#so i went pretty conservative which which books were adult only | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

olderthannetfic · 2 years

Note

No hard feelings if this is asking for tmi and you don't want to share, but do you think your sex positivity as an early teen was purely the result of a more open minded environment, or did you ever consider yourself to be hypersexual?

I am struggling to wrap my mind around the childhood you have described. I went to public school in the central valley. It's a red area but my sports team traveled to private schools all over the state for competitions. All the wealthy parts of California seemed very conservative and Christian to me.

I was horny at that age too, but I don't think I would've wanted actual sex, even if my environment was not quite so conservative. I was too worried about pregnancy and STDs. By 16, the furthest most people had gone within my peer group was outercourse. (At least, as far as I knew. I also was not very popular and probably did not get all the gossip.)

However the only girls who went further than that, or at least openly talked about going further than that, were from troubled homes. They always seemed like they were getting pressured into the things they were doing.

I believe you had a healthy childhood. I'm not trying to insinuate anything and I know you are tired of people suggesting this. I'm just struggling to comprehend the upbringing that you're describing. If I had even attempted to get a vibrator at that age, I'm pretty sure I would've been bullied to hell.

How in the world were you getting sex books and toys at 14? If your parents were in on it, how did they not get bullied by other parents?

I got most of my teen health books (which included sex advice) from my parents friends as presents. No, other adults would not have bullied them.

Have you ever seen Call Me By Your Name, anon? I'm vastly less European than the vibe there, but those intellectuals reading books aloud and pretending they can't see their hapless offspring trying to figure out life remind me of the adults I grew up with.

The sex toys I mostly got when I was a little older. I'm probably exaggerating to think I had them at 14 rather than 16. (I'm old. Things blur together.) But if one looked old enough, one could buy them plenty of places. Good Vibrations was my go-to later, but some of the sketchier places were closer by and not at all discerning about clientelle. Books were easy: I just walked into any one of the many, many odd little bookstores around here and went poking around the queer or sexuality sections. Some stuff I found in the library. Bookstores don't card people.

I really cannot emphasize enough how much difference it makes to be geographically near weird indie bookstores with alternative sexuality sections. Not only was I able to buy, but I could lurk in the aisles, reading things in the store. (Unnecessary in my case, but a godsend if you don't want your parents catching you with something at home.)

It was at these bookstores that I bought Anything That Moves, a bisexual magazine that ran during basically my entire adolescence and no other time. Reading queer community papers certainly does something for one's outlook. This particular magazine was especially interesting in that the 90s queer landscape was very much oriented towards cis gay men and cis lesbians, and not only was the magazine specifically about bisexuality, our own rights struggles, and our culture, but it was also very trans-friendly.

On the subject of schools, private schools, broadly, come in three types: Catholic, for rich people so they don't have to associate with the poor, and for the ~gifted~. All can be expensive and full of rich people, but the last of the three tends to be a lot more liberal than the other two. Also, a lot of them suck at sports.

But to answer your question... hmm... I don't think I was hypersexual. I was on the horny little gremlin end of teens, certainly, but I wasn't such an outlier that I see it as pathological. I definitely stood out from my classmates though, and I chalk it up to early unfettered access to Usenet.

At the time, the internet tended to be full of academics and tech industry people from a few parts of the US, from the Netherlands, and from a couple of other countries. (No, really, I knew a bajillion randos from the Netherlands.) Many countries seemed to barely be online in the early 90s. It was very unevently distributed, even compared to now.

So Usenet was full of adults who felt themselves to be in relatively homogeneous, friendly, ephemeral spaces (little did we know about later archives of posts) and who wanted to discuss BDSM, bisexuality, and other sex and identity things. I didn't interact that much, but I was lurking in the kinds of spaces people usually try to keep minors out of.

I doubt I was that much hornier than other classmates, but I was vastly kinkier, especially in fiction tastes, and much more self-aware about that. Because my tastes were weird, I kept seeking out spaces with adults discussing kink. I also sought out a lot of freaky art.

My mom actually wasn't at all supportive of BDSM. She thought that kind of taste came from a background of abuse (which I know because she made weird comments when she saw me reading a book about BDSM safety), but it didn't matter because I was secure enough and had enough exposure to kinky adults to not be freaked out by Mom being wrong. I just thought it was embarrassing for her that she was so ignorant.

When I say I was online and unsupervised on the old internet, I think some people imagine a lot of gore spam and scary porn I wasn't ready for and old people creeping on me... But Usenet of that era was awash with FAQs by overly earnest adults pontificating about their special interests. How my tumblr sounds now is a lot more similar to that environment than most horror stories about internet porn.

Here's an example of some tl;dr overly earnest types in 2010 trying to document the history of fantasy necrophilia sites online. These people were definitely pedantic Usenet nerds 15 years before this.

Here's a 2001 version of the soc.bi FAQ. This is such a microcosm of what internet culture looked like in the late 90s/early 00s prior to everyone leaving Usenet and mailing lists for Livejournal and such.

muffin: A person who reads but has never posted to soc.bi. De-muffining means posting to soc.bi for the first time, hence no longer being a muffin.

Oh my god! I'd forgotten about 'muffin'!

Anyway, the big thing to notice here is that whether it's freaky fetish porn or factual info about orientations, everyone is extremely earnest, likes answering nosy questions endlessly, and is actively engaged in recording the history of their own communities and compiling lists of resources and where to find things.

It's culturally the opposite of, say, tiktok, where the algorithm serves you up what it thinks you should see and everyone is stewing in learned helplessness.

So it was partly a stable, sex-positive, supportive family. It was partly access to other adults' writing. And a decent chunk of it was that I had some pretty dark fantasies, so it was natural for me to actively confront what those do and do not mean in a way that a more vanilla teenager wouldn't have needed to.

I wasn't hypersexual, but I was born kinky, and it did make a difference.

86 notes · View notes

meichenxi · 4 years

Text

tldr; autistic parents are fantastic and fuck you if you think otherwise, signed, a disaster queer adhd daughter

So on the back of a lot of negative stuff I've been coming across recently I wanted to take a moment and talk about my dad. He is autistic and chronically ill, and has been unable to hold a job down since I was eight or nine. He only ever responds with brutal, crushing honesty when I ask him how he is (and as he's chronically ill, the answers are rarely fun); he doesn't have any close relationships with any other adults and is so afraid of crowds he sprints through them leaving the children to run after him as best they can; he very rarely told me I was doing well and never seemed to understand my point of view, much less my mother's; he would never talk about anything other than bloody knitting, rocks or conservation, he could eat approximately 0.5 foods but also had no job to buy anything better; he frequently goes around naked because 'it feels nice' causing me to SCREAM -

He's my favourite person in the entire world.

Growing up, there were so many things he taught me. His special interests were geology, nature conservation, wildlife gardening, taiji, mythology and knitting. When we were kids, we went out for long walks for miles and miles in the drizzling British countryside - when I was young, my brother and mum would lag behind and me and my dad would skip ahead, jumping over the rocks, and he'd tell with great excitement why THAT twisty line of quartz was actually less exciting that this outcrop here; he'd teach me about the Salmon of Wisdom and the folk that live over the sea and never grow old, and impress on me with utter seriousness how I must never tell a stranger my name unless they tell me theirs first; he'd sit down with me and draw patterns for a jumper he was thinking of in the mud with a stick, and then we'd have a sword fight. I never understood half of the things he told me, but listened with wonder, because he was my dad, and he knew everything.

When I was a little older, we made up stories that lasted for hours, and memorised poetry together from Lord of the Rings (because THERE our interests collided with galactic force) and he'd do all of the voices just perfectly. We went one whole summer just quoting LOTR to each other, and it was our little secret: Mum might hear 'Yes,' but only I would hear what came after: 'Yes,' said Frodo, or 'Yes!' cried Boromir. And when I told him my story about a woman who lived in a volcano he listened quietly and told me that that wasn't how volcanoes worked, but that he could help me write it better.

Everybody's autism is different. For my dad, it rendered him completely incapable to work and was paralysing in social situations, but when it was just me and him, he told the most wonderful stories. I wanted to be a geologist just listening to his voice, and then a writer, and then finally someone who understood the land like he did and the sea.

And he made me feel normal. He made me feel heard. With my mum, as much as I loved her, I would get vague noises of assent as she struggled to look after everybody in this damn house, or irritable 'Would you just be quiet for ONE second?' I was a talented kid, and everybody praised me at pretty much everything: but the only person who would consider anything I wrote like it was an adult's writing, with seriousness and criticism, was my dad. He didn't tell me I did well often. Instead he would take my picture, or my writing, and look at it with great seriousness, and ask me WHY the Queen was so intent on kidnapping beautiful princesses in the first place. I could trust him to tell me whether I did something well or not, because he never, never lied. Not to please me, and not to please anyone. It cost him his marriage and his job, but it was a rock of stability in my life : my mother was volatile, frequently furious enough to resort to violence, and she lied and laughed and told us what we wanted to hear, but he was always reliable. If he was angry, we knew.

When I spoke for hours about my languages, he listened, nodded, and then spoke about his plants. It was a perfect give and take because I didn't expect him to care about my languages, and he never expected me to care about his plants. We just cared about the other.

And when I didn't make any friends and couldn't interact with the other children without despair he was always there with a silent offer of a bike ride, or catch in the park. He was always the fittest person I knew, despite his illness. He had lots of grand ideas - once he climbed the tree outside our house and tried to rig up a platform fifteen metres above the ground. After three days he was inconsolable. He wouldn't speak, he just sat there. But a few days later he started drawing up plans and attacked it again, and this time it worked.

My dad is great for a lot of reasons, and difficult for a lot of reasons too. Some of these are just him - but some are specifically related to his autism, and I think it's important that we talk about that too, especially in the context of parenthood. Because we see a lot of positivity about young autistic adults and kids, but older adults are just as valuable and just as in need of support and recognition, particularly because they may have gone through so much. My dad was made to stand in a bucket of urine for three days as a kid to 'pull himself together'. Spoilers: it didn't work.

And I'm not autistic myself, but many of my ADHD behaviours are so much easier around him because he just. gets it. If I don't like a certain food because of the texture, he never buys it again - I don't need to explain myself. We leave all social events early, which is wonderful because he is very stressed and I am either so high on adrenaline I'm in danger of injuring myself or exhausted to the point of not being able to talk. We run through crowds together because he hates crowds and I like the chance to stretch my legs. We don't touch or keep in contact very much, because neither of us see the point or like small talk, and I'm terrible at messaging anyone, but I know (and he knows) as soon as we need each other we're there. We do handstands on the beach together and he points out plants on the way back along with their Latin names. He never bothers me about talking to my friends or stopping clowning and watching my stupid shows or spending ten hours a day on Chinese or Tolkien. He never mocks me for needing space and time after anything. We lie on the concrete together because it's so damned warm and nice and adgshhhhh. We spend hours playing taiji and doing push hands in the kitchen, and our 'love language', if you will, is him trying to throw me to the ground. We both get 100% of our emotional intelligence from books, and in any arguments can use this to great effect. I talk at him for an hour, and then he talks at me for an hour. I know so much about fucking willow trees.

So people who say that autistic parents are cold and incapable of care? My dad was the most sincere, honest and helpful parent a child could have ever asked for. Things were difficult, but it helped me understand that parents too have needs, and that adults are all just grown up kids trying their best. I didn't know why he was different as a kid, and I didn't much care - I just wanted to be a geologist like my daddy.

#actuallyautistic #autistic #adhd #actually adhd #autism positivity #non langblr #neurodivergent

367 notes · View notes

beaudeanw · 4 years

Text

Soldier Boy- What can we expect?

- Possible spoilers ahead

Gif credit : @justjensenanddean

The Boys S3 will have Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy - A Captain America-esque Supe, also known as the original superhero.

In the comic books, there are three versions of Soldier Boy. Ackles will be playing the first one. According to Eric Kripke, Soldier Boy is like the Homelander before Homelander. He has a similar kind of ambition & ego. It will just come in a different way.

He was a leader of the Team Payback - a Parody of The Avengers.

In the show, Soldier boy was the only one to ever exist.

Soldier Boy as a Character

As said above, Soldier Boy is touted to be very powerful. His powers are almost on the same level as Homelander.

According to a recent q&a with Kripke, he mentioned that Homelander will be threatened by Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy is said to be very Charming and Funny.

He will have this charisma that attracts the public towards him. As mentioned in the first episode of The Boys Season 2, Soldier Boy killed Nazis by a huge amount and he helped the Allies win the World War 2 against Germany. After that he went on to become a movie star and a huge mainstay of American culture.

During the course of S2 we saw some Easter eggs like his movie posters on the wall. Kripke compared his character to somewhat like John Wayne. If you google search John Wayne, you will get to know that he was conservative, racist, homophobic etc. John Wayne although famous for playing Soldiers in cinema, never served in WW2. He also had a complicated relationship with women.

Soldier Boy might take some similar route considering the fact that he is in fact from the 1940s. The q&a mentioned that he will be involved in a lot of Sex, Violence & Swears. Needless to say, soldier boy can totally be a. One of the 2018 tweets of Kripke said that Soldier Boy was involved in drugs & stuff. This might also be a part of his personality.

Since it's also said to be a parody of Cap America, Soldier Boy a complete anti-thesis of what former stands for. Cap America is sort of a moral, altruistic, kind & good superhero. Soldier Boy might be completely opposite. That he has no shame in hurting people & possesses no morals in order to get his work done & his ambition fulfilled. He can be the reason for the war crimes that America did after the WW2.

How the character might fit in S3

Now The Boys Season 2 ended with Stormfront becoming Stump-front. We have Homelander who got blackmailed by Queen Maeve with the footage from the airplane back from S1. We have Starlight & A- Train back in the Seven. However, the most important part is how both Vought & Homelander are completely screwed in the public eye. As we know in S2, Homelander was getting boo-ed by the public for indulging in war crimes. Now Stormfront's Nazi reveal should have some serious repercussions. The public people might boycott Vought because of their alleged ties with a literal Nazi. Homelander might not get the same love & respect in the public because he had love affair with her. We also have a Federal Bureau of Supe Affairs to keep Vought into check by Victoria Neumann, who is also a supe but thats not the point. The point is Vought needs a good PR to get themselves out of this mess.

Enter- Soldier Boy

Now there is a common theory that Vought must have kept him in some kind of facility & have him trapped. This is a very good possibility since that will mean that he is basically has no idea about the modern world. During S2 we saw a statue of Soldier Boy which showed that he sort of died in the 80s. So it will be interesting to see how Vought brings Soldier Boy back in the public eye.

Now Soldier Boy coming back to Vought can help them with Good PR. I mean who better than a Supe who killed Nazis in WW2 can help Vought clean up the Nazi shitstorm. He is the golden boy of patriotism. He is like a blue print of how they wanted Homelander to be when they created him the lab.

Another common theory that spread which was also kind of agreed by Laz Alonso, the actor who plays Mother's milk said that only his character until now never had something personal against a supe. We also learnt sort of MM's backstory in S2 which mentioned his father working against Vought & how he fought until he died. We have an idea that there is a possibility that both Soldier Boy & his father might have existed at the same point & SB might have something to do with his dad.

This can also be the reason why he vanished in the 80s & Vought lied about his death.

This also makes sense because at the end of S2, we saw all the members of The Boys seperated. One of the major reasons why they come back together is to help MM. I mean MM has been kind of a backbone keeping all of them together. A moral conscience. He is a good friend of all. So if he is in problem, the boys will come back together to help him for a change.

I am pretty sure that with Soldier Boy we will get to learn a lot about the dirty past of Vought & metaphorically, America.

Soldier Boy and Homelander

So first of all, Ackles' Soldier Boy & Homelander didn't have any sort of sexual relations. What happened in the comics was a sexual assault. That was Solder Boy #3. That character was a bumbling idiot, subservient to Homelander who got manipulated by him. It's also not logical for the show to have that kind of relationship of SB & HL. Homelander doesn't have that kink that is shown in the comics. Also, soldier boy in the show looks like has a dominating personality as opposed to of an idiot.

What Ackles is playing is Soldier Boy #1, the one fought in WW2 & as mentioned above, he is the only one to ever exist in the world of TV Show.

However, both of these characters have a lot of similarities. They are both powerful, egotistical, narcissistic, pathetic male superheroes. The difference is the situations they will be in. Homelander is currently in a problematic situation as his issue with wanting validation are bare open. He is emotionally at its weakest point. He wants to be loved. He longs for validation from the public which Maeve uses to threaten him. As he was made in a lab, he didn't have a normal childhood. He didn't have friends or anything. However, Soldier Boy was given Compound V when he was an adult. That means he might not require the same kind of validation. He is a very self-assured man. Also, since he was around in public life for decades, he has received love for years. So he not only he is physically strong, he might be emotionally capable against Homelander.

S3 might create a problem of Power Struggle.

Homelander might struggle to keep his head strong & possibly be threatened by Soldier Boy. Since the latter seems very confident, he might be able to take his position in Vought back. In the S2 premiere, we get to see how Homelander thinks of himself as indispensable for Vought as a company & how Stan Edgar shuts him down. Now think about how Homelander will react when Vought's original golden boy comes back & takes his what he thinks is his. There is a power struggle here. It's likely that Soldier Boy might corner him because of how popular he is in the public and how Homelander wants that same love that SB is getting. S3 might present a situation in front of him when a supe who might almost be as powerful as him & emotionally stronger than him kind of threatens both his power and position.

Soldier Boy and Stormfront

Speaking of Stormfront, Eric Kripke mentioned in a TV guide article that Soldier Boy had a connection with her when she was Liberty. Now both of them were created at the same time by the same man. Liberty was married to Frederick Vought but he then joined the Allies & injected Soldier Boy with Compound V. Now they are basically two sides of the same coin.

Some of this is from articles with Kripke's description of the character, some of them are common theories that have floated around & some of it is my predictions about what direction the character's storyline can take. This is majorly based on everything I have read, heard or watched. It doesn't mean that any of it will turn out the way it's written here. But I still hope this is helpful.

Anyway, I am very excited to see Jensen in this new role. I know he will rock it and I can't wait.

Some Articles I took into consideration -

#soldier boy #jensen ackles #the boys #the boys s3 #the boys tv #the boys amazon #Homelander #Stormfront #vought #solider boy #antony starr #aya cash #eric kripke

324 notes · View notes

ruffboijuliaburnsides · 3 years

Note

Hi! Obviously ignore this if I'm asking something too personal, but you've mentioned that you're in the process of converting to judaism and I've been wondering how did you start? I've done a good bit of research and think it's something I'm interested in, but I have no idea what the actual process of conversion looks like, much less where to begin. Obviously feel free to ignore, or send me towards someone else, but thought I'd ask!

Hey no worries, anon! So, I will preface this by being forthcoming and saying I got partway through the conversion process, was forced to move, and ended up in a different part of the country with only one shul nearby whose rabbi (and community) are… very unfriendly to converts. They don’t SAY they are, but a few months of attendance and a handful of meetings with the rabbi with regards to conversion really hammered home that neither my wife nor I felt even remotely comfortable converting here, considering it’s a very personal and often vulnerable process, and wherein you have to actually like… trust and communicate with the rabbi you’re working with. So my conversion, while I still consider it “in progress”, is in an indefinite stall until we can move somewhere else or can reliably get to the next closest shul, which we currently cannot for various reasons.

ANYWAY. I started by doing a lot of research. Mostly I was just looking into… all kinds of religion, including Islam actually, because I missed the community and the structure and the spiritual anchors of my very conservative evangelical christian upbringing, but I didn’t like or want to return to the actual, y’know…. beliefs and tenets of Christianity. I found Judaism and just… the more I read and researched about the beliefs and the general culture of questioning and grappling with things within it, the more I felt like I’d found a people who I could understand, and a religion that understood me and would allow for me to be uncomfortable and question why things are taught certain ways and so forth. Which was one of many things that drove me away from Christianity, as I was not good at the whole “blind faith” thing. (they insist it’s not blind, but if you’re not supposed to question god then… what else IS it?)

At that point we were living in upstate new york, and the nearest reform shul was very small, did not have a permanent rabbi (there was one for a number of local communities that cycled around every few weeks), and really while they were officially reform they seemed to as a community have a practice and beliefs a lot closer to something like reconstructionist or humanist Judaism. I went to shabbat services on fridays there for a few months, and they were very nice but said they were very much not a usual reform congregation and that I should probably actually convert somewhere with a permanent rabbi and that was a bit more traditional, but that in the meantime they were more than happy to have me attend services and events with them. They were very sweet and I did appreciate that opportunity to accustom myself to the general pacing and content of a friday night shabbat service.

At that point we get to the part that you’re actually asking about, and I’m sorry if you’re just like “OH MY GOSH MAGS PLS JUST GET TO THE POINT” which is when we moved back down to Florida and I actually properly started the conversion process with a rabbi! I started out emailing the local shul and saying that I had just moved to the area, I was not Jewish but was interested in possibly converting and had been attending services at a very small shul up north, and is it all right if I attend a few shabbat services while I consider converting? I will say, I have never been told “no please don’t attend” about going to shabbat services, but especially with the world the way it is, and me being new and not knowing anyone in the community or having anyone to vouch for me, I prefer to ask beforehand so that they know to expect someone new who is reaching out and less likely to be a threat.

Anyway after a couple of weeks at that shul, I already loved the people and could tell I would get on pretty well with the rabbi, so I emailed her again about setting up a meeting to discuss converting. We had the meeting, talked about why I wanted to convert, what would be required of me, etc. She got me set up with a book list and some books from the shul library, gave me a reading assignment and asked me to write down any thoughts or questions I had, along with some other things that were kind of reading comprehension stuff, and told me to email her when I had finished so we could have another meeting. She also stipulated that she would have me live and practice through a full year of the Jewish calendar at minimum before she’d declare me ready to go to the mikvah, and we’d meet regularly, I’d do a lot of reading, I needed to attend a beginning hebrew class for adults that would be starting again over the summer, attend services (both weekly and holiday) as much as possible, and engage as much as possible in the community. (I really loved them. I was a soloist in the Purim spiel that year and I had friends and once I’d finished converting and could join the synagogue I’d already been needled to join their tiny choir and it was just a great group of people.)

Aaaand then we had to move due to things outside our control, and I couldn’t attend as often due to being a heck of a drive away (in a car with no A/C, in Florida, in the summer) so I tried to shift over to a closer shul whose rabbi my old rabbi knew, but it was High Holy Days and then he was travelling for some studies and couldn’t start doing anything like conversion until that was all over, and then we had to move again and now we’re here and have a very unfriendly rabbi and congregation, so we don’t attend services right now.

…………all this to say: you’ve done some research and you think you’re interested. Next step is to find the nearest shul that is of the movement you want to convert in, and call or email them and just let the rabbi know where you’re at and ask if you can attend some services respectfully to see if you still feel drawn to Judaism when engaging with it directly. If so, let the rabbi know, set up a meeting, and go from there. It’ll take time, a year at the LEAST and usually longer even if you DON’T have the sort of issues I’m currently having, but if HaShem is calling you home, it’s worth it.

(and if your rabbi requires to you take any classes or what-not, most organizations that run them that require you to pay some kind of fee offer scholarships or reduced tuition if you’re not financially able to enroll in them initially, so be sure to reach out about stuff like that, too.)

#i use ‘calling you home’ specifically bc #one of the books i read talked about how all jewish souls were at sinai at least metaphorically #it’s just some of them weren’t born into jewish families #and that every convert is just a wandering jewish soul coming home #and i really really liked that #talked about it a lot with rabbi T back when things were on track #but that IS what it’s been like from start to finish #it’s felt without reservation like coming home #in a way nothing else in my life ever has #so y’know #jewish stuff #judaism #conversion stuff #sorry that this got so long and rambly #i’ve been having The Feels lately about my stalled conversion #it’s very frustrating and i think I just needed to get it out a bit heh

34 notes · View notes

rockofeye · 3 years

Text

Out of the depths.

It is somehow appropriate that a re-emergence and re-alignment comes with the beginning of the month of May. May is a big month for vodouizan; we celebrate Kouzen and all his family this month and, for people from Jacmel, it is a month devoted to celebrating Jacmel's heritage, which is tied closely to Kouzen. It is said Jacmel is where Kouzen was from before he went to more rural areas; it's not a coincidence that fet Jacmel and fet St Jacques e St Philippe (the patrons of Jacmel) are celebrated on the same days as fet Kouzen (May 1 and May 2).

I've been thinking about Kouzen a lot lately. It's been a difficult year in a lot of ways, but not a bad year. COVID has really permanently changed how things in my professional field work, and with the help of Kouzen and a few of my other lwa, I managed to leverage that into a position using all my professional strengths with the org that has been my target for employment for years. Landing that has not only been life-changing and future-solidifying, but really reinforces that I know what I know and that I am an expert at what I do.

That's a lesson that comes from Kouzen, and it's one that I struggle to learn and remember in my life. Kouzen shows me balance: he is the expert worker in his field (literal and figurative), but you might never know that from how he does his work. Underestimate him and you'll find out, but how he carries himself keeps his mastery of work and growth and agriculture from being the first thing that you see.

I'm pretty okay with that part, but that's the part I get tripped up about. I don't find anything fulfilling professionally or personally about illustrating what I know,, but there is a difference between going about your business and actively hiding from those moments where you can insert who you are and what you know.

I'm a hider. It might sound kind of funny coming from someone who has been writing a blog in the internet for close to a decade, but it's true: I am actually pretty shy and private and being the center of attention--professional or personal--is kind of horrifying to me. I've reached the point in my life where I don't feel I have a lot to prove because I know what I know, but in many ways that's just not possible for me. I don't work in a field where I can just close my office door and have it all be fine, and the lwa have made clear time after time that I cannot just ride off into Ginen with them and live a private life.

This has something that is always a struggle for me because I am introverted and like my alone space and time. It comes back to the good ol' lessons the lwa want me to learn over and over: balance and vulnerability. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes I react like a cat thrown into a bathtub full of water. The lwa win some, I lose some.

I had to get my ass in gear with the notions of balance and putting myself out there and being vulnerable in knowing my worth and demanding (politely) that it be recognized when I found myself completely dissatisfied with my job(s). I was working two jobs (houngans and manbos know about that hustle...) and making good money, but I was ready to work one job and free up time for spiritual work and projects.

I took a chance and applied for a job that was juuuuust within my experience. It was definitely bigger than what I was doing and while it was within my experience level, I honestly wasn't perfectly qualified....but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so I buffed up the resume, sent it off, and sat with my lwa about it. I told them that if this was where I was supposed to go next, I knew they would clear the way.

I didn't get it.

I made it through two rounds of interviews, but ultimately there was an incumbent with 10 more years of experience than I have, and that's almost always a losing equation. I was okay with it because I still had work and at the end of the day, I don't have to love my job to cash the paychecks.

BUT....the lwa had another plan. The team of interviewers liked me, and so I got headhunted for a position that was very, very in line with my professional experience and goals. I spoke with them several times about it and they made me an offer....and it was so low I almost rejected the offer outright.

I was both angry and scared at the same time; angry because the salary offer was ridiculously offensive based on my career history and scared because I have never been in a position to turn down a job offer or, honestly, negotiate.

This time was the first time in my life that I was planning to leave a job because I wanted to. I grew up in a upper working class home and as an adult have spent too much time jobless and underemployed to discount steady work and a regular paycheck. It was scary as hell to be staring down the possibility of kicking the steady paycheck to the side in favor of taking a step into the unknown.

When I got the offer letter, I sat down with the lwa and literally cried because I was so burned out with my other job that it was affecting my performance, but here I was getting a bullshit offer for a hugely involved job. It felt like a loss if I took it and affirmed that both my experience and what they were asking of me was only worth what they were offering. It felt like a loss if I didn't take it, because those opportunities do not come alone like that very often.

It was such a moment of unique despair. Like, I was not hurt or anything tragic but that feeling like I was painted into a corner and that the choices in front of me would leave me at a loss was HUGE and real. For me, when I feel like that it's hard for me to turn on the part if my brain that's analytical. I just need to sit in my misery for a minute (or more) until I get it together enough to figure out what to do.

That is where the blessing of Kouzen (and really all the lwa) came in. He told me to go back to the table, creat another option, and ask for my worth. Like, not swing my proverbial dick and be an asshole, but go be vulnerable and say that the offer was disappointing and that I expected more. So weird because it makes so much sense, right? And yet there I was totally sold that I was either going to be worked like a mule for less money than I was making already, or I was going to remain in The Bad Place until something else came along.

So I did. Even if I felt pessimistic about it (I did) and thought they would say no (convinced of it), I did what I was told because at the end of the day I agreed to sèvis lwa because I believe in the vision the lwa have for me. Some days I say that through gritted teeth, but that's my guiding principle and they have never let me down.

I sent in my counteroffer and waited for the 'we're sorry, but..' email. It was fucking scary. My agency is a behemoth in my field and has been around forever, so pushing back felt a little bit like David versus Goliath, and I didn't have the benefit of a sling and a rock.

It took two days but they got their offer almost to what I asked for, so I took it and it was a huge relief. I am sure that somewhere in the background Kouzen maybe did a quiet fist pump of 'Alex learned a thing' before going back to his work.

In all seriousness, that's a lesson I have struggled so hard with and it was a moment where I had to put it all into practice and rely on what the lwa have taught me as being an ultimate truth. Knowing my worth is not enough; I have to be able to communicate that in a way that both opens doors and doesn't get me used as a doormat. Not doing that seems like it would be almost offensive to Kouzen because, at least in this case, it would be essentially leaving money on the table and wasting it. My Kouzen is very rational about money, but the idea of not trying to set up my financial future makes his eyes bug out and would probably result in Having To Have A Conversation, which I avoid at all costs. Nothing like the lwa reminding you not to fuck up your own blessings.

Getting settled into this particular blessing has been what has been occupying my time the most these days. I came back from Haiti and went right into this job. I have finally clawed my way into administration and, in a very Kouzen twist, am responsible for managing several million dollars worth of grants and spending them both quickly and wisely. I work closely with the person in the position I originally interviewed for and am really happy I didn't get that job, as I am able much better fit where I am.

What else? In late January, I turned in a final draft of a chapter I was tapped to write for a book detailing the experiences of people who are converts to African Traditional and Diasporic religions. I'm excited to see the book when it comes out; I was the only writer on Haitian Vodou, and so it is chock full of other experiences from people from all different places who converted at some point in their life to a huge variety of African and African Descended religions and cultural practices. It's a project that has been in the works for several years, and it was interesting to see personal growth during my involvement in it and while tracking and detailing my journey from a fairly conservative Protestant upbringing to where I am now as a sèvitè lwa.

My living situation has changed up in the middle of this and I am once again at a point in my life where I have a dedicated space for my lwa. Living in one of the most expensive cities in the US has meant roommates and keeping my lwa in a closet in my room (my most recent roommate lovingly referred to them as the Closet People), but the lwa managed to swing it so I have a room dedicated to my spirits.

I have longing for that for so long...it's been years since that was a reality, and now it's finally a thing again. I always have the room for my lwa as my studio space too, since they are a creative force behind a lot of it, and it make my heart so full again to have room to spread out. It's such a gift for me. No more sitting down to pray and having my roommate start to have sex with their partner on the other side of the wall....I cannot tell you how many times that has happened.

Recently I listened to my mother tell some folks how to make tchaka/Kouzen's favorite meal. The regleman/ritual food is one of the most important parts of both ceremony and personal relationships with the lwa, and Kouzen reminded me that it had been quite awhile since I made him tchaka and boy his stomach would feel so much better with some tchaka in it and I already had a lot of the ingredients and wouldn't it be delicious to make some doumbrey for the tchaka too?

...so I went shopping for what I would need for tchaka for my beloved Kouzen because I have clearly neglected his stomach for too long. Living in a city with a huge Haitian population is great because the Haitian grocery store I went to had joumou/Haitian pumpkin, lalo sèk/dried jute leaves, tritri/tiny dried shrimp, djondjon/Haitian black mushrooms, fresh kowosol/soursop(!!!!!), and fresh lam veritab/breadfruit(!!!!!!!!!!).

It is so rare to find fresh kowosol and lam up here in New England because it def doesn't grow here and it doesn't last well when it's shipped....but it looked great today. The kowosol is going to be for me...ji kowosol ak lèt is a favorite, ESPECIALLY with a little Barbancourt poured in...and Kouzen will either get some tomtom or at least boiled lam veritab with his tchaka. Also have the makings of some bonbon siwo, so this husband is gonna eat GOOD. He deserves it.

And then...? Our live-on-Zoom socially distanced fet Kouzen will be sometime late in May. Making our fets available for folks to 'attend' at a distance has been surprisingly cool. I was not thrilled about the idea because of my personal hangups (I hate being on camera) but it's been really wonderful and has been a way for people who can't get to the temple to be able to share energy and get a taste of what a real Haitian fet is like. COVID isn't going away anytime soon, so we'll probably keep doing our fetes this way for awhile.

And...Haitian Summer is coming. I could write another whole post on what's going on down in Haiti, but I am very much looking forward to our kanzo and fet cycle this summer. My very favorite ceremonies are part of kanzo, and I love the opportunity to see the lwa in their home in the temple. I've been so lucky to be able to travel safely to Haiti several times during this mess, and it has fed my soul. It's safer for me and many of my family members now that we are vaccinated, so one less thing to worry about.

With Kouzen's month and the season of spring, I hope for growth in new directions for each of you, complete with all the blessings that Kouzen can bring: fertility and fecundity, inspiration, energy, commitment, rootedness, solid partnerships, and wise investments in self, community, relationships, and business ventures. May the fresh breeze bring you health with every breath and wealth with every exhale.

#vodou #haitian vodou #kouzen #kouzen zaka #azaka mede #fet kouzen #manje lwa #real vodou #voodoo

14 notes · View notes

ghostsofmemories · 4 years

Text

INSECT POISON: UPDATE 3

okay so first things first: I rearranged some things so what was previously chapter 11 is now going to be referred to as chapter 12, which is so long that it’s the only chapter this update will cover! it clocks in around 6.5k after cutting it down with editing. I’m eventually going to split it into two or three different chapters, but because all the events take place in the same day and were meant to be in one chapter, it’s easier to cover them all in one update and not include the chapters that’ve been written since then, all but one of which are pretty short.

content warnings (some of these are pretty heavy): sexual assault, death and cemeteries, possible hallucinations, toxicity/manipulation, instability

anyway, on with the update!

chapter 12 (formerly 11): quivering lip

this chapter surrounds adult Robert’s trip to visit his sister’s grave in the town he grew up while having a mental breakdown, the woman he meets there, and the interaction they have at her house that leaves him feeling even worse than when he started off.

some select excerpts from the beginning:

All this town knew how to do was rot. Robert realized this upon coming back for the first time in years—nothing was beautiful, nothing was alive, and nothing here was worth coming back to visit.

As he made his way through the empty parking lot, going slow in an effort to remember where Ramona’s grave was, he was struck with another bout of feverish anxiety. The baby was going to be his, and all his genes matched his sister’s, even when held up to the light. Would she grow up to look like her namesake, too? Would he have to watch a carbon copy of his dead sister, his greatest secret, grow up and put her hair in braids and ask for help with her math homework? He could already see it. Freckles and deep brown eyes and dark red hair, soft smile from her mother, talkative and hyper. Everything Amanda convinced herself Ramona used to be. He would be raising a eulogy, a little memorial. Ramona Bennett-Blanchard, in loving memory of Ramona Diane Bennett. Robert had force back vomit at the mere thought of it.

not him being totally wrong about what his daughter’s going to be like I’m-

He made sure no one else was around before sitting cross-legged in front of Ramona’s headstone. The feeling of fever left him just enough to give him hope this might help. “It’s been awhile,” he said, snaking his fingers through the grass around him. Dry, yellow, half-dead already. At least the sky was cloudy. The earth here needed some rain. “It’s miserable out here. Cold and stale.”

There was no reply, of course. The breeze replaced the need for one: skimming the sweat on his forehead and the back of his neck, smoothing him over. He felt like a child, here, thumbing weeds and talking to no one—like a schoolboy being forced to apologize. He made himself smaller, tried to conserve his heat against early November’s faltering autumn. He couldn’t picture himself leaving until his patience ran out, and desperation gifted him with heaps of it.

okay here’s the part where he talks to “Ramona” (she’s either a ghost or a hallucination and you don’t know because neither do I <3)

And there she was. Ragged bangs hanging over thin eyebrows, hair straight greasy and down to her waist, overalls covered in grass stains. Everything about her was juvenile and smelled of stale lake water. She sat on top of her stone, looked straight ahead, as if Robert was irrelevant to her situation. The dead version of Ramona was the same as the old one in looks as well as attitude—she’d been pulled fresh out of a memory, right out of their fifteenth birthday.

“You’re so…” Robert paused, looking up in awe at his sister, vulnerable as he could manage, tired as he was. “Young. And here.”

“You’re old and here.” She said, looking at him, now. He wasn’t sure why he expected her to look older, or if he’d expected to see her at all, but whatever his expectations were, they’d been slaughtered by her stare—cold and violent. No different than when they were both children and alive.

and oops here have some of the manipulation that made me realize some things in earlier parts of the book need to change:

Robert stood up and walked after her, realizing the ground was seeping and mossy and wet all around them. It hadn’t been before, he was sure of it. As he walked, the landscape meshed itself from dying town to young forest, and he was distracted by it, having to close his eyes when he wanted to speak. “How do you know about my daughter?” Robert asked, his socks getting wet beneath his canvas shoes, not standing well against the moist, newly swamping ground.

“Because I can know anything I want to, as long as you knew it first. I’m a part of you.” Robert stopped walking, and Ramona looked back at him. “You still can’t think about two things at the same time? How old did you say you were?”

“You can’t be a part of me. You’re a ghost. You’re dead.” He said, shutting his eyes again. Shutting his vision out didn’t seem to do anything. The landscape was in his head as much as it was around him.

“How is that more feasible than me being a part of you?”

“But you said you hadn’t been in my house. You said you weren’t following me.” He kept blinking, waiting for it to be dark just once. He tried putting his hands over his eyes, which seemed to work, but made him feel childish, all of a sudden. He didn’t know what to do with himself, with his body. He had trouble convincing himself he was inside of it at all.

“Like I’ve never lied to you before. Of course I’ve been there. I’m in your head all the time. You didn’t have to come here to talk to me.” Ramona laughed and started walking again. The laugh kicked Robert in the gut. It was old, rotting. He couldn’t be imagining this, could he? That was so her. She seemed almost more vivid than she had when she was alive—she was a memory playing out around him, but everything in it was raw, fresh out of the slaughterhouse.

a little internal monologue excerpt after ghost-Ramona says something about Robert killing her:

No one, himself included, had ever said it out loud before. He’d spent countless nights as a teenager practicing what he’d say if someone ever accused him, and he’d imagine confessional scenes before he went to sleep, or therapy sessions where he’d admit what he’d done and then disappear and change his name. But it was all in his head, just lips moving with nothing but breath coming out. He couldn’t afford to be overheard by anyone, for even the walls and the ceilings and the mirrors to know what he’d done. When he heard it come from someone else, he became a child caught drawing on the walls. The stages of grief hit one after another, each one knocking the wind out of him, but reaching acceptance was as impossible as catching a bird—he could run and lunge and sneak quietly up behind it, but all the bird had to do was go up.

and that’s that for that scene! now it’s time to meet Agnes! don’t get your hopes up about her :)

“Sir?”

He jumped awake and stumbled backward. There was a young woman, maybe a teenager, standing a few feet away from him, too nervous to get closer. She wore a brown jacket that went down to her knees, probably belonging to her father or bought for a couple dollars at a thrift store. Her hair reminded him of something that fluttered or floated, cut off at her shoulders and so brown it was nearly black, but swaying around her face at even the slightest breeze or movement.

“Sir, do you need help?” She asked, taking another step toward him. She was braver now that she saw how exhausted he was, how red his eyes were, how he coughed so hard that he nearly fell back on the ground. “It’s cold out here, and it’s been raining for awhile now. I think you’ve been out here for too long.”

“It’s raining?” He asked, and made an attempt at directing his attention to his surroundings, though the woman—or girl—seemed to have an extra dimension in comparison to the things around her, like she was a deer shaking in a forest. More rich. More colorful. Just more. But there was still a graveyard, still grass, the mossy swamp and Ramona were both gone. For some reason, this is what he expected. To become the madman who fell asleep in front of a headstone, who didn’t wake up even when it started raining. “I don’t know you.”

What he meant to say was are you from around here? and then because I’m from here. I used to be from here. And I don’t know you. It was nothing unfamiliar for his mouth to cut off the first half of his sentences.

you guys I promise I did not mean to start feeling bad for this guy and now I have to change his whole backstory to make it make sense someone help me

“I’m Agnes, and I don’t know you, either.” Agnes crouched down to be level with Robert, like she was kneeling over an injured animal or talking a toddler down from a tantrum. He supposed he was both. “Would you like some help?” She stuck her hand out, and when he reached out to take it, his blood, frozen, thawed a bit. Her hand was too warm and gripped his too tightly.

She hoisted him up, though she was much smaller than him, probably a lot lighter. “What do you need?” She asked, taking a polite step back. Her eyes were level with his throat, but she turned her head up, eyes darting around different parts of his face. His nose. The blood on his lower lip (if prompted, he wouldn’t have known where it came from). His eyelashes, tangled from sleeping face down over his arm but mostly dry when put up next to the rest of him.

Eventually, he and Agnes were in his car. He couldn’t remember, exactly, what conversation had lead them there, but he was almost sure she was afraid to leave him alone, that she had assumed he lived in town, and that he had probably lied about where he was from or where he was headed or why he was at the graveyard in the first place.

“Are you feeling alright?” She asked, bouncing her knee, looking up at him from her place in the passenger seat. He remembered how wet he was, that he was probably soaking the car and the seat and that he’d have to clean it all up later.

He realized, then, that Agnes had too much faith in him. The girl saw a man, most likely older than her, who’d fallen asleep crying at the grave of someone he most likely loved, and decided he was most likely a good person who was grieving, who was most likely unstable in a self-isolating way, in a no one will ever understand way, in a million ways he wasn’t.

“No,” he said, knowing he had waiting too long to answer and there was nothing else he could say that she would believe. He sighed, tried to remember where he was supposed to be driving. “But I’m sure I will be.”

“I hope so.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” he said, and let his subconscious drive for him. He remembered that he was supposed to be headed to Luther Street, that she lived at the end of it, that he told her he only lived a block away from there and he’d said he’d let her make him a cup of coffee and change his clothes, that they had a tub of her brother’s old clothes that were supposed to go to goodwill that would probably fit him.

“What?” Her eyebrows tied themselves into knots, knitted themselves into something sloppier. “Why not?”

yes I am going to continue oversharing excerpts from this chapter. I spent three months writing it and I think I deserve to indulge

“Because I’ve done a lot of bad things,” he said, and his heartbeat quickened in a way that was unfamiliar. Like someone walked in right after he broke something. “I’ll feel fine, eventually, but I don’t deserve it.” This was not something stated as a way to tear pity from the throat of the small animal beside him, it was a simple fact. This naive girl thought he was something worth saving, trusted him enough to get into his car and let him drive. He was a liar, a murderer, evaded her attempts to learn his name (but would hand it over anyway when she got into his car and saw his nametag from work).

“No one is irredeemable,” she said, looking out the window and making a small noise of understanding, something like huh but only in a hum, her lips never parting. “It’s snowing. It hasn’t snowed since the day before Thanksgiving.”

She was the sort of girl who loved winter, but mostly for the spring that followed. She was the sort of girl who would suffer through the death of everything colorful just for the satisfaction of watching all of it come back to life.

“I am,” he said, and he turned onto Luther, a street of smaller houses, where some of the locals couldn’t afford garbage service and tossed their trash into the back of their trucks until they had the extra cash to bring it to the dump. This was where most the stray cats of the neighborhood called home.

“What makes you so different?” and then a boney finger pointed to a blue-gray house on the right side of the road, a double wide trailer with a car in the driveway that was hoisted up on a jack. “That one.”

“I guess it’s because I’m still not sorry.”

“I think,” Agnes said, looking at him, though he couldn’t look back for more than a second at a time, trying to find a way to park in Agnes’ slender driveway, “that you are. You just don’t know it yet.”

“You have too much faith,” Robert said, turning the car off. He pulled the key out a little too harshly, and was compelled to look at it, to make sure he hadn’t broken it, but he knew better. The key wasn’t broken, half of it still wedged into the ignition, rendering the car and key useless. To check that his key was still in one piece would only further cement his impression as being crazy.

That’s what Agnes had to have thought. There was nothing else for her to think. There was no other option for men who fell asleep in graveyards, who called themselves bad people with no repentance, who checked to make sure their keys weren’t broken when they turned their cars off.

“I think I have the right amount.”

don’t get too attached to Agnes btw (spoiler alert: she doesn’t die (a little unfortunate imo)).

She was already frustrated with him, the stranger. Robert, his ID had said. Robert Bennett. Agnes came from a family of helpers and saviors, and Robert didn’t want to be saved.

Still, there were ways around such things. She would make him want it.

ew ew ew EW

He decided to wash his face in the bathroom sink before he buttoned the shirt up the middle, the warm water a refreshing change from the rain’s cold that seemed to have set into his bones, decided to stay there until it got warm enough to start decaying. He scrubbed with his hands, then with his fingernails, until he could feel his skin shedding. When he stood up straight again, he saw Ramona’s face—all covered in red, just like his, hair dark red and still damp because the towel could only hold so much. He slammed himself back against the wall, which was only a step away. In the kitchen, Agnes froze over the sink, the coffee pot overflowing in her hand, wetting her hand up to her wrist.

“Are you alright?” She asked. A moment had passed with no other sound to follow the crash, and there was nothing to do but ask. It felt like an invasion of privacy to do anything else, anything more.

Robert closed his eyes and took a moment to learn how to breathe again, then how to speak. “I’m alright,” he said, and if he was in his own house, no one would have heard him. The walls here were thin, though, and Agnes shook off the interruption to start the coffee maker.

When he was ready to open his eyes again, the reflection in the mirror hadn’t changed. It wasn’t Ramona. It never was. He just looked more like her than usual, that’s all. It was seeing her that had refreshed the image in his mind, gave his idea of her face more clarity, that’s all.

He sat on the lid of the toilet and held his head in his hands, for a moment, but didn’t let himself cry. There was no reason to, she wasn’t here this time. He hadn’t seen her.

and then some of their coffee scene:

“Oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry. If you want to talk about it, you can, but you don’t have to.”

He was speaking before he had the sense to stop himself. “I won’t get too far into it,” he said, reaching for his cup of coffee. He had no plans to drink it, but now that it had cool enough to just warm his hands, he was thankful that it kept him busy, “but she drowned. In the lake. It was a long time ago.” Indeed, emptying his troubles out to a stranger was soothing, but Robert wasn’t known for his conversation skills. He wanted to let something else slip out—the sight of Ramona out of the corners of his eyes, seeing her at the graveyard and waking up to this gentle woman. Or girl. She was younger than him, he was almost sure, but she could be anywhere from seventeen to twenty-seven.

“Oh, I think I heard about that. Ruby Bennett? My older cousin was close with her. Well, she says she was. She exaggerates sometimes, but they knew each other at least. Martha’s my cousin’s name. I guess if you and Ruby were twins you would have graduated with her.”

“Ramona,” Robert corrected, and set his cup down. The name Martha was familiar to him, but not enough to distract from his sudden, unexpected defensiveness. He moved himself to the edge of the chair, frowning, already feeling the toll of the cheap furniture on his back. The furniture in his apartment was cheap, too, but it was a sort of cheap he was used to. Thrift-store-miracle cheap, not mass produced for $8 a piece cheap. “Her name was Ramona.”

“Oh, sorry. Ramona,” Agnes ran her finger down the short pile of unopened mail, averted her eyes, embarrassed by the nature of her mistake. Her accidental disrespect of a dead girl.

this next part is where the big content warning comes in, if you’re sensitive to sexual assault (it doesn’t follow through all the way but it’s definitely implied) probably don’t read this excerpt or the one that follows, they’re both pretty heavy

Not much later, Agnes was swiping a kiss in the hallway, walking Robert to her bedroom, breath hot and vision blurry. He was unsure how or when they got there, but it was something like this:

Robert, finishing his coffee out of obligation, hoping the caffeine would soothe his headache and give him the energy to drive home soon. He stood up, took the two or three steps to the sink to rinse the cup out.

Agnes, following his movements faster than he could make them. “Let me get that,” she offered, and took the cup from his hand, set his and hers down in the sink, stared up at him with dark eyes and deep red cheeks.

They were three inches apart. Robert opened his mouth, took a step back (Agnes mirrored it, of course, before he’d processed that he’d moved at all), closed his mouth. Opened it again. A toddler trying to speak, a fish pushing air to the water’s surface, a drowning man.

Several more seconds of staring, then Agnes’ hand on his shoulder, then her lips on his, then the half-walk, half-kiss through the kitchen and down the hallway. Robert felt as though he might doze off, might fall over, might start crying again. He didn’t understand what he was doing enough to stop. Agnes kept kissing him while she fumbled with the loose doorknob, kept kissing him while she shoved the door open. It had been awhile, but she wasn’t completely without experience. She moved like liquid, so fast and fluid that Robert could hardly inhale, let alone speak. Did she think she could baptize him like this? By holding him under? She started unbuttoning his shirt, slid it off his shoulders, let it fall off the unmade bed and onto the carpet.

It wasn’t until he realized that she was undoing his jeans that Robert pulled away. Pushed away. Did both at once. Agnes’ eyes flitted open, and she frowned. “What was that about?” Her hair framed her face in a way that made her look young, innocent (and it was still difficult to believe that she wasn’t either of them). She was sitting on the bed and he stood as far from it as he could. It was a twin size and still took up most of the room. He was only a step away from it and backed against the wall.

“No. No, I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t have- I can’t do anything like that. I didn’t mean for that to happen, I-” He already knew his whole face was red and his hands would shake the second he thought too hard about them. “Agnes, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. I need to go home.” His apologies were as sincere as they were unnecessary. This wasn’t what he wanted. He knew he wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t his father. His marriage was what tied everything together, the only reason he’d ever had to regret his past. It was what kept him grounded, even if that wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted for himself. Amanda was the only promise he’d ever kept, the only thing he’d ever paid faith to.

yeah so after this there’s a really awkward dialogue that needs some work so I’m just going to pretend it doesn’t exist for now, just take the end of this neverending hell chapter :) this excerpt is a bit disorganized and messy but so is Robert and so am I so it’s fine.

Leaving his hometown, dizzy and sick to his stomach a forcing his eyes to stay open for the entire fifty-six minute drive, there was a dull knife of guilt pushing at Robert’s gut, trying to cut him open. Why didn’t he stop her sooner? Had he just cheated on his wife? Where did he go from here?

He kept his eyes away from the roadside when he passed his childhood home on the way out of town. His mother wouldn’t miss his visit, and he was likely better off without it. He understood this better than he understood most things, and yet he had to stop himself from turning around, from finding himself on her doorstep, from knocking on the door and falling into her arms the second it opened. He longed for the comfort of any mother but the one the one who’d raised him. Was that an evil thing to think? Would his mother hate him if she knew he’d driven past her?

It didn’t matter. man does what he has to do sometimes, and if that made him evil, he could live with that. Sometimes, a man has to drive past his mother’s house. And sometimes, he has to stop someone from ending his life in a lake by the forest, watch the bubbles float to the top until they don’t, wait a little bit longer to make sure. And sometimes, he has to come home and tell his wife he wasn’t feeling well and had gone to the doctor and was told that he needed to rest for awhile pick up some tylenol if it didn’t get any better, tell her he’d sleep on the couch so he wouldn’t get her sick, question all night if he would tell her the truth tomorrow or not just to disappear off to work before she was up in the morning and leave a note on the fridge that he was feeling better and that he loved her.

Maybe he did. He couldn’t imagine a world where he’d be so afraid of losing something that he didn’t love. This constant exchange of fear and comfort really couldn’t be anything else.

okay yeah that’s it! hopefully soon I’ll update on the shorter chapters I’ve written since this one, but one of them needs to be re-written entirely since I’m changing so many things about Ramona’s character.

writing this chapter was a bit of a catharsis for me, and also made me realize some changes that need to be made to the backstory/early narrative because Robert’s character ended up evolving into less of a bad person and more morally gray, the kind of character you can relate to but sometimes in ways that scare you a little bit. I hope you enjoyed this update! I spent way too long working on it and even longer writing the chapter. I’m finally getting back in the swing of writing post-covid and post-going back to school for the first time in two months, so hopefully no other large life-altering events happen because I’m having a pretty good time writing this book.

Insect Poison taglist (ask to be added/removed):

@coffeeandcalligraphy @alicewestwater @fliiik-art @wolf-oak @shaelinwrites @hellnar @nsanelyawkward @oceancold @aetherwrites @keira-is-writing @bookpacking @chloeswords @feverdreamwritings @samirahs @isherwoodj @oasis-of-you @rubbahpunk @azure-platter-writes @santinas @bookphobe

#insect poison updates #insect poison #writing #my writing #writing updates #excerpts #writers on tumblr

15 notes · View notes

kokujin-josei-simmer · 3 years

Photo

THIS IS A LONG POST NOT RELATED TO THE SIMS, SORRY BUT I JUST NEED AN OUTLET. THIS POST IS ABOUT JAPAN.

1st picture is of Norihisa Tamura, Japan’s Minister of Health, Labor & Welfare on tv with no mask and what’s supposed to be a face shield. That man went on national TV looking that ridiculous.

The other photo is in Kabukicho, Tokyo after 8PM...when all the bars/restaurants are supposed to close but 40% of them are ignoring the request (yes, the government keeps asking them to close because the law limits them) mainly because they can’t afford to close.

More about that here:

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210817/p2a/00m/0na/023000c

And the last picture is rush hour in Tokyo, ALL of those people are getting on/off the train and all during Tokyo’s 4th (yes FOUR) State of Emergency. The pictures highlight the incompetence of Japan’s leaders & the slow/ineffective measures they’ve taken to fight the spread of the virus. Allowing The Olympics to go forward was pretty much the point of no return *the 2 photos of the crowds were taken last month, Aug 2021*

I’m talking about Japan because my bf is leaving soon (Saturday) to visit Japan.

Don’t mistake this post for any sort of travel advice: don’t try to book a trip there if you have no business going there, besides...you’ll be banned from entering the country. Even folks who have business in Japan (foreign students/employees who already have their visas) are still banned from entering the country.

He’s going back because he has a relative in the hospital whose condition was worsening (it seems their condition has slightly improved) and it’s unrelated to COVID-19. He wouldn’t jump on a plane to Japan, during a pandemic, if he had any other choice. He’s fully vaccinated and always wears a mask (double mask) when out in public.

I know a lot of weebs on here who probably think Japan is “doing well” because the numbers are much lower than the US (always the constant comparison to the US but never mind the fact that the US pop is 360M compared to Japan’s 126M) but the reality is: Japan still, to this day, doesn’t have mass testing sites meaning lower number of people are being tested daily. No lockdowns, extremely slow vaccine rollout, and they just threw out over a million doses of Moderna due to contamination.

The hospitals cannot handle the number of infections and many people have been turned away from the hospital which has lead to deadly consequences for some, like the pregnant woman who was forced to give birth at home which resulted in her newborn baby dying. A woman in her 70′s who had diabetes was denied a hospital room, she too died as a result. Now I’m just reading about the actress, Haruka Ayase, who has pneumonia due to COVID-19 yet the hospital made room for her. I’m not saying she deserved to die but Japan is clearly picking & choosing who is more important.

I think the only upside to this is the fact that my bf will have to quarantine at his parents home for 2 weeks in Osaka (not Tokyo, which is good since the biggest outbreak is of course in the largest city, Tokyo) so (hopefully) he won’t be exposed to the virus if he stays at home. Plus he has to quarantine, the government requires anyone returning to Japan to install an app that allows them to call you at home (video-calls) to verify that you are your quarantine location. I read one woman’s account, she’s a permanent resident, about how they video-called her twice in the same day: within 30 minutes actually. They most likely won’t do that to my bf because he isn’t a “scary foreigner” since quite a few Japanese folks (including racist, ultra right-wing politicians) are still lying & blaming foreigners for all the cases in Japan.

Oh and a FYI: from the folks I follow on Twitter (foreigners living in Japan), they’ve stated that lots of folks in Japan, especially Tokyo, are ignoring the State of Emergency. They continue to go out to bars, restaurants which increases the spread and the risk of infecting their loved ones at home/coworkers/classmates/etc.

It’s irritating knowing all this and reading posts from people who have no ties to Japan, don’t know anyone from Japan and can’t even be bothered to read posts from people who actually live there claiming “they defeated the virus” or still denying that it’s actually a hell of a lot worse than they’re letting on.

We can compare cities, we can compare Tokyo to NYC and see how the response to the virus has been. NYC had a lockdown, rent relief for its residents ($2.7B available but the payout has been disastrous, the new Governor is trying to speed it up), workers & students were allowed to work/attend classes from home meaning no crowded mass transit. We had mask mandates & even now NYC requires proof of vaccination to go to most places like restaurants, gyms, etc.

Tokyo is not allowing workers/students to work/attend class from home so their mass transit (a city of 13 MILLION, 37 MILLION in the metro area, quite a few more than here in NYC) is PACKED. There was no real lockdown because the government is limited in its power, they’re just now *over a year later* trying to vote to change that. I haven’t heard anything about any rent relief just the ¥100000 paid out once, that’s about $930 USD, to adults and a one-time stimulus payment to businesses that was less than $20K USD. There’s no mass testing site meaning testing throughout the country is still limited.

Tokyo set up a “lottery” the other day in Shibuya which required people to go the location to try and earn a spot for a vaccine. They could’ve had this lottery online but Japan is so behind the times they clearly didn’t think this was a problem...to have a large number of people moving around during a pandemic. Of course it was a mess and the governor of Tokyo (Koike) had the nerve to try to blame the staff for the large crowds.

My bf has to get a PCR test document (in Japanese) & it has to be SIGNED by someone at the clinic. Fortunately he’s able to get it in one day (day before his flight) but it’s just the fact that Japan is the only country in the world pulling this nonsense. If we didn’t find out about the handwritten/signed document he would’ve flew all the way there and been denied entry into the country.

He’ll be there for 3 weeks, the other positive side of this trip (other than being able to see his family/relative in the hospital & not having to be in Tokyo) is that he is, of course, picking up some stuff for me. But only if it’s safe to do so though, I don’t want him going to jam-packed stores, since he has a week to look around it should be less crowded at the stores during business hours when most people are at work/school.

My list:

Famima socks & imabari towel *I think it’s actually a handkerchief ( ファミリーマート (Family Mart) convenience store has a clothing line)

Some donuts from Mister Donut (I’m not joking, as long as there’s no cream they’ll last outside of the fridge for 2-3 days before getting stale)

Muji cotton headbands (they no longer sell them at the NYC locations)

Baton d’or (fancier alternative to Pocky, they cost almost $10 a box)

Amanatto (look up natto, it’s a candied version of that)

Some little knicknacks from Osaka like fridge magnets, he thinks a hoodie/sweater with Osaka on it might be too cheesy/touristy

Maybe Melano CC, it’s cheaper than ordering online ($11 vs $20+)

Probably some other food/snacks

Etc. - still thinking if I need/want anything else

He’s also giving me a video tour of Osaka (大阪) so I can see places like his parents town Izumi ( 和泉市) & places he used to hang out in like Amemura ( アメリカ村 - full name is Amerikamura Village) so I’m just trying to get into the positive side of this and enjoy seeing Osaka beyond G.Map.

So to wrap this up, it’s already too long but I just wanted folks to know that things aren’t so peachy in Nippon, and it won’t be for a while. Hopefully, with more people getting sick of Suga’s (Prime Minister) inaction over the pandemic they’ll be more motivated to vote out the useless, racist LDP (Liberal Democratic Party: don’t be fooled by the Democratic part, they’re quite right wing and conservative) party. He’s already suffered several embarrassing setbacks from recent elections such as an LDP candidate losing the Yokohama mayoral race to an opponent, very embarrassing since Yokohama is Suga’s hometown.

So I’m hoping for a better future for Japan (for everyone, but I’m actually hoping for the imperialist, oligarchy of the US to collapse) and for safe travels for my bf and anyone else who has to travel during this pandemic.

#non-sims #japan #japan state emergency #osaka #大阪 #日本 #japan pandemic #COVID-19 vaccine #stfu weebs #ファミリーマート #family mart #famima #アメリカ村 #和泉市

1 note · View note

marta-bee · 3 years

Text

On Fanworks as Commodities

I've been thinking lately about commodification and how it applies to fandom.

At the risk of giving an unhelpful circular explanation, commodification just means treating something like a commodity when it really isn't. And by commodity, I mean the kind of good or service that it's the kind of thing we can "reduce" to market terms. A loaf of bread is a commodity. So is a house or the services of an accountant- you're not losing anything or "debasing" anyone when you suggest these things can be bought and sold.

But what about surrogacy pregnancy? This is the question Elizabeth Anderson asked in her philosophy paper, "Is Women's Labor a Commodity?" (This is where I first encountered the concept.) She asks what exactly is being sold when we pay a woman to go through a pregnancy and then give up the resulting child to someone else. Anderson said if it's the child that's being sold that seems obviously inappropriate- we rightly consider a human person as the kind of thing you can't just buy and sell- but she also argued even if the woman is just selling the use of her body for a period of time (say, implantation and surrogacy pregnancy of a fetus conceived through in vitro fertilization of the adults who will become the legal parents), there's still something lost. The argument is, pregnancy naturally (at least usually) forms a loving bond between mother and child, which a surrogate woman would wisely try to avoid; otherwise giving up the baby would be that much harder. In effect, it encourages her to alienate herself from the products of her pregnancy. It degrades the commercial surrogate, turns her into an emotionless, contextless factory. And it degrades women who might lovingly serve as surrogates (say, for a sister or friend) because it turns their gift into something indistinguishable from a market transaction.

That's the argument, anyway. Once I found it convincing but these days, I have my doubts. For instance, I don't see any problem saying commercial surrogacy is a different kind of process than surrogacy offered as a gift to someone you know. Even if the result is the same, they seem like very different beasts. I'm also uncomfortable with this idea that certain kinds of work just can't be ethically paid for. Because this usually comes up with "caring" work, which is most often done by women even these days, it becomes too easy to not help bear the costs of that work. We can expect, say, a nurse to care about her patient even though she's paid a salary; is it so wrong if a child who quits her job to care for a sick parent to also be paid for her sacrifice?

That's more a criticism of how the concept is applied, though. I think it's applied too quickly, and in ways that turn it into an either/or, where this doesn't need to be the case. I still think the basic idea has a lot going for it. We do give the market too much power to answer questions it really isn't well suited for. Healthcare, for instance; it needs to be paid for, but not in a way that keeps people from accessing it who need it, or even lets those who can pay get to it more quickly. And maybe market pressures can make it more efficient, to a point, but we really shouldn't reduce it to something that can be bought and sold and understand entirely on those terms.

So, what does all this have to do with fandom? Well, I'm of a different fannish generation than a lot of you young whippersnappers- I first got involved in fannish circles with the Lord of the Rings movies back in the original 2000s. This was pre-AO3 and pre-Tumblr, and only a few years after Anne Rice got ff.net to disallow all fanfic based on her novels. We posted our disclaimers about not owning the characters for a reason and professed our poverty because we believed (or feared at least) we could be sued by the canon's authors. I was mostly in the Tolkien fandom, and it was well known that the estate was never going to authorize fanfic, commercial or otherwise. They state as much on their website, though I can't remember how long that Q&A has existed in its current format.

That gave us a lovely little commercial-free zone. If you couldn't sell your own work commercially, then you could give up all pretenses of success along the normal capitalistic lines and delve into areas that just would never have been very marketable in traditional publishing. Tolkien fandom itself was pretty conservative but I know other fandoms went much further in this regard, exploring genres that just would never be marketable especially before the niche and self-financed publishing the internet opened up for a lot of authors. If the law wouldn't let you do what you wanted to do anyway, why not become utterly ungovernable? So, fanfic became (for me at least) art about art rather than filthy lucre. We were doing what we did because we loved it, and as gifts for our friends, and as a way to be something that wasn't quite allowed in the "normal" culture for whatever reason- even just because we were women daring to make time for our weird little hobbies. It was glorious. And we worked hard enough in other areas of our life that we had the $$$ to indulge in this. We didn't need to be paid, and even if you offered to pay us for our works, we'd likely get a bit insulted and insist that wasn't what this was about at all.

I was told more than once by family that I was good enough to be a "real writer" and didn't I want to do my own thing. So yes, I did get a bit miffed and lean in to my identity of fanfic-writing as hobby not intended as a career.

And I'll be honest: when I see people advertising for commissions or celebrating fan-authors going "professional" as if this is necessarily a step up from unpaid fannish work, I often have this old framework in the back of my head. And it's not really fair. For one thing, I was in college in the early 2000's and so even when we didn't have a lot of cash, we expected to soon get day jobs where we could afford to live comfortably and still afford our hobbies. The housing market crash and the Great Recession changed all of that, as did work opportunities like Instacart and Uber. For a lot of people even a few years younger than me, everything became a side-hustle and there just wasn't this expectation a hobby could be a hobby. I get that there's a lot of privilege entering into that.

On top of which, there's all kinds of gender issues: professional artists, predominantly men, have been painting and selling drawings of comic book characters for years. Star Trek and Star Wars affiliated novels, and Sherlock Holmes pastiches (as opposed to fanfic), again written primarily by men, are also very much a thing. Hell, so are Renaissance artists and the patron system that was built off of. And of course, just because you sometimes produce fanworks just to sell and still do the less commercial work just for yourself if you ever want to. There's no real conflict in that. And it's not like producing art to sell is at all wrong. But to me it does feel like that kind of art is different than what I fancy I do, back when I occasionally wrote. :-) And I probably am more aware of this than I should be, because my backdrop is different from a lot of fans younger than myself, and really do try not to let my situation turn into a blind spot.

Even so, I worry and struggle to find the balance between letting art turn a profit and be reduced to a strictly commercial venture. It's never been anything I've been even remotely drawn to do, and human nature being what it is, I probably do think more highly of the kind of thing I'd choose to do. But I don't want to be unfair, and I don't want to think just because art is paid for and written/drawn to order, it's some sort of assembly-line output with no heart put into it by the writer and artist. Just like an artisan shoemaker might take great pride in his art and work his hardest on each shoe he crafts, even if he must sell it to make ends meet. Somehow, I suspect thinking about this in terms of commodification, the dangers of evaluating artistry using market standards and the ways in which it can still have a value beyond commodity even if it’s bought and sold, might help. But I've not quit worked out what insight that kind of thought would provide, if any.

Do you think there's a special value in fandom or art generally that's not made to be bought and sold? Or am I perhaps making too big a deal over nothing and revealing myself to be an old fuddy-duddy in the process. (It's always a possibility!) I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts if you have any to share.

#philosophy #fandom #commodification #marta blathers

2 notes · View notes

athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

Text

Tragedy of Gatsby

PART TWENTY-FOUR OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: serious angst, anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 6.1K

Summary: Jess walks his mother down the aisle. Later, he and Ella address issues from their past.

Raucous laughter filled the diner as Liz had her makeshift bachelorette party. Ella could only roll her eyes at the obnoxious women, only growing louder as they drank more wine, along with whatever the one dressed in loud shades of pink, Carrie, had in her flask. With the wedding fast approaching, only one more day, Luke and Ella were doing their best to keep calm. They had closed Luke’s for the afternoon to allow for the modest party, consisting of four middle-aged Stars Hollow women drinking and uttering cliché nonsense. But, they had also (somehow) been assigned the task of making the food for the festivities. Ella had no idea where Luke had acquired the large, silver rotisserie cooker which sat on the diner counter, and she was almost too afraid to ask.

Large turkey legs spun around inside the hot plexiglass contraption, and more sat on a plate on the counter. Ella stood with the manual in her hands, a crease of concentration between her brows, trying to decipher the vague instructions. Though Luke was asking Liz if she had any idea what to do, Ella knew the effort was futile. As with most of the other wedding plans, Liz would be offering little to no help. Her personality wasn’t totally asinine, but Ella was beginning to understand the many complaints Luke and Jess had about Liz. She certainly wasn’t amazing at problem-solving.

“Let me see it,” Luke said, putting the roasted leg which he had held up to examine back down on the plate. He reached his hand out for the manual.

Ella sighed, not looking up at him. “You already read it. You need fresh eyes.”

“I think I saw something that’ll help. I’ll try and find it,” Luke continued, extending his hand to her further.

Shrugging, Ella finally tore her eyes away from the words and handed the book back over to him. “Godspeed, boss.”

Just then, Jess appeared from behind the curtain and came over to the end of the counter. “I need to get some batteries. I’ll be back.”

“What? For your Scarface beeper?” Ella asked, eyebrows raised.

“Hey, don’t get distracted. You’ve got legs to cook,” Jess scolded playfully, but frowned as his mother called over to him. Seeing her within a five foot radius of alcohol was enough to put him slightly on edge.

“Girls, this is Jess,” Liz said, taking her son by the shoulders and over to the table to show him off to her friends.

Jess was met with a flirtatious chorus of “Hello handsome!” and other such greetings. And he immediately heard Ella snort back a laugh to his left. He shot her a glare and she feigned an innocent look.

“He’s gonna walk me down the aisle,” Liz said. “Is that cool, or what?”

Behind the counter, Ella raised her eyebrows in surprise. It was the first she was hearing of it.

“It’s no big deal,” Jess replied dismissively.

“It’s a very big deal,” Liz insisted, a hand still placed on his shoulder. Then, she turned back to Ella, who was staring quizzically into the rotisserie cooker. “And Ella’s filling in as my flower girl. I gave her one of my dresses and everything.”

“Oh, you’ll be great,” Carrie smiled at Ella through sips of her drink. “And those Renaissance dresses Liz showed me? They’ll squish your boobs right up to your neck! It’ll be fabulous!”

“Yeah,” Ella said flatly, sighing. After trying on the dress last night with Lorelai, they’d taken up the length and taken in the sides. But the corset was relatively static, unable to be adjusted. When laced up all the way, it almost completely cut off her ability to breathe. “I’m just counting down the seconds.”

Outside, a man in a UPS uniform, holding a large package, approached the door. Luke went over to accept the delivery, but it instantly became apparent that there was no package and the man was a stripper. Eyes widening, Ella quickly undid her apron and hung it on the hook in the kitchen.

“I’m taking a break,” she announced, rounding the corner of the counter to come up beside Jess.

Luke barely acknowledged her, still lost on what was about to happen. Without thinking, Jess grabbed Ella’s wrist gently to lead her out of the diner before the show could begin. It was clear from the scarlet flush on her cheeks and the amusement on her face that she didn’t want to bear witness to what was about to happen either.

“Have fun,” Jess muttered dejectedly to his uncle before brushing past him and escaping.

“Have fun with what?” Luke asked cluelessly behind them, but the door had already shut.

Ella erupted in a fit of laughter as Jess released her wrist, walking beside her and shaking his head in disbelief. Birds sung in the afternoon heat, and they went down towards the market, the streets lined with fresh produce and fragrant flowers. Eventually, Ella’s giggles subsided and she caught her breath.

“Luke really should get out more,” she said, letting her long hair out of its ponytail and running her hands through the waves.

Jess snorted. “Agreed. I’m pretty sure the only movie he’s ever seen is Bridge on the River Kwai.”

Pursing her lips, Ella shook her head. “Maybe that’s what he says. But he’s definitely seen more. How else could he keep up with Lorelai?”

“Good point.”

A comfortable pause passed between them as they neared the market, entering the air conditioning as Jess went off in search of batteries. Even after a couple years, Taylor still glared each time Jess came in the store. It was meant to look menacing, but instead it ended up as mostly cartoonish. Ella even shot him a teasing wave as they walked past. In some ways, Taylor felt about Ella the way Mrs. Kim did. She wore dark clothing and makeup, and created ghoulish artwork. And her dead mother, and additional complicated family members, did nothing to help her reputation among the other conservative townsfolk. Not like Ella cared, however; she knew people like Patty and Babette and Maury and Gypsy were the coolest ones. And they all liked her just fine.

“When the hell did batteries start getting so expensive?” Jess grumbled, picking up some generic AAs, skipping over the name brands.

Ella chuckled. “You sound like such a responsible adult.”

“Hardly,” Jess replied, leading the way to the checkout line. “If I was actually responsible, I’d leave New York. I live in one room with five other guys and I still barely make rent.”

“Ah, so the tragedy of Gatsby holds true?”

As he paid, Jess only chuckled in response. His eyes fell on the ‘Take a Penny, Leave a Penny’ jar while the cashier made change, and he smirked nostalgically. After so long, he could still hear Taylor’s accusations of his stealing every single coin in the jar. He had done it, of course. He just hadn’t expected such an intense response. Those early days in Stars Hollow had shown him just how boring such a sleepy town could be. In New York, there were bigger fish to fry than some kid taking pennies. But still, before they left, he dropped one penny into the familiar jar. For old time’s sake, he told himself. Ella noticed, of course, and raised a brow at him in askance.

He shrugged as they emerged back into the May sunshine. “What goes around comes around.”

Ella gave a bitter chuckle. “Not that karma bullshit.”

Jess clicked his tongue mockingly. “Kids these days. So cynical.”

“Whatever, James Dean,” Ella said, shaking her head.

For a moment, Jess’s breath seemed to catch in his throat. She hadn’t called him that name in such a long time. And suddenly, he was seventeen again, ditching school and mouthing off and making out with her to depressing records. But, then, he had to remind himself where he was. He was putting pennies in the jar. Walking his mother down the aisle. Reading the self-help book Luke had given him the night before after a long, strange lecture about the power of communication. Jess wanted to roll his eyes at every word when first starting the book, but he’d read almost half of it already, sitting up in his old bed. And he was beginning to absorb it, understand it. Biting down hard on his lip for a moment, Jess quieted the emotions which sprung up in his mind and only shot her a smirk.

“I am not going back to the diner any time soon. You wanna get some ice cream?” he asked, tucking the batteries into his pocket.

Nodding, Ella let a fond smile cross her face. Either she hadn’t noticed her nickname slip, or was brushing it off. “Sure. Seems like you’re finally developing a concept of weather.”

. . .

Sucking in her stomach, Ella regretted eating so much mint-chocolate-chip. Pretty in Pink played at a low volume on the small TV in the Gilmore living room, as Lorelai made the final alterations to Ella’s dress. Standing on a kitchen chair, Ella was off to the side of the couch so as not to block Rory and Sookie’s view of the movie. Along with playing substitute seamstress for the wedding, Lorelai would be meeting with Sookie about some Inn business later in the evening. Ella felt like she had been holding her arms out at her sides for hours, and her shoulders were starting to ache. But she bit back the heavy sigh which threatened to escape her mouth as Sooke, Lorelai, and Rory shot questions at her about Jess’s sudden reappearance. They were doing nothing to hide the suspicion in their voices.

“He’s really walking his mom down the aisle? Mr. Sid Vicious, Mr. Stealing-My-Beer-and Ditching-My-Dinner, Mr. Steal-Babette’s-Gnome-and-Fake-A-Murder-Outside-Doose’s is walking his mother down the aisle voluntarily?” Lorelai asked through the pins she held in her mouth, taking in the sides of the dress one final time.

“Anything else to add or are you done?” Ella’s voice was husky and breathless as she watched Jon Cryer dance around Molly Ringwald on screen, the corset tight but still manageable around her torso.

Rory chuckled. “You can’t deny all those pseudonyms are factually accurate.”

“And no longer timely, Ms. Amanpour,” Ella quipped flatly.

“But he still got in a fight with TJ at a strip club last night,” Lorelai piped in.

Ela rolled her eyes. “That was justified. And happened while he was reading Jane Austen in a strip club.”

“You’re grumpy tonight, kitten,” Sookie said, tilting her head over the back of the couch at Ella with a small pout.

“Comes with the lack of oxygen,” Ella replied.

Lorelai took a final pin from her mouth and stuck it in the hem at Ella’s side. “Why did you agree to this Renaissance nonsense, then?”

“Didn’t really agree to it. And when Liz brought it up, Luke seemed so happy. I just...couldn’t say no to them,” Ella explained.

Lorelai shot her a mischievous grin. “Ah, there’s that hidden heart of gold. What a shame that it’s three sizes too small.”

“I’m not losing any sleep over it,” Ella said.

Rory snickered.

“Hey, I’m not the only one trying to add a few years to Luke’s life this week,” Ella continued, stepping down from the chair, trying not to slip in her fishnets.

“What do you mean?” Sookie asked.

“Lorelai is Luke’s date,” Ella said. “A match made in heaven.”

Lorelai rolled her eyes. “We’re just going as friends.”

“It’s a good thing you’ve never been arrested. You’d never pass a polygraph,” Rory smiled, in on the teasing.

“Wicked, wicked girls,” Lorelai scolded with a dramatic gasp.

“Not quite the twins from The Shining, but close,” Sookie chimed in, agreeing.

“Twins indeed,” Lorelai said, straightening the corset, eyebrows raised.

Normally, Ella barely filled out a bodice. But, with the constricting powers of the corset, she had cleavage nearly up to the collarbone. She’d be lying if she said it wasn’t an interesting change from being nearly flat-chested, as she slowly got used to the pressure on her ribs.

“Just call me Bianca,” Ella announced in a dramatic Elizabethan accent, making circular gestures with her hands.

“Not Desdemona?” Rory asked.

Scrunching up her nose in thought, Ella shook her head. “No, definitely Bianca. I’d much rather slap Cassio than be murdered by Othello. Besides, I don’t think this dress is exactly Desdemona’s taste.”

. . .

The day bloomed hot and dry, the sun shining down from a cloudless sky. Ella rushed across town square from Patty’s to Luke’s. As she entered the air conditioning of the diner, she felt sweaty in her tight outfit, panting slightly. In the back of her mind, she worried her makeup would smudge beyond salvageability before the ceremony had even started. But soon, the cool evening would set in. And she kept her mind focused on the task at hand, trudging up the stairs to the apartment and knocking twice on the door. After a few moments, Jess came to greet her, dressed in all black. He blinked at her in surprise, then smirked.

“Hello, flower girl,” he said.

Scoffing dejectedly, she brushed past him into the apartment. But, as soon as she was in view of Luke’s side of the room, she turned back around with a look of disgust. TJ was shirtless, in nothing but some very form-fitting tights. Jess chuckled at the scowl which formed on her face and the blush on her cheeks.

“Jackass!” she scolded Jess playfully. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Didn’t exactly give me the chance, did you?” he asked, eyebrows raised as he made his way over to his duffel.

“Excuses,” she shot back.

“Alright, alright,” Luke piped up, exiting the bathroom and walking over to Ella in the kitchen. “What’s up, kid?”

Letting out a heavy sigh, she turned away from Jess and faced Luke, mouth set in a thin line. “I’ve been sent here to tell you that Liz’s dress ripped. But Lorelai is fixing it and everything is fine. She’ll just be a few minutes late. But no one’s getting left at the altar or anything.”

“What’d you say?” TJ chimed in, panicked, in his thick New Yorker accent.

“Nothing, Liz is just running a little late getting dressed. Go put your outfit on, buddy,” Luke said, reassuring.

Narrowing his eyes, TJ stared suspiciously at the three of them before finally giving a nod. He took the hanger which held his heavy Renaissance costume into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Ella was comforted by the fact that the next time she saw him he would more than likely be fully clothed.

“Nice tie,” Ella said, feeling odd seeing Luke out of his usual uniform. The black suit looked stiff on him, but his burgundy tie was surprisingly fashionable.

“Thanks,” Luke replied, almost begrudging, almost anxious.

Jess walked back over to the two of them near the kitchen table. He had a pale, yellowish button-up over his black t-shirt, yet to be buttoned. “He’s nervous.”

“I am not,” Luke argued.

“I bet Lorelai will think you look great,” Ella teased.

Luke rolled his eyes dramatically. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” Then, he went to deal with the shoes on his bed. The polish was practically a hundred years old, and its chunkiness wasn’t yielding the best results.

As Jess finished buttoning up his shirt, his gaze roamed over Ella. She wore a lavender, cap-sleeve dress, chiffon with a hem which stopped just above her knees. Over it, a silvery vest corset. Her usually messy hair was curled in long, golden ringlets, and it was done half-up, half-down. A few loose strands hung around her freckled face. But even though her lips were shiny with clear gloss, her eye makeup was dark and smudged in a grungy style as usual.

“You look nice,” Jess said with sincerity, nearly winded, breathless from the butterflies which flew around in his stomach.

Smiling shyly, Ella’s flush deepened. “Thank you. Don’t look so bad yourself, Mariano.”

He nodded humbly.

But then, Ella furrowed her brows and she reached up to straighten the collar of his shirt. “You have to remember to fold these right. How many times, Jess?”

Ignoring the electricity he felt at her touch, he looked down and saw the hefty black Doc Martens on her feet. He regained his confident smirk, smug.

“No heels?” he asked as she took a step back from him, satisfied with his shirt.

She mirrored his expression, conspiratory. “Never, when I can help it. Last time I wore them was at Sookie's wedding. One of the worst decisions of my life. And, hey, Liz said I could wear my own shoes.”

Jess snickered, picking his watch up from the kitchen table and fastening it around his wrist. “Wait to cheat the system.”

“Thank you very much,” she replied with a little bow. “See you out there?”

“Oh, can’t wait,” Jess drawled, feigning excitement.

“Hey. Game face, Mariano,” Ella said, pointing a finger at him as she made for the front door. “I’ll save you a seat.”

. . .

With Liz’s dress finally fixed, Ella jogged over to the town square from Patty’s, hearing the strings and flute players biding their time, keeping the moderate crowd entertained. So many people were wearing costumes, flowers in their hair, and bells on their shoes. She would have rolled her eyes, but she was clutching at her middle and nearly doubled over when she finally made it to the end of the aisle, trying to catch her breath. Jess stood in waiting for his mother, and his eyes widened when he saw Ella panting.

Bringing his hand to her arm as he crouched down, he furrowed his brows at her. “Woah, Stevens, are you okay?”

Nodding, Ella swallowed dryly and straightened up. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine, Mariano. It’s just hot. And I’m only getting about half the air I normally do. I’m dizzy, that’s all.”

“You wanna sit down? I can get you some water?” he asked. Though she was usually pale, her face was almost never so ghostly.

She shook her head just as the music kicked up, signaling her cue. Grabbing the basket of rose petals from the ground near the end of the aisle, she shot him one final smirk in an attempt at reassurance. “Really, I’m okay. And I’m on. Break a leg.”

“Right back at ya,” he said, a doubtful eyebrow raised.

And, in a mortifying turn, Ella skipped down the aisle and added in a few twirls, tossing petals as she went. It wasn’t exactly dancing, which was good for the audience’s sake. They would otherwise have been doomed. But her cheeks flamed and her stomach squirmed with nerves, fearing a stumble. Lorelai flashed her an encouraging smile as she went, and soon enough Ella was taking her seat in the front row, one empty chair for Jess to her right. In all honesty, she was surprised she had actually pulled it off. When she’d signed on to be the flower girl, she’d understood the role as merely walking. She’d almost chickened out when Liz had shown her the moves the night before. But, somehow, she had survived. She didn’t believe in miracles, but it came pretty close.

Then, Liz rode in at the back of the arrangement on a large chair, rolled by two men in pantaloons. Everyone rose. Jess took her by the arm, leading her down the way. Ella had to admit, Liz looked amazing in her wedding dress. And Jess, who’d had only a shy, stoic expression before, even managed a small smile as his mother kissed him on the cheek. Soon, she stepped next to TJ, and the crowd was seated again. Ella looked at Jess, as he came to her side, with a tiny smirk.

“You did well. Very firm gait,” she whispered.

Jess rolled his eyes, but his smile stayed. “Whatever, Stevens. We both know you were seconds away from breaking your nose.”

She didn’t reply, but instead licked the pad of her thumb and smudged Liz’s lipstick off his cheek.

Jess grimaced. “Ugh, Eleanor spit.”

“Ah, sweet revenge,” she said, a wicked grin growing on her lips.

Once the officiant began playing some antiquated string instrument and singing a silly song about love, all bets were off. Ella could hear Luke and Lorelai fighting laughter behind her. She bit at her thumbnail to keep from giggling, but eventually had to hide her flushed face with one hand and grip Jess’s knee with the other for dear life. Even Jess had to bite down on his bottom lip to ward off an amused outburst.

. . .

Stars shone brightly from the dark sky, and Ella gazed up at them as the man sitting next to her and Jess droned on about his time in prison. Having had the opportunity to meet many of Liz and TJ’s acquaintances from the Renaissance fair over the course of the night, Ella was relatively sure she would not be donning her corset dress again any time soon. Though Liz had assured her she could keep it, since it was now fitted just right to her frame. Warm air blew past them in pleasant breezes, and it made Ella’s heart feel calm, soothed. Summer was coming. She couldn’t wait. Swims in the lake (without the current of an ocean), sitting out in the gazebo with Lane, drawing the floral arrangements which would adorn town.

Eventually, the man with the tank top and shaved head rose from his seat, and left Ella and Jess alone at the table. Stray, empty plates peppered the gingham tablecloth. Deeply breathing in the clean air, Ella looked over at Jess in the glowy night, lit up by the extra twinkle lights around the makeshift dance floor which had been set up near the gazebo. Past Jess, she could see Luke and Lorelai talking and laughing amongst themselves at their table. A smirk crossed Ella’s face. She hoped it would stick this time, with Luke officially divorced and Lorelai having broken up with her rich, snotty boyfriend, Jason Stiles. Ella had never met him, of course. But from what Rory had told her, Jason had been all wrong for Lorelai.

Clearing her throat, Ella faced Jess again and propped her head up on her palm, elbow on the table. “You okay?”

Jess, sitting hunched over his nearly empty plate of food, looked up at her and shrugged. He leaned back against the back of the folding chair he sat in. “Well, I’m not bleeding or anything. Are you still dizzy?”

“No, I think my vitality has been restored,” Ella said, sighing slightly.

“Well, I know the sunlight hurts you, Morticia.”

Snorting a laugh, Ella straightened up and her tone turned more serious. “Really, though. You’re okay with her getting married again?”

Chewing on his lip, Jess shrugged once again. “I’m okay. She’s gonna do what she’s gonna do. And this one is better than some of the others. Though that bar is pretty fucking low.”

She nodded. “Alright. You can tell me, y’know. It’s okay if you’re not okay.”

“I know,” he said shortly, though not unkindly.

“Good. Glad we sorted that out, then,” she said, smiling genuinely at him.

He gave a small smile back. “Me too, Stevens.”

Suddenly, Kirk came over the loudspeaker soundsystem and announced Liz and TJ were about to have their first dance. The sweet guitar tune which played was not one Ella could instantly recognize, but she didn’t hate it. From the corner of her eye, she saw Luke and Lorelai over near the side of the dance floor. Jess watched Ella gaze out around the crowd, starlight glinting in her hazel eyes. He felt so content, and his mind wandered to the now-finished self help book sitting on the table near his teenage bed. But, before he could open his mouth to speak, Ella turned back to him.

“This song isn’t half bad,” she said. “I almost expected a Gregorian chant, but I guess they’re not quite that committed to the theme.”

“I’ll be sure to mention that in the Gazette review tomorrow,” Jess quipped. “I figured you’d think this was too happy.”

She shook her head slightly, pursing her lips. “Maybe the lyrics are happy, but it sounds sad. The music feels...depressed. Fuck, that doesn’t make sense. Maybe I do have heat stroke, after all.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you. And you tell me I don’t drink enough water,” Jess chided, shaking his head.

Ella rolled her eyes. With a smirk, she pointed across the square towards Luke and Lorelai. “Look at those crazy kids.”

Jess looked at the two of them, Lorelai settling against Luke as they danced slowly together. He laughed under his breath. Maybe Luke was taking the book’s advice, too. It still shocked Jess that his uncle had been proactive enough to seek relationship guidance. Maybe Luke would no longer be the most dysfunctional person he knew.

“Took them long enough,” Jess said knowingly.

Humming in agreement, Ella leaned back in her chair, shifting to get more comfortable. She absolutely couldn’t wait to take the dress off. “But, hey, Luke can waltz a hell of a lot better than I ever would’ve been able to.”

“Agreed,” Jess scoffed. “In those boots? You’d break all ten of my toes.”

“Hey, you managed to come away from the Distillers concert unscathed,” she said pointedly, eyebrows raised.

“The exception that proves the rule.”

She snickered but didn’t retort, instead yawning against the back of her hand. Such a costume in the nighttime heat also seemed to be making her drowsy. After a moment, Jess swallowed down his pride. He remembered Lorelai’s words, Luke’s words, and the words in the book telling him he deserved love. Jess put a hesitant arm around her, and before she knew what she was doing, instinct taking over, she brought her head to his shoulder. And it was so familiar. Watching the townspeople of Stars Hollow, saying nothing but feeling everything. And, just for a minute, she quieted the thoughts which swirled around in her mind. She didn’t worry, she didn’t bite her nails, she didn’t clutch her necklace. She only let herself feel the swell of her heart.

. . .

In the early hours of the morning, Ella was glad to have some silence in the house. Hep Alien was out at a gig, performing and celebrating the success of Mrs. Kim’s visit to finally reconcile with Lane. She’d come over to see her daughter’s new life during the wedding, when Ella was out. Though Zach and Brian had combed their hair and put on ironed shirts, Mrs. Kim already knew enough about Ella to never trust her. So, before she left for the wedding, Ella parked her car outside the diner and left no traces of her presence in the living room. As Ella was coming back through the front door, already unlacing her corset, the three band members were getting ready to rock, as Lane put it. With Dave out at college in California, they were still missing a guitar player, but they’d booked something at a random bar near New Haven. They were relying on their minimalist White Stripes covers for the time being. Lane had given Ella an excited squeal and a big hug before leaving, offering her friend a brief rundown of the evening. Mrs. Kim still wasn’t overjoyed, but she had at least done a walkthrough of the house.

Finally able to breathe again, Ella had cracked open nearly every window of the house to let the cool breeze in. Her hair was damp and loose from a shower. She was dressed in an old Pixies t-shirt and some plaid pajama bottoms, more comfortable than she’d been all day. It had been taxing, but more fun than she thought it would be.

And Jess. So different but so easy. A quick goodbye. Apparently, though, he had just gotten a cellphone. He had given her his number, after a fair amount of her teasing. She’d promised to take advantage of Luke’s house phone during her breaks. As hard as it was to watch him disappear into the dark diner, parting ways as she walked back to Lane’s and he went to pack up his stuff, at least she knew it wouldn’t be the last time they spoke. She could’ve sworn, as they sat for nearly an hour with her head on his shoulder, she had been transported back in time. Somehow, she had forgotten just how safe Jess could make her feel. How right. But with it brought confusion.

He lived miles away, he left without a word, didn’t speak to her for over a month. If she hadn’t grabbed the phone from Luke, would he have ever tried to get in touch with her at all? No matter how much she wanted to be with him, she couldn’t forget what had happened, how it felt. Despite what Lorelai and Rory may have thought, calling to check in on her best friend every once in a while was different than forgiving the past.

Snuggled beneath a thin throw blanket, Ella doodled inside a copy of The Waves. She had tried to focus on the words for only a few minutes before giving up entirely. Her thoughts were too loud; she couldn’t quiet them down enough for fiction, even modernist. Instead, she drew a Renaissance scene, a grim reaper sneaking up on a gaggle of beautiful, corseted women.

She furrowed her brows when a knock sounded on the door. It was Lane’s house, and she hadn’t mentioned expecting anyone. Nonetheless, Ella tossed her book and blanket aside, crossing her arms over her braless chest defensively. But, she found only Jess on the doorstep. He had donned his leather jacket and stood with his hands shoved in his pockets. His expression was largely unreadable, but she almost thought she saw a shine in his brown eyes.

“Hey, Mariano,” she greeted him, smiling. “Is something wrong? Is it that rust bucket again? If you need a place to crash while Gypsy’s fixing it, I’m sure Lane would be okay if we shared the couch, or the floor maybe-”

“Can I come in?” he asked suddenly, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Ella nodded, face falling at his anxious tone. She stepped aside for him to pass. “Sure. Everyone else is at a gig near Yale. Just Virginia Woolf and I tonight.”

A half-hearted smirk crossed his face as she shut the door and went back to the couch. She gestured for him to sit in the armchair across from her. It was a wonder how the band managed to fit any furniture in the living room at all with the drums and other gear set up on the wall near the front door.

“What’s wrong, Jess? Did something happen?” she asked gently, tilting her head at him.

He swallowed harshly, running a hand over his mouth. “I need to talk to you.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, here I am.”

Breathing a heavy sigh, he took a long pause, then finally locked eyes with her. “Come with me.”

“What?” she asked, chuckling slightly in disbelief. Was he joking?

“To New York. We could work, live together, be together. God knows they would love your art up there. You could sell it on the street if you needed to, and I know people would buy it. I love you, Elle. I love you so much and I wanna be with you.” He gestured passionately and spoke with such conviction that Ella was almost rendered speechless with shock.

Gathering her thoughts, she began to shake her head slowly. “You don’t love me, Jess.”

“Of course I do!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been in love with you for two years!”

She gave him a doubtful glance.

“Since that day in the gazebo! I’ve thought about it over and over! When you took my hand, and you showed me the hydrangeas through the hole in the roof, and you told me you didn’t care whether I went to college! And you took off your heels to walk home, right before you left for New Britain. And I’ve loved you every second of every day since!”

“Oh really?” she asked, voice growing tense. “You loved me when you left without saying anything? You loved me when I went a month without knowing whether you were alive or dead? You loved me then?”

Jess bowed his head slightly and sighed again. “Yes. I loved you so much then. And I love you now. I’m sorry, Elle. Okay? I know you couldn’t count on me then, but you can now! I’m here! I’m right here!”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella only kept shaking her head. “Jess, you can’t do this to me. I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can. You can do anything. You’ve always been able to do anything! And I know you want this, too! I know you love me!” he continued, tone pleading now.

Tears sprang up and spilled over in Ella’s eyes before she could stop them, and she wiped angrily at her cheeks. “Please stop.”

“Look, I know you’re scared-”

“No, Jess, you don’t know!” she interrupted, voice raised to a yell. “You don’t know! You were gone. Overnight. Just gone. And you didn’t call for a month! I didn’t know where you were! You left! Just like everyone! Just like my fucking mom! And my older brother! And you broke my heart!”

For a moment, the air stood stagnant and charged between them. Crickets and cicadas hummed outside. Stray yells, noises from the wedding party, still sounded in the distance. Jess sniffled and blinked back tears. Ella wiped furiously at her cheeks. Soon, she had her elbows on her knees and was hiding her face in her hands.

“Eleanor, please, I’m so sorry! I was so lost! Luke kicked me out and I didn’t know what to do! And I did leave you. But not forever!”

Ella gave a muffled, bitter chuckle.

“I wanna be with you! For the rest of my life! But not here. Not in this place. Not in Stars Hollow! We can start new!” he said, voice strained with emotion.

Raising her head to face him again, Ella clutched at her necklace. “I can’t leave, Jess. My little brother’s still here, I’m starting summer classes in a week, I-”

“It’s not about him. It’s not about them. It’s about you and me. It’s about what we want! You already left your place! Everything you own is in your backseat! You’re ready! Let’s go!”

“No!”

“I love you, Elle. I know you love me too! You say you don’t believe in it, but I know it’s not true! You love me and we love each other and we’re supposed to be together! Let’s go!”

Still, she shook her head vehemently.

“No, Jess!” she shouted, louder than she expected to. She had stopped trying to hide her crying. Her tone was cracked. “No! You don’t get to come here and try to save me! I don’t need any saving! We said no cop outs! We said we were gonna try! And you left without trying! I’m not falling for it again!”

Jess, too, had tears streaming down his cheeks. “Eleanor, I can fix it. I promise, I-”

“Don’t Eleanor me, Jess! It’s too late! You promised before and you left me! Fuck and run! And I should’ve known!” she exclaimed hotly. She raked her hands through her hair, pausing, but it seemed Jess might have nothing more to say. “I think you should go.”

His jaw tensed, and a crestfallen look appeared on his face. “Eleanor, you know we love each other. Please...please just come with me.”

Breathing a broken sigh, Ella averted her gaze from him, dejected. Her heart twisted painfully. She almost couldn’t take it. She stared at her hands, wringing them together in her lap. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Jess. Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

Mouth agape, Jess stared at her in the lamplight. She loved him. He loved her. They both knew it. But her voice, with no affection for him in it. Nothing at all but sorrow. And it clicked in his mind. He would never have her again. He’d done exactly what he’d promised not to do; and he would forever pay the price. She could hold a grudge like it was her job, Luke had said. Patience, Lorelai had said. He hadn’t listened. Maybe he deserved love, as the book said, but not from her. As he walked out without another word, he didn’t slam the door. He shut it gently behind him. And a cold stone of grief sat heavy in Ella’s stomach. She sat on the couch, weeping, until the birds chirped and the sun rose.

#jess mariano fanfiction #jess mariano au #jess mariano imagines #jess mariano stories #jess mariano #jess #mariano #gilmore girls fanfiction #gilmore girls au #gilmore girls imagines #gilmore girls stories #gilmore girls #jess mariano x oc #jess mariano x original character #original character stories #original character #luke danes #rory gilmore #lorelai gilmore

25 notes · View notes

emberfrostlovesloki · 4 years

Text

To Be Held Chapter 2 - Running Out

Here is chapter two!

Chapter warnings: Description of kidnapping. Mention of torture. Homophobic ideology. Description of sexual assault.

Spencer was on his side sleeping when his phone rang with a piercing shrill. He rolled onto his back, and he extended his long arm out to reach the phone on the bedside table. He didn’t even look at the name when he answered, “Reid here.” When he heard the voice of Garcia he sat up, suddenly awake. “Hey genius. Sorry for disturbing your beauty sleep, but I got your girl. “Give me a second.” Spencer said while turning on the lamp above his bed. The light hurt his eyes. He grabbed his notepad and a pen and sat down cross legged on the mattress. “I’m ready.” “Well, Venus Rising’s other name is Levi Hill. She’s an English lecturer at...” Before Penelope could get the rest of her sentence out Spencer filled in the last few words with, “Washington State University.” The computer whiz laughed and responded with, “Bingo. She teaches Queer theory, a class on Milton, and early British literature.” Spencer jotted down the information, and asked, “How long has she been teaching in Washington?” “Three years. It looks like she moved here from Ohio after getting her masters degree at Notre Dame. She’s twenty three, and before you ask, she doesn’t have a big social media presence, so I can’t find that much more about her.” Spencer replied to this tide of information with, “You did a great job Garcia. With this information we have a connection between Mr. Pyne at the university and Ms. Grost at Fantasy Girls.” Spencer was always impressed by Penelope, and sometimes he was scared of her too. “Anything for a fellow friend with a superior intellect.” Garcia said, then continued by saying, “I’ve sent Ms. Hill’s profile from Washington State over to you, along with her LinkedIn, and just for a bonus, her dissertation. One last thing you might want to know, pretty boy, she’s got office hours at 1:00 tomorrow, office number 212.” Spencer checked his email and found the attachments. “Thanks again.” Spencer said. Garcia replied happily, “No problem, now it’s my time for my beauty sleep.” The line dropped, and Spencer ran his hand through his hair. The clock read 5:00 A.M. ‘At least I have a few hours to read over this material’ Spencer mused. He grabbed his glasses off the table. Got up and started making some of the lousy instant coffee. It was going to be a long day.

The team entered the East precinct of the Seattle Police Department at 8:00 A.M. No one had really slept, which was usual in an active case. J.J. kindly handed Hotch, Gideon and Spencer a cup of coffee before pouring her own. As the coffee crew assembled around the milk and sugar. Gideon was adding a packet of sugar and stated, “This unsub feels very unstable to me, yet he’s methodical and calculated. It doesn’t make sense.” Hotch looked up from stirring the milk into his coffee and replied, “The unsub must be mission-oriented. We’re looking for someone that has a problem with religion or politics. He probably holds extreme beliefs.” The four members of the BAU moved into the room they had set up in and jumped into their assignments. Hotchner started by saying “I’m meeting Mr. and Mrs. Pyne at 10:00 A.M. today. Elle, will you come with me?” Elle nodded and said, “Of course.” Gideon then said, “I’m going down to the coroner's office to look at the death certificates of the victims, then I’ll go over to the forensic labs that ran the test on the orange fibers found at the scene. Spencer will join me. I might need your expertise at the lab.” “Actually I’m meeting a potential target that the unsub might have had contact with. Her name is Levi Hill. She’s a professor at Washington State, and an employee of Fantasy Girls.” The team looked at him, surprised that he had found a connection between the two victims. Spencer continued, “I was hoping J.J. would go with me. I’ll go to the coroner’s office with you, but Ms. Hill’s office hours are at 1:00 P.M. and I plan on being on time.” Gideon chuckled that Spencer hadn’t just said he couldn’t go with him to the lab. But Jason also knew that Spencer didn’t like conflict and avoided it when possible. He smiled at the genius while saying, “Sounds like a plan.” J.J. finished the conversation by saying, “I’ve set up a press conference at 5:00 P.M. today. The media is getting restless and it would be best if we give them, and the police a profile by then.” The team grouped up and into their assignments and headed out to the cars.

Mr. and Mrs. Pyne lived in a modest house on the edge of town. Hotchner and Elle were seated on a couch which faced another couch facing them, where the Pyne’s sat. Pictures were spread across the coffee table that showed Jefferson Pyne; the photos ranged from the smiling blond haired boy as a child to an adult version of the child standing outside of a dorm on the Washington State campus. “So, Mrs. Pyne, you said that Jefferson was doing well in school? Did you notice any changes in him in his sophomore year? Were there people who disliked your son?” Mrs. Pyne swallowed and wiped at a tear that fell down her face. Before she responded Mr. Pyne squeezed her hand reassuringly. She started by saying, “Jefferson excelled in school. He loved living in the dorms and meeting new people. During his freshman year he came out as gay.” Before Mrs. Pyne could continue, Hotchner interjected, “And how did you react to your son’s coming out?” Mr. Pyne smiled a little and said, “We try to be very open in this household. We told our son when he was younger that he could love anyone he wanted when he grew up.” After Mr. Pyne finished answering the question his wife continued by saying, “I was so proud of him the day he told me that he was gay, so, so proud.” Mrs. Pyne then bent over with a sob. She tried to hold back her tears, but they flowed down her cheeks. Mr. Pyne held her close to him and continued answering the questions with, “In Jefferson’s sophomore year he moved back home and commuted to school everyday. He wanted to live in an apartment, but we were having some financial troubles and it would be much cheaper. Mr. Pyne stood, allowing his wife to sit and gather her emotions. He gestured for Elle and Hotch to follow him. The trio walked up the stairs to the second story of the house. Mr. Pyne opened the second door on the left and said, “This room was Jefferson’s. We haven’t moved much in here except for some of the photos you saw downstairs. We’ll be downstairs, take all the time you need.” Mr. Pyne stepped out of the room and walked down the stairs, and went back in the direction of Mrs. Pyne.

The bedroom had a bed, desk and lamp. A pride flag adorned the wall next to a BYX banner. Hotch looked around the room and noticed the banner. “What fraternity is BYX? I haven’t heard of it before?” He looked to Elle. She was examining the book shelf that held a lot of college textbooks. She replied, “BYX stands for Brothers Under Christ. It’s a Christian fraternity that is known for their service to the community.” Elle didn’t know how much she believed in Christian fraternities or sororities, but she had a feeling about Jefferson. She told Hotch, “I don’t see anything suspicious about this kid. I suppose that he could be getting some backlash for coming out, but other than that, I don’t think he had enemies.” Hotch replied, “I agree. The parents don’t seem like likely suspects. Let’s go down and look at Jefferson’s laptop. If he was getting hate for being gay we might see it online.” The pair of agents stepped out of the room. Elle gingerly closed the door to Jefferson’s room and followed Aaron down the stairs into the living room.

The coroner’s office was very cold inside. Spencer folded his arms over his chest. Conserving the heat between his arms, shirt and maroon vest, and his body. After a minute an older man walked toward them. The man extended a hand toward Jason and said, “I’m doctor Stanley. I examined the bodies and wrote the cause of death” Gideon retracted his hand and said, “My name is Agent Gideon, and this is Dr. Reid.” Dr. Stanley took the time to look at Reid with unbelief. Stanley even rolled his eyes until Jason asked, “Do you have the files on Mr. Pyne and Ms. Grost ready for us?” The older doctor said, “Follow me.” He turned on his heel and walked quickly down a white tiled hallway. Spencer and Gideon followed behind him. Stanley unlocked a room that held a metal table and chairs. On the table lay two files. Stanley said, “Here are the files, if you have any questions you can page me.” With that being said the coroner walked away. Reid couldn’t help but sarcastically say, “What a professional man.” Gideon replied, “Agreed.” In the same tone as Spencer. The two men sat down, each grabbing a file off the table. After fifteen minutes of silently reading Spencer found something odd in the report on Ms. Grost. “Gideon, it says in the report that we got at headquarters that she had been raped. In Dr. Stanley’s report he only states that “‘the body was bruised in the primary sexual organs. If she was raped, why wouldn’t he have written that?” Gideon looked at the page that Spencer had handed him and replied, “Let’s find out,” while punching the button to Dr. Stanley’s pager.

Stanley walked reluctantly into the room with Spencer and Gideon. “Did you have a question?” the older man asked with condescension, looking at Spencer as he asked. Spencer looked back at the doctor unfazed and said, “I was wondering why in one report rape was explicitly stated, but in your analysis of the body you don’t?” Stanley cleared his throat and responded by saying, “The body hadn’t been penetrated by male genitalia. It was clear that an object was used. Under certain definitions that would not be considered rape.” Spencer looked a little sick at this information, and Gideon was angry. Jason stood, holding the page in his hand pushing it in front of the coroner. “You didn’t think it was important to tell us that the victim had been raped with an object instead of a dick.” Gideon breathed out harshly and turned to Spencer saying, “We have the information we need. Let’s go.” Jason’s tone calmed when he looked at Reid. Reid made him feel like a father again, and he couldn't let himself be mad around the younger agent. Spencer stood and neatly placed the folders on top of eachother on the table. As He and Gideon walked toward the door. Before Reid left the room he turned to Dr. Stanley and stated cooly, “I’ll be talking to your superior when this is over, about your apparent lack of empathy and understanding of medical terms dealing with trauma.” With that Spencer turned on his heel and left the cold room behind. As he and Gideon walked to the car Reid took a moment to close his eyes and feel the sun on his skin. The long night was getting to him.

In an unknown location a cabin surrounded by trees came to life with a shrill cry. Inside a man was tied to a wooden table. His legs and arms were bound in the shape of the cross. A figure dangled a cross above the body of the man who was tied down. “God told me that I should give you the chance to repent. You claim to be a man of God, preaching his word to those people who will burn in hell. It’s heretical!” The tormented man breathed laboredly, and coughed up some blood. The man stammered out shakely, “God states that he loves all people. Therefore I practice giving love to all people .” The man standing over the preacher laughed grimily and responded to his captive comment by saying, “God said that there would be false teachers in the end times, what a blessing I’ve found one. Now repent, or I’ll send you to the pit.” The preacher couldn’t say anymore, he was in so much pain that his mind couldn’t put words together anymore. Before the pastor passed out from the exhaustion of his position, he thought, ‘Lord save me. Lord.”

Gideon dropped Spencer off outside the main campus of Washington State University. Just as Spencer got to the student union he spotted J.J. standing outside the campus bookstore. When J.J. noticed him, she walked to him, and he asked, “How was it today in the station?” J.J. sighed at the memory and said, “The press had so many questions that are going to be answered in four hours if they were just patient. Instead I was forced to copy and paste the same response to fifteen different outlets.” Spencer had spotted the coffee shop above the bookstore and checked his watch, which read 12:25 P.M. “That does sound very boring. How would you feel about grabbing a coffee before going to office hours?” J.J. smiled at the idea and agreed. The two of them climbed the stairs. The date to the football game had made it clear that she and Spencer weren’t meant for eachother. But that didn’t invalidate their friendship. With coffees in hand the duo from the BAU found the English building and waited outside office 212. Spencer was leaning against the doorframe reading a basic philosophy book when he heard footsteps coming their way. He closed the book and stashed in his shoulder bag. The young women who walked toward her office didn’t look like what J.J. or Spencer had expected. “May I help you?” Professor Hill asked as she attempted to grab the keys to her office while holding a large box of blue exam books. Spencer pulled out his badge and said, “I’m Dr. Reid and this is agent Jareau. We’re from the Behavior Analysis Unit from the FBI. We have a few questions for you profesor Hill.” Ms. Hill looked surprised for a second, but she quickly replied with, “It’s nice to meet you Dr. Reid, and you agent Jareau. If you give me a second, we can go into my office. I’m happy to answer any questions you have.” Spencer quickly put his badge away and offered to hold the blue books. With the package out of her hands, Ms. Hill was able to grab her keys from her backpack and quickly unlocked the door to her office. She flipped on an office light and plugged in two lamps on each side of the desk, lastly she pulled a chair from one wall and placed it next to another chair at the desk. After she had finished all this she said, “Come in.” J.J. went in and took a seat, Spencer followed. He shut the door to the office with his foot, still holding the box of empty exam books. “I can take those now, thank you.” She took the box out of Spencer’s hands and placed it on an empty shelf of an overflowing bookcase. She sighed at the sight of the exams and then sat in the chair across from the agents, just as Spencer took his seat.

With notepad and pen at the ready Spencer began the interview with, “How long have you been living in Seattle Professor Hill?” Ms. Hill replied, “I’ve been living here for three years now. I was offered an adjunct position at the university during my final semester at Notre Dame.” Next, J.J. asked, “When did you start working at Fantasy Girls?” At this question Hill’s eyes briefly glanced over to her Master’s degree hanging on the wall before she looked at J.J. and said, “My second semester of teaching at this university made me realize that I wasn’t going to pay off my student loans as a professor. Even with financial aid and scholarships my debt after school was more than I could pay off in twenty years with my current position. In December I got an advancement in the University and I signed up to work at Fantasy Girls.” Spencer nodded his head at hearing about needing to pay off debt. Although he was fortunate that his parents had paid for his education, he knew people that were consumed with debt for the rest of their lives, it destroyed them. Spencer continued the conversation by inquiring, “Were you friends with Sydney Grost, or was she just a colleague?” Hill smiled at the question and said, “I remember my first night hosting; I had a client that was very insistent that I go back to his apartment with him. Well Sydney walked over to him and said, “‘If you keep harassing her, I’ll go over to your apartment and break every window I see with a brick.’” Sydney was very protective of all the girls. She and I worked a lot of jobs together and we’d always get coffee at the end of the night. Sit and talk about what we were doing tomorrow. She was great.” As Hill finished the answer she took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. It was clearly an attempt to stop herself from crying. Spencer looked away from the professor for a second too, not wanting to make her feel awkward. J.J. then asked kindly, “I know this is a sensitive question, but have you, Sydney, or any other women you work with gone back to a client’s apartment or house?” Ms. Hill ran her hand through her short hair. She took another breath and looked at J.J, and said, “The people I work with, they're like a family. We see each other at least three times a week. We see each other nude, or almost nude, and we complain about our lives. Whether or not some of the escorts have worked in that way I can’t say with certainty. We have to have some boundaries and that’s one of them.” She looked to J.J. to see if that was enough, “I’m sorry I have to ask this, but have you solicited sex after work?” J.J. did feel horrible having to ask a question like that. The blond agent knew that the work paid and therefore had to ask. Hill shook her head before answering, “No. I’ve never wanted to risk my position, not even for that much money.” J.J. nodded and jotted down the answer. Spencer placed his head on the side of his hand and tried to think of something he was forgetting. He thought for a moment, and then he it hit him, “‘social media.’” After realizing there was something strange about the professor’s media he quickly asked, “You don’t really have any social media. Is there someone you’re trying to avoid, or get away from?” Ms. Hill replied, “Being an escort isn’t really seen as a moral profession. If anyone found out what I do I’d lose my job, my friends in church and the opportunities I might have once I can move forward from here. The only person I’m trying to actively avoid is my father, but he lives in Florida, so I doubt he’s trying to find out where I am.” J.J. then said, “I think you’ve given us a lot of good information Professor Hill. I know you have class in twenty minutes. We’ll get out of your hair and let you get ready for that. Thank you so much for your time.” Ms. Hill smiled and wrote something down on a sticky note. As she handed the note to J.J. she said, “Here’s my cell number, email, and schedule for my other job. I hope you find the person who’s doing this, and stay safe.” When she finished saying this she stood and extended her hand to J.J. and Spencer. The FBI agents stood and Spencer opened the door for J.J. As the blond agent stepped out Spence pulled out his card and handed it to Hill and said, “If you see anything weird, or you feel unsafe, feel free to call me.” Ms. Hill smiled and said, “Thank you Dr. Reid.”

Gideon had picked up the results from the orange fibers. They had from a basic rope and could be bought at any hardware store in town. Although that lead had been disappointing Jason hoped that once Reid had a loot at the retort he would have more input on the evidence. As he was leaving the lab he got a call from Chief Best. “Gideon here.” The leader of the BAU listened for a moment before quickly picking up the forensic evidence and ran out of the lab. As he slid the seat of his car Jason replied to the police chief by saying, “I’ll let the team know, and I’m headed to the house right now.

The latest crime scene had new features that the others had not. Firstly, it was fresher than the other scenes. Secondly the victim had enemies in the community. James Reeve was a pastor and had been scrutinized by some of the other churches for teaching a doctrine of tolerance for some communities often marginalized by denominations of the Christian faith. As Morgan walked around the room he commented, “Reeve’s church is close to the Washington State Campus. It’s the central point to all of these cases.” Reid was confused by the new victim and said, “Why would the unsub take a college pastor? It doesn’t fit the profile. It’s likely the unsub is around the same age as Mr. Reeve. There seem to be a thousand directions this case could go.” Hotchern replied, “If the unsub is changing his targets every time he finds a new victim he could be trying to throw us off the trail. Or maybe he’s becoming more unstable. Afterall, this is the first time that he’s shown a sign of forced entry.” Gideon looked up from the door that had been forced open and said, “I’m certain that all of these victims are related in some way. The unsub is just getting bolder, braver with his abductions. I think that he’s making his final preparations for an important kill. We have to go back to the station and give a profile. Once the officers have it we need everyone looking for a person that meets the profile. We’re running out of time.”

#criminal minds #j.j #elle greenaway #aaron hotchner #jason gideon #spencer reid #dr. spencer reid #fanfiction

5 notes · View notes

billdenbrough · 5 years

Note

i'm going through some rough stuff atm and i've been feeling pretty bad for a while, but the shark puppy au made me smile for the first time in days. thank you so much, to you and to all of the people contributing to it. you made someone's day a lot more bearable

first off, i’m so sorry you’ve been having a hard time recently! i feel that a lil deeply, rip, but i’m sending you all the vibes and care i can, and i really hope things shift for you, because that’s an awful way to feel, but i am so, so happy that anything we did or said today/last night made anything a little easier for you 💕it’s nearly 3am and i have work again in the morning (fucking rip) but i thought i’d put some more shark puppy stuff out there in the hopes it might make tomorrow a little easier for you too!

so this morning before work i answered an ask abt shark puppy and was talking in the tags abt patstanlon (essentially just. thinking abt how to execute it)

and so tonight once i was finally home from work i was talking to a few of the others abt it and @benverlesbians brought up patty’s BA and also how in the book she says bill isn’t a real writer bc he’s a novelist (tangent but i just went back to read the start of that chapter and a, ouch, but b, “Stanley drove a Mercedes diesel—teasing him, she called it Sedanley” this will never not make my heart yell) and that led jem to the conclusion that patty thinks real writing is either non-fiction or non-prose, i.e., journalist or poet

we settled on journalist for her career, but she has a background in poetry from college

@benverlesbians: “patty and mike are like “we both got BAs in english and we are both perfect human beings” and they are correct”

anyway this interview takes place after the Scathing Review from the Conservative Magazine (after richie’s bi ass jeans)

jem posited that bev’s rly protective of the band (and herself, ofc herself, and why wouldn’t she be) and tends to like, vet the interviewers pretty hard, bc she has to be sure she can trust them with their words and their image

and then we were thinking abt how that’s interesting bc like. patty probably isn’t super overt on social media (certainly not just showing her whole self on there, miss ‘wouldn’t admit to thinking richard dawson’s watch chain was sexy if wild horses tried to drag it out of her’), which is like. frustrating for bev’s purposes, but also… kinda relatable? and bev can respect it, on an intellectual and empathetic level, even if it’s annoying that it runs counter to her purposes (but there’s also—-part of bev thinks maybe, someone who can be private with themselves can have some integrity with others, but then there’s another part of her, those self-preservation instincts honed from years of not being able to trust… men specifically, but it’s made all trust harder now, and that part is wary, hard-pressed to give people the benefit of the doubt, not when it comes to her and her friends)

jemma: “bev is like “why don’t you have instagram” and patty’s like “this isnt you interviewing me, this is me interviewing you. please pass the maple syrup, my pancakes are dry as fuck"”

(it starts at a kitschy diner (jem’s idea) bc like, well, there are seven of them. like. that’s too many. but they’re probs not all at the diner, maybe just bev, stan, mike & eddie (deliberate choices from bev, given how she couldn’t find too much on patty—-some good testimonials that convinced her to give the interview anyway, even if patty works for a buzzfeet analogue, bev has less personal hang-ups with them than stan does, even though she loyally disavows them with him—-and she trusts stan and mike to hold their own, and while eddie can be a wild card (it’s not wild, she thinks, not really, because it doesn’t come out of nowhere. it’s just that he’s brave and good and loyal and principled, like he’d have her back, have all of their backs, and wouldn’t let anything slide he wasn’t okay with), she’d rather have that inability to back down at her side when their words and image are on the line than some of the impulsive nonsense richie and bill pull, and ben has a tendency to be too earnest, too quick, and if bev wants to be careful, be sure, before exposing ben’s heart and sentiment and big fucking eyes to that, well, sue her) but then patty is interviewing them, and she’s thoughtful, questioning without being probing, framing things in interesting ways that keeps them talking, keeps them interested, and bev’s already halfway to inviting patty back to the clubhouse (their studio) where the others are when stan, like, references some swedish poet whose translated works he was reading when he and mike wrote one of their songs, and patty, like, gets it? and works tomas tranströmer into her next question, and stan’s expression is just. and he glances at mike, and mike grins (bev doesn’t even know why stan bothered. mike’s clearly thought well of patty the entire time), and stan cocks an eyebrow at bev, and she almost can’t believe it, bc since when does stan ever want to allow interviewers more access? but it’s stan, and he never asks, and so of course she turns to patty, and asks: “got a couple more hours?”)

@chaoticbisexualalien: “pre-meeting stan journalist!pat on twitter giving their album a four-star review but singling him out as exceptional and then a bitter fan is like "oh did he eat you out for that review” and she’s like “I would have given them five stars for that"”

@striffyisme: “omg,,,, the fans start calling her Petty Patty for her excellent clap backs”

britt: “stan sees it and doesn’t get involved directly because he doesn’t want to fan the flames but he admires her from afar and then later on he finds out that she’s interviewing the band and he’s like ”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!“ inside”

alex: “stan, instantly in love and adoring from afar, patty falling for him as she gets to know him, everyone outside the band thinking it was the other way around lmao”

which, yeah, bc when the others catch on, they realise… patty working for a b/zzfeet analogue isn’t a speed bump for patstanlon to overcome, but rather just something stan was holding onto as like, a reminder to himself that ‘objectively she’s not perfect, and the only perfect person in this world is probably mike hanlon, be quiet rich’ but he’s wrong! she’s perfect too! he knows two perfect people! and by the time she’s gotten a job offer for her frankly thoroughly fucking excellent article abt shark puppy and has quit her job at the buzzfeet analogue, he’s pretty much forgotten about that hang-up until she’s like, “god i’m glad i have an actual adult workplace now” and mike laughs and stan feels his heart grow three sizes in his chest

@dykeeddie: “Okay I’m just gonna say it if she’s working at a b*zzfeed analogue for any period of timeShark Puppy Styles Me For A Week… there are 7 of them it’s the only way”

anyway the article is fucking bomb, everyone stan patty blum, and it blows the conservative scathing review sky high into a void of irrelevance

(at the clubhouse, patty makes such an expression at one of bill’s lyrics that richie actually chokes on his coke from laughter)

#shark puppy #patricia blum #beverly marsh #stanley uris #god i've been typing this for hrs i suck at answering asks it's fucking 5am #also the b/zzfeet analogue idea came totally from that ten long yrs of trying to make armie hammer happen article lmao #answered #Anonymous #long post //

72 notes · View notes

otisadams · 4 years

Text

Bankrupt: The Story of Donald Trump

Below is an excerpt from Presidential: America’s Great Non Sequitur by Otis Adams. The paperback is available at Amazon.com. E-mail [email protected] to be notified when the audio book is available.

Buy Presidential by Otis Adams here.

Bankrupt By Otis Adams

President Trump’s ascendance to the White House as a Republican is truly baffling. He is a middling businessman whose success came from inherited wealth, a reprobate by Christian standards, admires the Republican hobgoblin Vladimir Putin, champions the use of tariffs that are typically a tool used by Democrats…and he became the Republican nominee for President of the United States?

The Republican Party is both the party of business and the party of Jesus. This is a peculiar and conflicted marriage on a normal day, but how did Donald Trump become the choice for either group?

God’s Man

Let us begin our two-part investigation into the Trump mystery with those among us who are most prone to singing with closed eyes.

Christians have embraced Trump. If this were not so, he would not be the president. Many seem to do so with the childlike faith that God will excuse their votes if they were cast with a held nose. Others, those with that boundless talent for belief, have elevated Trump to the cast of God-chosen biblical leaders.

Trump has not only reformed the philosophy of the Republican Party, but has done some remodeling work for American protestant Christianity. For instance, President Donald J. Trump has rekindled a bit of the interest Christians once had in the Bible by autographing a few. You too can own your own Trump autographed Bible for $325.

I have written and said for years that we are in the midst of a Second Reformation. Protestants, whose forefathers rebuked the authority of the clergy in favor of the infallible authority of the Bible, are now altogether adrift as they are no longer tethered to the Bible either. Authority now resides with each individual’s interpretation of their own emotions.

This, I am certain, adds to the agility of the historically adaptable faith as there is no way to debate a believer’s beliefs if they don’t know what they are.

The modern Christian’s ignorance of Christianity is not a hindrance to church attendance as an abundance of professed believers can be found serenading the Lord in every American town and city on Sunday mornings.

This newish breed of dingbat is however doing damage to democracy and traditional American ideals and aspirations. The most obvious evidence of this is that Christians elected former game show host and WWE Hall of Famer Donald J. Trump to preside over the United States of America…and afterward shifted blame by claiming this was God’s will.

If Christians are playing by the (Good) book, they are not allowed to be dazzled by the wealth of the wealthy. Their concern is to be the teachings of Jesus. Jesus, who turned over the money changing tables. Jesus, who told the rich man to sell all that he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. Jesus, who said a camel can more easily pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man can enter the gates of Heaven.

Trump’s cupidity, for centuries a disgusting sin in the eyes of Christians, is now a virtue. That the Bible says this love of money is the root of all evil is of no consequence. The Bible is of little concern to the modern confused Christian. Neither do traditional elements of good character cross the mind.

Christians are supposed to favor truth over lies. Yet, they nominated and then voted in the millions for the most prolific liar in the history of the American presidency. His demonstrable lie tally since becoming President recently rocketed past the 13,400 mark.

Christians are meant to be concerned with integrity but deflect any responsibility for handing the reins of power to a scoundrel who repeatedly cheated on his wives with pornographic actresses and nude models.

Instead, they twist and contort their own beliefs in order to make room for Trump. They pervert the New Testament teachings on forgiveness as a free pass to avoid any effort at attempting a virtuous life. They draw tortured equivalencies between Paul of Tarsus and Donald Trump, pretending that infrequent mentions of God in speeches to religious groups is not bald pandering, but a sinner striving to repent and get right with his maker. They circulate false equivalencies with Trump playing the role of King David and Stormy Daniels being a breast-augmented version of Bathsheba, apparently substituting Trump’s lies and cover up of the affair for David’s repentance and dead son.

I was shocked when I first heard a variation of the argument that the President of the United States needn’t be a Boy Scout to get the job done. I have since heard this a couple dozen times from Christians I went to church with growing up, who now divorce integrity, accountability, and moral fortitude from the list of qualifications for leadership.

In another vertigo-inducing example my 60-year-old mother, who has gone to church for 60 of her 60 years, describes herself as a “Trump girl”. I tried to tell her some of the scandalous things Trump has said and she scolded me for using that language in her house. I showed her the nude photos America’s First Lady posed for and she said, “Well, she is a really pretty lady.”

I keep waiting to hear a Rod Serling voiceover emanating from the heavens as he explains my plight in the Twilight Zone.

In an effort to lend a hand to those confused Christians I find using social media, I’ll review the story in which Jesus said the one without sin could cast the first stone. This was the scene in which Jesus was writing in the dirt, deep in thought about something else as I recall. The neighborhood watch dragged a woman over to Jesus and accused her of adultery and asked something along the lines of, “Hey, you want us to start throwing rocks at her?” Jesus then somewhat encouraged the Socratic tenet of living an examined life by requiring the rock hurlers be sinless.

The point Jesus was trying to get across was that throwing rocks at an adulteress until she’s dead was not an equitable response to her actions. We might intuit that violence is a poor answer to another’s mistakes. It is also fair to glean, from this and other New Testament scenes, that Jesus wanted us to look at our own motivations and actions before examining others.

However, he absolutely was not suggesting that a person’s character is meaningless and we should make the adulteress the leader of the free world.

The cognitive shenanigans American Christians are willing to engage in to scoot their belief in God aside to make room enough for Trump causes me to wonder if they actually buy into those claimed beliefs. If they truly think they will stand before God one day and explain why they granted power to this man, twisting Biblical teachings to do so, and making him an example for an entire generation of children.

Surely arguments of ending abortion would fall short before such a judge as all the other Republican candidates were pro-life. Winning the Supreme Court for conservatives is another whimpering effort as Marco Rubio is unlikely to have nominated Bob Dillon and Gloria Steinem as replacement justices if he had won the Presidency.

Hillary Clinton was the most beatable Democratic nominee in my lifetime and American Christians had several candidates to choose from to go and do it. Without Christian support, Trump could not have won the nomination. After getting him nominated, Christians then maneuvered to the position that it was a choice between two evils and Trump was the lesser of them, clumsily trying to shed responsibility for making him the nominee.

Instead of acting as armor, the faith of American Christians was somehow transmuted into a religious faith in Trump. It is almost as though being people of faith made them vulnerable to Trump, priming them to believe in the unbelievable. They support Trump with disembodied faith that is no longer coupled with the traditional morality of the religion in which it was born.

There is a growing bit of data to support this notion that the faithful are more gullible than the faithless, though the report card doesn’t look great for either class.

The number of Americans who can’t discern fact from opinion or something that’s known from something believed is staggering. Millions of people who grew up going to American schools and living in towns and cities with public libraries have opted not to gather any of the logic skills that have been within arm’s reach their entire lives. Instead, knowing something has become the finish line for belief rather than an entirely separate category. Regardless, knowing something does not mean believing it a whole lot.

Pew Research Center findings suggest that American adults would benefit a great deal from asking a second grade teacher for a few of those worksheets where you circle facts and underline opinions. Only about a quarter of American adults could successfully identify the five factual statements among the list of ten they were asked to look at. For those who do not trust the media’s honesty, the number falls to 18%.

The confusion Americans have over the definitions of fact and opinion were brought into the light by the research. It shows, with overwhelming clarity, that believers are ravaged by the disease of the brain called Confirmation Bias. They set up their conclusion first, then they call information they find supportive of that conclusion a fact while counterevidence is, at best, an opinion.

This perversion of faith is evident among most of the Christians I know and even the preachers who are televised on Sunday mornings. Never mind the small scolding Jesus gave Thomas for seeking evidence, or the Bible’s repeated dismissal of knowledge and exaltation of faith. Never mind that if something is knowable there is no option for belief, only acknowledgment. These Second Reformation Christians have broken away from the authority of the Bible as Protestants broke with the clergy. They instead give their own interpretation of their own emotions at any given moment the dizzying authority of the true word and will of God. As the Bible falls out of fashion for American Christians, so too does the value of faith – or even the understanding of what the word means. Instead, they will say, without hesitation, that they know this or that about God and his will.

The faith a third of American’s have in Donald Trump is akin to deity worship in some ways. Anything Trump does is good by virtue of Trump having been the one to do it. Any reporting of his misdeeds is viewed as the enemy of the deity trying to confuse his loyal followers, as Satan confused Eve, and should be met with plugged ears and closed eyes. The faithful await word from the deity’s spokesperson, Pope Sarah Huckabee Sanders so that they can hear and memorize the words of the deity and go forth and multiply, repeating Trump’s teachings throughout the day to non-believers. If he says something that sounds bad, the flock will work together to explain what he meant by what he said, and it’s sure to be something good. If a longtime Republican politician opposes Trump, they’re RINO heretics. Anyone who disagrees with Trumpians are guilty of persecuting the flock.

Republican leadership has discovered that repurposed Christian faith is a useful leash for millions of voters. While some of these faithful are only people of average intelligence with a talent for willful self-delusion, it is also evident that there must be many millions of Americans with a genuine inability to distinguish truth from lie, fact from opinion, or reliable source from unreliable. Nothing is gained from, and there’s something vicious about, mocking this latter group. While the willfully self-deluded earn the bruising quips sent their way, a person without the ability to do the job should be offered patience and sympathy.

Let’s run through a few examples of how faith has been used as a tool for manipulating voters.

In 2012 the Associated Press conducted a survey that revealed that more than 40% of Americans believed the new health care bill included death panels. The basis for this belief was a claim made by Reverend Sarah Palin, who invented an Orwellian Democratic scheme to create a panel of folks who would be in charge of whether to kill elderly parents or children with developmental disabilities in order to save on medical costs.

Before becoming President, Trump himself made enormous political headway by yanking on that faith leash as he championed the lie that President Obama is not a citizen of the United States. In the lie’s heyday, about three-quarters of Republicans either agreed or weren’t sure. Over 40% of Republicans still believed Obama was secretly a Muslim in 2015.

Millions of Republican voters believe that Hillary Clinton had a side-gig of running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria basement in Washington D.C. Trump, as the conspiracy theory goes, quietly began the heroic work of taking down these sex rings and bringing the celebrities and democrats responsible to justice immediately after taking office!

These are good examples of believing on faith alone as twenty minutes of research, supposing common sense did not dismiss the absurd claims immediately, would reveal facts dispelling the lies above. Instead, they take their preacher’s word on it and see evidence to the contrary as stumbling blocks placed in their paths by the great deceiver, the mainstream media.

Christians have butted heads with science for centuries, since evidence-based discoveries began disproving elements of papal teachings. This became another handy vulnerability for the Christian’s party mates, the businessmen, to exploit. As the leadership in corporations that make money off things that cause harmful emissions started to get nervous, they found the solution of sending out Christian soldiers to roll their eyes at Global Warming any time it snows. Beleaguered climate scientists, aware that this misunderstanding was more likely mischief than ignorance, began using the term Climate Change.

When I was in high school their position was that Global Warming was not taking place at all. Christians, with their marching orders, repeated this wholeheartedly in their daily lives. A few years later this argument began sounding so absurd that the pundits shifted to the idea that maybe Global Warming was happening but it wasn’t any more caused by mankind than the last ice age. Christians broke into new denominations. Some held the line while others fell back to the new trench and pretended they had been there all along.

The new position that’s popular today is that Global Warming is probably taking place, and maybe human activity has slightly contributed, but we have passed the tipping point and should not do anything that risks the economy in the name of a problem that needed action twenty years ago… back when they said it wasn’t real.

The eager faith of American Christians and their predilection for opposing scientific discoveries when they move too closely to things that are believed made them a useful tool for the business side of the party. When the decision was to either acknowledge the findings of a staggering number of scientific studies or believe a few conservative radio and TV talk show hosts, they chose the latter without hesitation. They were well prepared to believe in often ridiculous lies about the opposing party while ignoring glaring truths about Trump.

Those Christians who want to collapse the separation of Church and State should recognize this separation is not in place only to protect the state. American Christianity could not even survive, in any recognizable form, after mingling with a single political party. Instead, they lost themselves.

Christians are mandated to have compassion for the poor, though they have become sycophants of the rich. Christians ought to feel an empathic pain when they see a toddler pulled from his mother’s arms at the border as an added deterrent for illegal immigration, though they shrug and call them criminals. Christians are meant to insist that leaders be devoted husbands, free of the filth of greed, not prideful, above reproach, honest, good tempered, patient, kind, and charitable.

Unfortunately, American Christians have abandoned their post.

A Modern-Day Vanderbilt

As we rang in the New Year, 2019, the stock market was plummeting. The American government entered a shutdown for the third time in a year, a feat that had not been accomplished for decades. The national debt reached its highest mark in the history of the nation. Trump had been President for 24 months.

Trump’s reputation as a self-made billionaire who rose to the top thanks to the buoyancy of his business genius is mostly a fiction manufactured by him. Donald Trump has reportedly been the longtime clown prince of America’s wealthy since the 1980’s, often the butt of jokes at parties on yachts where I imagine women smoke cigarettes in those Cruella de Vil cigarette things and men exchange tips on how to improve their croquet games. Among America’s top businessmen, Trump was a punchline.

Trump’s business acumen is only impressive to those who are ignorant of his record beyond what they have read on magazine covers. Often, he made it into those magazines through self-promotion and a bit of trickery.

John Barron is one of the characters Trump would play to promote himself in telephone calls to reporters and columnists. (Trump’s alias John Miller was in charge of calling gossip magazines.) This alter-ego can be heard in taped recordings talking to Forbes reporter John Greenberg in an effort to get Trump on the magazine’s list of richest Americans. Trump had been lobbying to get on the list since its inception a few years before and winced as it reported his wealth as being a fraction of what he had been boasting publicly. Even so, Trump’s smoke and mirrors apparently benefitted him as the magazine determined he had $100 million. Greenberg says that he now regrets the mistake as new research proves that at the time Trump had about $5 million.

On a side note, the choice of creating an alter-ego named Barron gives some insight on Trump’s psyche. Perhaps he sees himself as a baron from feudal times in Europe or a cattle baron from the 19th century American West. In any event, he likes the name well enough to give it to himself when prank calling magazines and he gave the name to his youngest son as well.

Trump wanted to be thought of as an American billionaire, regardless of having $5 million. “Fake it until you make it,” might be a good credo for the Donald. The tactic he used was to try and confuse reporters as to how much of his father’s wealth now belonged to him. While Trump privately tried to convince magazines that he owned what belonged to his father, he publicly pushed the idea that his father gave him a small loan to get him started, but the rest of his success was well-earned.

By the 1990’s Trump was in fact extremely rich. He gained an enormous amount of wealth by joining with his siblings to create a fake corporation, its purpose being to, “disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents,” The New York Times reported. He also helped dear old Dad evade millions of dollars in taxes by lying about the value of assets they held and advising the old man to take deductions illegally. The tax fraud saved the Trumps more than $500 million.

Donald Trump deftly played this shell game, wanting the public to think he was a self-made billionaire due to his swashbuckling brilliance in crafting deals, trying to convince magazines he was super-rich because he inherited daddy’s real estate empire, and telling the IRS he was living paycheck to paycheck.

His mischief paid off though. In today’s dollars, Trump was able to leach off over $400 million from his father’s empire to keep for himself.

While Trump has had business successes, his numerous failures keep him off the list of the great businessmen he wants the public to believe he is the champion of.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney provided a damning list of failures in his famous speech urging his party to choose a more qualified nominee in 2016. He said, “But you say, wait. Isn’t he a huge business success? Doesn’t he know what he’s talking about? No, he isn’t and no he doesn’t. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them. He inherited his business. He didn’t create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine, and Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.”

How the Republicans morphed from the party that nominated the upright Romney in 2012 into the one who nominated the degenerate Trump in 2016 is baffling, but the former champion of the GOP was swiftly villainized by Republicans for truthfully reciting Trump’s resume. His loyalty to Republican policies and commitment to ideals of at least attempting to have strong character were rewarded with accusations of being a traitor.

Trump’s philosophy in life is that reality is the story he presents and truth does not exist. Trump acolyte Kellyanne Conway revealed these teachings as she told Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd about, “alternative facts”. That Trump successfully sold himself as a modern day Vanderbilt, Carnegie, or Rockefeller to those voters enamored by the rich might unfortunately prove his philosophy of deceit as a workable path to success. He was awarded the nomination over far more qualified Republican candidates.

It is part of Trump’s standard operating procedures to boast, even about failures. His loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton is an example. There he claimed voter fraud, without any evidence. Without this imaginary voter fraud, he would have won with record-breaking numbers. His approach to business is much the same as he describes his bankruptcies as just smart business decisions that are commonly made by high rollers such as himself. To support my claim that he is nothing more than a middling businessman whose success relied upon inheriting much of his father’s vast wealth, let’s look more closely at these bankruptcies.

Tax records revealed in 2019 that Trump took a billion dollar loss between 1985 and 1994. From 1990 to 1991 he was number one in the country in losses, more than doubling the hit taken by the nation’s second biggest loser. As with the bankruptcies, Trump dismissed the story as smart business decisions that common people would not understand.

What is a bit more difficult to dismiss is that in 1990 Trump’s hotels, casinos, and airline were performing so poorly that they could not even cover the interest owed to the dozens of banks who loaned the future president money. For Trump this could have meant bankruptcy. Lucky for Trump though, it also would have meant heavy losses for those banks. The banks decided to loan him another $65 million to keep him from missing his payment deadlines. One cost of the loan was that Trump had to surrender managing control of his companies to the banks, who expected that Trump would spend the time they bought him to sell enough of his properties to pay them back.

Even after all this, Trump’s three casinos filed for bankruptcy. The Plaza Hotel had to do the same in 1992 and the banks took many of his remaining assets. Trump would have had to file personal bankruptcy, damaging the fiction he was presenting to the public during these years, but the banks worked with him and his father gave him money to prevent it.

It was because of these enormous failures that Trump was locked out of the big business deals he had been attempting. Instead, he began selling his name. The lie he had been telling about his legendary business genius somehow endured these setbacks that would have been crippling had his father not saved him. He has been selling that lie ever since.

RINO

The typical routine for candidates in both parties used to be to drift toward the extreme side of your party to get the nomination because that is where those eager enough to vote in primaries lived. Then the job for running for president was truly a race back toward the center, where most Americans lived, before the election.

When I was a kid, my neighbors had a two-party household. My father, raised by a democrat mother and republican father, was a republican and my mother went along with it without having any real partisan convictions I can recall at that time. Even so, we frequently got visits from my mother’s democrat friend and her pro-union husband. My dad would grumble, “Those people are idiots,” before they arrived, and then for the next three hours I would watch television while they played cards at the kitchen table. In those days, my home state earned its nickname as the Show-Me State because neither political party had Missouri in its pocket. The nominees had to prove themselves.

Those days have gone, though I hope not forever.

Today, the parties have moved so far apart that the distance naturally creates more distance. It used to be that a president could expect his fellow party mates in Congress to support him 60-70% of the time. By the time of Obama’s presidency that party loyalty was closer to 90%, and has topped 90% with Trump. The once commonplace pro-life Democrat, for example, is now seen as repugnant by both parties and is quickly shamed into compliance or shunned – as religious communities often deal with heretics.

Being in the political center is now mocked by newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who frames having centrist views as a symptom of having no convictions about America’s future.

The right also pushes this fiction that the greatness of your patriotism will be shown by how extreme your political views are. Conservatives shame people away from the center in many ways, but one of them is with the term RINO. This stands for republican in name only.

Once some tipping point in recent decades was reached, the widening of the partisan divide took on some characteristics of a perpetual motion machine. If Republicans took a step to the right, Democrats took a step to the left. Each time one party moved farther from the center, the other party responded in kind.

Center-left and center-right voters find few options. If you considered yourself a Democrat but voted for Ronald Reagan, you still voted for someone who agreed with you on about 80% of the issues. To cross over now might mean voting for someone who disagrees with you on 80% of the issues that are important to you because politicians are fleeing from the center.

This divide and team sports mentality means that voters are no longer considering the character of the person running for office as they once did. Instead, they are more and more voting for their team, regardless of the individual wearing the jersey. The party leads the people.

There are several popular explanations for how the Republican Party went against its own established principles to nominate Trump, and then how the nation went on to elect him. They range from angry voters trying to teach Washington D.C. a lesson to angry voters trying to tell Democrats to get back to helping the working person. These are not robust enough explanations to satisfy, and I am afraid I will not be offering my own guess.

I will say, however, that in 2016 the Republican Party chose a RINO as their nominee. This indicates to me that it is not only agreement with a nominee that leads to their winning the White House, but that voters’ revulsion toward that nominee’s opponent that motivates. To put it more directly, voters have become so saturated with the poison of partisan loyalty that they were going to the polls to vote against Clinton, which they would have done no matter who her opponent was.

My calling Trump a RINO does not mean that I consider him a centrist. He is not genuinely left, center, or right politically – and at the same time he has been each of these things over the course of his life. He is whatever works. If Trump had seen a clearer path to becoming president as a Stalin Communist, he would have told his people to find Ivan Drago and talk him into being his running mate.

By calling him a RINO, I am just saying that he won the Republican nomination, but does not keep with long held Republican ideals. By this point, it would likely be more accurate to say that the party itself has shifted to meet Trump, transforming its claimed ideals so that it can fit around the president.

There was a movement of a sort when it began to look as if Trump might be the nominee. These Republicans called themselves Never Trumpers. This amounted to an enormous portion of established Republican politicians when it seemed like a safe bet that he would never become president. After he became president, the Never Trump movement lost a lot of momentum, but many soldier on in defense of what the GOP was before Trump.

From time to time a petition or letter signed by a few dozen preachers standing up to Trump will make the news, but they have little lasting impact. Christians who are not moved by immigrants having their children taken away from them and held in detention centers are not likely to feel their spirits stirred by a petition.

One effort from a Christian magazine did hold a spot in the headlines for a few days. Christianity Today, held in high regard by some believers because of its ties to the late Billy Graham, published a very clear rebuke of Trump concerning his impeachment.

“The typical Christianity Today approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square… (We want to be) a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and remind everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being… But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral. The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationships with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone – with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders – is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”

It did not take long for most Christians to forget the article, though it was an overdue stance from a significant Christian periodical and the magazine should be proud to have taken it.

The National Review is the conservative magazine that taught Ronald Reagan Reaganomics. It is safe to say that when they took their early stance against Trump being nominated to lead the party, they believed they still held a good deal of influence over voters. As they tried to draw comparisons between Trump and Obama, it seems that not many were listening.

The rise of Trump also marks the moment the main body of Republican voters broke with Republican intellectuals. This could hardly have come as a surprise to those intellectuals. The growing disdain for experts on the far right as well as the spreading virus of baseless hubris among those voters had been obvious to anyone paying attention. These are the voters who know more about current events than the press. They understand climate science better than climate scientists. Their Google-powered research makes their conclusions about vaccines more valid than that of the world’s community of medical doctors. Their opinions are stronger than facts and their beliefs can withstand any evidence. What use could such a group as the far right have for conservative thinkers like George Will when they have emotion and intuition to guide them?

Susan B. Glasser wrote an interesting article for the New Yorker in March, 2020 following the efforts of Never Trump Republican Sarah Longwell. In part, the article describes some of the organized groups attempting to hold to traditional Republican principles, and how their disobedience infuriates the president who warns, “Watch out for them, they are human scum!” Longwell’s hope is to build a coalition of the center and she hopes that Joe Biden can represent this. Her hope beyond this is that, as after the Nixon debacle, the Republican Party can take the following four years to redefine itself.

After Trump was the nominee, Longwell began feeling very lonely as her allies hopped over the line to join the New Republican Party. As the 2020 Presidential Election grows near, Longwell has found allies like George Conway and the Lincoln Project, and continues trying to make her case to likely voters.

The aroma of petrichor is in the air as signs of a rejuvenating rain begin to mount. The avalanche of Trump’s scandals and embarrassments seem to vex reasonable Republicans who ignored them two years ago. The very early polls suggest that Joe Biden could win comfortably against Trump in November, in part because he is not reviled by the right in the way Hillary Clinton is, and so his nomination may not ignite the same fire in Republicans.

If the historical mistake of Donald Trump is corrected in November, we should keep in mind that the 30% of Americans who make up his base will remain. They are the ones who showed themselves in a poll released yesterday, in which 70% of Americans were in favor of mail-in voting for November’s Presidential Election in order to protect lives from Covid-19. The remaining 30% are not moved by the elderly poll workers who are distressed by the idea of risking their lives. Instead, they either understand that the fewer people allowed to vote, the better Trump’s chances for re-election, or else they are so gullible that they can be manipulated by claims of mail-in ballots leading to a rigged election absent any evidence.

People who are happy to undermine American Democracy, whether it be through the meddling of a foreign government or homespun ways to keep people from voting, have likely always been around but were too weakly organized to derail America. Supposing Biden does win over the financially and morally bankrupt Trump, we will still have to wait to see if the reasonable center has been restored well enough to dominate the extremes in a lasting way.

The checks and balances built into the foundations of our government by our Founding Fathers have remained intact, though they have been damaged in the Trump years. It is naïve to take for granted that American Democracy will endure no matter how irresponsible the American people. We have been reminded many times throughout our history that America is an experiment that can either succeed or fail. America can only continue unbroken if each generation keeps it until passing it to the next.

The adults in the center must regain control of the children on the edges or our future might read like Lord of the Flies.

#Donald Trump #Otis Adams #Presidential book #Presidential: America's Great Non Sequitur #Christians #2020 Election #Mitt Romney #RINO #The Lincoln Project #Presidential Quotes

2 notes · View notes