#what is american culture to the point that it could apply to every single person who's lived here for like 20 years

[beemovieerotica]

struggling with how to word this, but putting it out there anyway:

i can fully understand the posts on here from a lot of americans being tired of "vote blue no matter who" posts when the #1 thing that people are constantly (and sometimes only?) addressing is how the republican party is going treat trans/queer people if elected.

it's part of an unfortunate pattern of prioritizing the effects on a demographic that includes white + upper class people, when people of color and those in the global south are actively and currently being killed or relegated to circumstances in which their survival is very unlikely

it is genuinely exhausting to witness this, and i was also on the fence about even participating in voting because i a) felt like it didn't matter and b) every time i voiced being frustrated with the current state of the country, white queer people would immediately step in with "but what about trans people!" -> (i am mixed race trans man)

and i say this with unending patience toward people who do this, because i know that it's not something they actively think about. but everyone already knows how the republican party is going to treat queer people. you are probably talking to another queer person when you bring up project 2025. the issue is that, for those of us who aren't white, or for those of us who are but who are conscious of ongoing struggles for people of color worldwide, the safety of people around the world feels more urgent than our own. that is the calculation that's being made.

you're not going to win votes for the democratic party by dismissing or minimizing these realities and by continually centering (white) queer people.

very few people on here and twitter are actually talking about issues beyond queer rights that concern people of color, or how the two administrations differ on these issues instead of constantly circling back to single-issue politics. this isn't an exhaustive list. but these are the issues that have actually altered my perspective and motivated me to the point of committing to casting a vote

the biden administration has been engaged in a years-long fight to allow new applicants to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that allows undocumented individuals who arrived as children to remain in the country) after the Trump administration attempted to terminate it. the program is in limbo currently because of the actions of Trump-backed judges, with those who applied before the ruling being allowed to stay, but no new applications are being processed. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of just deporting the 1.8 million people, but he continues to change his mind depending on whatever the fuck goes on in his head. he cannot be relied on to be sympathetic toward people of hispanic descent or to guarantee that DREAMers will be allowed stay in the country. biden + a democratic controlled congress will allow legal challenges to the DACA moratorium to gain ground.

the biden administration is open to returning and protecting portions of culturally important indigenous land in a way that the trump administration absolutely does not give a fuck. as of may 2024, they have established seven national monuments with plans to expand the San Gabriel Monument where the Gabrielino, Kizh / Tongva, the Chumash, Kitanemuk, Serrano, and Tataviam reside. the Berryessa Snow Mountain is also on the list, as a sacred region to the Patwin.

i'm recognizing that the US's plans for clean energy have often come into conflict with tribal sovereignty, and the biden administration could absolutely do better in navigating this. but the unfortunate dichotomy is that there would be zero commitment or investment in clean energy under a trump-led government, which poses an astounding existential threat and destabilizing force to the global south beyond any human-to-human conflict. climate change has caused and will continue to cause resource shortages, greater natural disasters, and near-lethal living conditions for those in the tropics - and the actions of the highest energy consumers (US) are to blame. biden has funneled billions of dollars into climate change mitigation and clean energy generation - trump does not believe that any of it matters.

i may circle back to this and add more as it comes up, but i'm hoping that those who are skeptical / discouraged / tired of the white queer-centric discourse on tumblr and twitter can at least process some of this. please feel free to add more articles + points but i'm asking for the sake of this post to please focus on issues that affect people of color.

[snekdood]

my culture is midwestern emo

[bookwyrminspiration]

hello i brought up the terrible cultural representstion in keeper to my parents and they said it was probably the publisher pushing for it. dyou have any thoughts? you seemed like the best person to ask about this

I don't know if I'm the best person, but I can certain share some thoughts about it. I'm assuming by cultural representation you're referring to the lack of diverse characters--and subpar representation/inclusion of the few characters who are diverse? (this is a bit long, so warning)

While I doubt it was the only thing, it is likely publishing affected the diversity; this was a book pitched and sold in the early 2010s in an industry dominated by white women--I found an article from 2016 saying about 79% of publishing staff are white. The same survey in 2019 found 76% were white, so while I can't find one more recent at the moment, it's safe to say it's still a very white-dominated industry.

Keeper is published by Simon & Schuster, and I found a few various sources talking about them, but nothing significant enough to override what I've already cited (which applies to them as well). You can check out this site citing a few employee statistics about them, if you're curious.

If you look through the people Shannon thanks in the acknowledgments of her books--Like Laura Rennert, Lara Perkins, Taryn Fagerness, etc.--the people she's working with and surrounded by appear to be predominantly white women (though I didn't look up every single name, and I'm specifically focusing on book 1 right now), and the thing about agents and editors and all the like is that they'll be much more incentivized to work with/sell/buy a book that they connect to emotionally, which in this case is white stories.

The same applies to authors, which I think is another aspect of the supbar diveristy. Shannon's--as far as I know--an abled allocishet non-hispanic white American woman. Authors like to write stories they connect to and see themselves in (which isn't inherently a bad thing), and for her that means stories with straight, cis, abled white characters and heavy American influence. And this story is scouted and enjoyed by white agents/editors/publishers/etc. (I don't know enough about them to truly discuss their identities, I'm coming to conclusions based on suggestive evidence, but may be wrong).

I can't tell you what's going on in their heads, but it's entirely possible that the lack of diversity wasn't a conscious choice, but rather something that none of them prioritized or noticed. Publishers appear to have some sort of diversity "quota" as well, not going beyond it. This opinion piece briefly mentions it amongst the rest of its discussion, how white publishers at Simon & Schuster questioned whether they needed to bid to publish a black author when they already had another. This is, however, one anecdotal instance and may not be representative. My point in including it is to be aware of what the scene may be and how, even though Shannon is white and therefore more likely to be published, a story with increased diversity may not be seen as necessary or be pushed for. Instead, the diversity in their company can come from other authors. So unless Shannon makes that conscious effort herself, she won't be punished for the lack.

That all discusses this from the perspective of including diversity. There's also the matter of the diversity that is there, which has been dissected and commented on by people far more knowledgeable than me. The two are related, and there are likely similar causes.

Once again, Shannon doesn't have the personal experience or knowledge of the various characters/backgrounds she includes. And her editors/publishers likely don't either, which may explain in part what we see in the books. I don't know whether keeper has sensitivity readers or not, but if there aren't any that could also contribute.

Improvements have been made with time--there are more characters of color than when we started--but that doesn't make these improvements without fault. So I think she is making an effort, but it's falling short. And if the prior observation about how they can meet their diversity quota with other authors continues here, there may not be significant push from her publishers/editors etc. to truly focus on quality diverse representation. They're committed to her story at this point and won't stop her, but they don't need her to do much, perhaps? And Shannon has, to an extent, backed herself into a corner because so much of her story was established without diversity early on, and there's only so much she can add later--we see now how the cast is started to get very crowded and complicated with all its additions, and her focus is on Sophie regardless.

There's a lot going on and I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg--and I am not an expert or professional of any kind, so take my observations and hypotheses with a grain of salt--but based on what i know, publishers likely do play a factor. But Shannon herself plays a role as well; the fact of the matter is the story she wrote isn't very diverse. And it was appealing to certain publishers, because the industry is abled straight white woman dominated. So there is a lack of representation, and the representation there feeds into stereotypes and generally isn't good.

No one cause can be blamed, but instead the intersection of various reasons contribute to the diversity issues--that's my conclusion, but don't just take it from me. Think about it for yourself and listen to others as well. I don't quite know where I'm going with all this, but hopefully some of this satisfies your questioning

If not or if anyone would like to discuss it further--including correcting me on anything I may have missed or insensitively said--my inbox is always open.

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

Dunno about you but our teachers never really analysed required readinh in class. Our English (as foreign language) teacher just ripped a quiz from the internet after we were supposed to read 1984. Our (German) literature class was a bit better, but I'm only saying this because I remember the parable of the three rings. I think a lot of teachers don't really do anything with the required reading, making it feel pointless. Dunno, maybe challenging kids to analyse their fav media would work better

I don’t think the problem of mediocre teachers teaching for the test is going to be solved by letting kids pick the books. I get what you are saying, and i think kids analyzing their favorite books could work as a good introductory activity for elementary and middle schoolers, i think you are missing the point of the post. There are always going to be things in life that require critical thinking even if it doesn’t personally interest you. You can’t always just throw up you hands and dnf the world around you. I’m sorry your teacher’s weren’t great, but that doesn’t mean the whole exercise must be wrong.

(Apologies for going on a bit of a ramble, but your ask really rubbed me the wrong way and i need to talk about it.)

The first problem with letting kids just pick whatever book to analyze is practical: the teacher won’t be able to read every book. My average high school english class had 15 people, and most schools have more. Unless that one assignment made up the whole class, the teacher would not be able to read every single submission in a reasonable time frame. If the student misinterprets something, the teacher has no way of knowing. Say for example that someone wanted to do a project on the Twilight Saga, and somewhere in their paper they argue that the book has a strong anti-racist message because it has a lot of Native American characters. And ignorant non-native student might not catch the more underhanded racism present, nor would they know about how the author appropriated a real tribe for profit they never got a cut off if they only looked at the book itself and not discussions around it. And the teacher wouldn’t be able to correct them because they have 20-some other completely different books and projects they’ve never read to worry about. The point of a curriculum is for everyone to be on the same page. And yes, this can lead to situations where a teacher decides that their interpretation is the only correct one, but it’s better than a free for all where no one learns anything.

As for why english class had people look at certain ”classics” over the new YA hotness is because the classics’ value goes beyond whether or not they are good stories. They have cultural impact, they challenge your thinking, they hold up to close readings. It’s one thing to learn about the raw facts of WW1 or the Vietnam War, it’s another thing to read what it felt like to live through those things and their aftermaths from authors who experienced them firsthand like Earnest Hemmingway and Tim O’Brian. And let me tell you: I cannot stand Hemmingway, but i understand why i was made to read his work. He touched on not only the war itself, but the emotional struggle to move on with your life after experiencing something so traumatic but ultimately pointless, not to mention his actual style of writing was innovative for its time. Meanwhile Tim O’Brian is one of my favorite authors long after my high school class introduced me to him. His book The Things They Carried will tell a horrifying anecdote about Vietnam in one chapter, then spend the next talking directly to the audience about which parts were literally true, and which parts were emotionally true, details that were altered in order to tell the story in a way that brought the reader closer to what the real thing felt like. There’s a lot more storytelling philosophy in there i still apply to my own writing too this day that i would have never considered without it. There arguments to be made about the over abundance of white dude authors in the curriculum. Calling it right now, The Left Hand of Darkness should be taught in schools. But there is diversity outside the YA shelf. Go read Toni Morrison.

Speaking of YA, as a final point, some kids would just pick bad books. Let’s take Divergent as an example from the original post. Divergent is a bad book. It’s a bad trilogy. I know they are bad because i’ve read all of them and gone through with a fine toothed comb analyzing how poorly constructed its world, characters, plots, and themes really are. I have literally given an academic lecture in my discord server about the baffling degree to which Divergent is a literary failure from top to bottom. Now, a casual teenaged reader would go through a series about a girl fighting in a post-apocalyptic restrictive system where people are only allowed to be one thing and say the book is about standing up to authority and fighting against conformity. Many characters even say as such. But remember the Twilight example? How books can say through their details themes that contradict what the characters in-universe declare to be so? In Divergent, there are 5 factions, but only one of them has any real government power, the same one main girl is from. The bad guys are the ones who start advocating for for equal government representation for the other groups. Main girl immediately clocks them as bad and evil. They later use mind control for genocide. Second book, what about the people who don’t fit in the faction system? They all live in poverty and naturally want to abolish the old system in favor of something new. Main girl thinks this is a bad idea. The revolutionaries later commit more genocide. Third book, secret scientists who have been running the show the whole time want to wipe everyone’s memories/kill everyone to start over. Main girl dies stopping the bad guy from doing a third genocide, the series ends with the restrictive faction system firmly in place and more people joining it from outside because it works just so darn well. Every single character or group who wants to make more than the smallest changes to the status quo are consistently framed as callus, bloodthirsty villains. By the end, nothing has changed except the visitation rules between factions aren’t as strict. This is framed as a good thing. But most teens who read the books didn’t notice these troubling themes, because the story is dressed up in the the imagery and language of fight-the-power dystopian YA of the time. It’s all surface-level. The book tells you that it’s against conformity, even though it shows how deviations from the norm are dangerous and get people hurt so it’s better for everyone if everything stays the same. And that’s just one angle wrong with this series.

If this was the only book a teenager ever read, they would not be able to pick up on this. I am because i’m an adult with years of analytical study and practice, with hundreds of books under my belt. But i got to where i am because my teachers forced me to expand my horizons beyond warrior cats and realize that a story could be more than just a story.

tl;dr: deficiencies in the education system are not the fault of the books being taught. those books are taught for a reason. if you want to be an anti-intellectual, do it on your own time

[terubakudan]

This may be an old article from 3 years ago, but these cultural aspects/observations still apply even today. And though this is strictly a Chinese perspective, a lot of these everyday life bits are observed in Overseas Chinese communities in countries such as The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. as well as countries heavily influenced by Chinese culture like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

I've always liked learning about other cultures and making comparisons between how things are done East vs West. Which probably stems from growing up with two cultures and Mom raising me on American movies xD

So the irony is if you asked me how many Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong actors I know, chances are I know as much as you do xD Like Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, and that's about it. But if you asked me about Western (specifically American and British) actors, then I have a useless brain dump of movie trivia and who was with who in what movie xD

Hmmm, both Taiwan and the Philippines are two distinct cultures but both look up to a certain country and are fascinated by that. In Taiwan's case, Japan and the US for the Philippines. In both cases, this is due to being under the rule of those countries in their history. Taiwan being under Japan for 50 years, and the Philippines being under Spain for 300+ years, followed by periods of American and Japanese rule. To put it simply though:

Taiwan is "mini-Japan with a very Chinese culture".

The Philippines is "former colony of Spain with lots of American influences".

But unlike the author, I've never set foot in any Western country, so my understandings are strictly what I've observed in media, which while it can be accurate, doesn't compare to actually experiencing the culture.

Some further elaboration on most points:

#1 We quite literally use chopsticks for everything. We use it to pick rice, viands, vegetables, fruit, smaller desserts, almost all the food you can think of.

But where do you put your chopsticks when you're not using them? Just put them on top of your bowl or flat on your plate. But do not ever stick them vertically. It's taboo, since it looks like incense sticks, which we use to pray for those who have passed, like our ancestors or during funerary services.

#3 The majority of Asia is obsessed with fair/white skin. In my time at the Philippines, I grew up watching all these Dove Whitening commercials and my classmates often commented on how fair my skin was, how they envied it etc. In Taiwan, girls often say they don't want to 變黑 (biàn hēi) 'become dark'. Japan and Korea too are not innocent of this either (if their beauty/skin products weren't a dead giveaway).

People here at Taiwan often mistake me for being from Hong Kong or Japan (as long as I don't speak Mandarin with my heavy accent xD). A Taiwanese classmate of mine joked that she often gets mistaken for being from Southeast Asia due to having a darker complexion. And while I laughed it off with her at that time, looking back, I now realize she was lowkey being racist. xD

And believe me Filipinas have mentioned literally being told 'your skin is so dark' here in Taiwan, or being given backhanded compliments like 'you're pretty despite having dark skin' and...*facepalms*

My point is, beauty is not exclusive to skin color. People who still think that are assholes.

#5 Not to say we don't have salt and pepper, but yes soy sauce and vinegar are the classic condiments you see on the table, be it at home or at a restaurant.

And if I may add, Taiwanese love their pepper. xD If you ever get to eat at a night market or a smaller "Mom n' Pop-style" restaurant here, some dishes/soups tend to add quite an excessive amount of pepper. Not like anthills, but quite liberally and way more than average. Enough that you see traces of pepper at the bottom of the food paper bag or swirling in your soup. xD

#6 I know this all too well from personal experience. In my years of studying at Taiwan, I always had roommates. 3 in my first school (I graduated high school in the Philippines pre K-12 so I had to make up 2 years of Senior High), followed by 2 in college, with the exception of 1 in freshman year.

My college did offer single person dorms but at around 9000 NTD ($324) per month compared to around 6000 NTD ($216) per semester. Because I wanted to save, the choice was obvious for me xD. But ah, this doesn't mean I don't value personal space, in fact I love having the room to myself, and since both my roomies would go home to their families every weekend, weekends were bliss for me xD

And you don't have to be friends with your roommates (that's an added bonus however), you just have to get along with them. I was quite lucky to have really great roommates all throughout my schooling years.

#9 In the Philippines, we do. Owing mostly to American influences and maybe being predominantly Catholic? xD

#10 *sigh* Chinese parents and parents from similar Asian cultures tend to put too much emphasis on grades, so much that kids could get sent to cram school as early as elementary. This is because what school you get into could literally affect your future job opportunities, and while that's not exclusive to any particular country/culture, I feel it's especially pronounced here in Asia. I'm really lucky my own parents weren't that strict about it. However, if your parents don't point the mistakes out to you, chances are you'll do it yourself, if you're an Asian kid like me anyway. xD It just becomes a habit.

#11 My family is an exception to this. xD We do say 'I love you' directly, but complete with the 'ah eat well ok?', 'don't scrimp on food', 'sleep well' and similar indirect words/actions of affection. We were doing 'Conceal, Don't Feel' before it became popular. xD

#13 I'm kind of confused about this but this has sort have changed over the years in which eye-contact is now more encouraged. But don't stare, especially at elders and authority figures. Sometimes it's just shyness though. xD And I've observed this with my own Taiwanese friend, especially when I'm complaining or ranting to her about something. xD I'm a person who likes to express my opinions strongly, which tends to scare/alienate some of the locals here, as doing so is kind of frowned upon. Thankfully, she does listen and offers her take on things.

#14 Ah this. xD In the Philippines, this is a common greeting known as beso-beso, and I freaked out too when an auntie did that to me. xD Needless to say, Mom lectured me later on what that was. ^^"

#16 Along with #3 another crazy beauty standard. In my view, people always look better with a little meat on them and when they're not horribly thin. Asia still has a loonng way to go with accepting different types of bodies if you ask me. This combined with modern beauty standards has made the pressure for women especially to 'look beautiful' higher than ever.

I know many people love them but please, starving yourself or glorifying eating disorders is never OK just to get this kind of 'ideal' body. I'm not part of the Kpop fandom, but even I think when idols get bullied just for gaining the least bit of weight among other insensitive comments, that's really going too far.

#17 'If you want to make friends, go eat.' <- I couldn't agree more. In the Philippines we have a greeting: 'Kumain ka na ba?' (Have you eaten?) . Similarly in Taiwan, we have 吃飯了沒? (chī fàn le méi), both of these can mean that in the literal sense but are often used as greetings instead. By then which invitation to having lunch/dinner together may or may not follow. Food really is a way for us to socialize and to catch up with what's going on in each other's lives. Not to say we don't have regular outings like going out to the mall, going shopping, etc. but eating together is a huge part of our culture, be it with family or friends.

And while I'm at it, some memes that are way too accurate good to pass up xD

Parents, uncles, aunties alike will fight over the bill xD

Alternatively:

You just space out until your name is called xD

My parents are guilty of the last one. Logic how? xD

#18 True. xD I like giving compliments out to people but I have a hard time accepting them myself, though I've learnt how to accept them much more now than before. We're kind of raised to constantly downplay ourselves so we often say things like 'ah no no' or 'I'm really not that good'. The downside of this of course is that it can come off as somewhat fake. xD

Again from personal experience, that same classmate who made the lowkey racist remark, she was good, she was on the debate team, was a honor student, knew how to mingle with people, but she downplayed herself way too much, while praising me but I honestly thought that she never really meant it from how she treated me. She wanted to keep me around her yet make backhanded compliments at me and she didn't want me socializing with my other classmate who is now my friend. *sigh* It was only after discussing this with one of my roomies did I realize how this 'excessive downplaying' might come off to people like me who more or less grew up with a more 'Westernized' mindset. I'm not saying brag about your achievements but don't be overly humble about them either, which can also be a turn off.

#20 We do tend to be a lot more realistic on how we view things, neither entirely optimistic nor pessimistic. We try to think of things practically and often analyze things on pure logic. A downside of this however, is that Chinese people can be overly practical. Taiwanese for instance don't like to 'find inconveniences' and generally keep to themselves, meaning, they won't help you in your hour of need even when they do have the capabilities. Sounds really harsh I know, but in my 6 years of living in Taiwan, while this doesn't apply to all the people, a lot of them really do only find/talk to you when they need something.

So for some people saying Taiwanese are 'friendly', that's BS xD If you ask me, Filipinos are infinitely more friendly, and again while not all, generally make more of an effort to help you when you need it. I really felt more of a real sense of community during my years growing up in the Philippines compared to Taiwan.

#21 Children do tend to stay with their parents well into college and adulthood, since Chinese families are indeed very family-oriented, in a lot of cases, grandparents often live under the same roof as us as well! And it really does save a lot of money. I see there's a real stigma in the US when it comes to "living with your parents", but that's starting to change especially because of Covid and having more and more people move back in with their parents.

Housing unfortunately is pretty much hella expensive no matter where you go, and Taiwan is no exception. Steep housing prices and the very high cost of raising a child (schooling + buxiban fees, etc.) contribute to a very low birth rate and thus an aging population like Japan. It's not uncommon to see both parents working in Taiwan.

#23 I'm an overthinker myself, but I totally agree with the author that the best is to strike a good balance between these two. Which I guess is why I love drawing or any other related creative attempts, it helps me be more spontaneous or well, creative! I like to remain intellectually or artistically inspired.

#24 Is French high school really like that? xD My friend did watch SKAM France and more or less got a culture shock from what was depicted on the show. I can confirm however that most high schools both in the Philippines and Taiwan require students to wear a uniform, only in college is everybody free to wear casual/civilian clothes.

#26 Ah this is part of our Asian gift-giving etiquette xD We always open gifts later after the event/meeting and in private. Never open them in front of the person who gave it to you or in front of others. This is to prevent any 'shame/embarrassment' that may result both to yourself and to the gift giver. I know this may come off as something weird since some people may want a more honest response or immediate feedback when it comes to gift-giving, but that's just how it is in our culture. You're always free to ask us though (in private) if we liked the gift or not ^^"

#28 I want to say the same goes to drinking, partying, and drugs however xD Those are things which are still frowned upon in our culture. And to be honest, whenever I see those in movies, it does kind of turn me off xD It doesn't mean that we're "uncool" or "boring", we just think that there are much better or healthier ways of "having fun".

#31 Is this true in France?! Man I would kind of prefer that instead of people being on their phones all the time xD This kind of goes with #20 in that Chinese are overly practical or logical, and don't read fiction as much as nonfiction. My Taiwanese friend is an exception though, she's a bibliophile who loves the feel of paper books compared to e-books, and it's a trait of her that I like a lot. Both the Philippines and Taiwan however have a huge fanbase when it comes to manga and anime though.

I'm all for reading outside of "designated reading" at schools especially. Reading fiction improves your vocabulary too, and can be quite fun! It helps you imagine and really invest in a world/story, and if you ask me something that I feel Westerners are better at, they're more in touch with their emotions and creativity, and are thus much more able to write compelling or original stories. Believe me, I've seen a fair amount of Chinese movies that rip off Western movie plotlines xD

#33 Nothing much to add on here..except that since I'm a "weird" person, Mom often jokes that she got the wrong baby from the hospital. xD

#35 True. While I agree with the care and concern that your fellow community can give you, the downside of this is we tend to only hang out with our own people, e.g Chinese with Chinese, Taiwanese with Taiwanese, etc. I've seen too that it's especially hard to make friends in Japan and Korea as a foreigner. Not only is there the language barrier, but the differences in culture too. In a way, Asians can be pretty close-minded on getting to know other cultures or actually making friends with people from other countries. I know this all too well being half-Taiwanese/half-Filipino, being neither "Filipino" enough nor "Taiwanese" enough. xD It's more of people here being too used to what they're comfortable with.

#36 Oh this is something I feel that Chinese students and other students from similar cultures should really improve on. xD How will people respect you if you don't speak your mind?

I felt bad especially for my Spanish teacher in college, granted it was an introductory course (Spanish I and II) but the amount of times that our teacher had to prompt a student to recite/speak even with clear hints already made her (and me too) extremely frustrated. The thing is, these are college students, I personally feel they don't have any reason to be so shy of speaking and technically by not doing so they're slowing the pace of the class too much and a lot of time is wasted.

Unfortunately you can't always be very vocal with your thoughts and opinions in most Asian cultures. I would say strive for that, but at the same time, play your cards well, especially if you're in a workplace setting.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading and here's a cookie! 🍪 I'm not perfect and there's bound to be something I missed so please let me know if you spotted anything wrong. Feedback/questions are very much welcome and please feel free to share about your country/culture's differences or similarities!

[fandom-oracle]

Wait wdym? Do you think fic is bad?

i'm getting canceled tonight i guess.

if you actually did a good a faith interpretation of my post you know it's not really ABOUT fanfiction at all, i actually write fanfiction myself. i'm not sharing here because it's overwhelmingly bad fic that i write exclusively as wish-fulfilment or for self-projection, but at least i'm self-aware about it. i am ALSO one of the people who reads ze Books™️, although most of the academic material i consume are nonfiction, so this whole thing is particularly annoying to me. the crux of the matter is that, if you're a little younger you might've missed it, but this website was a hotbed of scalding takes like 'dante's divine comedy is literally fanfiction', 'something something is literally fanfiction' when the thing in question barely counts as a transformative work and, in fact, it weakens the definition of transformative work in itself to try to apply it to literally anything that exhibits an ounce of intertextuality. plenty of takes that are... true, but require some nuance, focused on the idea of transformative fandom as a place defined by its presence of overwhelmingly female and disproportionately queer (occasionally, though disputedly, nonwhite) content creators and the ways in which transformative fan content could be interpreted as a space of defiance to cisheteropatriarchy in the way it permeates traditional media. a third, less common but still relevant take was the focus on how certain fandoms such as trek and doctor who have a long history of involvement in real-world civil rights issues and progressive politics. so this kind of take has been the dominant view on tumblr and transformative fandom for a good decade now, perhaps longer, and the people with this kind of takes can sometimes be a little... obnoxious. and the majority of people on transformative fandom (regardless of wether or not the fandom is disproportionately composed of nonwhite individuals or not, by sheer virtue of american demographics and this site`s heaily skewed userbase, the majority will still be white) are white, and like any other space dominated by white people, fandom has often been a vehicle for white supremacy. "Stitch Media Mix" talks about this in-depth. the discourse on fandom racism and ways in which transformative fandom as a whole contribute to racialized stereotypes, hierarchies, and deeper problems within online culture has led to a lot of people with grievances with fandom, many of whom are women of color, to develop an entire online identity built around the concept of being "critical of fandom", which is a very weird thing to do with fandom is literally billions of people, not a unified demographic, and that being critical of something can mean a WIDE amount of things; which in turn has led to a lot of people insulating themselves completely from any criticism of fandom as being inherently in bad faith, which a weird thing to do when literally ANY sphere of society should be open to criticism. people taking critiques of media they consume and taking critiques of their own critiques as personal attacks are abound here and make everything worse. so a fairly recent (mid2018ish, definitely post the insanity of reylo discourse but before sarah z blew up in popularity) trend has been that people in these communities isolate more and more and the general discourse has effetively resulted in people with differing takes in fanfiction specifically but fandom as a Whole (which is, again very weird to say because fandom is not 'a Whole' because there's no unifying element to different fandoms) only interacting with each other in hostile ways. and increasingly, in my personal sphere, a lot of people are positioning themselves in the "fandom critical" (AGAIN, WEIRD THING TO SAY, WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN, PLEASE USE WORDS WITH PRECISION) sphere, and I tend to take that "side" myself, but i specifically do not think framing this as a team A or team B thing is useful. this culture war was in the buildup.

last week a post by a user i follow recently became popular. the post itself was a critique that i.. do not necessarily agree with. it was ultimately about the idea of easily-consumable popular media being seen as an acceptable form of exclusive media engagement by people in the "pro-fandom" sphere, and how the insidiousness of this line of thinking has to do with how capitalist media production is designed to spread, and how fandom AS A TREND, not specifically any individuals or any fanworks, can empower capitalism. the post specifically did NOT use the kindest possible words, but that was what they were trying to say. howelljenkins also has really good takes on the subject, albeit from a different angle.

anyway because this is a circular culture war, the result was as follows: 1) a bunch of pro-fandom types refuse to actually make a charitable reading of the post and insist the user in question hates fandom and thinks people under capitalism shouldn't have things that are Fun, and should Only Read Theory and keep sending anon hate to several blogs in the opposing sphere, therefore proving the point that fandom sometimes prevent people from being able to engage critically with things; 2) a bunch of anti-fandom types who defined their entire identity on hating fandom being like "haha look at these cringe people" instead of trying to understand why a demographic overwhelmingly composed of marginalized people would feel strongly to posts that use inflammatory language against an interest of theirs, thereby proving the point that most criticism of fandom is divorced from actual fan content and is vaguely defined. the reason this is a culture war that actually deserves attention (unlike most fandom culture wars, which are just really granular ship wars made into social justice issues for clout) is that, for the most part, both of these groups are mostly people with college degrees, many of whom will contirbute to academia in the coming years. fan studies is a relevant field. these discussions have repercussions in wider media criticism trends, and this is why i can't really stand it or just passively ignoring it the way i do with most other inconsequential discourse. like it's genuinely upsetting seeing almost every single tumblr user, most of whom should know better, patting themselves in the back for their inability to read things in a way that doesn't feed into preexisting cultural hostilities in fan spaces.

[youneedasoultraveller]

Is the popular headcanon that Nicky was illiterate, stupid and barbaric fitting in the stereotypes about Southern Europeans / Mediterraneans ? I’m guessing it’s from the American part of the fandom that’s choosing to not respectfully write Nicky since he is white while being virulent towards anybody that doesn’t perfected and accurately write Joe because he is MENA.

Hello!

Mind you, I am neither a psychologist, a sociologist nor a historian, so of course be aware these are my own views on the whole drama.

But to answer your question, yes, I personally think so. It definitely comes from the American side, but I have seen Northern Europeans do that too, often just parroting the same type of discourse that Anglos whip out every other day.

There is an abysmal ignorance of Medieval history – even more so when it concerns countries that are not England: there is this common misconception that Europe in the Middle Ages was this cultural backwater full of semi-barbaric people that stems unfortunately not only from trying to (correctly) reframe colonialist approaches to the historiographies of non-European populations (that is, showing the Golden Age of Islamic culture, for instance, as opposed to what were indeed less culturally advanced neighbours), but also from distortions operated by European themselves from the Renaissance onwards, culminating in the 18th century Enlightenment philosophes categorising the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages.

Now this approach has been time and time again proven to be a made-up myth. I will not go into detail to disprove each and every single one misconception about the Medieval era because entire books have been written, but just to give you an example: there was no such a thing as a ius primae noctis/droit du seigneur; people were aware that the Earth was not flat (emperors, kings, saints, etc, they were depicted holding a globe in their hands); people were taking care of their hygiene, either through the Roman baths, or natural springs, or private tubs that the wealthier strata of the population (and especially the aristocracy) owned. The Church was not super happy about them not because it wanted people to remain dirty, but because often these baths were for both men and women, and it was not that in favour of them showing off their bodies to one another. Which, you know, we also don’t do now unless you go to nudist spas. It was only during the Black Death in the 14th century that baths were slowly abandoned because they became a place of contagion, and they went into disuse (or better, they changed purpose and became something like bordellos). And, lastly, there was certainly a big chunk of the population that was illiterate, but certainly it was not the clergy, which was THE erudite class of the time. It was in monasteries and abbeys that knowledge was passed and preserved (as well as lost unfortunately often, such as the case for the largest part of classical literature).

So what does this mean? According to canon, Nicolò was an ex priest who fought in the First Crusade. This arguably means that at the very least he was a cadet son of a minor noble family (or a wealthy merchant one) who was part of the clergy. As such, historically he could have been neither illiterate nor a dirty garbage cat in his daily life.

Let’s then talk geography. Southern Europe (and France) was far, far more advanced than the North at the time and Italy remained the cultural powerhouse of the continent until the mid-17th century. Al Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian States,  the Byzantine Empire (which called itself simply Roman Empire, whose population defined itself as Roman and cultural heirs of the Latin and Greek civilisations): these places have nothing to do with popular depictions of Medieval Europe that you mainly see from the Anglos. Like @lucyclairedelune rightfully pointed out: not everyone was England during the plague.

Also the Middle Ages lasted one thousand years. As a historical age, it’s way longer than anything we had after that. So of course habits varied, there was a clear collapse right after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but then things develop, you know?

Anyway, back to the point in question. Everything I whipped up is not arcane knowledge: it’s simply having studied history at school and spending a few hours reading scientific articles on the internet which are not “random post written by random Anglo on Tumblr who can hardly find Genoa on a map”.

Nicolò stems from that culture. The most advanced area in Europe, possibly a high social class, certainly educated, from Genoa, THE maritime superpower of the age (with…Venice). It makes absolutely no sense that he would not be able to speak anything past Ligurian: certainly Latin (the ecclesiastical one), maybe the koine Greek spoken in Constantinople, or Sabir, or even the several Arabic languages from the Med basin stretching from al Andalus to the Levant. Because Genoa was a port, and people travel, bring languages with them, use languages to barter.

And now I am back to your question. Does this obstinacy in writing him as an illiterate beast (basically) feed into stereotypes of Mediterranean people (either from the northern or the southern shore)? It does.

It is a typically Anglo-Germanic perspective that of describing Southern (Catholic) Europeans are hot-headed, illiterate bumpinks mindlessly driven by blind anger, lusts and passions, as opposed to the rational, law-abiding smart Northern Protestants. You see it on media. I see it in my own personal life, as a Southern Italian living in Northern Europe for 10 years.

Does it sound familiar? Yes, it’s the same harmful stereotype of Yusuf as the Angry Brown Man. But done to Nicolò as the Angry Italian Man (not to mention the fact that, depending on the time of day and the daily agenda of the Anglo SJW Tumblrite, Italians can be considered either white or non-white).

Now, the times where Nicolò is shown as feral are basically when he is fighting (either in a bloody war or against Merrick’s men) or when Yusuf is in danger. Because, guess what, the man he loves is being hurt. What a fucking surprise.

Nicolò is simply being reduced to a one dimensional stereotype of the dirty dumb angry Italian, and people are simply doing this because they do not seem to accept the fact that both he and Yusuf are two wonderfully complex, flawed, fully-fledged multidimensional characters.

So I am mainly concentrating on Nicolò here because as an Italian I feel more entitled to speak about the way I see the Anglo fandom treating him and using stereotypes on him that have been consistently applied to us by the Protestant Northerners. I keep adding the religious aspect because, although I am an atheist who got debaptised from the Catholic Church, a big part of the historical treatment towards Southern has to do with religion and the contempt towards Catholic rituals and traditions (considered, once again, a sign of cultural backwardness by the enlightened North).

I do not want to impose my view of Yusuf because there are wonderful Tumblr users from MENA countries who have already written wonderful metas of the way Yusuf is being depicted by non-MENA people (in particular Americans), especially (again) @lucyclairedelune and @nizarnizarblr.

However, I just want to underline that, by only ever writing Yusuf as essentially a monodimensional character without a single flaw, this takes away Yusuf’s canon multidimensionality, the right he has to feel both positive but also negative feelings (he was hurt and angry at Booker’s betrayal, allegedly his best friend, AND HE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO BE – and I say this as a Booker fan as well).

I have not been the first to say these things, it is nothing revolutionary, and it exactly complements what the MENA tumblr users in the TOG fandom have also been trying to say. Both of us as own voices people who finally have the chance to have two characters that are fully formed and honest representations of our own cultures, without stereotypes or Anglogermanic distortions.

And the frustration mounting among all of us comes from the fact that the Anglos are, once again, not listening to us, even telling us we are wrong about our own cultures (see what has happened to Lucy and Nazir).

What is even more frustrating is that everything in this cursed fandom – unless it was in the film or comics – is just a bloody headcanon. But these people are imposing their HCs as if it were the Word of God, and attacking others – including own voices MENA and Italians – for daring to think otherwise.

I honestly don’t expect this post will make any difference because this is just a small reflection of what Americans do in real life on grander scale, which is thinking they are the centre of the world and ignoring that the rest of the world even exists regardless of their own opinions on it.

But still, sorry for the length, hope I answered your question.

[geekgirles]

Your Heart

Chapter 8 -- Aftershocks

Word Count: 13482

READ ON AO3

Margaret’s quarters had to be one of the most glamourous in the entire manor. Designed to be a duplex, it consisted of two different spacesーthree, if you count the bathroomーthe lower floor held the living room, and the higher one was where the Council member’s actual bedroom was. 

The living room resembled that of a wealthy family’s. A deep red velvet hue gave a touch of colour to the walls, which were decorated by several portraits revealing pieces of contemporary art. Now, Sam loved going to museums and culture in general, but she couldn’t identify what the artists had tried to portray to save her life. When asking about the meaning of one of the paintings, Margaret once told her it was an allegory to the passage of time. How could a smear of red, a blue smudge, and a black, straight line mean any of that she had no idea.

Questionable taste in decor aside, Margaret’s quarters also consisted of a parquet flooring that always seemed to have been recently varnished, so shiny and clean one could eat from it. Just from a small glimpse at her room, one could guess the older witch had a weakness for rococo furniture; a set of golden couches and chairs with cream upholstery was scattered around the place. A backless seat was in front of the piano at the far corner of the room, a loveseat could be seen located under a particularly large painting, Sam and Margaret were both seated, one in front of the other, on two chairs…

Ironically for someone as elegant and graceful as Margaret, all her plants were made of plastic. Grandma Ida had once told her in confidence the clan’s best spellcaster was also the worst gardener she’d ever seen. According to her grandma, when Margaret was still just a witch in training her teachers ended up forbidding her from getting near to their supplies of mandrake; she always killed them all and the plant was very difficult to find. 

At the far corner of the room, to the side of the piano, a white staircase with a golden banister led to the Council member’s room. What secrets her bedroom held, however, Sam didn’t know. Margaret was very particular about who she let in on her personal life, and bedrooms were extremely personal. 

Which was enough of a hint to understand she hadn’t been called just to chat and have some tea with her. “Your Majesty,” Margaret broke her out of her musings and from inspecting her personal chambers, “I understand you already know why I have summoned you here, correct?”

Even when she was about to scold her, the older witch always looked like the epitome of grace and dignity. They were currently seated on two of her rococo chairs, which Sam had to admit, were pretty but not necessarily comfortable; a coffee table with a porcelain tea set alongside different types of biscuits, scones (a favourite of Margaret since she spent some time abroad in London in her youth), and sandwiches were in full display in between the two. 

Knowing how seriously Margaret took table manners, Sam put her teacup on its respective plate before delicately placing both down on the coffee table. “I have an inkling as to why that might be.”

The African-American woman’s perfect posture never faltered. “In that case, I will get straight to the point: sending Miss Baker and Miss Zhou back home while you were left alone with the Ghost King was unbelievably unwise.”

Sam couldn’t help but wince when Margaret’s forest green eyes laid on her, an icy quality to them. “I understand your concern, Margaret, believe me, I do, but…”

“‘But?’” Margaret cut her off, raising an eyebrow as her cup of tea was halfway to her mouth. “Your Majesty, in case you forgot, you are our queen. Amity Park clan’s leader. Dozens of women depend on you for guidance. Your sole presence keeps us from going to war over the throne!”

Unable to hear the same things over and over, the young queen turned her head to the side, as if pained by her words. “I know, I know.” She raised a hand to silence her. “Margaret, you needn’t remind me the very reason why I even stepped up to become queen. Keeping the clan from succumbing to chaos and honouring my grandmother are my main motivations for everything I do.”

“You and me both know that, my Queen.” Margaret conceded, stirring her second cup of tea. “But that does not change the fact that what you did was foolish. However, I also know that you never do anything without reason, so I am willing to hear it.”

With a gesture of her hand, she motioned for Sam to explain herself. Sighing, the violet-eyed girl did just that. “I know my life is precious, but the circumstances were dire and even now I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a miracle I’m even alive.”

“Forgive me, your Majesty. But I fail to see how that is helping your case.” The green-eyed woman pointed out. Deep down she knew Sam probably had a good reason for doing what she did, but as second-in-command, it was her duty to ensure their queen never made a mistake like that ever again. 

“I’m getting there, I promise.” Sam hastily said. 

With a nod, Margaret gestured for her to continue. “I don’t feel comfortable putting my safety before others’ just because of my position.” She finished, and even Margaret’s stoic mask cracked a little at the revelation. “Stephanie and Susan were with me, Margaret. They were in as much danger as I was, I couldn’t risk their lives like that.”

“Miss Zhou and Miss Baker both volunteered to escort you to your visits to the Ghost Zone, your Majesty.” Her fellow Council member reminded her in between sips. “Had anything happened to them, they were just doing their job.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing their loyalty would force them to pay such a high price.” 

Margaret was about to take another sip of her tea when Sam’s solemn words made her eyes widen. Looking over at her, she noticed her tense posture, her stiff shoulders, her slim fingers clutching tightly at the fabric of her black and purple plaid skirt...And the resolution in her eyes. The older witch could’ve sworn she saw the same fire that was so characteristic of her grandmother in Sam’s violet gaze. 

Unaware of the reaction she’d caused to the woman in front of her, Sam went on. “I’m the queen, Margaret. It’s my duty to make sure our people are safe. How do you expect me to just leave them behind, not knowing if they’ll even make it alive!? Even if the black hole had been taken care of without my assistance and they would’ve been safe from it, how do we know the ghosts wouldn’t have taken advantage of the chaos to attack them?! 

“Even if I have a feeling King Phantom would’ve tried to protect them, it was still too risky. I would never have been able to live with myself if anything had happened to them because, somehow, my life’s more important than theirs!”

Setting her now cold teacup down, the African-American witch clasped her hands together on her lap. She regarded the young queen with a face that betrayed no emotion. “Your Majesty, you do realise every single one of your points can also be applied to your own situation, right? Just like Miss Baker and Miss Zhou could have been in danger at the hands of the ghosts, so could have you. Except an attempt against your life would be grounds for going to war.”

Knowing she was right, Sam averted her gaze to the side. Suddenly that one painting with the impossible-to-understand analogy on the passage of time seemed much more interesting than ten minutes ago. 

Margaret sighed as she stood up. Her high heels clicking against the parquet, she hovered over Sam, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Samantha, I know choosing what is best for our people is hard, especially if it comes into conflict with our personal beliefs and desires, but duty must come first.”

The young sorceress started at the sound of her full name. She really hated being called ‘Samantha’, but knew that was the most personal Margaret would ever get with her, so it'd only be rude of her to complain. “I know,” she sighed dejectedly. “I know, it’s just...I can’t just do that to them! Susan is still just a teenager; no matter how good of a potion-maker and warrior she is, she’s still too young. She has so much to live, I can’t afford to make her miss out on all that for my sake…”

“But what about Miss Baker? I believe you two are the same age; you both still have so much to live, as well.”

“You mean Stephanie still has so much to live for. I gave up on that a long time ago…” Sam couldn’t resist the urge to scoff. 

Even if all witches had to make compromises to balance their lives inside and outside of the coven, Sam’s entire life had revolved around giving up on one passion after the other. Growing up she couldn’t make friends because other girls weren’t allowed to go near the queen’s granddaughter. Her world was reduced to the manor and her house, to her family and her teachers, to her lessons and the very scarce moments where she could pretend she was a kid like any other. After her grandma died, under the threat of her coven falling into anarchy until they found a new leader, she sacrificed her one chance at a relatively normal life in exchange of being elected the future queen. For four years her extensive studying and isolation were self-imposed; the only times she allowed herself to take a break where her birthday ーso her dad wouldn’t get suspicious as to what was so important she couldn’t celebrate her own birthdayーand the anniversary of her grandma’s death; because there was no way she’d ever have the energy to work on the most painful day of the year. And now that she was queen, every waking moment was dedicated to looking after her people.

Stephanie was just a shy girl who loved books. Between the two of them, she was the only one who really had a chance at experiencing life outside of the manor’s walls. And Sam refused to be the reason why she lost that chance. 

Understanding dawning on her, Margaret’s face softened. “Your motives were noble, my Queen, and I am sure the Baker and Zhou families are extremely grateful for having their children returned to them. Just try to keep in mind that with great power comes great responsibility, and more often than not, that means making sacrifices for the greater good.”

As the spellcaster went back to her chair, Sam could only stare after her like she’d just nonchalantly revealed the meaning of life to her. “...did you just quote Spider-Man?”

Picking her teacup back up, she just chuckled in amusement. “I am a woman of culture, your Majesty. Now, pour yourself another cup of tea or help yourself to some snacks, before it gets cold.”

Reaching over for the kettle to pour some more tea on her cup at the same time as she started munching on a vegetarian sandwich, a comfortable silence settled between them. The only sounds disturbing the quiet atmosphere were the occasional sound of sipping and of plates clattering. In the midst of the silence, Sam’s mind couldn’t help but race back to the moment right after Phantom stopped the blackhole. 

She wasn’t lying when she told Margaret she believed he wouldn’t have let anything happen to Susan and Stephanie, for her own protection seemed to be one of his top priorities. That and their last interaction before she returned to Earth had been replaying inside her head over the last several hours. 

As she and Phantom stared at each other, unbeknownst to them, both thinking that they could indeed make things work as long as they worked together, Sam’s mind unexpectedly wandered to uncharted territory. Now that she was looking at him up close, a part of her had to agree with all the fangirls who’d squeal every time Phantom appeared on TV; he was quite handsome. 

It was undeniable that the Ghost King’s defined physique was anything but hard on the eyes. She didn’t know what it was, but something about himーmaybe the inches he had on her, or maybe the way he’d pressed her close to his chest earlier when he was trying to put her to safety, or maybe the intensity of his neon green eyesーmade her feel safe. 

Now that they weren’t separated by a large table and a few feets of distance, Sam could appreciate his chiseled jaw and how his Adam’s apple moved up and down when he gulped, sending a heatwave straight to her very core. His intoxicating eyes no longer looked at her with suspicion and disdain, but with gratefulness and with a candour whose origins she couldn’t quite identify, and at that very moment she was sure nothing would’ve been able to get her to tear her own violet gaze away from them. His shock-white hair alongside his characteristically ghostly glowーthat glow she used to interpret as a warning sign; a reminder of his true natureーall of a sudden made him look ethereal, otherworldly. Like a guardian from beyond sent to protect everyone from evil. Like...Like…

Like an angel.

And his lips...Oh, God. They were so inviting. The mere thought of kissing those lips was incredibly exhilarating. From where she stood, Sam could already imagine his lips on hers, coming together in a slow, passionate dance; their touch so rough and yet so gentle; both breathing her to life and leaving her breathless; and the way he was moving them at that very moment only helped in further cementing her beliefsーwait a minute. They were moving?

“Lady Arcana, are you okay?” Phantom asked, even though he looked a little out of sorts himself. “Your face is a little red. Should we have someone check it out?”

“No!” Sam exclaimed a little too quickly and a little too loudly, shaking her hands before her and already feeling the scorching heat on her cheeks. She barely resisted the urge to facepalm herself. What was she thinking?! Drooling over Phantom? Fantasising with kissing him?! Did she lose her mind?! Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she originally believedーshe was still debating on itーbut he was still a ghost. And ghosts and witches didn’t mix, especially like that. Hell, not even when they were still allies did a ghost and a witch ever end up together!

Noticing the Ghost King staring at her quizzically, the witch cleared her throat in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “I mean, no; I’m fine, really. Probably just a little affected from all the excitement.” Averting her gaze, she jerked her thumb behind her. “I, uh, I should probably go back to my people. They’re probably recruiting an army to come and save me as we speak.” She laughed it off weakly. 

Phantom’s eyes shot open at that. “Oh, right! Yeah, it’ll probably be for the best. Wouldn’t want to start a war over a misunderstanding…” He rubbed the back of his neck as he, too, looked away. “I...I’ll let you be.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for saving me.” Sam told him, missing the way his eyes softened at her words. She put a little distance between the two, ready to cast the spell that would send her home, when Phantom’s voice stopped her in her tracks. Turning around, she raised an eyebrow at him, “What?”

“Are there going to be any more meetings after this?” He asked. “I mean, after this whole fiasco, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to call it quits…”

In spite of herself, the young witch couldn’t help but give him a small smile. “We still need to solve the portal problem, don’t we?” Then, she smirked. “You won’t get rid of me that easily, Phantom!”

The relieved expression he sent her way sent her heart aflutter. Feeling the blush coming back, she hastily turned around once more, ready to leave. “Well, until next time!” Again, she was getting ready to leave when Phantom’s voice stopped her.

“Wait, Lady Arcana!”

“Yes?”

“I...u-uh,...well…” He stuttered before taking a deep breath. “Thank you for saving me, too.”

Against her better judgement, Sam’s expression softened. “You’re welcome, Phantom.” Finally, she focused on her anima, willing a purple light to engulf her as she chanted, “Omnes viae Romam ducunt.”

She could almost feel how every individual cell in her body separated before being rearranged again. The tingling sensation was similar to when she’d phased through Phantom’s lair, except it was warm rather than chilly. Spellcasting felt like being cocooned in a thousand blankets inside your home during a particularly cold winter night, while the sensation brought by ghost powers was akin to sticking your head into the freezer when it was 104 º outside. 

Both experiences were incredibly pleasant, albeit drastically different from one another.

When Sam opened her eyes, everything was mayhem. 

She’d arrived in the middle of the Grand Hall inside 917 Maplestreet, and every single witch present was looking straight at her. Judging from their positionsーsome had risen from their seats, their hands slamming the tables; others had their arms raised as if making suggestions or waiting for their turns to speak up; a few were arguing amongst themselves…ー, she’d just interrupted a council meeting. Most likely to discuss her current situation. 

Oh, great. 

“Your Majesty!” A voice cried out, and Sam almost fell back upon impact, for someone had slammed into her chest with great force, almost knocking the wind out of her. 

Looking down, she realised the iron grip she suddenly found herself in belonged to none other than Susan. The poor thing was sobbing and hiccuping uncontrollably against her chest. Automatically, Sam put her own arms around her in an attempt to sooth her. With how fierce and disciplined she usually was, it was easy to forget she was, technically, still a kid. She had much to learn before she became completely desensitised to the world’s horrors. 

“It’s fine, Susan.” The queen soothed, caressing her hair. “I’m fine.”

Right at that moment, the room erupted in a row of applause and cheering, alongside many questions directed her way. Before Sam could so much as tell them to speak one at a time, she felt something being discreetly slipped under her dress. Turning her head to the side in surprise, she found herself face to face with Stephanie. “Welcome home, your Majesty. I am so glad you have returned.”

When the strawberry blonde winked at her, Sam understood everything. Steph had taken advantage of the current chaos, and of her tied up skirt, to return Arcana’s Grimoire to her. Sam couldn’t help but smile; she was worth much more than people often gave her credit for. 

Paulina and Star almost tripped over themselves trying to reach her. Rushing to her side, both simultaneously looking panicked and relieved beyond belief, the moment they reached her side they started fussing about her personal care, promising to prepare a warm bubble bath immediately.

“Your Majesty!” Paulina exclaimed in between pants, “You have no idea how glad we are that you’re back!”

“Totally,” Star agreed beside her friend, nodding but equally winded. “One minute Pauli was trash-talking Ms. Gorilla, and the next news reached us that you hadn’t returned from the Ghost Zone!”

“I’m sorry,” a sultry voice from behind startled them, while Sam shook her head in pity, anticipating what was to come, “you were doing what?” Delilah asked the two ladies-in-waiting sharply, her unforgiving eyes narrowed on them.

The Witch Queen could only roll her eyes knowingly at the way Paulina and Star flinched upon noticing the shapeshifter heard them. ‘Ms. Gorilla’, as Star helpfully supplied when they were assigned to her upon becoming the clan leader, was a moniker Paulina had come up with at the height of her jealousy towards the stunning Council member. Sam, despite her love for animals and nature, hadn’t noticed until they pointed it out, but Delilah shared her name with the famous Purple Back Gorilla that was discovered to be female by a high school student working on extra credit back when she was fourteen. 

The thing is, as good-natured and laid-back as Delilah could be, she did not appreciate being compared to such a majestic creature. “I’m waiting, Miss Anderson. What did you say you were doing before you heard the news?”

From where she stood, still being held by Susan’s iron grip, Sam could see how Star was beginning to sweat. The blonde usually didn’t have trouble saying what she thought of others, even if it was mean-spirited or uncalled for, but even she knew it was foolish to anger another witch, especially when her position was much higher than hers. 

Squirming under the shapeshifter’s harsh glare, the handmaiden couldn’t do anything but stutter. “Uh...um...w-well...we...we were…and the...the gorilla...b-but then...” She trailed off, luckily for her, Paulina chose that very moment to jump in on the conversation. 

“We were just talking about the new gorilla-inspired fashion collection!” The Latina lied and, if you listened closely, you could hear the way her already pronounced accent thickened. Paulina was a good liar, but even she sometimes had trouble working under pressure. “It’s absolutely fabulous! Almost as much as your blouse,” she complimented as she reached out to touch the fabric, “Is it new?”

Unamused, Delilah decided against pushing the issue...for now. Gently swatting the Latina’s hand away from her clothes, she directed a much kinder expression towards Sam. “It’s good to have you back, my Queen. We were worried sick for your safety.”

The violet-eyed queen smiled in return. “It’s good to be back.”

Suddenly, an imposing voice made itself heard from the other side of the room. Heads snapping to the origin of the sound, everyone’s eyes landed on Margaret standing with her hands behind her back by the entrance. She looked as poised and collected as usual.

Somehow, Sam knew she was in for a world of trouble. 

“Your Majesty,” Margaret began, and her voice commanded such respect a pin drop could be heard in the middle of the previously loud room, “you have no idea how grateful we are for your safe return. If what Miss Zhou and Miss Baker told us is true,” both witches at her side sent their queen an apologetic look, “then you must be exhausted. Please, after you’re well-rested, come tomorrow to my personal chambers.” She ordered, because she didn’t even ask for an answer, before turning away. Just as she was about to leave the room, she called out over her shoulder, “We have much to discuss.”

Oh, yeah. She was indubitably, thoroughly screwed. 

Her instincts were proven correct the moment she was given the third degree by the woman in front of her. As she pondered Margaret’s previous words, however, a question materialised itself inside Sam’s mind. 

Furrowing her brow, she called out to her fellow Council member. “Margaret?”

“Yes, your Majesty?”

“You said we more often than not have to make sacrifices in the name of the greater good, even if it goes against our personal beliefs and desires…” she started carefully, looking down at her cup. “Have you ever had to sacrifice something you cared deeply about or wanted desperately for the sake of the coven?”

For a moment, the silence had returned, only it now hung heavily over them, when just a few minutes it’d been comfortable. After a few minutes had passed and she still received no answer, Sam was about to ask again when Margaret finally answered. “Yes, I have.”

Her head shooting at her uncharacteristically lifeless voice, Sam almost gasped. Before her, Margaret wore the saddest expression she’d ever seen of her face. Her deep, green eyes, usually so vibrant and full of colour, were now bleak and devastated, reminiscent of a forest after a wildfire. The otherwise calm and collected Council member now looked heartbroken and desolate, like a piece of her was missing. Margaret certainly wasn’t crying, but she seemed so miserable Sam could feel tears of her own stinging her eyes. 

“I...I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

“Uh...right! O-of course. Don’t worry.” The lavender-eyed witch hastily said, too shell shocked to be more eloquent. Margaret never used contractions when talking to her. 

Margaret acknowledged her with a respectful nod of her head. “Thank you, your Majesty.” Then she went back to drinking her tea. 

Deciding it’d be best to imitate her and pretend nothing had happened, Sam couldn't help but wonder what might’ve happened to Margaret to make her so miserable. But above all else, she could only hope she’d never have to sacrifice the same thing. Somehow, she had a feeling death would be less painful.

...........

The forest in the outskirts of Amity Park could be described as anything but a walk in the park. The tree trunks knotted and twisted, forming shapes made out of the stuff of nightmares. The wind rustling the leaves sounded like a ghostly wail, not unlike Danny’s, albeit much quieter. That only made it more sinister. And the sound of twigs, dead leaves, and fallen tree branches crunching beneath had him frantically looking around for the slightest sign of danger. Since it was mid-October, nearing Halloween, the weather was beginning to change as well. For instance, temperatures were starting to drop from the cool yet warm ones that reigned during late September, and the first fall rainstorm hit the town just the night before.

And since it’d just rained the night before, that meant Tucker was now stepping on mud. He was stepping on mud with his new boots on. He was stepping on mud and getting his new boots that cost him a fortune, mind you, dirty. Already irritated and spooked beyond belief, he called out to the person walking in front of him, “Care to remind me why the fuck I didn’t turn you down on your invitation to, and I quote, ‘a fun fieldtrip?’”

Stopping momentarily to look over her shoulder, Jazz scolded him, “Language.” With that out of the way, she turned her head back around and kept on walking through the forest. “And to answer your question, you agreed to come with me because you want to help Danny as much as I do.” 

Tucker rolled his eyes, taking advantage of her back, turned to him, and followed her close behind. “Yeah, that I know. What I mean to say is, how is hiking aimlessly around the woods going to do anything to help Danny?!”

They’d been trekking around that damned forest for three hours, with absolutely nothing to guide them but an old, probably outdated, map some ranger had given to Jazz back at the information booth. Three hours wandering around a forest that was creepier than Mr. Lancer’s ‘sculptured summer physique’ back in summer camp, and the most resting they’d done was when Jazz would suddenly halt to check the map or crouch down to get some samples. 

Just like she was doing at that very moment. “Look at this, Tucker. Ocimum basilicum!” She reached her hand out to show it to him before putting it inside a little glass jar. She brought the jar close to her face. “Did you know in Christianity this plant is said to have sprouted when Jesus’ blood fell to the ground?”

“No, I didn’t know that.” The technopath said, unimpressed. “What I do know is that Ocimum basilicum and basil are the exact same thing! Care to tell me why you’re so transfixed on a mere spice? As much as I love myself a good pizza, even I have to admit this is just ridiculous.”

Sliding her backpack across her shoulder, the redhead put away the basil. With that taken care of, she sent her friend a bored look, standing up from the floor and coming to stand beside him. “It’s important because it’sー.”

“‘It’s going to help Danny.’” Tucker finished for her, doing a poor impression of her voice. “You said that over a million times already! Can you at least tell me how it’s going to help Danny?”

Jazz looked away, sulking. “Because...because it just is, okay?! Trust me, Tucker, I know what I’m doing.”

But the African American young man wasn’t buying it. That answer was far too childish, especially coming from someone like Jazz, who’d been acting like someone twice her age for almost as long as he could remember. Something was definitely off. 

“But what could it be?” He asked himself as they resumed their march. She said she knew what she was doing, and that was all great and dandy, except he had no idea what they were doing! He was the technician of the team, his specialty were computers, viruses, and thwarting technology-dependent ghosts’ plans! He was not made to hike, looking for God knows what, in the middle of a forest! 

And Jazz?! He barely held back a scoff. No matter how much more physically adept than him she was, the eldest Fenton was no field agent, either. For years, her way of assisting Danny in ghost-hunting had been through research, bringing back-up,helping work out the tricky details in their plans, now she was obsessed with finding out more about the witches…

Wait a minute. 

Tucker stopped dead in his tracks, fists curled at his sides and a very angry glare directed at the back of the head of his best friend’s older sister appeared on his face. “You dragged me here to help you research witches and avoid Danny’s wrath.”

It wasn’t a question and she knew it. Wincing at the, accurate, accusation, the redhead turned around slowly. “I...I have no idea what you’re talking about…” She tried playing dumb. 

In an instant, Tucker got in her face, wagging a chastising finger at her. “Oh, don’t you dare play innocent, little missy! You might have been able to fool your parents all these years, but that’s only because they’re surprisingly gullible. You can’t fool me; we’re here to research witches aren’t we?”

Looking down on the floor, Jazz ultimately gave in, sighing. “Yes, we are.”

“And I’m guessing Danny knows nothing about this which is why; first, you went out of your way to organise this on my free day, which, for the record, also happens to be the day Danny’s schedule is packed; second, you wouldn’t tell me why we’re here; and third, you’re just picking random things up, because not even you know what you’re looking for.” 

She bit her lip, knowing she’d been caught. She always forgot how observant Tucker could be. “Maybe?”

“Jazz!” 

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?!” She snapped. “I know I shouldn’t have lied to you or Danny, but I just can’t sit idly by and watch as he enters the lion’s den, completely unprepared!” She stepped closer to Tucker, looking him dead in the eye. “You know Danny, Tucker. He shoulders everything and refuses to let us help. Please, you have to understand; I have to help my little brother.”

Looking down at her pleading eyes, the techno geek’s own teal orbs softened. He did understand. He really wished Danny would let them help more often. It was just painful watching him come back looking like death, knowing he’d been sticking his neck out for a town that didn’t always appreciate him, and not being able to do much because even then he was protecting them. 

It was maddening, really. 

Sighing, he grabbed Jazz by her shoulders, trying to show her just how much he understood her plight. “Listen, I know how you feel. You know I know how you feel. But we gotta make sure us going behind Danny’s back will really be for his own good. We can’t just wander aimlessly with no real plan in mind! Never mind how good our intentions are.” Seeing as she only stared at him, unblinkingly, he sighed and let her go. “Face it, Jazz. We’re about as lost as Danny when it comes to witches.”

He was sure what he said would be discouraging, hence why he didn’t understand the way her eyes lit up. “That’s where you’re wrong!” She exclaimed just as she started rummaging through her backpack. After a few seconds, she pulled a book out. “This is a book on plants, arthropods, and other ingredients traditionally used by witches in folklore. If we find a place where many of said ingredients grow or inhabit, we might know where to find them!”

“Right…” he drawled, he should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy to keep Jazz from her goal. “Because there’s no way a group of women from the 21st century have learned to grow or breed those things from the comfort of their homes.” He deadpanned in response. “Is that why we’re here? To look for a bunch of plants and insects?”

Her right hand still clutching the book close to her chest, the other hand fisted on her hip, Jazz sent him an irritated look. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking the witches’ lair could actually be around here.”

Tucker’s brows shot up at that. “What makes you think that?”

“Because it’s tradition!” She exclaimed, before pulling her phone out of her pocket and shoving it in his face. “Did you know Baba Yaga was said to inhabit the Russian forests?”

Glaring at her, he carefully got her phone out of his face. “Yeah...She was also said to be an old hag, with a blue nose, and a bone leg. Pretty sure the Witch Queen Danny meets up with is supposed to be quite the looker. So, try something else.”

Jazz pouted, before trying to come up with a theory that would please him. “Well, what if there are Russian witches in Amity Park? Maybe they stayed true to tradition, taking advantage of the locals’ ignorance to remain inconspicuous.”

“Nice theory,” he clapped sarcastically, “only one tiny, itsy, bitsy detail, though. I doubt the Cold War made it easy for Russian witches to move to the USA. Instead of putting them up to trial for being witches, they’d have been accused of being spies.”

She was beginning to get frustrated with Tucker’s lack of cooperation. Groaning, she snapped. “What do you suggest we do, then?!”

“How about get back to civilisation and forget all about this silly quest, huh?!” He snapped back, dramatically flailing his arms in the air in exasperation. Seriously, were all Fentons supposed to be stubborn to the point of idiocy? Didn’t they understand some things weren’t worth falling-outs and even their lives? He loved that family to death, but if he was going to die for them, he at least would like it to be because of something useful. 

Jazz just kept staring back at him, frowning in annoyance, before turning away from him in a huff. Tucker was about to call her out on her behaviour when she beat him to it. “I know I’m being difficult. I know I’m looking for things that aren’t there, but I just need to help Danny!” She whirled back around to look him in the eye, desperation clearly laced in her voice. “Please, Tucker. You have to understand.”

“Uh, no. Not that! Anything but that!” He cried, frantically covering his eyes with his hands. She was pleading, giving him the trademark Fenton, sad, puppy-dog look. The damned thing was so effective he was genuinely surprised it didn’t count as a persuasion technique. Peeking through his fingers, he chanced to look, only to close his eyes shut not long after. Nope, she was still doing that look. 

With a dismayed moan, he gave in after a while. “Fiiiiiine!” He groaned, only to subsequently send a glare at Jazz’s direction when he saw her fist-bumping from the corner of his eye. He quickly squared his posture, jabbing his finger against her chest. “But if Danny busts us, you’re explaining things to him!”

He so hated the way she was beaming at him, completely ignoring his threat. “No problem!” She then slapped his hand away, causing him to let out a sound of complaint. The grin had been replaced by an irritated frown. “If you ever touch my chest again, though, I’m going to blast you with the Fenton Ghost Peeler until your skin falls off and only your non-existent muscles remain.”

“Hey!” He began to protest against her comment, only to back-pedal when she sent him a withering glare in warning. “No touching your chest ever again. Got it.” He smiled sheepishly at her. When that seemed to please her, she turned her focus on her book, prompting Tucker to ask. “So, what now?”

“Now we look for evidence that proves the witches of Amity Park visit this place.” She replied, not looking up from her book. 

“No, I got that. I mean how are we going to do that?”

“Well, if witches really do need certain ingredients for their spells and potions, then I’d suggest we look for things that could possibly grow around here.” Jazz kept reading the paragraphs detailed in her book, turning pages at the speed of lightning. Stopping at a certain page, she tapped her chin with one finger as she pondered their options before showing the book to Tucker. “Do you think we could find some newts around here? They’re said to have been highly demanded as an ingredient for their eyes.”

Taking a look at the slimy creature pictured in the book, the techno geek recoiled in disgust. He couldn’t hold back a shudder before regaining his composure. “First of all,” he lifted his index finger in the air, “the closest lake in the area is Lake Eerie, a good three hours away from here. So I highly doubt we’ll be finding any newts any time soon.” He fiddled with his PDA before showing it to her, a map appearing on the screen. “And second, even if there were any lakes around here, there’s no way I’m gonna touch an amphibian. I’m a techno geek, not a biology geek. If you want help collecting those little guys, you’re going to have to ask Sam for help.”

That perked the redhead’s interest. “You mean the Manson heiress?” She asked, not missing a beat. Even if the topic of conversation had changed greatly, her focus was still on her book. If newts weren’t an option, something else had to be. She just had to find it. “Is it me, or is there something going on between her and Danny?”

Not one to resist some good gossip, especially when it was related to Danny’s love life, Tucker leaned in closer to Jazz, as if he were about to share a conspiratorial theory with her. “Oh, something is definitely going on. I haven’t seen Danny act so comfortably yet bashful around a girl since Valerie. As for Sam, let’s just say I don’t usually see her with other guys. Period. As a matter of fact…” Eyes snapping open, he trailed off. What Jazz had said about Sam finally catching up to him. 

The psychology understudy looked over at him in concern. Unlike her friend, she wasn’t one to gossip, but her little brother’s mental health and social life was something she cared deeply about. Moreso because the two aspects tended to go hand in hand. “Uh, Tucker? Is everything okay?”

“What did you just say?” He practically mumbled in a voice so low Jazz had to strain her ears to hear him. 

“Um,” she stammered, “I said, ‘is everything okay?’”

“No, no.” The African American man shook his head and hands, indicating that wasn’t what he meant. “Before that.”

“I literally said ‘uh, Tucker.’” She repeated, looking at him like he’d grown a second head or something. Did a branch fall on his head while they were hiking and she hadn’t noticed?

Oh, for the love of God...This was getting ridiculous! Did he have to spell it out for her? Scrubbing his face with one hand, growing frustrated, he tried one last time. “No, Jazz.” He gritted out as gently as possible. “I’m asking what you called Sam earlier.”

“You mean when I said ‘the Manson heiress?’” She raised an eyebrow in confusion. 

“Yes, that!” He exclaimed, before returning Jazz’s confused expression with one of his own. “What do you mean by that?”

“You really don’t know?” She asked in disbelief. Considering that, no, he really had no idea what she was even talking about, the technophile could only shake his head and wait for answers. “Oh! Wow...So turns out Danny isn’t the only person in Amity Park who doesn’t know!” She meant to mutter that part to herself, but her disbelief was so great she forgot to lower her voice, causing Tucker to hear her just fine. 

He didn’t know why, but the moment the Fenton girl’s aqua eyes landed on him, Tucker couldn’t help but feel he was being regarded with pity. The fact that she nervously rubbed her arm holding the book up and down while avoiding his gaze didn’t help matters any. “Um, you see...You know Sam’s name, right?”

That made him furrow his brow, not quite following. “Obviously,” he scoffed. “Her name’s Sam Manson. But how come her ID makes her an heiress?!”

“Because she’s not just a Manson,” Jazz corrected him gently, “she’s the only child of the Mansons.”

“Are you saying she’s related to that psycho serial killer?” He squeaked, rightfully freaked out. Deep down, however, he knew that couldn’t be right. Sure, Sam had a spooky taste in...everything, really. But she would never hurtーno, wait a minute. She could definitely inflict pain on others through elaborate and well-thought schemes. But she just couldn’t be related to a serial killer!

...or could she?

“What?!” The redhead gasped. “No, of course not! I’m saying she’s related to the Manson family,” when he was about to comment further, she stopped him with a raised hand, “as in, the descendants of Izzy Manson,” she stressed, annoyed; “the creator of the cellophane-wrapping machine used for chopsticks.”

Growing frustrated at Tucker’s blank face, she made an indecipherable sound at the back of her throat before snapping. “Darn it, Tucker! Rich, I’m saying she’s filthy, stinking rich!” She rolled her eyes when the techno geek’s jaw almost touched the floor. “Gosh! I swear, you’re even more hopeless than Danny!”

“Wait a minute, Sam is rich?!” He all but screeched. “How come she never told me?!”

Feeling sorry for him, she could only shrug in response, her previous aggravation gone. Honestly, she’d only met the girl once, and not even a prodigy like her would’ve been able to determine her thought process with just one session. “I don’t know. If I’m being honest, I’m a bit more surprised you never figured it out.”

That gave him pause. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...” she crossed her arms. How could she put this gently? “I mean, you’ve known her for a while, haven’t you?” Slowly, he nodded. “And you’re way more into the wealthy and powerful than Danny, and, come on, Sam’s an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian Goth.” She sent him a pointed look. “Goth clothing and vegetarian food aren’t cheap, you know.”

Tucker could only grimace, knowing she had a point. “I know who the Mansons are, but I’ve never seen Sam in any of the pictures taken of her family’s sophisticated parties. And, really, would you seriously take a look at her parents and go, ‘Yep, no doubt. These preppy, cheerful folks are definitely related to cynical, brooding Sam Manson.’” He defended himself, and judging by Jazz’s expression, he knew she concurred. Then, he added, almost as an afterthought, “And honestly, I legit thought she basically ate grass and mud, so…”

Sympathising with him, Jazz put a soothing hand on his shoulder, smiling kindly at him. At first he returned the gesture, before furrowing his brow in concentration. Something wasn’t right... “Wait, how do you know any of this? How do you even know Sam?”

“Ah, Danny and I ran into her and her dad last Saturday at that new Vegetarian Mexican restaurant.”

The bespectacled young man couldn’t do much but blink in astonishment. Then, suddenly, he let himself fall to his knees, crouching down before crossing his arms over his chest, pouting. “How can I possibly be that out of the loop?!”

Jazz flashed him a meek smile in response as she lowered herself to his level; literally. The tug in his lips turned into a full blown smirk as a devious thought came to him. “Was there UST between the two?”

The older girl let out a loud cackle at his question. “Oh, you have no idea!”

With a ‘hm’, he settled for a content smile that Jazz knew was only half-hearted. “That’s enough for me...for now.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Jazz, trying to joke, but the way she was looking at him made it clear she didn’t buy his attempts to lighten up the mood. 

“Why don’t you ask her yourself, huh?” She offered softly. “You speak so fondly of her, and she seemed to know you well enough when we talked about you the other day. I’m sure she’ll come clean to you if you let her know you feel hurt over not knowing who she is.”

Normally he hated when Jazz psychoanalysed the situation, more so if it involved him. But now he couldn’t help but feel grateful for having the eldest Fenton’s advice and support. “Yeah, I...I think I’ll do that.” He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

She smiled back, “You’re welcome.” The quiet atmosphere soon dissipated when she got back up on her feet as she dusted herself off. “Well, we’d better find something that’ll hint us on the witches’ hideout!”

Getting up from the ground as well, Tucker watched as Jazz pulled out the map from her backpack at the same time as she leafed through her book using just her thumb, that girl’s ability to multitask was both impressive and unnerving. She was clearly searching for a clue to get them started on their quest. Rolling his eyes fondly at her, he started fidgeting with his PDA, looking for clues of his own through the best way he knew; technology. 

Printed books and maps were fine and all, but it didn’t take long for them to become outdated. With the Internet and his trusty PDA, Tucker always had the latest information in the palm of his hand. Literally. As his eyes scanned over dozens of articles from the day before to several decades prior, his eyes landed on one story in particular. 

Gasping, he called out to Jazz. The girl looked up from her own research to see Tucker motioning for her to come closer with his hand. Curious, she did just that. The moment she was within touching distance, he handed the PDA to her. “Look!”

She squinted her eyes on the screen. What appeared  was an old newspaper article, around thirty years old. When she read it over, however, her eyes widened. “Is this what I think it is?” She whispered in disbelief, as she turned to Tucker, who was smirking. 

“You’d better believe it!” Snatching the device from her hands, he began scrolling down and zooming in on certain fragments of the article. “It’s a news segment dedicated to two rangers’ retelling!” He exclaimed, his eyes not once looking away from the screen. “According to them, a few days before the interview with the newspaper, they were patrolling around the woods when they came upon what appeared to be a garden entirely made up of mandrake! Which took them aback because, first, that was a restricted area to the public; and second, mandrake usually grows in Mediterranean weather!

“Since it was getting late, they decided to investigate the following day first thing in the morning. But when they tried getting to the garden, they found they couldn’t. Somehow, whenever they thought they were getting closer, they kept getting lost and further away, something that was odd because they’d both been working as rangers, walking through the woods, for more than twenty years!” He finished, looking far more excited at the prospect of their research than he’d been before. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Her hands clasped in front of her beaming face, Jazz could only nod eagerly. ��Mandrake is one of the plants that are most popularly associated with witches and magic, and the rangers kept getting lost because they’d found a patch of mandrake and the witches wanted to keep them away in order to protect their secret!”

“And you said Internet searches were only going to lead us to Satanist sites.” He flashed her a shit-eating grin, feeling proud of himself. 

“Ugh, knock it off!” She playfully shoved him away, before growing serious again. Her joy being replaced by uncertainty. “Just a question, though?”

“What?”

“How are we going to find this mandrake patch? It’s been over thirty years! And if the witches were able to make two seasoned rangers wander aimlessly through the forest, what chances do we have of finding it ourselves?”

Tucker opened his mouth, only to close it again, realising he didn’t have an answer to her question. Yep, that could definitely be a problem. “Well, the rangers didn’t know they were facing off against a group of spellcasting women; we do.” He tried steering the conversation in the right direction. “What do we know about witches?” She was about to speak when he cut her off, “ Aside from the obvious.”

Bringing a fist to her chin, Jazz began to revise everything she’d learned on them ever since Danny shared his latest plan with them. “Hm, Danny said witches used to be able to summon ghosts from the Ghost Zone and make them cross over to Earth. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Hm, it might.” Tucker replied, the gears already turning in his head. “You know how every ghost has its own ecto-signature?”

“Yeah?”

“What if the witches have something like that?” He suggested, his mind already focused on the possibilities. 

Jazz gasped, her eyes widening at the possibility. “Then maybe we could create our own version of the ghost radar, except that instead of ghosts, it’d latched onto a witch’s own signature!” She added, practically bouncing up and down.

“That way, we could lead the radar to someplace with a particularly strong magical signature, and therefore guide us to the mandrake patch without getting lost!” Tucker continued, equally excited. 

“Which would then allow us to track any witch that comes to the garden.” Jazz said.

“And eventually lead us to their hideout!” Tucker finished. The two of them high-fived the other, reeling from the revelation. They were so hyped they almost forgot to address the most important part of the plan.

“So,” Tucker started, slipping his PDA back in his pocket. “What about Danny? Do we tell him about this?”

Against her better judgement, Jazz shook her head. “No. I believe it’d be best if we don’t.”

“Are you sure?” Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Arguably, this affects him much more than it does us.”

“I know, but we need to give him an edge over the witches. An ace up his sleeve! Something to use as leverage if the queen ultimately turns against him.” She explained. “Telling him of our plan before we even have a clue would only make things more difficult for him.” Noticing Tucker’s unsure expression, she rushed to reassure him. “I promise, the moment we know where they gather, we’ll tell him. Okay?”

Tucker didn’t look convinced. Excluding Danny in something this important just felt wrong! But, on second thought, Jazz was his older sister; she’d been taking care of and protecting him long before she learned about the accident. Jazz was always looking out for her baby brother’s best interests. Sighing, he gave in. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Tucker.” She grinned in appreciation before she looked down at her phone and noticed the time. “Now, come on! We still have to get back before Danny finishes his classes and notices we’re nowhere to be found. We don’t want him to get suspicious, do we?”

As he followed her back through the way they’d come from, Tucker could only hope their decision wouldn't bite them in the ass. 

..........

“Remind me again why we’re here?”

“Because we needed to meet up and the You Mocha Me Crazy was closed today.” Tucker smirked smugly at her from the seat across from her; a mixture of grease and sauce dripping from his fingertips. “My, what a tragedy!” He lamented in mock sadness. 

Her body leaned forward and her elbow propped up on the wobbly table, Sam sent him a nasty look. “Knock it off! You like the café and you know it.” 

The techno geek shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ll admit, they make good sandwiches. But nothing can beat my love for the Nasty Burger. It was about time I dragged you here for a change.”

Danny was sure the Goth girl was about to deliver  a very colourful string of words their friend’s way hadn’t he intervened. “Remember, Sam,” he warned,  putting a hand on her shoulder, making her look at him instead, “this is a kid-friendly space.” He took her huffing and crossing her arms over her chest as she slumped on her seat as a victory. “Look on the bright side,” he pointed at the trail of food in front of her, “at least they serve vegetarian menus.”

“It was a pleasant surprise.” She admitted, looking down at the tofu-soy melt she’d been served. “I honestly thought their only options would be a bunch of so-called salads with more meat than lettuce.” Picking the sandwich up, her face wrinkled in disgust when she brought it to her face. Averting her eyes, she promptly set it back down, before sliding the trail away from her. “That being said, that thing’s soggier than a quarterback’s socks after a football game.”

“Then it should be just like you like it!” The techno geek quipped, causing Sam to fling some of his own fries at him in retaliation. Tucker could’ve tried shielding his face from the assault, but that would've meant dropping his burger, leaving him no choice but to become an easy target. “You’re gonna pay for those fries.” He deadpanned, his scowl only deepened when the Goth girl blew him a raspberry in response. 

“I believe it’d be more accurate to say football players’ socks are stiff after a game, giving the poor hygiene of the guys at our high school,” Danny pointed out matter-of-factly, trying to keep the peace between the two, before noticing the possible innuendo thanks to the help of Tucker and Sam’s meaningful looks. “But I get what you mean.” He finished lamely. 

Changing her position so she was looking directly at him, her face leaning on the hand resting on the table, Sam raised an amused eyebrow in his direction. “No offence, Danny, but teenage boys aren’t exactly known for their impeccable hygiene.” With a noncommittal shrug she leaned back against her seat. “There isn’t much of a difference between you guys and pigs; you’re both more voracious than a pack of hyenas and your body odor is arguably stronger than a pig-pen’s stench.” She pinched her nose with her fingers for emphasis, the smirk never leaving her face. 

Both guys seated with her shot her matching glares. “I resent that.” They said in unison, making her laugh. 

“FYI, Sam,” Tucker said between bites of his Mega Meaty Nasty Burger, “Danny and I had to learn the wonders of personal hygiene much sooner than any other guy at our school.” Setting the remainder of his burger down on its trail, his arm resting close to it, he leaned closer to Sam, as if he were about to share a secret. “For all the cruel things the girls said about us behind our backsー”

“Or to our faces.” Danny reminded him with a pained mumble. 

“Or to our faces.” Tucker agreed. “Despite everything, they never, not even once, complained about the way we smelled.” He leaned back against his seat with a triumphant grin, the burger already in his hands. “That’s way more than the jocks ever got.”

“Now that you mention it, Tuck,” the blue-eyed boy started, “I think the closest we ever got to a compliment from the A-list girls was when Paulina, grossed out by Dash trying to flirt with her all sweaty after P.E., screeched, ‘Get away from me! Not even those losers of Foley and Fenton smell nearly as bad as you!’” He mimicked in a very whiny, high-pitched voice. 

While Danny’s imitation got him and Tucker in stitches, it got Sam thinking. Did he say Paulina? She didn’t want to just assume the Paulina she knew was the only one in town, but she couldn’t help but think of her. “Uh, guys?” She waited until they gave her their full attention. “Um, sorry if this is weird, but I just realised I never got around to asking you; which high school did you go to?”

“Casper High.” They replied at the same time. “Why?”

Okay...so they were talking about the Paulina she knew. The Latina wasn’t kidding when she said she used to be the queen bee at Casper High when she and Star studied there, if Danny and Tucker’s retelling, as the lowest end of the food chain, was anything to go by. “Um...no reason, really. I was just curious, that’s all.” Not feeling up to compromising her, for once, plausible answer, she quickly tried changing the subject. “If what you’re telling me is true, though, how come you were such prodigies in the art of not smelling like garbage that’s spent way too much time under the sun?”

“Ghosts.” Tucker replied simply. Panicking, Danny discreetly kicked him in the shins, the only reason his best friend didn’t yelp in pain was the warning glare the raven-haired boy was sending him. He was about to ask him what he wanted when Sam supplied the answer. 

“Ghosts?” She echoed, tilting her head to the side.

Flinching at the realisation of what he’d just said, he immediately tried to cover his slip-up. “Y-yeah! Ghosts!” He vaguely registered Danny rubbing his temple with two fingers from the corner of his eye. “You...you remember Danny’s a Fenton, right?”

“Yeah?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, while Danny’s head shot up at that, wondering what his best friend was up to. 

“You see,” Tucker said with the same tone of voice a teacher would use when enlightening his students on his subject, “since Danny’s folks are ghost hunters, ever since the spooks started haunting Amity Park, Mr. and Mrs. F. have been a little...say, trigger-happy. So every time they thought a ghost was near, we’d accidentally end up covered in whatever goop they were developing. Hence, why we were always taking showers.”

Catching onto what he’s best friend was up to, Danny was quick to add. “In fact, my sister used to have long, flowing hair, but ended up cutting it to a pixie cut after one too many accidents.”

“That’s...weird as fuck.” Sam said, and for a moment the two men feared she’d seen through them. Until she bobbed one shoulder up and down as she readied herself for round two against her tofu-soy melt. “But I guess it makes sense.”

“It does?” Danny asked, before Tucker’s foot painfully stomping on top of his brought him back to his senses. “I-I mean! Of course it makes sense...well, it shouldn’t, but that’s my family for you!” He made a helpless gesture as he shot her a sheepish grin her way. 

Their antics made her frown in suspicion, “Are you guys okay? You’re acting weird, and that’s saying something.” 

“We’re perfectly fine!” Tucker rushed in to say, at the same time as Danny tried with, “Just tired!” They shared furtive glances at each other when the dissonance registered in their brains. Then they tried again, only for Tucker to squeak, “Just tired!” at the same time as Danny assured, “We’re perfectly fine!”

A little creeped out by what was taking place right in front of her, the girl munched on her sandwich painfully slowly. “Uh huh…” She drawled, not buying it. She swallowed her food before addressing them again, her hazel-eyes strained on the two nervous-looking boys. “So, which one is it? Are you perfectly fine, or are you tired?”

Gulping loudly, Danny chose to speak for the two of them, seeing as their usual ‘bronnection’ was failing them. “Come on, Sam. We obviously mean we’re a little tired, with all our assignments and whatnot, but overall, we’re perfectly fine!” The halfa tried alleviating the tension with a motion of his hand. “That’s just your usual college student life. What’re you gonna do? Right, Tuck?” He elbowed his bespectacled friend, urging for support. 

The African American young man started, “Oh! Um...sure” He stammered at first. “Totally. Nothing going on but your typical college life problems.” He let out an awkward laugh. 

Sam just kept staring at them just as intently as before, her intertwined hands resting on the table. With her eyes narrowed on them like a gangster deciding whether to kill or torture a snitch that’d ratted them out to the cops. The pair of best friends could barely contain the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. Finally she shook her head and, for a moment, they were sure she’d made her choice; they were dead. “We definitely can’t come back here. The food’s so bad it’s rotting your brains!” She shook her head in mock concern. “And it’s not like you had many to begin with…”

“Wait a minute!” Tucker protested while Danny let out a relieved sigh, “You leave the Nasty Burger out of this!”

“I just say it as I see it.” Sam countered in a sing-song voice. It was so easy to get a rise out of him, she just couldn’t resist. 

As his two friends started bickering, Danny limited himself to watching them, amused and content to have them in his life. A part of him still couldn’t believe how easily Sam had filled the space he didn’t even know was empty. His whole life he thought Tucker’s companionship was all he neededーexcept for his early high school days when he dreamed of being part of the A-listers, but he’d since wisened up. With ghost-hunting overcomplicating his life, he’d long given up on expanding his social circle outside of his sister and best friend, and serious girlfriends were an all-time no-no, but in just a few meetings, the Goth changed that. 

Her individualism and strong moral compass were the perfect addition to his dry sense of humour and awkwardness, and Tucker’s optimism and desire to do something big. It was like they balanced each other out. Sam’s own sense of justice aligned itself nicely with Danny’s own need to do the right thing and protect others, while she shared the need to stand outーalbeit in different waysーwith Tucker, as opposed to his efforts of blending in. Even their differences were a great addition to their friendship, for they forced them to open their eyes to new possibilities they might have overlooked. 

Danny wished Clockwork would just stop time right at that very moment. There, in the middle of the crowded and not always sanitary Nasty Burger, surrounded by teens complaining about the struggles of high school and underpaid workers, everything was perfect. Being there with Tucker and Sam, watching them bicker and mediating when things threatened to get out of hand, felt like things were as they should have always been. 

They weren’t even there to talk about witches! Somewhere along the way hanging out with Sam just became normal; the right thing to do. And to think not that long ago he didn’t even know she existed…

Watching her bring a hand to the shaved half her face, as if she were about to push away some hair blocking her view only to stop in mid-air and sheepishly put her hand back down on the table when she remembered there was nothing to push awayーmaybe she still wasn’t used to missing half of her raven locksーwarmed his heart. For a moment, she redirected her focus on him, probably sensing his eyes on her, and she flushed prettily, causing heat to creep up on Danny’s own cheeks as a result. 

They immediately averted their eyes and focused on something else; Sam looked back at Tuckerーwho was trying very hard to keep his impish grin off his faceーand Danny found himself looking at the ceiling. He’d never noticed there were pieces of gum up there...

For someone who’d sworn off romance after sophomore year of high school, he was doing a very poor job at steering clear of it. Just like the route his treacherous mind had taken the other day as he locked eyes with Lady Arcana…

The halfa could feel his heart squeezing in his chest just by looking into those heliotrope orbs of hers. From the moment he first laid eyes on her, he knew not even his glowing gaze could compare to them in uniqueness. Regrettably, the usual frostiness he found in them hindered their beauty. But now that she was staring at him with great esteem and, dare he hope, a hint of admiration, it was as if spring had finally arrived and had defrosted her gaze; revealing the field of lilacs hidden underneath. 

The content smile tugging at her lips illuminated her entire visage, accentuating that tantalising beauty he chose to overlook due to the rocky nature of their relationship. In all his years coming back and forth between the Ghost Zone and Amity Park, he was sure he’d never met anyone who represented the beauty of both worlds quite like she did; and he was a halfa! 

Her amethyst eyes and her paranormal nature made her stand out even in a dimension populated by powerful entities, each possessor of a unique gift. The way the eery light coming from the ectoplasmic swirls around them reflected on her slick, black hair gave her an appropriately otherworldly glowーso beautiful it eclipsed anything he’d ever seen before. It was almost like she belonged in the Ghost Zone. 

But her personality wasn’t like any he’d ever encountered before, let alone in a spirit. He hadn’t realised it until now, or rather, he hadn't allowed himself to see it, but there was no denying the glimpses of something incredibly humane within her. As unusual a sight it might be, her love for her carnivorous plant wasn’t any different from that of a little girl playing with her puppy. The care she felt for it was evident in the curve of her smile whenever she glanced down at her little, potted friend. Her love and loyalty for her people were admirable as well. He’d been lying if he said he hadn’t been taken aback by her insistence of staying behind in order to protect her two subjects. As vain as it sounded, he’d only seen that kind of dedication and sacrifice in himselfーright when he took off to take on Pariah Dark. She’d even saved him, a ghost! Her alleged worst enemy! And all because she saw him in need and couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing. 

He could see it now. Lady Arcana represented the best of both worlds. It was like she belonged with him…

Eyes widening in shock, he quickly tried to shake off the strange feelings taking residence in his core. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge Lady Arcana, but she was still a witch! It’d be incredibly foolish of him to ignore centuries of beef between their people just for a pretty face. Besides, even if ghosts and witches weren’t enemies, he still could never date her. It’d be too dangerous. 

He had to snap out of those delusions, pronto.  “Lady Arcana.” He called out to her. A few seconds passed and she said nothing, causing him to worry. Now that he looked closely at her, she seemed a little flushed; what if something was wrong with her?

“Lady Arcana, are you okay?” Phantom asked, even though, unbeknownst to him, he looked a little out of sorts himself. “Your face is a little red. Should we have someone check it out?”

“No!” She exclaimed a little too quickly and a little too loudly, which only made him worry more for her sake. She was frantically shaking her hands before her and her cheeks only took on a deeper shade of red.

Looking at him like she’d been caught doing something bad, the witch cleared her throat, although it looked a little forced. “I mean, no; I’m fine, really. Probably just a little affected from all the excitement.” Averting her gaze, she jerked her thumb behind her. “I, uh, I should probably go back to my people. They’re probably recruiting an army to come and save me as we speak.” She laughed it off weakly. 

The halfa’s eyes shot open at that. Duh! What was he thinking!? Of course not seeing their queen return from the Ghost Zone would cause an uproar among her clan! “Oh, right! Yeah, it’ll probably be for the best. Wouldn’t want to start a war over a misunderstanding…” He rubbed the back of his neck as he, too, looked away. “I...I’ll let you be.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for saving me.” Lady Arcana  said softly, and Danny could feel his heart swelling at her words. Unbidden, his expression fell a little when she put a little distance between the two. She was about to cast the spell that would send her home when his voice acted before his brain had time to catch up to it. “Wait!”

Turning around, she raised an eyebrow at him, “What?”

“Are there going to be any more meetings after this?” He asked. “I mean, after this whole fiasco, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to call it quits…”

In spite of himself, he couldn’t keep the seed of hope from being planted when she gave him a small smile. “We still need to solve the portal problem, don’t we?” Then, she smirked. “You won’t get rid of me that easily, Phantom!”

Danny was pretty sure he’d just smiled appreciatively at her, which was why he didn’t understand when she hastily turned around once more, ready to leave. “Well, until next time!” 

“Wait, Lady Arcana!” He called out to her once more, hating how desperate he sounded. 

“Yes?”

“I...u-uh,...well…” He stuttered before taking a deep breath. “Thank you for saving me, too.”

The way her expression softened was enough to bring forth emotions he long believed dead and buried. “You’re welcome, Phantom.” Finally, she focused on her anima, willing a purple light to engulf her as she chanted, “Omnes viae Romam ducunt.”

And with that, she was gone. 

The snow-white haired ghost kept staring off into the distance even after she was long gone, his mind still trying to process the day’s events. But there was something that, hard as he might, he just couldn’t make sense of. She’d been able to grab him while he was intangible, but how? At first he thought it was a specific spell or something, but that theory was soon proven mistaken when not even Lady Arcana seemed to know how she’d been able to touch him. 

Only one thing was for sure; he needed answers. And he had a pretty good idea where he’d be able to get them. 

Danny’s musings were abruptly interrupted by the sight of his best friend pointing a fry accusingly at Sam, “When were you going to tell me you’re rich?”

A heavy silence suddenly filled their booth. It was like someone had forced a horrible screech out of a vinyl disc by scratching on its surface. Looking over at Sam, the halfa was sure she was about to drop her food, too stunned to even move. The way her eyes had popped open would’ve been comical, hadn’t it been for the tense atmosphere. 

Shaking her head lightly, the Goth girl finally regained her senses, her shocked face morphing itself into a scowl. “Say it a little louder, Tucker.” She grumbled. “I don’t think they’ve heard you all the way to Siberia.”

Now it was Tucker’s turn to scowl. “Uh, no. You don’t get to be mad at me for saying it aloud.” He slumped back on his seat, turning his head away from her. “Not when you never even told me yourself; I had to find out through Jazz.”

“Jazz?” Danny repeated, confused. “When did you talk about this with Jazz?”

“Uh...we were texting each other and it came up.” He shrugged his concerns off. “But that’s not important right now. What matters,” he said hotly as he shot the brunette a pointed look, “is that we’ve been friends for over a year and you never told me! How come Danny and Jazz get to know you’re part of the Mansons but I don’t?!”

The youngest Fenton was about to try and explain things to the techno geek when Sam beat him to it, “Tucker, it’s not like I planned this! I was just having dinner with my dad when Danny and his sister appeared at the restaurant.” She explained, exasperated. “And honestly? The only reason Danny knows is because Jazz already did. It’s not like I saw them come in and waved at them like, ‘Hey, guys! I’m here with my Hella wealthy father! You wanna come with to our yacht in the Mediterranean?’” She droned in an overly cheery, sugary-sweet voice, her lashes fluttering excessively.

“You have a yacht in the Mediterranean?” Both boys asked, incredulous. 

Her scowl deepened. “That’s irrelevant.”

“Yeah, well..,” His shoulders slouched, Tucker could only sulk, hurt. “Could’ve still told me. I thought we were friends, Sam.”

His words were like a knife piercing through her heart. They were friends, weren’t they? Despite their differences and some of his most obnoxious flaws, Tucker was still the first person to ever approach her without ulterior motives in mind. Even after they’d made it clear they could never work as a couple, he stayed with her. Annoying he may be, he was still the first friend she’d ever made on her own, and she loved him for it. He was right; he didn’t deserve to be hurt due to her secretive nature. 

With a sigh, she scrubbed her face with one hand, feeling remorseful. “Tuck, I’m...I’m really sorry.” She confessed, earning the techno geek’s full attention. “You’re right, even if the secret was mine to tell, I should’ve let you know sooner.” She sighed once more, unable to meet his eyes. Sam hated allowing herself to be vulnerable in front of others; growing up, she’d learned to depend on no one but herself, therefore, showing her helpless, weaker, side to others was incredibly hard to do. “Listen, you’re the first friend I’ve made in a very long time. I was afraid of losing you.”

Although his posture was still guarded, Tucker couldn’t deny her words piqued his interest. “What do you mean, Sam? How is me knowing who you are going to lead to you losing me?”

“I sort of agree with Tucker.” Danny commented. “If anything, it’d bring you two closer.”

“Right?”

Chuckling mirthlessly, the Goth shook her head. Both boys flinched when they saw the pain reflected in her hazel eyes. “Look, being me isn’t easy, okay? I’m not saying life in general ain’t shitty, because that’d be lying, but my life is especially complicated. 

“I grew up trying to live up to insanely high expectations, a childhood no kid should ever be forced to go through. I was constantly reminded of the near impossibility that was me making real friends, and I guess, once I reached puberty, it just made me cynical.” Sam admitted quietly, not looking up from her trail of food. “By the time I could try making friends of my own, I was already convinced the moment they learned of my family’s wealth, they’d start seeing me as their personal credit card, instead of my own person who deserves to be loved and accepted just for being who I am.”

Although she desperately tried to hide it, Danny and Tucker immediately exchanged concerned glances the instant she sniffled. Their hearts broke in two for the girl sitting with them. Sure, they’d been Casper High’s laughing stock from the beginning to end of their high school experience, but they always had each other. Sam...Sam spent the majority of her life alone. It was impossible not to feel for her. 

“In...in the end,” God, how she hated the way her voice shook! “I decided hiding that part of me was easier. I wanted friends who liked me for me, and having a Black MasterCard was surely going to make things difficult.”

“You have a Black MasterCard?” Tucker accidentally let out. When Danny’s neon green glare started burning a hole in his skull, he backtracked. “I’m sorry, Sam. I mean...I guess I mean I’m sorry.”

“You are? But I’m the one who’s kept you in the dark this long!”

 “Yeah, and it hurts.” He admitted. “But it’s obvious you had your reasons and after hearing them, man, I can’t blame you. I would also hide all that cash if I were you. Even though the temptation of flaunting my own private jet in front of all the asholes who used to shove me into lockers would be too great.”

Despite herself, his joke made her laugh. “Thanks Tuck. Friends?” She rubbed her eyes to wipe the imaginary tears away. She was relieved to know she didn’t cry; crying was something Sam Manson just didn’t do. It would’ve been mortifying.

He leaned over to rest a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’re still friends. But you’re paying for our next meal.” That earned him a playful punch on the arm from the Goth, but the smile on her face betrayed her true emotions. 

Shaking her head good-naturedly, she scoffed. “Deal.”

After that, the three kept talking amongst themselves. About everything and nothing. Nearing the end of their meal, Danny and Tucker were too engrossed reminiscing about their high school days per her request. Admittedly, just hearing the traumatising experiences they’d been through made her feel suddenly grateful for never attending the dreaded place herself. Still, after the tenth story retelling how some jackass had forced Danny to eat his jockstrap after losing a betーew!ー her mind wandered elsewhere. 

Her last encounter with Phantom sent her reeling. The way they both complemented each other when they worked as a team was astounding. It reminded her of Grandma Ida’s tales of how things used to be before the ghosts forced them into hiding, when the two species were practically symbiotic of each other. 

For the first time since she received his letter, she found herself trusting him. Most importantly, a part of herself came to wish she could indeed trust him. Perhaps all the centuries apart and resentment had clouded their people’s minds. Maybe they were really better off together than separated. She had to admit her knowledge on ghosts was very limited aside from what she’d been taught her entire life, and if there was something Sam was, that was inquisitive. She never took anything by face value, so why did she do just that with ghosts?

She needed to learn more about them. She needed to act like an individual, rather than a bee awaiting orders from the queen, and do a little research of her own. 

She needed answers and, crazy as it might be, she knew where to find them. 

“Hey, Danny?” Her voice stopped short Tucker’s retelling of his hellish experience dating the second most popular girl in school. When Danny’s baby blue eyes met hers, she almost lost her nerve. Almost. “Um, would you mind taking me to FentonWorks?”

[emerald-studies]

Racism in Education

June 27, 2020

Day 6 of 7

[ These are just some thoughts I have in my head about this topic, it isn’t meant to be a purely academic discussion. It’s meant to be a conversation to learn about another perspective. ]                                                

—-    

Ok this will be my most challenging post. This is a long read but I’d appreciate you reading it all because I’ve been doing free emotional labor for almost a month and if you want to be an ally, that means learning from other perspectives. So please read. This drained me so much to write, please make it worth it. 

You have the time, please read.

As I stated in my intro, I moved from a very conservative State (I don’t even want to say the State because I hate it so much.) to Washington State. I moved after graduating online school a year ago. 

Growing up in that State I was almost always the only Black girl in my class. For my whole educational career. I hated when we would discuss the civil rights movement because I could feel my White peers staring at me, like I was the face of my race. 

It was junior year that broke me. 

I began the year optimistic. I always did, even though I had experienced racism before each year, pushing me to move to 4 different schools in 4 years. 

I moved to a school in a rural area with a lot of mormons and maybe 5 Black people in the whole, huge school. 

It was in September that my mental health plummeted. I don’t know why. I guess I was overwhelmed. I was in an AP US History class and there was work over the summer that everyone else did, but I didn’t. I had just gotten there, after all. I didn’t have the textbook. That class was such a heavy workload that we were having a quiz every other day, 1 test a week, and I was trying to study for a test that my peers had months to study for, and already took. 

I attempted to take my life, but I knew I didn’t really mean it. I’ll be honest about that. I just wanted everything to stop so I could catch my breath. 

I went to the ER on a Thursday night. My Mom drove me. 

We sat in the ER for a little bit and then I was taken to a little room where a nurse came to talk to me. BTW I have never had a good interaction with a nurse.

This nurse came in and basically shamed me. 

“You’re so young. You have your whole life ahead of you. You don’t need to do this to yourself.”

Yeah, no shit. I thought about that every day. My grades, getting into college, getting into law school.... that’s the point. I was overwhelmed. 

She suggested that I punch a pillow if I “Got upset” because that’s what her daughter does. 

Fuck off. 

The Doctor came in and he gave me butterfly bandages and he was so much more understanding, shockingly. (I’ve shadowed Surgeons and Doctors and they can be a little abrasive).

I liked that the Doctor fixed me up. I liked having this wrap around my wrist. I felt like I could move on. Like I let something out. 

The Doctor asked if I needed to stay at this place that dealt with cases like mine. 

I said,

 “No.”

I couldn’t have that on my record for what I want to do. So, I went home.

I took the Friday off and my Mom visited the school to let them know what happened. I was already preparing for pity.

I had to come in on Monday to set up a 504 (students with disabilities act) for depression. I don’t think I had depression, but whatever. I dropped out of AP US History.

They made accommodations for me: more time on tests, working in the library, more time on assignments, etc.

I want you to know that I did not touch those accommodations for 5 months. 

I knew I didn’t need them. I maintained a 3.8 GPA.

I sat in a room with all 8 of my teachers (we had a block schedule 4 classes per day alternating), seeing all of them look at me with disgusting levels of pity.

They each talked to me in private saying things like,

“If you ever need anything, let me know.”

“I’m here for you.”

“You matter.”

I thought,

 “Hm ok, that’s nice.”. 

I went on for months without using my accommodations and practically wooping my “normal” classmates in intellectual discussions.

But then the casual racism I experienced was escalating. 

First, in the beginning of the year, my AP US History teacher put his hand on my head and said to a student,

“If you really believe that, Faith would be a slave right now.”

(I don’t remember what the hell we were even talking about)

Then I got little questions/comments like,

“Why do you dress White?”

“Cracker is just as offensive as the n-word”

But now we were going into Black History Month. My new history teacher was an old White Man and we were talking about the civil rights movement, while in English we were reading “Black Like Me” with my blonde, Female, millennial teacher.

I nailed everything in the civil rights movement discussions. The teacher loved me. I nailed the conversations about “Black Like Me”. 

But....I don’t know. The environment got really toxic. There was more racism, gaslighting, slurs. Every. single. day. It could break anyone.

I would be on the brink of tears in class every day. 

Guess who didn’t notice? 

All 8 of those concerned teachers. 

They don’t give a shit. 

My grades were still pretty good, but I started working in the library. I couldn't be around all of those racist peers. 

While in the library, my counselor would come in and interrogate me. 

“How long have you been in here?”

“Have you tried, really tried to go to class?”

Of course I tried! I felt like I wanted to be dead and so I left. That’s what the 504 Plan was for. Again, I hadn’t touched my accommodations for months so I thought maybe these grown adults would use their tiny brains and think,

“Huh maybe she needs help.”

But no. 

I would go to the counselor almost every day and say 

“I’m not doing well.”

And she’d ask,

“What does that mean?”

Ok...so I have to tell this Woman that I feel like dying but not at my own hand? Because she can’t use social cues and read my face stained with tears?

I couldn’t say anything. 

She said,

“What can we do to keep you going here?”

I said,

“I don’t know”

Because that’s not my job.

Then it happened. 

My history teacher was talking about affirmative action.

He said,

“If I worked at a bank for 30 years and went to work at another bank, FAITH would get a job over me because she’s a BLACK WOMAN. Do you get that? She covers TWO minorities!” 

He said this while pointing his wrinkled finger in my face.

None of my peers said anything.

I replied with,

“Well, what are my qualifications?”

He ignored me.

He went on a rant teaching his opinions, not facts. So I wrote down what he said on sticky notes. 

I called my Mom at break and asked her

“Is that racist? Do I do anything?”

I was so desensitized to racism I couldn’t tell anymore.

My White Mom, my awesome Mom said,

“YES.”

I went to the Vice Principal and reported the teacher and gave her the sticky notes. 

The next day we got an email from the principle saying that the teacher said, he never said anything about me.

So I was a liar?

To get evidence, I recorded the whole next class. I was scared every minute that he would find out. 

He didn’t. And he said more awful things.

I had concrete proof.

We told the Principal and he ignored me. My Mom emailed the superintendent (very high up person in the school district) and oh now he responds? 

They basically said,

“We gave him a warning, he won’t do it again.”

Ok so he just will hide his racism now. Just remember, teachers legally aren’t allowed to teach their opinion. The Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional to teach opinions.

I was still required to go to this racist Man’s class. I still answered every question he posed to the class and he recognized my intelligence. 

So WHY?

WHY me?

The whole year he loved having me as a student and then....that?

Moving on to my English class.

We had to do a cultural experience trip and so my acquaintance and I went to the Black History Museum. Because I’m Nigerian-American. I do identify as Black though because everyone assumes it anyways, but I wanted to learn more about the history in my city.

We were required to make presentations talking about the experience we had. I decided to add a little twist. 

I made a whole slide in my slideshow dedicated to every racist thing said to me in that class. 

The slide was met with laughter because racism is just so funny.

My teacher said nothing. 

So I, the student, the minor in the room, had to say,

“I see you laughing but this is why I’m leaving this school. This is serious.”

Nothing from my teacher. 

Cut to maybe a week later and I was done. I was sitting in my English class about to burst. My acquaintance asked me,

“Are you doing ok?”

I replied,

“No. Absolutely not.”

A classmate checked in on me, while all my 8 teachers who actually knew about my attempt on my life didn’t.

We went outside and I decided to leave the school that day. Three weeks before summer break. I couldn’t be in either class anymore. I felt my brain rotting from being exposed to the absolute shit that those students/teachers would spew, every day.

I lost my 3.8 GPA

I lost my credits for the semester.

The racist teacher is still working.

I had to go online.

It happened again.

Another racist history teacher. 

Wasn’t removed.

I graduated with a lower GPA.

Didn’t apply to my dream school.

I have the trauma seared into my brain. I’m terrified of taking another history class. Terrified.

Ok, that’s it. If you made it this far, thank you. It took me awhile to write this. I hope this gave you another perspective. 

--

So.... discussion time. 

Let me know what you think here

I’d like to hear from you since I delved into my trauma. 

I don’t think I’ll ever tell this story again, it makes me sick and tired. But I’ll answer questions/asks.

If you have a lot of White guilt and wanna do something, you could donate some reparations to my venmo lol: 

@faithrebecca1397 (last 4 digits are 4809)

or paypal

http://www.paypal.me/faithrebecca1397

Edit: People are asking me if they can reblog this. YES PLEASE REBLOG. It’s important to let people know that all types of racism are alive and well.

[writingsfromstarfleet]

Chakotay - The Falcon

♫ - To Be Alone - Hozier

For the eternally brilliant @too-many-baes​, whom I must thank for giving me the opportunity to write this! Nothing is ever too specific, the more the better! I had the chance to research into spirit guides and found so much interesting stuff, I am absolutely fascinated! I tried to choose an animal that was the most fitting for the request, and I sincerely hope you and everyone else enjoy! Hugs! ♡

Learning was at the heart of your decision to join Starfleet. Through your whole life, any opportunity you had to discover the unknown or further your own knowledge base, you jumped at. You were an inquisitive child, to sat the least. So when the time came to apply to the academy, it was hardly something you were going to pass up, nor was it a surprise when you passed your final exams with flying colours. Your first assignment was aboard Voyager, and you could not have been given a better assignment.

You'd been on Voyager for a while, and the predicament of being stranded in the Delta Quadrant didn't mean that your discoveries suffered; on the contrary, there was always something around the corner waiting to be studied. Voyager truly had some of the best crew you could ask for, and ��you became close with everyone. Not a single unfriendly crew member was aboard, at least not in your eyes. You'd found it easy to get along with people anyway, but there was something about the people you served with that felt like a family. Even Tuvok had taken to you, often showing you tips and tricks on Vulcan meditation for the times you felt the stresses or anxieties of daily life.

Captain Janeway too was no exception, she was the best captain you could have asked for. Strict when needed, but friendly and caring. You knew that you always had a shoulder to cry  on with her, she was wonderful.

You had found, though, that your closest relationship lay with the Commander, Chakotay. For whatever reason, neither of you quite knew, you had taken to each other like a fish to water. Chakotay was fascinating, and his stories always kept you captivated, no matter what they were about. He was full of experiences and knowledge, be it with his tribe or his time with the maquis, and that was what originally drew you to him. Chakotay found your curiosity to be endearing, which is why when you came to him with questions on his tribe, he was not surprised.

"So," you began, sitting down in his quarters with a drink, a pass time that had become all too common with the two of you. "What is a spirit guide?"

"A spirit guide is a Native American tradition," he spoke with confidence, and you listened intently to every word. "It is an animal that guides a person through life. The creature that guides a person does not define who that person is, it simply chooses to be with them. Therefore, no one can choose their own animal guide. It would offend a guide if its identity was revealed to others. You cannot choose your guide, either."

"What's yours?" Your curious tone made him chuckle.

"I don't wish to say, it can be seen as bad practice in my culture, though I will mention she is a female."

You raised your brows, and Chakotay shot you a charming smile. He knew what your next question was, and held out his hand for you to take.

"Let's find yours then, shall we?"

Your smile was palpable at this point, and you were all too happy to partake. Standing, Chakotay brought you to an open space and sat you both down on the ground cross legged. He lay out a towel that had several artefacts and stones on it, and spoke quietly in a language you couldn't understand. He would later tell you this was a phrase used to request the spirits for guidance and clarity. All through the vision quest, you kept your eyes focused on him, entranced.

Chakotay asked you with a look if you trusted him to continue, and you simply nodded back. You entered a meditative state, and found yourself in a sort of altered state of consciousness. You found yourself seeing and hearing things that you otherwise may never have. The ability to ask questions to the guides came about, and you did just that.

Re-entering consciousness once more, you were greeted by Chakotay's smile once more, his eyes full of a prideful spark.

"Did you find out, Y/N?"

"I did." Your voice suggested you weren't happy, or that you were confused, something Chakotay picked up on immediately. His brow furrowed.

"And how do you feel?"

"I don't know, Chakotay, it wasn't what I expected. Can I tell you what it is?"

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly in thought. Conceding, he nodded.

"My spirit guide is a falcon. I don't know much about them, but it wasn't what I'd expected at all."

You looked down at your hands in your lap, and Chakotay's eyes were full of love as he looked at you. He took your hands in his own which prompted you to look up at him, a smile finding its way to your face upon seeing his. Chakotay's smiles always brightened you up.

"Would you like me to tell you about the falcon as a spirit guide?" He asked, continuing when you nodded. "A falcon is not a very common guide, and they appear to you when you are in need of clarity or in need of rising above challenging situations. At its core, the falcon signifies wisdom, vision, and protection. It is a beautiful and powerful creature, Y/N. I wouldn't be so disappointed if I were you."

Eyes widened, you shifted as you sat, looking down at the stones before you. Perhaps he was right. You had never stopped to think of the strengths of such an animal, but now it made sense. Falcon's were headstrong birds, and were rather majestic in their standing in nature. You laughed to yourself and glanced to him.

"I never knew that.." you trailed off, and he lifted your chin back up to look you in the eye.

"I believe there is no better guide suited to you, Y/N."

Rising to your knees, you leant over and wrapped your arms around his neck, bringing him in for a hug. Chakotay responded, pulling you closer to him so you could lean against his side. As you sat there together, you thought more about what the falcon meant.

Wisdom; you always did have a taste for knowledge and learning. Vision; you weren't always sure of the path before you or if you were on the right road, but the people around you kept you grounded and always had the right thing to say to help you get there. Protection; your crew mates, who were your family, always had your back, and so did the man sat next to you. With them, you knew you were capable of anything.

"Thank you, Chakotay."

He looked down to you, pulled you closer and placed a sweet kiss to your forehead. No more words were needed between you.

[mashounen2003]

Sonic opinions - 4

Initially, the purpose of my fanfics was almost only to think of a possible continuation of the events of Sonic SatAM, adapting things from the Archie-Sonic comics (and taking some licenses in the process), and trying to better write Antoine's transition from his self in the cartoon to his self in the comics, give more importance to Tails and better portray his parents, Amadeus and Rosemary. But then I realized how abysmal the differences between the two versions of Antoine were, while it was also harder for me to think of a way to write Rosemary coherently.

In Antoine's case, lately, I came up with an alternative to make him develop and stop being what he was in the TV series:

Immediately after the original Robotnik has been defeated, Antoine leaves his team behind. He actually doesn't know how to fight, but he still has good marksmanship, so he becomes a hitman. However, he's eventually convinced to leave behind that life without honour, begins to train in real fighting skills and becomes a genuine Freedom Fighter once and for all. In any case, he develops an opinion of "the end justifies the means" and continues thinking it for the rest of the story, being critical of his former team; this, along with his lasting grudge against Sonic and Sally, leads him to fight against the Monarchy in the events of "Civil War".

As for Rosemary... I don't like to say it this way, but she was a total b**** in the comics. I came up with a way to show her in a better light, but in no way could it have worked with the comics' Rosemary as she was. I'll talk about it when I write my list of ideas for future fanfics.

--------------------------------------------------

I also addressed Politics in that fictional universe, trying to avoid the way this was done in the comics: there, Ian Flynn created the Council of Acorn and portrayed it as a bunch of stereotyped useless politicians obsessed with controlling the heroes and barely concerned with their country's security, and I think Flynn didn't do it to actually enrich the comics' universe or to add depth to the story or to communicate certain political ideas, but only to give readers someone to blame.

In the stories I wrote so far, I didn't go deep into what happened with my fictional universe's Council of Acorn after its creation; however, I did address its origin, and in doing so, I didn't make the Bems involved. Look... In the comics, Tails's parents were inspired by the Bems to try to establish a Democracy in Acorn, and this entails some inconvenience:

The Bems are terrible people. They roboticized Sonic and Tails to make them fight Robotnik and Snively, in order to verify the robots were better than flesh-and-blood beings (if things had happened differently, perhaps Mobius's Robians wouldn't have been de-roboticized); their society is entirely made of clones and almost lacks variety, not only in terms of the physical but also in terms of people's ideas; their judicial system is quite f***ed up (at least according to our standards), and... *sigh* they're just the worst. These traits of the Bems had been developed when Karl Bollers wrote the comics, and Flynn should have considered that they’re technically canon before having Tails's parents claim to have been inspired by those aliens.

Even if we cling to Moral Relativism with all our strength, claiming the Bems are just "different" and have different behaviour, mindset, psychology and culture, this keeps making things complicated: applying something in one society, solely because it succeeded in another, ain't exactly something smart to do.

And the craziest of all is that it could have been avoided very easily: Flynn could simply have said there were previous failed attempts to establish a Democracy in other countries of Mobius and Amadeus & Rosemary had always wanted a change in the government system, had learned about those historical events and knew (or believed they knew, at least) how to do it right this time. Moreover, Flynn could have said the decade spent by Tails's parents with the Bems gave them a clue about what they should not do when finally returning to their homeworld.

I tried, in my work, to use this idea of Amadeus & Rosemary wanting to establish a Democracy in an attempt to succeed in what others in other parts of Mobius had failed throughout History. It was based upon what happened in the French Revolution (more precisely, the Jacobin period), the years immediately after the Russian Revolution, and mainly the First English Revolution: in 1648, the Monarchy was overthrown in England; the change was violent and chaotic, the government that took the place of the King ended up being also a despotic tyranny, and the final result was just the return of a King to power in 1660 (although, anyway, the Glorious Revolution established in 1688 the British parliamentary system as we know it); Thomas Hobbes, while watching those events unfold, wrote his book Leviathan, where he justified the need for an Absolute Monarchy by arguing humans were violent, selfish, chaotic and brutal by nature, so they had signed a symbolic pact where they ceded all their rights and their power to a single person in charge of ruling with an iron fist, in order to prevent humanity from destroying itself. In my fanfics' universe, it was mentioned those attempts at democratization in Mobius led to civil wars, ended with those same peoples clinging to ideas similar to those of Hobbes, quickly restoring the Monarchy and promising themselves not to try and establish a Democracy ever again.

I also mentioned the recurring conflicts between the Acorn Kings and the Southern Barons in the comics, as well as the connection between the Kings and the infamous Source of All, among other things. I also had Amadeus do what he should have done in the comics when he explained why he wanted there to be Democracy: to present historical events, such as those conflicts, the Kings' cult of the Source of All and the technological and cultural backwardness to which the people were subjected by them, as concrete examples of how the Monarchy had never worked well.

--------------------------------------------------

There are several Sonic fans, including @toaarcan and @robotnik-mun, who argue Politics shouldn't have been addressed at all in Sonic stories. Also, the vast majority of Sonic fans claim each and every one of the attempts to make this series more serious were some of the worst things that could have happened, even the addition of more characters was nothing but a cancer, and everything should have remained "simple" or the Sonic franchise shouldn't have gone beyond what it was at the time of the classic Genesis games. I praise the stories written by @toaarcan, and I agree with many of the opinions of both him and @robotnik-mun, but with all due respect, I totally disagree on this particular point.

I've always believed that, if it's done right, any topic should be able to be addressed in any kind of fiction, and Politics is no exception; more exactly, I think an author has two options when writing a work aimed at children and young people: to write something super light and soft where no serious topic is addressed, or to "go all-in" and address all serious topics, leaving nothing out; this includes not only Politics, but also tragedies, the complexities of love, toxic interpersonal relationships (whether abusive or otherwise), bullying, mental illness, trauma (for example, that caused by war), societal issues, and so on. That's one of the many whys of my love for RWBY: there's nothing that web-series doesn't talk about. As for the proper and respectful LGBTQ+ representation, rather than a serious topic reserved for serious fictional works, it's a requirement every fictional work should meet, whether serious or not, especially in the middle of the 21st century (this is something I think my work didn't meet satisfactorily).

With Sonic SatAM and the comics, it looked like the second option could have worked in the Sonic franchise too, and the TV series did it right to some extent. Unfortunately, Archie-Sonic's writers almost never did things right in regards to relationships between characters: Ken Penders's work, in particular, is an example of how relationships should never be, and Flynn's attempt to talk about Politics was a complete disaster, not much better than Penders's heinous handling of political stuff, more similar to a very low-quality North-American political satire, even when the conflict portrayed wasn't of the "Right versus Left" kind but of the "Monarchy versus Republic" kind, which should have been much easier to do without ruining everything. The only ones who didn't fall into those same mistakes were Gallagher and Angelo DeCesare, the comics' first writers, but only because they chose the first option: to write stories that weren't serious at all... with the notable exception of "Growing Pains", the B-story of issues #28 and #29, a typical Shakespearean tragedy where they presented us Auto-Fiona, a robot replica of who would later be one of the most controversial characters in the comics.

This, coupled with the resounding failure of Sonic 2006, is the only reason why now almost everyone in the Sonic fandom prefers stories without anything serious and/or a return to the Classic Sonic era, with very underdeveloped characters who are turned into mere plot devices and are only a shadow of their former self or of what they could have been.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Spock Grok Shock Squawk

Lemme get my main thesis out in the open first thing:

The search for intelligent life in space is a quasi-religious endeavor.

The unstated hidden hope is that we will find up in the sky people who are better and wiser than us, and who will prove they’re better by sharing that wisdom, ushering in, if not exactly a golden age, then one of shiny brass.

The unstated assumption is that they will be like the Vulcans in Star Trek, more advanced than we are, but impressed by our courage and our curiosity and our just plain ol’ fashioned humanness so that even though they are technologically and culturally far superior to us, they’ll toss the keys of the galactic federation in our lap, letting us run things for everybody’s betterment.

Snowflake, please…

(I mean let’s acknowledge this is a white and / or Anglo / European colonial fantasy from the gitgo, okay?  No sane species will let us anywhere near the torpedo room, capice?)

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a harmless enough exercise, and I’ll be honest, it would be cool if they actually found something, but at its core it’s no different from going into a place of worship and attempting to contact the divine.

(Mind you, I have absolutely no objection to that in principle, either, but I know how a lot of supposed spiritual searchers are actually searching for cudgels to batter their fellow humans into submission; and besides, as will be pointed out below, the search for the divine shares some similar issues with SETI, so read on, MacDuff…)

My next major thesis is this:

Nobody knows what they’re looking for, SETI or conventional religion.

They dress it up in fancy costumes but when you strip both groups’ sky beings naked, you find they’re looking for people just like us in every important way (i.e., we understand them, they understand us, and they don’t hold us accountable for our bullshit).

Here’s a few issues I have with the current state of SETI affairs:

We don’t know what alien life would look like.

We don’t know how alien life would think.

We don’t know what alien life can sense that we can’t sense.

We don’t know how alien life would process information.

We don’t know how alien life would adapt to its environment.

(There’s more -- much, much more -- but these will do for the moment.

Point 1: I’m not talking about green skinned Martians with six limbs, I mean we don’t even know if alien life would have a cell structure or pass along generational information via DNA.

Personally, I think there’s a remote possibility life on Earth did not evolve but is a product of panspermia, in which case any life we encounter on other planets in this solar system may indeed use cell structure, DNA, etc.

But that’s just “a chance greater than zero” not hard evidence.

We literally have no idea what other life would look like so we have no way of knowing where or what to look for.

Someone familiar only with North American forest insects might have a hard time identifying life found at the bottom of the Marianas Trench -- and that’s part of the planet we all share.

There’s a fringe science called shadow biology that wonders if there may be life on this planet that we can’t identify because it looks and behaves so differently from us.

That’s another one of those “greater than zero” speculations -- but the fact we can define right now what would constitute alien life means all we’re doing is looking for Vulcans.

Point 2: We don’t even know how we think; howda %#@& can we anticipate how alien intelligence would think.

I got into this discussion decades ago at a sci-fi con and the fan I was talking with blithely assumed we would recognize one another as intelligent based on whether we used mathematics and my question then and now is:  ”How would you know?!?!?”

Math is a symbolic language that (apparently) interprets basic underlying principles in a way that humans can grasp and apply.

The principles exist whether or not they are expressed, or how they are expressed.

We humans “see” 2 + 2 = 4 as “logical” because out symbolic language links the concept of two distinct objects added to another two distinct objects as being the equivalent of four distinct objects, but we have no way of knowing if an alien intelligence grasps the concept of distinct objects.

For them it may all be just part of a continuum.

There could be aliens desperately trying to contact us right now, using methods we can observe, and we just can’t grasp that there’s even a message to be grasped! 

Point 3: Holy cow (no, not a religious exclamation), this point is huge and we just keep glossing over it.

Humans possess better color vision than canines.

We see three primary colors, they see only two (blue and yellow).

There are other terrestrial species -- butterflies and mantis shrimp, to name two – who see colors far beyond human range, well into what Dr. Seuss would call the “on beyond zebra” range.

Even if we could talk to dogs, we couldn’t tell them what green looks like:  There is literally no place in their brain to process that color.

Or consider binocular vision, i.e., depth perception.

Most humans have depth perception but many -- for any number of reasons -- do not.

A lot of animals lack binocular vision (indeed, on Earth encountering a creature with binocular vision is fraught with danger because they’re almost always predators of some sort, using depth perception to attack prey).

Try explaining depth perception to someone who’s only had vision in one eye since birth.

“Well, it doesn’t have a color or a texture or anything like that, you really can’t ‘see’ it except…well…you actually can see it insofar as you can ‘see’ the actual space that exists between two objects instead of just guessing based on visual clues…”

Again, we may be bombarded with messages from space all the time that we simply lack the ability to sense.

Point 4: This is a lot like Point 2 but different enough to enjoy its own category. 

I mean a couple of things when I refer to processing information.

First off, there’s the actual processing time.

Remember the sloth DMV scene in Zootopia?

Imagine we contact a life form that takes a standard terrestrial year just to express “2 + 2 = 4”.

The entirety of human history would pass before it could get to basic trigonometry.

How do you communicate with that?

(And what would you talk about?) 

Conversely, we would be like ferrets on espresso, the worst form of cultural ADHD imaginable to them

And the script could be flipped!

We could be the ones taking forever to respond, their elaborate and erudite answers might flash by in less than a nanosecond.

We also don’t know what an alien species would value.  We have Maslow's familiar hierarchy of needs but there’s no guarantee these would motivate any other species.

Thigs that would be extremely vital to us might be wholly unimportant to aliens and vice versa.

The fact our sky is blue is just an interesting fact to us, to aliens it might be the single most important thing they’ve ever encountered.

We simply have no way of knowing!

Point 5: Europeans encountering North American native peoples dismissed them as “primitive savages” because they didn’t smelt ore, they didn’t use wheels, and most of their cultures lacked a written language.

Ignore the fact they had well traveled trade routes stretching from the Bering Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, ignore the fact many of them governed and protected well organized territories the size of France or Germany, ignore the fact they lived in an environment not only abundant with easily available natural resources but also possessed the time to work those resources at a leisurely pace.

The European interlopers sure ignored those facts.

SETI looks for machine based physical communication from alien life (physical here including any form of energy used to convey information such as a telegraph or a laser beam).

Presuming alien life exists it may never have occurred to them to attempt to communicate in the manner humans do!

It would be like putting a mime on the radio.

The great unuttered chauvinism of the Drake equation and Fermi paradox is this: That there exists a basic template to intelligent life that’s so common the law of averages says we must find examples of it just like us wherever we look.

That’s an awfully big assumption, folks.

And we’re nowhere close to proving any of it.

  © Buzz Dixon 

[arcticdementor]

Dating and the process of mate selection have changed. The rise of hook-up culture, proliferation of dating apps, and ever-increasing age of first marriage are evidence of this. This current situation can be summarized along four parameters:

Increasing female achievement.

Growing variability in male status and competence.

An evolutionary desire among females to marry up.

The globalization of the sexual marketplace and resultant collapse of local status hierarchies.

Together, these conditions have created pronounced imbalances in the modern sexual marketplace. Put plainly, an increasing cohort of successful women are chasing a shrinking number of high-value, commitment-averse men.

At a cursory level, much of this can be explained by sex ratios and partner availability. However, the underlying structure of modern mate selection is fundamentally mathematical. For us to truly understand the causes and consequences of the modern sexual marketplace, a bit of math is required.

…

According to evolutionary psychologist David Buss, the dangers of our evolutionary past favoured females who were highly selective of their mates. To both survive childbirth and raise healthy offspring, early human females needed to evaluate a man’s current position as well as his potential and future trajectories. Consequentially, females typically mate above and across dominance hierarchies whereas males typically mate below and across them.

…

Let us consider height. According to one study, women were most satisfied when their partner was 21cm taller. This is corroborated by other studies which found that 49 percent of women preferred dating taller men and that the shortest man a woman would date was 5 feet 9 inches. Moreover, a study of undergraduates reported that only four percent of women would accept a relationship where the woman was taller. In general, tall men are more likely to obtain attractive partners, less likely to remain childless, and have a greater number of children relative to short men.

However, height isn’t the only factor which determines access to the sexual marketplace. Financial prospects matter as well.

A 1939 study found that American women rated good financial prospects twice as highly as males when gauging the value of a marriage partner. This finding was replicated in studies conducted in 1956 and 1967. Moreover, David Buss, attempting to replicate these studies, surveyed 1,491 Americans across four states in the mid-1980s. Once again, women valued good financial prospects in a mate roughly twice as much as men did. This gender difference has not changed. In fact, a 2014 Pew Research survey reported that 78 percent of unmarried women placed a high premium on finding a spouse with a steady job. Only 48 percent of men shared this view.

…

Furthermore, researchers from the University of Aberdeen found that males could move themselves two points higher on a bespoke attractiveness scale by increasing their salary tenfold. For females to achieve a similar two-point effect, their salary would need to increase by 10,000 times. The socioeconomic status of a man is a major determinant of his attractiveness to a woman, but the opposite is not true.

What happens when a woman out-earns her husband? One study found that marriages where the wife out-earned the husband were 50 percent more likely to end in divorce. This is corroborated by Finnish researchers who concluded that whereas “a husband’s high income decreased the risk of divorce … a wife’s high income increased the risk at all levels of the other spouse’s income, but especially when the wife’s income exceeded the husband’s.”

Furthermore, a study of Swedish couples reported that when the wife contributed 80 percent or more to the total income, the divorce risk was twice as high as when she contributed less than 20 percent. Curiously, one study also found that men who were not the primary breadwinner were more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication relative to men that were.

…

To this extent, researchers, analysing 120 personal dating ads, found that education was one of the two strongest predictors of how many responses a man received from women. The other was income. Moreover, researchers in Australia reported that women were more likely to initiate contact with a man if his education exceeded hers. Indeed, researchers from Ghent University also reported that women on Tinder were 91 percent more likely to “like” the profile of a man with a master’s degree compared to a man with a bachelor’s degree. The cliché that women prefer to marry doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs is not a pithy truism. It is a derivative of hypergamy.

…

Hypergamy is an evolutionary fixture. Hating it is tantamount to hating thermodynamic laws or Archimedean axioms. It simply is. Moreover, it is hypergamy that created the competence hierarchies that are used to structure human societies. If seeking to reproduce with choosy females galvanizes a man into conquest and self-actualization, are we not better for it? But what is the effect of hypergamy when females outperform males?

…

But it’s not just the US; the UK, Panama, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Cuba, Jamaica and Brunei have some of the highest female to male ratios in higher education.

Young women are also out-earning young men. According to data compiled by the Press Association, women between the ages of 22 and 29 typically earned £1,111 more each year compared to males in the same age group. As it stands, women contribute $7 trillion to the US gross domestic product per year and are the primary breadwinner in 40 percent of US households.

Crucially, the more professionally successful a woman is, the stronger her preference for successful men.

In a study of financially successful newlywed women, researchers concluded that “successful women place an even greater value than less successful women on mates who have professional degrees, high social status, and greater intelligence.” This trend is also present in cross-cultural contexts. Separate studies of 1,670 Spanish, 288 Jordanian, 127 Serbian, and 1,851 English women all found that high resource women desired mates with greater status and more resources. In general, single women are three times as likely as men to say that they wouldn’t consider a relationship with someone making less than them.

When paired with the ground truth of hypergamy, the growth of female attainment (and comparative stagnation of male attainment) amounts to a law of diminishing returns. The more a woman achieves, the less suitable mates she has to choose from. It is, indeed, difficult to marry above and across dominance hierarchies if you sit atop your own. This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that older high-powered women must compete not only among themselves but with younger women for a fleeting number of high-value men.

…

Successful women face a shortage of demographically superior men to marry. Indeed, the nascent decline in marriage has been attributed to a putative shortage of economically attractive partners for unmarried women. Applying data imputation methods to national survey data, researchers found that unmarried women face an overall shortage of partners with either a bachelor’s degree or yearly income exceeding $40,000.

…

While this observation is far from novel, what is not well understood is the extent to which this imbalance is likely to worsen.

In 2012, there were 88 employed college-educated young men for every 100 college-educated never-married young women. Among never-married young adults with a post-graduate degree, there were only 77 men for every 100 women. In addition, the ratio of employed men to young never-married women has consistently declined. In 1960, there were 139 employed men for every 100 young never-married women. As of 2012, this ratio sits at 91 employed men for every 100 young never-married women.

If you think these ratios are troubling wait till you see what they look like in 20 years. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait that long.

…

Together, these figures point to a lonely future for many educated, career-oriented young women. While some might be understandably sceptical of my findings and conclusions, they are corroborated by a 35-page report put out by Morgan Stanley in 2019.

Cleverly titled the Rise of the SHEconomy, Morgan Stanley forecasts that 45 percent of working women between the ages of 25 and 44 will be single and childless by 2030, the largest share in history. Single women are expected to grow by 1.2 percent annually from 2018–2030 compared with an 0.8 percent growth for the overall US population. By 2030, the percentage of single women will outpace that of married women.

While some of these women may very well eschew the tenets of hypergamy and settle for a man below their financial and educational station, many will seek out a high-value partner. This is where things truly become onerous.

…

If we keep within the parameters of this model, this group of women effectively outnumber their desired partners by a factor of 34. Moreover, if each man is paired with a single woman, this leaves 32.8 million women without a mate. This is a staggering imbalance.

…

According to a study of the dating app, whereas men “liked” 60 percent of female profiles they viewed, women liked only 4.5 percent of male profiles. Moreover, women, on average, viewed 80 percent of men on dating apps as below average in attractiveness. Importantly, one study, seeking to quantify the prospects of success on Tinder, determined that “the bottom 80 percent of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22 percent of women and the top 78 percent of women are competing for the top 20 percent of men”.

While power law distributions occur naturally in a multitude of settings, it is my contention that its presence on Tinder is by design. The app’s core algorithm is not calibrated to produce equal outcomes. This is a function of its use of the ELO rating system.

…

Tinder’s financial metagame is contingent on the facilitation of a power law distribution among its users. Given that the top 78 percent of women on the app are vying for the top 20 percent of men, Tinder will do everything it can to keep these men swiping. It cares little for the bottom 80 and 22 percent of men and women as these users do not generate much traffic.

This power law imbalance in the sexual marketplace is one possible explanation for the increase in male sexlessness. According to the General Social Survey, the share of men younger than 30 reporting no sex has nearly tripled from eight percent in 2008 to 28 percent in 2018.

…

Over the past few months, I’ve attempted to create a mathematical model to describe this imbalance in the sexual marketplace. Mathematical modelling is a useful investigative tool for understanding human behaviour.

Though I designed several linear, polynomial, and threshold models, none were able to adequately capture how men and women selected their mates. Fortunately, I came across a 2016 paper by evolutionary psychologists Daniel Conroy-Beam and David Buss which proposed the use of a Euclidian integration algorithm to determine how mate preference and selection were linked.

The problem with my earlier models was that they treated mate preferences in isolation. Potential mates do not present themselves one trait at a time. Rather, we evaluate potential mates based on a bevy of traits.

…

This mathematical model offers key insight into our unbalanced sexual marketplace. The number and weight of a woman’s mate preferences is negatively correlated with the number of eligible mates that are available to her. Thus, the distance of a prospective mate to a woman increases with each new preference she adds. Put simply, the more you demand, the less you receive.

More generally, there’s a disconnect between what women want and what is actually available to them. Whereas greater male attainment increases the number of romantic options a man has, greater female attainment reduces the number of options a woman has.

This imbalance in the sexual marketplace is not a good thing. A society teeming with lonely women and sexually frustrated men is one hurtling toward disaster. It is imperative that we, as a society, think carefully about solutions to this burgeoning crisis.

[maedousae]

On today’s episode of americans are at it again

Yesterday I reblogged this post with my pissed opinion in the tags

but I immediately cancelled it because i said "no i’m a grown ass woman I cannot be bothered by italian-americans calling themeselves italians once again" and then it came back to my dash with a fresh new cursed reblog that just... made me loose it.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against those users personally so please be peaceful everyone

- “EEEEEEY this is something I actually know a few things about!“: no dear you don’t.

- “The Italians who immigrated to America were primarily poor southerners from Sicily, Naples, and Calabria, especially!”: first of all Naples is a city, other poor people from Campania went to America too 

Exhibit A:

- "They’re fucking Mediterranean (read: brown) : no we're fucking not brown my dear. We italians have the longest and craziest history of immigration and invasions, we're not two-colored entity. For instance, i am from Sicily and i have olive skin, my siblings are the palest-mozzarella-white person you could imagine and my father is so dark skinned that once a coworker deadass asked him if he was from the Middle East. That is why we are really confused when you americans label yourself based on your origin (like italian-american) because following this logic i should be a greek-roman-norman-arabic-german-french-spanish-once again french-sicilian-italian. This works only in America.

- “And there’s a long history of the wealthy Alpine (read: white) North of Italy dominating, exploiting, and controlling Southern Italian states. Even today Southern Italians in Italy are looked down upon as trashy peasants.”: once again, no north Italy is not a bi-color entity. And no, north Italy did not dominate shit, the south wasn’t a colony. It’s true that people from the south suffered xenofobia but it has nothing to do with the color of your skin. And we’re not looked down upon as trashy peasants anymore if not for few exeptions.

- For the italian-american food paragraphs, listen me carefully: that's not italian food, and i can guarantee you that it's not from south Italy either. It's italian-american. We don't know who the fuck Alfredo is (fettuccine alfredo are not pasta in bianco don't even try), we - and i cannot stress this enough - do not put chicken in parmigiana, and so on. It's normal for migrants to reinvent traditions, but don't call that italian because it just is not.

- "So of course what to Northern Italians have to say? “Pfft that’s not *real* Italian!” completely ignoring the fact that Italy was only unified in the 1850s”: my child i'm from Sicily and i am once again telling you that it's not real italian food. Not to mention that Italy was unified in 1861 and not in the 1850s, a date that no one forgets in Italy.

Exhibit B:

- “There’s no such thing as “real” Italian because it’s all fucking different depending on where you go!“: sorry for not fullfilling the only pasta eaters stereotype but our food differentiate from city to city just as in the rest of the world. Every dish from Valle d’Aosta to Sicily, from polenta to arancini is true Italian food, but surely none of them resembles even remotely a single italian-american recipe.

-  “So yeah you could acknowledge that Italian-American food is its own unique thing”: 

- “[...] but somehow the language always comes down to “It’s not *real* Italian!” and being fucking assholes about it“: yes, and you know why? Because food is incredibly important in our culture, and when you claim that shoving 100 cloves of garlic down your throat is italian tradition we get really pissed of because it's just not true. If you like italian-american food it's okay, good for you, but do not claim it as something that it's just not what it is. Get over it.

You just can’t came here with zero knowledge (nothing fancy, informations that you con get for free on wikipedia in less than ten minutes), try to lecture italians on what is italian culture and then complain when people are rude to you.

You americans have to understand that your point of view it’s not the only one, and it does not apply everywhere around the world as it does in your own country. It’s truly disrespectful and the very reason why us (not just the italians but any non-american person on this planet) cannot stand your bullshit and end up being complete assholes when you talk like that. If an entire country is telling you that you are wrong maybe chances are that the asshole is you and not the others.

[felicityzoid]

Technology- A Friend or a Foe?

Dependence on technology has made us forget about some of the traditional skills. Technology is wonderful but the increasing rate of dependency on technology is alarming. For example, the skills of reading maps have been forgotten as now people are using GPS for directions. Nowadays driving is also automatic, the car basically drives itself and after using automatic cars people have forgotten how to operate manual cars. Calculators have also become so popular in school that people can’t operate simple calculations without using a calculator. The dependence on the technology is too much that people are losing their ability to think and even read as people have all the information they need on the internet. Our grammar and spelling mistakes can also be corrected by the computer. We have also stopped producing our own food as production of packaged foods have been mechanized.

For a long time, computers have been all over the place and most households have them. Internet is the common activity on the computers and the internet is used to expand our knowledge, listen to music, play games, chat and watch videos. Most of the population is addicted to internet and spend much of their time on the internet other than spending their time on productive activities.

Technology makes our life simpler and easier but people's dependence on the technology is too much in that they are making people damn lazy as we have become sluggish, obese since our transportation has been mechanized.  The technology has made so lethargic in that we cannot even go to the shops to buy fast foods and all we need is just a phone call and the foods are delivered to us. So, in my opinion too much dependence and addiction to the technology is not good for humans.

There are many advantages that technological advances have brought. Technological dependence is clearly seen when we look around and realize that we are surrounded by technological advances ranging from mobile phones, computers, iPod, and television; that have become part of our common lives causing in us a certain dependence. Technological development has grown at considerable speed and the consequences on society, countries and individuals are enormous. Technological development has a unique course we cannot alter, nor stop; It defines our lives. In the present, technological change is determined by a few large multinational corporations that in turn influence the behaviour of consumers by advertising, so the consumer is directed to where they want. For example, for the people that must be continuously checking their e-mail; cell phones were invented, which already have mobile internet so that they can connect at anytime and anywhere. Another example of how consumerism is relating to new technologies is the company Apple who release every year a new iPhone. It is important to emphasize that the same consumerism perceived by the people today in everyday life; it is the same that induces to the purchase of new and improved artifacts focused more than anything else as a whim and not as a necessity. The gap between consumption and need becomes increasingly close and more difficult to discern.

“At first glance, one might have the tendency to dismiss such aberrant cell phone use as merely youthful nonsense a passing fad. But an emerging body of literature has given increasing credence to cell phone addiction and similar behavioural addictions.” Technology is a means that on one hand brings us many advantages, but in the other hand, we have to establish that the use of artifacts such as the Internet and mobile phones are becoming of excessive use in young people, for Roberts and Pirog it is definite that all these artifacts are becoming a way of life for each one of them, and they say that the same young people are at a stage where they will become addicts to this devices if they do not know how to control themselves. They argue further that technology isolates people because it is now very common to see how many hours devoted young are to be on the network, because humanity is involved in a technological world, that’s where people are starting to talk about the term “technophile” which is becoming more common every day. In addition, several people are starting to consider technology dependency as any unhealthy dependency such as alcoholism or drug addiction. Jane Demerica thinks the opposite to what is set out in the article of Roberts and Pirog she says that these new technologies are extremely beneficial for all and that it is difficult to speak of dependence in these technologies. New technologies in communication are optimal for better knowing people and expand the social circle. “Meeting new friends- Shy kids can make new friends on the internet.” She also claims to have solved the problems of introversion and even ensures that parents feel reassured that their children are talking to friends who already know and are under supervision to help lower the risk. Another point where she is in favour is the mobile phones because she mentions, “Cell phones make it easier for parents to keep track of their children.”

The technologies have a great potential to enhance and change the education system, which can break the prevailing cultural patterns so that technology does not bring so many prejudices and steers away from becoming a dependency. “When schools in different parts of the state, country or world connect, students can “meet” their counterparts through video conferencing without leaving the classroom.” According to him, there is no abuse of technology rather this is the current key of teaching so children and youth should be therefore more exposed to the media. As a source of information, the Internet provides immediate access to almost all knowledge collected by mankind in the history of civilization. In times where knowledge is power, access to the Internet puts a person in complete advantage over those who do not. With the internet a person can read the latest news on different topics, obtain information on employment opportunities, find out the latest fashion trends, and learn from the written responses of millions of people in specialized forums and blogs. The downside is that many people infringe copyright because they are tempted by so much information and end up copying and pasting text and then present them as their own. This promotes laziness and dishonesty. Also, many people take advantage of the vast amount of personal information available on the Internet to blackmail or steal identities. Psychologist Patricia Greenfield indicates that technology is causing the loss of critical thinking in students. She states that because of the incredible boom that technologies have on societies can begin to talk about the concept of dependence on technology, estimates that there are already hundreds of incidents of Internet dependency. Although she is not totally disagreeing with the new technologies, she indicates to use both “As students spend more time with visual media and less time with print, evaluation methods that include visual media will give a better picture of what they actually know.” Addiction is increasing, it is giving following alteration in social and physical habits of young people and identifies these as other addictions, producing anxiety about being in touch with a computer and the need to be using it every minute, so that has made huge gap between use and abuse. Another person who is in favour with the views of Roberts and Pirog about the mobile phones is Josip Ivanovic who says, “Teens’ natural tendency to follow trends may result in an emotional attachment to a cell phone that is out of scale with its actual value.” It can be said that many people, especially young people tend to use this device in a manner disproportionate, making it an addiction. Most people overuse the cell, nowadays users cannot leave it off for minutes, and if so, they tend to turn it on after a short time to check for text messages or voice mails. People who are dependent of cell phones need to feel their devices in their hands, otherwise they will not feel good, and this will generate anxiety, stress or despair. This new addiction attack to hundreds of people, and the worst thing of all is that they do not realize that they are addicted because they see it as something normal. “The overuse of cell phones has become a social problem for tens of thousands of Americans not much different than other harmful addictions.” In addition, cell phone addiction can cause serious damage to the home environment; because it causes alienation when a member moves away to make a call or send a text message this generates a detachment of the family environment.

We live in times where the use of technology is applied in every aspect of the society, which explains the technological dependence in which we live. Nowadays society applies new technology almost anywhere such as scientifically, socially and financially, “But as a foundation for an important economic pillar in our country, I suspect we’re pushing the envelope of sane thinking. There is no such thing as an unhackable computer system. There is no such thing as a 24/7/365 computer system.” For example, if we go to the bank and the system goes down, we cannot do anything because all the information about the clients is stored online; If a person wants to be served in any unit of government health, he has to make an appointment, but if it is rush hour in which all users want to make an appointment, the system will flood, and they won’t be able to handle the appointment. Other problem could be if a system fails “Because hospital systems are so complex, and require the careful integration of disparate, specialized software and hardware systems, single component downtime can greatly interrupt workflow.” New technologies have entirely changed the way of life of young people. In some respects, very much improved. For example, in order to perform the schoolwork children have to use a computer to do some research. In the last few years there has been a considerable advance in the technology, each time improving more what we already have, which is beneficial to our quality of life. The problem is that goes awry and creates addiction among children and adolescents, and presently technology can be considered as a drug.

At first, results from the ease of communications appear valuable because it helps people to communicate with others who are far away, but if this trend persists, people who use this technology often will isolate. “Young adults who use Facebook more frequently show more signs of psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviour, mania and aggressiveness.” An example of this is Facebook where more and more people spend hours attached to this virtual community, and thus ignore their interpersonal relationships in the real world. For young people, I believe that new technologies have become a property of first need that gives them independence with respect to the outside world. Some of the things that stand out are the media such as television, social networks, the consoles such as the video games, mobile phones, the Internet, and photos and videos from digital cameras. This has caused a radical change in the socialization and how they relate. The presence and contact now have become a thing of the past. Friendships are now not visible using technologies. For example, with the use of Facebook many people can meet new friends. The advantages that young people see in the new technologies are many and varied. For example, in social networks allows them to have a continuous communication. They can choose a person to talk or keep hidden until they feel confident most of the time, they use it at home where they feel safe and uninhibited, which causes parents to lose and control of their children. These technologies also have an impact on family relations, creating privacy for the children, which is hardly controllable by the parents, because most of the population now has a computer at home with internet access. The computer is a useful tool in everyday life as it helps us to make academic work and non-academic work. Although it is a very important tool in our daily lives today we have also become very dependent on it because we cannot do anything if we do not have a computer, this mainly happens because our environment demands the use of this tool each day at work or school, and nobody denies that it is a very useful tool for everyday tasks, but when a person rely on something that is what we dread to think what will happen when this technology is not around us. From a computer with internet connection a person can buy anything, from books to a house. There is no need that could not be met with the Internet and a credit card with funds. Someone with Internet connection could live his entire live without having to leave his home. This also means that the Internet offers an endless variety of business opportunities, from basic Web page creation, sales of traditional products, to even sales of stranger things. The negative side of these are of course spam, phishing, and other forms of fraud; through which unscrupulous people look for to get rich quick. Fraud can also come from the buyer’s side, because many thieves of credit cards use the Internet to make purchases under the name of their victims, emptying their bank accounts and ruining their reputation.

In conclusion, technology is a phenomenon that surrounds us all with artifacts and technical devices daily, is an element that is maintained for the length of time, and we remain equally or more wrapped up in a technological world that teaches us a new way of learning, and adaptation. Technological dependence is part of our lives because nowadays no one is free of this phenomenon on the global level. An example of this are the universities which indirectly involve students in this system, the same applies to jobs or simply with the Chat, which is limiting personal relations, replacing them with virtual communication. All this becomes dependence when individuals cannot perform their daily activities without the use of some device, or better said function in society without occupying any technological tool. Historically, technology has been used to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and housing. But also, for other negative purposes such as, create weapons to persuade and dominate people. Technological activity affects the social and economic progress, but also produced the deterioration of our environment. Technologies can be used to protect the environment and prevent the growing needs cause depletion or degradation of material and energy resources of our planet. Avoiding these negative aspects is the task not only of governments, but of all the people living on the planet. Although technology has several disadvantages, I think the advantages of these are more favourable to mankind. In fact, one could say that without sustainable development of the technology, the humans would not be more than an ordinary living being on this planet. The inventions of man are indicators of the cognitive evolution of the same, and in their eagerness to learn, can overcome evolutionary barriers such as adaptability to certain climates, and defence against diseases. Unfortunately, it is man who decides how to use it. Certain types of men see technology as weapons for war, others as tools that help us improve the quality of life of the species.

[mylifeblog814]

Cuban Dating Websites

Find Cuban singles for flirty online dating Finding friendly and attractive Cuban singles in your city couldn’t be easier when you sign up to our dating site. We’re the first-choice website for single Cubans, and what’s even better is that lots of our members are hoping to meet a man with your looks and personality. Thus, this website can be regarded as one of the Cuban dating sites. Being an American dating site at the beginning of its creation, now this site has surpassed the borders of the country and serves mainly as the international dating platform.

Let me guess. You went to Cuba for a long weekend and met a seemingly mysterious and charming local at Fabrica del Arte or at some other paladar in with live music. One kiss and exchange of social media handles later and you’re officially in a relationship. Welcome to Dating a Cuban.

Cubans are notorious for their charm and their confidence toshow you it. We don’t blame you forfalling in lust in a weekend. No one does, not even Camila Caballo in herfamous “Havana” hit song.

Free Cuban Dating Sites

But, I hate to break it to you,you aren’t alone.

If I had a dollar every time someone messaged me (onInstagram) a version of that story, I could buy an overly priced motorcyclealready on this damn island.

Dating a cuban and the love culture in general here is hard to explain and even more complicated to understand. Though, anyone who’s spent significant time here knows what I’m talking about.

In some unspoken language, we all do. We all know what’shappening and we all keep our mouths shut. I mean, after all, it isn’t ourbusiness. But I’m willing to share a few observations I’ve learned over theyears.

So before you recharge a cell-phone or send any moneythrough Western Union, let me try my best to describe and give you some tips onhow things work here on the island of lust.

And by no means is this a blanket explanation of every Cuban-foreign relationship. I myself would be a hypocrite to state that, as I am a Cuban-American engaged to a Cuban-Russian born (its complicated…).

So no, this does not apply toeveryone. But it does, indeed, apply.

1. Cuba’s Bad Economy Creates Avenues of Desperation

First things first: Cuba’s economy. It’s no surprise to anyone that Cuba isn’t exactly experiencing its “Golden” age.

With wages low and opportunities even lower, for many theCuban dream no longer is a dream inside the country.

Cubans look north. They look south. East and west. Just about anywhere but Cuba for their dreams for a better future.

It’s something everyone here seems to have in common. Itunites the country in some bizarre melancholy way and everyone talks about it.It’s the social glue that bonds us all together.

And because of this, Cubans have tried various differentmethods to leave the island or make their situation on it much morecomfortable.

That’s where you come in.

2. Dating a Cuban 101: Jineteros

To the seemingly naïve foreigner,many don’t know what a “Jinetero” is. Though, in Cuban culture, ‘jinetero” is aterm we grow up with.

Jineteros or Jineteras in thesimpliest form are hustlers in any way but most known for being in the sex industry.Whether for a day, a week, or for an entire relationship.

Yes, I said it- an entirerelationship.

We have met some jineteros thatwill fake being in love to continue an ongoing relationship with a foreigner. It’sa sad truth, but it does happen. They will have their own families on theisland and when the foreigner comes, their partner vacates the home and therest of the family plays along. Theywork together for the week.

Of course, like I said not every relationship is this way but if you expect to be dating a Cuban you will absolutely have to know what a jinetero is.

3. It will Be an Expensive Relationship

Expect to pay…. For everything. Unfortunately, few Cubans have the money totake their partners on a proper date to wine and dine them. That shit doesn’t happen here.

If you’re used to your partnerstaking you different places and having them pay or sharing costs, this will definitelytest you.

Because besides the costs ofgoing out to dinner and dates, you will have to get to Cuba and most likelygift them things they and their family needs. Oh yes, the. Family is alwaysincluded in Cuba. Always.

The real costs are maintainingthe relationship. Want to call Cuba?EXPENSIVE AF

Want to talk to them on theinternet? EXPENSIVE AF

Want them to leave the country with you to start your life together? SUPER SUPER SUPER EXPENSIVE AFFF FOR YEARS.

But if they are worth it, then you won’t care. Here are some apps you’ll need in Cuba.

4. Cubans Cheat… A Lot

I know this is particularly hardand uncomfortable point to write, but they likelihood of your Cuban cheating onyou while you’re not in Cuba is enormous. Whether you’re okay with it or not, its really apart of the culture.

And weirdly because its so prevalentits still taboo to talk about. Its likewe all know its happening but pretending its not.

Ojos que no ven, Corazon que nosiente (Eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel).

Really though: Cubans cheat andthey do often.

When there’s nothing to do all day and the culture very open with sex in general, the field is wide open. Plus its also very hard to find out what you’re partner is doing inside the low connected island all day.

I recommend having an honesttalk with yourself and your partner about what you expect and your values.

5. Dating a Cuban = Moving Incredibly Fast

Cuban Dating Websites For Us

I’m laughing writing this pointup but here’s a typical storyline:

Day 1: You meet and have fun

Day 2: You Meet the Family

Day 3: The Proposal

Ok that’s a bit of anexaggeration, but true. Cubans date insanely fast compared to foreigners.

Cuban Dating Website

For example, foreigners take months to decide if they are actually in a relationship or not, Cubans are moved into their in-laws in a month, have a ring, and call each other “maridos (husband/wife).

I’m serious.

In conclusion, don’t be weirded out (and I am warning you) If you get proposed to on your 3rd or 4th visit and already having their mom calling you her son or daughter in law.

If you think its going too fast,just try to explain to your partner how things are a bit faster than what youare used to. Don’t feel pressured into things if your gut is telling you somethingelse.

Overall:

Cuban Dating Sites

If you’re traveling to Cuba as a female solo or in a group, please please read my tips on female travel in Cuba. In short, Cuba is a fun and extremely safe place for females. You’ll just get lots of catcalls! 🙂

Cuban Dating Sites

Catching a Cuban eye is veryvery (extremely) easy to do, but knowing what to expect is hard. They will charm the shit out of you but youhave to be careful who really has good intentions, as in any relationship, withanyone, from anywhere.

Many Cuban-Foreign relationshipsare very beautiful and we know many long -lasting ones so of course take this blogwith just precaution.

All I ask is that if he or sheis constantly asking for money or material items to do a hard look. I advisestrongly against be sending large amounts of money on the regular to your Cubanboo.

In other words, have fun and be safe!

If you need help planning, as always let us know!