#really lived the life of any of my cultures. i’d say culturally i’m not really from anywhere even if that doesn’t make sense | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wolfjackle-creates · 1 year

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Ghost!Robin Part 10

Here's another WIP Wednesday! Hope you enjoy.

Story Summary: Danny was invited to dinner at Wayne Manor to meet Jazz's boyfriend and his family for the first time. He worked hard to make sure no ghost business would interrupt the evening. But when he arrived, all he could focus on was the ghost of the dead Robin that seemed to haunt Jason. Looks like he was breaking his promise.

First, Previous

Word Count: 1.4k

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Alfred let out a put-upon sigh. “You, and you alone”—he gave a look to everyone at the table—“may ask Mr. Danny a single question. All other questions must wait until Mr. Danny has finished his dessert and informs you he is willing to answer more of them.”

“What the fuck does Jazz mean when she says ‘spoilers’?”

Danny sighed and leaned his chair back as he looked up to the ceiling. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair. You deserve an answer to that, dead boyfriend number two.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I’m finally not the only dead one in the family. Sorry, but I’m gonna revel in that a bit longer.” Danny grinned at him and set his chair back on the ground. “So, spoilers. Well. My grandpa is kinda the Ghost of Time. Responsible for maintaining the time stream to bring about the future that has the best outcome for the most amount of beings. We met a few years back when he was ordered to kill me but became my mentor instead. Since he’s the ghost of time, he sees all futures and doesn’t really exist in the present. Sometimes he refers to things that haven’t happened yet as if they have or brings up events from centuries or millenia ago as if they happened yesterday. Bit headache inducing if I’m honest, but I’ve gotten used to it. Jazz doesn’t like it when I share details about what Gramps has let slip about her future.”

“No I do not. I’d rather live my life as if I have some degree of free will!”

The silence from the Waynes was only disrupted by the increased typing from Tim and Barbara.

“You know what,” said Jason after a beat, “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. Jazz, your brother’s life is insane and I say that as a zombie from a family of vigilantes.”

Danny shook his head and swallowed a bite of ice cream. “You aren’t a zombie. Zombies don’t retain any memories of their lives and they can’t think. Not sure what you are, to be honest. You’re ghostly in some way as evidenced by Robin and his ability to use and eat ectoplasm. Which you also recognized, if by a different name. Though, I will reiterate, ectoplasm shouldn’t bubble or collect in pits in the living realms.”

Jason stared at him for a moment before stabbing his spoon into his own pie. He muttered something under his breath and projected, restraint, hold it in.

Danny sighed. He really shouldn’t drag this out any longer. His remaining desert was gone in a few bites.

“Fine. I’m done. How do we want to do this?”

Jazz cleared her throat, “If I may, I have a suggestion.”

Bruce nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“Look, if we take the time to answer every single question about the Infinite Realms and ghost culture, history, biology, and psychology, we will be here for years. Now, Danny’s partner Tucker is our tech guy. We can have him send over a document tomorrow with much of the information we think would be necessary for you to have. You can review it on your own time line and verify it with Justice League Dark or whomever. And you can formulate a list of questions you need further clarification on. Sound fair?”

Jazz was the best. Danny sent her a wave of love you, thanks, you’re amazing and she squeezed his knee under the table.

Bruce hummed. “And what do you wish to talk of tonight?”

Jazz leaned back slightly and looked at Danny. “Danny? I think this is all you.”

Danny nodded. To the table he said, “Over half of you are in danger from the Guys in White. I suppose I should start with showing you how.” The ecto-trackers he had pulled out earlier still sat ignored on the table. He grabbed his own version and took a position kneeling between Bruce and Barbara. Tim got up to stand behind him. Everyone else also got to their feet and started moving closer.

Danny clicked his tongue. “The screen is too small for all of you to see. Jason, stay seated over there. It’ll be easier to show what’s going on with you if you and Robin aren’t right next to each other. Damian and Cass, you are the next most affected so come over. Everyone else, I’ll show you the exact same things just after.”

Cass gave him a single nod and slid out of her seat. Damian didn’t say anything, but pushed his chair out and stalked over. He stood as far from Tim as he could while still being able to look over Danny’s head at the small screen. Cass took her place between the two.

Whatever, their family drama was not his problem. He turned on the machine. “So this device tracks ectoplasm. My design is the most sophisticated on Earth. Green is free ectoplasm—ectoplasm that isn’t part of a ghost or sentient being. Purple indicates a liminal human. Blue is an unknown ghost. Red is a known, unfriendly ghost. Yellow is a known, friendly ghost. Orange is a halfa like me. The intensity of the color indicates the strength of the being.”

“What is a liminal human?” asked Bruce. “You’ve mentioned them before.”

“I didn’t go over that?” asked Danny as colored shapes began to appear on the screen. A bright orange blob appeared in the middle, himself. He was surrounded by three purple blobs, Cass and Damian were the brightest, Steph the dimmest at the other end of the table. But what really drew his eye was Robin. He was mostly blue, but a wave of blue-organge-purple connected him to Jason who was mostly purple. Both of their main beings had some of all three colors mixed in. Danny had never seen anything like it.

But he couldn’t focus on the strange display right now. Saving the image, he decided to ask Jason later if he could show Frostbite and Tucker to get their insight. “Liminals are humans who have been exposed to ectoplasm in some way. Either through death or long-term, low-level exposure. Overtime, it makes you death-touched and that changes a person. Everyone is different. Jazz has a degree of super strength, a ghostly obsession, and true empathy. Tucker has some technopathy; Sam a green thumb like you wouldn’t believe.” Though, this was Gotham, home to Poison Ivy. “Or, well, maybe you would, living in Gotham.” Danny pointed to the purple blob that represented Bruce. “This indicates you have quite a high level of liminality. Jazz”—he pointed to where she was, her color clearly brighter than any of the Waynes—“is currently the third most liminal person I know of on Earth.” He then pointed to Stephanie, a much dimmer purple haze. “And Steph is only lightly touched.”

Bruce hummed. “So this Ghost Investigation Ward will use a device like this to track any of us who have any sort of ectoplasm in us.”

“Yeah. Only theirs isn’t nearly as good.” Danny looked to his sister. “Jazz, mind passing the GIW device down?”

“Of course.” The GIW ectoplasmic radiation sensor had their signature sleek, white design. It was passed down the line from Jazz until Bruce was able to hand it to Danny.

“Thanks.” Danny took it and turned it on. “So the GIW design looks good, but can’t differentiate between different types of ectoplasm. As of now, they aren’t even aware of liminals.”

This device, when it turned on, showed a black screen with a white bar that went up and down at a steady pace. A loading bar was visible on the bottom labeled “Scanning.”

“As you can see, theirs takes a lot longer to get readings.” It finished loading. “Here we go.” Danny was a large green shape labeled “Phantom.”

Robin was also a green shape, though he was distorted with a tail leading towards Jason. He had no label. The others, excluding Stephanie who wasn’t displayed at all, showed up as a green haze.

“Thanks to my parents, they have good readings on me which is why my name shows up. They aren’t usually too focused on identifying ghosts, though, which is why Jason-Robin doesn’t have a label. I’m a special case. The rest of you are safe from a distance, but that haze means they’d take you in for questioning at the very least.”

“Hn. What is the range on these devices?” asked Bruce.

Danny shrugged. “My stuff? From anywhere. I track through the Infinite Realms, not by Earth. GIW? Jason-Robin, they’ll be able to detect something from probably ten miles out of city limits, but they’d need to be within half a mile to get an accurate location. The Fentons? Mile or so. They get an exact location or nothing.”

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I don't really think I have much to say about this segment. The info dump has started! Thank you Jazz for keeping people on track. Alfred will help her if he feels people start pushing too much.

Tag List Part 1

@addie-lover-of-stories, @justwannabecat, @gin2212, @amercurio, @regonold, @overtherose, @readerzj, @sjrose1216, @echoednonny, @deeterzz, @blu-lilac, @number-one-jew, @rowanaway-fromthisbs, @vythika96, @tired-yet-awaken, @themirrorghost, @emeraldcorpral, @all-mights-asscheeks, @darkhinauniverse, @blep-23, @phandomhyperfixationblog, @larkcoe1, @thegatorsgoose, @job-ross-the-second, @britcision, @lenacraft, @bubblemixer, @androgynouslordofescapism, @purefrickingspite, @leftmiraclechaos, @lizisipancardo, @starlight-sparks, @miraculousandmore, @gildedphoenix, @sometimesthingsfallapart, @letmesayfuxk, @phoenixcatch7, @skulld3mort-1fan, @abaowo, @dhampir-princess, @idkmrpianoman, @sarina-elais, @ballzfrog-blog, @undead-essence, @spookytragedyshark, @flyingpansaurus, @akintoabitch, @marivictal, @8-29pm, @justreadingthefanfics, @happybear135, @kisatamao, @spoopyspoony, @adorablechaos, @sara0055, @screamingtofillthevoid

#dpxdc #danny fenton #jazz fenton #jason todd #anger management #ghost!robin #my writing #i had no idea where to stop this one #the scene just keeps going!#it would not have been nearly this long if my work hours hadn't been weird yesterday #the bats are definitely not happy right now

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appalesbian · 3 months

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The @wilcze-kudly Avatar Hottest Woman Tournament got me inspired to write a silly little drabble. @korrasamibottles this one’s for you.

The door to the home gym was cracked, and Asami couldn’t help herself. It promised to be a long day at Future Industries and nothing motivated her like catching a glimpse of who she would be coming home to.

She tiptoed into the home gym to find Korra at the punching bag, hitting and kicking in rapid-fire sequences. Asami was temporarily mesmerized by the fluid grace of Korra’s movements coupled with the immense power that fueled them. She had clearly been at it for a while, if the rivulets of sweat dripping down the small of her back were any indication. Asami had half a mind to collect them with her tongue…

“Stupid fucking-“ Korra spat with a particularly strong kick to the bag, followed by a one-two punch. “-bullshit, what do they know-“

Asami frowned. Korra had mellowed considerably in the years they’d been together and it seemed unlike her to be so upset, especially so early in the day.

"Are you okay, love?” Asami asked. Korra jumped and spun around mid-swing.

“Ah, ‘Sams, you scared me.”

"Sorry." Asami pressed a kiss to the crown of Korra's head. "I wanted to see you before I left for work. What’s got you so upset?"

"You haven't seen?"

"Seen what?"

Korra's eyes blazed. She bent down to retrieve a piece of newsprint that lay crumpled on the floor next to the free weights.

"The fucking... poll."

Asami looked at the crinkled paper. The headline of whatever section this was (Living? Culture?) proclaimed "Republic City's Hottest Dame! YOU Decide!"

Asami snickered.

"This is supposed to be news? They’ll print anything these days.”

“Keep reading!” Korra insisted.

Asami skimmed through the article, something about giving the citizens the power to choose the city’s most attractive woman by mail-in ballot, until she came upon her own name.

“Asami Sato, CEO of Future Industries and wife to Avatar Korra, was a shocking casualty of the second round of voting, losing by a slim margin to Republic City Police Chief Lin Beifong, the new statistical favorite moving forward in the competition.”

Asami laughed.

“Good for Lin! She’s beautiful, the people are right. Maybe this’ll help her learn to take a compliment.”

Korra stared at her.

“But they chose her over you!” Korra exclaimed. “You, of all people! You! Have you seen yourself? There’s never been a more beautiful woman in the history of the world! It’s an outrage!”

Asami smiled and pulled Korra into an embrace, not minding at all that she was now at least 20% as covered in sweat.

“You’re so sweet.”

“I’m not sweet, I’m right!” Korra protested. “I mean, yeah, Beifong’s pretty hot, I’ll admit it, but these people have the nerve— the fucking nerve— to say that my wife isn’t Republic City’s ‘hottest dame?’”

“People have different tastes.”

Korra still glared in the direction of the newspaper in Asami’s hand

“You really don’t need to be offended on my behalf,” Asami reassured, releasing Korra from her hold. She sniffed exaggeratedly and pretended to wipe a tear from her eye. “I promise, I’ll make it through somehow.”

“Okay,” Korra grumbled. “I was going to go have a word with the editor of the Republic News, but I probably don’t have to do that, huh.”

“Nah, it’s all good.”

A moment later, a thought occurred to Asami.

“Wait a minute, are you in that competition?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Korra said nonchalantly.

Asami read through the remaining contestants.

“Yes, you are! And hey, look, you made it through this round!”

“Heh, good for me.”

“I was going to say,” Asami chuckled. “If you weren’t, I’d lose all faith in the people of Republic City.”

The softly flattered look in Korra’s big blue eyes was too much. Asami pulled her in for a kiss, letting it express anything more she might have said about how incredibly lucky she felt that Korra was in her life. Korra kissed back eagerly and held her tight.

“So,” Korra said, eventually coming up for air. “Should we look at the rest of the bracket and place our bets?”

“Yeah,” Asami laughed and opened the spread to see the full bracket of contenders. “Wait a minute… is that my mom?”

FIN

#korrasami #ahwt #was I writing this during our weekly staff meeting? I’ll never tell #ficlet

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peterman-spideyparker · 2 years

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Mr. Russo (Billy Russo x Secretary!Reader)

Author’s Note: I’ve had this fic and other Billy Russo stories in my drafts for ages, and I figured while I was working on other Daredevil and Moon Knight fics, I’d throw in some of these older ones that I’ve never posted. I think the original intention was for this to be longer and a multi-part series, but I don’t like that idea anymore. I cut about a thousand words, and I might include those as a bonus separate part--I’m not sure yet. Enjoy! :)

Summary: Working for Billy Russo wasn’t a challenge like most people would expect. You know how to do your job and how to do it well. One late night of working allows something about your past come to the surface, changing the trajectory of the relationship you share with your boss.

Warnings: Fluff, Billy softening up, angst (mentions of crappy experience in New York and the foster care system/Billy Russo being brooding and sad/hurt and rage/delicious tension), implied smut, cursing, mentions of addiction (drugs/alcohol)

Other Characters: Frank Castle

Word Count: 5,495

Another day in the books. Although everyday at Anvil is never the same, it can get a little monotonous. You answer the phone, respond to emails, draw up contacts, and do whatever Mr. Russo needs.

Oh, Mr. William Russo.

Intelligent, suave, cultured, and the definition of sex on two legs.

He works so hard in his business, and he cares about what he does. Anything that you can do to make his day less stressful, you’ll do it, and that definitely came in handy today, even if it still is a late night for him. You catch a glimpse at the clock on your screen—7:14pm. With a tired sigh, you hear him shuffle some papers around and push his chair out, moving a short distance to slide on his coat. You hear the click of his Italian leather shoes move closer to where you sit, and you smell his expensive cologne in the gentle breeze he brings by. You watch him as he walks with a purpose when he stops in his tracks, turning around to address you. “Do you ever even go home?” he asks.

“Sir?” you ask, unsure where he’s going with this.

“You’re always here before I get here—no matter how early—and you always stay after me. I just don’t get it.”

“I do my job,” you tell him. “It’s that simple. I do it, and I make sure that I do it well.”

“You also deserve a break—a life. Don’t you have friends around to go out for a drink or anything?”

“No, actually,” you admit. “Last friend I made in New York was one from when I got here. She then took 180 dollars from my wallet and ran away, making me scrape by for food for the rest of that week. My family isn’t nearby, either, if that was your next question. Work—this—is all I have, really.” Oh God, do you sound pathetic.

“Where is your family?” Mr. Russo asks, slowly moving back to your desk.

You scrunch up your bottom lip in a frown and shake your head. “I don’t know. I grew up in the system. I’m assuming whoever my parents are, they live in the Boston area, since that’s were I grew up.”

His expression softens to something to one that you have only seen twice before. It’s not quite pity, but it’s deeper than sadness. “You grew up in the system?” he asks softly.

You give a small nod. “It changes you pretty quickly.”

“It does.” His lips part like he wants to say something more, but he presses them in a tight line and sticks his hand in his jacket pocket, his eyes swirling with a mix of emotions.

“Is there anything I can do for you before you leave, Mr. Russo?”

He blinks a few times before he shakes his head. “N-No,” Billy breathes. “Have a nice night, (Y/N).”

“You too, sir.”

There’s flowers on your desk when you walk in the next morning. How are there flowers on your desk?

“Hello?” you call into the office, sliding pepper spray out of your purse. “Anyone here?” Dead silence. Nothing looks out of place except for the bouquet, and after a quick sweep of the office, you see that you are alone. You look through the flowers and don’t see any card. Logging into your computer, you quickly pull up surveillance to see who delivered these. Your jaw drops when you see Mr. William Russo himself walk in at four in the morning with the same giant vase of flowers to your right. You lean back in your chair, your brain not really comprehending what you just saw. After a few minutes, you move towards the beautiful assortment of white gardenias, yellow lilies, red tulips, and magenta lilacs. You stick your nose to the flowers and take in a perfume of scents that make your chest happy and bring a smile to your face, and that smile remains on your face as you get to work and organize Billy’s day.

“Mornin’,” Billy says with a nod, walking a few hours later, not acknowledging the assortment on your desk.

“Morning,” you respond as he moves closer. “Thank you,” you say just before he enters his office. You don’t need to turn around to know exactly where he is—about a stride and a half from being in the doorway to his office, his right foot mid-step. “They’re beautiful.”

He doesn’t respond, but he takes a minute before he continues his gait into his office.

The rest of the day proceeds as it normally does: you respond to client emails, answer the phones, do other office work, and hand Billy files, briefing him before his meetings.

“Have a nice night, (Y/N),” he says, adjusting his scarf on his peacoat as he walks past your desk.

“You too, sir,” you say. “And remember you have a 7:30 meeting tomorrow morning at the Four Seasons with Thaddeus Ross to discuss security for the SHIELD weapons conference.”

“Thank you for the reminder,” he says, turning to look at you, flashing you the faintest of smiles. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well, considering you built this company from the ground up, I think you’d manage.” His smile grows a hair bigger. “Safe travels, Mr. Russo.”

The next few weeks proceed as they usually do, but you are dumbfounded yet again when you walk in Monday, about a month after you found the flowers on your desk.

“Morning,” Billy says, placing a coffee cup on your desk as he walks by. “Sweet cream cold brew, right?”

You turn in your chair and look at him, confusion and surprise written all over your face.

“Yeah,” you say. You notice he has a hot cup for himself in his hands. “You hate Starbucks.”

“I needed some extra caffeine this morning,” he shrugs.

“So the ‘shit-water jet fuel’ is what you were craving this morning?”

He nods, taking a sip of the drink in his hand. “Exactly,” he answers after he swallows. You can tell he still hates the brew.

“Well, thank you for thinking of me,” you say. “If you find yourself needing some more caffeine, just let me know and I’ll make a pot.”

His face says I’ll be taking you up on that in five minutes, but his lips say, “Thanks, (Y/N).”

The next morning, there is a bouquet of blush colored peonies, white gardenias, and purple roses on your desk.

“Vultures today, huh?” Billy says as he comes out of his office and to your desk, placing some outgoing mail in your organizer, adjusting some of the flowers in the assortment of roses, chrysanthemums, and asters. “That phone hasn’t stopped ringing all morning.”

“It’s the political season,” you hum as you shift your gaze upward. “All the big wigs want the best security money can buy. You’ve made it clear that you and your people are the ones for that job.”

“You know how to flatter a man,” he chuckles, shaking some nuts you’re snacking on in his hand before plopping them in his mouth.

“While you’re here,” you say, picking up a few slips of paper, handing them to him in an ordered fashion. “These are those calls back you were waiting for, these are inquiries from the three biggest politicians running for Senate, this is a message from Frank wanting to know if you’re on for dinner at Karen’s, and these are the Ulrich files you were waiting on.”

“Thank you, paperwork Santa,” he says, moving his gaze to quickly examine what is in front of him. “And here I thought it was gonna be a slow day.”

“Around here? Unlikely,” you grin.

He is about to say something more when he turns his head to the ringing of his direct line in his office. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “We’ll talk more later.”

You turn back to your computer in astonishment. We’ll talk more later? Is this the same Billy Russo that hired you? And does he mean casual talk or work talk? He would have made it clear, wouldn’t he?

“Anvil, this is (Y/N),” you say as you continue typing a contract on your desktop.

“(Y/N), hi,” you hear Mr. Russo say on the other end of the line.

“Is everything alright, sir?” you ask, spinning around in your chair and watching your boss give you a little wave through the industrial loft windows.

“We’ve been over this, you can call me Billy,” he reminds. “We’ve known each other long enough.”

“Sorry, it’s a force of habit.” You have to suppress a blush. “What’s going on?”

“I just got off of a call about that veteran’s fundraiser,” he says, and you shift to flip through the calendar.

“The one on Saturday night?”

“Exactly. They asked me to present an award and introduce a speaker that night. So in addition to networking and schmoozing, I’m gonna need to do some more things.”

“Let me know what you need to have ready, and it’ll be good to go by Friday night.”

“Actually, I was hoping you’d come with me Saturday. With my upgrade in duties, they gave me a plus one.”

What? “I appreciate the invitation, but I don’t know if I have anything black tie like that,” you say.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll have it all taken care of. So can I take that as I yes?”

“Y-Yes,” you stutter. “And—.”

“Perfect, you’re the best,” he says, having up the phone with a click.

Did your boss just ask you out? Or is this really just a work engagement?

When you come home from work on Friday, you see a black dress bag hanging off a garment rack with black bag hanging next to it. Locking up and putting down your things on the table by your door, you slowly move over to it.

“Told you I had it taken care of,” the note reads on the bag.

“What did you do, Russo?” you breathe, undoing the zipper. Inside, there is a stunning pine green gown. You look at the label and your mouth drops open: Oscar de la Renta. Taking it out of the bag, you see that it has a v-back, but has fabric coming off of each shoulder to give it a kind of cape effect. You feel like you’re moving in slow motion when you dare look over at the jewelry bag on the right next to it, seeing Harry Winston embossed in gold lettering. Carefully, you take it off of the hangar and peak inside, seeing three boxes neatly arranged. Placing it on your breakfast bar, you pull out the large necklace box, opening it to reveal both a sparkling diamond necklace and its matching earrings. Shocked, you pull the other two boxes out and find that they are the corresponding bracelet and ring. As you look down in disbelief, you catch a Louis Vuitton shoe box at the bottom of the rack.

You sit down on the barstool, lightheaded about the luxury that is around you. As if on cue, you see Billy’s contact light up on your phone.

“I’m assuming you’ve seen what you’ll be wearing tomorrow?” he says after you pick up.

“It’s way too much,” you say. “I appreciate it, but all this is more—it’s too much.”

“It fits the event,” he shrugs off. “It’s a ritzy event full of high-rolling investors, contributors, and other people within the top one per cent. Trust me, you’ll fit right in.”

“I just . . .”

“It’s a lot?” You swear he’s smiling like a devil on the other end.

“A hell of a lot.”

“If it makes you feel any better, the jewelry is on loan,” he says. “But the dress and shoes are yours to keep. Oh, and before I forget, you have an appointment to get your hair and nails done tomorrow with Donna at the Marigold Spa. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before your brain can think to ask him more, he is off the line, leaving you stunned in your apartment.

“Who is it?” you call from your apartment, responding to the rap at the door.

“Your chariot has arrived,” Billy says through the wood.

“I’m almost ready,” you say, nearly falling over as you try to put on the heels standing up. “Come in! It’s open.” You hear the door open and shut, and the click of expensive shoes against the vinyl floor.

“You know, for someone that works for a security company, leaving the door unlocked isn’t secure,” he teases.

“I knew you’d be over soon and I was still getting ready,” you say. “Just a courtesy.”

“To robbers.”

You chuckle as you successfully gain your footing in one of the shoes. “There’s water in the fridge if you’re thirsty,” you start as you slide on the other shoe, throwing a few last minute things in your clutch, and taking one final look at yourself in the mirror.

“I’m good," you hear him chuckle in a low timbre as you clack your way out of your room. “Thank you, though.”

“Alright, I’m all set to go,” you say as you enter the main living space.

Billy turns toward you and stands stock still. His eyes slowly look over your body from head to toe. It’s as if he’s drinking you in.

“Wow,” he finally says, his dark eyes twinkling in the lights of your kitchen.

“Well, the guy that picked it out has really good taste,” you say with a small grin and a blush rising up from your neck to your cheeks. “Thank you.”

He continues to look at you for a little while longer before he realizes that he’s staring.

“These are for you,” he says, holding out a bouquet of burgundy, cream, and lavender roses. “A little thank you for agreeing to come.”

“They’re beautiful,” you say, smelling them. You move to find a vase, getting the flowers settled before walking back towards Billy.

He puts out his arm for you to take.

“Shall we?”

“I still can’t figure out how you manage to do it,” you say as you walk beside Billy after he schmoozes the last of the big-wigs in tuxedos.

“Do what?” Billy asks with a lift of his eyebrow.

“Work so well with these upper-crusty people. Some of them very clearly just a face at this fundraiser and don’t care the same way you do. I don’t know if I could do that.”

“Unfortunately, that’s just what the business is sometimes,” he sighs. “But then I remember that Anvil gives veterans an outlet when they get home—a legitimate career. Then it makes the schmoozing and pretending to care about their Hamptons houses easier.”

“That’s a great way to think about it,” you say softly.

“Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

Instead of walking to the direction of your table, Billy leads you to the edge of the dance floor.

“Care do dance?” Billy smiles.

“I can’t promise that I won’t step on your toes,” you say, feeling a blush prick at your cheeks and your ears.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have the band play something slow.”

You wouldn’t be surprised if his Marine-trained ears could hear how hard your heart is beating.

“How can I say no to that, then?” you say with a small smile, your mouth suddenly very dry.

Billy takes your hand and leads you in. As if the band knows, the song shifts to something slow. Billy holds one of your hands in his while the other rests on the small of your back, his palm spread wide, securely holding you as you both move across the floor.

“And here I was thinking you had two left feet,” he grins.

“Well, I guess it helps that it’s not a formal ballroom dance,” you blush. Seriously, he has to know how fast your heart is racing right now.

“Is this what you thought you’d be doing with your life?” Billy asks as you slowly move in a circle. “Being a secretary, dealing with executives and government officials, and going to charity fundraisers?”

“Isn’t it every little girls dream?” you smirk, quirking an eyebrow.

He chuckles, twirling you to the music before he pulls you back into frame.

“No, really,” Billy whispers. “What did you want to be when you were younger?”

You think about it, but only briefly. “An author, I think. With all the time I spent in the system, I always tried to figure out how I could get out or what it would be like when I did. I’d just write about it. It moved from that to creating these different worlds and different people that were everything that I wasn’t and everything that I couldn’t be. Those are what made me happy. Scholarships from those stories is what got me through college to get my undergrad.”

There’s something soft in his eyes, tender even, as he listens to you talk about your childhood dream. It’s soul-churning and completely devastating in every sense of the word.

“What about you?” you return. “I’m assuming that the military wasn’t six-year-old Billy’s dream.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he admits. “I wanted to be a baseball player. But there were things that happened when I was a kid . . .” He clears his throat. You’ve touched a nerve.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—.”

“No, it’s okay. Saying that my childhood was shitty is an understatement, but it made me who I am and brought me here. In a way, I think the Marines was the only thing that made sense for me.” He gives you a gentle smile, pushing away the dark cloud that emerged on his face. “And just think: without it, we wouldn’t have met. And I don’t know about you, but our time together makes me happier.”

Your heart stops and leaps into your throat. He has to just mean as a coworker—maybe just even someone who isn’t an ex-Marine that he gets to see to break up his environment. You can’t let your mind go to these conclusions. It’d just be a disappointment, and he’s my boss. Still, you find yourself unable to look away from his hypnotic gaze, the tenderness in his expression making you melt. The song stops and he drops the frame, and you let your eyes flutter a few times so you can adjust your head out of the haze he has placed you in. Billy keeps his hand in yours as you stand, pointing his head towards your table.

“C’mon,” he says. “I heard the steak was supposed to be amazing.”

“Did you have fun tonight?” Billy asks as you hand him a bottle of water, his elbow cooly leaning against the island.

“Surprisingly, yes,” you admit, taking off the heavy jewels. “I don’t know, I hear fancy fundraiser, and I don’t think ‘party.’”

“That’s cuz you’ve never been to a Billy Russo fundraiser,” he smirks.

“I guess those are the only ones worth going to, then.”

“You know, I’m really glad you came tonight.”

“You are?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Oh,” you blush, but a nagging question starts to echo in the back of your brain. “I-I didn’t mean to. Just tired.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll let you be for the night,” he says with a soft smile, giving you hand a gentle squeeze on the island before he moves away. “See you Monday, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart.

Okay, that’s it.

“Are you only being nice to me because you found out I grew up in foster care?” you blurt as he walks towards the door. There’s no turning back now. “Before, you’d never say more than you needed to to me, and now for five months, you’ve gotten me flowers, you ask about my day, you know my coffee order, and you left me an insanely gorgeous gown and jewelry to wear to a fundraiser that I wasn’t supposed to go to in the first place.” You pause for a moment, processing that you’re probably running a bond that you’ve wanted for a long time, not to mention your job, probably. “What’s changed?”

“You know I grew up in the system?” he asks, his head turned to the side while his back is still to you.

“I do,” you answer. You had done some deep digging when you were applying for the job, trying to find out as much about the company and its founder as possible.

“Then you should realize that I sympathize with you. Pouring your life into something to move yourself as far away from your past as possible.”

“What I’m really hearing is that all of this from the last few months has just been pity,” you say bitterly, and you try to push away the feeling of tears stinging at your waterline. “And if that’s what this job has turned into, then I don’t need it. I know my worth, and it’s more than that—than whatever this is.”

Your statement causes him to spin around so fast you think he’s gonna get whiplash. He strides over to you so quickly you almost can’t process it. He drops his keys to the ground before kissing you hard, one hand on your waist as the other holds onto the back of your head. He almost knocks you off your feet, but his hands on your body assure that it can’t be a possibility. Your hands rest on his shoulder as your lips move against him, kissing him back just as urgently. His beard tickles a little, but you’re not moving in a way that makes it scratch. When Billy finally pulls away, you’re both left panting for air.

“It’s not pity,” he clarifies. “It’s admiration. I had always thought you were some brown-noser with daddy issues, but you always had this integrity and determination. And then . . .” he trails, his eyes intent and glassy. “I know that drive you have, and that fear of being a disappointment. Hell, that’s how I got here. I wanted to show you that we’re not that shit that happened to us. I wanted to show you that I care.”

“It’s a hell of a way to show it,” you say quietly, looking at his big brown eyes. “I, um . . .” you swallow hard and let emotion contort your face, reeling your feelings in before you continue. “Every time someone finds out, they treat me differently. I really didn’t want you to be one of those people. You might not have thought so, but the way you treated me before made me feel like I finally had a place, y’know? I had a purpose to do something. That I was needed and wanted.”

“I know,” he nods.

“I guess I’m just confused why now.”

“You’ve been my secretary for four years. You know things about me that I don’t even know all the time. You know things about me that you don’t need to know, but you care enough to. I’ve always wanted to know those things about you, but . . . I’m not great at communication with people that—.” He stops to clear his throat, furrowing his brows together. “The only good relationships I have are with Frank and Curtis, and that’s because we’ve been through hell and back with and for one another. I didn’t know where to start with you, because you just come in and you’re like this . . . force to be reckoned with. I guess that finding out we had something in common made me think I could know you better.”

Billy tucks some stray hair behind your ear as he looks at you. “I don’t want to go back to what this was before,” he says softly. “I like this. Having a friend. Connecting with someone. And . . . I like to think this has the potential to be more than that. Than friends.”

“Well, I guess I need to know if you kiss all your friends like that.”

A small smile spreads across Billy’s face. “Just the ones that use lemon shampoo and look good in designer dresses.”

“I’m not fired, am I?” you whisper. “Because I think a kiss like that is some kind of HR violation.”

“Not if you don’t want to be,” he responds. “I will say, though, the job market is tough right now.”

“Is this something we can do?”

“I’m willing to make it work if you are.”

You nod your head. “Let’s try it.”

Billy leans back in for a kiss, this one more gentle that the last, but just as deep. Your arms wrap around him and settle on his back, and you feel him lift you up slightly as he pulls you into him.

“We’re gonna do this slowly,” he breathes, brushing his nose against yours, his chocolate eyes staring into your soul.

“Okay,” you quietly agree. “Slow.”

“We have different definitions of slow,” you hum as Billy presses a kiss to the back of your naked shoulder.

“Trust me, I wanted to, but I have a thing for brunettes in designer dresses,” he says, dragging his hands down the bare curves of your body in post-sex bliss. “And it looks just as good on the floor as it did on you tonight.”

You laugh as you roll onto your back, your head resting on his shoulder.

“Hi,” he says with a dreamy look on his face.

“Hi,” you say, returning his gaze. He leans down and presses a soft, tender kiss to your lips before resting his cheek on the crown of your head. You lay like this in blissful silence as his fingers play with yours, the pale moonlight trickling into your bedroom through the curtains. You think he has fallen asleep—and you almost have—when he shifts a little on the mattress.

“Did you ever think of finding them?” he asks quietly. You know exactly who “them” is.

“I did find them,” you say. “I found out all about them, too. A little after I told you about growing up in the system, actually—curiosity got the best of me.” You think about what you know, and the silence weighs heavy in the bedroom. “My father was an alcoholic, and my mother used all kinds of drugs. They had a short and nasty relationship and split before I was born. My dad worked on the docks, showed up one day drunk, hit is head, and drowned. Based on his obituary, I was six when he died. My mom sobered up around that time, got married, and lives in Cape Cod.” You feel hot, angry tears sting at your waterline. “Two kids, and a freakin golden retriever.”

“And I’m guessing you don’t want to reach out?” he asks carefully.

You scoff. “No. Didn’t want me then, won’t want me now. I’m a part of that past that she worked to forget. I don’t want to go near her with a ten-foot pole. Besides, if she wanted to know me, she’d find me. She’d find a way. And she hasn’t. That says all I need to know.”

Billy wraps his arm around you and pulls you close, pressing a long kiss to your forehead.

“She’s missing out on the best person that I know,” he whispers.

Too emotional to respond, you snuggle into him and nuzzle your head into the crook of his neck.

“Have you?” you whisper. “Found yours?”

“I found my mom,” he swallows. “She chose meth over me—she safe-havened me. From then on it was group homes.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I think I’ve made my peace with it all. Can’t change it. But it made me who I am, and I’m okay with who I am.”

You don’t ask any more onto the subject. Instead, you snuggle in closer to him.

“For what it’s worth,” you breathe. “I really like who you are, too.”

Billy turns so you’re huddled together chest-to-chest, his arms holding onto you tightly, kissing your forehead before tucking your head under his chin. You fall asleep to the sound of his beating heart.

You practically jump out of your skin when you feel a pair of arms loosely wrap around your middle.

“Jesus, Billy,” you sigh. “You really don’t make a sound if you’re not wearing Italian leather shoes.”

His laugh comes out as a hum as he places a kiss on the back of your neck, right on a bundle of nerves he found out about last night.

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” he murmurs into your skin. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” you grin as you turn the waffle maker.

He kisses your neck again before resting his chin on your shoulder. “I thought the guy was supposed to make breakfast.”

“Not in my house,” you say, running your fingers through his hair as you move to flip some bacon. “My place, my job to make you some food.”

“Fine,” he sighs, moving from you, but not before placing a light smack on your rear. “But I make the coffee.”

“You want any eggs?” you ask.

“Nah,” he says, pouring coffee grounds into the filter. “This all is more than enough. I don’t usually get to enjoy this part.”

“Well, if we’re gonna make a habit of this, it’s something you better get used to.”

You finish making breakfast in harmony, exchanging sections of the newspaper as you eat.

“Wow,” Billy chews, taking a sip of his coffee. “You’re destroying the crossword.”

“It’s a talent,” you smirk as you pause before filling in the rest of your answer. “Now, is it ‘ei’ or ‘ie’ in Steinbeck? I can never remember.”

“I guess you got cocky too soon,” he smiles.

“Yes, and I’m big enough to admit it. Which is it?”

“I’ll tell you, but it’ll cost ya.”

“Oh?” you say as his hand slides into mine, silently inviting you to get up and sit in his lap. You do, and his free hand squeezes your thigh.

“It’s gonna cost you a kiss,” he hums.

“Mm, you run a hard bargain, but I think I can afford that,” you smile, biting your lip as you press your mouth into his. It’s tender, and even with coffee in your systems, there’s something sexily sleepy about the embrace.

“It’s ‘ei’,” he breathes, his lips brushing against yours before placing another kiss on you lips.

“Thank you,” you say, filling in the squares and placing a soft kiss on the freckle just below his eye. His hand then gently holds your cheek, bringing your lips down to his. The kisses grow more needy, and just after he adjusts you so your legs straddle his lap, his phone starts to ring. Reluctantly, he pulls away and looks at his phone.

“Shit,” he hisses before he answers. “Hey, Frankie.”

“Brother, where are you?” you hear Frank ask through the phone.

“Yeah, no, I’m on my way,” he sighs. “I just got a little held up this morning.”

“Mm, yeah,” you hear him chuckle. “Where’d you find this one?”

Billy looks at you with warm, sparkling eyes. “I think she found me.”

“And the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day.”

“Yeah, shut up,” he chuckles. “I’ll be there soon.”

Billy hangs up to avoid any more snark over the line from his friend, but not before kissing you once more.

“I didn’t realize it was this late,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. I gotta go.”

“I know: ten o’clock runs with Frank, every Sunday. And if you go by the office, you have some extra workout clothes there so you don’t have to run in a tuxedo.”

“Nothin’ gets by you.”

“Nope,” you smile, popping the ‘p’.

You get up from his lap and begin to clean up the table while Billy moves back to your room to get his clothes.

“I will trade you one dress shirt for one very soft and fluffy robe,” he offers when he comes back into the kitchen, your Hello Kitty robe hanging from his finger.

“I guess I accept,” you sigh dramatically. You slide Billy’s shirt off of your body and hand it to him as he slides the robe onto your shoulders.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks, adjusting the collar on your robe.

“Tomorrow,” you nod. “Have fun with Frank.”

“Somethin’ tells me I’d be havin’ more fun here.”

He leans down to kiss you, repeatedly procrastinating his delay with each punctuation of his lips.

“Okay,” he kisses. “I’ll see you—.” Kiss. “—tomorrow morning—.” Kiss. “—bright—.” Kiss. “—and—.” Kiss. “—early.”

You giggle as he takes you in for more kisses. You pull away from his reach, only to be swept back in for one final kiss.

“I really gotta go, now,” he sighs, tucking hair behind your ear.

“I know. I’ll see you soon.”

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despazito · 1 year

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like i have such conflicting feelings about the pathologizing of mental illness nowadays and the culture it creates. i think the need to have ones dx, at least in my case, was driven by a fundamental urge for validation that what i’m feeling isn't just a phase or something that will sort itself out. i think women especially have had our pain and struggles so minimized, i had lows wishing i just had a broken leg so others could at least see my pain. i clung to my dx and feet like waving it to the world shouting its not just in my head!! i’m not just lazy!!

in some ways getting the dx is like getting a pedigree for your fucked up brain. like this isnt some backyard bred tiktok adhd, this is PUREBRED adhd with the papers to prove it!!! all these women like myself who were looking for a voice and affirmation through dx to prove they “aren’t just one of those girls who’s too sensitive and googled their symptoms”, but now that’s also created its own trope of “overdiagnosed girl in her 20s” and there’s a whole new stereotype to mock and invalidate. there’s just no winning, it really feels like our pain will never get taken seriously by society to matter which route we take to get heard we are dismissed.

but of course these slips of paper become vital if you need any assistance or accommodations, so they are incredibly beneficial to have.

my issue is the more i reflect, the more i do feel like many emotional disturbances or brain funkiness ESPECIALLY depression and anxiety are the result of, or at least become more aggravated, by unluckiness in your childhood relationships and the narrative we created about it. turns out you don’t need to be textbook abused to have adverse experiences, and a failure to have a healthy secure relationship to your primary caregiver fucks with you for life but nobody wants to talk about that. i do think we live in a society here in canada where parental rights to parent how their want is overstepping on the child’s right to have the healthiest possible environment to be raised in. i had spent years reading about the lifelong effects of parental deprivation or bad socialization in dogs and parrots before reading about it in humans, and i think we forget how much humans are also animals.

but the thing is you can work on relationships, you can begin to process trauma. when i tell myself “i’m a person with anxiety” it feels really loaded with a sense of finality that i will always live this way.. the more i use that language the more futile it feels about ever improving, when so often depression and anxiety are the result of deeper unresolved issues. I see so many people with phobias or fears resign to living painful lives than trying to work on any exposure or processing their fears. i’d still be miserable if i never worked through my intense fears of intimacy, i was perfectly resigned to a life of being alone and thought i was content with that.

turns out growing up with trauma can cause the same unfocused and disorganized presentation as clinical adhd.i’ll admit i didn’t like learning that one, as adhd already has so many deniers my kneejerk response was anger at my adhd being invalidated. but i think a lot of adhd people fall somewhere in between that venn diagram, and rejecting a traumagenic theory for some people’s symptoms means they will be prescribed the wrong treatment plan. and this is why all treatment plans put emphasis on talk therapy just as much as pharmacological intervention.

obviously some things aren’t the result of your childhood! your mom yelling at you doesn’t cause autism, but chances are if you’re autistic and had cruddy support you’ll face more adversities and mental health struggles than a good supportive environment. similarly, you could’ve grown up with all the love and support to thrive but one day your thyroid decides it’s time to make you feel like roadkill.

idk, what i’m trying to say is don’t corner yourself or resign from living life because of your mental health dx or think that you’ll never get better because you “have” this, chances are there’s always room to feel better. the most hurtful thing is our inner voice if it’s internalized negative language, and there’s exercises you can practice to drill more positive or at least neutral nonjudgemental language into your inner critic. because even if you have something that will never be cured, the way we talk to ourselves about it is a variable we have some power over.

the narrative part experiencing trauma is uniquely human. some people will experience horrible things and internalize the negativity or self blame, but resilient people have better prognosis because they have ability to frame things in a narrative that don’t assign self blame, and critiques the behaviour instead of the self. because so many complications and struggles arise out of kicking ourselves when we’re down. but the thing is this usually can’t happen on its own, we need to see this modeled by the people around us. but thankfully if we missed the boat, we CAN retrain that voice

anyway that’s my musings from my perspective. for anyone curious here’s a lecture that really resonated with me, its got some hard hitting truths i didn’t want to hear but sometimes you gotta hear things that make you uncomfortable

#mental health #maybe you feel like none of this applies to you and thats ok!#im speaking for my own experiences

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apollos-olives · 15 days

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Hey, this is a somewhat complicated personal thing? But I’d really like your weigh in on it— you’re a blogger who’s perspective i respect a lot. I’m wondering if i have the right to call myself palestinian.

A bit of background- i’m a romani-jew. My family is, as far back as i can trace, indigenous to palestine, but when my grandmother was a baby was forced out and fled across the continent to romania, and eventually she left for the US to become a doctor. I believe this was around 1947 when they were forced out, if i’m pinning it to other timelines, but she isn’t sure and neither am i, so i don’t think i have the right to claim that. She doesn’t identify as Palestinian, only roma, and practically raised herself without her parents (who were absent via work) and identifies as jewish, vehemently anti-israeli and not actively practicing because of that. I was raised jewish, but really often with scorn to most local jewish orgs and institutions, and i know my family is very actively excluded from the bullshit ‘right to return’ programmes in our area because we are, well, roma, despite how at this point compared to my grandmother we are very pale— to them, it’s a blood thing. My father is no contact with my grandmother, so i was not raised with her. My father does not identify as Palestinian as well. I wasn’t raised with her culture and practices because of that— I am almost completely divorced from what would be my own culture, but i still, when i hear her stories now, and her perspective on the very active genocide going on, wonder if i have the right to speak on it as a voice with any authority on the matter. Am i able to identify as palestinian? Do i have any claim to it at all, really?

i wrote practically a whole essay and then tumblr deleted it right before i could post. so i'm gonna make my response significantly shorter, but i'll explain why.

you are not allowed to call yourself palestinian. you were never raised as one, you were never part of the culture, and your family does not identify at all as the people of the land. you have not lived your life as a palestinian, and you do not have claim or authority to speak on the matter at the same level of other palestinians at all. it is not your right to call yourself palestinian, and claiming to have any authority of what the palestinian experience is like is incorrect. i assume you're about a quarter palestinian, yes? but only by blood. not by culture or connection or anything. your family identifies as romani, and do not identify with the palestinian identity. you have not experienced life as a palestinian, diaspora or not, and you have not suffered the same type of oppression that indigenous palestinians have faced. while your father would be half palestinian (i assume), he could technically be considered as palestinian diaspora (as would your grandmother), but since both of them have been disconnected from the culture, and don't identify as palestinian, then you do not have claim to that identity. like for example my grandma is half (i'm unsure about the percentage) turkish and palestinian, but my mom does not identify as turkish, and i do not identify as turkish either, because i was never part of the culture and never lived my life as a turkish person. i can say im part turkish by blood as a random fun fact, but claiming i have authority to be a turkish person is not correct. i also want to mention that being palestinian is a nationality, not a race or a specific ethnicity, so that is another factor you must consider when evaluating your identity.

you can, however, look more into palestinian culture and try learning about it. i hope when palestine is free, you can come visit and fall in love with our hospitality and culture, and look into your ancestors who lived there. and if you'd like to connect back with your palestinian roots, that's absolutely something that we are welcoming and would love for you to do. many palestinians who fled during the nakba have a tough history and connection with the land, so i'm sorry your grandma had to leave and disconnect with palestine, but i hope one day you can come to a free palestine and celebrate with us.

if your grandmother was a baby during the nakba, i assume you're very young. around teenage years (early twenties maybe). i know that figuring out your identity is a big part of this stage in your life and you're probably looking into your family's past. i suggest to look into palestinian culture, but don't discard the romani and jewish part of you. being part of those communities is a very culturally rich experience and you should be proud of that. don't stress too much on having to "choose" what you're trying to connect to.

in the end, i can't tell you what to identify as with your romani-jewish family and your palestinian ancestry, but calling yourself palestinian currently is not right. i hope i answered your question.

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aita-blorbos · 2 months

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AITA for naming my son Doomed?

A few months ago I gave birth to twin boys. In my culture each child gets two names, one from their mother and one from their father. Usually the father names the child first, and then the mother gets some time to observe them as they get older and pick a name based on what they’re like. With my previous children I’ve taken anywhere between one and ten years to choose a name for them.

The exception to this practice is when, while pregnant or shortly after giving birth, a mother receives a prophetic dream about her child’s future. These dreams are understood to indicate the name the child should receive. This is rare, and it’s never happened to me before, but this time it did, and I had an incredibly disturbing dream about the ultimate fate of one of my boys. Don’t ask me to elaborate, because I won’t. Suffice it to say that it was horrible. I definitely didn’t want to name my son after what it showed me, but I knew I’d be lying if I named him anything else.

Eventually I decided to just let him share his twin brother’s name. I told my husband I was going to call them both Red-haired (this is translated, of course, and it’s a typical sort of name in my culture), but my husband objected vehemently to my giving both twins the same name. It was really none of his business - this name was completely mine to give, and my husband also gets to name each of the boys whatever he chooses. But he kept complaining about it, asking why I wouldn’t give them each their own name. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it - I couldn’t explain why without revealing the dream, and I didn’t want to do that to my husband - but he kept insisting. Finally I thought, you know what, he wins. If he wants to know so badly, let him. He can live with this just like I have to. I know that wasn’t really fair of me, but I was just so tired of keeping this a secret and having my husband act like I was wronging him and my sons, when I was actually just trying to spare them pain.

So I told him, fine, okay, I’ll tell you the second name. I’ve had a dream, and this one’s name is Doomed. Happy now? And my husband decided to react by pretending he misheard me. Since then he’s been calling the second twin Exalted (very similar-sounding to Doomed in our language). And listen, my husband is a linguistics fiend. He’s got an ear for phonemes like you wouldn’t believe. I know he didn’t mishear me. Not that “Exalted” would’ve made any sense with how upset I was, either! I just - I mean, I’m happy to keep calling both boys by the first twin’s name, Red-haired. But neither my husband nor I appreciate dishonesty, so the fact that he’s going this far to pretend the name is something other than what it is - that struck me. Should I have stuck to my guns and refused to reveal the name? Gone further and given the second twin his own, false name? I don’t know if I could have done that, called him by it every day of his life, knowing why I chose it, but - I don’t know. AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

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laineystein · 6 months

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I know that the media would have you believing that war is constant and ruthless but sometimes it’s a lot of sitting around and waiting for orders. And a lot of talking. Really introspective talking. And the things that people say when there’s a very real chance that they might die, are probably the most poignant and well said. So here’s a conversation my unit had in a million different ways with a million different words:

We love beings Jews. We love being Israeli. We can’t imagine being anything else or belonging to any other group. But this statistic that we are 0.2% of the worlds population has been so much more than a statistic lately. We all feel it. We feel how so much of the world has turned their backs on us — how the same people that posted those stupid blue squares on instagram are now using language that calls for our genocide and the destruction of our homeland. We know that for so many people we are pawns in their political game. We know that so many people think we are sub-human and therefore deserving of less respect than any other person. We don’t need anyone to tell us what they think of us because so many people are showing us by what they’re doing or not doing. And that’s okay. We’re used to it. We’ve always been alone. We’ve always fought (and won) our own battles. We’ll win this one without any of you. It’s fine. But it makes me think about how the same people that alienate us are the ones that critique how we live in insular communities (like the neighborhood I grew up in Crown Heights) and how our religion is closed and how we don’t need a place (read: Israel) where we all live together (assumedly because no other group has such a place — which is just a total lie). And there’s this thought amongst many Jews that communities like the one I grew up in in Brooklyn exist as a result of the persecution we faced. Just like there’s this thought that Israel exists because of the Holocaust. The survivors of the worst thing that can happen to a group decided to live together and close out the outside world. Now I’d argue that we certainly haven’t closed anyone out in Israel - I’m currently serving with Israelis that are Arab and Druze. But is our country very Jew-centric? Absolutely. Just like Crown Heights is very Jew-centric. Goyim can/do live and visit Crown Heights but it is a place that caters to what is otherwise considered a counter-culture in America. Just like Israel caters to Jews in an area of the world where all of us were expelled. We are fine living in these places. We have created these communities and curated them to our Jewish way of life. But people wonder why we close ourselves off and why we need special spaces - and that same ignorance is the answer. Sure, our diets are different and we have laws about how we go to school and work and pray that make it very difficult to live in a non-Jewish world but there’s a very real truth that so many people are scared to say aloud so I will: We don’t trust goyim. Goyim have never stood up for us or protected us. Only we can keep ourselves safe. Only we truly care about our wellbeing. We do not feel safe around goyim. And I think we have every right to be distrustful. We have every right to think that our survival and security rests solely in our fellow Jew. So while this has all proven that the Jewish people are amazing and loving and stronger than even we knew, it’s also only cemented this idea that we absolutely need our own world. And it’s clear that we’ve essentially lived in our own world all this time anyway - our world view is not your world view. Our experiences are so incredibly different than the goy experience. If you’re not Jewish and especially if you’re not an Israeli Jew, you can’t possibly understand any of this. And that’s fine! But don’t get angry when, in the absence of your support, we’ve figured it out. And don’t be upset when your Jewish friends - Israeli or not - have pushed you away because you didn’t show up in the way they’d hoped. You’ve merely proven us right. We do not need you. Our communities are enough. Our country is enough. Together, we will outlive you.

#let a girl kvetch #let a girl kvell #I really don’t know which one fits better here #⚔️🇮🇱#we will outlive you

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power-chords · 5 days

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apologies if you've explained this already, but tumblr search is trash, so I have to ask... why the obsession with michael mann, how did that start?

Oh, man. It’s a long story! In the early days of the pandemic I got a call from my favorite rock musician that he had read a short essay I’d written on his solo album, and he wanted me to contribute a piece to his band’s forthcoming box set. Dream come true obviously, couldn’t say no, so I immediately buckled down on the research end, which for me involved a deeper dive into said musician’s love of film. Mann was on the list of suspects alongside more definitive entries like Coppola and Scorsese, but that turned out to be a happy accident of misreading. (Major shout out to Adam here, by the way, because without his guidance I would have been working with a much more meandering home-brewed syllabus.)

I enjoy movies like any properly adjusted American but they don’t tend to put a spell on me the way music does, or make me want to disassemble the whole contraption piece by piece like a good written story. And Mann’s work was the first time I’d ever encountered films that could have the same effect on me as music and literature. They were hypnotic and enchanting and propulsive, like my favorite records, but they also suggested this dense subterranean architecture of potential meaning, obscured from immediate view but very much there and carefully, deliberately encoded. In other words, these films were like texts imploring (really, daring) you to interpret them.

That’s Mann’s methodology in a nutshell, basically — it’s a seduction gambit, and on me it worked spectacularly! It tapped into my grotesque hedonic animal brain and sparked an intellectual curiosity as well. For me that combination has a narcotic quality that’s hard to explain, but I have an addictive personality. And the more I watched his work, the more it ensnared me like The Footage.* (“WHAT is going on? What is this film doing to me??” Etc.) You have to understand I have no prior experiential basis for this, so as far as I’m concerned it’s witchcraft. By the time I turn in my piece for the box set I have this collateral situation developing, ha ha, oh no, and here I am three years later.

Initially I had wondered if Mann had been an influence on Dulli, but it turned out to be a case of convergent evolution. Or something akin to it. I think they’re just similar in terms of what subject matter they’re attracted to, maybe in their modes of perception and how they make aesthetic/narrative sense of the world. And there is some part of me that keys into that sensibility — whichever part precedes organized expression, maybe even conscious comprehension — and finds it cathartic and liberating and all that good stuff. (I’m a Safety First adrenaline junkie these days so I try to limit my habits to art and pop culture.)

And then he and Meg Gardiner co-wrote an actual book which provoked further investigations, escalations, whatever you want to call them. It turns out that the abyss really DOES stare back into you in the form of numerous spooky historical coincidences. I’m like afraid of Heat 2 at this point because the more I go trawling around in there the more it becomes an eldritch object, LOL. I’m the closest anyone has come to living the film Jumanji, let me put it that way. But the experience has been a blast. And I feel fortunate to have found yet another creator on par with Dulli and Townshend whose work I will be able to take with me and return to over the course of my life, and seek shelter in in that way.

*EVERYBODY READ PATTERN RECOGNITION BY WILLIAM GIBSON!

#I’m sorry that is the most abridged possible version lmao #michael mann

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rosedominatesyou · 9 months

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Bedtime Stories w/ Rose

ੈ✩‧˚ Turkish Coffee ‧˚ੈ✩

(Bedtime Story #3)

Good evening my pretty puppies. I’ve got another interesting tale for you. You all voted pretty heavily for this one, probably thinking you’ll hear about me in a little maid outfit ;3 Remember to keep this story in your likes until you are all cozy and ready for bed.

Before reading: Everything I’m about to say is real and actually happened. I’ve withheld things like certain locations and last names to be respectful to the people in the story.

This time in my life I’m about to describe 100% shaped me as a person. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it didn’t all happen. I kept an extensive journal the whole time and have written hundreds of pages already about my experience, hoping that one day I might publish my story. Though there’s so much I could say, I will try to summarize it within a 20 minute read.

~'*•.¸♡¸.•*'.・。゜✭・.・✫・。.'*•.¸♡¸.•*'~

Please look up the song, “So Wie Du Bist” by MoTrip. A song I heard on the radio while on public transit in Germany, its title translates into, “Just The Way You Are.”

I went through a pretty intense existential crisis my senior year of high school. Everything felt so bleak. I felt like nothing really mattered anymore.

My whole life, my parents were preparing me for college. One day at the dinner table in grade 12, I asked them if they would help me send in some applications. They laughed at me, and told me there was no way they could afford to send me to a university. I felt like they had lied to me my whole upbringing. What was the point of all the pressure if I wasn’t going to be anything anyway? How could they laugh like that?

My sister had just gotten back from an au pairship in Germany that was organized through a family friend, and during this same dinner conversation, my parents asked me if I was interested in doing that as well.

With no real goals anymore and spending my days sitting on the couch talking to my online friends on Xbox Live, I said fuck it, why not? I signed the paperwork and I would be sent out at the end of July. I didn’t know any German, but I was told that the point of being an au pair was to do a cultural exchange, where they’d teach me German and I’d expose them to regular English.

The contract I signed laid out two distinct parts of my job: to help the two children I’d be living with with their homework, and to be a live-in maid for the household. The plan for my days was always the same: get up at 8am and do any housework that the mom, Mrs. K, assigned to me, and then be ready to tutor the kids once they got home from school.

Things don’t ever turn out like we expect. We have all these ideas and hopes for how it’ll be, but we never really know. We can only guess and wait and see.

The family I was living with wasn’t German, they were a Turkish family and exclusively spoke their own language in their household. One of the first Turkish words I learned was “Anne”, meaning ‘Mom’. The second was “Yok”, which means ‘No’. The blue Turkish ‘Evil Eye’ will always make me think of them, as it was very important to their culture and had to be able to be seen no matter where you were in the house; they were everywhere, above every door frame, and in every room.

Mr. K was a dentist, and their family lived a very well-off life because of it. They owned two Porsche’s and their home was gorgeously modern: 4-stories tall with one level being a fully furnished basement. The color pallet of the home was white, with the outside being red brick. The walls on the ground floor that made up the kitchen and living room were essentially just massive windows, floor to ceiling all around the house, with huge zombie-esk shields that could be raised to cover the windows at night.

I was their little American trophy, and they loved to bring me to their friend’s homes for dinner to show me off. “Say word!” they’d encourage me.

The children I took care of were the most monstrous spoiled little brats I had ever met. The girl (I’ll call her D) was 12 years old at the time, and the boy (I’ll call him C) was 14. Two very hormonal ages for a kid and they had to suddenly spend half of their time at home with me. Originally, they were very insecure about their English, but they were both actually pretty smart, and could speak it very well. Our homework time was called ‘learning’ and they would always fight with eachother over who would have to go first.

The girl would throw tantrums regularly. If she didn’t get exactly what she wanted, she’d start stomping her feet and screaming her head off. One time when we went into town, she wanted to buy an umbrella from the store, and her mom said no. “Yok!” She was on the floor, kicking and screaming in front of everyone about how she never gets what she wants.

She was such a silly girl with me sometimes though, always wanting to laugh and poke-fun instead of learning. We’d be trying to do her vocabulary and she’d be asking me all sorts of things that had nothing to do with school.

“She messes with me by asking me random questions that throw me off. We spent the last 10 minutes laughing about how her cardigan made her look like a bat when she spread her arms out.”

The boy was devilishly smart, but his parents expected too much of him which caused him to slink away a lot. He would say some pretty racist things to me at times, things that would make me use google translate to try to show him how horrible his words were. He was well aware. The boy also had a silly side though, and would get so distracted during our learning time with questions just like his sister. They hated it when I said that they were very alike.

“C spent the first 8 minutes very eager to kill the fly stuck in the room. Once I got him to finally sit down, I had to stop teaching every six words because C wanted to talk to me about Destiny.”

My room was basically an apartment, located in “level 0” as I called it in my journal in the basement of the house. It had its own entranceway to outside, as well as my own kitchen and bathroom. It was pretty cool, and things were going really well until about a month into my stay.

The family planed a trip for all of us to go to the nearby city of Köln, or better known to most with the French spelling as Cologne. The Köln Dom is a very famous cathedral in the city, and we climbed all the way to the top to see the view, spending the day walking around and eating local food. It was wundershön. Towards the end of the day, when we were at a restaurant having dinner, one of the daughters of the family friends we knew invited me out to a night club later that evening.

I asked Mr. and Mrs. K if I could go, and much to my surprise, they said yes.

It was close to 9pm when N and her brother came and picked me up. We went to one of their friend’s house first to pregame. We sipped mixed drinks while we watched some of them play FIFA. It made me feel so cool. I was only 18, but the drinking laws were much different in Germany than they were in the states, so even though I wouldn’t be able to legally drink for another 3 years back home, I was of age here.

The club was exactly what I hoped from the underground German-club scene. The U I think it was called, we all piled together in an elevator that was crammed full of 30+ people that took us to the top of a skyscraper. The bouncer gave me the craziest look when I showed him my California ID. One of the boys we were there with snuck in a whole bottle of vodka that we all took turns drinking from as we danced. It was my first time in a club, and also the first time a random stranger started grinding on me.

Things were going great, until they weren’t. No one knew they needed to take care of me. I didn’t know either until my legs stopped working. I had never had that much freedom to drink alcohol in public, but the laws in Germany start at age 14 for supervised drinking, so all of them assumed I had been used to alcohol for years. We were leaving when my legs gave out. I don’t remember much after that. We were suddenly in the car and N was handing me a water bottle. Then they were telling me I was home, and to get out. They asked me if I was going to be okay, and I confidently waved at them and wished them goodnight.

I woke myself up by vomiting everywhere in bed. There was no time to run to the bathroom, it just happened before my eyes were open.

One of the rules in the house was no closed doors. The kids had to leave their’s open at all times (which made me really sad for their developmental needs), but that also went for me as well. I shut my door and went upstairs to have breakfast with the family. I forgot and started working on my cleaning duties when D came running up to me, saying that Anne was very upset. She saw my door closed and went in to check, seeing the throw up on the sheets.

This moment unfortunately changed everything. I was a good girl. I worked very hard. I never wanted to do a better job in my life. But now I was labeled as irresponsible, and lost my privileges to sleep in the apartment room. They made space for me at the other side of the basement, in a cold, windowless room that didn’t have any furniture, just boxes and the kids old toys meant for storage.

“It’s a strange feeling to wake up reaching for your stuffed animal and to remember that you’re not home. It’s even stranger when it’s in a bed that’s not even a bed. One that I woke up in this morning, sprawled out across two couches in the abandoned toy room of my host family’s basement.”

The days got bleaker from there. I had to keep track of any work that I did, writing down the exact amount of minutes in a calendar to make sure I did enough work. Some days, Mrs. K wouldn’t give me anything to do, and I would be standing there in front of her begging to assign me a task. She’d wave her hands and go back to watching her soaps, leaving me to just go sit somewhere and wait. There were days I only did 2 hours of work, when I had to get 6 done each day. It started to become a real burden to me. They would make me write down the hours I didn’t complete, even on days that they blatantly told me that they didn’t have anything.

The negative hours were adding up. At the end of it all, I had 14.3 hours they expected me to somehow fulfill. There were days where I worked 10 hours of just cleaning trying to make up the time.

“What am I supposed to do? How is that fair? How can they tell me that when I’m standing there asking for work and they say no? I’m more stressed out than I have ever been. I hope this is one of those things where if you face the storm and just keep moving then everything will clear and it’ll be okay.”

However terrible I felt, I did start to get used to our routine. Once the kids were done with their homework, it was my free time, and I eventually started taking the spare house key and announcing I was headed out. I knew they couldn’t stop me. I would walk around the neighborhood until it started to get too dark and I’d sluggishly take myself back home.

A river went through their backyard, and on the other side was a large city-owned cemetery. I would walk about 15 minutes down the road to the entrance, always making my way to a specific bench that faced one of the gravestones. I loved talking to her. It felt good to say so many things in English. People would see me and I just hoped they assumed I was grieving; they always let me be, which I truly appreciated so much.

The last straw was sometime in November. The plan was that I was supposed to be there through Christmas, and I had already experienced an Oktoberfest which was really very exciting, but I ended up filing for breach of contract and leaving early.

Their house was always under construction. There were workmen there doing something every single day, hammering or drilling or doing some kind of panelling. They didn’t like when they accidentally hired German workers - Mr. K only wanted them to be Turkish. A German boy named Ray struck up a conversation with me one day he was there doing landscaping at the house, but he was never invited back. I had dreams about running away with him, having him save me from the life I was living.

I was sitting in the kitchen one morning when Mrs. K pointed at the backyard for me to look. A dump truck was coming into their large yard and unloading dozens of uncut logs. I watched them for a moment and then asked, “Workers?” Mrs. K looked frustrated and said, “No workers. You!”

I wasn’t as strong as I am now, but even still, it was too much work for a single person to do. Winter was coming, and it snowed heavily in Germany so the family needed lots of firewood for the next several months. She had me hauling and stacking the logs in the shed behind the house all by hand. I wasn’t even halfway through the mountain of wood before I started to feel dizzy, my vision was fading and I was afraid that i’d pass out on top of the pile if I didn’t go inside.

I made the mistake of calling my mom. She freaked out, and when I woke up from my exhaustion nap, the damage was done. She called everyone involved, and had already bought me a plane ticket home. There was no changing it now.

D used to text me constantly after I got home, sending me videos of herself asking me over and over again, “When are you coming back?”

There’s so many things I regret about what happened in Germany. So many things I wish I could have handled differently. But there’s also so many amazing things that I was so happy to go see and do.

I loved Mrs. K’s cooking. I would do a little dance everytime we sat down to eat and it would make her smile so much. No one ever said thank you to her, so I always made sure to thank her for the meals she made. Her authentic Turkish cooking was to die for. Lamb and rice with dill and her brown lentil soup were my favorite.

I earned 1 vacation day every month I was there, so I eventually was able to save up 3 vacation days, and also used my 1 day off during a specific week to take a bus to London. It drove all through the night and then got on the ferry to cross the English Channel.

The whole experience living with this family made me very good at understanding people without English. It was incredibly difficult at first, of course, but I work with a lot of vendors at my current job where English is not their first language, and no matter what they speak, I will not have a hard time talking to them.

Even when things were rough between me and the K’s, we all still had lots of good moments. Just like any family. I know that they think about me just as much as I think about them.

“It’s amazing to not speak the same language, but still be able to understand a person’s emotions and body language. It really shows how we are all the same species, and all humans are very much the same. All of our laughs say the same thing too, and I think that’s really beautiful.” That’s the end of our story my sweet angels. I know it probably wasn’t what you were expecting, but I still hope you enjoyed it. Mommy got very good at cleaning windows because of these days in her life. Thank you again for reading, and I hope to hear what you think. ❤️

Sleep well babies xoxo

~'*•.¸♡¸.•*'.・。゜✭・.・✫・。.'*•.¸♡¸.•*'~

#rosebtstory

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literary-illuminati · 10 months

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Book Review 40 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Okay, 40th book of the year! And yes I’m going to be smug about that, no matter how pathetically it pales in comparison to some of the rest of you. To commemorate the occasion I decided to acquire some actual Culture of the kind I can talk about reading to older relatives and have them nod approvingly. I’d say I wish this had been assigned in some English class I took, but honestly I’d have just ended up skimming and using sparknotes and generally ruined it for myself.

Baldwin, as it turns out, really does live up to the hype. This book was absolutely sublime. I feel like it’s going to be impossible to be fair to whatever I read next.

The book follows David, an American expat in late ‘50s Paris. Specifically, a queer man with truly apocalyptic levels of internalized homophobia and lack of self-awareness spending his late 20s valiantly pretending not to be gay while contriving every possible excuse not to go back to his father and the rest of his life in America. The book takes place while his girlfriend is taking an extended vacation in Spain deciding whether she wants to marry him, and he meets Giovanni, a gorgeous Italian man who’d left his village and ended up in Paris under unclear circumstance, while he’s working at a gay bar David views with visceral contempt even as he visits it. They have a passionate romance, and unsurprisingly it all falls apart in a mess of a tragedy that ruins just about everyone involved (Giovanni most of all).

This was the most beautiful thing I’ve read all year. I’m not even sure it’s particularly close. Every single page had a line or two of incidental narration or dialogue that struck me enough to want to save it – I’d given up trying to note them all by the end of the first chapter. The narration has the sort of elevated, literary quality where everyone is two or three times more eloquent and articulate than they really should be, but when the things they say are so lovely it’s hard to mind that minor offence against verisimilitude – the constant peppering of French into everyone’s dialogue is honestly much more of an annoyance, if only because it keeps making me wonder what language all the other dialogue among these French Parisians is supposed to be in. The exact details of their speech (and tendency to monologue about the details of their psychology) aside, just about every character felt really, achingly real, all broken by the world in one way or another and dealing with it with whatever self-destructive coping mechanisms they have to call their own. Insert your favourite Richard Silken quote here.

Tangentially to the actual content of the book; I of course know Baldwin was one of the canonical Great Authors of the 20th century (I knew this before I knew literally any other fact about him), but my god does the edition I have of the book lay it on thick. There’s a 17-page forward that seemed to be an incredibly dryly written English essay talking about his influences and the role of Paris in American literature and etc (I skimmed the first few pages and skipped the rest, as is my habit with forwards by people who had nothing to do with actually creating the book and whose name I don’t recognize), followed by several more pages of a timeline of the authors life. I swear it’s like they’re trying to make reading this seem as much like homework as possible.

Even more tangentially; I was aware that Baldwin was gay, before reading this, and more vaguely aware that some of his work explored this. But I was expecting more, like, Great Gatsby-plus levels of subtext, not just explicit and unsanitized portrayals being the focus of the entire book. That came out in ‘59! Not exactly an obscure or reviled one either. I feel like I could go back and retroactively give myself permission to sneer and roll my eyes at a lot of ‘grounbreaking queer representation’ now. (This is a sign I have spent altogether too much of my life reading discourse on tumblr and tiwtter).

Trying to talk about the themes of Giovanni’s Room is probably just wasted effort – spend five minutes and I’m sure you can find an extensively researched essay by someone whose devoted years of their life to the subject. But it did really strike me how, like, fundamentally inegalitarian the book’s vision of romance is? Aside from David and Giovanni themselves I mean (and even then, David’s internalized homophobia expressed itself in large part through a terror and resentment of being made the woman (domestic homemaker) to Giovanni’s man (breadwinner)). David and Hella’s relationship is just drowning in ‘50s patriarchy, of course, with the future they sketch out for themselves both baldly hierarchical and just incredibly bleak, and David’s parents and upbringing aren’t exactly inspirational reading either. But Paris’ gay underground isn’t exactly portrayed as a liberated and welcoming space – it’s disgusting older men blatantly exploiting and being exploited by desperate younger ones, everyone involved pretending they don’t know what they’re doing and hating themselves and each other for it. All just incredibly unsentimental and anti-romantic.

David as a character and as a narrator really was fascinating, too. In that he’s such a fucking mess with zero awareness of his emotions who keeps making everything worse and seems to almost cause as much heartache for everyone around him as he possibly could. If he wasn’t the protagonist he’d be the most loathsome character in the book, or at least close to it. Was great.

Though one thing that really does drive home how historical the setting is is just how coincidental so many social meetings are. The cast is largely a bunch of bohemians and vagabonds and expatriates without real fixed addresses, and so much of their interaction revolves around just happening to run into each other as they frequent some of the same locales. Which, like, yes, that is just how socializing worked for most people until a historical ten minutes ago, but still very alien to me, someone with an electronic correspondence planning and scheduling ~90% of social things I’ve done since I left school.

Anyway yes, this isn’t an easy read – most emotional and heartwrenching thing I’ve read all year by far, and the only thing last year I can really think of that might beat it is the final chapters of The Making of the Atomic Bomb – but it really is a beautiful one. Five stars.

#book review #literature #james baldwin #giovanni's room

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punkpandapatrixk · 1 year

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☆°・. A Life that Suits You, Just You .・°☆ | Punk Girl Culture

Unless you’re terribly blessed since birth, I have a suspicion you might have noticed that living on this Planet, most of the time, for a lot of people, living a Life that suits you, just you, does not come automatically naturally. And to endeavour to create a Life that indeed suits you, just you, comes with a terribly high price tag.

Umm no, I’m not talking about collecting expensive shit because you have expensive hobbies. I’m talking about paying the price of your freedom with discreditation, invalidation, isolation, and perhaps to a lot of extent, alienation from those whom you believe should support your being yourself. Get it?

‘Parents will do anything for their children except let them be themselves.’ — something I found on Pinterest

If you haven’t noticed at all, the moment you were born into this Matrix of slavery, your first enslavement is to your parents. And for that, very little of your Life is even yours to actualise in the Style that suits you, just you. And I think… that’s such an unfortunate thing.

‘Man is born free, but one of the first things he learns is to do as he is told and he spends the rest of his life doing that. Thus his first enslavement is to his parents. He follows their instructions forevermore, retaining only in some cases, the right to choose his own methods and consoling himself with an illusion of autonomy.’ — Eric Berne

If you care enough… If you’re gonna commit to anything at all, I’d say commit to your own Style, honey. Life is too short to be unfulfilled on a spiritual level. To think your Soul chose to be born on a planet of free will and here you are living a life dictated by a System that profits from your phoney and misery.

‘We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.’ — Eric Berne

I’ve noticed that via education, most children grow up to find great strength within themselves to find all kinds of reasons to justify not realising a Life that’s just their own and nobody else’s. Becoming practical adults, they just flow along the river of society and drown in a sea of duty. Mingling and fitting in, though somewhat reluctantly, everybody is quick to forget the vision of an honest Life that’s dripped from the vast microcosm of their daydreams.

As if diving straight into the bottom of the ocean with just a single breath, most people race towards their graveyards without having truly lived. Are you… sure you’re OK with being just like that yourself? Damn, are you already that at this point?

I hope you understand just how important it is that you take action daily to create a Life that is just your Style. Even if just one small tiny puny thing. Any small action you take brings you closer to a realisation of why you chose to be born at all.

Everybody needs strength to take back their divine birth right—your freedom to create a Life that suits you, just you. You’re not anybody’s toy. In a world of your own you are God. I hope that by prioritising your own happiness you grow up to become a really kindhearted God. It all sounds so unnecessarily tragical but only because this world benefits from its inhabitants being miserable and cruel. But I think, I really believe, that if you can live on your own terms and conditions without being too much at odds with the world, that’s good enough of a win.

In a world of my own, I’d rather be a silly barbie doll of my own design than a stupid mechanical robot forced to serve a society that isn’t even kind to me. When people are miserable they become cruel and I simply do not wish to join that shit circus. I don’t wanna cry on my deathbed regretting an entire life I wasn’t ever happy because I wasn’t true enough to my Style⚰️🪦⚱️

If you’re gonna commit your entire Life Force to anything at all, commit to your own Life Style~

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

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— [Your Reservoir of Abundance] —

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wilderflcwers · 4 days

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had to clip this bit as it caused me to lose my life

(transcript:)

Murph: And you see, almost instantly, Ol’ Guppy bursts through the door.

Ol' Guppy: Oh, hey, ah, heard you’re on the market.

Calliope: Yeah, you want to buy the Grand Mariner?

Ol' Guppy: Yeah, we’re gonna buy the Grand Mariner.

Sol: Wow!

Ol' Guppy: Yeah, we’ve been trying to buy it for a bit, we’ve been trying to, you know, get a new business because the bar hasn’t been doing too well.

Calder: Wow, I can’t imagine why.

Sol: I think, you know, going from a small bar to a massive hotel is gonna be the perfect fit.

Ol' Guppy: Yeah.

Calliope: I think so.

Ol' Guppy: I got you guys a baby.

Sol: Huh?

Calliope & Calder: What?

Murph: You see Ol’ Guppy hands you guys a fishbowl with a fish in it.

Sol: Is this your…child?

Ol' Guppy: Yeah.

Sol: Congratulations!

Ol' Guppy: One—one of ‘em.

Calliope: Do you—do you want to raise your own child?

Ol' Guppy: I have—I’ve raised a ton of ‘em.

Calliope: Ok!

Sol: You want us to just…take your baby?

Ol' Guppy: Yeah, just one of ‘em!

Sol: I don’t know anything about Guppy culture, maybe this is like a thing.

Ol' Guppy: These guys are very finicky eaters, saltwater fish, difficult to maintain—

Calliope: Saltwater—shit. I’m freshwater.

Ol' Guppy: What? You got a freshwater tank?

Calliope: I’m freshwater.

Sol: I’m freshwater too.

Ol' Guppy: Ok, well, you just gotta get a saltwater tank, it’s not a big deal.

Calder: It’s—ok.

Ol' Guppy: If they live, they live for like 200 years. I’m 194.

Calder: It’s a lot of responsibility.

Sol: Wow!

Ol' Guppy: Yeah.

Calliope: Ok. Ok!

Ol' Guppy: Ok.

Calliope: Thank you…

Ol' Guppy: Alright.

Calliope: …so much.

Ol' Guppy: I’m gonna start filling out the paperwork back here with the manager or whatever.

Calder: You’re sure you don’t want to go home and work on a business plan and come back tomorrow or the next day?

Ol' Guppy: AH…I feel like I’ll figure it out. I feel like when you guys already ran the hotel, pretty much, so, we’ll take it from here.

Calliope: What is its name?

Ol' Guppy: What is the fish’s name?

Calliope: The baby.

Ol' Guppy: The baby’s name? I just gunked out a buncha eggs, so—

Calliope: Ok, we’ll call him Gunk!

Sol: Gunk is perfect!

Calliope: Gunk is perfect.

Ol' Guppy: Perfect. Alright.

Calder: Gunk.

Sol: Gunk Jungle!

Ol' Guppy: Alright, be careful out there. Alright. Let me know if you need any room service.

Calliope & Sol: We do.

Ol' Guppy: Yeah.

Calliope: (I look at Gunk, and I think of him saying he gunked all over a bunch of eggs, and I say,) I think I’m actually good. I’m good.

Ol' Guppy: Ok. Well, he’s gonna need to eat every couple hours.

Calder: (incredulous) Couple hours…

Sol: I think, just, you know, like one of everything. Just bring it on up.

Ol' Guppy: One of everything, ok.

Calder: What does Gunk eat?

Ol' Guppy: What does Gunk eat?

Calder: What is Gunk’s diet?

Ol' Guppy: You gotta figure it out.

Calliope: What?

Ol' Guppy: I don’t know!

Calliope: That is not normal for the baby process!

Ol' Guppy: I’m 194 years old, I live to be 200, when do you think the last time I raised kids was!

Calliope: Do you have books that tell me how to raise this child?

Ol' Guppy: I told you. Finicky eaters, saltwater.

Calder: Got it.

Calliope: You don’t have, like, a—

Ol' Guppy: Live to be 200 years old.

Calder: Of course.

Ol' Guppy: Stinks really bad if he dies.

Calder: Really.

Sol: Why—

Ol' Guppy: Yeah.

Sol: So don’t let it die. (Ol' Guppy: Don’t let him die.) That’s a good start for any parent, I’d say.

Calder: (I look at Gunk and I say,) Um, what do you want to eat, kid?

Murph: You see the little guppy just swims up to the side and gives you the stink eye. Just this little green fish with beady little eyes and a big, sad mouth.

Calder: Are you mad at me?

Sol: So like, chicken nuggets?

Gunk: (Gunk noises)

Calliope: (I start just dangling food into the bowl.)

Murph: Give me a persuasion check with disadvantage.

Emily: That’s a three and a four, becomes a twelve.

Murph: Hides in the bottom of the bowl.

Calder: Ok…

Calliope: Ok.

Riaris: Oh, wow.

Jake: Maybe—Calder tries cheese, just like some—some cheese that he has.

Murph: Give me a persuasion check with disadvantage.

Sol: You had cheese this whole time?

Jake: Shout-out to the Two Crew.

Murph: You see he hides in the other corner of the bowl.

Calder: That makes sense.

Murph: You see the bowl starts to get dirty.

Ol' Guppy: Oh, you’re gonna have to change that.

Calder: Yeah, of course.

Ol' Guppy: Yeah, they poop a lot, even though they don’t eat a lot.

Sol: Huh. That’s interesting.

Calliope: Change the bowl…change the bowl…

Ol' Guppy: So just be on the lookout.

Calder: (I run outside the airlock, change the water, come back.)

Murph: You see Riaris puts his hand on your guys’ shoulders.

Riaris: I can take this on, if this is—if that would be better for you guys, and if you think it might be better for Gunk. I know you guys are on the run.

Calliope: I think I kind of want Gunk, but I’m a little worried that Gunk is gonna just freeze when we go up north.

Calder: Will you look after Gunk for us til we get back?

Sol: Yeah, I don’t think we could put a parka on Gunk.

Riaris: Just another reason for you guys to come back soon!

Calliope: (I hand over Gunk, but I’m shaking, like I’ve already formed a bond.)

Murph: You see Kenna holds—you see Kenna puts her hand on your shoulder.

Kenna: (tearfully) We’re gonna miss you, Gunk.

Calder: (I snatch Gunk. I snatch Gunk.) Um, we’ll let—well, we’ll bring him up to the room for the room service and one last feast, don’t you think?

Caldwell: I want to try something real quick.

Calder: We’ll hang out with him for a bit.

Caldwell: Just gonna pour a little bit of a Molson into Gunk’s bowl.

Murph: Go ahead and give me a persuasion check with disadvantage.

Caldwell: HAH! That’s a natural one.

Murph: You see, it looks like Gunk dies.

Sol: AAH—

Calliope: WHAT?

Murph: Turns upside down and begins floating (laughing) towards the top—

Calder: (I rush out and I change the water. I change the water. I change the water! Instantly change the water.)

Calliope: HE’S JOKING, HE’S JOKING!

(unintelligible distress)

Calliope: GUNK! Please, I only just met you and I love you already!

Sol: I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!

Calliope: GUNK!

Murph: You see Gunk flips back up and just kind of looks pissed off.

Calder: (I come in and I push Sol really hard.) What are you doing?

Sol: I deserve that, you’re right. Riaris, clearly we are not ready for a child. I think that you, as the Guardian of the Vibe, this is part of your charge, this is part of your—

Calder: We’re not ready? You’re not ready! I just did cheese, you did beer!

Calliope: I know! I know!

Riaris: (placatingly) Let’s keep the vibe going, ok, let’s get up to that penthouse.

Calliope: I was gonna figure it out…

Riaris: Let’s get up to the penthouse.

Calder: Come on, Gunk.

Murph: You guys get up to this penthouse that looks out into the ocean. You can see all these fish, now free of Gromdall’s influence, sort of swim around happily. You can see the neon of the city in the distance, all these colorful lights that cascade into this big circular room.

Jake: Are there any expensive penthouse snacks, like a Toblerone bar, or, you know, fancy nuts?

Murph: Yeah, you find—

Jake: Can I try to feed Gunk again?

Murph: Yeah, of course, give me an animal handling or persuasion check with disadvantage.

Jake: Ok, that’s a little bit better.

Caldwell: I love the Gunk minigame.

Jake: Fourteen?

Murph: Fourteen? You see that Gunk sniffs a Toblerone bar.

Emily: Ok, ok, what about, are there any, like, healthy granola bars that are a little bit decadent?

Murph: Go ahead and give me an animal handling or persuasion check with disadvantage.

Emily: Dirty twenty.

Murph: Ok! Gunk begins eating the granola bar.

Calliope: It just wanted something nourishing!

Riaris: I don’t know if that’s good for it…

Calliope: He’s just been born!

Riaris: …but he’s eating it, and that’s nice…

Calliope: He knows instinctually that he needs this.

Calder: The young know what they want, indeed.

#not another d&d podcast #naddpod #calliope petrichor #sol bufo #calder kilde #REPOSTING BC I ACCIDENTALLY POSTED A NOT-FULLY-EDITED VERSION TOO QUICKLY lmao

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faithfromanewperspective · 7 months

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the western sydney work ethic, mental health, burnout, inequality and ableism

inspired by ashton irwin on artist friendly with joel madden and 17902 sustainable urban development at the university of technology sydney

I’ve teased the idea of writing this post for a while now, and now I’m sitting in my borrowed bed in Sydney with the graphs and maps from my course still at the back of my eyelids and still processing the Vibes of catching up with my childhood friends and wondering if it’s too early to go to bed if the sun’s still up—it’s time to let it out. Because I found a bunch of seemingly unrelated things and put them together in a way that helped me process my upbringing and the way it’s positioned me as I go through life even now.

For background of this post, the Greater Sydney metropolis has a very stark rich/poor divide, where a large strip from the west going to the south of the city have been left behind in a variety of ways. In my uni course I see the maps on income, education level, job overqualification, crime, violence… they’re nice and set out, and they validate what I already intuitively knew—just like everyone who grew up in the area I’m going to refer to vaguely as Western Sydney. These graphs put words to something I’ve lived when I was too young to process it, something I hear the impacts of in 5 seconds of summer’s songs like I’ve never seen in any other art ever.

I know many people relate too and I don’t want to say you have to be from Western Sydney to get it. There are plenty of other places with similar trends, but this strip of suburbs, half a city, is where I grew up and the case study I’m going to use for the phenomenon I’m going to describe in this post.

Having spent the last decade and a bit in a more conservative, more sheltered area of suburban Brisbane, where people take it slow and at least attempt to have fun without getting completely wasted; where people have high expectations for their lives and livelihoods they never quite meet and where they’re the kind of emotionally aware that you hear all about how stressful that experience is: this was the backdrop of my teens and young adult years to this point. It’s where I learned about mental health and neurodivergence and ableism and where I really explored what faith and spirituality is to me. It’s where I never quite felt comfortable when people were too polite, where I poured all the belief they had in me as a gifted kid plonked into that environment I wasn’t native to into the delusion that I could deconstruct the unequal education system of their own creation if I only worked harder than anyone had ever worked before. Then they would finally listen. It’s where I tried and tried to get help for my mental health and wasn’t listened to either, not when I presented so well and was simply unable to unmask until I was unable to mask at all. Where the slightest bit of hope caused me to forget everything that was hurting me, making it a struggle to work through even to this day. where I wondered if I was some superhuman for the fact that I can work my ass off without even realising it’s hard work, a smile on my face and arms open for connection as always (the mark of health they say) while being desperately unwell, hurting, thinking I had it good compared to some of the people I’d see crumple under the pressure, I should be kind to them (not understanding why I found them so, so relatable).

I am not a freak of nature, or superhuman, though I am neurodivergent and twice-exceptional. I am the product of my upbringing and my ancestors. I carry generations of culture from hectares of foreign lands my ancestors made their homes on (ethically questionably in some cases I do acknowledge) and became part of the ecosystem of. It is, like most difference, a gift and a curse. Something that makes certain measures of ableism not apply to me, but creates others in their place. I’ll get into this more later.

in the strip of suburbs united by demographics we call Western Sydney, farmers from the notoriously difficult land of the Murray-Darling and immigrants from everywhere on the planet, some Indigenous but few Indigenous to Australia, make up classrooms, neighbourhoods, workplaces. Think I Am Australian by The Seekers, but just the verses, as a snapshot of some of the stories representative of the people. Interwoven in the landscape. We celebrated Harmony Day on the 21st of March in my primary school. Everyone had a different cultural background. We heard different languages spoken on the street. There were stereotypes. There were scared people trying to find their tribe, build a life in Australia, away from the larger scale farms, get their kids a good education to do a trade or go to university. Fear and angst and hurt coexisting with an appreciation of the juxtaposition of others you’d never head admitted out loud. But the second verse of the Australian national anthem was written just for us, or might as well have been. Beneath our radiant southern cross, we’ll toil with hearts and hands… google the lyrics, you’ll get it, you’ll see why I wish the rest of Australia did too: for those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share, with courage let us all combine to advance Australia fair…

No one with the power to acknowledge this I interact with these days remembers the second verse. Except 5 Seconds Of Summer, in their ridiculous little promo videos, who I’d bet the rubble that’s left of my parents’ old house as the new owners turn it into a mansion because Gentrification, have no idea of what a meaningful gesture that is.

I can feel the wounds of being torn from the good parts of that experience closing over. And so it’s time to give the often forgotten stories on an often forgotten piece of land that made me and also these four wonderful humans who we are today, the credit it deserves. Start by telling our stories.

One thing I love about Artist Friendly is it cuts straight to it. Joel Madden is just incredible like that—in a world coming out of the 2010s pop decade of dancing while the room is on fire (bloodhound, 5sos) put your rose coloured glasses on and party on (Katy Perry’s chained to the rhythm) (these I would consider more analytical quotes of the era, one whose vibe was ‘forget all the pain in the world, let’s party and sing about how horny we are’ which for all my cynicism I did find fun)—he kept up his punk edge, kept investing in new musicians, searching for and investing in what’s real. He also really loves Australia, and when you put our underdog-supporting attitude next to Good Charlotte’s songs you understand why. Anyway, the episode pretty much opens by him asking Ashton about his background, and relating from the perspective of working-class-emotionally-unavailable/immature-parents-who-showed-their-love-through-provision-and-really-did-try-to-be-there-but-had-none-of-the-resources. I like the positive take. It’s high time we stop being classist and ableist towards the people who’ve met our needs as much as they were able, but it still wasn’t enough. Who taught us how to take opportunities, work to prove our worth, and through it all couldn’t even afford therapy.

I used to think my family was rich because we lived in Australia and my parents had gone to university. Never mind the fact that I was born when they were barely older than I am now. Never mind the mould in the walls or sneaky Tuesday night washing of the school uniforms in the summer when we got sweaty and there weren’t any spares or the mismatched bargain bin clothes we wore or the bedroom I shared with my sisters. I knew the people I compared us to. And now I do really believe if I’d grown up a bit less frugal or even a few k’s out of the area I did I wouldn’t be who I am. I wouldn’t have the perspectives I have, nor would this podcast episode have me feeling so seen. Like, yes I lived a bit further into the city than these guys, close to the train line without any farmland where the house values shot up seemingly overnight and meant the area I grew up in is experiencing a very weird disparity as two cities collide within it today. But we grew up in the same era in western sydney, we grew up loved and knowing that was a privilege and we grew up knowing from a very young age we had to spend our whole lives working hard if we wanted life to be manageable and we better be polite and better not ask for too much.

yet we also grew up with hurt. From the trauma we inherited from our caregivers as we encountered the attitudes and fears with which they faces the world. From what we saw our peers go through much too young to be able to draw boundaries with the empathy we felt too much of and understood nothing of. From broken family relationships that were all too common. From religion that hurting people used to cause or at least stagnate hurt instead of healing.

when I was burning out and struggling as an unrecognised neurodivergent I used to wonder why my father would place such value on the Protestant work ethic when Jesus died exactly so we wouldn’t have to strive. And I acknowledge that the PWE is harmful to many disabled folk or literally anyone who has experienced the demands of life and had their stress invalidated for it. Including myself. But never having the expectation of a life of ease and luxury? I do appreciate that. It’s given me a whole different metric for how I view life, one none of my friends except those who are from those years of my life understand. No one in Brisbane or my online international friends seem to get it. But I’m sure when you see yourself in this post, that some of you will (we might be the largely unheard minority but I’m sure we exist. Joel Madden is proof of that). It’s given me a differently calibrated emotional pain scale in many ways. Different standards for when the warning lights come on (and I’m very perceptive of angst and disappointment and always see them in others to be worse than they are because of it). And when I look at everything this band has accomplished, I know it’s the same for them.

I have spent a lot of time these last years advocating for neurodivergent acceptance. I’ve done so in a way that made sense of the decade previous, of existing in a world of inequality I’ve always been so sensitive to and of expectations that I took on as opportunities (because what else have I been trained to do)? And yet so much of it is about funding and resources. And when there isn’t that? You make room for my favourite thing ever: grassroots, unofficial but beautifully organic loving neurodivergent affirmation. Plenty of rural folks, my grandparents included, hate labels, prefer focusing on strengths and equipping young people based on those than accommodating difficulties. They’re often seen as conservative, bigoted, ableist, and some of them are. But they bring with them an important lesson about how to live with the realities of the economy that they struggle in too, too much to support someone else. They don’t have the same impossible expectations of their neurodivergent progeny and protegees and community members that many who hold in their heads an idea of perfection they hope to bring to their families do (the kind of things sometimes only a diagnosis can free someone from, and nothing from the memory and shame of) and that—that is an important attitude for all of us to have.

Some people are unconventionally neurodivergent affirming while knowing none of the terms, or maybe trying to hold off using them because of the same economic and confidence reasons I’ve tried to unpack. Some rely on simple kindnesses and explanations that centre around possibility, and go nowhere near deficit. Some people know intuitively or through hard life lessons themselves (usually the latter) the value of stripping all but essentials from the functionality of everyday life. Not making it any harder than it is.

Of course you can drum on the tables in math class. My son is a musician, I get how it is.

Liz Hemmings is the only valid neurodivergence parent—I’ll say no more, it is how it is

Sometimes when we advocate for things we have to be aware that the way the dominant in-power often wealthy culture has figured it out isn’t always the best way to do things. Environmentalism is a prime example of this. This is why we need brown environmentalism and to decolonise and listen to our Indigenous stewards and share power.

You can take a lot of lessons from a place that’s as culturally diverse as Western Sydney. And you can see how a work ethic is facilitated, rather than gatekept. You can see why Ash, when asked by Joel if he’s scared of every getting back to that life (ref to poverty) his attitude is actually one of gratitude and almost reverence for the place that shaped him, that brought the band together and everything that came from that point forwards. That shaped their attitude and birthed the grit that got them through being on tour with one direction and I don’t think he said it but in Ash’s case I bet the empathy he has for the fans and the way he just wants to connect and create a fun experience but also one where we’re deeply seen by moving songs is because he knows what it’s like for so many people. You can’t not if you grew up like we did. You can see why Luke at any chance will say ‘we’re from Sydney Australia’. It has a way of sticking to you, the rich culture that’s a patchwork of orphaned cultures, the way everyday life is like one of those adventures you emerge from with strong bonds usually only found in fantasy novels. You can see that the band is proof that those bonds exist in real life.

after a decade and a bit pretending I know what leisure is and how to have fun without Bad Angst I’m glad that this proof is still in my life. I’ve still got close friends from primary school and few can boast that (we might not quite be Calum and Michael in that regard, but they still have other friends from primary who they’ve kept in touch with despite geographical separation as I have).

Now I’ve acknowledged this and traced the strings that are much easier to see when my own life is mirrored in a podcast episode, maybe I can find the good among the cultural dysphoria in the circles I do have in Brisbane, and do value still for what they are even if they’re not quite the same. Now that I can see how a world of too many opportunities and not enough freedom can burn someone out who came from this background, with the type of brain that flourishes on being a latchkey kid and sketchy hangouts with deep conversations and questionable substances but crumples under expectation and too much choice and politeness, I can put my life back together in a way that validates who I am and where I come from, rather than what those around me tell me should be good for me.

as, I can tell by this interview, these guys have. I want to be able to talk about suffering without people acting like it shouldn’t be something we can comfortably say out loud, as Ashton does here and through music. My art isn’t quite the same, but the purpose behind it is so, so similar. I relate a lot to the importance he places on spirituality, even if I’ve tried to do something with Christianity that it, in the mainstream at least, isn’t built for and probably can only partially do on its own. Maybe the epitome of humility is being able to learn from other religions and see them as gifts from God even as, and I include Christianity here as well, anything can be dangerous if used in a way that it wasn’t meant for: anything with power to heal has power or hurt too. I’ve got so much respect for how Ash does it. I think this episode really cemented for me that, and I feel like it’s something we as a fandom don’t talk about enough because of their characterisation (and fair enough, if you’re famous you don’t want people dissecting every part of you, and I’m not going to do that just give a generalised compliment): these guys are so incredibly resilient and intelligent and invested in creating healing and they’re really fucking good at it. They might present themselves as goofs with one braincell that create bops and fan over other celebrities as if they themselves aren’t famous too, but so much of that is humility and them baring themselves in ways that are sustainable and really emotionally mature (for the most part) to be relatable to us as fans and invest in making that connection genuine. They’re not pretending, because they understand how it is to be human.

and you don’t get there by being some sort of Untouchable Philosophical Genius Figure. you get there because you’ve lived in community and you’ve survived hard things because of other people who’ve done similar and created authentic art too. You get there often because you have to: because putting on a fake show and doing stuff for likes and popularity was never going to work and will only screw you up in the long run and you’re worldly enough to see that from a young age and learn from your own intuition and empathy and experiences. You get there because you lived your whole life being resourceful and being street smart and doing what it takes to make good decisions and invest in yourself (who else do you have who’s worth more than that) and your future. Doing what it takes to make sure you’re alive to learn how to do better at things you’re behind in that might keep food on the table in the future, because there’s none of that oh-it-won’t-happen-to-me attitude. That part is very sustainable which I love. I also really really relate to it and have found it something I would get complimented on when I was younger, too young to be so mature. But I never attributed it to myself. I knew somehow, abstractly, I was disabled and nearing my limit and everything I do I did so I could survive. It’s the western Sydney work ethic.

and yet this often beautiful phenomenon has its ugly side. If you know you’re neurodivergent even without the words—more often than not the only people you see who you relate to are those who didn’t make it, who fell off the horse of functionality and into things like addiction and other things that exacerbate the inability to empower yourself. You figure that when you’re honest with yourself you’ll be dead by 25. Sometimes you give up on trying to prevent that and wonder if it’s even worth it to attempt to keep going: is your life really worth that effort?? What I’ve described is a combination of the experiences of many people I know, aspects of it are mine, and aspects mirror things I know these guys have mentioned about themselves (I’m going to leave it at that vague level of detail). You wonder why people believe in you, is it only because any other option is unmentionable? But what if you let them down like you know (fear) you will? And burnout is the epitome of this: the need to let go of trying. And without a decent amount of privilege it’s impossible to return from.

I’ve been there and scrounged at straws of privilege I do have, pretending I’m doing my job to the level that others expect while letting go of every expectation I have on myself. Still problem solving outside every box on how to get back on my feet because I know nothing else, radically accepting that I might not and whittling down all my needs in life to the most essential, that I might still survive even at my limited and diminishing capacity. While always relating to those our society sees as failures. I’ve borrowed from other cultures that aren’t my own to have a stubborn sense of worth while trying to keep afloat in a society and economy that says it’s conditional. My spirituality comes in here, as do my problem-solving skills: again, maybe this culture fears burnout more than anything, but maybe it has half a toolkit on how to get out of it. Only half. I have to pair it with what I learn from others too.

and even through that, I’m immensely privileged to have savant skills and a generally able body. Just like when you make it big as a musician you’re privileged by that. Against a backdrop of I’m-nothing-special. I’ve always struggled with questions of my felt worth, because I’m so conscious of my privilege and ability that sometimes I get the two muddled (though I know my ability doesn’t define my worth in things I do poorly at, and my persistence technically doesn’t either but I’ll be damned if I don’t try and try and actually find doing badly more validating of how I see myself than when I do well, so I chase it again and again, my dad is the same, it’s what makes us so adventurous). I understand the consciousness of things that are going well not lasting, and pouring creativity for new ventures into things like selling candles. Instead of letting achievements make me believe I’m someone more important than I am, using them as ways of giving myself space to do whatever’s next, dial off the pressure a little bit.

I understand appreciating others’ sensitivity and the social capital they bring everywhere rather than their material wealth or achievement and when Ash praised Calum for that and said it made him look bad I felt that. Both the experience of being that counter-cultural person who doesn’t give a shit about money but values connection so, so much more (and from all I’ve written, you can see why, can’t you) to still never being able to be as good a person as I see the need for in the world.

I understand missing family and constantly grieving that, as I weigh up the city of my childhood with the friends and culture I love versus the city of my youth with my feathered family who are my children and who I hate to miss birthdays of and the like, same goes for my sisters and parents and grandparents, the way Ashton, the only band member with younger siblings, hates missing all their milestones too. I feel privileged that Brisbane and Sydney are so close to each other and nothing in my life is as far as Los Angeles. I understand the nostalgia for Sydney. This whole post is proof of it.

I understand the unbreakable bonds between people who make this kind of art together. I understand putting disagreements on the back burner and realising the connection through writing is so much bigger and the connection can overcome whatever is going wrong. Heck, I feel privileged to understand and relate to how such brilliant brains work (nature: neurodivergence I won’t go any further into as well as nurture) as well as the environment that made them what they are.

all my life I’ve longed for that kind of community and connection I’ve seen largely in fiction, sometimes between people in real life. And I think having written this analysis (it’s taken me til my bedtime or later) I do have all the ingredients there. All the ability to make it, both in the practical way I relate to and am there for my friends and whatever I do in my silver bridges tag. In the neighbourhoods I eventually design that foster communities with all the good parts I’ve described but without the inequality and minimal poverty and hurt and violence. To everyone who’s shown me these things in myself that are so worth working for and I know I’m not savantly immediately good at, I am so so incredibly grateful. the city as a whole. My family and friends. The celebrities I grew up nearby and those who invest in people like them. People like me. May I keep investing in people: people like you. because what is humility but knowing there’s always something to learn, and what will bring all of us forward but learning it and putting it into practice in love and empathy that drives a grit that no amount of striving for striving’s sake can manufacture?

#western sydney #western sydney work ethic #neurodivergence #burnout #personal mental health tag #ashton irwin #artist friendly interview #5 seconds of summer #calum hood #luke hemmings #michael clifford #5sos #community #urban design #growing up poor #I did a big analysis and I will do this again #5sos5 city #silver bridges #neurodivergent liberation

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