode progresses, Tierna spits out additional facts about the Challenger as well as NASA itself, and you can’t help but listen in awe and admiration.
The two of you barely make it through two episodes, as the hours of travel catch up to you and sleep takes over.
—————
It was the last day of camp, and you and Tierna had grown quite close, bonding over being the youngest on the teams as well as your similar interests.
You’d discovered that, when not playing soccer of course, you both enjoyed going on hikes, reading with a cup of coffee, and also relaxing at the end of the day with a good TV series.
She’d also given you some insight on how she adjusted to being on the national team at such a young age, something you were having trouble doing. It’s not that your skill level wasn’t up to par; you were just finding it difficult to put yourself out there and connect with the rest of the women. And just maybe your newfound friendship with Tierna would be just what you needed to open up to the rest of the team.
Over the past couple of days, as you’d gotten to know the defender, you couldn’t develop feelings for the other woman.
So here you were, packing up your hotel room, as you worked up the courage to ask Tierna out. At the moment, the freckled woman was currently rambling about some new book she’d found, but you were to stuck in your own head to really pay attention.
“(Y/N)?” Tierna pulls you out of your thoughts.
“Huh?” You shake your head, turning to see an amused smile on Tierna’s face.
“Did you hear anything I was just saying?”
“Umm, yes?” You try sheepishly.
Tierna rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right. It’s alright. You can make it up to me by reading the book I was talking about. And by the way it’s about a depressed neuroscientist at Stanford.”
“Sounds peachy,” you groan, earning a chuckle from the defender.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Nothing,” you mumble, shrugging.
“Come on, what’s bothering you?” She asks, as she sits down next to you, lightly elbowing your side.
You take a deep breath, gathering all the courage in the world, before asking, “Would you maybe wanna go out sometime? Like grab some coffee or dinner when we’re back in Chicago?”
Tierna stills, her eyes widening, as her brain tries to process your question. “What?”
“I’m asking you on a date, T,” you clarify, feeling a new wave of confidence take over. “Do you wanna go out with me?”
A gigantic grin breaks out Tierna’s face. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
—————
About six months later, you’d received another national team call up, and so had your girlfriend.
After last camp, you and Tierna went out to dinner at a restaurant back in Chicago, and from then on, you began dating. It helped that you both played for the Red Stars, getting to spend more time together and not having to worry about the trouble of a long distance relationship.
However, the two of you decided to keep your relationship under wraps, not feeling the need to announce or flaunt it. In fact, in public, your relationship didn’t really change, and to most people, it looked as if the two of you were just best friends.
But Alyssa had known you well enough to see that you definitely had a crush on the younger defender, and to be fair, you did, but the goalie didn’t know that you were already dating.
The Red Stars training before the national team players left for camp, Alyssa decided to see if anyone else shared the same suspicions.
“Hey, J!” she calls out, catching up to the blonde midfielder.
“What’s up, Lys?”
“Do you think there’s something between (Y/N/N) and Tierna?”
“What do you mean?” Julie furrows her brows, confused.
Alyssa gives her friend a pointed glare, nodding her head in the direction of where you were leaning your head on Tierna’s shoulder, giggling at something your girlfriend had said.
“Ah, I see,” Julie muses, nodding her head in realization. “Are they together?”
“Nope, at least I don’t think so. I’m sure (Y/N) would’ve mentioned something.”
“Well, should we help them get their head’s out of the butts and try and set them up?” The midfielder proposes.
“Camp is this weekend…” Alyssa smirks, as the two women share a knowing look.
“Kelley’s gonna have a field day with this,” Julie chuckles.
—————
After morning training the next day, the team split off into groups, as they head into town to grab a bite to eat, do some shopping, or just walk around the streets of Santa Barbara.
A group of the veterans decided to try out a cute little cafe they’d seen. As they were all sitting around the table, sipping their coffee and eating some pastries, Julie decided to bring up the subject of their two favorite team babies.
“So, have you guys noticed anything going on between (Y/N) and Tierna?”
Conversation stopped, the entire table going silent.
“Wha?” Kelley asks, her voice muffled by the food in her mouth. “(Y/N/N) and Baby T?”
“Kel, please swallow your food,” Christen requests, cringing at the defender.
“Sorry.” The freckled woman gulps down her bite of her croissant. “But Tierna and (Y/N)?”
“You don’t see it?” Alyssa raises her eyebrow, surprised that she might be the only one who saw the chemistry between you two.
“Aren’t they just best friends?” Tobin chimes in on the conversation.
“That’s what people always said about you and Chris until they got their heads out of their asses,” Ash snorts, pointing between the two forwards.
“Fair point.”
“Now that I think about it,” Christen hums. “They do act very couple-y.”
“And Tierna is really the only one that (Y/N) hangs out with, besides Alyssa,” Pinoe points out, as the others nod in agreement.
“True, though she is warming up to the rest of us,” Julie lightly argues.
“So do we have a plan?”
The rest of the table just stares blankly at Kelley, who rolls her eyes.
“A plan to get them together?” She clarifies, as if to say ‘duh.’
“Well, that’s what I thought we could discuss.” The blonde midfielder suggests, sparking the discussion of how to get the two youngsters together.
Meanwhile, as the veterans were scheming, you and your girlfriend were taking a walk along the beach, your hands laced together, as your bare feet sunk into the sand.
“I hear you might start in the match versus England,” Tierna smirks at the shy blush that creeps up your neck.
You duck your head and brush a loose strand of hair of your face. “I don’t know. Our midfield is already so stacked, so I don’t know why Vlatko would start me.”
“Hey.” Tierna stops walking, stepping in front of you, halting your movement as well. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a phenomenal player, one of our best middies, at only twenty-one years old I might add.”
“You have to say that.” You bashfully roll your eyes. “You’re my girlfriend.”
“That I am,” Tierna proudly states, as she kisses your cheek. “But seriously, (Y/N/N), you’re amazing and you’re here for a reason. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“Thank you, babe.” You lean in to give her a chaste kiss before bringing her in for a hug.
The two of you decide to walk back up to the sidewalk and sit on one of the benches that overlook the beach. After a couple of minutes of peaceful silence, you remember something Alyssa had mentioned to you a couple days ago.
“I think Lys might know we’re dating.” You raise your head from your girlfriend’s chest to look up at her.
“Hm,” Tierna hums, not looking concerned or fazed, only curious. “Did she something to you?”
“The other day she asked me if I had feelings for you.” You snuggle back into your girlfriend’s body, comforted by the fact that she didn’t seem to be freaking out about the possibility of one of your teammates knowing. “Well actually, her exact words were: ‘Do you have a crush on Tierna?’”
“And what did you say?”
“I said ‘yes,’” you mumble, your cheeks tint pink.
“What was that?” Tierna teases.
“I told her ‘yes’ I have a crush on you.”
“Aw, babe,” she coos, tapping your nose. “I have a crush on you too.”
All you can do is scrunch your face and stick out your tongue at your girlfriend and her antics.
“Do you think we should tell the team we’re dating?”
“Words probably gotten around that you have feelings for me, and seeing how we’re ‘best friends,’ knowing them, they’re already probably devising a plan to get us together.” Tierna shrugs, lightly chuckling.
Though you hadn’t been on the team as long as the defender, you knew she was most likely right.
“Well, who are we to stop their fun?” You say with a small smirk on your face.
Your girlfriend raises her eyebrow at you, surprised by your uncharacteristic boldness and mischievousness.
“Whatever you say, babe.” Tierna softly kisses the top of your head.
The two of you spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying each other’s presence, the calm waves crashing in the background, before you have to return to the hotel for team dinner.
—————
As you and your girlfriend were off on a brief romantic walk, the rest of the team, who had been recruited by the Kelley, had been finalizing their plan to set you and Tierna up on a date, so you can confess your feelings.
“So,” Kelley, the leader of this operation, announces. “Tomorrow, when we have dinner off, Alyssa, you’ll ask (Y/N) if she wants to grab a bite to eat, and Casey and Abby, and whichever youngsters wanna tag along, will bring Tierna out to dinner.
“The rest of us will grab a table in the backroom so we can see them without being seen. Everybody got it?”
They all nod along, voicing their agreement.
“Awesome,” Ash cheers and claps her hand together. “What do you think Lys?”
“I think it’s good, hopefully it works.” Alyssa nods, quickly glancing at her phone. “I also think we better head back for dinner before Vlatko sends out a search party.”
The rest of the women check the time, their eyes widening, as they all scramble out of their seats, rushing to make it back in time for team dinner.
—————
The next day, at the end of training, many of your teammates, mainly Kelley and Sonnett, were anxious about their upcoming blind date they’d set up for you and Tierna.
“Gosh, I don’t know how I didn’t see it before,” Kelley groans dramatically, watching from across the field, as you and your girlfriend were leaning on each other, laughing at something you’d said.
“How can they be so oblivious?” Tobin shakes her head, following her friend’s gaze.
“That’s rich coming from you,” Megan snorts, as she approaches the two women.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Chris had heart eyes for you for like three years before you actually noticed.”
“That’s different,” Tobin protests, earning a laugh from her two teammates.
“It’s really not.” Kelley clasps the forward’s shoulder, giving her a sympathetic smile.
“But we’ve learned.” Pinoe boasts with a pointed look.
Tobin just tilts her head and furrows her head in confusion, not following along.
“Oh, Toby.” The freckled defender slings her arm around Tobin’s shoulder, as they make their way back to the bus. “After being tortured by you and Press’s oblivious pining for many many years, the team collectively decided that when two teammates develop obvious feelings for each other, we’d put our own dignities aside and get them together.”
“Hence, our dinner plans for Tierna and (Y/N),” Megan finishes.
“You guys are all crazy,” Tobin says with a light-hearted roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, but you love us,” Kelley chirps before skipping off to catch up with Alex on the bus, leaving the two forwards chuckling at their teammates playful behavior.
—————
After hopping out of the shower and getting dressed, you decide to text Tierna to see if she wants to grab some dinner.
(Y/N/N):
Hey, you wanna grab some dinner?
I think I saw a taqueria that looked good :)
T 🤍 :
Sorry, babe :/
Casey already asked me to get dinner with Abby and Sam.
(Y/N/N):
Aw man, okay.
Stop by after?
T 🤍 :
Of course
I’ll see you later :)
You give the message a heart, before shutting off your phone. As you contemplate what you’re gonna do for lunch, there’s a knock on your door.
“(Y/N/N),” you hear Alyssa’s muffled voice. “It’s Alyssa.”
“Come in!” You call back.
The goalie saunters into your room and plops on your bed. “You wanna grab some dinner?”
“Yeah,” you beam. “I saw a Mexican place downtown that looked good.”
“Hmmm, I had tacos for dinner last night,” Alyssa hums, pretending to think it over, even though she already has a restaurant in mind. “Tobin mentioned a good Japanese place they ate yesterday. We could try that?”
“I could go for Japanese,” you agree. “You wanna head out now?”
“Yeah, I’m down.” Alyssa jumps up from the bed, as you gather your things, following her out the door.
The two of you make light conversation, as you walk through the streets of Santa Barbara, enjoying the warm evening air.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, the hostess leads you to a table by the window, but as you sit down, Alyssa remains standing.
“I just have to run to the bathroom real quick,” she tells you. “If they come by to order drinks, could I get a lemonade?”
“Of course.” You nod, before scanning the menu.
While you think Alyssa is going to the restroom, she is actually going to text Casey that you’re sitting at the table near the window.
After a couple minutes, you hear footsteps approaching, which you think is the waitress coming to take your drink order.
“Hey, funny seeing you here.”
You immediately snap your head up when you hear your girlfriend’s voice.
“T, what are you doing here?” You ask, obviously quite surprised, as Tierna sits down in the chair across from you.
“Well, I was supposed to meet the girls here, and they just they’d be at the table by the window,” she chuckles amusedly. “Obviously our teammates are setting us up, not that I’m complaining.”
You roll your eyes at the teasing smirk on your girlfriend’s face. “Yeah, Lys brought me here for lunch. I didn’t think it was in her to be a part of their little matchmaking plans.”
“Alyssa is full of surprises.” Tierna shrugs, as she picks up the menu to look at it for herself.
“Aint’ that the truth,” you laugh.
As the two of you sit in a comfortable silence, deciding what you wanted to eat, you spot a familiar head of purple hair out of the corner of your eye.
“I think we’re being spied on,” you whisper, leaning forward in your seat.
“Huh?”
“Pinoe’s pink hair is a dead give away,” you slightly nod your head towards the back room of the restaurant.
Tierna turns her head to subtly scan the room, and then lets out an amused chuckle. “So how are we gonna play this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, since they’re watching us, do we wanna play into their hands or should we mess with them a little?”
“We could do a little bit of both?” You propose, earning an impressed grin from your girlfriend.
Before Tierna can respond, the waitress comes by to take your orders.
—————
“What can you see?” Sonnett shouts from the other end of the table.
“Keep it down, Sonny,” Kelley scolds, swatting the younger defender’s arm. “But, P, seriously, what’s going on?”
“They’re just talking, laughing occasionally,” Pinoe reports, as she cranes her neck to see the table in the other room. “From what I can see, no sparks are flying yet.”
“Gosh, this is painful. We need to move them along,” Kelley whines, before her eyes widen and her eyes light up, a mischievous smirk playing on her lips. “I have an idea.”
“Oh no,” Christen groans. “This should be good.”
The freckled defender just waves her hand, ignoring her friend’s comment. “Just you wait and see. This is gonna work.”
The team has to wait a couple more minutes until the waitress comes back to refill their waters for Kelley’s plan to unfold.
“Excuse me,” Kelley calls over to the waiter, briefly glancing at her name tag. “Virginia, could I order some dessert?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to get one slice of your cheesecake, please. And if I could ask for a favor?”
The waitress nods with a polite smile.
“Would you deliver it to my two friends over there sitting by the window?”
“Aren’t those your teammates?” Virginia turns to see where Kelley’s pointing.
“Yeah, we’re trying to set them up. So if you could just say it’s on the house or something, we don’t really want them to know we’re here.”
The waitress just chuckles, as she shuts her notepad. “Of course.”
“Oh, wait,” Kelley stops her one more time. “If you’re cool with it, maybe you could flirt with one of them, maybe say the cheesecake is from you?”
Virginia pauses for a second to contemplate her options, before ultimately agreeing. “Fine, but only if I can get your friend’s number over there.” She smirks and points over to where Emily’s sitting, sipping on a glass of wine.
“Deal, but only if my friends over there get together by the end of the night.”
Virginia just smirks, as she leaves to continue her job and get a slice of cheesecake.
—————
You and Tierna took advantage of the date your teammates had set up for you, enjoying some delicious rolls and a bowl of udon. Even though your teammates were technically in the backroom watching, you and your girlfriend enjoyed a nice evening to yourselves.
As you’re finishing up your meal, the waitress comes over with a slice of cheesecake and places it down in front of you.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” You move to return the dessert. “I didn’t order any dessert.”
“I know, cutie,” Virginia flirts. “That’s from me, on the house.”
“I- I, um.” You blush, flustered, while Tierna shoots silent daggers at the waitress. “I’m flattered, but I actually have a girlfriend.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the waitress apologizes, glancing between the two of you. “Is this your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, I am,” Tierna answers, hints of jealousy lacing her voice, as you give a sheepish nod.
“Ah I see,” Virginia observes, amused, knowing that the other group of soccer players were going to be quite shocked. “Well, I’m sorry, again, for hitting on you. Keep the dessert as an apology?”
“Everything’s forgotten,” you amend with a kind smile. “Thank you for the cheesecake.”
As the waitress turns to leave, she suggests, “Maybe you guys can share? I’m trying to win a bet.”
Before you or Tierna can respond, Virginia gives both of you a knowing smirk, as she takes your plates and goes back to the kitchen.
“What does that mean?” You tilt your head and push the plate of cheesecake towards the middle of the table.
“I assume that our teammates probably had something to do with that whole scene,” Tierna guesses, shrugging, as she takes a bite of the dessert. “Mmmmm, but thank goodness they did because this cheesecake is delicious.”
“Oooooo, let me try!”
As you and your girlfriend share the slice of fluffy cheesecake, your teammates were waiting for something to happen.
“Anything?” Alyssa asks impatiently. The goalie had been becoming increasingly agitated, because she had seriously thought there was something between you two.
“Not yet,” Kelley sighs. By now, the rest of the team had lost interest and decided to just enjoy their night out.
“Oh wait!” Pinoe gasps, holding her hand up to get everybody else’s attention. The pink-haired forward watched intensely, as you leaned in closely to Tierna, who was holding out her fork with a bite of cheesecake for you.
“Baby T just fed (Y/N/N) a bite of cheesecake. I repeat, Baby T just fed (Y/N/N) a bite of cheesecake!” Megan exclaims. “It was the last slice, too!"
“And they are totally giving each other heart eyes right now,” Kelley adds, excitedly bouncing in her seat.
After a few minutes, as the team bubbles with anticipation to see what would happen next, Virginia returns to the table with the checks and hands it to Kelley.
“By the way, you owe me your friend’s number.”
“Um, I don’t think so. We don’t know for sure that they ended up together,” Kelley protests, as she passes the checks down the table.
“Yeah, we do, because they’re already together,” Virginia boasts and moves to collect the empty plates, smirking when she sees you and Tierna holding hands, as you make your way over to the team’s table.
“What? No, they’re not.” The defender frowns, not noticing her two youngest teammates.
“Yes, we are,” Tierna simply states, leading you out the backdoor, as you duck your head to hide your flushed cheeks.
“And, thanks for the cheesecake,” your girlfriend throws over her shoulder, leaving your teammates sputtering in shock with wide eyes and gaping mouths.
“Well, that was fun,” you snicker, as you step outside.
“Yeah, it was,” Tierna agrees, kissing you cheek. “Now let’s go have some fun of our own.”
Laughing freely, you relax into your girlfriend’s side. You couldn’t help but feel lighter, like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders, now that the team knew about your relationship, and maybe this is the push you needed to open up to the women who would soon become your second family.
#uswnt x reader#uswnt imagine#uswnt imagines#tierna davidson x reader#tierna davidson imagine#tierna davidson imagines#uswnt#tierna davidson
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Crossing the divide
Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.
In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”
Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.
But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.
“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”
Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”
We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.
(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)
‘I’ll never call the police again’
Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.
Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.
Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.
One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”
I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.
Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?
Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.
I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.
But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”
It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.
‘It now feels as though I am on my own’
Zander Keig, 52, San Diego
Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.
Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.
I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.
I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.
Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.
I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.
Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.
Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.
I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.
What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.
I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.
‘I took control of my career’
Chris Edwards, 49, Boston
Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.
When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.
The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.
Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.
When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.
The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.
People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.
‘People assume I know the answer’
Alex Poon, 26, Boston
Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.
Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.
Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.
My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.
People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.
When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.
A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.
Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.
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Old story worth a repost SOURCE
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[A candid photo of Igor kissing his very grumpy toddler’s forehead goodnight]
The Greens could feel they were getting older, and Coach’s rookies just stayed the same. Two had joined CSKA that year. One of them was another Sergei, who we’ll call Seryozha. He had grown up skating eagerly every day, just outside their training camp in the city of Arkhangel. He thought Igor “was one of the smartest people I've talked to on this earth," and is pretty sure his idol didn’t know he existed. (Having read Igor’s book, I can now confirm). The other was Sasha, and had been born on the other side of the world, in Siberia, before he was taken early for CSKA’s system.
Sasha did not like any of this any better than the Greens had before him. Picking up the tension between the team’s leaders and Coach Tikhonov, Sasha had no problem talking back when Tikhonov turned on him. After his first season, the same trick that had made Igor an officer was used on him, making him a real Russian soldier who could be shot for treason. Igor hadn’t fought it, but the whole team heard Sasha yelling down in Tikhonov’s office.
Quiet settled for a while when Sasha was privately promised a better position to soften the blow--the top right wing, at Igor's side. 30 was creeping up on Sergei. He, Igor, and Vova privately celebrated and mourned the upcoming '88 Olympics as the last time they might play together on the world stage before Sergei's clock ran out. Pretty soon Tikhonov would be ready to retire him, just like Kharlamov.
But there were still signs that replacing Sergei wouldn't be easy, on either side. One day in practice, Sasha was injured and the team doctor told him to just watch from the stands that night. Igor saw him leaving the locker room just as Coach came in. Coach demanded that he get his sweater on immediately. Sasha repeated what the doctor said, and Tikhonov repeated what he had said, but louder.
“‘I thought I had explained it clearly enough,’’” Igor remembers little Sasha saying. “‘I will not play. That is all!’” And he walked away. Igor had to cough and cover laughter as Coach stood speechless.
“Only his wife and his dog like [Tikhonov],” Sasha once said. “And I don’t understand how they do.”
In December of ‘87, Igor thought that with a little help, maybe he could score another point on Tikhonov. He reached out to the author of that article about the hockey program that he had read to the point of memorizing two years before. Their conversation turned into an interview. He admitted he wasn’t ready to share the deepest details, but even scratching the surface of the Soviet image was enough to attract attention. Igor decided he liked to think of himself as a bit of an author. All the papers were calling for more quotes, until Lena got fed up and unplugged their phone.
At practice after it was published, Coach Tikhonov screamed, “‘Comrades, I always thought that I was working with hockey players. But here, do you understand, it has become clear I was not right. Among us are writers! Larionov, for example, is a Boris Pasternak!’
I think we could safely say he was not pleased.”
Two months later, the national team headed to Calgary for the Olympics. Before the Games the senior players had asked as always--if we win, wouldn’t it be possible to train less this summer, to rest, to see our families during the coming year? Coach Tikhonov said they’d talk about it if they got him gold.
Journalists invited Igor to a press conference. They forgot a Russian translator, though, so when they asked the first question and he understood it, he decided not to bother pretending he didn’t speak English. They asked how his new literary career was looking (and whether he’d had any flare-ups of that tonsillitis). He told them what he thought was the truth, colder than it had been when he was 20.
“I do not hope for some kind of large and speedy change for the better….But, I am not losing hope. We shall see what we shall see.”
They still had the rest of the Olympics to play. Between periods in the first round, Coach Tikhonov took Sasha out to the hallway and began to lay into him for mistakes he may or may not have made yet. Sasha told him no again, so Coach Tikhonov punched him in the gut.
Slava was the only one who saw, but he told the others. If thinking the team didn’t need him had snapped some key piece of Igor’s heart, the winter of ‘87 and ‘88 broke Vova’s massive one. They had won gold, again--and Vova had heard Tikhonov say that he wished he could coach the Canadians instead. Vova had swept more scoring titles, been named the best winger in the world, again--and Tikhonov had given a public speech about how Vova was proof that he, Viktor Tikhonov, and his physical training methods could make anyone a star. Igor was furious for his friend, and Vova was realizing nothing they did would ever be enough for Coach Tikhonov to stop hurting them.
They had nothing to do at Arkhangel, after eight years of doing the same nothing. One night in the spring Vova and Igor climbed out their bedroom window and hiked through the woods to a bar in the city. They sat beside a Canadian journalist and gave a short interview, Igor translating for them both.
By the summer of ‘88, Slava was done, too. He wanted permission to play in the NHL during the regular season, and he told everyone so. Officials told him no problem. And then they got out the red tape.
“You would not wish it on an enemy. Especially not on Slava, who is my friend. It was painful to look at him, irritated, disappointed by the word that had been given to him, grown tired from going from office to office, lost.”
When he complained, the Party told him if he wasn’t happy in Arkhangel he could always play in a Siberian labor camp instead.
But Igor was also busy, or trying to be, at home. He and Lena had their first baby, a daughter, Alyonka. Like her father, she was frighteningly small. If officials had thought becoming a husband and father would scare Igor into shutting up, like it had Lyosha, they were super wrong. The boredom, indignity, and constant inconvenience of Soviet life was bitterer now that he had to see it happening to someone else. When his daughter was sick, he couldn’t go home to hold her. When she was hungry, he might spend his whole day off wandering around the city, waiting in different lines to be told that there was nothing worth waiting for left. During parts of the season he could visit their apartment in Moscow in the afternoons, but couldn’t help cook or eat with Lena or stay to clean up and put Alyonka to bed.
Just like Tretiak had, he asked Tikhonov for time off next August--no days off, just nights, to be able to stay for dinner and drive back for training.
No.
“In August it was a life and death necessity for me to spend the night at the base? Well, the World Championship was not far off. Only eight months!”
Igor thought about it. He told the Greens that he was thinking about publishing another article. They were excited to read it, asking what this one would be about. He still wasn’t quite ready to say it, but he wanted them to know the moment was coming, so he just made them promise to read it.
Then he quit. In September he handed Tikhonov a letter explaining that he would play his last season with CSKA. They could let him go to the NHL during the regular season, or home to Khimik, or wherever he was wanted, as long as it wasn’t here. He went to the newspaper that promised him it could print fastest, and published it.
In his resignation letter, addressed to Tikhonov and now to the whole Soviet Union, he told everyone about the schedule (it was shocking, he said, that he and Lena managed to have a baby, when Tikhonov didn’t let him sleep beside his own wife); about how Tikhonov had made that schedule more important than Kharlamov, then Tretiak, and now Igor too; about Tikhonov punching Sasha; about the steroid injections he’d kept secret for Tikhonov for six years.
Those last two pieces were the wedge that any officials looking to shift the system needed. The papers published more pieces arguing one way and the other, which only made sure everyone heard about it. Fans and former players, now officers, stopped to pat Igor’s shoulder. Igor was informed that the legendary Tarasov, in his country retirement, had quite liked it.
Coach Tikhonov didn’t like Igor’s poetic inclinations any better this time. He was getting calls from all kinds of important people, and they weren’t going well. For the first time in years he was quiet, speechless. And then it became clear that was his response: he wouldn’t acknowledge Igor’s existence. He couldn’t take him off the roster now, but he could pretend he wasn’t there. No criticism in practice, no direction, nothing.
That was the difference between them, Igor wrote, both of their fatal flaw: Igor wanted to talk to everyone in the whole world, and Tikhonov had never learned how to talk to people.
The veteran players on CSKA’s second line found quiet moments to come up to Igor, and let him know they were on his side. Slava, still fighting for his own right to leave the team, came to Igor as soon as he’d read it, and took his hand. He told him Igor had done the right thing. Sergei and Vova embraced him and agreed.
Lyosha wasn’t sure it was right to share what had been said in the room, or to undercut Coach, who had kept him when he was at his lowest, and he was afraid of being sent to Siberia.
He told Igor, “You and I are not going the same path.”
And they did.
CSKA went on the road in October. In Sergei’s hometown Chelyabinsk fans hung over the rails and heckled Tikhonov, asking if he’d come to steal more children. His brothers Nikolai and Yuri were an institution in the city, and locals had consoled themselves over losing out on the full set by imagining that Sergei was doing well for himself and making a name for their city. Tikhonov turned away from the ice to try to shout at a fan like he did his players, and was swamped. Igor burst out laughing.
The next game, Tikhonov told the assistant coaches to tell Igor that Tikhonov still wasn’t talking to him but he could take a shift now, or whatever, not that Tikhonov cared. Igor caught the puck and carried it along the boards, expecting Sergei and Vova to chase him. Instead he hit a patch of bad ice, and then two of the other team landed on top of him on the way down. His right foot went the wrong way.
Now Tikhonov had a cast iron-excuse. Igor went home, and held his daughter, and waited and worried to hear what would happen if he didn’t heal in time for the next national team tournament--the Super Series, which would be the last warm-up before the ‘88 Olympics. It was out of his control, and he couldn’t bear that.
Igor has an explanation for what he did next that I’m sure felt sensible at the time. We, now, can gently set that aside. Igor had all the symptoms of a serious eating disorder, so for three weeks, he only drank water and honey.
Because, and I just can’t stress this enough, Igor, your bones heal in their own time anyway, he was back on the ice a month or so after that. Once again able to skate himself sick with CSKA’s reserve team, he started eating fruit and the occasional vegetable again.
The team doctor, who I guess had been hired on the basis of being able to say, “All good, Coach!” over an injured player faster than anybody else, cleared him to play. (Like a stopped clock, Igor maintains that the doctor--who Igor had seen point a concussed Vova in the general direction of the goal, roll players over the boards, and offered Igor mystery drugs--got it right this one time. Again, gently, we can question Igor’s medical fucking expertise here.)
It didn’t matter anyway. Tikhonov stood with arms crossed the whole time watching Igor skate, and said he was out of condition. He sent him home.
Igor was helpless again. His family wouldn’t get the pay from wins with CSKA, and now they were missing tournaments. Those could earn him $300, five months ordinary pay. He could train as much as he wanted alone--it wasn’t the same as playing with the Greens, and anyway now Tikhonov could always have a handy excuse to say he wasn’t back to his old self. All he had were his friends, who seemed sympathetic, but still hadn’t done anything.
Winter was coming on by now. He drove from Moscow to the training camp and walked across the grounds in the first drifting snow. Everything was quiet, cold, and clear, and he might as well have been twenty again, but this time he wouldn’t cross through the barracks door. Sergei, Vova, and Slava saw and came running down to meet him in the snow. They were glad to see him, worried for him, but they knew that Tikhonov was having his way.
I drove home along the Leningrad highway. I felt like shouting. ‘Where are your friends in a time of trouble? WHERE??? Can I expect sympathy from you, and nothing more?’...
Only my wife understood my despair.”
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#green unit#cw disordered eating#igor larionov#slava fetisov#wayne gretzky#sergei makarov#vladimir krutov
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Your ex taps you on the shoulder and says, “I still love you.” You say?
ooooof. I don’t think i’d buy that. I hardly think people who DO show they have feelings for me are being truthful, so I doubt that.
Do you play video games?
haven’t in some time, but I want to get back into it a little.
Do you spend a lot of time with family?
oh heck yeah. I have a really great family.
Is your house more than two stories tall?
nah, it’s the two stories with a basement.
Have you ever hit your significant other? Has he/she ever hit you?
I will never raise my hands to another human being. I once dated someone who was a veteran and had severe ptsd. we were napping one time and he got aggressive. that wasn’t HIM though.
What makes you an attractive person? (Talk about your personality too!)
physically, I suppose I have nice eyes and a decent smile. personality wise, I am warm, friendly, loving, supportive, sometimes funny, very loyal.
What color is your hairbrush/comb?
depends which one I use. I have a pink one right now.
What snacks do you have available in your household atm?
I honestly haven’t got a clue. I haven’t been let out of my room in 2 weeks.
Has anyone recently told you that they like you, or find you attractive?
yes. it’s weird.
Are you attracted to the last person you Facebook messaged?
DEF not. he has been asking me out since we worked together maybeeeee.. 8-9 years ago?
Do you care about anyone that doesn’t care about you?
yes! I am trying to learn how to undo that. it’s not that I don’t want to care about him, but I know and can soooooooo clearly see that he doesn’t care anymore, and it is extremely emotionally draining to watch.
Was your last Facebook friend requests from a male or female?
I wanna say female but idk
Which one of your relatives is most likely to embarrass you?
scott
When was the last time you ate a bar of chocolate?
couple days ago.
Do you play any games on Facebook?
Nope.
What would you like to get a degree in?
I have two degrees -- one in psych and one in SLP.
Do you wake up a lot in the middle of the night?
ahahahaha yes. almost always wide awake from 3-6
Would you prefer to read a book, watch a movie or TV show, or play a video game?
typically more in the movie/show or book mood.
Do you usually get popcorn or soda at the movie theater?
Both. nothing like that buttery, salty goodness that obvs requires an enormous drink
What genre of films do you like the best?
either make me EXTREMELY sad, or romantic.
How many bank accounts do you have?
2
Have you ever had the flu?
Yeah.
What is your goal for the next few months?
i have several. the only one that can/will be public right now, is to get my lungs back to functioning as they were.
Have you ever had some kind of sleep-disorder? How did it affect your life?
yes. I have very bad breathing during sleep. I have had 11 sleep studies done, because my breathing will just stop randomly, which luckily my brain wakes me. it doesn’t really affect my like severely.. I function normally. but shoooooot, if I got normal levels of sleep i’d be a force to be reckoned with.
Have you ever had food poisoning before? Describe the experience.
Yes. It was AWFUL. vomiting for 2 days straight. it was so gross.
Funny, charming, cute, romantic, smart - choose only 2 for the opposite sex.
smart and romantic.
Have you ever let somebody use you? Why did you do it?
hmm. I think there have been times where i’ve let people have more access to me than they should have had. or there have definitely been times I’ve been used in school groups. But honestly, I tend to be protective of myself. I stop when I feel enough is enough.
You can go back in time & change something in your mom’s past - what is it?
I would want either Bill to not die, or for her to be spoiled incessantly by someone else.
Do you know anybody who is around the exact same size as you? Who?
psh. no. my friends are all tiny which is just not fun.
Ever been to a haunted house? How scared were you?
Yeah. i found it so fun.
Been on any websites today you wouldn’t want your parents to see?
ahahahaha no.
Which is worse: dusting or mopping?
mopping. i hate doing the floors.
Did you pull a senior prank?
Not really advised when a homeschooler.
Did you graduate?
Yes. that was a rough, rough day.
Have you ever been unfaithful in a serious relationship?
Nope
What was the last song you listened to?
i think it was Happier than Ever by billie eilish. the lyrics are ... woof.
Are you one of those lucky people with 20/20 vision?
20/12 -- the last time I had insurance anyway.
Is fashion one of your interests?
honestly, if I had money, it would be. but it isnt right now.
Do you think you’ll eventually find that special someone?
It’s getting harder and harder to believe that will be the case. I knowwwww I need to start dating, but every time I go to open up an app, I hesitate and chicken out. I just was so happy before.. its hard to think I could be able to offer anything to anyone right now.
Do you care what people think?
veryyyyyy few people. I care about the thoughts of those I genuinely love and respect. However, I still ensure I’m protecting myself regardless.
Is acting something you enjoy?
No.
What was the last thing you broke/sprained?
I have a bum knee, so I sprain that from time to time. I last broke a finger.
Have you ever fought with a friend because of their boyfriend/girlfriend? Because of yours?
ahahahaha yes. but years ago. never because of mine.
Has a stranger ever yelled at you for your language?
No. I don’t cuss.
Whose house, other than yours and your families’, are you most comfortable at?
probably either nathan’s or em’s.
Has any of your friends’ family ever yelled at you?
alix’s family used to yell at me a lot for being fat. that used to mess me up.
Did you ever play a sport as a little kid? Did you enjoy it?
soccer. no, i found the endless running to be unnecessary.
Did you ever watch the show Full House?
yup
Is there a celebrity you are just DETERMINED to marry?
no, thats so out-of-touch with reality
Have you ever burned someone’s picture?
yes, i have.
What’s the longest hike you’ve ever been on?
i think it was 8 hours. I hate hate hate hikes. But, thats because I have really weak lungs, so my doctor says it’s like lighting them on fire.
Would you ever get a lip tattoo?
No.
Who is the first person of the opposite sex that pops into your head?
kile
Do your parents smoke cigarettes?
my mom hasn’t since a teenager. I think my dad does still. though, i dunno for certain.
What does one of your T-shirts have written on it?
uhhhh, PTK honors society
Name a pet you definitely wouldn’t want.
Any reptile or insect. <<<< same
Would you prefer your partner smaller or taller?
Taller.
Do you enjoy going through old pictures?
Yes. very much so.
Do you believe people when they say they don’t judge people?
No, i respect people who are truthful saying they either try not to judge, or that they do judge despite their desire to stop.
What did you love the most about the town you grew up in?
sooooooo much. it’s small town-y, quiet, safe, lots of trees, family close by.
What’s a movie you cried the hardest during?
ps i love you will always shatter my heart.
What’s your favorite restaurant?
buona or ashford
Is there a dessert you don’t like?
im not wild about pastries.
What’s a book that you read because everyone else was reading it?
hmmm maybe that one mrs. pettigrews home for peculiar children.
Underwater or outer space?
i’m fascinated by both. typically more interested in the water.
Dogs or cats?
both. all of them.
Kittens or puppies?
kittens.
Bird watching or whale watching?
whales!!!!!!!!
What was your best subject in school?
in HS probably history. or science. in college, psych or neuro.
What was your worst subject in school?
Math. always freakin’ math.
What is one thing you wish you knew in high school?
Uhhh. hm. i don’t think anything. I liked my experience.
Who is your fashion icon?
nada.
Diamonds or pearls?
Both are nice. I love pearl stud earrings and I really want a simple, one pearl necklace. I am kinda ruined for diamonds for some time. My favorite rings and necklace were diamonds from kile and I just cant bring myself to wear those anymore.
What color dress did you wear to prom?
pink
Honestly, are you jealous of someone right now?
oh sure. I am envious of those with bangin’ bods. I’m envious of those who have great finances. I am envious of those who live life married to their love. I’m envious of people who see kile regularly. But there are difficulties that come with any of those situations.
Honestly, when was the last time you REALLY cried your heart out?
not long ago. the whole crushing reality of losing kile just destroyed me. I’m OK now.
Do you need to return anyone’s phone call?
ahahahahah. I just reject all calls.
Who are you closest to?
My mom and nathan rn.
Have you ever had a bad concert experience?
no
Are you currently sad about anything?
several things have recently been really saddening, but I’m ok. Ill get thru it.
Have you had any form of exercise today?
Its going to be some time before I’m cleared for that. I almost faint from taking a shower and I have to be on oxygen after doing the one flight of stairs.
Can you handle blood?
doesn’t bother me at all.
Has any place hired you underage for a job?
yes. I mean technically, I was legal to work in that I was 17, but the company didn’t want to hire younger than 18.
Have you ever carried a concealed weapon?
not like in public, but at a house or gun range, yes.
Are you currently searching for a job?
soon.
Does eating breakfast make you sick?
i’m never ever ever hungry for it. I know i should, but its the worst. I don’t even like breakfast foods.
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CHARACTER SHEET !
Answer the questions for your muse. REPOST don’t reblog.
𝑩𝑨𝑺𝑰𝑪𝑺
FULL NAME: Cristóbal Rios
NICKNAME(S): Cris - Not a nickname but most people just call him Rios, and Sylar always calls him Captain and Sir no matter the circumstances - except when referring to him with Vulcan terms of endearment, usually t’hy’la but sometimes others like ashayam
GENDER: Male
HEIGHT: 6′0″
AGE: 46
SPOKEN LANGUAGES: Spanish (Chilean dialect, fluent, mother-tongue), Federation Standard (fluent, slight Chilean Spanish accent), some Vulcan, some Klingon, some Bajoran, possibly others
𝑷𝑯𝒀𝑺𝑰𝑪𝑨𝑳 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑺
HAIR COLOUR: Dark brown
EYE COLOUR: Brown
SKIN TONE: Tan (Latino)
BODY TYPE: Athletic, muscular
VOICE: Slight Chilean Spanish accent, can be casual, calm and relaxing, but always authoritative
DOMINANT HAND: Right
POSTURE: Relaxed but not slack, a conscious choice; he tries to seem casual but there is always the military man underneath, the Starfleet Captain who never was but would have been; when he’s not paying attention or is distressed the facade drops and he automatically takes a stricter military stance.
SCARS: Several scars on his chest, arms and legs.
- His first scar is on the back of his left leg from falling off the rigging on his family’s sailing ship when he was 7.
- A small, jagged line on the left side of his neck from a jellyfish sting when he was 8 (based on the fact that I got stung by a jellyfish on my neck when I was 6 or 7 - it didn’t scar, but I think scars from jellyfish stings look cool)
- Scar on his leg from a fútbol injury at the Academy when he suffered a comminuted compound fracture of the tibia and fibula in his right leg (based on a soccer injury my dad suffered when in the military which happens to have coincided with the American football injury of Joe Theismann that ended his career, if you want to know more about it), didn’t fully heal when he told them to leave the scar, acts up once in a while.
- Several scars from his time during the Dominion War -- Not ones he purposefully shows off, though he doesn’t hide them. Any of his “war stories” are usually not from the war itself. He’s not ashamed of his time as a soldier but doesn’t think of actions during war as something to brag about.
- Scar on his right arm from a bat’leth competition.
- Scar on his chest near his left shoulder from a shuttle crash during an ion storm.
- Scar on his left side from falling scrap during an attack.
- Scar on his right shoulder from tritanium shrapnel.
- Probably others
SCARS (MIRRORVERSE): Probably the same as above, probably a few more, plus the very obvious one of his damaged eye, always covered by an eyepatch
TATTOOS: Tattoo of a mermaid on his left bicep - He and Sylar are going to get matching tattoos at some point, but they haven’t decided what it will be yet.
- Mirror!Rios might have more?
BIRTHMARKS: ?
MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S): Mustache and beard, slightly graying, short, messy hair that tends to curl
NOTE: Mirror!Rios does not have the mustache and beard
𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑯𝑶𝑶𝑫
PLACE OF BIRTH: Caracas, Venezuela (based on Santiago Cabrera)
HOMETOWN: Santiago, Chile (because why not)
SIBLINGS: N/A
- Raffi (and Seven)
- Elnor (adoptive brother)
- In Syrios-verse, Agnes would be his adoptive sister-in-law as well as Elnor his adoptive brother-in-law since Sylar adopted them
PARENTS: I haven’t named his parents yet in case it’s ever mentioned on the show - @talvenhenki has the headcanon that Rios is half-Danish on his father’s side, who is related to H.C. Andersen and I like this headcanon - his father also left him and his mother when Rios was young and he barely remembers his father at all. He was close to his mother and his maternal grandparents.
- Rios saw Alonzo Vandermeer as a father-figure
OTHER FAMILY: The Holo Squad (don’t tell them)
𝑨𝑫𝑼𝑳𝑻 𝑳𝑰𝑭𝑬
OCCUPATION: Captain and pilot of La Sirena, an unregistered Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter - veteran of the Dominion War, former Starfleet officer, attained the rank of Commander before being honorably discharged after being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Dysphoria and declared unfit for duty. Served as the XO of the Ibn Majid (and was very briefly Acting Captain on it)
CURRENT RESIDENCE: La Sirena (civilian freighter)
CLOSE FRIENDS: Raffi Musiker - Picard’s crew, Picard, Agnes, Elnor, Soji, Seven
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Verse-dependent
- Syrios: Married/bonded to S’vec Sylar, @plaktow-ed
- Your Lips are like a Siren’s Call: Married to Anna Winden Rios, @manenimittliv
- Agnebal: Dating(?) Agnes Jurati, canon, @agnespjurati
- Long-time on again/off again relationship with Kira Nerys, @kiranerysmajor
- Dating(?) Ellie, @bakcr
Honorable mention to Enoch, his ENH who is not-so-secretly in love with him, @ncthingstars (and Emil, who is not-so-secretly in love with Enoch because this crew is a mess)
FINANCIAL STATUS: He’s “expensive” - He’s not really rich but he does alright, mostly uses his money to repair and maintain his ship because, despite what he claims, he doesn’t actually care about money that much
DRIVER’S LICENSE: Starship pilot’s license
CRIMINAL RECORD (MAINVERSE): Nothing on record. Almost-sort-of committed mutiny on the Ibn Majid, may or may not have transported some illegal items post-Starfleet. Nothing he’ll admit to
CRIMINAL RECORD (MIRRORVERSE): Mutiny - probably smuggling but it’s also probably not on the record. He’s had a few scrapes with authorities on various planets.
VICES: Alcohol, tobacco, reckless behavior, reading depressing philosophy and self-isolating in space, wallowing in his depression
𝑺𝑬𝑿 & 𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑨𝑵𝑪𝑬
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Pansexual
PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE: Dysfunction
PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE: Dominant but flexible
LIBIDO: Normal, somewhat repressed lately
LOVE LANGUAGE: Showing off (strength, scars, skills, etc.), discretely staring, sharing silences, talking about philosophy, getting drunk and talking about philosophy until 0-dark-thirty, gently touching the other’s hand
RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES: Closed off at first, emotionally, but will open up pretty quickly. Gentle, caring, protective.
𝑴𝑰𝑺𝑪𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑬𝑶𝑼𝑺
CHARACTER’S THEME SONG: Hm, I don’t have one yet
HOBBIES TO PASS TIME: Reading (out of paper books), reading philosophy, discussing philosophy, learning about cultures, exploring, traveling, fútbol, exercise, camping, hiking, sailing, playing his guitar, dancing, listening to music (especially on his record player), learning about/using/collecting old technology, holonovels on the holodeck, wallowing in his misery, racing La Sirena between jobs, reckless behavior
LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED: Right-brained
FEARS: See this post
SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL: Surprisingly high considering his self-hatred and introverted nature
VULNERABILITIES: Very empathetic but tries to hide it, his post-traumatic dysphoria from the Ibn Majid, probably has some father issues from both his own father he never really knew and the whole Vandermeer stuff, he wouldn’t call his relationship with Sylar a vulnerability but it can be...
Tagged by: @plaktow-ed
Tagging: @manenimittliv / @prcjectpurity, @kiranerysmajor, @soongtypefrankenstein, @warp10 / @qosmics, @quantumstarpaths, @bakcr, @ you
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Sierra Buttes Fire Lookout: A Worthy Side Trip
By Rees Hughes
Perched on the very top of Sierra Buttes, nearly 8,600 feet high and well above any surrounding topography, the decommissioned fire lookout offers an amazing 360-degree view. On a clear day, the view extends west across the Sacramento Valley to the Yolla Bollys and Sutter Buttes, south across the Yuba drainage and far into the High Sierra, and north and east are equally stunning. It is a couple mile side trip from the PCT and well worth the detour. I’ve gone a couple of times now including a visit in early August.
In 1975 the National Geographic Society published a comprehensive 196-page book on the nascent Pacific Crest Trail. The book chronicled the thru-hike of author Will Gray and photographer Sam Abell. This was well before trail names, trail angels, and even completion of the trail. A friend of mine recently gave me a copy he had purchased at a library sale. It truly captures the era when external frame Kelty packs, wool, and heavy leather boots reigned supreme. It is well worth a read.
This short excerpt begins at Sierra Buttes, just north of Sierra City. I have included a few photos of the lookout from my walk through the area:
“Lightning makes an incredible whipping and crackling sound just before it hits. Then there’s a loud buzzing like radio static as the thunderclap shakes the whole building. Sometimes there’s a blue glow around the roof overhang, and I’ve even seen electricity arc back and forth between the beams. The first time I saw that, man, I was scared!”
Bill Thomason sat with his feet on a desk inside the fire lookout station that perches – at 8,587 feet – atop the highest of the Sierra Buttes. The thumb-like spires of volcanic rock provide a vantage high above the rolling ridges of the northern Sierra, and I could trace, far below, the Pacific Crest Trail near Sardine Lakes. A side trail ended at the base of the 178 metal steps that climbed the rocks to our steel-and-glass cage.
Bill, a college student who works summers as a fire guard for the U.S. Forest Service, continued to describe the awesome display of a thunderstorm and I was glad that the sky was bright blue and cloudless. “One of the first things I learned,” Bill said, “was not to touch metal during electrical storms. But I’ve gotten so used to them now that I can usually sleep right through.”
What were his duties? “Basically, I just look for smoke, I take a compass reading and check my card file to see if it’s coming from a sawmill, say, or a campground. If not, I radio headquarters to have it checked out. Fortunately, this area’s not too vulnerable; there are relatively few fires each year.”
I asked Bill whether the isolation of sitting alone high on a remote mountain ever bothered him. “Usually it’s not all that lonely,” he answered. “Besides the hiking path, there’s a jeep trail, so I get a few visitors almost every day. Sometimes more than a few – over the Fourth of July weekend, at least 150 people trooped through. And there’s always communication through the radio. But I have gone as long as four days without seeing anyone. I guess I’ve learned to appreciate both company and loneliness. The time of day I most like to be alone is at sunset. It’s so peaceful up here then.”
Fire lookouts are fast going the way of the typewriter, Kodachrome and the handwritten letter. According to author Philip Connors, 90 percent of American lookout towers have been decommissioned with only a few hundred remaining, mostly in the West and Alaska.
A dozen miles north of Sierra Buttes, the trail skirts placid Gold Lake, named in acknowledgment of one of the biggest hoaxes of the gold rush days. In 1849 vague rumors of a lake with banks strewn with gold spread through the mining camps. In the early summer of 1850, an English miner named J.R. Stoddard appeared in Nevada City with a poke of nuggets and a dramatic tale. While on a hunting trip, he said, he had stumbled on the fabled lake of gold, and was astounded by its abundance of riches. As he scooped up handfuls of nuggets, he was suddenly attacked by Indians, and was wounded in the leg by an arrow while escaping.
He offered – for a price – to lead an expedition back to the lake; dozens of gold-hungry prospectors responded and paid the fee. When the party left Nevada City, a throng of perhaps a thousand other men followed along.
For days the horde vainly tramped the mountains. Stoddard became increasingly vague about his bearings, until at last the miners rebelled and gave him an ultimatum: He had 24 hours to find the lake or he would be strung from the nearest tree.
That night the wily Stoddard stole out of camp and disappeared. In the morning the miners, thoroughly chagrined, headed back to their old claims or sought new ones in the Gold Lake country.
Sam rejoined me on the trail north of Gold Lake and together we walked the dry, hot ridges of the northern Sierra. Late one afternoon, as we followed a dusty road toward a bluff overlooking the North Fork of the Feather River, the aroma of cooking drew us toward a small prefabricated house alive with young men.
It was a crew of the California Ecology Corps, sponsored by the California Division of Forestry. Under contract with the U.S. Forest Service, the men were building a six-mile section of Pacific Crest Trail from the ridgetop down into the Feather River Canyon near the town of Belden. After we had demolished a supper of roast beef and corn on the cob, I sat sipping coffee and talking to Dick Hansen, project foreman and a 20-year veteran of the Division of Forestry, and Rick Lawrence, the 22-year-old crew leader.
“We’ve been up here for just under three weeks, and we’ve already got more than half a mile of trail built,” Dick said with pride. “The whole project should take no more than four or five months, we hope.”
“We’re averaging about 250 feet of finished trail per day,” Rick added, “and that’s through manzanita, which is hard to dig out. We have to follow strict specifications of trail width and drainage, of course, and we’re anxious to do a good job; we’re hoping that this one will lead to more contracts.”
In the late mountain twilight the corpsmen returned from swimming, fishing, or rock climbing and crawled into the sleeping bags scattered around the prefab building. A few minutes after five o'clock the next morning I was served a tasty cheese and mushroom omelet by camp cook Jim Atha. Breakfast over, we crowded into a truck and bumped along the dirt road leading to the new trail site.
Following the newly constructed section, I rounded a well-engineered switchback and faced a tangle of brush. Ahead of me a proficient team of two strong corpsmen worked with lopping shears to cut out the tough branches and trunks and form a rough corridor. A couple of dozen yards behind them, another team wielding picks and shovels grubbed out rocks and roots and widened the initial path. Other teams graded, cleared, and trimmed, until finally a permanent section of Pacific Crest Trail had been completed.
“We rotate the men every day so they don’t get burned out on any one job,” Rick told me. “As we work, we’re careful to preserve the natural lay of the land as much as possible. We only take out boulders or trees where they would be a serious hindrance to hikers.”
From the top of the canyon wall, Rick looked down at his crew and said, “This is the kind of work you can appreciate doing. You feel like you’re leaving your mark, that you can come back in 20 years and be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
Bob Birkby wrote a wonderful piece that is included in the Oregon/Washington volume of The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader, “The Art of the Trail: An Aesthetic Appreciation of What’s Underfoot”. It captures the work of art that results from good trail building … and reminds us not to take for granted the work of Dick Hansen, Rick Lawrence, and their team and countless similar teams that built the PCT.
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Quotations
Ambient Conversations:
“I fucking hate mosquitos. Can we get away from all of this stagnant water before we die of West Nile or some shit?”
“You know, there’s a really good hiking trail around here. If you just turn here…. And we’re going the other way. Nevermind.”
“Gotta love the wilderness, the sun, the rivers, the lakes, the idea that there could be a Chosen archer hiding in the trees just waiting to murder us.”
“...Yeah. Heights. This’ll be fun. Not. Can we uh -- get down. Like. Now.”
“So. Have you ever thought about what’s gonna happen when all this is over? People don’t even have homes to go back to anymore and what? Are we gonna hold hands and sing kumbaya and pretend this all didn’t happen? Like fucking hell.”
When Deputy Points a Gun at Them:
“Ah. So this is what betrayal feels like. Gotta admit I’m hurt Deputy.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
Holland Valley:
“Ah. You can almost smell John Seed’s entitlement from here. Or… maybe that’s just his cologne. Eau de Asshole.”
“The Spread Eagle. Did you know that Girl’s Night has karaoke? You’ll have to ask Grace to sing Man! I Feel Like a Woman! by Shania Twain. It’s a blast.”
“Ah yes. Open fields, straight roads, the perfect place for snipers to shoot at us while I can’t shoot at them. Let’s get a move on.”
“...you think that the general store ever got my shipment of books in before shit went south? No?” *sighs* “And I was so looking forward to finishing the last of Toni Morrison’s body of work.”
“Gotta admit, even though I don’t remember it -- one baptism was more than enough for me; evidently I cried the whole time. My childhood priest wouldn’t be pleased with me converting to some crazed religious cult. Catholicism is cult enough for any one person.”
“You think we could convince some people to sneak speakers up by John’s house? And blast Oh John from their fucking radio station while he tries to sleep? It’ll be hilarious.”
After Being Captured By John:
1st Encounter: “Did you enjoy your dip in the bliss filled water? Was John everything you hoped for? Thank god for Pastor Jerome and getting you out of there before shit hit the fan.”
2nd Encounter: “God. John’s quite the drama queen isn’t he? Shouting for you over the loudspeakers, promising that God will lead him to you.” *snickers* “He’ll be sending you flowers and love poetry before you know it, Dep.”
John’s Death: “Well, everyone in the Valley can breathe at least a little easier now… It’s just a damn shame about the lives lost in the process and all of the people displaced by the violence.”
Henbane River:
“Ah yes, just your good, old fashioned, brain melting hallucinogenic drugs that at the very least sends you on a bad trip and at worst, turns you into a fucking zombie. Just how I wanted to spend my Tuesday.”
“Oh good. I’ve been meaning to stop by and see Addie. I have to talk to her about the fucking alleged haunted house she sold me.”
“I swear officer! It wasn’t me! Don’t cart me off to jail!” *snickers*
“You know what fucking sucks the most about all of this? They blissed out all of the best swimming spots in the Henbane, so unless you want to get really high I don’t recommend it.”
“Do you have any idea how much I���d love to take a rocket launcher to that sanctimonious prick’s dick?” *pause* “On the statue, dumbass. Although… Now that I’m on the topic…”
“...Please tell me that you’re also seeing pink elephants and about a dozen Faith’s littering the sides of the roads. Oh god.”
After Being Captured By Faith:
1st Encounter: “You never take me anywhere nice, actually, I lied. Do not. I repeat. Do not. Take me skydiving off of that fucking statue. I will murder you.”
2nd Encounter: “Best be careful there Dep. The adrenaline can bring you back but… there’s always a cost. You gotta wonder what the cost of finding that Marshall and bringing him back is.”
Faith’s Death: “It’ll take years for this place to get back to normal… All of that Bliss, in everything. It’s not just gonna go away, and we don’t even know the long term effects. What a fucking waste of life.”
Whitetail Mountains:
“I should stop by and see Will and Eli while we’re here… No one in that fucking Militia keeps themselves fed unless you bug them about it. Fully grown toddlers, I swear to god.”
“Guess I should be thankful that the Cult isn’t as concerned with book burning as other zealous religious groups -- I would storm the Veteran’s Center myself if Jacob tried to burn my books.”
“...Did you hear that howl? We should go. Before we end up as wolf chow. Or, we could stay and when the Judge’s come you stay there, and I’ll climb a tree and use you as a big, beautiful distraction.”
“So… You know that fucking eyesore of a Truck that Hurk Senior owns? A few months ago I dumped pink paint all over that shit. Hurk and Sharky thought it was funny… his daddy not so much. It was just detailed too. Such a shame, that.”
“For the record, if you’re planning on using helicopters to travel you can count me out, out of this county, out of this little group of yours, out of existence. There will be no heights for this woman in this or any lifetime.”
“Please tell me that you’re not actually going to get those records on the kid’s list. He has like, the WORST music taste. Literally give anyone else that job because I don’t know how much of What’s New Pussycat I can take.”
After Being Captured By Jacob:
1st Encounter: “Careful now, Dep. The mind is the one thing that’s really hard to un-fuck once you get it into a bad place so just… be careful. The reprogramming may not be so family friendly.”
2nd Encounter: “You ever think that people get tired of his whole, “I ate a man once”, shtick? Like. We get it, you’re the scary mountain gremlin who likes to murder people and train deadly wolves, we don’t need more than that.”
Jacob’s Death: “...What happened was... unfortunate. But it’s over now. It’s all almost over.”
Intercompanion Dialog:
Nick
Nick: “Hey. So, Kim’s been meaning to ask you for that recipe you and Will brought to the last cookout.”
Bridget: “The peach cobbler or the pudding shots?”
Nick: “….Both. Definitely both. And make sure that you bring them both again next time. They were a lifesaver. Who the fuck brings pineapple pizza to a barbecue?”
Bridget: “Evidently, the Seeds. As if we needed another reason to shoot them.”
Nick: *laughs* “Right?”
Bridget: “I’ll make sure to stop by the next time I have a chance, I’m sure that Kim would enjoy some new faces around.”
Grace
Bridget: “I managed to find a copy of Beloved for you if you’re still interested in reading it?”
Grace: “Really? You found it before the Peggies lost their shit then?”
Bridget: “Yeah, it was in the last shipment of books that came into the library before everything went post-apocalypse now.”
Grace: “I’d love to read it, be nice to take my mind off of everything that’s going on.”
Bridget: “Of course! I’ll bring it by 8Bit the next time we’re gonna meet up there for you to read. I promise you’ll love this one.”
Grace: “You haven’t steered me wrong yet.”
Boomer
Bridget: “You know… I’ve always been more of a cat person myself….”
Boomer: *whines*
Bridget: “Don’t give me those --” *sighs* “Fine. Fine. You’re the only exception. Happy now?”
Boomer: *happy bark*
Sharky
Sharky: “Hey so, Bridget. I have a question.”
Bridget: “Hm?”
Sharky: “Do you think that readin’ Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and shit would make me sound smarter?”
Bridget: “Nope.”
Sharky: “Seriously?”
Bridget: “Sharky, it was like… the Simpsons of our times, people just like to act like it was smarter and better. Besides, you’re plenty smart by yourself and if anyone tells you different you can tell them to find me and I’ll beat the shit out of them with my twenty five pound Shakespeare anthology.”
Sharky: *laughs* “Can and will do, ma’am.”
Adelaide:
Bridget: “So… About that haunted house you sold me…”
Addy: “Ah, I was wondering when you’d figure that out -- technically no one’s ever died on the property and the hauntings are all just rumors that the town likes to tell.”
Bridget: “It definitely explains why it was half of the price of every other house in Hope County.”
Addy: “Darlin’ you always get what you pay for, and honestly, I think you and that man of yours got quite the steal on that place.”
Bridget: “Uh-huh. Just know, that if I die, I have every intention of haunting you just so that you have to deal with those sort of shenanigans and whispers from the people in Fall’s End.”
Addy: *laughs* “It’s a deal.”
Billy:
Billy: “So I say we just…” *inaudible whispering*
Bridget: “Absolutely not! We are not going to panty raid the entirety of John Seed’s house and hang his silk underwear from his flag pole no matter how funny I think that is.”
Billy: “Come on, think of the rage -- the pure unadulterated fury that he’ll have at seeing his glorious black silk boxers hanging from every available surface in the Valley.”
Bridget: “Do not. It’s too fucking tempting.”
Billy: “You know you want to.”
Bridget: “You’re the absolute worst.”
Billy: “That’s not a no.”
Bridget: “Fuck you.”
Peaches:
Bridget: “Hey! You want some treats?”
Peaches: *cougar noises*
Bridget: “I talked to Chad and he gave me the scraps from the latest roadkill he’s gotten and I’ve saved it for my favorite kitty.”
Peaches: *happy cougar noises*
Bridget: “Yup! It’s all for the best murder machine in the Henbane.”
Hurk:
Hurk: “So you’re sure you’re not interested in Hurk’s Gate?”
Bridget: “Nope. I’m pretty good where I’m at, plus, Jerome would be out a Youth Pastor if I did.”
Hurk: “Well, I guess you could still stay with the Youth Pastoring thing, helping the youth and all of that is important, plus you could start recruiting them to Hurk’s Gate.”
Bridget: “Still gonna pass.”
Hurk: “Huh. Gonna have to do the hard sell on you, huh? Well, what if I told you that there are tons of beautiful men and women who are --”
Bridget: “Hurk, I’m gonna stop you right there. My grandmother was Irish Catholic, were I to convert to anything she’d come down from heaven just to beat the ever living shit out of me.”
Hurk: “Respecting the wishes of your grandma I can get that. Yeah.”
Jess:
Jess: “Hey, thanks for letting me crash with you and Will for the last few months, it’s been… a lifesaver. Really.”
Bridget: “We know how hard it’s been, I’m glad to see you getting back on your feet… Well, as back on your feet as you can get given the circumstances.”
Jess: “It’s crazy, all this shit goin’ south with the Peggie’s is what it’s taken for me to get my life back in order… It’s almost surreal.”
Bridget: “Well, if you ever need us, our door is open and the spare bedroom is yours.”
Jess: “Thank you, Bridget.’
Ashlee:
Bridget: “So. When all of this is over, we’re having a party. A big one.”
Ashlee: “Obviously.”
Bridget: “My first thought is at the lake, but then I’m like, “but wait, we live in the middle of nowhere, our only sources of entertainment are drinking and shooting things” which means that I’d spend my time worrying about people accidentally ending up in the water and drowning.”
Ashlee: “A fair point, but may I just say that they’re all fucking adults and should know better. We’ll grab some trucks to put along the waterfront to play music and block the way into the water and then people will have to think to get in.”
Bridget: “An excellent idea. This is why I keep you around.”
Ashlee: “And here I thought it was because I was attractive and intelligent company.”
Bridget: “Always. Heart emoji”
Ashlee: “Did you just---”
Bridget: “Don’t.”
Cheeseburger:
Bridget: “Cheeseburger!”
Cheeseburger: *bear noises*
Bridget: “You know, every time we’re out here, I’m always surprised that the deputy hasn’t had a saddle made to ride you into battle like the majestic beast you are.”
Cheeseburger: *bear noises*
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• sometimes you just need a few bad-ass females to perk up your day. •
1. WILD
A biographical book-turned-film based on the true story of Cheryl Strayed. A recent divorcée with no prior hiking experience, Cheryl embarks on a motivational, inspirational journey of self-discovery and healing - hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
2. Colonia
Also known as ‘The Colony’ - stars Emma Watson (Hello, ultimate feminist Queen!!) as Lena, one half of the young German couple who the film is based around. During the 1973 Chilean coup d'état her boyfriend Daniel is abducted by the secret service after getting caught up in a military operation where supporters of the President Salvador Allende are being rounded up by the military. Lena tracks him to a secret organisation ‘Colonia Dignidad’ which presents itself as a charitable mission run by a preacher. She joins the organisation in hopes to find a way to Daniel, only to then realise that it is actually a cult which no one has ever left alive.
3. Bend it like Beckham
A romantic comedy based in London, telling the story of Jess, an 18 year old girl who breaks the mould. Raised in a family of Punjabi Sikhs her family expect her to go on to university, secure a high-end job and become a model housewife for her Sikh husband, but Jess has other plans. Jess has a love and remarkable skill in football, her family’s worst nightmare as ‘girls don’t play football.’ She secretly joins a local girls team, meeting her best friend Jules (Kiera Knightley) and eventually falling for her coach Joe. It all seems like the perfect secret, a double life until the all important final is scheduled for the day of her sisters wedding!
4. Memoirs of a Geisha
A Japanese-American epic drama based on a novel by the same name. Chiyo, born to a poverty-stricken family is sold along with her sister into a life of servitude. Satsu, her older sister is sent to a brothel while Chiyo is bought by the ‘Mother’ of a geisha house in Kyoto. Chiyo strives to become a world-renowned geisha with a lot of troubles and setbacks on her way, mostly from the cruel and jealous rival she has in older geisha Hatsumomo from the same okiya. A story of love, strength and self-worth - I recommend both the film and the book.
5. Matilda
Although it’s a film aimed at the younger generation, Matilda addresses some major subject matters such as sexism, child neglect and personal identity. Matilda is a gifted child from a broken home, constantly put down by her slob parents and favoured less than her older brother. She teaches herself to read by visiting the library when her parents leave her home alone as a young child (the film and book imply that she is around four or five), her parents do not value education but she begs them to let her go to school. At Crunchem Hall elementary Matilda meets the tyrannical headmistress Agatha Trunchbull who abuses her position to bully the children in her care. Along with the help of her kind teacher Miss Honey, Matilda rids the school of Trunchbull and eventually is adopted into a loving home with Miss Honey.
6. The Help
An insight into the world of African-American women forced to work in White households in Mississippi during the 1960′s. Skeeter, an aspiring writer from a White family who has been raised by her beloved Constantine, a maid who brought her up and then was cruelly dismissed by her Mother when Skeeter was away at university - works in secret with the housemaids around Jackson, collecting stories and insights from those who have experienced life as “The Help” - some accounts describe generous and loving households while others reveal the cruel, brutal lives they have faced as employees of White families. This book adaptation is not just a pivotal movement for women, but especially for people of colour too.
7. Cadet Kelly
You may have come across this one if you watched Disney Channel during the early 00′s. Starring Hilary Duff, Cadet Kelly is the story of an 8th grade girl sent to military school by her Stepfather who is a commandant of the George Washington Military Academy, where she initially has trouble fitting in, especially with her Cadet Captain who dislikes her instantly. It’s a story of growth and acceptance, resulting in a happy ending - like all Disney’s!
8. Carrie
A classic film with many remakes, Carrie tells the story of a troubled girl - neglected by her overly religious Mother who frequently locks her in a cupboard to pray for repentance. Carrie is bullied at school, one of the most cruel attacks being when she begins her period in the school showers, something which her Mother hadn’t warned her about - and thinks she is bleeding to death, causing a hysterical reaction which the other girls find hilarious, cruelly chanting at her and banging the doors to the showers until a kind PE teacher rescues her. Carrie experiences unexplained powers which she regards at first as miracles, but then researches Telekinesis and realises that she has a gift. She uses the gift to fight back against her Mother, determined to go to prom which her Mother declares a sin. The prom is a disaster after the school bully rigs the voting of prom Queen so Carrie is up on stage in time for a bucket of pigs blood to drench her, the bucket knocking her date unconscious. Full of rage Carrie releases uncontrollable powers that kill all but 11 of her school peers, setting the gymnasium on fire and causing carnage throughout the town.
9. Mulan
A classic Disney movie based on the true story of Hua Mulan, it tells the story of a female warrior from the Han Dynasty in China. Conscription means one male from each family must join to fight against the Huns, Mulan’s father is an elderly war veteran who wouldn’t be strong enough to make it home from war, so Mulan cuts her hair and dresses in his armor so she can pass herself off as a man eligible to enlist. Mulan fights against the Huns, falling in love with her Captain but of course she can’t reveal her true identity or she faces being killed for her deception.
10. Tracks
Based the memoir of the same name by Robyn Davidson, tracks chronicles her nine-month journey on camels across the Australian desert, documented by a National Geographic photographer. The cinematography is exceptional in this film.
11. Erin Brockovich
A dramatisation of the true story of Erin Brockovich who fought against the ‘Pacific gas and electric company’. Starring Julia Roberts, Erin is an unemployed single mother of three children who has recently been in a traffic accident and is suing her doctor. She loses the case and after a lot of persuasion her lawyer feels sorry for her and gives her a job. She begins researching the case notes in the files she’s employed to file away, eventually finding a loophole in a case against the PG&E, she takes them to court - resulting in $333 Million for the victims of the case. Erin herself receives a $2 Million bonus, enough to set her and her children up for life.
12. Belle
Both empowering for women and also for people of colour, especially those who are mixed race. Belle is inspired by the 1799 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate, mixed-race great-niece of the 1st Earl of Mansfield. She is found living in poverty by her father and entrusted to the care of Mansfield and his wife. The fictional film centres on Dido's relationship with an aspiring lawyer; it is set at a time of legal significance, as a court case is heard on what became known as the Zong massacre, when slaves were thrown overboard from a slave ship and the owner filed with his insurance company for the losses. Lord Mansfield rules on this case in England's Court of King's Bench in 1786, in a decision seen to contribute to the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.
13. 10 Things I Hate about you
So much more than a 90′s chick-flick! 10 things is a modernisation of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ - revolving around Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) who plays a headstrong, feminist with no interest in social hierarchy or boys. Her sister is forbidden to date boys until Kat does, spurring off the beginning of Patrick’s (Heath Ledger) interest in her. Paid to date her by the popular boy who wants her sister, Patrick eventually falls for her and she him but this is so much more than a love story. We get to watch witty Kat verbally destroy sexist classmates, high school norms and social status, making this one of the best girl power movies of the 90′s.
14. Pocahontas
Another Disney classic based on a true story, Pocahontas is the adapted version of the life of Matoaka (later nicknamed Pocahontas) the daughter of Chief Powhatan, also the name of their tribe in North America. A free spirit, she fears being married off to Kocoum, a brave yet serious warrior from her tribe. She visits Grandmother Willow, a talking willow tree for advice - who alerts her to the Englishmen arriving in the new world. Though historically inaccurate in significant parts, Pocahontas became the first Native American Disney Princess and first woman of colour in a leading role in any Disney film.
15. The Craft
A film showcasing female empowerment and sexuality, also showing dramatic examples of what can happen when women tear each other down instead of building them up. The craft tells the story of a coven of modern-day witches, using witchcraft and black magic for their own gain, and the negative repercussions they encounter.
#girl power#watchlist#films#movies#movie watchlist#netflix#feminist#feminism#girly#girls#girl#pocahontas#disney#the craft#mulan#10 things#memoirs of a geisha#bend it like beckham#kiera knightley#emma watson#emma stone#the help#poc#people of color#sexism#empowerment#empoweringwomen#empoweredwomen#film review
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In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.
A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade.
Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.
“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”
Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”
We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.
‘I’ll never call the police again’
Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.
Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.
Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.
One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”
I get pulled over a lot more now. I got pulled over more in the first two years after my transition than I did the entire 20 years I was driving before that. Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?
Race influences how people choose to transition. I did an ethnographic study of trans men and found that 96 percent of African American and Latino men want to have surgery, while only 45 percent of white respondents do. That’s because a trans history can exacerbate racial profiling. When they pat you down, if you don’t have a penis it’s going to be obvious (or if you’re a trans woman and you have a penis, that becomes obvious). If they picked you up for popping a wheelie or smoking weed, if they find out you’re trans it can be worse for you.
There are also ways in which men deal with sexism and gender oppression that I was not aware of when I was walking around in a female body. A couple of years after my transition, I had a grad student I’d been mentoring. She started coming on to me, stalking me, sending me emails and texts. My adviser and the dean — both women — laughed it off. It went on for the better part of a year, and that was the year that I was going up for tenure. It was a very scary time. I felt very worried that if the student felt I was not returning her attentions she would claim that I had assaulted her. I felt like as a guy, I was not taken seriously. I had experienced harassment as a female person at another university and they had reacted immediately, sending a police escort with me to and from campus. I felt like if I had still been in my old body I would have gotten a lot more support.
Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world. I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.
But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”
It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.
‘It now feels as though I am on my own’
Zander Keig, 52, San Diego
Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.
Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence. I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.
I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations. Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives. I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.
Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.
Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.
I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.
What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.
I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.
I took control of my career’
Chris Edwards, 49, Boston
Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.
When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.
The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.
Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.
When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.
The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.
People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.
‘People assume I know the answer’
Alex Poon, 26, Boston
Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.
Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.
Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.
My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.
People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.
When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.
A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.
Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.
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Coffee... take a break ... we have all the time in the world except we’re running out of it.
Far from being seasoned travelers, we got a late start in life and we can hear the ticking of the clock.
I was concerned, without putting too fine a point on it, that the writing I shared last week appeared to be coming from a Kerouac style road warrior who was gristled and hard and was a fountain of rebellious wisdom garnered by always taking the road less traveled. Au contraire mon ami, we entered this game later in life than some yet more so that others ever would. Of all the valuable lessons to be learned from dedicating oneself to travel is usually and hopefully the first one; and I paraphrase here, “ true wisdom is realizing not how much you know, but how much you have to learn.” Our first few adventures were consumed with lessons dealing with logistics: how to pack, what not to pack, which converters to use, when do need to use the passports ... etc., this can almost turn off the glow that one expects from seeing the world and it’s marvels. You gotta get your feet wet no matter what you embark upon... so we developed our routine and attained a limited veteran status.
I related in last week’s story how my wife Kim was the impetus for the new path that we were taking. Before August of 2013, our “vacations” were of the common variety of middle class parents of three. Since all three of our sons were accomplished Eagle Scouts, a good number of our outings dealt with camping and hiking during summer breaks. The summers were broken up with trips to various size cities to visit the sites: San Antonio, Dallas, Fredericksburg and Houston to visit family. For eight summers we rented the same house at Crystal Beach and had wonderful times until hurricane Ike blew down our gulf getaway. All in all, our trips as a family took on the tone of a John Mellencamp song. We were fully aware of the valuable nature of travel as through Boy Scouts, we arranged trips for each of our sons to attend “High Adventure “ camps in Ely, Minnesota, Philmont in New Mexico and the Florida Keys. Each of our sons participated in numerous football, baseball and soccer camps. We made certain that our sons never feared hitting the open road, all the while the clarion call of our desired travels were kept far removed from contemplation.
This is the common approach I dare say of most American families when it comes to vacations with the kids; they are entertaining, happy and kid centered. Adventures and exploration are left to those of more substantial means. Our talks included much mention of the vaunted “one day” and “bucket lists”, a term I detest. As the years progressed, our travels consisted of simply visiting our sons where they had set up house and started their own lives. It was in many ways a very stagnant outlook and adding to that the previously mentioned debilitating leg injury ... it appeared that travel for us would be of the most common nature. Dreams run deep though, very deep ...
Without retelling aspects of our epiphany and the contrasting mundanity of learning logistics, we returned from Ireland in 2014, with an afterglow that changed everything about us. We had received so much more from our adventure than we realized as we thought the overwhelming effects would center on the anxiety of getting through an international airport without incident. We had indeed been touched by magic; Kim became a cook of Irish delights, I read volumes of books, we “entertained” our friends with poorly performed accents and story after story. Paraphrasing an oft seen commercial of an elderly person being injured, “we began talking and we couldn’t shut up!” Boy, we were having fun talking about the trip of a lifetime, but we became aware of voice that silently haunted our thoughts, “what next?”
“What next indeed,” the term ... trip of a lifetime... indicated one, no more, we got what we needed, no mas, el fin ... no, no, no that simply wouldn’t do. New questions and wonders delightfully teased our waking and sleeping hours. Travel programs were a special treat as we developed new “must see’s” and added to our, ugh, bucket list. This time we realized that it could be done, by us no less. We had made friends of a unique nature... others of a like mind that knew deep in their heart that every corner of this world was meant to be seen, explored, tasted, walked upon and drank like bottles of wine.
Truly, our world expanded and questions of what we wanted to learn grew exponentially, and far from being disconcerting in any way, it was marvelous. We began learning bits and pieces of other languages and began to understand through the history and culture we experienced, why our world was the way it was ... and introspectively, why we were the way we were. As we reasoned with the knowledge we acquired, we came to understand that we needn’t be those things ... history comes with its lessons ready to learn.
There is a deep seeded need in all of us to be overwhelmed at the wonders of this world. Circumstances, trials and close minded notions bury this need so deeply in some so as not to be recovered ... resulting in an immeasurable tragedy. I’ve gone to pains to state that such explorations are not reserved for the wealthy alone ... far from it... it is our world too. Despite the current dilemmas we find in our world, travel is still very much our call, even though we all find our world limited in various respects. This transitioning teacher has more to see and share... this too is a lesson learned. The prime lesson, I know far less than I thought is enticing beyond belief.
Share your travel stories as we examine this magic further as friends and explorers of a like mind ...
http://labibliotecacoffee.com/
#coffeetime#lessonlearnedinlife#anthony bourdain#open mind#retirement#teacher#roadtrip#roadslikethese#traveling#travel well#exploretheglobe#exploretheworld#europe#ireland#airport#winelover#food and drink#history stuff#adventure#bilbo imagine#outside the box#must see#bucket list#my art 2020#passport#luggage#open road#emerald isle#i need friends
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REVIEW
Handle With Care by Marie Harte
Veteran Movers #3
A company that employs military veterans who move people sounds like a wonderful team to join when one leaves for civilian life. A team to work with and that will support you. That is what was created with Vets on the Go – a business Evan Griffith is a partner in with other family members.
When on a job he is warned about a woman that is “crazy” by a teen in the neighborhood...and shortly thereafter he sees her entangled in a trio of women crying and carrying on and then a BIT later...wielding a knife. What is he to think? And...when his phone rings he wonders who changed the ringtone?
The woman with the knife is Kenzie Sykes and the teen with the warning her much younger brother. The women in the frenzy were roommates and long time friends. Add into this mix the men that Evan moves with, a few teenagers and people they both encounter through work and there is a lot that can happen. Both seem to have backstories that make it difficult to trust and that doesn’t help either.
As I began reading I thought, “Not a book for me.” A few pages later I was a bit more into the story but still felt the topic perhaps not my favorite. By the end of the book I felt it was a solid story in what is a series of easy to read contemporary romances that are...not for me. That said, I do see this appealing to readers who want to have a HEA with a feel-good element and not much challenge for the male and female lead.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC – This is my honest review.
3-4 Stars
BOOK INFORMATION:
★★ NEW RELEASE ★★
Don't miss this brand new contemporary romance, standalone title from Marie Harte.
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Evan Griffith has had a hell of a day...
And that was before he met the stunning, sexy woman having a meltdown.
Evan Griffith has had many careers in his life. But who knew working for his family's moving company would hold just as much action as his stint in the Marine Corps? On an unforgettable job, Evan finds himself taken by a teenage conman and confronted by a woman wielding a knife—and promptly falls head over heels for her.
Kenzie Sykes is doing her best to raise her little brother and keep him out of jail—all while dealing with her own broken heart that just hasn't healed. She doesn't have time for romance. He's not asking... Until he is, and she finds herself saying yes.
EXCERPT
Kenzie stared at the phone, half expecting it to bite her. Had she really said no to a date with Evan? Yes, yes, she had, because she didn’t need complications right now. And the way he made her feel certainly qualified as difficult, perplexing, and chaotic.
“Who was that?”
She jumped, not having heard her brother return to the living room. “Um, no one.”
“Really? Because it sounded like you were saying no to coffee, and the only guy you’ve talked to about a coffee date was Evan. I was there, remember?”
She didn’t need lectures on honesty from a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. “Shouldn’t you be heading to bed?”
“Kenzie, it’s seven thirty on a Friday night.”
“And? You’re a growing boy.”
He rolled his eyes in the way only an adolescent could, sneering without sneering. “Admit you like the guy.”
“I admit he was nice. So what? I’ll probably never see him again, unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Did you steal his phone again? Will he be a character witness for the feds when they come to take you away or raid our house for some illegal mess you’ve once again gotten yourself into?”
He flushed. “No. And quit changing the subject.”
“There is no subject. Now go watch TV or something. I have more work to do.”
He stared at her, his brows drawn, then headed back upstairs. She felt bad about chasing him away…for all of three seconds. Her brother loved Netflix, and she really did have work to do. Especially since she’d spent much of the afternoon trying to ignore thoughts of Evan while the girls continued to talk about him.
If only he weren’t so attractive and polite. If only he hadn’t asked her out after she’d already put him in the “must try to forget” pile.
The little demon perched on her shoulder, an amalgamation of Lila and Rachel with its nonstop yammering, whispered: What would really be the harm in going out with him?
She tromped downstairs to her office and fired up her computer. The harm, she thought, would be in getting involved, liking him as a friend. Then a boyfriend. Then dating, having him interact with Daniel. They’d hang at his place, then her place. More and more, until she would grow attached. Then she’d fall in love with him, and he’d leave.
Just like Bryce.
To torture herself a little more, she dug up an old picture of the three of them from happier times, the one she kept hidden in a bottom desk drawer. She tried to see the flaws in her relationship, but the picture only showed a woman and man in love and a young boy ecstatic about going to a fall festival.
Kenzie gripped the frame, wishing she could go back and undo…what? She hadn’t stepped a foot wrong. She’d always put Daniel first, had checked out Bryce before their first date, and thought long and hard on it before living together. Bryce had never been anything but loving and fun—until the end, of course.
How could she have known things might change?
Before she could cry, she smacked herself on the arm and laughed, not a little hysterically. Holy crap, Lila’s aversion therapy kind of worked. Because instead of crying, all she could think about was Lila’s silly “Bryce.” Smack. Rinse and repeat.
Kenzie tucked the photo away and, smiling now, concentrated on her work, liking the new idea for their footwear client though still not sold on the walking, talking kale for the organic food business.
About the author
Caffeine addict, boy referee, and romance aficionado, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Marie Harte has over 100 books published with more constantly on the way. She’s a confessed bibliophile and devotee of action movies. Whether hiking in Central Oregon, biking around town, or hanging at the local tea shop, she’s constantly plotting to give everyone a happily ever after. Visit
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HGP Ch. 4.2
Ch. 4.2
****WARNING 18+ only recommended – mentions of abuse and bodily harm! You have been warned!****
*FLASHBACK*
THE NEXT MORNING
You were utterly exhausted after finally having a real full meal you passed out like a light being turned off. You wake to hearing Bear talking with Hell who you learned last night her name was Rachel.
Bear: “I think I understand now why General Bates did nothing now, even when we told him we had to the leave the island that too many of the dead had made it pass the defenses. If what you told me is in those journals is even half true, that sick bastard would have never let her leave; I think General Bates knew it too. I need to ask Lionel what happened in that room when he killed Dr. Harris. I need to know if that fucker tried to take her with him.”
You crack your eyes open and see Lionel against the other wall asleep. Propped up on his rifle. You learned a great deal of information that sick bastard kept from you or just lied about. You had been told there were only military personnel there, no civilians. You had assumed all the “volunteers” were like you veterans or military personnel. Not that you had bothered to talk to them.
It was weeks maybe a month or a little more when you stopped talking altogether, after he put you and the others into that room. That’s when you changed irrevocably for what you assumed would be the short rest of your life. Still remembering the pain from the bites and scratches. The bones chilling cold that made you feel like you were being scrapped against broken glass every time you moved, from the fever afterwards. Flashing in and out of conscientiousness’ and seeing that sick f*cks face with that shit eating grin when you finally woke up. Like he had done the impossible.
Technically; you begrudgingly had to admit he had done the impossible, but only with you. It drove him even more insane as he could not make everyone immune like you. He would take too much blood, even started taking “samples” he called them of tissue he would either take from your legs, he even performed surgery on you a few times to take biopsies of your liver. You lost count of all the scars. Didn’t matter anyway, you knew you would never get out of there.
It seemed too good to be true like a dream almost that the sick f*ck was finally dead.
*A shot rang out*
*Beep* the radio on the table pings. “This is Bear who took that shot? Over.” *Beep*
*Beep* “Sir, wasn’t one of ours,” came a whispered reply; “I think we should move out we’re not alone out here anymore; I can hear some screaming to the east, it doesn’t sound good Sir. Over.” *Beep*
*Beep* “This is Bear to all personnel, pack up we leave in 5. Over and out.” *Beep*
Multiple beeps on the radio all come in affirmative or acknowledged. “Wilco”
Hell shakes Jacobsen awake, Lionel had already gotten up and grabbed his bag; he started to make his way to you, but you stand before he can get to you.
They all freeze and wait for you to move, do something…
After a few moments of silence, you try to speak…
“Th__…” Your voice cracks with disuse, you look at them each and try again. “ _he..” It’s no use, your throat is already beginning to throb with the small effort you already made. Hell moves towards you and you back away until you realize she’s holding a notebook and a pen.
Hell: “Here, use this...” She hands you the note book.
Taking the note book you write as quickly as possible – “the sounds are from the east, right? We need to go North, North East; the logging trail will take us to top of the mountain here. But from there it is hiking and game trails only down the other side, until you reach the river.”
You hand it back to Hell and she reads it aloud to everyone.
Bear: “So you do know where we are?” He looks at you with interest. “You don’t know us, and you’re taking our word for everything we told you last night. Why help us? We could be lying to you.”
Hell hands you back the notepad, you sigh in frustration and your hand begins to cramp up from disuse – “Because I have no choice, and you can’t be lying about that f*cker being dead. There hasn’t been a time he didn’t come to see me before I passed out or a time he didn’t wake me up himself. He must be dead or he’d be here now; besides if I don’t help you I will most likely die here on this mountain.” You give her back the notepad.
As she reads it aloud she hesitates when she reads about him seeing you to sleep and waking you every day. Bear nods his head and everyone piles into the food truck and a head count comes over the radio.
*Beep* “Sir, it’s Bane, we lost a few of the civvies last night. Looks like the 3 of them, they took off and took one of the pistols with them. They told Sarah they would head East, wanted her to go with them. Over.” *Beep*
*Beep* “Understood Bane, the shot we heard must be them then.” *Beep* ~” Fucking idiots the sound only attracts them.” He says aloud to no one in particular.
*Beep* “Alright take inventory of all your gear and see what else is missing, when we next stop, I want a report. Over and out.” *Beep*
*Beep* “Roger, wilco. Bane over and out.”
*END FLASHBACK*
High up in your tree you quietly chuckle to yourself.
*Still can’t believe Bear took a risk and believed me* You shake your head.
Lionel or “Angel” as you finally came to call him; which he liked to pretend he hated. You gave him the nick name after you heard his call sign from the other’s, “Silent Angel”. He nudged you and nodded his head at you. *He wants to know what made me smile, since you rarely do so.*
You tap your head and point to the clouds above you and tap your head again. He nods his head in understanding. He knows you were just remembering something from before. It’s happened a few times, while you sit in a blind quietly taking your turn at watch while hunting game at the same time.
You’ve gotten to know one another well, neither of you talking much to the other, mostly hand signals, rolling eyes… usually was enough communication between you, which meant words really weren’t necessary. They all tried to get you to talk Hell, Jacobsen before he was lost and Bear too. Even Bane took a crack at it a time or two.
They all just kind of dealt with you not being a talker and staying to yourself most the time. Which didn’t bother you any really, it was a relief after all that time not needing to talk yet being understood. Your voice still cracked on the rare occasions you did say something, but when you did everyone listened.
It still unnerved you every time, anyone in hearing reach would hear you they would stop what they were doing to listen. You hated being the center of attention.
Ever since it spread through your small group what happened to you and what you had become. People stopped trying to leave the group, they no longer felt that the marines weren’t capable of protecting them. Because they knew they had to protect me. And they thought then I was their best bet at a cure.
Bear however, saw to it though that all were trained with weapons, knives, sticks it didn’t matter. He told everyone that it would take us all if we were to survive now; that no one person could sit out, that was not an option. Everyone helped, everyone took turns hunting, scavenging homes; apartments, cars even…
You look down at your weapons you scavenged over time; throwing blades attached to wrist holsters, your Kodachi that was typically on your left hip was absent today in favor of the 2 wakizashi, one on each hip that you found in the basement of a house mounted on the wall with several old riffles. You and Angel a few weeks back found them when you had gone scavenging; the dead man Angel found upstairs must have been the owner; had killed himself, he must have been a collector of sorts.
Hell taught you how to use them, she apparently had taken sword lessons when she was in her 20’s. Turned out everyone in your group that had become your new family; had something they brought to the table. They took Bear seriously, no one slacked off. Everyone pitched in and we all learned how to use a variety of weapons. We lost people along the way despite all the training and effort the marines put into it, Jacobsen was one of the first just a little over a month after getting you out of that hell hole, he was bitten during a run. We tried to give him my blood directly, but it didn’t work. We lost him that night.
I felt like an outcast whenever I was around everyone and would be stared at, someone that was tolerated simply because I was made to be immune. So I normally ate alone to avoid being around everyone. I had hoped it would fade, and it has. Now they really only pay attention to me if I speak. I try and do as little of that as possible.
It took Bear and Hell a while to agree to finally let me go on runs. They said that even though I was immune, it didn’t mean I couldn’t be taken out by a bullet or knife from some twisted soul out there. So, I received twice the training all the others got. It sucked but I understood. Even if no one could reproduce my immunity I had to stay alive in case we found someone that could.
Our new home was impressive; the first few we had eventually failed one way or another. Until we came across an old marble mine close by to an newer quarry that had since the world went to shit been abandoned. Much of the heavy equipment though was still there some no longer operated but it didn’t stop us from moving them and using them as blockade material. Lots of marble had already been cut waiting to be shipped on trucks. We had to scavenge parts from places near and far to get some of the trucks up and running.
We had crossed much of the country and made it all the way to Washington DC. When Angel did a recon of the area he found the marble quarry and came back to our makeshift camp with the news.
So, we set up in the mine fortified the blocked gate and would make runs to and from the marble mine setting up quarry like an old fortress made from marble.
Even though my blood was no good for curing a bite or scratch, it turned out to be good to fortify the sick. We had an outbreak of some kind of flu a year ago…? Still no way to keep track of time, even if I can now see the moon and sun daily.
I have no idea how long I was in there. Hell had kept track for a time but eventually she had given it up. We gave Sarah some of my blood when we realized she was getting worse fast, Hell had no idea if it would work.
But between her and I we were able to figure out with the charts and chemical compounds he used he had done something to my immune system that made it act faster and better than everyone else’s.
We still lost a few though to that flu, one of the older men and a few new people that had joined our little group. The old and poorly nourished, food had become a problem at that time, game was scarce and seemingly everything had been picked over where ever we went. Even with my blood in them we still lost them. It was turning out I was not a cure all, but more of an enigma.
Some of the chemical compounds that sick bastard used, even I didn’t know what they were. I was a science geek growing up. I raided book stores and libraries alike taking whatever science book I could find back with me to our “home”. Nothing helped, but Hell, she never gave up.
I had given up, I walked away I was sick of having to look at his handwriting, hearing his voice in my head as I read what he wrote. Bear had caught me, the one day I had finally worked up the courage to open one of his journals and read it. I had nearly destroyed it by tossing t into the fire; Bear retrieved it, he kept those with him from then on, never allowing me near them again.
My blood couldn’t really do much more than act as a booster for regular illness’s or infections. I felt useless, so I made myself useful by learning how to handle different weapons. In the military, I was pretty good with a riffle but I’m crap with a pistol. It was Hell that found out I was good with a blade and took to training me.
Hell and I got along really well, she had been a nurse before all this; and when I finally started to let her in I told her I had been a surgical technician in the military.
It’s how I knew all the surgical procedures he did on me. Since he would read from his journal to me every day and show me things he was doing and explaining them was how I knew most of the chemical compounds he used. The documents weren’t complete some were damaged by fire, others torn or stained with something or another rendering them useless. But Hell insisted we keep them anyway. If we could find a way to read them she didn’t want them to be lost forever by our ignorance.
*****
Lionel nudged me again away from my thoughts and indicated down the road to a truck that was coming. I nodded to another tree across the field of dead closer to where the truck would undoubtedly need to stop by if they didn’t want to get mobbed.
We had come out here in hopes of finding people. It was agreed we would all take turns 2 weeks out on recon for people. Angel and I made it south in a little under a week. We were not far from Charlotte and only had a day or 2 before we had to head back.
One trick Angel and I had found was that the dead didn’t react to me the way they did to everyone else…, well everyone else that was still alive that is.
In fact, they didn’t react at all to me, that is if I moved slowly. When we got back from that run Hell made an educated guess it was because I might not be “fully immune”; she said I could be a carrier but incapable of contracting it, whatever “it” was.
Like someone that was exposed to chicken pox but never got it, but if you examined their blood you would find they had the virus in their system. Since I had scratched Lionel that day I woke up, she believes I am not contagious. She said that was all she could give me though.
Oh, I wasn’t fully protected from them a few newer bite scars that now accompany all the others have given proof of that. Lionel, Bear and I had to do several “experimental tests” to see just what I could and could not do.
Which normally translated into me running away as fast as I could before my ass got bit… again, or worse...
I couldn’t run or make any fast movements around them. I couldn’t talk around them either… not that I talked much anyways… I couldn’t raise my hand up in the air, we found out any noise I made would attract them just like everyone else too, we found that one out one day when I sneezed… That was not a fun day...
Now I wear full sleeves and normally a hood or scarf to cover my neck where the scratches are. Long pants typically too; my favorite are the leather skins I had sewn together like patch work from the skins of the kills both Angel and I got, it’s the easiest to move in and run in if need be.
*I’m normally covered head to toe. But it really sucks in this southern heat to be completely covered. I’m sweating and getting itchy… Ick!* I mentally give myself a shake.
I shimmied down the tree and followed the trees surrounding the fields filled with the dead. When I get closer, I low crawled until I was under some bushes.
I could hear shouting from here but not close enough to hear what was being said, nor close enough to be seen by them. I could see a firetruck covered in filth. *They are obviously resourceful at least* I thought. There was a big guy with red hair and he was shouting and shoving some portly fellow with a mullet.
*Obviously not a “team”* I was about to turn around and go back and write them off but I heard the one with the crappy mullet say DC. But it wasn’t that, that caught my attention.
The man with the mullet shouted 3 words that caught my attention “I’m not a scientist!…”
*What the hell?!?* I think and turn my head back to listen in some more while creeping a little further towards them to hear better.
*I never thought having a Special Forces Sniper as a friend would come in handy when the world went to shit* I sarcastically think.
But what had really caught my attention was one name, a name not even Hell knew about.
Not even in those journals did that sick son of a bitch ever mentioned his name, he wanted all the credit for himself.
Only to me ever did he tell me who was responsible for the project that made a prisoner, The Human Genome Project. The director of it, T. Brooks Ellis.
Mullet man: “ I lied about T. Brooks Ellis liking my hair, as I never met him…”
My heart is pounding and my mind is going a thousand miles a minute.
*Flashback*
Dr. Harris: “You know you should be thankful 685436, you should be thankful Dr. T. Brooks Ellis was my mentor, I know everything about the Human Genome Project he does. Without him I couldn’t have made you the way you are…”
*End Flashback*
*If he has never met T. Brooks Ellis, how the fucking hell does he know the name?!? I have to find out more!*
Just then the ginger man clocked him.
*FUCK!*
To be continued….
#twd#twdfamily#twd reader insert#twd fandom#twd fanfiction#twd fic#the walking dead#the walking dead fanfiction#the walking dead fic#the walking dead family#the walking dead fandom#twd eugene#twdg
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So intense was the terror of deprogramming inside the cult that some Moonie leaders passed out razor blades
▲ 2717 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, California
A story from Bay Area Unification Church of the 1970s – part 3
By Bill Keller The Pittsburgh Press, page 11 Friday, June 3, 1977
Tucson, Arizona – Deprogramming, the psychological antidote to alleged brainwashing by exotic religious cults, has become almost as controversial as the cults themselves.
It is such a chilly, 1984-ish word even those who practice it would rather call it something else.
To a member of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, the word conjures up kidnaping, confinement, torture, loss of friends, loss of God, loss of hope.
Barbara Underwood, who was deprogrammed a few weeks ago, now calls the experience “sensitive and compassionate,” and says she may want to try it herself on those still in the church.
But while she was in the Moon movement she was warned that deprogramming tactics might include cursing, beating, humiliation, seduction or even rape.
A few months ago she was secretly spirited out of California to avoid deprogramming. Another time she went, armed with chemical mace and a deafening noisemaker, to stake out a house in Ohio where a Moonie was undergoing deprogramming and, if possible, aid in an escape.
So intense was the terror of deprogramming inside the cult, she said, that some Moonie leaders passed out razor blades, with instructions that captured Moonies should attack their deprogrammers or hurt themselves so they would have to be taken to a hospital.
The horror stories of deprogramming, ex-Moonies claim, are largely church propaganda, fed by reports from disciples who have been partway through the process and escaped back to the church. Ex-Moonies say the escapees embellish their stories to enlarge their hero-status within the cult.
One recent escapee from deprogramming has claimed his captors poured water up his nose; witnesses who were present say one of the deprogrammers sprinkled water in his face in an effort to break his trance-like state. Another Moonie says she was beaten with pillows; witnesses say an ex-Moonie gently tossed a pillow at her to get her attention.
Ex-Moonies don’t deny that occasionally a cultist has been slapped or sworn at, or that it has sometimes taken considerable force to hold a deprogrammee — especially in cases where the youngsters have been snatched without the authority of a court order. But they maintain such instances are exceptional.
Berkeley psychologist Dr. Margaret Singer, who has studied more than 100 former members of the Unification Church, said she knows of “nothing untoward” about the deprogrammings of any of Moonies.
Dr. Singer says that almost all the ex-cultists she studied continued to be deeply religious, either returning to the faith of their childhood or developing “a basic religious belief of a kind they say is really theirs.” Barbara said she has kept a deep faith in God, without feeling attached to any particular religion.
But concern about deprogramming is not limited to Moonies, nor based entirely on exaggerated stories of brutality.
Ralph Baker, attorney for the Unification Church, said he believes the pillow-beating and water-up-the-nose stories but feels even nonviolent deprogramming “is kind of alien to our American way.”
Baker says deprogrammers often charge “$15,000 to $25,000 a head,” and are simply profiteers taking advantage of gullible parents.
Deprogramming is expensive, though less so than Baker claims. The Freedom of Thought Foundation in Tucson, which wrestled Barbara from the Moonies says it charges parents a $10,000 retainer for legal work, travel, motels and the actual deprogramming. The foundation also provides several weeks of “rehabilitation” in a bungalow on the outskirts of Tucson, paid for by a Detroit philanthropist whose daughter left a cult.
Ann and Adrian Greek, a Portland, Oregon couple whose son, Phil, was pulled from the Unification Church under an Oregon court order and deprogrammed in the state, said it cost them about $4,000. Neither family complained of the cost.
According to Barbara and several other former Moonies, the deprogramming process consists of two basic elements: confinement and conversion.
After the “pick-up” of a Moonie, sometimes a forceful kidnaping but now more commonly under a court-ordered conservatorship, the cult member is confined in a motel room, at least until he or she seems unlikely to attempt escape.
The deprogramming period, usually a matter of days, often includes walks and trips to restaurants. In the case of Barbara who responded rapidly, the first few days included a picnic, horse-back riding and a tour of a California winery.
All of those interviewed said the cultists are given three meals a day and at least 8 hours of sleep a day. Under the conditions of Barbara’s court order, she was allowed to talk to her church attorney, to have any reading material she wanted and to practice her religion.
“I’d rather talk to you well rested, well fed and with all your faculties,” said Joe Alexander, a veteran deprogrammer with the Freedom of Thought Foundation. “You can accept what I have to say much better.”
Alexander, a high-school-educated former Ohioan who used to run a chrome and nickel plating shop in Akron, got into deprogramming six years ago when he helped pull his nephew out of a small cult called The Christian Foundation.
He claims a 90 per cent success rate, working with hundreds of young people in more than 30 cults. The Moonies, Children of God, the Hare Krishnas, Divine Light Mission, Scientology, The Christ Family, The Way International – “All of the groups are carbon copies of each other,” he said.
The key figures in a deprogramming are not usually the professionals like Alexander, however, but ex-members of the cult who are fluent in the church jargon and can reassure the “client” that they’ve been through it themselves.
The goal ls to get the cultist to listen.
“Eventually each person deprograms himself,” Barbara said. “Eventually a person talks out all the defenses until they’re tired of talking out their defenses, and then they begun to listen.”
The process was easier for Barbara than for most.
She says her faith in the church had already been rattled when her two closest friends – Eve Eden and Jeff Scales – were taken and deprogrammed last December. Both now practice deprogramming.
Then during the 12-day courtroom fight for her custody, Barbara said, the give and take aroused her curiosity. Why, she puzzled in her journal, had her attorneys not tried to convince the court of the alleged abuses that take place in deprogramming? And if all those charges were true, she wondered, why would her parents be willing to put her through it?
When the judge awarded her parents a 30-day conservatorship, Barbara and four Moonie co-defendants were driven to the Travelodge near San Francisco Airport, where they were met by a large team of deprogrammers and ex-Moonies.
The families split up into smaller groups, Barbara with her parents, her old friends Jeff and Eve, and Gary Scharff, once the top East Coast lecturer for Moon, now an official of the Freedom of Thought Foundation.
Many cultists resist for days, chanting to themselves, praying, pacing the room. Eve Eden said she “tried to fake it” for four days; pretending the talk was sinking in but actually chanting inside and concentrating on the possibility of escape. Barbara, however, had decided from the start to give it a try.
“I really had confidence that if I talked, it wouldn’t shake my beliefs,” she said. “I’d spent four years believing it and I’d sacrificed my whole life for it, 20 hours a day working for it and four hours dreaming about it.
“I just couldn’t conceive of anything short of brutality and torture that would get me to change my mind.”
For the past several weeks, Barbara has been relaxing in Tucson with other ex-Moonies; swimming and hiking, reading and studying, “trying to reclaim my past.”
Her future plans are uncertain, which is not unusual. Dr. Singer says it takes most Moonies eight months to a year to return to a “normal” way of life.
“Once you’re deprogrammed, that’s one thing,” says Eve Eden. “Then you’ve got to face yourself.”
In New York recently to be interviewed for a television talk show, Barbara worried for a long time whether to wear her long brown hair down, a style considered “satanic” in the church. Concerned about the Moonies who might be watching, she wore it up.
But despite such emotional tugs she feels she is free of the Unification Church, and glad of it.
“I can’t express the amount of relief I feel about being rescued,” she said. “And I really feel it was a rescue, because I know that I never would have left on my own. It would have been absolutely impossible. It’s so hard for anybody outside of the experience to understand the depth of that.”
A story from Bay Area Unification Church of the 1970s – part 1
A story from Bay Area Unification Church of the 1970s – part 2
Interview with Gary Scharff in May 1978
Barbara Underwood from her book, Hostage to Heaven
Who Is the Captive?
One Family meeting with Onni Durst scarred my soul
Onni Speaks
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