#the thing about the comment to is that both my parents are immigrants

[ckameley]

I'm still bothered by the fact that the white-looking 80 year old man down the street who knew little English drew me into a conversation and then basically said that I look like I'm from North Carolina based on my skin color

Racial prejudice truly has no (language) barriers

[sheastri]

Can I Call You Rose? ft. ln4

Pairing: lando norris x fem!black reader

Genre: Social Media AU + Story

Summary: In which the reader grew up in a household where she was never able to express herself properly due to her father. Lando heals her inner child and helps her experience all the things she wasn't able to when she was younger.

Warning(s): None.

A/N: No specific facecast, just the gorgeous black girls of pinterest!!

Also please send requests, whether they're movie based, book based, song based, or even original. Spill your brains and I'll bring the ideas to life the best I can.

Dedicated to all the young girls around the world growing up with immigrant parents who they knew loved them but didn't know how to show it. You will find someone who allows you to express yourself and heals you inside out.

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Flashback To Y/n's Childhood

13 years ago

Y/n had just turned 10 years old and was excited to celebrate her birthday. Her mother had suggested they all go out and grab dinner at a restaurant of her choice as her birthday treat. They were at home getting ready and just about to leave when her father had said something.

He had insulted her mother and she knew immediately that it would prompt a whole argument so she grabbed the car keys. She made sure to tell her sister, who immediately followed behind her, before she went outside to the car to wait for their parents.

When everyone had gotten in the car it was dead silent. Nobody spoke a word until her father attempted to break the silence with a joke, not an apology, a joke.

Her mother had laughed and went back to speaking to her father like nothing had happened. Y/n and her sister had looked at each other before going back to their phones. Out of nowhere her father begin to go on a rant, well yapping spree, about how this generation was always on their phones and started to talk about how his life growing up in Jamaica was.

Both her and her sister laughed as their mother commented on his very animated story and the atmosphere felt lighter, as though everyone could breathe again. They laughed and conversed until they pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, Olive Garden.

It wasn't giving birthday dinner but Y/n's been craving it for weeks now, the only reason they couldn't go was because of her dad. He didn't like their food and made sure to make it known. He had eaten something before they left so she could hopefully enjoy just eating her food.

They ordered and while they were waiting her dad decided that he needed to complain more. He started with a joke about how she kind of left him to starve and how next time she should be more considerate. Her mother laughed and her sister spoke up about how she didn't like Olive Garden that much either.

Y/n eventually excused herself to the bathroom and went into a stall deciding to just cry. Safe to say her 10th birthday was ruined.

Alexa play "Can I Call You Rose".

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Current Time

liked by landonorris, whosimani, maxverstappen, and 246,789 others

Tagged: whosimani

y/nsdiary ya'll the view is next level 🤭

view all 13,729 comments

whosimani girlll you so fine, lemme take you out and treat you right.

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username its so much going on right neoww

username y/n and imani serving as per usual

username ok but what are max and lando doing up in these likes??

username i was js about to say... username i mean y/n's been invited to a race before maybe they're just friends?

username Can I call you Rose? 'Cause you're sweet like a flower in bloom…

liked by oscarpiastri, mclaren, y/nsdiary, and 567,293 others

Tagged: oscarpistri

landonorris the view is just spectacular

y/n'sdiary this man is who i'd be if i never had an original thought in my life

username not her clocking himmm oscarpiastri GAGGED username lando are u js gonna let oscar and y/n eat you up like this??

username whos the girl in the last picture??

username are we not going to talk about how oscar is looking like a snack in that picture??

username now wait a damn minute...

whosimani whos the smoking hot chick in the last photo🫦

landonorris shes all mine ↪ username my heart just broke into a million tiny pieces ↪username nah wdym by this lando??

username Can I call you Rose? 'Cause you're fragrance takes over the room...

୨୧–------------------------------------------୨୧

I Wanna Plant You in my Heart, Oh, So Love Can Grow

Y/n and Imani had bought tickets to attend the Miani Grand Prix since they happened to be in town. Y/n wasn't so much as interested in formula one as Imani was so she was pretty much just tagging along for the ride. It was Thursday and they had come in for what was known as "a pit-lane walk" because Imani had wanted an oppurtunity to talk to some of her favorite drivers. Most notable were Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton. Y/n, personally was a Lando girl. She wasn't a hardcore fan but she tuned in every once in a while and used social media to keep up with everything going on within the formula one community. They were walking around when someone bumped right into y/n knocking the cold matcha out of her hand. It had gotten over her and the opposing force. She looked up, feathers a bit ruffled and was jumpscared, mostly because she expected some rando, with the face of Lando Norris. They were both frozen for a bit before he helped her up. After he had helped her though he stared at her for a long time and she just averted her gaze before accidentally getting caught in his eyes. She let out a soft laugh at the situation before apologizing. Lando's eyes momentarily widened before he quickly began to stutter out apologies. Y/n just laughed at his nervousness before he offered to help her find some clean clothes. Y/n looked at Imani who had given her a thumbs up before giving her that look with her eyebrows raised which made Y/n let out a soft sigh. She took Lando up on the offer and they walked off. Many people looked up at them seeing them both giddy and drenched in Matcha. The upcoming weekend Lando had won and joked with Y/n about having her come and visit again along with a cup of matcha in hand.

Can I Call You Rose? 'Cause Your Thorns Won't Let Blood In Too Soon

It had been almost 2 months since the incident and since then Lando and Y/n had kept in contact. At the moment Lando was trying to convince Y/n to go to the beach and have dinner with him but as more than friends. Y/n had turned the idea down due to being scared of the prospect of a romatic relationship. Eventually due to a bit of convincing from Imani and communicating her feelings to Lando directly she had given him a chance. She had dressed up in a cute pink two piece in which she wore her swimsuit under. She had 2 gold necklaces stacked on top of eachother, one shorter than the other along with some lightly colored bangals. Her makeup was pretty light and she had on strawberry sceneted perfume. She heared the doorbell ring and rushed down with her purse before taking a deep breath and fixing up her hair. She opened the door and was met with a giant boquet of pink flowers. Lando angled the flowers in his arms so that he could make himself visable but also be able to take in her look. If the weight of the flowers hadn't kept him grounded he would've thought he had died, had ascended to the heavens, and had seen an angel. He took her in with all his five senses. His eyes had been blessed, his ears had the pleasure of being able to listen to her soft voice, his hands had the ability to caress and hold hers, his nose was able to take in the scent of strawberry that surrounded her, and his mouth was able to taste wonderful cooking. He never wanted to depart from her. She invited him in and had him place the flowers on the dining table until she came home later to figure out where to place them around her house. He held out his hand for her and led her to his car.

"What a gentleman you are tonight Mr. Norris." Y/n teased with a soft smile on her face.

"Only for you Mrs. Norris." Lando teased back earning him a soft slap from Y/n.

They ate at the restaurant first before going to the Beach soon after. It was late evening but the sun still had yet to set. Y/n wore a swimsuit but didn't plan on going in the water. She had brought a book. It was more out of habit since she was stuck watching her siblings play instead of being able to enjoy the trip. Lando had gotten into his swimsuit and wasted no time jumping in the water before coming out a bit after. He gave her a look with his eyebrow raised and she immediately got up, book long forgotten, and began to run. He chased her for a while, letting her think she was getting away before sneaking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her torso.

"Lando, no. Don't do this to me." Y/n had said dramatically while dying of laughter, already out of breath from all the running.

"Sorry love, it had to be done." Lando says laughing as he now moves one his arms under her legs and runs into the ocean.

After they were both soaked and tired but for Lando the most important thing was that Y/n had fun.

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Current Time

liked by landonorris, whosimani, mclaren, and 524,936 others

Tagged: landonorris

y/nsdiary meet mr. totally in love with me

landonorris and proudly so

y/nsdiary u tryna be the patrick to my kat? ↪ landonorris always baby username well damn, i love this for herrrr username glad to see that shes being treated like a queen

whosimani ya'll are cute ig

y/nsdiary like she didn't tear up when i told her the news

username ouhh i see you girl

username the famed caption stealer

mclaren can't wait to see you guys in the paddock again soon!

y/nsdiary cant wait to be back!!

username I js know he lets her embrace her inner child

whosimani AND DOES!!

username Can I call you Rose? 'Cause your roots have the power to consume...

liked by y/nsdiary, mclaren, oscarpiastri, and 736,927 others

Tagged: y/nsdiary

landonorris Meet Mrs. Norris. The woman of my hours, my days, my years, and hopefully my forever. There is never a day spent in her arms in which I lack love. I thank my God for you every time I think of you and I hope that you know that you are the pinnicale of my existence.

y/nsdiary nah because you have me over here trying not to sob, you couldn't have waited till I wasn't out?

landonorris nope, the world needed to know how deeply rooted in my heart you are ↪ username thats it, im never settling username girl js like me fr, i do not need those people knowing im a crybaby ↪ liked by y/nsdiary

username my girl just looked at me and sighed

username just looked at my bf and sighed

maxvertsappen1 my gf wants to hang out with your wife.

landonorris sorry shes never leaving the house again ↪ y/nsdiary Mr. Norris, dont make me beat you up again. y/nsdiary I WOULD LOVE TOOO

username I love them together so badddd

username I wanna plant you in my heart, oh, so loving grow

୨୧–------------------------------------------୨୧

And that's all folks, follow for more amazing stories!! Remember to leave suggestions in my box!

Please like and reblog, not necessary but would help out!!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for mentioning college again to my online friend, despite her telling me she knows it's not for her/not making a decision about it right now?

We both turned 18 this year, and are in our last years of highschool, and hopefully will both graduate this year! We met two years ago, and call and play games together sometimes, send each other selfies, share our silly crushes—she's the best girl friend I have right now and im very grateful for her.

Some info about me: both of my parents grew up very low income and from rough places and got full scholarships/a deal(like they pay for your college, and then you work for them after), because of this they're financially doing much better than both their families(my mother regularly sending money back home to pay for surgeries , bills, etc.). All of this is to say I've been raised with the mindset that higher education is my ticket to bettering my life, and I take school very seriously. I live in an area with a lot of immigrants, and all my friends do plan on going to college. Here is my disclaimer that I know college is *not* for everyone, and you do not need to go to college to be successful. But my friend is in the same stage in life as me, and I think it could be beneficial for her. She's not the best student at all(also home-schooled and does online schooling), but she's passing all her classes. We've talked about it before and I've asked if she's thought about college, and she said no because everyone in her family who went was just left with debt. Additionally she's not motivated in school now, so she doesn't think she would be motivated in college and would just end up as a "money dump". She's also talked about college with her mom, who said that she was only 18 and didn't need to make decisions about it right now. Right now her plan is to get a minimum wage job after high school(she's mentioned a fast food chain). I do think it would be good for her to get out of the house because right now she's basically stuck at home because her mom doesn't like going places. To my knowledge she has no friends irl, because of the homeschooling. Which is one of the reasons why I think college would be great for her--the chance to be with other people your own age.

We've only talked about college one time where I just asked, and after that I haven't mentioned it because I don't want to act like I have any say in her life decisions or make her feel bad. I've just been thinking about it lately because logically to me it seems like if she did want to go to college, now would be the best time because she would have the support of her online school where she has a counselor. Her mom didn't go to college and she isn't in regular contact with her dad.

For more context my family is middle class and I'm not sure what her financial situation is, but I do know comfortable but not deeply so. I would hate to bring up college if it's something she knows she cant afford( but long term I think going to college would help her make more money than any job she started now, which is why Im thinking about bringing it up again). I don't know if this is enough context, and I'm willing to provide more! I'll admit I'm not the smartest teen out there, so if you see any thing wrong with my thinking or think I'm a total asshole please tell me and I'll check my behavior. Im also keeping in mind her lack of motivation that she mentioned she had in school, and of course her mental health and wellbeing is of like. the utmost importance.

so, would I be the asshole for bringing up college with her again, despite knowing her situation? I really love this friend and the last thing I would want to do with her is be disrespectful and insensitive. thank you for very much, Tumblr! any advice you can give in the comments would be greatly appreciated.

What are these acronyms?

[the-phantom-author]

Hasan Piker | Turkish S/O

this took way longer than i would have liked, so to the person who requested this, i love you and thank you for your patience with this. 🩵

Request are open, Reblogs always welcomed

You meet completely by accident. You are out and about with your friends and you start talking with your friends about something stupid some random guy in front of you just did in Turkish and Hasan is just right next to ya’ll. He overhears something that he can’t help but comment on so he butts in. 

This lead to you just staring at him for a bit because, “Why is this 6’5 dude butting into my turkish rant” He’s staring back because “pretty girl speaking turkish” It doesn’t lead to a full conversation but it does lead to the two of you talking long enough to exchange numbers.

I feel like there would be lots of discussions about your differing childhoods, whether you were born in Turkey and immigrated to the States or you were raised in the States and your parents are first or second generation immigrants. He finds the differences interesting and he just loves to know about what your life was like before him.

More than half of your conversations are in Turkish. The both of you find it refreshing to have someone outside of your family to be able to speak in turkish with. 

Hasan already refers to the house as a “Turkish household” that only gets worse when you start staying over. The amount of times that people will walk into the building and then just be yelled at to take off their shoes. 

If/When you are introduced to the stream he does not mention that you’re Turkish and lets you surprise chat with it. Like as part of your introduction stream he has you watch something that makes you frustrated and when you start ranting about half way through you just start directly rantign to him in Turkish and chat loses their collective shit. No one would be prepared for Hasan to have a hot Turkish girlfriend. 

Being Hasan’s Turkish Baby Mama does mean that your kids are speaking way more Turkish than English, I don't make the rules. At first you both agreed to do the “One Parent, One Language” thing, where one of you talk in English when it’s just you and the baby and the other parent speaks only in English when its them and the baby, however everyone in the house just speaks turkish more so eventually you give up on it. I mean the kids are going to be raised in the States, they’re bound to learn English through osmosis. 

[imqueerandadeer]

Not so small rant about assimilation

Okay quick disclaimer, all if not most of this rant will be about MY experiences as a white passing asian person (with some commentary from my non mixed friend), and remember my experiences don't speak for the whole asian american community (although I will admit there are some similarities between what I have experienced and what other people like me have experienced) because asian people are not a monolith!! This rant is also mainly centered around being asian american and being forced to assmilate but I think most of it applies to other cases of assimilation.

Okay with that out of the way lets start with some context about myself and my life.

Hi, I'm Oliver or Cupid and I'm half thai but white passing. My mom immigrated here with her parents in the 1970's when she was around three. My mom grew up in the valley (or the San Fernando valley) in the 80's and 90's when asian hate and racism was a lot more prevalent than it is now. She was one of the only asian kids at her Christan school. I remember her telling me there was this boy who made fun of her for having an accent when she didn't have one (my mom is fluent in both English and Thai) the same guy (I think) also made a racist comment about two Chinese pandas and connected it to my mom somehow idk she told me this a while ago.

My mom only spoke thai at home with her parents and because she was the oldest child and she was fluent in both Thai and English she had to translate everything for her parents. She only knows thai because she had to speak it at home and because she doesn't use it anywhere else, she married my dad (a white guy) and had me (I am only fluent in english) she didn't see the use in teaching me thai. She also barely knows anything about thai culture because her parents just refused to tell her because they wanted to assimilate and be "real americans."

This stops me from knowing anything about my culture or language, I had to google thai mythology. I had to google my own cultures mythology. Thats just depressing. This also just makes me feel more isolated from my own community than I already am because I'm white passing.

From a very young age I've always sensed that I don't fit in with other asian kids or fit in at all with other asian people and the community as a whole. It feels like I'm not asian enough to call myself asian american, theres always an asterisk of hey I'm also white passing so I'm not really aisan. Which mind you isn’t true but doesn't stop me from feeling like that in general.

It's so hard trying to keep your culture alive when you know nothing about it, I want to talk about being thai, I want to talk about my mythology, and I want to know more than 4 words in thai. All thats keeping me from that is assimilation and a false promise of "if you try hard of enough to fit in you will," the american dream was never a thing and it actively hurts people like me. people who want to know about their culture but can't because is stuck under years of oppression and trauma that our grandparents and parents just won't work through.

And now over to my friend @pansgoobernonsense for it's comments on just asian hate as a whole and some of its experiences with how normalized it is:

"So this one time my mom was at the DMV I believe and some lady yelled at her to go back to China since her English was bad and that encouraged her to learn more English, but her English still isn’t that good (it’s understandable but not grammatically correct sometimes) and she used to get bullied for it and was self conscious

my dad was raised in Hong Kong when it was a British colony and when he went to America for boarding school a kid physically attacked him, called him a slur, and tried to hit him over the head with a snowboard because he was Asian

I was raised in a very sheltered Chinese environment (bilingual school and all that jazz), but as a kid I always wanted to be that white it girl, to the point where I would lie and say I was bipoc 💀 lowkey funny asf

I’ve also been called slurs before and have been told by my parents to avoid talking about being Chinese so I wouldn’t get hate crimed when I went to middle school (public middle school) thankfully that didn���t happen but someone said konichiwa to me once so… erm"

Wow this was longer than expected mb sorry if this made zero sense/jumps around a lot I tried to make it coherent as possible (and have the spelling and grammar correct) but it's 1 am for me and I'm already shit at articulating my thoughts and sleep depravation does not help

[beatleshalloween]

Okay, some of you maybe a small handful might be reading my series including, "Connecting The Stars" , " The Third Wife," and "Love and Limbo," would know of the characters I created based off the 1990s rap group Salt n Pepa.

If you haven't been introduced to them I would recommend reading "Connecting the Stars" and if you want to know more about the characters without reading my long ass book, you could read chapters 8 and 9 of "Love in Limbo. "

These characters are 1990s underground rappers that are in many ways the opposite of the Beatles. They're not heavy into drugs, they value principals over capital, and despite their obnoxious demeanor, are rather good kids.

They're young teenagers, living in poverty in the 1990s New York, And despite their many contradictions from The Beatles they are a reflection of them as well.

They represent the generation that comes after them.

They reflect how rock and roll evolved into rap, And that these girls along with their generation were the modern-day teddy boy or greaser in America.

The characters names and their stage names, real name, and brief description of what they look like.

Spice (Ebony) is a lead rapper in the group. She is the tallest member of the group. Her race is and is around 5'10. She is the 16th child and her twin brother Elijah (deceased age 12) was the 17th, of 19 siblings. Her parents are loving, but they both work overtime to support their large family.

Sugar (Unity) is the second lead rapper. She is a petite white girl, and the only white member of the group. Her height is 5'3" tall, and is the shortest member of the group. She lives with her mother who is a drug dealer and rejects her youngest child and only daughter, and things are much darker.

Spindelle (Dominique) is often referred to as the & on the group's albums. At 5'7", she is the middle height member of the group. Her mother immigrated from Haiti to the United States, while pregnant with her only child. She spent her first 7 years of life in the Bronx, before moving to the town of Bellport, where the group is from. Her father isn't in the picture, where mom is a disassociated She was mother due to a heroin addiction.

Now why the hell am I telling you all this?

Well I'm considering using these characters as obnoxious commentators to the pictures of The Beatles by creating their own Tumblr channel.

Here is a modest sample here.

The Beatles

Spice: Wow! They finally became a Frapple and adopted a bunch of kids!

Sugar: I picture them with little dogs.

Spindelle: Shit! I envisioned them with a bunch of cats!

[gogojetters]

GJ Families - Headcanon Mini-Post

I’ve wanted to do this for a while, but because I’m very busy at the moment, it’s hard to find the time to make big posts. So, I’m trying my best to be okay with making smaller, more simple posts, and this is kind of testing that format. And what better than sharing some headcanons about what I think the Go Jetters’ families are like?? It’s been a long time coming, haha.

For now, I’m only doing the Funky Five (Xuli, Kyan, Lars, Foz and Tala), but maybe in the future I’ll drop a thing or two about the others. Each character has their own little section, with a mini-Drabble about what I think their family structure is, and maybe even some little HCs about some of the members. I hope you like this layout, and feel free to ask questions ! Any rude comments will be deleted.

XULI

Xuli is adopted! She has two mothers, Alejandra and Lina, who adopted her when she was two. Additionally, she has an older brother, Sol, age 19- who is her biological brother- and a younger sister named Aurelia, age 12, who is also adopted. Xuli’s family is upper middle class, her Mum (Alejandra) working as a lawyer, and her Mama (Lina) working as a hairdresser. Xuli’s family is very loving and supporting of her endeavors, and she has her Mum’s stubborn personality and her Mama’s love for sightseeing !

KYAN

Kyan was raised in a multi-generational household, living with both his parents and his grandparents in California. His grandparents and parents are all immigrants from China, with Kyan being the first of their family to be born in the states. His Father, Mako, along with his grandparents, run a popular Chinese restaurant on a boardwalk, which Kyan used to work at as a child, while his mother, Daiyu, works as a dentist. Kyan is particularly close with his grandparents, who were very supportive of his athletic dreams in particular.

LARS

Lars grew up in the countryside, on a small farm, with his single Dad, Dominic, Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Benjamin, as well as his little sister, Juno, and his younger twin cousins, Aria and Piper. While living on the farm instilled a love of animals early, his love for machinery came from there too, watching how the different machinery there worked, and learning to fix tractors and farm gear by watching his uncle- and quickly becoming better than him at it! Lars is very close with his family, but has a specially strong bond with both his sister and cousins.

FOZ

Foz is from a richer family, and is an “age gap” kid- meaning that there’s at least 10 years between him and his siblings. He lives with his Mother and Father- the owners of a jewelry company, and an emerald mine, while his three older siblings, Stephanie (27), Andrew (23) and Austin (23), have already moved out of home to peruse their own careers. Foz isn’t particularly close with the rest of his family, having attended boarding school before the GJA, and not growing up alongside his siblings.

TALA

Tala’s family is very well off- after all, with a family history as incredible as the Glitches have, how couldn’t they be? Tala lives with her father, Gabriel Glitch - who is Grandmaster Glitch’s twin brother, and her mother, Reagan Cade-Glitch, as well as her half-brother on her mom’s side, Callum Cade, in the Glitch Estate, which has been in their family for years. Tala spend much of her time as a child in the garden, talking with the family’s gardener about new and fun plant or bug facts.

Thank-you for reading all the way through !! Again, I hope that you guys find my personal headcanons fun and interesting! I wanted the GJ to all have different kinds of family groups, as opposed to just having “nuclear” families, because I think that it’s just boring if they’re all very similar, and different kinds of family representation is important to many people, including myself !! Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments, and I’ll try my best to answer them ! (:

[tommming]

Adoption analogy for trans gender identity

One of my favourite analogies for being transgender (and people should use this more in my opinion, I came up with it idk if anyone else did too) is adoption. (and I am aware that adoption in our society has some problematic issues in its current state, but that’s not the point, especially because humans throughout history and the world can and do adopt children).

When an adult adopts a child, and the child is happier and healthier because they have someone to care for them, and the parent and the child both like to refer to each other as mom/dad and son/daughter, would you deny the reality of this relationship or refuse to use the words mother/father son/daughter?

Some adoptions will be more visually obvious than others (like inter-ethnic), and this can lead to mean and invalidating comments and assumptions about the relationship. 

In adoption situations, it’s clear that the medical implications (genetic diseases etc) are not the same as biological parents and children. 

And some kids will at some point decide they want to call their adoptive parents “adoptive parents” and reconnect with their biological parents, and maybe have two sets of parents, and this is accepted, because parent can mean different things. 

Everyone (idk i’ve never met an adoption hater) accepts that this is all valid and in a sense real, because who counts as a parent or son/daughter is just words, and even if they usually have a concrete biological basis, it would be quite disrespectful and unhelpful to refuse to use the words to include adoptive parent/child relationships. 

As you can piece together I am sure, the visually obvious adoptees are analogous to visually obvious trans people, medical concerns are analogous, and different sets of parents is somewhat analogous to the somewhat nuanced way sex and gender all fit together (like someone can be male and nonbinary or whatever) and that whatever the adoptee kid says about their relationships is probably what others should accept, and just the whole thing is analogous! Especially it’s really the same type of thing: People accept the fact of adoption / gender as something that is socially and psychologically real despite lacking the biological basis that typically defines these things, largely because many of the important parts of what defines these words/concepts actually does apply to the situation, and importantly I would argue everyone is better off because of it! (better both because of the actual adoption / transition itself and because of the validating language and people being understanding of it).

You could argue that adoption reduces the resources available for real parents/children (parenting clinics, family therapy, family lawyers, etc.) You could argue that is degrades  and distorts the meaning of what a child is (so that immigrant parents wanting their children to be reconnected with them might have less legal leverage, or that after someone dies it’s no longer enough to be a biological child to inheret their stuff if they have no will, because being a child no longer has any real definition). You could even argue that it perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes about parent/child relationships (for example I know someone that had an abusive mother and is lowkey triggered when people talk about maternal love, and it’s not helpful at all for people to assume that everyone’s parents are nice and caring and present or even existent/known because so many children’s parents are not, or that parents are responsible and have rightful authority over children, which is a dangerous idea for children that are abused by their parents). But are these realistic concerns? Why or why not? I’m not saying this is exactly the same as gender issues, but it has similarities for sure.

I think these ideas are interesting and important and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I really think this is a great analogy, and shows how I wish the world would be about transgender people (accepting and validating, even legally, without suspicious concerns and without any delusions or misconceptions about what’s real or not).

Furthermore, if you want to really get into it, both the idea of being a parent and the idea of being a woman or man have an interesting similarity, due to both of them being being complex concepts that involve biology and social relations and stereotypical characteristics and all kind of stuff. Someone who is a father to a child that died before the child was born, and left nothing for the kid (wasn’t married lets say), is a parent, and so is an adoptive father, notice how there is absolutely no single fact that these two dads have in common except for the identification as a father. I think this is very similar to a very masculine cis woman that is consistently mistaken for a man, lives a very masculine life generally, lets say perhaps has had medical issues with her hormones throughout life, and has no real attachment her gender because she is a gender studies professor and knows about how its all bullshit (I knew a professor that was a lot like this), and a trans woman, who is technically male, but passes effortlessly as a quite feminine woman and has since being a little child gravitated strongly towards girlhood and said she’s a girl, and grown up to take hormones etc., although not yet done bottom surgery (you probably are aware of this, but there are many trans women that fit this description). There is not a single fact that makes these people both women other than their identification as women. Both are quite atypical, but both have good reason be called women. 

This is why I think that gender is actually a circular definition. Men are men because they are considered men, women are women because they’re called women. Just like parents are parents because someone called them a parent. There are a million and one things that are typical of a man or woman or parent, but none are completely definitive (in my view), and that’s okay because they are just words and words are tools to understand the world. And likewise I think other complex concepts are probably like this too. Religions, languages, families, crimes, salads, idk! Trans women are women because we regard them as women.

[dragoneyes618]

There’s a popular slogan in Israel that appears on car stickers, jewelry and suchlike: Ein Li Eretz Acheret, “I have no other country.” The phrase comes from the title of an iconic and extremely moving song written by Ehud Manor, with music composed by Corinne Allal, and originally recorded in 1986 by Gali Atari; we will mention those names again later. Its opening lines and chorus are Ain li eretz acharet, gam im admati bo’eret, “I have no other country, even if my land is burning.”

A neighbor of mine, who was experiencing considerable war anxiety about the land burning, told me that he didn’t relate to it at all. He said, “But I do have another country. I can go back to Teaneck!” And he said that if things got worse, he would seriously consider doing so.

At the beginning of the war, I was wondering the same thing. I do have another country – two, actually. I have UK citizenship and my wife has U.S. citizenship, and our children have both. Maybe we should go back to live somewhere safer? One of the commentators on the previous post was talking about Lakewood as being a safe and excellent place to live with a rich Jewish life.

Now I could continue by talking about how special and beneficial it is to live in Israel, about how it’s both the Promised Land and our historic homeland, about how it’s the only country with Jewish sovereignty. Which would all be true. But there’s a different point that I want to discuss in this post.

Yes, I do have another country that I could go to (though it wouldn’t be at all straightforward, especially for my children). So do lots of people in Ramat Beit Shemesh and the rest of Israel.

But there’s also lots and lots and lots of people who don’t.

There are millions of Jews in Israel who just don’t have anywhere else to go. There are those who simply don’t have the money for it and would find it too difficult to find employment in a country where they don’t even speak the language. There are those who are too old or ill or who have young children that would suffer from a move. There are those who have crucial responsibilities here. There are those who are just too deeply embedded here.

Even more to the point, there are also millions of Jews who literally don’t have any passport other than their Israeli one. What other country will let them in? The Jews who came from Iran and Egypt and Syria and Yemen are certainly not able to go back to those countries! Nor are Russia and many European countries a safe place for Jews. And even countries which are relatively safe and allow some immigration are not going to accept millions of Jews (and if they did, those countries would likely quickly become not very safe for Jews).

In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why Israel came to exist in the first place. As antisemitism grew in Europe, many Jews realized that they needed to get out, but simply had nowhere to go. Twenty years before the Holocaust, at least 100,000 Jews were massacred in pogroms in the Ukraine, which also created 600,000 Jewish international refugees and millions more who were displaced and threatened.

At this point, many people realized that an even greater catastrophe might happen. But the countries to which the largest numbers of Jewish refugees were fleeing all revised their immigration policies to prevent further Jewish immigration. This included not only Poland and Germany (which obviously wouldn’t have been a good long-term solution anyway), but also the United States, Argentina, and British Palestine. In the U.S., Henry Ford’s newspaper published pamphlets about the Jewish problem, claiming that the national debt was Jewish-inspired to enslave Americans and other such hateful slurs to keep Jews out.

Then things got even worse in Europe, with the rise of Hitler. Some people managed to get out. The parents of Ehud Manor, writer of Ain Li Eretz Acheret, fled Belarus and managed to get into Palestine.

Yet still no country was willing to take in millions of Jews. The U.S. convened the Évian conference, bringing together 32 countries to find a home for Jewish refugees. But aside from the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, no country, including the U.S., was willing to accept Jewish refugees in any remotely significant number. Consequently, millions of Jews were killed in Europe.

And even after the horrors of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors still had nowhere to go! Some of them went back to their home towns in Poland and were killed in a pogrom. Others languished in Displaced Persons camps for years, some of which were actually in concentration camps. My late mother-in-law spent the first years of her life in a DP camp; her parents were lucky enough to have a relative in the U.S. who eventually managed to bring them over, but most Jews did not have such an option.

Many Jews, very understandably, realized that a Jewish homeland was needed. It wasn’t about it necessarily being the safest place for a Jew to live. Everyone always knew that Palestine was in a hostile and dangerous part of the world, and that there would be a challenge with the resident Arabs (though it was generally assumed that some sort of compromise would be worked out; there was no broad plan to drive them out). And on the eve of the War of Independence, it was assessed that there was only a 50-50 chance of survival!

Israel has not yet been, and still is not, the safest place in the world for Jews. But not everyone has the option to live in the safest place in the world – many people just need somewhere that is safer than where they currently live. And in any case, having a homeland is not about attaining the greatest safety – it is about having a home, a place that Jews historically belong, a place that Jews can always come to when they fear persecution or experience discrimination, where we can take responsibility for our own safety, and where we can put being Jewish into action and expression.

While Israel won the War of Independence – at a cost of 1% of its population – this created a crisis for nearly a million Jews in Muslim countries, who were persecuted and had to make immediate use of Israel as a refuge. The parents of Gali Atari, singer of Ain Li Eretz Acheret, fled Yemen for Israel, while composer Corinne Allal’s family fled from Tunisia. But it should be born in mind that even if Israel had not come into existence, the existence of Jews in Muslim lands was difficult and very precarious.

And so we reach the situation that we are in today. Israel is home to over seven million Jews. Most of them do not have another country to go to, even if they wanted to (which they don’t). Ain lahem eretz acheret.

(As Haviv Rettig Gur notes, this is the fundamental mistake made by many Palestinians and their supporters, who believe that they can rid of the Jews with violence just as the Algerians successfully used violence to get the French colonialists to go back to France. They don’t grasp that most Jews just don’t have a country to go back to, and thus violence won’t achieve anything and will even be counter–productive.)

Now, there are some Jews who only look at things in terms of their own personal interests. “Where is a safe place for me to live? What is a spiritually safe environment for my children?” And if, as a result, others are less safe physically and spiritually and have to take on an even larger cost to their families and jobs and religious life, then that’s just too bad.

But others feel a sense of responsibility to the rest of our people. It’s not “me” and “them” – it’s us. The correct formulation is not ain li eretz acharet or ain lahem eretz acharet. It’s ain lanu eretz acheret.

Millions of Jews need Israel. And Israel needs a strong army and a strong economy to finance it and a flourishing national Jewish life. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to help with that.

[thecursivej]

SOTU - 2024

Well, I'm forcing myself to watch the State of the Union while I grade speeches, so I figured I'd record my reactions and thoughts here.

Do I hope for the words "Immediate Ceasefire"? Absolutely. Will we get them? Looking at the track record, probably not. But I remain optimistic because otherwise I'd be six feet under by now; ANYWHO here is a list of my reactions/thoughts/general feelings of the evening's watch.

I do want to give a point of clarity: I technically am identified as a democrat; truly, I'm a socialist, but seeing as how the U.S. is stuck in this godforsaken two-party-system, that is where I am. Though both sides have me feeling very french-revolutionary-esque.

Of course the first thing I see if MTG rifling through her purse on screen. I quite literally despise her.

AP is discussing Ukraine's need for weapons and funding; I would truly rather us align with Ukraine than Isr@el. I will stand unapologetically firm for Palestine and Ukraine.

Who is actually in the cabinet? I know Blinken, Garland, and Buttiegeg. Damn, wish he was running again. Would rather have him than Biden.

How insane is it that the Sec. of Defense didn't even let the White House know that he had to go in for surgery because of cancer. Like, that's just bonkers to me.

Republicans truly look like fucking robots right now. No warm greetings, no hellos, simple nods.

Republicans out here wasting fucking time with that impeachment of Mayorkas. Like how about we house the homeless populations with the money they wasted on this circus.

Oh funky fresh look at the Ultra-Mormon(TM) Mitt Romney.

MTG with that stupid fucking MAGA hat on is just... disgusting. Like this bitch is crazy.

Okay Joe, speed it up down the fucking aisle please. I got papers to grade.

Lowkey Joe looks like he might have had a five-hour energy drink with that big-ole look in his eyes.

I do appreciate that Joe still smiles and is kind to MTG. She truly doesn't deserve it.

Okay this is getting just a wee bit too monarchy for me.

MTG holds up a button saying "Laken Riley..." (couldn't read the rest). Riley was a 14 year old girl murdered by a man who was an illegal immigrant of venezuela, and instead of handling this situation with grace, empathy, and love; MTG and others seem to be capitalizing on her death to push their anti-immigration rhetoric.

Okay, cool selfie skills Joe, but let's get on with it.

ALSO HOW IS JOE BIDEN GONNA BE SO IN DEPTH WITH TECH AND "Savvy" WITH IT WHEN MOTHERFUCKER WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK!? Hello?!

BERNIE AND RAPHAEL! I feel like I haven't seen these guys in 10 million years.

Oh thank god we're starting.

Aww the little hand shake thingy he does with Kamala makes my heart happy.

Did Joe just yell "tony"?!

Wow, even got some republicans clapping for him (probs not a good thing but here we are)

Okay, good bit of humor at the top; and a throwback to the 40s. Funky fresh.

Yeah we ain't living in ordinary times for damn sure.

Interesting point of democracy being attacked here in the U.S. AND Internationally. (Mentions Ukraine and Putin; no word on Gaza yet).

Someone busted out a Ukrainian flag and shook it; rock on.

OH SHIT HE GOT MIKE JOHNSON TO CLAP!

Appreciate the insistance that the U.S. won't send troops to UKR.

Good use of Reagan to connect with the Repubs; and compare to the predecessor (aka Tr*mp).

Mike Johnson nodding instead of clapping about the predecessor comment, trying to save his ass in Orange Man's eyes.

Welcome to NATO, Sweden!

If there is one thing that should connect Democrats and Republicans; it's hatred for Putin. Yet there's a mix of Repubs standing in agreement and sitting to back up the predecessor's comment on Putin doing "whatever the hell he wants"

Talking about Jan 6. What breaks my heart? My parents still believe it wasn't an insurrection. Yikes on Bikes for me.

The line "You can't love your country only when you win" hits hard and even got Mike Johnson to applaud in agreement.

Foreign AND Domestic. Need a hefty focus on that with the right-wing republican group (@ MTG, Gaetz, Cruz, etc.)

Discussing IVF in Alabama; good connection to the overturning of Rowe v. Wade. It sucks that Republicans HAVE THE POWER to protect IVF nationally but shot the damn bill down not even a week ago.

ABORTION IS A HUMAN RIGHT. BODILY AUTONOMY IS A HUMAN. FUCKING. RIGHT. (@ The Missouri Senators who support taking away bodily autonomy).

WOMEN AREN'T WITHOUT ELECTORAL AND POLITICAL POWER; WE ABOUT TO TURN UP IN FORCE MOTHERFUCKERS!!! Bring back the strats from the 1900s; time to use our power and go bonkers.

Someone get Joe a glass of water please. Motherfucker looks a bit parched and keeps coughing. I get that when my throat goes dryyy

Can Biden not restore RvW? Can he not by an executive order make RvW the law of the land already?

Revisiting COVID's start from 2020 (Next week is the four year anniversary since the global pandemic).

PFFT idk who just yelled "LIES" but that was comical AF.

Well, the pandemic still controls a big part of our lives... so...don't agree with that shit.

Man, everyone sitting-and-standing must be getting a HELLA calf work out.

Sure, unemployment is down and new jobs are built; but corporate greed is quite literally killing us. Can Congress or Biden do something, damn it?!

Are we beginning to feel it, though? Are we feeling good economics? I doubt we are.

Good job pointing out how both parties have failed to buy american products, but how this admin has established that.

There's a good two rows of Republicans who stand in applause; but the rest just... sit there. Like robots. It's freaky as fuck.

Joe is actually doing pretty great with the flow of this speech. Only a couple of stumbles, but overall pretty gucci. (He'd get a 9/10 on delivery in my public speaking class).

God these fuckers are really gonna make me run for office at this damn point.

Removing poisonous lead pipes... but there's still a water crisis in Flint, Biden. Like, what the fuckeroni do you mean?

Yes, let's invest in family farms; lets stop selling our farmland (especially in Missouri) to foreign countries (@ China buying up TONS of Missouri Farmland).

I love that the UAW president is here, because he straight up is my kind of people. Dude wears eat-the-rich shirts and calls out the unethical-ness of billionaires.

UAW President pointing to Biden saying "It's you!"; nah dawg, it's you Sean.

MIDDLE CLASS DID BUILD THE COUNTRY AND UNIONS BUILT THE MIDDLE CLASS MOTHER FUCKERS!!!

Yes we get back up but right now...we might be getting more french revolutionary-esque if y'all don't stop PLAYING WITH OUR LIVES.

Oh jesus not the 4-more-years chants.

Oh now we talking about the future

YES PLEASE END TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMIES.

Says he's not anti-corp; but points out how trickle down economics has only helped the wealthy.

Yeah, how the fuck does it hurt the wealthy to pay just a weeee bit more in taxes? Like dawg, what are you gonna do with another million? What's the point?

Ooooh is Biden about to rope the repubs into some bipartisan shit? Please do.

What is Republicans huge issue with capping insulin? Truly? Who does it harm? Billionaires still get billions.

[bluedalahorse]

Two decisions I really liked about YRS3 (but not the only decisions)

Also posted on my dreamwidth. Left unrebloggable for the sake of setting boundaries. Comments and thoughts welcome though!

Today I want to talk about two decisions made by Lisa and the other Young Royals Season 3 writers that I really liked. This is an analysis post, to some extent. In line with my new priorities, I also want to talk about how these decisions could work on a craft level to fuel my creativity, and—more fannishly—where they might leave me with inspiration in my fanfiction. Because everything from here on out is spoilers, and because it is long, I am going to cut it.

The writing decisions I want to focus on today are a) starting the season with a private settlement to resolve issues around the video/the gun/the drugs, and b) digging deeper into the ambiguity of Erik. As a heads up, both of these decisions felt particularly catered toward my reading of the show and what I wanted from it to begin with. But I figured, why not start with what one loves about a thing? So we will begin there, and perhaps, if I let myself rewatch episodes during the break, we will move on to other things, too.

The private settlement

This was something @heliza24 speculated might happen in the months leading up to season 3’s release. In fandom, there was a lot of discussion around whether the legal system would be able to deliver consequences to August re: the video or not, and whether Wille or Simon could be prosecuted for the field scene and the drugs and such. For me, one of the most informative posts on the matter was sflow-er’s post about how each boys’ actions would be labeled and classified, and what the penalties might be. I don’t know the Swedish legal system too well, so it was quite informative.

In my opinion, kicking off season 3 with the arbitration/settlement outside of court, and refusing to provide catharsis through the legal system itself, was the best decision the writers could have made. I also love that it was all wrapped up in an episode. We know that rich Hillerska families often settle things discreetly behind closed doors, and the legal system tacitly allows this to happen, so this felt in line with the series worldbuilding and the real world interactions it is grounded in. I also feel that Young Royals works best when it’s at least partially anchored in Hillerska, and secondarily anchored in the family interactions characters have at home. So taking things into the courtroom for too long wouldn’t feel quite right, even if season 3 does, to some extent, open up the world more for our characters.

What also struck me was the way the adults behaved in this scene, and how a lot of it felt… not so great? You can tell that the adults all care for their respective boys (however imperfectly they express it before, during, and after the settlement.) But the way they all swoop in and try to flatten the last two seasons of conflict into who owes what to whom is sort of fascinating, and feels parallel to the housemother trying to mediate between Sara and Felice at the end of 2.6. You realize how little they know of the nuances of what happened, and how quick they are to take away the agency of their boys when they think it protects them. I really want to hit this point hard—the boys all have their agency taken away in that moment, and I use the word “boys” deliberately because it is adults who are putting them in that position. You can see some of that persist in the aftermath of the settlement; FFS Linda is making Simon pee into a cup every day.

(Not to mention the hint of personal investment each set of parents has in the case. Rickard can’t resist doing lawyerly flexes, and Linda’s constant references to Swedish values show that she’s worried she immigrated in vain. I’m sure there’s a blank we could fill in with Ludwig and Kristina, but I’m operating on memory here and I don’t remember their lines precisely.)

As icky as the settlement scenes feel, and as much tension as they create, they are also necessary for marking the importance of past conflicts while propelling the narrative forward. It does matter that August released the video—it matters enough that he had to sell his estate to compensate Simon, and it’s absolutely appropriate that he should have. And it does matter that Wille waved a gun around and Simon brought drugs to school and sold them. 

At the same time, what the show is saying here is, legal consequences and lawyers (especially Rickard) can’t solve all the show’s problems. No amount of money from August is ever going to fix Simon’s mental health by itself. August being locked away forever wouldn’t have magically taken away the fault lines in Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship, which we see over the course of the season have as much to do with Wilhelm’s relationship to the monarchy as everything else. And in some alternate universe where Simon and Wille get in trouble for the drugs and the gun but August faces zero punishments at all, he wouldn’t exactly be magically cured of all his trauma and live a pretty life from then on.

Ultimately season 3 seems to be saying not that the legal system is 100% ineffective, but that it has its limits in how much healing or catharsis it can bring to people. Especially because of the way settlements and trials focus on incidents in isolation, and limit the agency of the people they are supposed to defend. I actually don’t think season 3 is telling us to let go of the legal system entirely. But what it is doing is asking us to understand offenses beyond the strict binaries of crime and punishment, and how they fit into broader contexts of societal prejudice. And finally, it is telling us to look to vulnerable human-to-human connections as another space for healing. Which is where all the juicy, interesting, complicated stuff is. I’m glad that S3 chose to follow those threads instead of just sticking us in a courtroom for five episodes.

A note before I continue: I know I’ve talked to a few friends who were disappointed we didn’t see August sell Årnäs, when we know it’s important to him. I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet. I have decided that this is one of the things I’d love to ask Lisa about in more depth, to see why one of her writing decisions was to leave that out. I suspect August has already started to pull away from Årnäs a bit in season 2 already, given that he’s willing to sell art to buy Rousseau for Sara, but I don’t know if he’s consciously there yet, and I think fans might be looking to see him grapple with that. In retrospect, it also seems like August’s arc over 3 seasons is him trying to figure out who his family is. The material reality of Årnäs and how much he wants to keep it is sort of an externalization of that, but also his way of deflecting from talking seriously about his grief for his father. So, I see why this is a tab left open in people’s brains. Maybe I’ll be able to close it on rewatch. But Simon’s also supposed to be getting that money, and that tab is left open in my brain, too. I hope Lisa reads this and has an answer for me.

Anyway. Onward to those human-to-human connections.

Erik’s ambiguity and his role in the initiations

I never fully trusted Erik. I say this not to “gloat about being right” but mostly to establish what my baseline reading of the character was in season 1. I do think he was very loving of Wilhelm and meant a lot to him, but I didn’t trust him to be a full-on LGBTQIA+ ally, and I didn’t trust him not to have gotten up to abusive fratboy shit in the past. Part of the reason I gravitated toward this reading of the character is that I found it way more interesting than Erik being perfect. In my personal experience, family members are never exactly who you need them to be, and part of the struggle of growing up is knowing when you can lean on someone (or their memory) for support and when you need to protect yourself. Fiction that deals with these themes is endlessly fascinating to me. It’s the kind of fiction I try to write, that I’d want to someday publish. So naturally Ambiguous Erik is my preferred Erik.

As someone who’s always sort of approached Erik’s memory with a less-than-trusting reading of his character, the minute the homophobic initiations came up, I knew that Erik’s role was going to be a key point of revelation. So much of season 3’s momentum was tied up in Wilhelm finding out and processing that, and August being able to put into words how Erik and the other third year boys’ actions traumatized him. The knowledge that August, Nils, and Vincent chose to remove the most homophobic practices when they initiated first years adds a twist of the tragic knife. We have three boys who are trying (however imperfectly) to break the cycle, and yet none of them got the support they needed in processing what happens to them. August even ends up releasing the video and perpetuating the cycle of abuse. But it’s hard not to look at that now and not see an element of untreated trauma driving his actions.

I suspect for some fans of the show, that revelation about August (and Nils, and Vincent) essentially being a sexual assault victim is a pretty uncomfortable one, because it can feel like an excuse for his actions. But I don’t think the show is excusing August’s actions so much as explaining them, and even more importantly, the show instead seems to be focused on just how challenging breaking the cycle can be, and just how much time and effort is required. Moreover, understanding August’s vulnerability is crucial for Wilhelm’s character arc.

In my restorative justice meta a while back, I talked about the dangers of the Hillerska students being able to villainize someone like August, because they could so easily deflect from their own actions by imagining him as an individual monster and ignoring the parts of the system that enabled his worst deeds. When I wrote this, I was primarily thinking of characters like Nils and Vincent. I did not expect it to be Wilhelm buying into the myth of August the Monster while disavowing his own flaws. And yet, in season 3, we could see Wilhelm’s black-and-white villainizing of August as something that got in the way of his empathy and better judgment, primarily toward Simon. Like. Wilhelm is, to put it lightly, a pretty crappy boyfriend to Simon at the beginning of the season! (If this post also included a third thing I loved, it was that a lot of the wilmon boyfriends stuff early on in the season was always just a little too yikes to be fully cute.)

And yes, you can look at the part where Wilhelm’s making Simon delete stuff off social media, and eventually delete all his social media entirely, and talk about how Wille is responding to the pressure of the palace, and his mother’s mental health struggles and so on. But IMO it’s similar to the way August lets himself get caught up in the pressures of his social role at Hillerska to try and escape his grief and trauma. Both boys fear and disgust the ways they’ve been made vulnerable (something they react to when they see their vulnerability reflected in one another) and try to play their social role within the system they are most familiar, to gain back a sense of strength and agency. Ultimately, however, they become the weapons of that system, and hurt those they love and care about. It was pretty smart of the show to recognize that Wilhelm reconciling with August and Simon reconciling with August are actually two different flavors of Thing, and the reason a Wilhelm-August reconciliation is different is because of the amount of social power that they hold in the system.

No character symbolizes the reasons for August and Wilhelm’s struggle with the system more than Erik. This is not to say that Erik Is Evil—he’s not! We also know that August and Wilhelm love him, and that he has helped them and cared for them—merely that he strands for what they’re both grappling with. Both boys have to recognize Erik beyond the idealized version of him in order to heal and move forward and actually break the cycle. And they have to recognize Erik’s place in those cycles too. In the last scene we see of Erik, he’s day drinking, and we know he visited Boris for therapy. Could he have struggled with guilt over what he did in the initiation? It’s possible. In a way, the biggest tragedy of Erik’s death is that he doesn’t get a chance to break the cycles alongside Wilhelm and August. But maybe his soul can rest easier knowing they are a little closer to being brothers than they were before.

Where this leads me as a writer, especially of fanfics

I likely started with these two aspects of season three because they already line up so much with what interests me in storytelling. When I think about the kind of writer I want to be, I want to write the complex entangled family history stuff that’s hard to sort through, and I want to write it well. Young Royals gives me another solid mentor text in that regard, alongside books like Patron Saints of Nothing and A Sitting in St. James.

On the fanfic side of things… well. I’m glad the legal stuff is taken care of already! I honestly didn’t want to have to be dealing with the courtroom all that much in my fanfics. Maybe someone else will want that, and I think the option is still there. Someone could do some really cool fics with a character choosing to study law in the future, or similar. But I’m glad to have that off my plate for the time being.

As for what these parts of the season have made me more interested in than before, I’m really captivated by the idea of Wilhelm and August becoming brothers to one another, even if—especially if—it’s a fun multi-year slowburn with lots of heart-wrenching emotions. What would their relationship look like? How would they navigate around Wilhelm’s break with his mother and August’s newly forged relationship to one another? What kind of time would August and Wilhelm choose to spend with one another to work on their relationship, and what do the boundaries look like? Could August one day leave the monarchy too, and would Wilhelm support him in that? (I hope so.) For some fans, I think they’re just content to leave Wilhelm and August’s reconciliation as that conversation at the party, and I think that’s valid. But I do know that in whatever I write going forward, I’m interested in seeing how their relationship can develop and change over time. And that feels hopeful in a way I like.

So maybe… just maybe… some of the things I’m going to write will involve Wille and August developing a better relationship. And I think I’m ok with that.

[ghostywriter]

My Extensive List of Backstories + Headcanons for the Devil's Nest Gang part 1: Dolcetto!

Born May 4, 1882

At the time of his death in the autumn of 1914, he was 32 years old.

His height is 5'5"

Dolcetto is his last name. He gave up his first when he joined the Nest.

His father is an Aerugonian immigrant and mechanic. His mother is from the islands surrounding Xing. She was a traveler and swordswoman for hire before settling down in South City.

He has 3 sisters-- Two older twins (born 1877) and one younger sister. (born 1887)

He was born in the southeast side of South City and grew up in a slums apartment.

He's always been short-statured and was often bullied for it as a child and teenager. He gets really annoyed when people comment on his height.

He met Martel in June 1890, when he was age 8. She helped defend him from those bullying him and quickly became his best friend. He liked her for protecting him and teaching him how to be stronger.

Upon Martel leaving for the North when he was 14, he stopped attending school as much during a period of depression. He dropped out when he was 16.

Dolcetto was drafted for the Aerugo border war at 19. In training, he met Martel again and they resumed their friendship.

Dolcetto was the one who rescued Martel after she stepped on a landmine. While he was saving her, he was shot in his spine and nearly died, thus leading to his use as a test subject.

He is trilingual, speaking and reading both of his parents' languages as well as Amestrian. He's distinctly bad at reading in Amestrian.

He has dyscalculia which has led him to dislike solving math problems and handling money.

He's trained in both judo and boxing. He hadn't done much training with swords until he'd joined the gang. He likes swords for their extensive history, the skill required to use them, because his mother was a swordswoman, and because one of his older sisters was a fencer. His current katana was a gift from Greed, though he collects additional antique swords.

Cooking is one of his biggest passions, partially thanks to both of his parents having been fantastic cooks who'd taught him. He's especially invested in Aerugonian cuisine and particularly likes hand-making pasta and noodles.

His favorite smells are lavender, sandalwood, rose, and tomatoes. The former two originate from his mother using lots of lavender incense when he was a child.

Martel cuts his hair. She's the only one that he trusts to do it.

He's prone to depression and anxiety, and the main way to alleviate both for him is to constantly stay working. Unfortunately, all of those contribute to his insomnia.

His favorite drink is espresso and his favorite food is udon.

He's a complete snob about tobacco and refuses to smoke cigarettes unless they're his only choice. The first thing that he bought for himself when he got settled into the Nest was his favorite kiseru.

He takes after his father and is very mechanically minded. Whenever anything needs to be fixed in the Nest, they bring it to him and he can fix it very quickly.

He loves cars and working on them, but he also has developed a significant fear of them that's probably caused by the dog genes.

He likes to help Bido with gardening, work out with Martel, dance with Greed, and play shogi with Roa.

He's an incredibly lightweight drinker. He also gets terrible hangovers and has a tendency to be incredibly emotionally volatile when drunk, often crying or ranting to Martel.

He has lots of scars, most notable of which are the ones from knife training with Martel that line his arms and burn scars on his ribs from torture. He also still has scars from being shot in the spine.

He regularly gets overstimulated from sounds and smells, so he's gotten used to figuring out his sensory limits.

He instinctually reacts happily to having his head and neck scratched, and Greed often makes fun of him for that.

He deals with chronic back and joint pain, so his wrist cuffs are for compression. He's also been known to use a cane on particularly bad days.

[shivvroys]

a long-winded ramble no one asked for on karolina/shiv and motherhood

Okay, so I got a comment on the last chapter of this fic that included the question of whether Karolina would have kids in my version of their world, and I wanted to dig a little bit into it.

This is essentially a lot of psychoanalytical rambling about Karolina and Shiv and their relationship to motherhood/raising children.

In my view, both Karolina and Shiv grew up in a house with an angry man (“there will always be an angry man in your house”). We know what Logan was like and what Shiv’s childhood essentially looked like, we’ve seen it written all over the siblings’ faces throughout the show, and I think Karolina’s background was not that dissimilar.

Being a child of immigrants, I think Karolina was always reminded that her parents had given up everything, had fought to give their children a “better life”, and that she had a sort of sacred duty to uphold that sacrifice and ensure she “made something of herself”. Queue the repression, and later on the resentment once the successful life she’s built for herself still isn’t enough because now she’s compromised her values, and she’s failed to build a family of her own because of her dedication to her work.

Working for a company like Waystar, and spending her time protecting corrupt men and the systems they uphold, I’d imagine has also been a constant point of contention in her household, and the inevitable catalyst for every fight during holidays and family get-togethers.

Then, later on, came the fact that she’s prioritised that work over starting her own family.

Now, and this is mostly coming from personal experience so don’t take my word as gospel, in the minds of someone who grew up in a country under communist rule, family was holy. If you were over a certain age, and you didn’t have a family, a child, you were seen as a failure to your country. In fact (again, not sure this applied to every country under the iron curtain), childless women over the age of 20 (and men over 25) had to pay a “bachelor tax”. The government needed workers, and if you failed to provide them, you’d failed your country. Women who’d birthed over ten children were given medals and called Mother Heroines (btw that term is still used today, albeit it is no longer a formal honorary title).

Combine that deeply ingrained sense of duty, with the added pride of having fought for their children, I’d say there has to be a lot of pressure there for Karolina to have something to fight for, to have a family that she could dedicate all that work to. For a parent who’s lived under communism, wealth for wealth’s sake doesn’t mean all that much. People who grew up in that environment wouldn’t even know what to do if they had that sort of luxury (a sentence that gets repeated by a lot of people who grew up during those times is “Even if you had money, there was nothing to buy with it!”).

For Shiv, I think the same principle applies, although her cross to bear is the fact that Logan uses his children as an excuse. He tells them that everything he’s built has been for their sake, when really he just loves the fight. And Shiv’s smart, she sees through it, but she’s also a woman, and she knows the same rules could never apply to her. Not in Logan’s world, anyway.

He couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head.

In Logan’s world, and the world both Shiv and Karolina have moulded themselves to fit into, a woman is never allowed to be more than one thing at a time. They can be valuable assets to the firm, or daughters, or wives, but never all of those things at once. And motherhood is the last stop. It’s a canyon drop that takes a lot of fucking work to climb out of.

Now, I also think it’s important to take into consideration Shiv and Karolina’s respective career points.

Shiv’s is…a whole mess. She’s nowhere near where she thought she’d be, and she has a lot of figuring out to do in the wake of everything that’s happened. Essentially, she’s got a knife ready in her hand but can’t find a worthwhile fight to throw herself in. She’s basically just flinging the knife around, hoping it stabs something. She’s still trying to find a canyon to climb.

Karolina, on the other hand, has found her fight. I think Dag shared her view in an interview that, as of the pilot, Karolina’s position as head of PR had been pretty newly minted. The amount of time that’s passed from the pilot until the finale is pretty short. She’s just managed to crawl on top of that canyon, so I imagine she’d want to enjoy the view for a bit, before taking that nosedive. In my world, that’s also where her hesitation to be in a public relationship (especially with another woman!!) comes from.

The emotional front is another beast altogether. I think they’re both afraid of passing that anger and that resentment down (letting the poison drip through).

Despite the breadth of privilege they both have, they still have had to learn to more or less survive in these structures, so I think they’d be terrified of not being able to protect their child from having to do the same.

I also see Karolina as someone who needs to feel in control, and who has a very strict order to her life that a child would be very hard to fit into.

And personally, I’m not fond of narratives that use children as catalysts for change. And I don’t see that as a value that either of these women would feel very connected to, either. The “think of the baby” of it all. At the end of the day, they’re both very selfish women. You kind of have to be when you’ve chosen to work in the belly of the beast of corporate America.

Thus, and coming to end of this giant fucking ramble (i am so sorry the world wide web has to house all that), do I think Shiv and/or Karolina would absolutely never want children? No. I just think there needs to be a lot of self-work on both parts before that choice can be made consciously.

Do I think they would find a way to raise an emotionally healthy child? Yes, actually!

But I prefer to imagine a world for them in which that is a choice they make, and not a consequence they deal with.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for “cultural appropriation”

The quotes will make sense I swear

🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽

I suit shopping and saw quinceañera dress and make a comment about how it woulda been nice to have had one but meh. My friend got mad saying that if I did it would be cultural appropriation cause im not Latina.

If you’re unfamiliar a quinceañera is a big party to celebrate a girls 15 birthday and her becoming a woman in Latin American cultures. Specifically tho this ask is talking about Mexican culture.

Now you might be saying “yeah you’re 100% the asshole. That is culture appreciation if you aren’t Latina”

Here’s the thing tho

I was.

Currently I’m a transman but I didn’t come out until I was 16 and I pass pretty well now. People think I’m a cis gay boy or some other type of cis mlm. I’m also Latino. My dad is an immigrant and my mom’s second generation (her parents were immigrants). However I’m kinda white passing (both parents have pretty light skin for being Mexican)

But back then as far as everyone knew I was a Latina turning 15 so I COULD have had one. But didn’t for a few reasons (I don’t like being the center of attention, I was in the closet and it woulda been dysphoric, I wanted to use that money to go on vacation instead)

So yeah- AITA? My friend is being pissy about it still saying I need to apologize but literally what did I do wrong???

If there’s any questions I’ll make a throwaway account

[jesncin]

5 days long anon again. Yeah, it took a while because I kept reworking and trying to find the right words. words are hard. Plus anxiety. Constantly worrying if it would be right or sound right. Right now I'm riding the high of "it WAS fine!!" so I'm feeling more confident in sending this.

The whole "oooh superhero lied to someone how bad" when it's about their identity? One thing I clipped from the previous ask was talking about how of course a hero should not disclose their civilian ID because that would put any family or friends in danger. A reporter SHOULD understand that! Or at least a kind one. Of course Clark wouldn't be going around telling people if only because he wants to keep his parents safe. Yet you can't look me in the face and tell me that the Kents wouldn't be leery about telling people their son's origins as an alien regardless of when the story is set because technically? Illegal immigrant baby. Illegal immigrant alien baby, whom any spooky group (military/research/???) might want to get their greasy mitts on. I can see that kind of worry leaving marks on him too, even though he is trying to be kind and good.

Maybe it was "too soon" but Kal-el is talking to someone he's grown to know as both Clark Kent and Superman. Who he feels he can take that risk with. And with something... not small, exactly, but not as harmful to his life as he lives it on Earth? It's not quite a test of trust because that would be too calculated for it but it is something more honest and raw and the little voice in the back of the head going "do you understand? do I understand?".

"I've had to justify fanon to canon" is... odd. Have you had to with the Martians or is it specifically your take on Lois? I admit I haven't been able to read all the comics and random sketches yet but everything I've seen has been built on the trend of compassion and care whether it is for it or in spite of it. ...and sexy abs. (Rudy.)

Run out of steam/focus so hope you have a good night again.

Hiya 5 days anon (Here I am responding now after the strike)! And no worries, I appreciate people taking their time thinking of what to say.

Right! Even without any Superhero-level fantasy stuff- irl journalists write under pseudonyms or protect the privacy of the people they're interviewing all the time (Lois did this in Girl Taking Over!!). This notion that reporters are Kantian "Lying Is Always Bad No Matter What" people is frankly a caricature. Fun for silver age shenanigans, but not if you want your story to have any sort of depth. And yeah! Clark is an illegal immigrant baby. It shouldn't take much imagination to see why he and the Kents would want to keep that a secret (alas some stories think otherwise- I can't help but call the emotional intelligence of the characters into question at that point).

Yeah! I don't imagine Superman telling Lois his Kryptonian name as something pre-meditated, it's very spur of the moment trust. The idea is that he's not ready to disclose his civilian identity yet, but he is trusting Liando with something far more personal.

It's mostly been my Superman stuff. I don't post my Martian art on twidder especially since well. I've always gotten one or two racist comments on my Clois comics but the Private Interview comic just unleashed the floodgate for racist comments. If I get that much heat for a cishet interracial couple, you can imagine how gross people would be to my Martian stuff. There's a portion of cape fandom that just doesn't understand fanon or interpretations and are vehemently against any sort of change. So I get silly comments asking me to justify the change ("Why is Lois Black??") or backhanded compliments hailing me as "the exception to racebends". It's annoying, but in the end the comic really wasn't for them. It's for people like y'all who get it! (like Rudy)

Thank you and good day/night!

[frogmanfae]

Screams excitedly those are two of my fave livesies too!!

What are your headcanons for them?

Ooh ok ok ok I'm gonna section this

Elmer

Canon era

This isn't original but he has a cat who's the ugliest thing ever but he loves it so much

Big family, lots of siblings, raised by a single dad in over his head (this might be canon)

Almost completely illiterate. He learned the alphabet and that's about as far as he's been able to get. Buttons reads the headline to him every day and has tried to teach him but not much has actually stuck

Buttons is his best friend fs

He's definitely close with Spot Conlon. Someone told me that they think they're half brothers and I can't figure out if I like that or if I think they're a teeny bit in love. I think it depends on the context.

Elmer is Elmer in Manhattan but sometimes he sells in Brooklyn and he's Graves. The only one who knows he's both of these people is Race, who finds it extremely funny whenever someone else says something about Graves in Manhattan or Elmer in Brooklyn

First generation Polish American who's fluent in the Polish language. Because of this, he's good friends with Davey (a Polish immigrant) and he asks him about the country a lot. They both find it pretty refreshing to be able to speak the language and talk about Poland with someone they aren't related to.

Raised in a very religious setting, but once he started selling papers he used it as an excuse to escape the church (religious trauma)

Hides his feelings. If he has to cry he holds it in until night. He usually spends those nights on the street so his siblings don't hear and no body in the lodging house asks

He's on the younger side of the newsies. Either the youngest of the oldest or the oldest of the youngest

He's trying to provide for his family but he's often largely unsuccessful. Not because he's bad at selling or anything, but because a dime doesn't go as far with 9 people to feed

Modern Era

A lot of the canon era stuff carries over (the ugly cat, big family, Buttons, religious trauma, hiding his feelings...)

He really likes Spiderman. Like a lot.

His family isn't the most accepting in terms of his queerness but they could definitely be worse. They kind of just don't acknowledge it most of the time.

He likes to paint his nails. Or rather get his nails painted. Usually Buttons or Jojo does it, but the first time someone painted his nails it was his older sister before she moved out. His favorite color to do is pink but it's more often black so nobody makes a comment because he doesn't want to deal with it

He's one of those fluffy hair boys for sure

He likes experimenting with makeup, nothing too dramatic, but some shiny eyeshadow, some eyeliner (he hasn't been able to do a wing yet) a little bit of lip gloss.. He really likes blush tho, he wears it as often as he can

His sister got him a skirt as a joke and he's only ever put it on once to try. He doesn't love it and he's never worn it after that, but if he's going to a party he might consider it and not go through with it

Despite what literally everyone thinks, man can hold his liquor

He has glasses

He likes chunky jewelry. He has two piercings in each ear that he usually wears black studs and small black hoops in. He wants to get more piercings when he can, but that's it for now

Mountain Dew addict

Or pineapple Fanta addict

Both probably

He plays the flute and the guitar, but most people only know about the flute

He knows flower language. He and Sarah get together at least once a month to talk about flowers

Big over the ear headphones

So easily eepy, man can sleep anywhere no matter the conditions

He struggles a lot with his mental health, but he started to get help and talk more about it when he was nearing the end of high school

Finch

Canon era

Steals Specs's glasses more often than anyone realizes

He has a little sister but hasn't seen her since he ran away

He didn't really mean to run away, but he got into an argument with his parents one night and he stormed out. He got caught up in something and wound up in the Refuge for 6 months. After he got out, he couldn't bring himself to go back. He had just spent half a year getting tortured and degraded and if he went home and his parents were still mad (especially now that he had gotten arrested and disappeared for so long) he wouldn't have been able to handle it. So he never tried

He's actually really good at gambling. Like really good. Most of the time he's not even trying. It drives Race insane

He's close friends with Albert and he might have some more than platonic feelings about him, but he's not entirely sure because he has the same feelings about other people (Crutchie) so it might just be good friend feelings (is it tho?)

He lovesss some good word play

He won't often go out and make trouble himself, but he definitely follows people into trouble a lot

Modern Era

Again, some of this carries over (stealing Specs's glasses, confusing feelings about his friends, word play, following people into trouble...)

He's really close with his sister. She's several years younger than him, but she's his whole world

His parents are divorced and he lives with his dad most of the time, but his mom is still very present in his life

He doesn't do anything to his hair. Like he doesn't even brush it most of the time. Just shampoo and conditioner. It makes Race so pissed that his curls aren't all over the place

Archery 100℅

He doesn't excel in school but he's a straight B student (with the occasional C in math)

He doesn't play hockey, but he does watch it when it's on TV

He knows how to braid, mostly because of his sister. Not just normal braids either, several types of braids. Fishtail, Dutch, French, bubble, all of the above

He's kind of quiet in class, but not so much when he's with his friends

Not a whole lot really bothers him. He's the guy all his friends come to when they're upset