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rae-gar-targaryen · 4 years

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alight with the lights out | diego hargreeves x reader [tua]

A/N: Thank you for all of your interest after I posted the teaser! It was VERY surprising and humbling; I’ve NEVER had so many people ask for a tag before. I only ask that if you asked for a tag, you interact with this fic SOMEHOW. And go find another story you love and REBLOG IT! LET THAT WRITER KNOW YOU LOVE THEM!

I’ll be honest, I’m very nervous about this one. I’m not sure if it turned out as good on paper as it did in my head. Please let me know what you liked and what you didn’t!

Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x vigilante, powered!Reader; this one may read a bit more like an OC because I’ve given the reader backstory, powers. She’s (you’re) a vigilante who regularly runs into Diego. I keep the physical description vague, so I hope you can still imagine yourself!

Warnings: Language; who doesn’t love getting a little sweary? Violence, fighting, references to a shitty childhood, and separately, implied sexual assault (nothing graphic, I promise); angst and angsty dialogue; SMUT-- 18+ ONLY PLEASE; lots of cocktease dialogue, fingering, pierced nipples (the reader’s not Diego’s-- sorry), biting, rough sex, choking. Romance is its own warning. Fluff.

Word Count: 12.1k of sexy, self-righteous vigilantism, half-baked metaphor and of course, at least one literary reference.

Summary: Diego Hargreeves, aka The Kraken, is secure about few things in life; one of those things being his vigilantism. He’s a hero. Until he meets a fighter who shares the same hobby, albeit with different methodologies. Diego isn’t quite as certain about her, but her mysterious abilities make him think he and his siblings aren’t the only ones in this world with power. If only she and Diego could just stay out of each others’ hair. It’s a good, old-fashioned ENEMIES TO LOVERS, lads!

Link to my playlist of songs that inspired this fic: here

NOT MY GIF

----

You wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. That was rule number one. Hell, if you could get away with it at all, you wouldn’t hurt anyone.

But Mr. Adler hated children. And he had made it his mission to not understand you. To regard you with the utmost disdain. And unfortunately for you, Mr. Adler had married your mother when you were six years old.

You had never known another father. Your mother refused to talk about the circumstances of your birth, or of the man who had supposedly been responsible. The lack of identity loomed like a large question mark over certain portions of your life.

And Mr. Adler, that loud, controlling lout, was not about to fill that void.

When you were in elementary school, you began to feel like you were different from the other children. Watching them carry about their days with their steel-pressed pop culture lunch boxes and not a care in the world. While you sensed your music teacher’s sadness when her cat had died. You could feel every anxiety that passed through your classmates on the day of a spelling test. You didn’t know why you could feel these things. You just could.

Prominently above them all, you could feel Mr. Adler’s hatred for you, like a thick, toxic wall every time you passed through your front door and into what was supposed to be your sanctuary.

He shouted at you for inane things, like the pantry door being left open, or the fact that your mother was tired after cooking dinner, insisting you never did enough to help. As a child of eight, what did he expect you to do? You kept your room clean, cleared and set the table, helped your mom water the plants in her garden. What more could Adler want from you?

Still, Mr. Adler’s hate for you colored your every interaction with him, the world you saw him through tinged with an orange-red lens of rage.

You had never tried expanding upon your grasp of others’ feelings until you had witnessed a boy in your class push your pigtailed classmate, Annabelle, down on the playground. Anna’s shock, fear and sadness had bitten into you from the other side of the sandbox like an unwelcome spider bite, sudden and itchy.

It didn’t sit right with you. To you, how was this boy any different from Adler? Reigning terror over someone else just because he thought he could. You’d recognize that red-orange tinge in another person anywhere.

You stood, marching over to the boy, gripping his wrist firmly in your stubby, grubby fingers. Quick as a flash, you were met with every emotion this boy had ever felt -- annoyance at Anna (she wouldn’t share her toys. How selfish, the boy had thought); anger (how dare you grab him!); and finally, prominently, fear.

Fear looked different for everyone, you had noticed. For some, like this boy, it was an ugly green, so like jealousy. For others, like Adler when he’d been drinking, it was an inky black you could drown in. Fear was clearly the strongest. You knew that now.

You gripped the boy’s fear in your own mind, pushing it to the forefront until he began to cry, his eyes welling with the sudden fear he couldn’t understand.

“You won’t do that again,” you said. Turning to Anna, you offered a hand to help her up, but she just shook her head, pigtails flying, and scampered away from you.

Your teachers were clearly afraid of you after that. Could sense that something wasn’t right. Anna? You thought she’d be grateful ... but the chilly pale yellow of her fear, and everyone else’s, followed you wherever you went.

Fine, you thought. If they wouldn’t be grateful for what you could do, you may as well help yourself.

From then on, you exploited your teachers’ happiness -- pop quizzes became less frequent. Everytime they wanted to scold you for incomplete homework, they were left grasping at straws and with the daze of an emotion they couldn’t name.

Adler hated you for it.

“I knew there was something wrong with you,” he sneered over your mother’s weeping objections. “I don’t know what it is, but I know there’s something.”

Once you reached 18, you left for the neighboring bustling metropolis and didn’t look back. The world was full of people like Adler, like the boy in the sandbox, like your teachers, who tried to use their own fear to feed their hate, to exploit others. To exercise false power over them.

Well, you wouldn’t have it. If it meant a few of those assholes got hurt, well, so be it.

You lived like that for years. Until --

---

"I hope you choke on it," you hissed, watching the smoky black tendrils slither their way around the man, constricting -- bringing him to his knees, hacking and gasping. "I see your fear, I feel it all. You deserve this, you know you do," you lectured, advancing toward the man, your hands raised.

He was seconds away, you knew it-- and then one more scumbag would be off the streets for good ...

Things were going your way, you were in your favorite position in an altercation-- you know, the one where you had the upper hand? Everything was coming up you, until--

Your ears were met with a whizzing noise mere seconds before a sharp, shiny something nicked your cheek and lodged into the wooden beam just past you.

Your gaze left the piteous man before you long enough to see what looked like a small, but dangerously sharp, knife embedded in the beam. You reached up and plucked it from its resting place, spinning it in your palm before catching the hilt in a clutching grip. You turned to see where it had come from, your eyes catching a dark blur flipping from the fire escape of the opposite building, before said blur landed at your feet.

Standing at his full height, the blur-- no, the Kraken himself-- towered above you.

You had to admit, the stories didn't do him justice. Standing before you in head-to-toe black and a harness replete with shimmering, twinkling edges and danger, you could've sworn he was your knight in shining leather. His cropped hair and facial scars gave him the air that he was every bit as sharp and deadly as the many blades that adorned his body. His oilslick eyes so like mirthless pits of danger, daring to suck you beneath their surface. He was, in a word, imposing.

Regarding you from behind his Venetian domino mask, he spoke, "Miss I'm gonna need you to drop the knife and let this man go."

You snorted.

"You're joking, right?" Not giving him a chance to respond, you chuckled as you swung at him with the hand still holding what you now knew to be his blade.

You'd give credit where it was due, Diego Hargreeves, aka Number Two, aka the Kraken, was every bit as fast as they'd said. In this regard, the stories and Umbrella Academy-related media hadn't been wrong.

Diego dodged your swing, bending his body back before twirling around to strike at your torso, like a snake, with his heavy, hammered fist.

The hit knocked the wind out of you, effectively breaking your concentration, and, devastatingly, your connection with the previously fear-choked man cowering in the alley behind you. As you recovered from Diego's hit and swung around to check your quarry, you could only watch as he shook himself from your fear-induced trance.

He scraped and scrabbled to get up off his knees as Diego shouted at him to "Go, just get out of here!"

You snarled and swung a well-aimed high kick at Diego's head, connecting with just enough of his jaw to drop him. As soon as your proverbial window opened, you turned from Diego to run after the man. But even grounded from a blow, Diego was formidable. He shot his arm out and snagged your ankle, yanking you to the ground.

The gritty pavement scraped your palms as you attempted to catch yourself on your way down, growling as you glanced up to see that loathsome cockroach of a man slip out of the alley, huffing as his bloated legs carried himself far away from you.

You tossed a glance over your shoulder to see Diego righting himself as he stood up, looking down at you before shrugging, offering you his hand.

"Not a chance," you scoffed, knocking his hand away. You rolled slightly back, arched up, and used your hands to help you spring as you lept to your feet in one smooth movement. You landed with a thud of your boots, your feet spread apart, and arms raised in a boxer's stance.

Diego had the decency to look slightly surprised at your obviously-dangerous athleticism. He shook himself slightly as he regarded you.

Besides, he thought, taking in your stature, it's not as though you were any match for him. No way.

"Why would you get in my way, Umbrella douche?" You bit out harshly, glaring daggers at the knife-wielding Kraken.

"Come on, hot stuff," Diego shrugged. "If you know who I am, you gotta know it's not like I can just let you mug that man with … well, whatever you were doing to him." What he had seen you do in the alley seemed to be catching up with him as he cocked his head and queried, "What exactly were you doing to him, by the way? I mean, other than hurting a civilian?"

"A civilian?" You spat. "You don't know what you're talking about, do-gooder. If you knew what he was, you wouldn't be defending him so staunchly."

“And what was he?” Diego pressed.

“That dickless fuckhead would-be-rapist isn’t worth the shit on your shoe,” you snarled. “And you let him get away. Nice job, hero,” you sing-songed the last word mockingly, taking advantage of Diego’s lowered guard to level a swinging hit to his nose.

Your punch landed with a satisfying crack, Diego stumbling back, shaking his head.

“What in the ever-loving FUCK is wrong with you, lady?” Diego shouted.

“Take your hits like a big boy. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of ‘Big Deal?’ ” you asked, advancing toward Diego, fists raised.

“Honey, my reputation precedes me for a reason,” Diego quipped back, blocking your next swing and making one of his own toward your gut.

The two of you sparred in the alleyway, whirling and spinning in a very violent dance between two unwilling partners -- Diego, clearly pulling his punches, while you were obviously preoccupied with your rage at your escaped quarry.

Diego flipped and spun and swung his fists with a speed that bordered on unnatural. His jabs and kicks annoyingly landed, as you were really only able to block just about every other hit. Fuck him for being so fast.

So it was true, you thought, the superpower hype was real. Well, two could play that game.

At Diego’s next hit, you caught his fist, allowing the contact to create the connection you needed, feeling for Diego and any underlying emotion that would be his undoing, before latching onto your favorite-- past the overstuffed confidence, you tasted simmering rage. Beyond that? A tiny prickle of … was that??…Ah, yes, the stinging, burns-so-good zip of lust... File that one away for later … and beneath it all lay Diego’s stammering, stuttering, suffocating fear.

You dug your proverbial claws into it once you found it, bringing it to the surface, manifesting it into your signature smoky tendrils.

Drag them down with their own fear.

Diego’s eyes widened as he looked down to see his legs wrapped in what looked like snakes. Suddenly, his worst memories of fearful days under his father’s tyrannical reign were the only things in his brain. The shouting proclamation his own inadequacies in his father’s too-posh voice pounded within his skull. It was all he could think about -- Your presence before him seemed to dwindle, he couldn’t focus on you, try as he might-- when he was overcome with the feelings of every bad memory he had ever suffered through bearing down on him like the crushing weight of the ocean, pulling him under with the riptide of his own panic and inadequacies.

What the fuck was this shit?

He pushed through his sudden indifference toward you to regard you, the woman stood before him. Diego’s fist clenched as he took in your own grip clutching around his wrist. Your eyes were closed as your face was screwed up in concentration.

Repulsive. You were repulsive, he suddenly thought. How could he have cared so much about hurting you when his own terror and agitation sat heavy on his tongue, like ugly curdled cream?

But he hadn’t always felt this way-- not his usual modus operandi, was it? So what was this? Was this-- you?? Was this what you had done to that man?

Diego began to dredge himself through his own agitation, past his father’s lilting abuse… through the mire of never-quite-being-enough against Luther... dragging his proverbial feet through a bog of his own self-hatred. Just long enough to wrench his wrist from your grip, grabbing you by the shoulders and spinning around, slamming you probably a little too hard into the wall behind him. Your eyes snapped open as your head made a minor thwack off the alleyway-- you had just enough time to tilt your head to the left as Diego brought one of his knives down, driving it into the wall a sliver from the space your face had previously occupied.

Diego bore his weight on his toes, leaning his imposing height into and over you, panting and snorting heavily through his nose. You looked at his eyes behind his mask-- hardened flints of pissed-off-superhero glared back at you.

“W-wh-What the F-f-UCK was that?” Diego spit, lip curling over his teeth in a gruesome snarl.

A fleeting flicker of shame passed through you. He hadn’t really done anything to deserve that, had he? Before you shook yourself out of it-- No! He let that rat-faced motherfucker get away!

You fixed your face into an impassive mask of your own before you chirped, annoyingly, “What was what?”

Diego chuckled mirthlessly, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. How did you do that?” Diego pressed, leaning even closer to you, if that were possible.

“Do what?” you chimed innocently, tilting your chin up, eyes meeting Diego’s from beneath your lashes. Maintaining your feigned ignorance.

“Don’t do that,” Diego snarled. “Don’t play dumb. I think we both know at this point-- you’re alot of things, and dumb isn’t one of them.”

“You’d know all about playing dumb, wouldn’t you, pretty boy? Or for you, is it not really playing?” You reached up and ran a finger along his sharp jaw before tweaking his chin and dropping your hand back to your side. You sighed at Diego’s stone face. Honestly, it was so boring when they didn’t bite back.

“I don’t know what to tell you, cutie pie. I can’t help it. People are just drawn to me,” you quirked an eyebrow. “Or repulsed by me. I really haven’t decided.” You fluttered your eyelashes at him, ever the pretty picture.

Diego leaned further into you, pressing your back further and further into the wall. All the while, his leather-gloved grip creaked around the handle of the knife he’d plunged into the wall next to your head as he gripped it tighter.

“Huh,” he mused, scoffing at you lightly. “Ya know something, doll? I just don’t fuckin’ buy it.”

“Babe, if you wanted to play bad cop, all you had to do was ask,” you smirked as the stone face slid from his features and gave way to "surprised face."

“Honestly, honey,” you slinked up Diego’s body, propping yourself onto your toes and brushing his lips ever-so-lightly with your own as you spoke into his mouth, “Did you really think you and your reject siblings were the only ones in this whole wide world with a little … taste … of power?” you purred.

Ah, you thought, and there it was.

The warming, zinging hum that your ability recognized as Diego’s lust crept through your fingertips that were currently resting on his chin. You were sure if you took the time to analyze exactly who was feeling what, that this feeling of craving wouldn’t be as one-sided as you’d otherwise have hoped. Diego was, you had to admit, very pretty -- for a man.

The swirling galaxies in his midnight eyes regarded you with confusionangerwant. Had you really just -- kinda kissed him?

You took advantage of Diego’s surprised state to knock his grip from your shoulder and shove -- hard. Diego toppled back, and you took off as fast as your enhanced body would carry you, cutting down the alley and away from your fascinatingly frustrating new rival.

Diego took in your retreating form from his final resting place in the disgusting alley’s concrete. Slamming his fist into the rough-gravel ground, groaning out his frustration and anger.

You were gone.

What were you?

Were you really like him? Like the others?

---

Diego shuffled into Hargreeves Manor, determined to see who else was around. Surely they, or Pogo, would know if there were others like them out there. Had he been the only one to run into one? Was it all a hoax?

As he wandered into the cavernous, but simultaneously stuffy, living room, sure enough-- there was Klaus, sprawled across the couch, arm slung over his face in a restless nap.

“Klaus!” Diego barked, startling the spindly man from his perch on the couch and onto the floor.

Klaus looked balefully up at his brother from his spot on the carpet. “Jeeeesus, Diego, really? What do you want that made that necessary,” Klaus grumbled.

“Have you seen Pogo?”

“I haven’t seen anything but the back of my eyelids for the last several hours, thank you very much,” Klaus replied, “Although, I did have a very good dream about running into an old friend of mine in the grocery store. He was always so convinced he was straight. But I think the rest of my dream calls bullshit.” Klaus chuckled to himself.

“Yeah, whatever, man. I need to talk to Pogo,” Diego stressed, turning to leave the living room.

“Well, wait, wait, wait. What is so important?” Klaus queried, clambering up and lumbering across the room to catch Diego’s arm.

Diego sighed, facing his brother.

“Do you think … Do you think we’re the only ones like us?” He asked.

“Well, there’s no one like you, brother,” Klaus chuckled, taking on a rumbling, Diego-esque mocking tone, “I’m Number Two!” He cackled to himself for a moment before coming back to himself with a sigh. “And honestly, we all know I’m an original. So I’m not sure I take your meaning.”

“I mean… it couldn’t just be the seven of us, right? There’s a lot of other people in the world… it just makes sense others could do things like what we can?” Diego pressed.

Klaus started. He had never seen this look in his brother’s eye before. The unhinged mania of a fight? Sure. Crushing doubt? Obviously. But not this … fierce certainty buried beneath a question. This was new for Diego. He must be serious.

Klaus blinked, regarding his brother, before slowly nodding. “I mean… sure… theoretically, there could be others. But I don’t know any. Why? Did you find someone?”

Diego drew in a breath, unsure of how much he wanted to reveal to Klaus. After all, you were his nemesis. His pain in the ass. His whatever you were.

Diego crossed the room again, back to the couch Klaus had previously occupied, before sitting down in a creak of leather and clink of blades still strapped to his harness. Propping his elbows on his thighs, he placed his head in his hands.

“I don’t know. I think so? I found her while I was out patrolling, and I … I don’t really know how to describe what I saw.”

Klaus placed himself next to his erstwhile sibling, tucking his feet beneath himself as he sat, reaching up to pat Diego on the shoulder.

“There, there, big guy. Just… tell me what happened,” Klaus crooned.

Diego launched into the story of finding you in the alley, choking the man with your smoke without even laying a hand on him. He described to Klaus how the two of you had fought, and how you had called the man a “would-be-rapist” before knocking Diego to the ground and making your getaway.

“Well, she sounds hot.”

“Helpful, Klaus,” Diego deadpanned.

“Oh, isn’t it obvious, sweet Dee?” Klaus chimed at the end of Diego’s story. At his brother’s nonplussed look, Klaus continued. “She’s just like you! She likes to put on her Batman underoos and fight crime,” he chuckled. “Even if she is like… us… she clearly can do something different. But I think the most telling thing is how obviously into her you are.”

Diego sputtered, “Wh-what?? I am not into that … psycho. Whatever she can do, that’s all I want to figure out.”

“The lady doth protest too much,” Klaus sing-songed. “Whatever you say, brother. But I think the only way you’ll really figure it out is if you run into her again. I mean, we know dad had his secrets. If he knew about other powered children, don’t you think the Umbrella Academy would’ve been a lot bigger? The world is a big place. I’m sure there’s more out there, but, um… we just didn’t know about it until now?”

Diego sighed deeply. “Oh, joy,” he muttered. Ignoring the tinge of excitement that passed through him at Klaus’s suggestion he seek you out.

Klaus clapped his hands joyously, cuffing Diego’s shoulder, shaking him.

“A nemesis, Diego! How sexy! How exciting!”

---

Your encounter with one of the Umbrella Academy had left you slightly shaken, to say the least. You were so careful when you went out. No one missed those assholes you took care of. Honestly, you were doing the city a favor.

Patrolling on any given night would yield one or two men who were plotting something less than savory. And all it took was a brush of skin to determine their true intentions.

You sighed angrily, ripping off your bodysuit and stomping across your apartment to your shower, yanking back the curtain and twisting the knob forcefully.

Hot water began to pour from the showerhead, steam filling your bathroom. You regarded your reflection in your bathroom mirror, a distinctly palmlike-bruise adorned your shoulder from where Diego had clutched it, not to mention the scrapes that lined your body from your repeated meetings with the concrete during your sparring.

You met your own eyes in your reflection, regarding yourself as balefulness gave way to venom.

Honestly, that toadlike little nobody had deserved what you were about to do to him. You had watched him from the back of the bar as he had annoyingly pressed his presence onto a poor girl who was just trying to enjoy her drink. Her drink that the toad had slipped something in when he thought she wasn’t looking. He even went so far as to grab her wrist with his stubby little hands. That was the final straw.

You steeled yourself, letting the lustful, rowdy feeling of the other bar patrons that permeated the air like thick smoke take you over. Putting on your best, beguiling smile, you crossed the room and brushed your hand over the man’s bare arm, letting him feel the tingling want that you had absorbed. Simultaneously, you felt everything of his disgusting intent-- the hateful, possessive desire for the girl, the hurt he intended to inflict to trample his own inadequacies and sadness.

Oh, yeah, you were right about this asshole.

He looked up at you, disgusting gaze lingering on you, before forgetting all about his intended prey, pushing back from his barstool and venturing behind you out into the alley.

The rest, as they say, is history. And an annoying vigilante type who had an ass that just wouldn’t quit once encased in black leather just had to rain on your proverbial pain parade.

Diego Hargreeves… Of course you knew who he was. Everyone knew about the Umbrella kids. And you knew the man once-dubbed The Kraken was still doing his best Caped Crusader (sans cape) and kicking ass by night. Annoyingly self-righteous, really, you thought. Choosing ever-so-delicately to ignore the hypocrisy laden in your thought. Is that not, in effect, what you were doing? Albeit with a little more emotional manipulation and bloodshed.

As you thought of Diego, your fingers traced the slim, sharp cut his knife had made in your cheek as it surged past you.

You let the remnants of Diego’s rage that you had felt overtake you, amplified by your own, as you slammed your fist into the small mirror over your sink, letting the shards clatter to the ground around your feet.

Payback was a bitch, and so were you. You didn’t know if Diego Hargreeves was a praying man, but he had better hope to whatever deity would listen that he didn’t run into you again.

You wouldn’t be so kind twice, you told yourself, climbing into your shower and letting the blood and grit from your body swirl down the drain.

---

As luck wouldn’t have it, your gods were decidedly not on your side. And clearly whatever deity you had mentally implored Diego to pray to was on vacation.

Because you ran into that maddeningly beautiful dipshit, several times over the following weeks. He would do his best to bust up your party, stopping you from exacting your special brand of vengeance. You’d exchange a few quips and blows before running off before he could ask you the question you knew was burning in his mind.

You managed to evade prolonged encounters with Diego until about another two weeks later. Too soon, honestly.

Or not soon enough? God, your inner voice was desperate and annoying.

You encountered Diego again while you were propped against the wall of a seedy dive on the other edge of town, assessing each person as they passed. While your power worked best if you could touch, some feelings were perfectly easy to pick up from a distance.

So far, nothing. Just a few gross, horny bikers and depressive barflies. It was a maddeningly slow night. And you doubted you were needed here.

Just as you were about to call it and head to another hotspot, a familiar prickle passed through you. You glanced up, across the street.

Sure enough, on the neighboring rooftop, perched Diego Hargreeves in the flesh, surveying you like some kind of Great Value Nightwing.

You sighed, pushing off the wall and crossing the street. Diego watched as you clambered up the fire escape to meet him on the rooftop.

“Of course you would be here,” you chastised. “Are you fucking following me? I��ve been a good girl. Haven’t killed anyone in a week. I promise!” You held up your hands in mock surrender, coming to stand in front of Diego’s gloriously firm, leather-clad figure.

“If you say so, Princess. Maybe I’m just here for a drink?” Diego cocked his head toward the shitty bar whose entrance you were haunting mere moments ago.

“Doubtful, Underoos. I think…” you trailed off, circling Diego, tapping your finger to your chin in a pondering gesture. “I think you’re babysitting me. Making sure I don’t do your job for you and clean up the streets too well.”

You ceased your vulture-like circling, coming to stand before Diego. His eyes bore into your own, once again partially obscured behind that stupid mask. As if you didn’t know what he looked like without it. Your eyes weren’t deceiving you when you saw Diego’s eyes flash a quick up-down of your body before resuming his stern visage.

Oh good, you thought. You recognized the latent feelings buried beneath Diego’s anger. A new one brushed over you-- confusion… He still hadn’t figured you, or, more than likely, your power, out…

You weren’t left in suspense too long.

“Tell me about what you can do,” Diego pressed, advancing toward you. You took a step back to maintain some distance… best if you can perpetuate some veil of advantage.

“Ah, ah, ah, baby. It doesn’t work like that,” you chided. “You think I’m just going to spill all of my secrets because why? You’re cute? Try again. Ask nicely,” you smirked, pushing your lips into a tantalizing pout.

Diego rolled his eyes. You weren’t going to play fair? Fine, neither was he. Honestly, his fuse was too-fuckin-short for your shit. He wanted answers, even if he had to beat them out of you. Quick as a flash, he strode toward you, jumping into a flip and kicking you down to the ground upon his landing.

You looked up at him, standing over your body as it lay on the gravelled rooftop, bringing your hand up to touch your jaw, where his boot had collided with your face not moments ago.

You grinned widely, savagely, around bloodied teeth and split lips. "So that’s how we’re going to play? Do your worst, Big Deal. I like when it hurts."

With that, you swung your leg at Diego’s, causing him to topple beside you, where you promptly rolled over, coming to straddle his hips, bringing your hands to his wrists, the direct contact allowing you to bring his fear to the forefront.

Just as you were about to choke him with the smoke of his own fear, Diego surged upright, his arms breaking free from the grip of your wrists, his own hands coming to close around your throat. He squeezed insistently, enough to break your concentration-- the smoke dissipating as soon as it had come. With that, he had managed to roll the two of you over, you flat on your back as one of his thighs came to rest between yours.

You gasped, looking up at Diego with fiery shock looming in your eyes.

“Wow,” you rasped, “I told you before-- if you wanted to play bad cop, all you had to do was ask.”

Diego removed one hand from your throat, bringing it to his own head and ripping off his flimsy excuse for a mask. He regarded you with nacreous, tarpit eyes that glowed and glittered with the streetlights, his breath coming in ragged, uneven puffs through his sinfully full lips. His cropped hair was glistening with sweat borne equally from the heat of the night and your encounter.

“Baby, I think you owe me an explanation first,” He pressed, squeezing your throat lightly, free hand pulling a knife from his harness that he spun in his fingers while gazing down at you.

You whined, rolling your hips against where his thigh rested between your legs.

“This would be so much more fun if you’d just do things my way,” you pouted at Diego.

“Maybe I would, if you would bother to tell me what your way is,” Diego retorted.

“I could tell you, or I could show you,” you purred, rolling your hips again. “I’m all about more fun.”

Diego sighed. The familiar buzz of lust radiating from your skin-- or was it his own-- that always seemed to hang over your encounters was pressingly prevalent and it was all he could do to not just give in. He gritted his teeth, and shook his head.

“No. Come on. I know what you’re doing… whatever it is. Just … tell me what it is you can do. Tell me why you’re hurting those people,” he implored.

You scoffed, rolling your eyes, using your free hands to knock his grip from your throat and coming to a sitting position, as Diego remained crouched over you.

“All you hero-types. You’re no fun. You want to know what I can do? That pleasant little hum you feel? That’s you. Well, it’s me. But it’s you. I don’t make anyone feel what they don’t already… but I can use it against them. That first night at the bar? That,” you shuddered, “That rat was going to force himself on some poor girl. I could feel his every feeling as he was preying on her. I had to stop it. It’s simple, honeybunch. I do what you do, but better. I’ll make them choke in it, their own fear, their self-hatred, their inadequacy, their lust, I’ll drown them in it, and they’ll thank me for it. Because I’m nothing if not merciful,” you gritted out.

Diego’s mind reeled, jaw slack from your confession. He knew it! You were an empath, an enhanced emotional manipulator. Except you seemed to be able to manifest emotions into something tangible, something harmful.

Suddenly, the weight of your confession seemed to crush Diego, you had exploited every feeling of his during your encounters to gain an upper hand. And he hadn’t truly known about it until now.

You felt the surge of his rage, his disgust, his fear with you before he could say it--

“You c-can’t-- you can’t do that,” Diego said. “Kililng people who haven’t even done anything yet? It’s w-wrong. Y-you’re w-wro-wrong,” He stuttered out, clearly distressed, but advancing even further into your space.

“As opposed to you?” You bit out. “You wait until someone’s already hurting or hurt someone else to do something. How are you any better? Who are you to judge me,” you spit through gritted teeth.

“You’re a killer,” Diego pressed, pushing back from you and coming to stand.

“Sticks and stones. So are you. But I don’t hate you for it,” you snarled, jumping into a standing position, squaring your shoulders before Diego’s imposing form.

“You could always work with me,” Diego offered, “ We could take what you can do and just… re-tool it a bit.”

You ground out a harsh laugh.

“Unlikely, you absolutely patronizing dick. You don’t want anything to do with me other than to change me, control me. You’re just like them.”

With that, you unleashed a slew and flurry of attacks on Diego, swinging your hips around to level a kick at his gut, knocking him to his knees, where your arm was ready to strike a heavy blow against his cheek, your rage fueling the unnatural strength behind the hit.

Diego sprawled against the concrete of the rooftop, half conscious after blows you’d dealt him.

You stood over Diego now, looking down at his prone form.

“I would never want anyone who only means to stifle me. To take me apart until there’s nothing left. Never.” You spit a glob of bloodied saliva at Diego’s feet, leaving him in his semi-conscious, battered state-- the guilt only slightly prickling you.

His fear-- choking on half-gasped words from behind the tremulous task of tripping over his own tongue-- followed you like a stuttering stormcloud. It stung. Knowing that he was afraid of you.

---

Okay. The guilt was more than slight.

All he had wanted to do was help, right?

Years alone with your power, the sting of Adler’s rejection as a child, it all weighed down on you like the crushing magnitude of Atlas. You didn’t really want to hurt him.

You sighed, resolute. You just needed to make sure.

With that, you headed out in the storm. Headed toward Diego.

---

The rain pounded on the walls of the Fighting Lion, plunking heavily like half-hewn nails tossed onto the small window in Diego’s back bedroom. He could hear as it landed on the brick, the wet stone and stormy atmosphere making the air thick with the scent of sagebrush and rain.

A kind of whoosh passed through the room, prompting him to turn from where he was folding his laundry on the bed to see you propped against the door, legs crossed at the ankles, looking every bit as if you belonged.

“Wow, Big Deal. Nice digs,” you said as you sauntered in the room, staring at the case at the foot of the bed that was full of Diego’s knives. “Not what I’d expect coming from a dude who hails from the city’s biggest mansion. But still -- homey.”

Diego ignored the jab about his upbringing in favor of the real question.

“How did you get in here?” He asked, seemingly --and to you, maddeningly-- disinterested in your presence as he continued stacking his paired socks into their rightful place in his bureau.

“Uh, have you seen this place? It’s not exactly rigged with ‘Entrapment’ levels of security,” you snarked, folding your arms across your chest.

“Does that make you a cat burglar? Are you Catherine Zeta-Jones in this scenario?” Diego glanced at you from his socks, cocking a strong eyebrow.

“If you want me to be, sweetie,” you shrugged. “But, uh -- and don’t take this the wrong way, Diego, but you don’t exactly have anything I’d want to steal.”

“Then I’ll amend the question. What are you doing here?” Diego asked, finally turning to fully face you, taking in your form as you stood by his bed. The sight causing a pleasantly-unpleasant little something to prickle across his skin.

No, no, it’s not like that, he chided himself. Besides. You were an absolutely monumental pain in his ass. And his head. And basically every other body part of his you came in contact with. Nope, nope... Don’t think about her body parts “coming into contact” with anything of yours, he scolded.

“Aw, well now, Big Deal. Maybe I just missed you?” You mused.

“Doubtful. Did you come back to kick my ass with your freaky little homicidal chokehold some more?” Diego snapped.

Ouch. Maybe you had gone too far in your last little encounter. After all, wasn't that why you were there? To check on your favorite knife-wielding antagonist? To make sure you hadn't actually hurt him?

But what came out instead was--

"Is there any other kind of chokehold?" You hummed, arching your brow.

Before he could stop himself, Diego retorted, “Based on our last meeting, I think you know there is."

Momentarily stunned into silence, feeling the heat rush to your cheeks at the memory of his hands on your throat, you dropped your arms from where they were crossed at your chest down to your sides, hands flexing nervously. You chuckled.

"Heh. As tempting as that offer is, pretty boy, I only came to make sure I didn't ring your bell too bad."

Diego leaned against his dresser, tilting his head back and looking down his perfect, strong nose at you.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I must be going fuckin' deaf. Did you just say you slunk in here with your little kitten tail between your legs to say you were sorry?" Diego snorted, obviously pleased with himself as he saw the obvious fluster cross your face.

Okay, now he was pissing you off. You came here with good will and he sasses you? Two can play at that, as you two so often do...

"You must be fuckin' deaf, dipshit. I didn't say I was here to say I was sorry. I did say I wanted to make sure I didn't kick your sorry ass into oblivion. Which, you're obviously fine, so I'll just be going." You crossed Diego's room, breezing for the door.

Honestly, why did you think this was a good idea? Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Diego caught your arm as you passed him in your hurried attempt at an exit. You gave a half-hearted tug to pull your arm from Diego's grip, surprised to find how firm it was. You turned your head to meet Diego's gaze, throat closing around your sudden nerves. Diego's eyes were molten, boring into you with quizzical questions and low-burning heat. His grip on your arm afforded you an insight into the unique blend that was his confusion and simmering passion.

"What are you doing?" You asked.

"Come on," Diego drawled. "You clearly know what I'm feeling. But I have no idea what you're feeling. You have me at a disadvantage. I don't like it."

"Every time we meet, I have you at a disadvantage," you snarked. At the brief hurt that flashed across Diego's face, you sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I meant what I said when I told you I was coming to check on you … I just--"

You looked down at your feet, the laces in your boots suddenly incredibly interesting to you. Diego's other hand gently gripped your chin, his thumb pressing into its apex, fingers curled beneath your jaw.

"D-don't do that-- keep going. Tell me what you're feeling for once," Diego implored, eyes meeting yours once more, lips ever-so-close to yours. “Please,” he added, softly.

Had your heart been thudding like this the whole time?? Was your jacket always this hot? All you could hear was the pounding sheet of rain, pressing itself into your brain, growing fuzzier. Diego's proximity to your person was decidedly distracting. Wholeheartedly overwhelming.

Could he really not tell what you were thinking? You were certain at this point it must be written all over your face. Were you not being obvious?? Your burning ardor for him creeping through every inch of your person, drowning your intentions and better sensibilities in anything and everything Diego Hargreeves. You swallowed the lump in your throat before speaking.

"I'm feeling-- was feeling … guilty. The last time I saw you.. I h-hit you... pretty hard. So, you win. I guess I am here to tell you I'm sorry." You brushed your fingers softly over the bruise that adorned his prominent, proud cheekbone. "I… I just wanted you to be okay. Because I think you were just trying to help. And that's stupid. It's stupid. I'm sorry," you hurriedly stammered.

Diego relinquished his grip on your arm, allowing his hand to travel down your side until it met your waist. He cocked his head and studied your eyes with his own mercurial ones-- searching for any hint of mistruth in your confession, but seemingly finding none.

After all, he too knew the honesty behind words that struggled to come out.

"You were… worried about me? You?"

"Let's not make a big thing of this, big boy. You're obviously fine. I shouldn't have come… An honest mistake. Won’t happen again," you started to turn your head, breaking his gaze.

But Diego's grip on your chin firmed, forcing you to look at him again before surging forward and crushing his lips to yours.

And, oh, this was bliss-- you were just sure of it. Your yearning manifested itself in the hand you had placed on Diego's cheek, cupping your hands to the sides of his face before dragging them back to thread through the closely-cropped hair at the nape of his neck, then passing your hands up through his longer hair toward the top of his head and tugging. You took advantage of the gasp Diego elicited at that sensation, sweeping your tongue into his mouth.

Your shared lust bled through your connected skin, hands on faces and elsewhere… washing over you both like warm static, a pleasant buzz akin to drinking just a little too much champagne.

Diego’s hands tugged at the hem of your rain-dampened hoodie, tugging it over your head. Your newly-exposed skin prickled with goosebumps at the sudden chill. You had run over here in the rain, after all. Diego’s darkened, honeyed gaze reverently took in your form.

Never one to waste an opportunity, you took the break in action as your chance to respond in kind-- peeling his skin-tight black crewneck shirt from his own gloriously-sculpted body.

The two of you stood, staring at each other’s exposed torsos, ragged breaths dragging through the air of passion so-stifling the room like incense you’ve left burning for too long.

Diego stared at your chest, breasts heaving from behind the scrap of lace that constituted your bralette-- were those piercings that made your nipples poke so prominently through the lace? WIth this realization, Diego felt himself harden. He lunged for you with a growl, scooping you by the waist and dropping you with a bounce onto his bed.

His mouth latched onto your throat, sucking insistently while his powerful hands rested at the edges of the delicate lace trim of your bra, passing almost reverently across your ribcage.

You gasped as he brushed a thumb over your nipple, feeling yourself growing wet beneath your leggings. You hmm’d a whine as Diego’s mouth found that spot on your throat, his thumb still rolling circles over your nipple.

“D-Diego,” you gasped, sucking in air like you’d never properly breathed before.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Take it off,” you glanced down at the scrap of lace that adorned your chest. “Please,” you intoned, sweetly.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Diego said,” creeping his fingers beneath the lace to lift it off your skin. Suddenly, with that preternatural speed he’d come to recognize as a gift of those who were enhanced, like himself, you seized his wrist and squeezed.

“It wasn’t meant to be nice,” you ground out. “Take. It. Off. Now.”

With that, you released his wrist, and Diego gripped the lace where it rested beneath your breasts with this two hands and tugged, ripping your bralette cleanly in two, exposing your tits to his roving gaze.

“There you go, Big Deal,” you preened in satisfaction, taking your own hands from where they had previously been resting along his strong abdomen, trailing them down to the top of his jeans. You popped the button on his fly and began tugging his zipper down, before Diego caught your hand as quickly as you had just done to him.

“I’ve got this, baby,” Diego assured.

With that, he brought his mouth down to your left breast, swirling his tongue around your nipple, taking the hand still clutching your wrist and planting it above your head. He released your wrist, trailing his hand, down your side until it met the waistband of your leggings. He pressed his fingers beneath the waistband, raking his fingers under your panties, to where you wanted him most.

As he dragged a finger through your wetness, you gasped out a keening sigh. Diego’s long fingers working magic against your center, rubbing up and down your slit before pressing one, long finger inside. He lifted his mouth from your breast, pressing it to yours to swallow your moan with a searing kiss.

After a few more moments, Diego slid his finger from your center, retracting his hand from your pants, his other hand coming to meet it, peeling your leggings and panties from you in one fluid motion. You lifted and wiggled your hips to assist him. As soon as the leggings were free from your legs, you wasted no time in wrapping your bare legs around Diego’s waist, locking your ankles behind him and pulling him to you, dragging your hands up his neck and into his hair, hissing in pained pleasure as you rolled your hips against Diego’s still denim-clad hardness.

Diego groaned as he felt your hardened nipples press against his chest, the microscopic bite of cold from your piercings as they touched his warm skin made him sigh.

The room felt like it was bordering on a hundred degrees, the previously champagne-drunk feeling of your shared lust now replaced with a frantic urge to taste and mark every inch of the other as their own.

As you continued to grind your hips into Diego, he kissed you deeply, tongue sliding into your mouth, running along your own tongue and teeth, tasting every bit of your want for him as he succumbed to the heated buzz of the room.

Your power had its benefits, he reasoned, if it meant this would feel so… resplendent.

The mutuality of your shared passion was enough to do you in. You couldn’t be imagining that Diego wanted you as much as you wanted him. If that wasn’t the case, you both wouldn’t be burning like this, writhing atop his bed with pent-up passion and aggression.

Diego broke his hands from where they had previously been digging bruises into your hips, coming up onto his knees to start shucking his own jeans and underwear off.

And oh, he thought, you were a vision. As he looked at you while he stripped himself, he was overcome. Your half-lidded gaze swimming with hazy, unfulfilled promises, swirling lazily like the drizzle of sinfully sweet syrup over something forbidden. Your lips were flushed, swollen and lightly bruised from the punishing pace of your shared kisses. Your wickedly luscious curves and the glimmering slick between your thighs on display for only him. In this moment, he felt he could die under whatever your power would dish out, if it meant he died feeling like this.

Now bared to you in his entirety, Diego positioned himself once more between your legs, his impressive length sliding to where he had guided it along your opening.

You tossed your head back, eyes closed at the glorious feeling of his skin finally meeting yours where you wanted it most… but, still, it wasn’t enough.

“Di- eh - go,” you panted, your glimmering gaze meeting his lustrously darkened one. “P-please, I need it. I need you,” you cried piteously, clutching his shoulders and grinding your hips once more against him.

Diego chuckled, only to happy to oblige. With a guiding hand and a smooth flex-and-thrust of his hips, Diego entered you with a powerful, needed thrust. You cried out, sound going straight to his cock, twitching from its rightful place inside of you.

“There, now, baby,” Diego crooned, bringing his mouth back to yours and humming into your open lips. “Doesn’t that feel ... So. Much. Better?” He punctuated each of his last few words with hard, firm thrusts of his hips.

You nodded, eagerly fusing your mouths together, rolling your hips in kind to meet Diego’s sweet, but punishing thrusts.

“After all that shit you pulled with me,” DIego ground out, “It’s nice to know-- this is what you really wanted. Fuck--” he broke off as you clenched around him just right. “This is what you needed.”

You whined your assent, keening and high-pitched.

“Mmmm, I want y-you, as much as you want me,” you gasped out, Diego’s brutal thrusting brushing your clit with his pubic bone, bringing you ever closer, closer, closer to that teetering edge. You lifted yourself up to balance on one hand and meet Diego’s face where he was hovering above you, your sweat-slicked bodies pressing into one another with a delicious, filthy heat. You looked into his eyes, your jaw slack with the stupidly good feeling of everything he was doing to you.

You turned your head to face his sculpted shoulder, and grazed your teeth there, biting into the apex of his arm. Diego hissed, obviously pleased with the feeling, bringing his hand to your neck, fingers wrapping around your throat and tearing your teeth away from his shoulder, guiding your mouth back to his with the pads of his fingers lightly pressing into your airway.

You gasped, the combined feeling of his kiss, his pressing, insistent touch, and his cock inside you brushing repeatedly against that spot of your inner walls causing you to clench, crying out your sudden, gushing release.

Diego guided your head back to his pillow, clenching his fist, the same battered-knuckled boxer’s fist that had previously clutched your throat, now clutched around his bedframe as he hammered his final thrusts, pounding into you until he met his release, groaning as he came down from his sudden, bursting high.

He sighed into your neck, the lovingly sticky heat of your sweaty bodies pressed together as he eased himself from you, pulling you into his side.

You sighed in contentment.

Was everything Diego Hargreeves did punctuated with such beautiful, forthright power?

---

You both lie in the after, bodies pressed firmly together. It would have been romantically intimate had the primary motivator not been the lack of space on Diego's too-small mattress squeezed along the wall in his room.

Nevertheless, you lie there in complete contentment, basking in the afterglow and Diego's delightfully even, rhythmic breathing.

Said lothario had his head turned into your cheek, nose brushing against your hair. His arm around you, curling you to him and trailing his fingers up and down your side at a slow, steady pace.

Why couldn't it always be like this?

After all, fire doused with water still burns brightly at one time, but loses its penchant for destruction, tampered in cool, calming depths and leaving behind cooling steam. So, too, had you and Diego drawn a peaceable, but joyfully sweaty truce.

In that moment, you could see yourself loving him. You know he'd let you, if you gave him enough time and enough of yourself. The man had not had enough love given to him in his life-- he fought for it, tooth and nail. And had come up woefully empty, like clutching at soft sand that slips through your fingers. He'd had the love of his siblings, sure. But this was -- understandably-- different. You recognized a chasm in him that you often thought you'd never mend within yourself.

But he was so deserving of love. Whereas you? Well, the jury was still out.

When you think of Diego, you couldn't help but think of strength. Assuredness. Agility. His aura burned red in your deeper sentiments. Power. You do associate his memory with annoyance, sure, but also a biting wit that he so-oft concealed. And an endearing sentimentality. And an iron will suffused with stubbornness.

You had gleaned some of this from your foray into exploring his emotions, sure. But you don't use your power at every turn. The rest of it was every impression Diego had devastatingly left you with. You had learned so much of him, you yearned to share a piece of yourself, similarly eager for acceptance. Which then prompted you to share--

“You know,” you piped up in the dark, “You remind me a bit of the main character of my favorite books series-- Ever hear of ‘The Dark Tower?’ You know, the legendary Gunslinger?”

Diego scoffed at that.

“Guns are for pussies, real men throw knives,” he stated primly, but still unable to conceal the smile in his voice.

“That sounds a little rehearsed, Big Deal. But I’ll let it slide. Besides, you don’t know what you’re missing,” you acquiesced, turning your head to face him, your noses brushing.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m not into all that bookworm stuff. Cuz, ya know, I’m not a fuckin’ virgin,” he chuckled. Obviously pleased with his middle school-grade burn.

You met his eyes, yours widening in mock surprise. “Oh no?” you gasped. “Well, then why do you dress like one?”

Honestly, it had to be some kind of world record, how fast Diego’s face fell.

"I'm kidding, big boy. You know I dig the black leather," you crooned. Ever eager to smooth the waters of this moment, of his now furrowed brow, back to the placid lake it had been.

"You're goddamn right, you do," Diego chuffed, his grin now prominent in his voice.

You looked at him, your eyes travelling between his shining, ochre eyes and his full lips.

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.

"I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart," you recited.

Diego regarded you for a moment before brushing his lips across yours, kissing you warmly.

"What was that?" He asked.

"'The Dark Tower,'" you replied. "What? I like to read. You really do remind me of him. Surly, but just. Lost, but ever-searching. Pinpoint accuracy. Deadly. But hasn't lost hope."

Diego kissed you again, running his hand down your body beneath the covers to grip your bum and roll your body over his, urging you to tarry with him on another burning exploration of one another's bodies.

Yes, you think, sighing as Diego's teeth graze that spot on your neck, his warm palm on your breast. You could easily fall in love with him… if you let yourself. You were probably more than halfway in love with him already.

Oh, no.

---

You awoke to the early-morning sun peeking weakly behind the remnants of fat, overstuffed rainclouds from the night before, purpling the sky as sunlight met grey.

You took in Diego’s, sweet sleeping form-- his long lashes fringing his sweetly-closed eyes, his cropped hair mussed from a night of tugging, rolling, writhing. He breathed deeply, evenly, peaceably, as evidenced by the repetitive motion of his muscled torso, his long-fingered hands resting along his stomach.

You couldn’t do this. Couldn’t taint someone so noble and beautiful with your special brand of poisonous manipulation.

You couldn’t stop yourself as you spoke softly to the sleeping man beside you, coming to sit on the edge of his bed and brushing one hand through his soft hair.

“You wanted to know about my power? It’s a curse. You think I want this? This? It’s isolation, Diego-- it’s eternal damnation. I shouldn’t be able to do what I can do … No one should. It’s not a gift, it’s a curse. And it dooms me to a life alone,” your voice cracks as your breath catches in your throat, hitching over tears that were now, suddenly pooling in your eyes. “There’s no trust. It’s what I … It’s what I deserve.”

With that, you left Diego’s room. Leaving him to wake alone to a cold one-half of his bed, fingers clutching over air and the warm memories of the night before. He blinked in confusion, the sting of your rejection settling beneath his skin.

---

When you saw Diego again, it was nearly a month after your last… encounter. The sharp knife of anxiety and longing you so regularly felt in yourself since that day, you recognized immediately as emanating from Diego as you watched him limp away from what you assumed was a particularly nasty fight.

“Big Deal!” You shouted across the street and through the darkness.

Diego’s head whipped up, head turning to the direction of your voice, before meeting your gaze. He shook his head, looked away, and kept walking. Away from you.

Ouch.

Honestly, you could understand why he would. You had done the same to him a month ago. Walked away. But the pinging sting of his rejection dug at you, like glass into the thin skin between your knuckles.

All you had ever wanted was for other people to understand. But mostly, now, you realized… You really only cared that Diego understood.

You took off after him, enhanced speed helping you catch up to his limping form outside of a boarded-up, long-closed bar.

“Diego!” You called, stopping in front of him, causing him to halt.

“What could you possibly want with me, after all this time?” Diego spit.

“I.. I deserve that, Big Deal. I do,” you glanced at your boots, scuffing the toe into the pavement. “Please, just… hear me out?”

You looked up at Diego. Really looked at him. His beautiful, tawny skin damp with sweat from a fight, his usually bright and mischievous eyes sunken under the weight of tired bags that sat beneath them. He looked drawn, more exhausted than you remember. You caught sight of a particularly nasty, jagged cut on the side of his neck that had clearly only recently stopped bleeding, the splotching clot like a raised, splintering cut from a large cat’s claws. A particularly nasty bruise was already forming around his left eye and onto his beautifully-sculpted, prominent cheek.

You rushed to meet him, your fingers coming to brush along his cheeks, mindful of the bruise. He closed his eyes at your touch, lashes fanning downward in defeat.

“Who hurt you? What did they do, Big Deal? Who the fuck did this? If anyone hurt you, I would make them hurt. I’ll make them pay”

Diego dropped the knife you now noticed was previously-clutched in his right hand, bringing his hand to meet your wrist.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered.

“Don’t do what? Kill the fucker who hurt you? Fine, I’ll just break their knees--” you started, before Diego shushed you.

“No,” he said, “Shut the fuck up. D- Don’t act like you give a shit. Someone who gives a shit wouldn’t bounce for a fuckin’ month. Not after a night like that.”

Your hand left Diego’s face.

“I… I deserve that,” you said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” And with that, you plopped yourself onto the pavement, sitting on the sidewalk at Diego’s feet. Annoying? Sure. Dramatic? Sure. But if something is stupid and it works, then it isn’t stupid.

Diego sighed at you, rolling his eyes before coming to sit beside you, gasping out in pain and clutching an obviously bruised rib or two on his way down.

“Fine. Tell me what the fuck happened. Why’d you go?”

“Diego--” you started… “I-- I can’t be with someone when I’m like this. It never works,” you confessed.

“Like what?” He pressed, bringing his hand to your knee.

“I’m-- I’m a monster,” you cried. “Adler knew it. Everyone I meet knows it. It’s only a matter of time before you know it too. I just… I don’t know how to stop.” The tears you thought you could hold at bay were now creeping up and causing your throat to close around your words of contrition.

“You’re not--” Diego began, but you silenced him with a harsh wave of your hand.

“You don't understand. You wanted to know how it works? I’ll tell you. The power works based on the other's emotion, sure. I amplify what they feel. Cripple them with it, even. But that's not all… it only works, really works, if it's something I can draw on. They feel what I want them to feel-- because I feel it too …" you admitted. “Everything I ever do to someone else I can only do because I know how it feels. If I want someone to hurt, they’ll hurt… I -- I don’t want to do that to you, too.”

“You won’t. Not with me,” Diego pressed.

“And how can you be sure? Even now, I feel how pissed you are at me for leaving. It’s humming beneath your skin. I can feel it.”

Diego nodded, picking up the knife he had previously dropped and beginning to spin it around in his hand.

“I know it because I felt it. When we were together,” he sighed. “We both, we both can do these things. Anyone else would piss themselves if it was turned against them. But you look the danger of what I am in the face, and you laugh. When we’re together, we’re matched. The way that room felt? I know what that was.”

You sat, stunned at Diego’s read of the situation.

“I take back what I said the first night we met,” you said. At the question in his eyes, you continued, “You’re not dumb. That was… that was… something. But I know how to flex my power. I know what fells all men. Fear is a powerful emotion."

Diego smiled at you.

“I hate to break it to you, princess, but I’m not scared of you. I know you think I am, but I’m not. And you know what's even stronger than fear? Love."

You looked at Diego, blinked. He blinked back. You then turned your head with a mocking, retching, gag.

"Jesus, Big Deal. They teach you ‘Hokey Catchphrases 101’ at Dysfunctional Superhero Camp?"

“Hey,” he jostled your shoulder with his. “You know I’m right.”

You stood, offering Diego your hand.

“Come on, big boy. Walk me home?”

Diego acquiesced, coming to stand with a stifled grunt.

“You’re lucky I heal quickly.”

With that, the two of you walked down the street. You matched Diego’s stride, mindful of his injuries. As you walked side-by-side, your fingers brushed. Before you could stop yourself or think better of it, you took Diego’s hand.

When you reached your door, you turned to Diego, fiddling with your keys.

“Everyone’s distinct, you know? Everyone feels differently. Wears their hearts on their sleeve, so to speak. But with everyone, it’s a different emotion. Some flaunt pride. Some are more passive. Do you want to know what I feel when I see you?”

Diego glanced down to where your hands were still joined. He brought them up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

“I want whatever you’ll tell me. You’re such an open book,” he admitted sarcastically. You rolled your eyes.

“Come on, I’m being serious here. You feel... you feel...”

At Diego’s urging look, you continued.

"You feel like warmth. Like I could wrap myself in you and never feel the biting cold of my heart again. And when you're not around? The absence of you is worse than any feeling I could ever exploit. I hate it when you aren't here."

Diego stared at you in silence for a moment, before he spoke, “I really think you should open the door now and let me take you inside.”

You smiled, pleased that your honest confession had gone over well, the smile morphing into a smirk.

“As you wish, Big Deal.”

And in the morning? Well, In the morning, you and Diego were still wrapped up in one another.

You looked into Diego’s swimming, honey-and-tar eyes, tracing your palms down the sides of his jaw and cupping his cheeks as you told him, “You have my whole heart. It’s yours -- crush it, hold it, bury it in whatever you feel ... Do whatever you want with it, I don’t care. Just say you want it-- that you want me.”

“I want you.” With that, he kissed you deeply.

---

You were a master of emotional manipulation. To do that, you had to have a decent handle on your own emotions. For years, you’d rested on your own laurels of your mastery of self, indulging only in the most passing of forays into others’ feelings for the sake of your own.

So why on Earth were you so fucking nervous? Why couldn’t you get it under control?

Yet, here you were, hand in Diego’s, fingers laced, on your way to Hargreeves Manor to meet his siblings, months after your mutual confessions of want. The two of you had been inseparable.

Diego clearly sensed your unease, because he turned to you, squeezing your fingers in his own, planting a sweet kiss to your forehead.

“They’ll like you,” he promised.

“How can you be so sure?” You worried, trying to keep all of them straight in your mind based on Diego’s stories, anecdotes and descriptions.

“Because I like you, and they love to annoy me. So they’ll definitely want to buddy up,” he chuckled with a shrug. “Baby, you’ll be fine.”

With that, you found yourself standing in the ornate living room with five nonplussed persons who introduced themselves to you one by one.

As the largest of the group approached you, you beat him to the punch.

“You must be Luther,” you said, pumping your arm in a handshake where his hand comically dwarfed yours.

Luther blinked. “How did you know?”

"Easy,” you said, “You look like a 'Number One.’ "

Luther straightened, obviously pleased. "Important?" he asked.

"Self-important."

This caused the lithe one with the smudged eyeliner who had introduced himself with a wink as, “Klaus, darling,” to howl with laughter.

“She’s fuckin’ got your number, Luther,” he gasped out between his chuckles. He turned to the seemingly-empty air beside himself and said, “I know! She is fun!”

The group found itself sitting around the living room on the various, overstuffed furnishings, in a fun little Q-and-A circle, which was only getting easier all the time, as you found the Hargreeves siblings’ obvious bond to be so endearing. The glamorous one you knew to be Allison had queried about your power, curious as to how you and Diego had met.

Diego had recounted your first meeting to the group, and proffered an explanation of your powers with, "She takes the idea of 'wrapped up in your emotions' and makes it literal."

“And how did this come about?” Klaus queried, gesturing his long fingers between you and Diego. “It’s not like that first meeting was full of warm-and fuzzies.”

“I don’t know … We’ve … run into each other a few times,” you offer with a shrug and a shy grin.

Klaus clapped his hands, a large grin adorning his face.

“Oh-ho! I like this. Diego’s girlfriend beats the shit out of him on the regular!” Klaus happily sang to the massive living room. “Or is that how you two, you know, keep it exciting?” he intoned to Diego in what must have been the world’s loudest and worst attempt at a whisper.

“She does not beat the shit out of me,” Diego protested, rolling his eyes at his brother’s swaggering antics.

“Right, right, you beat the shit out of each other. Honestly, I get it. Kinda hot. No judgment from me, you crazy kids,” Klaus smiled and held up his hands in surrender, flashing you the “Hello” and “Goodbye” on his palms. “Diego told me about you the day after you first met. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it myself when I’m ever-so-alone at night,” he added with a wink.

All you could do was chuckle. Who couldn’t love Klaus Hargreeves?

After that, the questioning from the gathered siblings dissipated into a casual little party, with people pairing off to speak in groups of just them, and with drinks from the open bar being passed around amongst the siblings. Even Five. If you were honest, it was strange to see a thirteen-year-old boy drink frozen margaritas. But you’d had to remind yourself that he was actually older than all of you. Honestly, you’d tried not to think about it too hard.

In between drinks, you found yourself engaged in silly banter with Klaus and Vanya, laughing at Klaus’s stories of eating bagels from dumpsters and his bantering memories with their brother Ben. You responded in kind with stories of your own-- making your elementary school teachers believe they’d had crushes on one another by exploiting their repressed desires, making your classmates piss themselves every Halloween with some prank or another ...

While Vanya was a bit more reserved with her amusement, you’d caught a smile playing at her lips. Klaus outright howled.

“Oh, you truly belong here, don’t you? Reggie would’ve haaaated you,” he gestured at the stern portrait of their father. “Which means you’re absolutely perfect for our dear Diego,” Klaus proclaimed, lacing his fingers through your own.

With that, Klaus turned to you with a conspiratorial giggle and hmm'd into your ear, "You know what they say, peaches. 'A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly.' And if we're being honest, Diego deeeeeeefinitely thinks he's fly."

You laughed, choking on your sip of margarita. You’d never felt a kind of discordant unity like this one.

With Diego’s family… with Diego, you felt like you truly did belong.

As you and Diego lay together in bed after the day with his family, he’d asked if you felt comfortable.

“Of course, love.” You pressed a small kiss to the tip of Diego’s nose, nuzzling your own against his. “They were wonderful. You’re wonderful. Thank you for sharing all of this with me.”

Diego gazed lovingly at you, eyes, a deep, endless pit of an eclipse, brimming with golden honey streaks of mischief.

“I can’t wait to share everything with you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss into your shoulder and settling beside you comfortably.

Ah. So that’s what that warm, soft, cotton-y, cloud-like feeling you had begun to experience since you’d began your relationship with Diego was ... Comfort. Funny how it blended so seamlessly into the burning, cinnamon-tinged, blooming one you’d come to recognize as his love.

---

Tagging: @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa @winters-buck @qveenbvtch @forever-rogue @ali-cide @fleetwoodmactshirt @stellarkyun @zeldasayer @ayeayecaptaingally @nappingtopknot @holographic-carmen @mandaloriane @pascalplease @phoenixhalliwell @white-wolf-buckaroo @melon-eyes @pancakepike @noturjacky @johnc0nstantine @amarachoren @outrebanx @yespolkadotkitty @agentpike @cryptkeepersoul @netflixandzayn @deadpoolcouldshootme @manchuria @flhorah @halerune @spideymanreads @athousandbuckys @imagining-constantly @dovesgrangers @ravenoussss @pyrosag @rzrcrst

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cosmiccalliope · 3 years

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I have a lot of Hard Feelings when it comes to Christianity.

(Prior note, if I say anything offensive in this stream of consciousness musing on why I don't like Christianity, tell me. Everything that follows this is based on my personal experiences and thoughts that come from the 16 years of Baptist education I've been through.)

Let me start this off by outright saying that the feelings aren't towards Christians, but the Church and its History. I don't think a lot of Christians have an Ass To Shit With when it comes to their faith in general, don't care for it, don't care against it. They've just kind of always had it and never known anything else.

Christianity, as a system, has caused Global Scale problems, in my perspective. It started off as a branch of Judaism, one where the promised coming of a Christ figure happened, and the old ways could be completely done away with. As you can imagine, this wasn't super popular. You try telling people that everything they've always been doing can be done away with, cast aside, because now this New Thing is to be done.

You get a lot of angry people when you do that.

But then it became seen as a brilliant tool for control by Rome. It's simple, only having 1(3) God with a Captial G, and the rules can be read in a way where the Church becomes to absolute center of Everything. If the Church becomes the center of the Roman Empire, and if they control who knows what about the faith itself, that gives them the power to do whatever they want. They make the tithe mandatory and monetary, and now that's money coming in from everywhere under their empire. They call X a Sin, and can prosecute you accordingly.

And so, Christianity spread like a Plague upon the world, a scourge against all other Pantheons it touched. Gods died, for all intents and purposes, when Christianity came knocking. Systems these people had been engaging with for centuries, integral parts of their cultures and heritages, wrenched away in the name of the One True God of Christianity.

Nobody likes when you come in and tell them that they're doing everything wrong.

So what's at the front of the Bible? What is the central focus of Christianity? For all reason, who is that book about?

Jerusalem, Israel, and the Jewish people. The Old Testament is just a translation of the Tanakh. All the important Figures and stories? All Jewish tales about how the Israelites suffered and overcame struggles. So who becomes the focus of blame, who becomes a strong target to attack when people inevitably get upset that this strange foreign faith has just waltzed in and told them they're all wrong, despite not deserving any of the flack it gets?

Christianity, as a System, is inherently Anti-Jewish. On a fundamental level it paints the Jewish people as Outdated, still following practices and systems that the Christ has already fulfilled and nullified.

The Jewish people don't deserve it, they never have. It's not their fault Christianity exists, or did what it did, or became what it did. They aren't responsible for Christianity. Just as the Greeks are at the center of the original Greek Religion, and as the Maya are at the center of the original Maya Religion, so ar the Jewish people at the center of the Jewish Religion, and because Not-Jewish people were spreading it like wildfire, the attention and ire got shifted from the ones spreading it, to the ones at the center of the faith being spread.

And then, Christianity became the primary lens through which we viewed all other faiths, including Judiasm. Judaism, in and of itself, is nothing more than any other religion. It's a set of stories and beliefs that gives a culture their morals, gives them hope, explains the universe, and generally provides an identity for a group of people. It's history and cosmology from before history and astronomy. Religion is a set of stories that can be related to that imparts some message. If Christianity never mutated off of Judaism and then tore across Europe like a plague, I sincerely doubt the same issues of Anti-Semitism would be present nowadays. But because of Christianity, Judaism became a popular target and thing to rag on, despite the fact that it has done nothing wrong. The only people saying that the Jewish people are up to some shit are asshole nazis that want all Jews dead.

I do not know enough about Islam to comfortably say that it is to Asia, what Christianity is to Europe. But with my admittedly limited knowledge, I will say exactly that. Churches and Mosques are common in their respective reigns, predominantly so in different places. Temples to all other deities, all other stories and myths and legends, all of them have been destroyed, more or less. We know of the gods, but not how to worship and venerate them.

Because of this predominantly Christian lens, the only Faiths we typically see as Religions, are just Judiasm and Islam. Satanism is just Bastardized Christianity, which itself is Bastardized Judaism, making Satanism into Double Bastardized Judaism. Mormonism and the Jehova's Witness –alongside most Door Knocker sects– are genuine cults that are seen as legitimate because they're Christian In Origin. Hinduism and Buddhism are easily seen as these vaguely Asian Mysticisms, and entities from Native American Religions have become American Cryptids and widely used by people who have no right to use them (S**nw**k*rs and W*nd**o, censored heavily because I'm not part of those groups, are Navajo, and Non Navajo aren't even supposed to really know or definitely talk about them, which should not be hard to respect, just stop talking about the damned things if you aren't Navajo, come on. I think those are both Navajo, anyways, I know that if you're not part of the group that they belong to, you're supposed to shut the fuck up about them because they aren't yours to begin with).

Christianity killed many, many religions and many, many, many more people. It killed Religions and stories and cultures and histories, and superimposed itself wherever it went. It destroyed the identities of whoever it found to not be them. Religions change, pantheons definitely so, but that happens organically as their people do. Christianity's spread is artificial and forced. New gods entered the Greek pantheon somewhat regularly, for example, with Aphorodite being theorized to originally be Ishtar of Sumerian origin.

Because of Christianity, all other religions have an almost negative connotation to them, and the word Relgion generally ends up being used anonymously with Christianity specifically. Every Pagan/Non Christian Faith? Wrong and Bad and Witchcraft and Evil and Satan is in their hearts and "we must preach the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to them so they might be saved from the evils of their ways."

After 16 years of Baptist education and indoctrination from the schools I've been in, my only feelings towards Christianity are just that the faith has done some unforgivably shitty shit and has been used as a tool for Colonization and Genocide since basically its inception. I can't look at Christianity without seeing Everything It Has Caused, all the hate and blood and war and genocide, the fact that war and crusades are the single common thread through history for this so called "Religion of Love and Peace" where if you question any of it, that means Satan is infecting your heart.

Oh, but Christianity allows and encourages you to mock and ridicule all other religions, as it is "the One True Faith, and all others are sinful devil worship". Their are no other gods, after all, but the Christian god, Muslims and Jews are to be treated a little nicer, because they're just misguided, following the functional same God, just in the "Wrong Way".

If you can't tell, I don't like how Christianity does things, and as someone who has gone through 16 years of Baptist centric education in total, I think I'm qualified enough to complain about Christianity. Are all Christian Chruches this way? No, but it is undeniable that mine were not outliers, given the history of Proselytizing and Missionary work and Violent Crusades that is so present in Christian History that it Can Not Be Ignored.

#cosmic speaks #religon #christianity #paganblr #cosmic vents #i don't like christianity much #if you can't tell

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writingwithcolor · 5 years

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Focusing on Native American Lore in Story; what are the issues?

When dealing with “Native lore”, there are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to respect. Because Native American cultures have been so badly appropriated, repackaged, and turned consumable for Christian society, there is a lot of material involved that just... isn’t us. But it’s being sold as us, which makes people think they know more than they already do.

This is a guide for how to respectfully use Native religions, plural, and the steps you need to take as an outsider to help stop treating us as consumables.

1- Fetishization of the “Natives as savage” variety

Everyone Native I know is deeply uncomfortable with the white person’s focus on our monsters. I’ve addressed this a dozen times. I’ve spelled out how to be respectful in Using Native American Folklore.

When it comes to people who want to write Native monsters, I pose a few simple questions: why do you want to tie Indigenous identity to “monster” so strongly? Why are we tied so obviously to monsters? What about Native identity makes this such an easy connection? Why just the monsters and none of our defeating or healing from them?

If you want to write stories of boogiemen: this is not respect. This is exploitation.

You absolutely must write about our heroes along with our villains. Do not insert your own ideas of what our heroes should be, because these will be colonized. You have to take all of the folklore, not just the monsters.

1.5- Fetishization in general

Be careful you’re not attracted to your ideas about us instead of what we are actually like. Because a lot of pop culture is dedicated to people’s ideas about what Native life was like, and very little of it actually reflects us. So if you’ve read a few things and think Native lore is just the coolest thing ever and wonderful… you’re probably fetishizing. Or if you want to show how cool and awesome and brilliant this lore is… you’re probably playing saviour.

Read So You Want to Save the World from Bad Representation for more on that.

Because so much of the stories “about Natives” are from a fetishized perspective, you should assume you have some degree of it. This is okay! It is not morally impure to start off with a bit of fetishization. The trick is to catch yourself and to dig deep into who we actually are, to the point the idea the appropriated version feels off.

2- Flattening of our cultures

There’s an unfortunate part of appropriation: there are hundreds of resources about “Native American culture” as if we’re a singular unified thing. We’re not. There are some similarities across the continent, but those boil down to “sustainability focus.”

We don’t have a singular culture, and while our folklore can perhaps be of similar themes, approaching it with the idea that we’ll all match something already in your head that’s been created by white people, for white people.

Not all cultures have the same concepts. We aren’t interchangeable. You need to research each nation you want to use in detail to see about cultural diffusion, cultural exchange, and our own cultural concepts first.

3- Involving us

Asking for resources is good, but it’s very important to let go of the concept of sole authorship with the stories you want to write; if you’re too focused on your own exploration of a culture, your own compiling of probably cherry-picked legends, your own interpretations based on our lore (likely filtered through a culturally-Christian lens), etc…

If you focus too much on you, you’ve created a situation where our religious concepts are being shared around without our nations attached to them, which is the definition of cultural appropriation. You’re put your own ego in front of letting us have authorship.

You need to form a deep connection with basically every nation you wanted to pull from. They need to trust you enough to know you won’t appropriate what they tell you, and you need to find the correct people to teach you since not all stories can be shared by others.

You need to establish parameters for distribution (not all of our stories or aspects of the religion can be written down, for example), learn the cultural context of the monsters to decolonize your thinking and adapt them to the value systems of the nations in question, run the stories by sensitivity readers from the nation, edit accordingly…

And this would have to be done for each nation.

Is it possible to write about Indigenous folklore in a new way when you yourself aren’t Native? Yes! So long as you work with the tribes in question. Local folklore isn’t a free for all that you can pull from at will. You have to respect the original owners of the religion, because it’s a marginalized religion full of bad advice, appropriated stories, and stereotypes that further the colonizers’ agenda.

This is why I say you must let go of sole authorship. Native people are still too marginalized for anyone but us to have an involvement in the story.

4- Decolonizing your thinking

Because this is a big one.

Colonizers have certain attitudes about what they are entitled to, how the stories should be told, what Native American value systems are, and a whole host of other things.

This thinking devalues us, which is why I am so adamant that you have to talk to the nation in question to get it right.

I would suggest to read books you find on websites such as Inhabit Media and Strong Nations before writing your own stories, because then you can learn how we (or people very close to us who run it by us first) write our stories.

This involves also reading non fiction as well as fiction.

Part of decolonization is realizing how unfairly we are treated. What was imposed on us instead of what we do when left to our own devices. I’ve written about it extensively in the Native tag, all of these little colonizer things that people don’t realize are colonizer things because they haven’t read enough to know how much colonialism imposed.

5- Recognizing your Outsider status

The reason there’s a double status when it comes to “playing with” Christian concepts vs “playing with” marginalized religions is how widespread a respectful representation is, to a large group of people.

Most people in the West are what’s known as culturally Christian. They grew up celebrating Christian holidays, hearing about heaven and hell, the concept of sin, what makes a virtuous person, what a wedding looks like (did you know not all religions require witnesses?), and, in general, you are steeped in Christian ideology even if atheist.

Native religions are not Christian. They don’t have anything to do with Christianity. Our important heroic figures aren’t messiahs, our concept of greed doesn’t look like the Christian concept of greed, our concept of helping others doesn’t look like the Christian concept of donating, and, in general, there just needs to be a big reminder that Natives are not Western. Colonizers brought Western ideals to us. We did not have them before you got here.

This means you cannot play with them because you don’t have a right to them the way you do Christianity.

Christianity is yours to play with. You grew up with it, you subconsciously learned it inside and out, your paganism is filtered through the Christian lens (neo-druidism, wicca, and most European neo-pagan religions were created by Christians), and that’s all well and good.

Most of you did not grow up with Native religions*, no matter how many folk stories in your area you have borrowed from us. As a result, you don’t have ownership over our stories.

*exception: you actually did grow up with a bunch of Natives around you who accepted you into the tribe, even though you’re non-Native.

Remember how I said you have to give up the concept of sole authorship in the purest sense? Yeah. There are probably going to be thousands of things you don’t realize are Christian, and that we do differently.

It’s okay you don’t have ownership over it. You don’t need it to work with us to tell stories that incorporate our cultural practices. You can use your privilege to amplify what we have told you, in a way that will be more respected because of your non-Native status.

But no matter what, you will be an outsider.

Learn to get comfortable with it.

Tl;dr:

You’re going to fetishize Native religions at first. Keep learning until you realize we’re all individual things and no part of us is better/worse than other parts, or Western society

If you find sources that talk about “Native Americans” too generally, it’s probably flattening our cultures and you need to dig deeper

You need to involve us and give up the concept of sole authorship of any stories you tell that involve our religions

You need to learn what colonialism has done to us, which means learning about how colonialism works and how it’s still being perpetuated in modern day

You need to be comfortable that you will never have ownership of Native stories the way you do Christian ones

~ Mod Lesya

#Native American #folklore #respect #cultural appropriation #colonialism #creator responsibility #guides

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fratresdei · 4 years

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A Letter to My Beloved White Friends, by Karla Johnson

Karla Johnson, a member of my spiritual direction training cohort from back in the day, has graciously given us permission to share powerful, needed words from her blog this month. Find the original post in the comments, and subscribe to her blog to read more letters to come. The original text is reproduced below.

Dear White Friends:

You are lost. “Hurt, mad, insulted, grief-stricken and enraged more than I can say,” as my dear white uncle said. You don’t know what to do. You want to help—and of course you do. You’re a good person. This is my attempt at sharing guidance, from someone who holds both black and white inside of my skin.

I love you, my dear white friends. Let’s start there. You are my brothers, sisters, best friends, teachers, cousins, nieces, and nephews. You and I belong to one another. I am also an African American woman, by bloodline, culture and identity. African Americans are my brothers, sisters, best friends, teachers, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I was born with inherited racial trauma. (Inherited trauma is a thing—you can look it up). I have hordes of relatives, but only one who is a cop; a close cousin, who wears his badge with honor, excellence, and commitment. He’s also black. I pray for him often during times of (visible) racial unrest, and break into scared tears every time I pray. My heart, through an odd positioning, spans the width of our collective racial anguish.

Still, there is something deeper than any other identity I carry, with the exception of my faith. I am a mother. A black mother of two young black men whom I carried, painfully labored into birth and successfully raised through some very tough times. Any mother can understand that my children are my greatest pride and my deepest love. So please understand that racialized violence hits me different.

My dear white friends, most of you don’t know what to do. Here are some tips, from your white-skinned black sister:

I want you to imagine witnessing a terrible car accident. Then imagine walking up to one of the wrecked cars, finding someone who is still bloody and injured, and saying: “watching you go through that trauma was hard for me. Can you please give me some emotional support?” That’s what you do when you ask black people to help you deal with your angst. The phrase I’ve been using these past few days is this: “As a black woman, I’m struggling to take down my own bitter cup. Please, dear white brothers and sisters, stop trying to pass me your internal poison so that you can find relief.” If you’ve done this, you didn’t know what you didn’t know. You’re forgiven. But please stop.

If you want to understand, do some homework. That can be as easy as a google search. There are essays, blogs, books and articles galore which can help you get a better feel for what’s happening.

If you have black friends (or friendly black acquaintances) please check in on them without agenda. If that feels strange, imagine that they lost a distant-but-important relative, because that’s what it feels like. Dear white friends, you know how to offer comfort during loss, so there’s no need to be intimidated. Just send a simple text: “Just checking in. Is there anything I can do?” or “Thinking of you. Are you okay?” Let them know that they are more than a headline to you. If you are a praying person, pray for them and let them know.

Don’t talk about the issue or the headlines unless you already have a strong friendship with that person. It is awkward and unwelcomed to bring discussions of racism to a random black person in the grocery store or some such thing. Just like you, all they want to do is pick up their eggs and get home. Part of the difficulty of being in black skin in America is constantly being recruited as teacher, sounding board and priest to white people’s racial angst. Please let black people go about their days without such recruitment.

When you interact with black people, for the love of God, stay white. Nothing is more insulting than watching a Caucasian person try to use language, inflections or gestures which are not theirs in some awkward attempt to prove—with neon signs—that they are not a racist. I know this sounds strange, but black people know you are not black. They can tell just by looking. If you don’t want to look like a racist, be yourself, no matter who you are addressing.

Embrace the fact that you are a good person on the wrong side of an ugly history. You would never pull a trigger on a black person just because they are black. But, like me, your ancestors built this system. People who look like you continue to perpetrate this horror. That doesn’t make you guilty, that makes you and I unwilling recipients of an ungodly inheritance. We can’t keep pretending that isn’t true. The good news is your heritage also gives you tons of power to affect change. Make peace with what your (and my) people have built. Then consider—-from your position of lament—affecting change, even if that change is in your own perspective and social circles.

If you experience anger against you because you’re white, learn to deal with it without lashing out or diving into shame. I’m sorry, my dear white friend, but you must let go of the idea that you can be part of the solution without having your sense of innocence disrupted or called into question. And if you don’t have any tools to absorb feeling falsely accused because of the color of your skin? That is something a person of color may be able to help you with, if you are sincere in wanting to learn and can come to the question with neither defensiveness nor agenda.

Your guilt and your shame doesn’t do the tiniest bits of good to anyone, black or white. Work through it. It’s not helping.

Be aware that you are losing something personally important to you. You hate the circumstances, but as the scales of justice try to right themselves, you are losing your sense of security and your assumed power base. That loss is real. And eventually, that loss will make you feel threatened. (Even as you remain outraged against the racism.) That doesn’t make you a monster, that makes you a person. But please don’t take those feelings to the cause, and please keep tabs on your own, understandable defensiveness.

Especially in our culture, we hate to admit our own privilege—even to ourselves. I am an embarrassed participant in this dysfunction, and have often struggled to admit (much less claim) my own privilege. Please confront the lie that you are not privileged because, like me, your privilege is enormous.

You need not feel accused nor ashamed nor “less-than” because you hold privilege. You have also struggled, endured hardships, worked hard, and suffered. You’ve known pain. Your privilege does not detract from, lessen, or mitigate that reality. You get to own your story without excuse, no matter what privileges you’ve been afforded. You need not defend anything.

As a Caucasian brother recently said to me, “white people murdering black people is not a black problem. It is a white problem.” I can add nothing to his words.

Imagine walking into a room full of black people, where you are the only one with white skin. Then imagine someone bringing up your skin color, and having the whole room swivel to stare at you, hoping for answers, jokes and/or comment. If you see one or two black people in mostly-white room, please don’t put them in that position. And if someone else does, be willing to speak up and align yourself against the awkwardness. The same goes for social media exchanges.

If you interact with a black person, don’t point out the differing skin tones. Again, they can tell you aren’t of the same race all by themselves. Treat them as a person versus a skin color. Kindness and authentic respect is what transcends differences and puts people at ease.

Don’t let the devil tell you that you have no right to be angry just because you’re white. Of course you should be angry. This is a human story, not a story contained in black skin. Your ethnic background does not cheapen your lament. Your anger is well-placed, valid and necessary.

Black people need your voice, and we need your involvement. Traumatized people do not make the best advocates. Traumatized people—no matter where the trauma comes from—are angry, shut down, and often counterproductive. As long as you leave it up to black people to speak out, you are making unreasonable demands of the group you want to help. Speak up, dear white friends. Step up and speak up. We don’t need you to share our trauma, we need you to stand against what perpetuates the pain.

You can’t crawl into a black person’s skin in order to understand what is going on. You couldn’t possibly know what it is like, and if you could for a moment, it would shut you down. I promise. You must address, understand and process this issue from your lens, your white skin, and your unique perspective.

If you want to help, aspire to becoming the white person who gives other white people a touch-point to their own racialized angst. Be a bridge which helps other white people engage without shutting down or blaming the victims.

Ask yourself what you are called to do. That will look different for everyone. Every bit counts. Just don’t disengage and leave it to the people who are being harmed. We can all do something, as this is our nation.

If you’ve been guilty of any and/or all of the hardships I’ve mentioned, remember you didn’t know what you didn’t know. I know you didn’t mean it—that goes without saying. The only thing we can do is be truthful, be gracious, learn from our circumstances, and move forward. Like Maya Angelou said, “when you know better, you do better.”

You are a good person. Just be yourself, because sincerity goes a long way. Awkwardness and missteps can be forgiven—trust me, black people are used to it. Your genuine compassion and concern are what matter. And your sincere engagement matters even more.

Dear White Friends. I love you. You are my brothers, sisters, best friends, teachers, cousins, nieces, and nephews. You and I belong to one another. Keep being the people who may not understand, but who remain good, decent, and compassionate human beings. Embrace change, and if you want to help, start by taking hold of your own cup—it is plenty bitter enough.

And yes. If this has helped you, please pass it on, using [the link in the comments.]

Sincerely yours, Karla Johnson

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mssapphire · 4 years

Video

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I couldn’t find a transcript on David Jay’s talk about Asexuality for Moses Znimer’s Ideacity Conference. So I did it myself (because I need it for reference anyway)

«So, I'm gonna talk about a pretty universal human experience, which is the struggle to find connection.

And I want you to think back to the last time you had a really good, really deep conversation. Think about how that felt like in your body. Think about what it felt like to be that engaged with another person. That's what I mean when I say connection.

And I'm gonna talk about the struggle for connection in a community that you've probably never heard of before. It's a community of people like me who identify as asexual.

An asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. So, if you think about it, there are some people who really like sex a lot, there's other people who like sex but not quite as much - it makes sense that at the bottom of the spectrum there would be people who aren't interested in sexuality at all.

And the important thing to understand about our community is that we have the same desire for connection as everyone else - we just don't have a desire to express that connection sexually. And there's a whole community of us out there. This is us at San Francisco Pride (I'm in the roller blades over there), this is my hometown. And this website (asexuality.org) - I founded it when I was 18 years old. Because I wanted to find other asexual people like me. And it's grown. We've got about 60,000 member talking about asexual identity in a dozen languages right now. There's a documentary that just came out that's excellent, you should take the time to see it, that talks about our community.

And I don't know if any of you have ever had the experience of being involved in the early stages of a community - that was just deeply, deeply empowering for hundreds and hundreds of people. But there's no experience like it in the world. And I'm just really humbled to have gotten to witness it and gotten to be a part of it.

I remember that right when our community was getting started, there would be hundreds and thousands of people who would type the word 'Asexual' into Google and find the community for the first time. And there was this overwhelming feeling of validation, of finding other people like them. And they just gushed and gave their entire life story and they talked about how they felt alone in the world. How they felt like they were broken. But how now that they'd found a community of people like them, they didn't feel like they were struggling by themselves.

And my sexual friends would look at this and they'd be a little bit confused. I'd tell them about our community and they'd say 'what's the big deal? you guys just aren't interested in sex. Like, I would think that would be convenient. I think can't you just stay at home, not being interested in sexy? Why do you need to form a community about it? What's your struggle?'

And, to answer that question, I want you to think back to high school. Now, if your high school was like my high school, you probably were connected to lots and lots of people, that you called friends. And even though you spent a lot of time with these people, even though these were people that you felt really deeply emotionally drawn to, even though these were people with whom you were deeply connected... these relationships probably did not have the same status as relationships that involve sexuality.

Relationships that involve sexuality probably got talked about, celebrated, and prioritized in a way that non-sexual relationships did not.

And if you're a sexual person this can be confusing and disorienting. But if you're an asexual person, this leaves you wondering whether you'll ever be able to form relationships that get talked about, celebrated, and prioritized.

And it leaves you afraid that you may never be able to get that sense of connection that all of us so deeply crave. And that's why this word would come up when people talked about their experiences joining the community. We felt broken because the connection that we really, really deeply craved was velcroed to a culture of sexuality that we didn't understand.

Now, I tell you this story not because I think that our high school experience was any more traumatic than anyone else's high school experience. I'm sure there are many many people in the audience who could give me a run for my money in that.

I tell you this story to illustrate that the reason that asexual community came together, the reason we have a shared struggle, a lot of the reason why we even exist in the first place has to do with the fact that our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality.

This isn't just true for asexual people. Our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality. And as an activist in the asexual community, I spent years trying to figure out how to disentangle these two concepts.

Not that they can't be together, but that we should understand how to talk about them separately. I think if we can separate them and talk about sexuality, first of all, we'll be able to talk about sexuality much more clearly, much more directly. But - which, by the way, I think sex is great, sexuality is fantastic for people who enjoy it - but will also be left with this concept of connection that right now we don't have good ways to describe directly.

There's a thing called a relationship. That's not me, and it's not another person. But it sits between us. I can have one feeling about a person, and a completely different feeling about my relationship with that person.

Relationships have a life of their own. They grow like plants and entangle themselves into our lives. Creating this sense of connection that's so important.

And the more I study relationships, the more I realize that they are fundamentally the same. Whether you're talking about a sexual romantic relationship, or relationship between two close friends, or the relationship between a grandfather and a granddaughter, or the relationships that tie together a group of friends, or the relationships that drive a lab of scientists to make scientific discoveries, or the relationships that tie together a social movement.

And as you think about all these different kinds of relationships I want you to recognize just how little we understand about how they operate. What's the difference between a relationship where you feel open expressing everything that you're feeling, and a relationship where you express none of your emotions?

If I have a phone filled with contacts, what's the difference between the people that I see once a week, the people that I see once a month, and the people that I never take the time to see? Because how I answer that question, will have more of an impact on my happiness than my income.

Study after study on happiness has confirmed this. Friendship is really, really important. And yet research on friendship itself is fairly rare. There is more published research by far on the industrial process of die-casting than there is on the process of forming friendships. It's a blind spot.

And I think this is a little bit tragic, because if we want to disentangle our struggle for connection, we need to understand how these things operate. And I believe this is fundamentally possible. Relationships are really confusing, relationships are really complex, but they are not chaotic. I believe that there is a structure to the way that relationships form.

Biology gives us a language to talk about the structure of plants. Physics gives us a language to talk about the structure of matter. But right now the language we use to talk about the structure of relationships is tangled up in factors that confound it. Understanding how these things operate won't be easy. It's a process that we should approach with humility and the kind of intellectual vigor we were talking abut earlier today. But if we can begin to understand how relationships form, it could transform the way the connection happens in our society. I'll give you one tiny example.

So, a key element of relationship structure is decisions about time. Decisions about time are great because, among other things, you can measure them. But if you decide to spend time with someone regularly, then you have a relationship. If you don't decide to spend time with them, then you don't. It might not be particularly healthy relationship, but it's there.

In healthy relationships, the more time I spend with someone, the more we explore ways of spending time together... as I spend more time with someone, as I get to know them, the way that we make decisions about time evolves. So that the time we spend together is more aligned with both us. (It) brings both of our lives more deeply into balance. And I think that there's something fascinating about that process of evolution.

And it turns out we know a lot, actually, about the evolutionary process. Which I think is an interesting lens through which to examine the structure of relationships. So we start out by exploring lots of ways to spend time with people, then we communicate about our emotions to differentiate the ways of spending time that are most meaningful, that are most impactful in both of our lives. And then we select those periods of time, we invest more time in them so that we can explore the relationship further. And the cycle starts again.

And all relationships move through processes like this as they grow. But if we can see them, if we can measure the process, and talk about the process, it allows us to put a little fertilizer on the relationship. It allows us to take weak connections and make them stronger. It allows us to look at communities and see how to make the connections in them richer. It allows us to write new scripts for the way the relationships form.

This is my friend Brandon. Brandon and I have been very close for about four years. We met in graduate school, and we immediately hit it off. We have these long, intense conversations about business and the environment. We'd go on these epic, epic hikes together. We cook huge elaborate meals, we go out dancing - he's a killer dancer. And, after several years, I took him aside and said: 'Brandon. You've become one of my closest friends and, if you're comfortable with it, I would like to sit down with you and have a conversation where we acknowledge that our relationship exists. All I wanna do, is talk about the fact that we're in a relationship. Talk about what in that relationship is working, and talk about how we want to build on it'.

And there was something about that simple conversation that was terrifying. But once I could sit down and have it with him, the relationship was transformed. It didn't become a romantic relationship. But being able to make explicit the way that we made decisions about time, allowed the relationship to be talked about, celebrated, and prioritized in a way that most friendships are not.

Here's what I'd like you to take away: as you think more about the asexual community, remember that our struggle for connection is tangled up in a culture of sexuality. And that in order to disentangle it, we need to understand how these things operate. We need to recognize that they are fundamentally the same. Whether they are sexual, or non-sexual. We need to begin to explore the structure by which they grow. So that we can write new scripts for new kinds of connection. And if we can do that, then I believe that our shared struggle for connection may become just a little bit easier. And imagine what the world would look like if it did.

Thank you.»

#Asexuality #Asexual #David Jay #Transcript

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kitsoa · 4 years

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The Edge of Imagination Pt.2

A Fated Encounter

Part 1: The Final World as proof of an Author figure

In the previous part, I used the Final World and the parallels seen in the two realities to suggest that there is a common Creator between Sora and Yozora. This is the foundation for the premise of the 2nd part which seeks to understand why they were designed to meet and to what end.

Life and Death of Fiction

If the Final World is the Creator’s imagination, then that must mean the difference between life and death in a fictional state has to do with... publication? Well, more like-- the connection of stories through various mediums. Stories aren’t meant to stay inside your imagination. They don’t exist unless they are shared, no matter if its through a book, an animated movie, or a jrpg video game.

So consider, when those stories end, what happens to the characters? Nothing. They have a metaphorical death. It’s the reason endings hurt so much. But for some characters, they leave such an impact that they stay with us, in our hearts, in our imagination. We keep them alive there. So when Light Expired and Darkness Prevailed, KH3 the story technically ended. And Sora persisted beyond death in the Final World (though Kairi kept his body from perishing). He existed in the imagination alone. He then exploits the power of waking and breaks away from that state of being. His story continued and it continued to be shared.

It makes you wonder if that process could be interrupted or corrupted. What happens when that story is stolen, or the Creator is unable to finish it? Does it even exist? Where do those characters and bonds exist?

Stolen Heart

“They took my name-- everything about me.”

The Nameless Star, a sibling creation to Sora, has somehow seen the end of her life. The end of her existence in the fictional realm of her origin. She exists only in her creator’s head.

Well geez, that reminds me of another character that never saw the light of day.

People are making the obvious connection to Stella Nox Fleuret but I’m not sure the exact parallels of what’s happened to both of these characters are being taken literally enough.

Stella Nox Fleuret was a cut character from the FFv13 overhaul. She was created by Nomura, given a personality, a role, a purpose, and bonds with other characters. But they stole that role, they stole her name, they took everything from her. Stella only exists in Nomura’s imagination.

Who is they? The reality is a lot more complex in the creative decisions but it’s a vague “Square did”. When the overhaul happened, that was the decision made. She ceased to exist.

So if we take the parallels with the Nameless Star and apply them to Verum Rex, then clearly... the same thing that happened to FFv13 happened to Verum Rex.

The Nameless Star was cut from her story.

The involvement of Verum Rex, therefore, isn’t the revenge of a story that never saw the light of day-- it’s the story of its demise.

“He’s been changed beyond recognition-- his heart replaced with another’s”

Isn’t that what happened to Noctis in the rebranding? He was adjusted and changed, he wasn’t the same person. His heart was replaced with another’s. Yozora isn’t possessed or corrupted, he’s just the result of corporate meddling. (or other matters, we can be vague in the details)

A Tale of Two Yozora’s

Okay so..... this is where it gets really complicated. Because, The Yozora from the Secret Episode...can’t be the same Yozora from the Toy Box commercial. We know this because the Toy Box commercial depicts the Nameless Star, the character dwelling ‘dead’ in the Final World. The character who was cut from her story who mourns the overhaul that happened to Yozora. The Verum Rex we see at this time truly does appear to be the FFv13 knock off Nomura was sore to create.

But that Yozora exists in some capacity as a fictional construct in the KH universe, behind an interior 4th wall. He’s not real. So how?-- well, simple, the Creator wrote the ideal Verum Rex into the KH universe. (In the exact same way Nomura is writing “FFv13″ into KH)

But the one Sora was fated to meet in the Secret Episode wasn’t the ideal Yozora. It was the overhauled Yozora-- the “FFXV” Yozora. The one who does not remember his stolen love. Who’s heart was replaced by another’s. And in KH fashion we are shown the exception before the rule.

An Adapted Appearance

Which might be... why Yozora said this:

If you consider that... What we are seeing is through Sora’s perspective and... oh meta alert: he’s appearing in Sora’s medium (the actual physical story of KH). Yozora probably... looks a little more like:

(a little on the nose...)

Instead, he appears as Toy Box (ideal) Verum Rex Yozora because he’s on Sora’s metaphysical turf-- he’s in Sora’s game. He has somehow, through the interface of his dreams-- through his Creator’s imagination (i.e. The Final World), adapted physically to this synonymous identity.

“How did you recognize me as Yozora?”

That’s his question. He understands that this kid shouldn’t be able to call him by his name because he does not look like himself. Furthermore, he questions Sora’s identity in the same breath, as though Sora’s the one that’s not appearing as he should.

Reversed/Rebirth

Yozora insists on flipping this on Sora, so let’s flip the situation on these two characters.

From this line, I am convinced that Sora is the same to Yozora as Yozora is to Sora. Sora is a work of fiction. He is fictional in whatever universe this Yozora comes from. He very casually says “I’ve heard of you”-- which would not really work if the sole moment he heard Sora’s name was when he was given the quest to ‘save’ him.

“You’re Sora?”

A line that can be read incredulously. But you can also read a sense of disbelief. Yozora doesn’t believe that he’s who he says at first because maybe he believes Sora to have a different appearance.

Making this a big leap but... what if Sora from Yozora’s perspective, is a fictional character whose heart was replaced by another’s? What if, according to Yozora, Sora was the character whose story was overhauled and changed? I mean It’s not like Sora would know this.

Who even told Yozora to “Save Sora?” Because strike me paranoid, but in a way the Nameless Star was tasking Sora to “Save Yozora” from his changed fate. Why can’t the same be said on the other end? Is there some cut character from KH development hanging out in the Final World telling Yozora that the same thing the Nameless Star told Sora?

Maybe that’s why his defeat ends in this crystallization. Without knowing enough of the inspired lore, we can see that Yozora believes that by defeating and crystallizing ‘Sora’ he is saving him. If he believes Sora to be changed on the same level as the Nameless Star believes Yozora to be, then it makes sense why he would attack him.

“If you are who you say, and it was fate that brought us here, then... my path is clear.”

In this quote, he’s understanding that this is the ‘changed’ Sora. He is understanding that he needs to do something to this violated heart in order to save him. He is motivated by a very strong #oath to do so.

Which explains his sadness when he’s defeated he concludes that his ‘powers aren’t needed yet.” There are many ways to interpret this attitude but if the goal was to crystallize Sora on the basis that he’s been “overhauled”, then the defeat at his hands suggests that this version of Sora is sufficient. Which doesn’t really remove him from the rescue attempt, it just postpones it until he is no longer capable. (Therefore suggesting another element to the motive that I can’t fathom but would probably have to do with the strength and aptitude of Sora-- like say the defense of a greater threat).

And this reversal is why there are two different endings. Why they conclude in perfect parallels, as though looping the loser’s story to the beginning of their tale and continuing the victor’s story in the Final World.

We are left witnessing a waking Yozora, living out his story, confused. Sora is in the Final World-- shaken by this petrifying sense that nothing is as it seems.

Conclusion:

This speculation is driven by the idea that the Final World is a truly neutral ground and that due to the nature of the connection presented, the denizens within this graveyard share a fictional status and a common author. The fated meeting between these two protagonists is a resulting clash of the Creator’s imagination, a trial to determine what will become the truth. It’s meta, and there are probably discrepancies in the meta-lens that can’t be explained but the gist is there. Kingdom Hearts has always been a story, about stories. But for now, that story rests in a special, beautiful limbo. A graveyard of stars holding a creator’s dearest creations. Held hostage at the edge of his imagination.

Part 1: The Final World as proof of an Author figure

#kingdom hearts #kh3 re:mind #kh3 re:mind spoilers #kh3 re:mind speculation #kh meta #kingdom hearts meta #kingdom hearts speculation #the edge of imagination #metacatastrophe theory #yozora

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troybeecham · 4 years

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Fr. Troy Beecham

Sermon, Proper 13 A, 2020

Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

More often than not I have heard this Gospel narrative of Jesus feeding the multitude preached as some version of "Which is actually the greater miracle in this Gospel narrative: for Jesus to miraculously transform those few loaves into an abundance of loaves, or for Jesus to change the hearts of the people there to teach them how to share?" Growing up in church, I heard this, and all of the miracle narratives of Jesus, preached with full confidence in the miraculous provision of God to meet the needs of people in need, miraculous as in supernatural, creation from nothing. The longer I am in the Church, the more I am hearing these narratives being preached with an almost apologetic tone. I mean, after all, who really believes in the supernatural world presented by the writers of the New Testament? Aren’t we much more advanced than they were, having come all these centuries out of the world of superstition?

Well, no, actually, we haven’t. We may like to think of ourselves as having evolved beyond “all that supernatural nonsense”, but at best we have simply traded one world view that requires faith and belief for another world view that requires just as much faith and belief. Before you assert that they were hopelessly primitive, remember they built the pyramids, mapped the heavens and the movement of the planets, discovered algebra and trigonometry, and developed deeply sophisticated philosophy. We humans are curious beings, not in the sense that we arouse curiosity in those who might be viewing us, but in the sense that we look out at the universe with curiosity: we ponder and dream, and we have an insatiable desire to know what are the causes of all the wonder and horror that we see. From the Enlightenment to the present day, Western culture has been on a crusade to wipe out any belief in things that cannot be rationally explained or reduced to the “laws of nature”. We have made ourselves the measure of all things! If we cannot achieve it, then it must not be possible!

We have been crowding out belief in the miraculous, the supernatural for centuries. The problem is that the harder we push these out of our world view, the greater a vacuum we create in our attempt to understand or find meaning in the events of our lives or the changes in the universe around us, and that vacuum naturally draws all sorts of things in to fill it. And the things that fill that vacuum require just as much faith and belief as that which it has supplanted. Rather than go on for another thousand words about the history and nature of the theory of knowledge, that is, how do we know what we know…what are the parameters, modes, and conditions for knowing…I will simply say clearly that I fully believe the supernatural nature of the miracles of Jesus, and in the miraculous nature of his conception and birth, and in his full divinity along with his full humanity. I do not labor with the burden of needing to demythologize the life of Jesus, or to succumb to the habitual practice of reading the narratives of his life through any philosophical lens that renders his miracles into narratives about political justice for the poor or into miracles of sharing, overcoming ethnic, cultural, religious prejudices, all of which reduce the life of the kingdom of God into something produced solely by human action.

Certainly, when the kingdom of God is made manifest amongst us, we do see the miraculous breaking down of all of our prejudices: ethnic, cultural, economic, religious, et al. When the kingdom of God is being made manifest amongst us, of course we begin to see true justice begin to blossom. But these are the free gift of God to a people being transformed by the Holy Spirit into the image of his Son, Jesus. Far from any belief in the ultimate, eventual, and inevitable evolution of humankind into fulfilling the greatest dreams of science fiction utopian splendor, we humans have continuously shown ourselves to be unable to redeem ourselves.

It is beyond human ability to engineer our way back to the Garden of Eden. Paradise was lost to us forever because our first parents decided that they could create and sustain the Garden without need of God. We continue to believe in this first lie, and the pursuit of it has led, time and again through the bloody pages of human history up until this very day, to war, misery, untold suffering, and even genocide. Do we understand this, that every time we have committed to war or genocide, we have done so fully believing that our actions would ultimately end in the establishment of a utopia of peace and plenty? The Garden is just beyond our reach only because there are some humans who stand in our way, either because they have the wrong political ideology, religion, or ethnic identity. If only we could get rid of them, cancel them, then we would have a world of peace and plenty! I see this in the news every day, in our own nation and around the world.

Do we see how these ideas require as much faith and belief as accepting the witness of the Holy Scriptures to the miraculous and supernatural reality of God? Yes, I know the arguments that believing people have committed atrocities in the name of God. But this is human nature: we commit atrocities and always appeal to whatever is available to excuse ourselves of culpability, whether we appeal to God, communist/socialist economic and social justice theory, the pseudo-sciences of intersectionality, eugenics, or any other means by which we excuse our sinful and selfish desires for control, power, and authority to do as we wish.

In the contest of world views, faith and belief in God, and in his Son, Jesus, wins for me. I believe that Jesus miraculously, supernaturally fed the multitudes. I choose to place all of my trust in God, and in his promise to restore all of creation to the innocence and splendor of his kingdom. I will read our Holy Scriptures using all the critical tools at hand: archaeology, linguistics, comparative literature, comparative history; and I will read them through the eyes of trust and belief in Jesus, who has redeemed us, and teaches us to patiently wait for that day when, at long last, God our heavenly Father shall renew of his creation with the splendor of a new and conjoined heaven and earth, and he shall reign for all eternity. That’s something I can believe in, and a hope that endures. My prayer is that the Church may continue to proclaim this Faith, or return to it where it has departed, with honest conviction and in loving compassion to all the peoples of the world.

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

#father troy beecham #christianity #troy beecham episcopal #jesus #father troy beecham episcopal #saints #god #salvation #peace #faith

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arlingtonpark · 5 years

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SNK 112 Review

Eren gonna Eren Edition

“[He] lives in a psychic economy of aggression and domination. There are dominators and the dominated. No in between. Every attack he receives, every ego injury must be answered, rebalanced with some new aggression to reassert dominance. These efforts are often wildly self-destructive. We’ve seen the pattern again and again. […] We can’t know a man’s inner thoughts. But we’ve seen action and reaction more than enough times to infer, or rather deduce, his instincts and needs with some precision.”

Ladies, if he

Loves running

Has a really hairy chest

Is a total bad boy

He’s not your man, he’s Zeke Jeager, and…well, he still probably plans to screw you over.

You know what I love about the scenario Nicolo paints here? It’s that in spite of how much the story has changed, in spite of how much more grounded in real world issues the story has become, Paradis may still end up getting done in by a titan apocalypse.

Because P A T H S !

So the EFC invades the restaurant, locks it down, and takes everyone hostage. My only beef is that they didn’t have Onyankopon open the door to leave only for Eren to be standing on the other side. A la this.

Wait, yes, that’s it! Onyankopon opens the door and Eren’s just there. Then we cut to a shot from Onyankopon’s perspective showing Eren looking into the camera. He casually raises a gun to the viewer like the thief at the end of The Great Train Robbery and…

K, so we finally get the EMA heart to heart we’ve all been waiting for.

….

I think Eren is being legit here. *dodges thrown chair*

Just let me explain!

When it comes to this scene, what needs to be understood is that Eren is performing a dominance ritual.

Dominance rituals are ritualistic acts of humiliation that primates, including humans, perform in order to establish a hierarchy. In a human context, dominance rituals are strongly associated with male alpha bro culture.

Donald Trump is the most famous practitioner of dominance rituals out there. For example, Trump is known to give his enemies various nicknames.

Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hilary, Pocahontas (Elizabeth Warren).

That’s a dominance ritual. Trump is asserting his dominance over others by referring to them by an insulting name. The fact that Trump only ends up coming off as immature is beside the point. Dominance rituals are inherently immature. When Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz refused to push back, Trump’s dominance over them was confirmed. It’s not rational, it’s primal. Plain and simple.

And that wall he keeps yammering on about? That’s a dominance ritual too. It’s a wall that Mexico is going to pay for. It’s about humiliation. It’s about humiliating the country that’s sending the “rapists” to invade us. (The wall also has an important revenge aspect to it, but that’s not relevant here.)

To this day, Trump continues to perform dominance rituals with his underlings. One time he called his Chief of Staff into the Oval Office and ordered him to swat a fly.

Eren has engaged in dominance rituals before. When he confronted Reiner in the basement, Eren establishes that if Reiner doesn’t do as told, he will blow up the building. Eren then commands Reiner to sit.

As though he were a dog.

It was a show of force. A display of power. The power Eren held over Reiner. And he was clearly enjoying it.

Next, Hange visits Eren in jail. They sincerely ask if Eren cares about what happens to Historia and Eren reacts by performing a dominance ritual on Hange. He asserts that they have no power over him and that he’s only in jail because he’s humoring them. Again, when it comes to Eren, it’s all about power and having power over others. Eren asserts his power, his dominance, over Hange by throttling them. Hange can do nothing but call him a perv.

In this way, (post-time skip) Eren is no different from Trump. They are both obsessed with power and being powerful. They are both determined to be in control and when they are both denied this, they both get pissed.

I keep banging on this drum, and the sound of it has probably driven would-be followers away, but this is the hill I will die on: the best way to understand Eren’s character is to analyze him through a trumpian lens. You simply cannot capture the perverseness of Eren’s inner self without making the comparison. It’s just too appropriate.

In this scene, Eren’s trumpiness has never been more obvious. It’s actually incredible. In this chapter, Eren truly became the President of the United States. Let’s go through the scene moment by moment and witness the highlights.

The scene starts with EMA (and gabi) sitting with their hands placed on the table. Because Eren ordered them to.

Eren does get into roasting Armin and Mikasa, but note the timeline of events in the conversation. First, Eren asserts he is free. He goes out of his way to emphasize that his actions are an expression of his wants and desires.

This isn’t important just because Eren is telling his compatriots that he’s not a puppet of Zeke. Freedom and self-determination have always been important to Eren.

Like most people, Eren thinks of freedom as not being controlled by others. As not being dominated. That’s not wrong; the problem is that because of his zero-sum thinking, Eren also associates freedom with being dominant. Not being dominated, but by being the dominator.

There are only two types of people in this world: the strong, who dominate the weak, and the weak, who are dominated, and you’re either one or the other.

When you’re weak you aren’t free because being weak necessarily means people can have power over you. Because there are only strong and weak people, it follows from this that being free means being strong and dominating others. When no one has power over you, when no one can restrict you, you are free. Because the world is zero-sum, as Eren erroneously thinks it to be, no one having power over him means he has power over them. That’s what zero-sum thinking means: if I have more power, then they necessarily have less.

Trump is similar. Donald Trump is notorious for his desire to dominate others. It defines his every action. I already mentioned his propensity to use his underlings as human flyswatters. You wanna know why he decided to run for President in the first place?

There aren’t any words for it. Just watch the clip and think about what this says about him.

Whenever Trump is attacked, he must punch back “ten times harder.” Because he has to reestablish his dominance. When you’re obsessed with being strong (in an utterly childish sense of the word), you must hit back harder. It’s about putting on a show, a show of your power.

In this chapter, Eren punched back “ten times harder.”

So Eren says he’s basically attained what he’s always wanted in this series: freedom.

And then.

Mikasa says he’s wrong. Not just that, but the way she says it.

“No. You’re being controlled.”

She flatly and bluntly says to his face that he is being controlled. That he is a slave, if you would. Later, when Armin said Eren was the real slave, Eren was pissed. Why would this statement by Mikasa be any different?

And to top it off, Mikasa took her hands off the table. Against Eren’s orders. So not only was she, and Armin by extension, calling him a slave, she also disobeyed him

In primal terms, this is a challenge. And it was only after this that Eren started roasting them.

Eren wishes to be in control. To have power. To dominate.

Eren chose to engage in this dominance ritual because in his mind they slighted him when they questioned his power and acted against his wishes. He did it to put them in their place.

If that sounds incredibly petty and immature…that’s because it is. Dominance rituals are not just inherently immature, they are a marker of immaturity. People perform dominance rituals because they are insecure. They need to be dominant. It’s an impulse, and people like Eren lack the maturity to control those impulses. For all his talk of hating people who surrender, the only one who has surrendered here is Eren.

He has surrendered to his baser human instincts.

In this regard, Eren is basically a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

People have said that Eren must have been pretending to believe what he said because his past actions contradict what he said. Much like how some people claim Trump’s latest Twitter rant is part of some brilliant strategy, people have claimed Eren shat in the punch bowl because he’s playing 10-dimensional chess and everyone else is playing Go-Fish.

In reality, Eren shat in the punch bowl because he thinks shitting in the punch bowl at a party is how you show everyone who’s boss.

The idea that it’s either “Eren meant what he said and he hates his ‘friends’” or “Eren didn’t mean it, he cares about them” is a false dichotomy. I’m sure Eren genuinely cares for his friends. It’s just that Eren also has the emotional development of a three year old and his feelings got the better of him.

So now Eren launches into his rant. He targets Armin first.

Eren claims that people are the products of their memories. In general, Attack on Titan has operated on the assumption that people “live on” through their memories. This is called the psychological theory of personal identity. You are who you are by virtue of your experiences as archived in your memories.

This…is a very problematic and simplistic account of personal identity. There are philosophers who believe that our identity is grounded in our psychology, but their accounts are more complex than just, “you are your memories.”

To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“First, suppose a young student is fined for overdue library books. Later, as a middle-aged lawyer, she remembers paying the fine. Later still, in her dotage, she remembers her law career, but has entirely forgotten not only paying the fine but everything else she did in her youth. According to the memory criterion the young student is the middle-aged lawyer, the lawyer is the elderly woman, but the elderly woman is not the young student. This is an impossible result: if x and y are one and y and z are one, x and z cannot be two. Identity is transitive; memory continuity is not.

Second, it seems to belong to the very idea of remembering that you can remember only your own experiences. To remember paying a fine (or the experience of paying) is to remember yourself paying. That makes it trivial and uninformative to say that you are the person whose experiences you can remember—that is, that memory continuity is sufficient for personal identity. It is uninformative because you cannot know whether someone genuinely remembers a past experience without already knowing whether he is the one who had it. Suppose we want to know whether Blott, who exists now, is the same as Clott, whom we know to have existed at some time in the past. The memory criterion tells us that Blott is Clott just if Blott can now remember an experience Clott had at that past time. But Blott’s seeming to remember one of Clott’s experiences counts as genuine memory only if Blott actually is Clott. So we should already have to know whether Blott is Clott before we could apply the principle that is supposed to tell us whether she is. (There is, however, nothing trivial or uninformative about the claim that memory connections are necessary for us to persist.)

One response to the first problem is to modify the memory criterion by switching from direct to indirect memory connections: the old woman is the young student because she can recall experiences the lawyer had at a time when the lawyer remembered the student’s life. The second problem is traditionally met by replacing memory with a new concept, “retrocognition” or “quasi-memory”, which is just like memory but without the identity requirement: even if it is self-contradictory to say that you remember doing something you didn’t do but someone else did, you could still “quasi-remember” it.

Neither move gets us far, however, as both the original and the modified memory criteria face a more obvious problem: there are many times in one’s past that one cannot remember or quasi-remember at all, and to which one is not linked even indirectly by an overlapping chain of memories. For instance, there is no time when you could recall anything that happened to you while you dreamlessly slept last night. The memory criterion has the absurd implication that you have never existed at any time when you were unconscious. The person sleeping in your bed last night must have been someone else.”

This isn’t to fault the series though. Storytellers are allowed to take liberties with reality for the sake of their craft. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

No, problems only start to arise if readers, or even the author himself, start talking as though something profound is being discussed.

I assure you, there is nothing profound about this.

For the sake of continuing this analysis, let’s grant that this account of identity persistence is true. In that case, Eren is saying that because people are who they are by virtue of their memories, Armin’s actions aren’t entirely his own; he’s being influenced from beyond the grave by Bertolt. Given that the series already assumes memories=you, my sense is that Eren’s words, however harsh, will ultimately be vindicated.

Because it’s not like Eren being an asshole has stopped this series from siding with him before. (I’m still salty over last chapter.)

Eren declares that Armin is soft. Yep, nothing new here. It’s not surprising at all that Eren’s preferred method of action is the most aggressive one. Eren is a hawk and like many hard-right war hawks in our world, he thinks the doves are soft.

In the 1980s, when the US was negotiating a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, Donald Trump gave some advice to the lead negotiator: show up late to the next meeting, walk over to where the top Soviet official was sitting, and, while remaining standing, bury your finger in his chest and say “Fuck you!” Trump’s idea of how to deal with foreign adversaries is to dominate them and show them who’s boss. Not much daylight between that and Eren here.

And then, the best part of the whole chapter happens:

“Armin, Bertolt’s gotten to your brain. You’re the one being controlled by the enemy.”

NO PUPPET, NO PUPPET, YOU’RE THE PUPPET!

This is basically something Trump said to Hillary Clinton in a debate once. I can’t believe this is happening.

Taking someone’s criticism of you and throwing it back at them (instead of, ya know, refuting the criticism) is a classic trumpian maneuver. Most recently, Trump did it against his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

“I’m just saying. There’s nothing further removed from freedom than ignorance.”

The MC of this manga is a living YouTube comments section!

GoddamnitAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Okay, next is Mikasa.

Snoo here says both her physical strength and the strength of her concern for him is derived from her Ackerblood.

It’s no secret that Eren resents Mikasa for how much she cares for him. Even as recently as chapter 69, Eren still protests when Mikasa tells him to rest. Here, Eren even uses the word “clinginess” to describe that aspect of Mikasa he thinks the ackerblood explains. I wouldn’t be surprised if his mean spiritedness in explaining this was at least partially motivated by this resentment.

As much of a 4channer Eren is being here, the fact that Mikasa involuntarily protects Eren is compelling evidence of him being right. As with Armin, I wouldn’t be surprised if the series ultimately takes the stance that Eren is an asshole, but also has a point. Because apparently we live in a world where everyone has a point.

And then Eren does the most damning thing he’s ever done in this series.

Eren, channeling all the alpha bro smugness in the universe, literally turns his nose up at Mikasa and, in what can only be described as obscene racism, declares that the Ackermanns are a slave race and that he hates them for it.

F!@#. This. Guy.

Oh, and making Mikasa cry is bad too. That’s important, just not in the same way. Feeling the need to emotionally annihilate someone makes you a shitty person. But I would argue that believing in “slave races” and hating people for being a member of that race is even shittier.

When Eren says Mikasa is a slave, he not only denies her agency. He denies her personhood. That is obscene.

That said, my money is on Eren’s saying he’s always hated Mikasa being more hot air than anything else. Like I said, this is a dominance ritual; Eren is doing this to show his power over Mikasa.

Mission accomplished.

And take note: Eren says he hates the submissive even as he demands submission from others. He gets pissed when Mikasa takes her hands off the table against his orders, yet hates people who blindly follow orders.

This is not hypocrisy.

To understand why, look…

At Donald Trump.

Trump demands subservience from Republican members of Congress, but it is no secret that he holds them in contempt for that very subservience. Trump/Eren’s obsession with being strong is partly motivated by their disdain for the weak. Thus, they demand obedience even as they hate the obedient.

Finally, the dominance ritual turns physical. Eren wails on Armin, beating him senseless. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to utterly dominate Armin like he did. But Eren wants to make it clear how much bigger his biceps are, so there you have it.

Now Eren’s on his way to Shighanshina and Zeke has escaped. Like two star-crossed lovers put on a path set by fate, Zeke and Eren seem destined to meet up again. When they do, they’ll be able to mobilize the Wall Titans.

Eren is a lot like Trump, but there are major differences. Most important is that Eren is even more dangerous than Trump.

Trump is a wannabe dictator. He admires despots the world over, most likely because of how those despots have come to dominate their countries. But Trump himself lacks the competence to undermine American democracy and install himself as dictator.

But Eren is very much a competent person. He isn’t senescent like Trump is. He’s young, physically strong, and smart. He is emotionally volatile, and hopefully Armin and co. will find a way to use that against him, but so far this hasn’t been a problem for him. This makes him a far more potent threat.

There are three entities in this story that could fairly be described as evil and they’re the Marleyans, Zeke, and Eren. They are all dangerously competent. Meanwhile, the ostensible good guys, Paradis, have been made to look like the Keystone Cops.

So what’s this they say about the EFC controlling everything now? Did the populace rise up against the government off panel or something?

I know I’m probably being pedantic here, but this is really silly to me. They really expect us to believe that a rebel force of just 100 soldiers was able to take over-

*checks notes*

-basically everything in just a couple of days?

Hopefully they’ll elaborate on this in the next chapter. My guess is that because the people so strongly support Eren’s cause, the government’s authority isn’t recognized in large swathes of Walldian territory.

Because apparently I was right and Eren IS a folk hero to these people. Good grief.

The final note here goes to the issue of Eren’s supposedly free will.

It’s been speculated that Eren is being coerced in some way. I’ve seen theories ranging from, “Zeke made him do it,” to, “Eren’s being mind-controlled by the Attack Titan.” However, as I’ve laid out in this post, my sense is that Eren’s actions here aren’t a hard break from his already established character. If he is being coerced, then it’s not so much that he’s being forced to act out of character. Rather, it’s more like the negative aspects of his character have been exaggerated.

This is the strongest reason to believe Eren is being controlled in some way. It’s not unbelievable that the little kid we met in chapter 1 would grow up to become the man we saw in chapter 112. What’s harder to believe is that Eren’s personality would undergo such…radicalization in such a short period of time.

Eren has always seen the world in a zero-sum, strong vs weak kind of way. Could this aspect of his personality have festered into what we saw in this chapter? Yes, if given enough time, but Eren looks to have made the evolution seemingly overnight.

Eren has been slighted before and he has responded with aggression, but IIRC he’s never done so when the slighter is someone he loves or respects. Eren was always getting to fights with Jean during their trainee days in part because of Eren’s problem with being overly aggressive. But part of it was also just how much Jean’s cowardice pissed him off. Jean was someone Eren had no respect for and I’m sure that was partly why Eren was so quick to tussle with him.

Compare this to Mikasa. Mikasa has been motherly towards Eren before, sometimes even in a mortifyingly public way. For a man who cares about strength and being strong, his ego was probably smarting. But in spite of that, Eren rarely lashed out at her. He protested, sure, but it’s not like he tried to make her cry.

For Eren to go from this to what we see now is a bit hard to swallow, which is why I will admit that the mind-control theory can’t be ruled out.

But I wish it could be.

Attack on Titan could be the story of a boy who just wants to protect what he cares about, but, through their own character flaws, grows up to become a despicable human being. But all this just being mind-control would ruin that.

Throughout this post I’ve drawn parallels between Eren and Donald Trump. The fact that this comparison can be drawn at all not only makes Eren’s character intriguing. It makes it politically relevant.

Where do people like Donald Trump come from? Where do believers in right-wing nationalism in general come from? This story could be an exploration of that.

Eren doing these awful things because he’s been put down a path of radicalization is interesting and even socially relevant.

Eren doing these awful things because he’s being controlled by the big, bad Attack Titan is dumb, Saturday-morning cartoon s!@#.

The prospect of mind-control Eren is not welcome and I hope this theory is wrong.

…

UPRISING 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!

#snk 112 #snk chapter 112 #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #spoilers

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robininthelabyrinth · 6 years

Text

Fic: That Cycle Thing (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: "It's kind of weird, though, isn't it," Barry says, sitting in the clinic for the first time. "You know, that being a superhero or a supervillain is correlated with - well, developing a weirdo reproductive system?"

"Not really," Mick says. "See, it's not correlation. It's the other one."

"Causation? Wait, like, being a superhero means you go alpha or omega? But how?"

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: ABO

——————————————————————————————

"New one, huh?" the big guy asks, not without sympathy.

"Yeah," Barry says. "Is it that obvious?"

"Kind of is," the guy confirms. "Mostly in the freaked-out way your eyes keep darting around. Don't worry. This place is totally confidential and a, what do you call 'em, a safe space."

"I appreciate that," Barry says, very sincerely. "I mean, you hear stories..."

"Pornorgraphy, you mean," the guy says.

Barry laughs. "Yeah, I guess. It's kind of weird, though, isn't it, that being a superhero or a supervillain is correlated with - well, developing a weirdo reproductive system?"

"Not really," the guy says wryly. "See, it's not correlation, it's the other one."

"Causation? Wait, like, being a superhero means you go alpha or omega? But how?"

"You know how a while back, Superman was the only major superhero?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how he and his cousin are basically the last of their species?"

"Yeah?"

"I'd like you to imagine a computer-robot-creature capable of reprogramming the human genetic code being real unhappy with that fact."

"Wait. Are you telling me -"

"The whole alpha-omega shit all of us powered folks get saddled with is designed to make us reproductively compatible with Kryptonians? You bet your ass. Literally, if you're an omega."

"That's - that absolute bullshit! Why not make them compatible with us?!"

"We've all asked that question," the guy says. "All of us. At length. Usually at volume. Everyone reacts differently to finding out about the cycles, but that reaction’s pretty consistent.”

“No wonder.”

“Either way, that’s one of the reasons why capes end up dating each other more often than not. My name's Mick, by the way."

"Barry," Barry automatically replies, then flushes. "I mean -"

"No, no, it's better this way," Mick says. "No hero identities in the clinic. Keeps fights and rivalries from the outside from coming inside."

"Right. That makes sense."

A companionable silence settles on them for a little.

After a few minutes, Barry clears his voice.

"No, it's nothing like the tabloids say it is," Mick says.

"Oh thank god," Barry says. "That stuff about, like, heats and ruts..."

"You get cramps and a mild fever and you're, like, a little more horny than usual," Mick says. "Pretty similar to a woman's menstrual cycle. Nothing at all like the mindless fuck-or-die no-standards do-anyone bullshit you hear about."

Barry sighs in relief.

"Don't get me wrong, sex helps with the cramps and stuff," Mick adds. "But it sure as hell isn't a total loss of your ability to make decisions. Unless you're, like, into that, but that's your own business, y'know?"

"Good," Barry says firmly. "That was - yeah. Not good. I don't know what I was more scared of, the omega heats where you can't say no or the alpha ruts where you don't care if someone else is saying no."

"Yeah, that is definitely not a thing! Anyone who tells you otherwise, they're being dicks. You tell the clinic what they're saying and they'll shut 'em down. Everyone respects the clinic, hero or villain."

"Good," Barry says again, then hesitates. "Uh, one more question, if that's okay..?"

"Sure, shoot."

"How do you, uh, know? Which one you are, I mean. Or which one someone else is."

"There's a bunch of signs," Mick says. "But you usually aren't one or the other, you know."

"What? You're not?"

"Nah. It's got something to do with stress, proximity to other capes, nutrition, hormones, emotional state, whatever, but most people end up swapping dynamics every few years. Pretty rare to be one or another all the time."

"Huh. I didn't know that."

"Most people don't. It's private, you know? Especially with all the misinformation out there."

"Superhero porn," Barry agrees. "Super-heroes, super-popular - and that's even before the cycle thing got into the mix."

"Yep," Mick says. "Congrats, you’re a fetish now. But what can you do?"

“Not much,” Barry agrees.

"Barry!" the nurse calls.

Barry starts. "Oh," he says, starting to get up. "That's me - I've got to go -"

"I'm sure I'll see you around, the way these things go," Mick says, waving. "But, hey - Barry?"

"Yeah?" Barry says, turning back.

"If you ever have any more questions about all this, I'm happy to answer 'em," Mick says. "Cape or no cape." Then he grins wickedly. “And if you ever want some help getting through those cycles, hit me up.”

Barry blinks, taken slightly aback – is he being hit on? He is definitely being hit on, holy crap, he’s being hit on by a very attractive man who is considerate enough to wait until Barry has a built-in excuse to exit the conversation, this is the best day ever – and then, slowly, smiles back at him. "I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks."

"Anytime."

Barry does end up meeting Mick again, sooner than expected - he's a speedster from the Gem Cities, so he's inheriting the mantle of The Flash from Jay Garrick, the older generation, and along with the mantle of the Flash come the Flash's rogues gallery, including the Rogues.

The Rogues, which include Heatwave.

Mick Rory.

Oh, well. It was probably too much to hope for that he'd be a hero.

At least, if he has to be a villain, he's a villain in Barry's jurisdiction. Heroes, Barry had discovered, are extremely territorial about their villains, always insisting on taking lead against them and butting heads over them.

(After the first the time Rogues visit Gotham, Barry abruptly realized that that means they'll be facing Batman's unique brand of massive overkill vengeance only without the vague fondness he has for his own villains; as this was followed immediately by Barry growing a spine and confronting Batman for the first time to insist that he be part of the investigation and subsequent fight, Barry understands the impulse much more.)

But, yeah. Barry goes through his first few cycles - omega cycles, currently - by lying on Iris' couch and making puppy eyes at her until she fetches him chocolate and hot water bottles, but then she gets together with Eddie and it seems a bit rude to impose.

At least Iris assures him she'll continue to pretend to be his love interest, since having one is apparently de rigueur for heroes, since everyone gets very judgy if you're feeling single for a while.

Even Batman has a love interest. Several, even.

But also, going through your cycle alone is...ugh. Mick was right, at least, in that sex isn't required (though superspeed makes taking a bit of time to scratch the itch an irresistible temptation), but Barry's starting to find that company really is.

And he's kind of short of that.

So when he heads out on reluctant patrol during the itching, annoying second night of his heat to find Captain Cold and Heatwave robbing a small jewelry store - no witnesses, no CCTV, barely anything worth taking to the point that Barry kinda suspects that the place is a Family front - he decides to tap Heatwave on the shoulder and say, "Uh, sorry, but at the clinic -"

Cold is in the middle of raising his gun but when he hears the word "clinic" he drops it with a sigh. "Of course he did," Cold says, rolling his eyes. "Mick, I'll see you when you get back."

"You do that," Heatwave agrees. "Barry, this is an anti-Family thing - wouldja mind if Len takes..?"

"Well, if it's an anti-Family thing -"

No one in Central likes the ever-warring Families.

Cold waves a hand at Mick and glares at Barry. "You be nice to him," he says, right before stalking out.

Barry flushes. "I mean - I didn't -"

He kind of did.

"It's all right if you just have more questions," Mick assures him. "Or even if you just want someone to hang around while you're being miserable. Doesn't have to be a hookup." He grins. "Unless you want one, of course."

Barry wars with himself and his own embarrassment for a minute, but Mick seems so calm and even Cold had been so casually accepting and damnit, Barry hasn't gotten laid in ages which is even longer for a speedster who occasionally time travels back in time to repeat a few days -

"The latter," Barry says, flushing red under his cowl. "If you don't mind."

"Not at all," Mick says, eyes brightening. He steps forward and loops his arms around Barry in prime speedster-carry position. "Well?"

Barry runs them out of there.

Turns out Mick was right: it really does alleviate the symptoms.

After the whole mess with Eobard and things blowing up and Barry feeling horribly guilty and nearly running himself ragged, he notices that his cycles are – different.

Less cramping, more mood swings, for one thing. Mostly going manic, actually – super hyper, super bad focus, none of which is good for super activities.

The horniness is way up, as usual, but now Barry’s suddenly eyeing everyone around him because is it just him, or did he somehow miss the fact that he’s surrounded by extremely attractive people?

It takes a few days of being twitchy for Barry to realize that he’s in rut instead of heat this time.

And, well, Mick did say…

“Oh, sure,” Mick says, holding the door to the Rogues’ hideout open and gesturing for Barry to come in.

“There isn’t, you know, a compatibility problem?” Barry asks, coming in anyway.

“Gay people existed on Krypton too,” Mick says solemnly, then cracks up when Barry gives him a look. “I don’t know, Red. I’ve never noticed a difference, whether it’s alpha-omega, alpha-alpha, omega-omega, whatever. Besides, I live with a whole coop full of alphas now; someone’s going to be shifting dynamics sooner rather than later.”

“Oh?”

“Having a lot of one type tends to result in equalization, apparently? Something about syncing up hormones. Dunno.”

Captain Cold – Len, he’d told Barry to call him – waves from where he’s lounging on the couch. “Glad to see you two lovebirds are keeping it up,” he says.

That gets both Barry and Mick to splutter.

“They’re not lovebirds, they're just fucking,” Mark Mardon opines. He’s digging into a pint of ice cream with a fork. Barry wonders if that has to do with the heightened hunger of the alpha, or the cravings of the omega, or maybe the Weather Wizard’s just a frat boy at heart. Who knows?

“We’re just leaving, that's what we are,” Mick says, grabbing Barry’s hand and leading him upstairs. “So don’t bother us!”

As soon as they’re alone in Mick’s room, he grins at Barry. “Sorry about ‘em. Can’t live with them…you know the rest.”

“Why are you all living together?”

Mick shrugs. “Supervillain thing,” he says.

“What, a shared inability to make rent?”

Mick laughs. “Nah,” he says. “We did a job, it went pear-shaped, and now some people are out to get us, so we’re huddling together for safety. S’cool, don’t worry about it,” he adds, seeing Barry opening his mouth to volunteer help. “It’ll all blow over soon enough.”

“Well,” Barry says. “I’m glad you guys are doing okay.”

Mick’s smile broadens. “I’m glad to see you too, Red.”

Mick does end up going omega after another few months, and he calls Barry on the number Barry’s given him – they’ve been texting a little, back and forth, because Barry’s really bad at doing the whole friends-with-benefits thing without also doing the, you know, friends part of it –with a request that Barry show up at a certain warehouse with his supersuit and without plans for the evening.

It’s awesome.

And, well, after that…

It’s not that they’re dating or anything, that’s for sure. They’re hero and villain, and they are not pulling a Batman-Catwoman shtick.

But Barry has Mick on his speed dial, calling him whenever his ruts or heats hit – he ends up going back to omega pretty quickly, since apparently that’s where his body’s comfort zone is – and Mick does the same, wherever he is on his cycle.

And, you know, maybe they hang out outside of that, sometimes. Mick’s pretty cool – no pun intended – and he’s very laid back, which Barry really appreciates given the usual high-key frenzy that he has to deal with as part of Team Flash.

So, yes, sometimes they go see movies, or go to dinner, or Mick will swing by Barry’s apartment and cook him something, even if it’s not exactly on their cycles.

Sometimes Barry goes to hang out at Mick’s place – which usually involves at least some Rogues, or at minimum Len, because Len and Mick are codependent best friends and Barry respects that, especially once Mick explained that Len is ace and didn’t give a damn about cycles in any direction.

(Also, Len sometimes has glowing blue eyes, usually when he's reading this big large Book on the couch, but Barry has decided not to ask about that.)

Either way, though - it works.

It’s – nice.

Barry’s happy.

Of course, Barry's hardly the only hero with a regular hookup for heats and ruts, but most of them at least pretend that said regular hookups are not with one of their villains. Barry, on the other hand, isn't much for pretending, and that means he gets the occasional Talk from his fellow superheroes.

The annoyingness quality of said Talk varies based on the person involved.

"Bad guy, huh?" Aquaman grunts. "Sure that's a good idea?"

"Truce applies in relation to clinic matters," Barry reminds him.

He gets a shrug in return. "Doesn't make it not a bad idea."

"I'm an adult capable of making my own decisions, thanks."

"You sure you're okay?" Cyborg asks, looking sincerely concerned. "I mean, he's not, like, taking advantage or -"

Barry takes poor brand-new Cyborg to the clinic and corrects his misapprehensions much the same way Mick did for him, though without the proposition.

"A villain, Barry," Oliver says flatly. "Really?"

"Huntress," Barry reminds him. He's never going to let Oliver live that down.

"She's an anti-hero sometimes," Oliver says. "But Heatwave -"

"Are you trying to say the Rogues aren't anti-heroes sometimes?"

"Not the point."

"I don't think you actually have a point," Barry says. "You want to register your disapproval. Well, it's registered."

"You know it's not that," Oliver says. "We're friends. I worry."

"I appreciate that. But seriously, I'm fine. Trust me. Mick and I have a good set-up that works for us."

"You know, if it's just a lack of other options -" Hawkgirl starts.

"I'm flattered," Barry says hastily. "But seriously, Kendra, no, I'm very happy as is." He pauses and frowns. "Tell me Oliver didn't send you."

"No, no - well, he did express his concern -"

"Punch him in the face for me, will you?"

She laughs.

"You know, it's really good that you're -" Superman starts.

"Nope," Barry says. "If this is a lead up to say something about Mick, you should stop right there. I'm totally happy to talk work and even fun hanging out stuff with you, but I'm still pissed at you about the whole cycle thing."

"...fair point," Superman concedes. "Well, good luck. My cousin says hi, too; she's hoping to get back to Earth soon and wants to meet him. Assuming you're not still too pissed at her, too."

"...it's hard to be pissed at Kara."

"It really is," Superman agrees, quite solemn. He doesn’t take any of it personally, which Barry really appreciates.

Wonder Woman just gives Barry a thumbs up, but to be fair Barry is pretty sure she's casually dating Golden Glider, so he wasn't really expecting a lecture from her.

And then one day he turns around and the urban legend of Gotham is standing behind him with a brooding expression.

"Don't tell me you have an opinion, too," Barry sighs. He’d known this was coming – Batman had an opinion on everything.

Usually a negative one.

Usually a negative one backed with data collected via an unnecessary amounts of stalking.

“No,” Batman says. “No opinion.”

“…what, really?”

Batman’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker. “Central City is beyond my jurisdiction.”

Barry blinks. “I mean,” he says, “not that I don’t appreciate that, but – and please don’t take offense here – it’s not like you really seem to pay attention to that whole jurisdiction thing for other heroes, so –”

“Central City itself,” Batman clarifies. “I can’t enter. None of the heroes can, not without your authorization.”

“…what now?”

“Well, excluding Diana,” Batman corrects, as if that was the problem with what he’d just said.

“Go back to the part where there’s a forcefield around Central City,” Barry says.

“It’s not a forcefield,” Batman says. “I’ve checked.”

“Then what?”

“A zone of no-interference,” Batman says. “If it makes you feel better, it’s been there for a while; I don’t think it’s actively harmful.”

“…okay,” Barry says. “And you didn’t feel the need to mention this before, so you’re telling me this right now for a – reason? I assume?”

“The zone appears to have changed.”

Barry isn’t very good at glaring, and certainly not at Batman, but he’s doing his best.

“Your relationship with Mick Rory.”

“Wait,” Barry says, “I thought we were talking about the – no-interference zone, I guess? You said you didn’t have an opinion on me and Mick!”

“Mick and I,” Batman says. “And I don’t. But I prefer to keep an eye on things that change.”

“You haven’t even told me how the zone changed!”

“It doesn’t just apply to Central City anymore,” Batman says. “It also applies whenever you and Mr. Rory are – together.”

Barry gapes at him.

“Just thought you should know,” Batman says, and then he’s gone.

“Oh, that,” Mick says.

“Oh, that?!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?”

“It’s just a thing.”

“Mick!”

Mick cracks a smile. “Sorry,” he says. Barry smacks him with a pillow; there’s several within easy reach from where they’re snuggling on the couch in the Rogues’ living room. “Couldn’t resist. It is just a thing, though. It's Lenny.”

“Len? I mean, Captain Cold? What about him?”

“Well, way back when, we joined this hero group for a while,” Mick says. “Called the ‘Legends’ –”

“What, really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You guys? As heroes?”

“When I said we all react to finding out about the cycles in different ways, I mean it,” Mick says dryly. “Len seemed to think we needed to try both sides of the villain-hero spectrum to see if it was different. It isn’t, by the way.”

“Okay,” Barry says, mildly disappointed. It would’ve been interesting to go villain for a little bit. Just a tiny little bit. A nice, not-always-on-call villain, who could probably sleep in on the weekends for once instead of having to deal with a brand new crisis of the week…maybe he could arrange a kidnapping instead? Mick would definitely oblige. “What does that have to do with a magical zone of non-interference?”

“Well,” Mick says. “Len ended up doing something stupid.”

“Wow,” Barry says dryly. “Look at me. I’m so surprised. Len? I assume it was extremely dramatic.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Shocker.”

Mick laughs. “Well, anyway, he ended up sort of kind of – getting blown up?”

“He what?”

“Long story. He got better, though –"

Of course he got better.

"- and anyway he ended up in this garden that exists out of space and time, and while he was there, he stole this book - you've seen it, the Book? - and now he has this weird part-time job, sort of, except the guy he stole the book from is sort of mentoring him for a quote, ‘more peaceful transition than my brother’ because apparently there was a whole thing or something, I don't know. So Len gets to spend some of his time here, instead of being stuck in the garden.”

“Okay. So he’s a part-time…bookkeeper?”

Mick cackles. “You hear that, Lenny?” he shouts. “You’re a bookkeeper!”

“You have no idea how literal that is,” Len says, wandering out of the kitchen. He’s got the glowing blue eyes again, and he’s holding the Book – a big, gigantic tome of a book, and there’s a chain going from the spine onto Len’s wrist. “See? I’m keeping the Book. I'm the Book keeper.”

Barry snorts a laugh, somewhat involuntarily. “What do you actually do?”

“Long story,” Len says. “Mick, the pasta –”

“There’s a bowl on the table.”

“You’re the best.”

Len wanders right back out again.

Barry wonders if now is a good time to ask about the glowing eyes.

“They go with the Book,” Mick says.

Barry blinks at him.

“The eyes. They happen whenever the Book’s around. Len thinks it’s cute that you never ask, by the way.”

Barry flushes. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

Mick shifts a little, pulling Barry in closer. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t mind if it’s you. You’re my plus-one.”

Barry pauses. “I am?” he asks hopefully. “Really?”

“I mean. If you wanna be.”

“Yes. I do. Definitely. For sure. I mean, assuming we’re talking about dating.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“Then yes. Assuming you want me to…?”

“Yeah, Red. I do.”

“Okay,” Barry says, smiling. “So, that settled, how does Len and the book play into the zone of no-interference?”

“I think the book gives him certain powers?” Mick says. “I’m not entirely sure. But either way, when he tells people to buzz off, they buzz off. And, uh, when I say that I might want a bit of privacy in my, uh, relationships, then…”

Barry starts grinning wider. “Then it starts applying whenever we're together once I made the move to being relationship material?”

“Basically,” Mick says, looking relieved that he doesn’t have to spell it out. “Man, am I glad that we ironed that dating thing out before I had to admit that.”

Barry laughs.

“So,” Batman says. He’s still wearing the cowl, even though it’s an engagement party and supposed to be low-key and clinic-truce rather than heroes and villains, but he has at least condescended to accept a slice of Mick’s delicious homemade cake. “When you say ‘Destiny’, you mean – actual Destiny?”

Len grins and throws an arm over Batman’s shoulders. “Wanna see my Book?”

“…that’s not a proposition.”

“Nah, I’m ace.”

“In that case, yes. I would very much like to see your – ‘Book’.”

“Great,” Len says. “You can come to my garden and take a peep. One of my new siblings is really looking forward to meeting you…”

#flashwave #flashwaveweek2018 #mick rory #barry allen #leonard snart #my fic

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semi-anonyme · 4 years

Text

Let’s Talk About Alcohol

Gear up baby, this is a long and very personal post but I think it can help people and certainly it feels very cathartic to write.

Last night, I drank my last alcohol for a while, at least until my birthday in 2 months (more on that later). I’ve been declaring some intention to abstain from alcohol for a while now, but I think I’ve learned enough about myself during this past few months that this declaration now is clearer and more intentional. I’m going to write about it now because putting things into words is my therapeutic and ritualistic way of putting something behind me.

I think a big issue with substance abuse is being okay knowing that you have had legitimately good experiences that could not be replicated while sober. The part of me that strives to be mature and clearheaded wants to say:

every great experience I've had under the influence could have been replicated with a sober mind, I don’t need drugs

But the private voice in the back of my head says:

damn, those times were so fun. God do I really have to punish myself by going stone sober?

These two states, how I want to feel about my usage vs how I actually feel about my usage, create other feelings of shame and apprehension. I'm ashamed that I feel this way because I don't want the stigma of someone who is out of control but I also have no desire to stop because in my head the experience of the drug is irreplaceable.

An example I'm thinking of right now is going out to dance. When I'm a little faded on the dance floor, I usually have a big ass smile on my face and I vibe, man, I vibe. And there are times where I'm in the zone, I'll have people coming up to me -- including really beautiful women -- who just want to dance with me, know me.

As someone who spends so much time in solitude, it feels good and validating as a single man who also desires intimacy. There's something about knowing my energy was attractive that just feels good.

Same thing with sitting at a bar just drinking. I'd just be at a place having an IPA or a negroni after work, maybe some live jazz in the East Village. I'd enter with a lot on my mind and feel closed off. A drink or two in I'd start having a conversation with a woman sitting near me. Everything that flows out of me is just funny and real. The thoughts in my head I had deemed too shameful to reveal in my sober mind are expressed without inhibition. I am a poet. There's nothing to hide, this is real, and my inner life flows out of me as naturally as rivers flow downstream. I feel validated. Yes, I am a misunderstood martyr. Yes, I am a tragic anti-hero. Yes, these feelings I've been hiding are universal, why should I feel so ashamed? This is great. I love this.

I wake up the next day, maybe with a headache and a phone number or an instagram follow, but I know that I have no intention of actually knowing these people. Because who I was last night and who I am now are two different people. The shame is still there, it just got a little room to breathe.

Isn't that what we're always looking for? Just some room to breathe?

There's an overall theme in these two examples. On times I've been out drinking, there's this feeling of openness, human connection, and courage. In many ways, it's like wearing a mask and adopting a new identity. This character is full of joie de vivre, this character is an open book, this character is at peace with himself, this character is easily excitable, this character has an attractive energy and feels himself to be attractive. This character accepts his flaws, and knows that his humanity is precisely what makes him easy to connect with.

I remember one time I was talking to my therapist about drinking. I told her of all the times I had out, dancing, all the connections I made, all the memories I had. She looked at me and very non-judgmentally said, "it seems that alcohol has really given you a lot in your life". I agreed. She said, "you know, the alcohol is not really the problem - the alcohol is a proxy for something else, which is the relationship you have to yourself".

That kind of blew my mind. It made sense even initially, but over the past year it has become more concrete, and is the lens through which I view compulsive behavior. I’ll explain what she means more if you don’t quite get it.

If you notice how I laid out this "character" that I adopt, the space between who I am and this character is bridged -- or related -- by alcohol. In my daily life, I want to be more open, want to be quick to laugh, want to be quick witted and outside of my head more. I want to have that beautiful attractive energy I that I envy in some people. The alcohol gives me a lot of that -- but at a price.

I've talked with friends about their compulsive behaviors, read anonymous confessions on reddit, read about celebrities opening up about their addictions, and when you get into the why of when these people find themselves acting out their compulsive behavior, it really boils down to this:

I feel something that I do not want to feel --> I do a thing to escape this feeling --> that feeling goes away (but only temporarily)

A great example is when I listened to Kid Cudi on the Joe Rogan Experience talk about his addiction to cocaine. Note that this interview was in 2014 and he wasn't actually clean yet, so he was talking about a problem he was still privately battling. If you go to the 1:30 mark, he talks about his "trifecta" -- do cocaine before breakfast, drink a beer, smoke some weed. This allowed him to go out into the streets and interact with fans who would inevitably stop him and want to talk. Without it, he felt he couldn't.

What it did for me, it completely numbed me, I didn’t care about anything, I was a robot. But being so numb, it allowed me to meet my fans and be out in the streets, so in a twisted way, it did a positive thing for me and that’s why I didn’t see it as an issue

Like damn, today I went out in Soho and I was just high fiving fans and shit. It was the most amazing experience, something that I never get a chance to feel because I’m just like such a recluse and I was just weirded out when people recognized me and I just didn’t want to go anywhere

Kid Cudi needed his "trifecta" to get through that, but ultimately, a personality built off of drug use is obviously unsustainable. Again:

I feel something that I do not want to feel --> I do a thing to escape this feeling --> that feeling goes away (but only temporarily)

But that's the thing though. You don't know you have a problem until you're knee deep in it because the initial benefits of the drug use are so obviously good and pivotal to functioning.

Last year, I read this book The Lost Weekend -- it's about an alcoholic who goes on a five day bender that almost kills him. While I am not an alcoholic, it was amazing and terrifying to see how much of the character I identified with in his first two days of drinking. I wrote earlier how I now have a lens through which to view addiction ("alcohol is the proxy for your relationship to yourself") and this lens allowed me to see the main character, Don Birnam, for who he was and who he wanted to be and how he used alcohol to try and bridge the gap.

He was a failed writer who used alcohol to escape into fantasies of how his life should have turned out. There's this scene in day 2 of his bender where he's listening to a recording of a pianist and he talks about how his greatest fantasy is to have a piano recital at Carnegie Hall, a sold out show, and play beautiful piano pieces by his favorite composers. Everyone would adore him and his work.

While under the influence, he has these moments of clarity where he knows what he wants and feels committed to doing it. But as the booze wears off so does the satisfaction he has achieved in his fantasies, and he chases these fleeting feelings with more booze. After waking up, shaking, the only thing he can do to smother his feelings of shame and try to re-capture that sliver of optimism he felt is to drink even more. Therein lies the cycle of abuse.

This book was written in 1944 but it floors me how universally it portrays the mindset of drinking, and the slippery slope that the road takes. When it was published, a famous screenwriter named Herman Mankiewicz (an alcoholic who wrote Citizen Kane among many other great screenplays), having seen himself in the character of Don Birnam, attempted suicide. I was curious what more contemporary takeaways were. I can't find the source, but the one that stuck with me is when someone wrote, "The Lost Weekend made me realize that I thought that I was better than other people in my drinking, but in the end it's drinking, it's all the same".

Is it too embarrassing for me to admit that I totally get that?

I mentioned that substances are a poor substitute for the feelings we are attempting to bolster, and this is something I learned the hard way. I've had more than a few dozen conversations in my life with strangers that I felt were incredibly deep and meaningful, where I thought maybe, "oh this is someone I want to know in my everyday life". But of all those conversations, I think I may have had 3 people who are still in my life in any way today. And that's because the people you meet while out at bars are all wearing their own masks and good relationships aren't built on the basis of one strong connection alone.

Relationships, like all things worth building, take time.

I’m not an alcoholic, but maybe we should also get rid of that term?

There’s an article I read about a problem drinker who stopped calling herself an alcoholic and it struck a chord with me. I do not fit the profile of an alcoholic (and I guess the DSM 5 has revised the issue of problem drinking as Alcohol Use Disorder), but it has been obvious to me that something was not right with my alcohol use and I didn't feel completely in control of my actions. In fact, it was after waking up with a bad hangover on a Saturday last March that I decided to see a therapist.

I can't find it now, but there was an article I read when I was searching "how much is too much alcohol consumption". In this article, a psychologist said something along the lines of:

We used to give specific guidelines like 5 drinks is too much for a man, 3 drinks is too much for a woman. But there are people who drink more than these guidelines and live perfectly normal lives, and people who drink less and it's problematic. The amount you're drinking isn't as important as why you're drinking

I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that last night would be my last bits of alcohol for a while. If you had to guess, for me to make that type of declaration, how much do you think I drank?

The answer? (3) 16 oz beers over the course of about 5 hours. I like the taste of really boozy beers so these definitely weren't Tecates (the beers were 7.0%, 8.5% and 8% respectively) but still if you were to take that number and ask any random drinker whether that was too much they'd say, "what? c'mon, live a little".

This is the importance of self-knowledge though. Listen to yourself. Our intuition is pretty good at knowing when something is wrong.

So, what next?

I highly doubt I will be alcohol free for the rest of my life.

My self-awareness has always been a mixed bag of tricks but in identifying the root causes of my problem drinking (who I want to be vs who I actually am) plus my belief in my ability to change will allow me to get through this just fine.

I imagine being basically like Anthony Bourdain (RIP, sweet prince), who had a heroin addiction when he was younger but was able to travel and go drinking in his later years because he was no longer the person who did that.

I wrote a lot just now about this character that I don when I’m drinking who is open, friendly, confident, quick to laugh, sure of himself, easily excitable. These aren't just things I aspire to be but things I believe myself to be at my core, hidden underneath a layer of self-consciousness and useless thoughts that have no bearing in reality. When alcohol allows me to cut through that layer, it's not like I'm withdrawing from a bank account that's not mine; I'm reaching into a store of reserves that are in my name, just kind of hard to get to. I'm putting in the work now to streamline access to this core self, if this metaphor holds up

Earlier in the year, I mentioned my drinking guidelines as:

Vacations. Celebrations. Dates.

Vacations are a given, I never have a problem drinking while I'm on vacation. Celebrations mean big ones, basically, my birthday or my closest friends' birthdays or if my company gets acquired, or something. My plan is to do a deep dive for an extended period while working on my goals and designing the life I want to live. Like most people, drinking alcohol started as this social thing I did, which I wasn't doing unless I was with friends, and ended up becoming this thing that I used to avoid dealing with uncomfortable feelings I had about myself, feelings that only intensified the later I got into my 20s.

One reason why problematic drinking was able to go on for an extended amount of time -- hangovers and bad quality sleep and all -- was that I really didn't have anything else to look forward to. I could do my work fine so that was taken care of, but nothing actually excited me in my life. My goals in life became these checkboxes on a list of things that I thought might make me feel good but I was becoming less certain about that.

But after really examining my values in life, what I want to do, who I want to become, who I have to become in order to achieve these goals, I do have things that I'm excited to wake up and do now. And ultimately that's the only way to replace negative behaviors -- whether it's drinking, drugs, reckless sex, or procrastination. You have to identify why you do what you do and find suitable substitutes that give you the same benefits. Falling asleep at 3:30am after drinking 5 IPAs and watching 3.5 hours of K-Dramas doesn't have the same appeal to it like it did a couple of months ago.

Another reason why this has gone on pretty long is that when I think of myself in the future, I have an image in my head that constantly crosses my mind:

I'm living in New York or Paris or Tbilisi, a big city, you know. I have a beautiful apartment. It's Sunday at 2:00pm and I'm finishing up my first session of work and could use a break. I hit up a group of close friends and we decide to go to the neighborhood bar, have a beer, talk about what's happening in our lives, or do a post-game analysis of last night's shenanigans. We laugh, do that quality friend time, build memories and strengthen our connection.

But after babysitting a beer or two it is now the evening, and I want to make sure I have enough energy and focus -- either for a second session of work or just so I can relax at home just reading a book or watching a movie or spending quality time with my girlfriend/wife.

That sounds cute, right? Doesn't that sound beautiful?

Every time I’ve thought of abstaining from drinking, that image plays in my head and I think, “do I really need to stop? Can’t I just moderate? Like in that image?” Now I know from experience that asking yourself that question is a huge red flag.

Last week, I laid out some of my one year goals:

(1) to create a social media website (2) drop weight and attain a lean, muscular, model-esque physique (3) learn how to rap, develop a flow, and release some rap songs on SoundCloud

One thing I know about pursuing these things is that the process will become satisfying in and of itself. And when that satisfaction really sets in and the dopamine machine of my life is on autopilot, when I'm just really excited to wake up and work on programming this new feature before work, when I'm really excited to get my pull-ups in because my lats are starting to look really good and my body is just getting more tight and angular, when I'm excited to work on my rhymes because I have a few clever wordplays I want to drop, that's when I know, okay, I can have a couple of drinks with friends. Because by that point, the relationship with myself will have been repaired, and I'll have something to look forward to, and I won't look at myself as being this person who needs to avoid things or prop up my self-esteem, you know.

I have more to say (when do I not? I swear I can’t shut the fuck up) but I'll leave it at that for now.

I can’t believe you read this all.

I love you. I love you all.

#self #text post #alcohol #alcoholism #alcohol abuse #drinking #anxiety #depression #compulsive behavior

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