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#construction disputes examples
marzipanandminutiae · 7 months
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she's never going to read this, but it's still interesting
so the person with the extremely cold corset takes last night has now decided that dress history folks are straight-up lying about the purpose of corsets. because we just love them so much, I guess?
she found this ad:
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and therefore knows corsets were Totally About Waist Reduction First And Foremost, Always And Forever, Amen
I have. some thoughts.
the main one being that nobody claimed corsets were never used to waist-train back then
the secondary one being that many ads for "form-reducing corsets," at least the ones that I found, make a distinction between "normal" corsets and their product:
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It's a specialty product, not what the average woman is wearing on a daily basis. Is its existence messed up? Yes! But nobody has been disputing that pressure on women to look a certain way, and fatphobia, are awful. The issue in question is: was the primary function of an average (in this case Victorian/Edwardian) corset waist reduction? It seems to me that the ad supplied- again, for a specialty garment that was not seen as an ordinary corset -does not prove OP's point.
so let's look at some ordinary corset ads, shall we?
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(don't freak out too much about the "baby/child corsets"- I've worked with extant examples many times, and they're just lightly stiffened vests. you couldn't lace a kid down in them if you tried- not that you should, obviously)
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(Pliability, elasticity, comfort- but no mention of waist reduction as a selling point)
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(this one is an unusual design, but I'm including it because it mentions support- and specifically breast support -not once, but twice. It also instructs ladies to measure their waists OUTSIDE their clothing- which will result in a larger measure even than we commonly use for custom corsets nowadays. note that a 2" lacing gap was common, per a corsetiere quoted in Valerie Steele's The Corset: A Cultural History)
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(Flexibility and comfort, yet again.)
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(Rather a ridiculous one, including the implication that you need an elegant corset to snare a husband and therefore economic security and love, but the bottom left text says "What an improvement the Madam Warren corset. And how comfortable.")
so we've clearly got comfort, support, and ease of movement at the forefront of the average consumer's mind, for so many ads to mention such thing. a number also don't have much text at all:
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(The Celebrated EEE is my hypothetical burlesque name, but I digress.)
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of the first twenty random ads that come up when I do an image search for "corset advertisement," eleven mention health and/or comfort, and only one directly mentions waist reduction- while advertising, again, a separate specialty "reducing" corset.
am I saying it never happened? absolutely not. I have NEVER been saying that. tightlacing did happen. obviously reducing corsets existed. I would not deny any of this
am I saying that, clearly, support and comfort were thought so high on the average corset-wearer's priority list that manufacturers played to those attributes more than waist reduction when constructing/advertising corsets, implying that they are NOT, in fact, the same thing as a Kim K waist cincher? yes
(file under: things I cannot believe I have to fucking say, and yet here we are)
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redditreceipts · 13 days
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I'm very pessimistic about the oppression of females.
I think males are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy. The solution would be to reduce the male population to 8% (through abortions for example) and bioengineer them to destroy these biological predispositions.
yeah, it's an interesting idea. I personally don't really think that they are biologically predisposed to do that, I think that patriarchy is dependant on the principals of ownership in our society, and when the social construction of ownership changes, the oppression of women changes as well. I don't really see much proof for a biological predisposition of patriarchy. we could look at our nearest ancestors, chimpanzees and bonobos, but they both have very different ways of displaying sexually dimorphic behaviour. and who's to say that homo sapiens sapiens didn't evolve in a completely different manner somewhere along the way? there have also been a lot of matriarchal societies in human history, or at least societies that have not been patriarchal (because the term "matriarchy" is disputed in ethnological circles I guess)
but even if it's the case that men are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy, I think we can adopt other methods to reach the same "bioengineering" goals (and these are actually realistic and applicable today).
Let's assume that the tendency to create patriarchy is genetically predisposed in men, then we could "genetically change" them in the following ways:
encouraging women to only have children with men who lack oppressive behaviourial patterns
encouraging the abortion of a fetus if the father is an asshole
mandatory castration of all sex offenders
this way, the "patriarchy genes" would just not be passed down. and look in the animal kingdom: female peacocks found males with blue feathers, a crown and a beautiful tail sexy, and the males complied. female baboons found that ugly ass blue and red nose sexy, and what did the males do? they evolved to have it. if female birds can get their men to get crazy dances to perform for them and to evolve in every color of the rainbow, then female homo sapiens should get their men to behave imo
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thequeer07puss · 10 days
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On Zeus and Hera: divine conflict
When one consults the lore about Zeus and Hera, they may notice a pretty consistent pattern in their relationship: that is, the terrifying and constructive nature of their conflicts and disputes with each other, where a frustrated Zeus matches his brains with an equally frustrated Hera. This may lead some people to think that they don’t love each other, while this is simply not the case, which is why I’m writing this rant about the nature of the two head gods of the Olympian pantheon’s conflict with each other, and the ways in which it is significant in maintaining the balance of the universe.
First of all, Zeus and Hera are siblings. Siblings bicker and fight all the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. In fact, the love of Zeus and Hera is recounted in multiple bits of poetry, and their wedding famously lasted 300 years. The myth of the founding of the Daidala festival reinforces this notion of deep love and respect that the two gods have for each other, especially the one that Zeus has for Hera, his wedded wife and definitive partner.
Next up, the conflict between the two of them is a reminder of the equal nature of their marriage, as Zeus never argues with any other deity than Hera, nor does she argue with anyone other than her husband, with both allowing their points and desires to be heard and understood by the other. In the Iliad for example, Hera is the only goddess with whom Zeus shares his plans for the fate of Troy, to which she responds with her own plans to bring glory to the Acheans before all of it comes to pass, making the divine couple agree on the following course of events that will lead to the fall of Troy. This shows that this divine conflict, so often misinterpreted as divisive, serves as a means of determining the way in which the fate of the universe will be carried out.
Like Eve in the bible who was cursed with a mind contrary to her husband, Hera has a will opposed to that of Zeus, which serves as a challenge to him and a reinforcement of his diplomatic power, a good quality for a king to have, which ultimately leads to the solidification of his reign as supreme, since he is able to not only marry his way back into Olympus through Hera (she is a symbol of legitimacy after all), but also reconcile his will with that of a contrary goddess such as Hera, thereby making him seem wiser and peaceful in the eyes of the gods, to whom he is a father and a sibling.
Moreover, Zeus even appreciates, or at least accepts the fact that Hera is constantly bickering with him, as seen in the Iliad, when he sends Iris to scold Athena for being against his will while letting Hera walk away without consequence, even specifying that her character opposes his. Another example is in one version of the story of Tiresias, where the divine couple argued about who gets the most pleasure during sex and call Tiresias to give his opinion on the matter, having been man and woman at multiple points of his life.
Hera and Zeus argue all the time, but the Eris (discord/strife) omnipresent in their relationship is not the destructive, war-creating Eris that we all know and love (Hesiod identified two Erises), but the one that makes rivals compete, the one that makes opponents fight, and the one that makes siblings quarrel. As such, it is no coincidence that she is sometimes the daughter of the divine couple, and that her presence leads to constructive forms of conflict that facilitate the reconciliation of two opposing sides, making her a force of peace instead of lasting hatred that one thinks of when they hear the word “discord”.
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the-nightraven · 1 year
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Astrology with Raven.
Greetings, little astro-birdies! This is a continuation of serving an astro-blog. Hence, here are some speculations over your curios requests:
Lilith is a point that narrates about dark sides of a native’s soul, which can be detected during intensive periods of life or it is considered as a concealed desire that can be in an exaggerated form. In order to perceive it in a more accurate way, you can observe a perception difference between Saturn and Lilith placements in houses - as an example, 5 house placements: a Saturn native tends to refrain himself/herself from aspects of life that emanates from a house effect, in our situation, which are hobbies, leisure time preferences, an entertainment, sex, romantic relationships and grasps; where as a Lilith native can have an obscured, sealed interests in an exaggerated form, as it was stated previously, in topics that a house concerns. 
Since Lilith can be interpreted as a Black Side of Moon, natives can negate all those characteristic in themselves, however since it is a little morsel of their Moon, there is still a deprivation of those characteristic: 
A person with Lilith in Cancer or in a Cancer degree - 4, 16, 28 - may negate everything, concerning a mother figure, an emotional connection and their own emotional nature. The placement polarises a vision to an emotional deprivation of natives: they need an emotional connection, however Lilith distorted their perception of a guardian - they might have had problems with a mother figure and have felt an absence of emotional protection from her side in their childhood. Lilith in the 4th house can have resemblances in parental situations, home-relationships’ conditions that are deteriorated, where a profound human need in close family relationships grows, however due to the trauma with it, they might reject any kind of idea towards constructing their own family. 
Lilith gives an erratic opinion over the house’s topics. For instance, an owner of 5th house Black Moon will be in periods of wanting to have a lot of children or periods of disdain towards the thought of having any child in his/her life; a fluctuation of thoughts about getting into romantic relationships - it must happen with only being absorbed with a romance or an utter abandonment of any kind of lover-relationships. 
Lilith in Capricorn needs social praise and being able to function in a social hierarchy, gaining a better social placement, however might face obstacles. The inner self of natives is pretty conservative and solemn.
Lilith in Aries has an inner problem with aggressive emotions, liberating them. I have a few acquaintances, owning this Lilith in Aries, including me: all representatives have concealed anger issues - natives can not express it in a healthy way, periodically condensing everything inside. Secretively they have a tendency to make disputes and debates, serving polemics - we are secretly fond of them. 
Lilith in the 12th house tends to be immersed in their unconsciousness, hidden thoughts and meaning - I have a friend with this placement. These natives are prone to be escapists with a convoluted mind. Their concealed desire is to be embedded in a delusional idea, to unravel.
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The 4th house in Capricorn indicates a strict parent, profoundly, a mother. A family is much more a conservative one, where an emotional connection is absent - relationships within family relatives are distant, especially with the main female figure, a mother. My beloved little brother has a cuspid of the 4th house in Capricorn, so… A mother tends to be imperative over a child and insists on social principles and regulations. 
You might get irritated by a person with the same Moon sign as your Lilith due to them being an embodiment of your concealed features and tendencies to behave and serve your life. The person with the sign of your Lilith might trigger something inside for your sake - an acquaintance with him/her might embolden you to accept your inner self and to begin a personality elaboration.
Uranus in the 5th house is an indicator of having peculiar, promiscuous hobbies and having a vast spector of them. Preferences in sex and serving romantic relationships are rebellious and also peculiar that definitely stands out in a social circle. I might assume that it is an indicator of being possibly involved by LGBT communities due to the untraditional sexual orientation. 
Sun in the 4th house is an indicator of a father figure that was immersed in a family situation. However, rather it was a negative influence or a positive one might depict only aspects: if there are harsh ones with Uranus, Pluto or Saturn, a father might have been absent and it negatively affected a situation in the family. Nonetheless, it is a paramount field - a family - in native’s life. A family does not have to be only with blood relatives - a person might value a lot his own country or a place, where he/she has dwelt in. Hence, a person might be patriotic, especially in terms of Sun, Venus and Mars placed in the 4th house. 
If you have an interest in some aspects or placements, you can ask in the comments and I will include it in my further posts.
Sincerely, your Raven ♥
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wikiweird · 10 months
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Spite House -
Spite houses are unique and often peculiar structures that are built primarily to annoy, inconvenience, or retaliate against someone or something. They typically serve as a form of protest or revenge by individuals who feel wronged or antagonized. Spite houses can be found in various parts of the world and have become intriguing architectural curiosities.
The motivations behind building spite houses can vary. Sometimes, they are constructed due to disputes between neighbors, family feuds, or disagreements with local authorities. In other cases, they may be a response to perceived injustices or attempts to thwart unwanted developments.
One famous example of a spite house is the "Skinny House" located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It was built in 1874 when a man named Joseph E. Sturgis inherited a narrow strip of land from his father. However, his brother, who also inherited a share, built a large home on his portion, obstructing Joseph's view and access to sunlight. In retaliation, Joseph constructed a spite house on his small strip of land, which measured just 1.67 meters (less than 6 feet) wide at its narrowest point. The Skinny House stands to this day, serving as a testament to a long-standing family dispute.
Another famous example is the Hollensbury Spite House in Alexandria, Virginia, USA. In the 1830s, John Hollensbury, the owner of a nearby grocery store, grew frustrated with people using the alley next to his property as a shortcut. To deter them, he built a small, wedge-shaped house in the middle of the alley. The Hollensbury Spite House remains a prominent feature in Old Town Alexandria and has become a popular tourist attraction.
Spite houses can take on various forms and architectural styles. Some are intentionally designed to be visually bizarre or impractical. The primary goal is often to make a statement or inconvenience those who provoked the construction. However, not all spite houses are meant to be inhabited; some are merely symbolic gestures.
While spite houses may be intriguing to observe, they also reflect the conflicts and disputes that arise between individuals. They serve as reminders of the lengths some people will go to express their dissatisfaction and seek revenge through unconventional means.
Read more
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tanadrin · 10 months
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OK, so this post is going to probably look like I’m critcizing @jadagul quite directly, and I am, but only because he is a proximate example of something I find worth commenting on generally. This does not change the fact that I generally like and respect him, and find him pleasant to interact with.
There is a style of political thinking which seems to have an intuition that the law should work like mathematical formalism or computer programming, with a very close and literal relationship between any act of government (an executive action or an act of a legislature) and the constitutional or statutory text which enables that action. That even if the law is a messy and organic human institution, it shouldn’t be, and in ideal circumstances the whole system would be fairly mechanistic, with little room for human discretion. This line of thinking seems to work itself out in ideas like, “OK, discrimination is bad; but so is the government interfering in private actions; so anti-discrimination legislation is bad, too, in a different way.” Or “democracy is important, but part of democracy is free expression; and how you spend your money is a kind of expression, so limits on how you spend your money when it comes to politics is antithetical to democracy.” Or, in the anarcho-capitalist form I most strongly associate this line of thinking with, “OK, people seem to want a lot of freedom, low taxes, and the government not to tell them what to do; so we can (and should) construct a society where the government does very little--ideally nothing at all--and everything that can be is transferred to the private sphere, to be a matter of contract law and civil litigation. Since government power is very little or nonexistent, and all oppression comes from the government, everyone will be very free.”
This isn’t just wrong in the sense that the law is actually an irretrievably messy and organic institution because all human institutions are irretrievably messy and organic and we’re stuck with them; this is wrong because it is good that human institutions are messy and organic, and it would be bad if they were all purely mechanistic. I know this probably seems like a self-evidently silly thing to say if your intuition is toward the mechanistic and formalistic (and believe me, I share that aesthetic preference a lot of the time!) but it really is true. It is simply not possible for a legal system to reduce all potential coordination problems, political disputes, and breaches of social order to a set of general principles, and trying to would result in either monstrously cruel outcomes, like the ancient law codes that just killed everybody who broke them, or total structural collapse, like that town that got taken over by libertarians and then bears (because the libertarians didn’t understand the specific governance needs of the town, like how regular trash collection kept the bears away).
In particular, trying for this kind of metaphysical purity in your legal system often seems to cause people’s aesthetic preferences to short-circuit their moral ones; and because no legal system actually is metaphysically pure in this way, ultimately neither is satisfied. The thinking seems to go, we want a free and equal society without oppression; but government action is frequently oppressive, especially when it interferes with private business, so we don’t want to have anti-discrimination legislation. So what they get is a society without anti-discrimination legislation, that is also markedly unequal, because it turns out that bigotry just doesn’t go away by people saying “bigotry is bad, people shouldn’t do that.” Or, people want democracy; but they also want people to be able to spend their money how they want (that’s key to the liberal part of liberal democracy), so they don’t want to impose limits on spending around political campaigns. As a consequence, wealth inequalities distort politics by making the only viable candidates the ones who appeal to wealthy donors, putting a whole class of policies that poll really well outside the political pale--i.e., a profoundly undemocratic system where very popular legislation stands no chance of getting passed. Or, people want property rights and healthy markets; commensurate with that, they resist any effort to impose limits on those property rights or redistribute wealth. They get, as a result (and often hand-in-hand with the distortions of democracy that stem from the previous example), a system with a lot of rent-seeking and corruption where fair competition is almost impossible and there are a lot of monopolies that are bad for both businesses and consumers, far from the libertarian utopia of their laissez-faire dreams.
This isn’t meant to be a Chestertonian set of counterintuitive gotchas, where I try to argue that the real democracy was monarchy all along or something, just an observation that you have to look at, and argue from, actual outcomes, and not just what is conceptually appealing, even if you want to further quite lofty and abstract political ideals. Much the same way that abolishing your military does not keep you out of conflicts, if it results in you suddenly getting invaded by your neighbor, or abolishing anti-discrimination law would not result in a freer society, if you have a bunch of racists itching to discriminate against the minorities they don’t like.
I remember a post of Scott Alexander’s once expressing confusion at the idea banks would just decide not lend to black people in the midcentury US, because surely they would stand to make more money if they had more customers, and if they had more customers the banks run by non-racists would outcompete the banks run by racists, and I remember thinking, like, come on dude. There is a whole complex social ecology surrounding race and racial discrimination, which is going to drown out any possible weak effect that you are pointing to here. And he simply could not see it because it was not part of the world he knew, and he lacked the imagination to understand it.
Everything the law touches is like this. Law is not actually, nor can it be, a separate domain from politics, or economics, or private business, or religion, or any other aspect of human life. It is a loose category of thing we have drawn a fuzzy border around, like so much else. And because of the complexity inherent in the problems it presents, trying to decide which policies are best without reference to actual outcomes at best makes you prone to a kind of head-in-the-clouds idealism. But much more often, I think it means people support things actually corrosive to the principles they claim to espouse.
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cerisezero · 7 months
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I keep thinking about the times that someone has looked at the idea of writing their language and gone '…yeah no I'm gonna fix that' or 'yeah I want a piece of that action' and made it happen, for any reason. And I'm gonna make noises about it for a little bit. Maybe highlight a couple of things.
You've got King Sejong in Korea going "OK. The script we're using now is hella complex and …Chinese. I want something that's easy enough for a farmer to learn. And maybe to pay his taxes with." And he works out hangul, neat and logical and frequent winner of Best Writing System awards if such things exist. (And then the nobles don't like it because how are they supposed to look smart if the peasants can write too?)
You've got Sequoyah, thinking the settlers he's doing business with might have at least one good idea in this whole 'talking leaves' system they're using. So he throws himself into working out a syllabary that works for the Cherokee language even when his friends and family think he's losing the plot or he's possessed or… Anything. But he hangs in there. Teaches his daughter. Proves that this is something worth it, and goes on to see the syllabary he created become official and used throughout the Cherokee Nation.
These are the best known ones. But how many are there out there?
There are systems where a missionary or someone similar's come into a place, and gone 'hm, Latin ain't cutting it for writing this' - the Cree syllabics and their extended Canadian family fall into this box, though there's at least some accounts that dispute the usual story. (Given that a lot of those sort of stories come down to 'so we can make a Bible at these people', it's fair to put a big old asterisk on them, but… they're a thing.) Getting away from that issue, though? There's local creators making a bespoke system for their language when the ones they'd picked up from outside just don't fit the sounds or grammatical patterns. Writing systems that can really belong to a language and its people.
While it's absolutely not my place to say whether something is good or bad - the only people who can do that are the language users and community the script was made for - there can't help but be a few that catch the eye. For example, I'm quite fond of the Ditema tsa Dinoko script - it's a pretty recent creation from South Africa as a script for a wide range of Bantu languages, using compact triangular blocks in a way that reflects traditional patterns from Sesotho tradition. From my outside perspective, it's an elegant script. It's just one example, though - there's many creators in Africa who have done similar things, sitting down and making a script that their language needs and that isn't being shoved on them by… yeah. Vai and N'Ko are the biggest examples but there are so many! Moving on, in Oceania, we find the Avoiuli text from Vanuatu, designed so that any one character can be drawn with one stroke in the sand… and elsewhere, the scripts being created to use with signed languages which haven't used them in the past…
If I were to try and go into all of them, it'd be a whole essay. And I'd probably miss some as I'm an outsider nerd without access to the deep literature on some of this stuff. Instead, I'll link to The World's Writing Systems as an index to browse through - unfortunately, it doesn't allow searching by how the writing system was created. But there are plenty of indigenous scripts listed there too that deserve their own deep dive. (The fact it lists con-scripts specifically made for fiction… eh.) Their icon comes from the Afaka script, for the Ndyuka creole in Suriname. A lot of the letters are quite pictorial in nature - including the 'ka' in WWS's icon. Gotta say, that's a way to make things memorable.
…anyway, that's my ramble for today. Just gonna wrap with this source which I haven't fully investigated yet, and Endangered Alphabets which isn't so much for deliberately constructed scripts but (unsurprisingly) for endangered ones in general, and as such plain deserves a link.
Now I go back to my own scribbling. Maybe I'll finish a con-script enough to show off one day. Even if one rather smaller in goals.
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badpancakelol · 5 months
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the one where steve harrington is the monster in the woods
Hawkins has never been one of those towns that you could point to on the map unless you were looking for it. Swaddled between the wide expanse of nothingness on either side, the town is less than a town, really. If anything, and Steve had figured this out when he was only young, only tall enough to slide the hard-covered dictionary from its place on the bookshelf into his little, grubby hands, the town was better suited to one of its other synonyms — a village, maybe. It was a little archaic, yes, young Steven had noticed this, but wasn’t their town always a little bit backwards? 
It was a well known fact that nobody had tried to dispute for years, that Hawkins wasn’t interesting until you turned of age. A long time ago, before Steven’s parents were born, before Loch Nora had been a place for two-to-three story houses, deep pools, and house parties, that age had been eighteen. Steven had been regaled of stories, through thick books and musty paper, about how you were meant to drink, and fuck, and drive, smoke, party, undress, and press soft hands into softer flesh — feel the pleasures of a lesser man — destroy yourself from within. 
Then, there was the accident. And the age had been heightened to twenty-one. 
What if it happens again? They’re only children, really, why are we letting them do this? They shall be condemned. Young Steven had read the words on the paper, had squinted his eyes at the accounts of the courts in swirling text that had been ingrained into him from a young age. His script was loopy and small, quaint on the pieces of paper that his father had handed to him. Young men can write in its proper form, his father had said. And he had always said that, called Steve a young man — as if he was never truly anything but a being who was fully formed and grown, from before his first breath.
It had always rubbed him the wrong way. The way that they would leave him as if he were of age, days to weeks to months, alone and alone and alone. The walls of the house used to have this ugly wallpaper, patterned with golds and blues and whites. It was so terribly ugly, Steven had thought, with paintings of oranges and their yellowing leaves, and the stripes of sky-tones that reminded him of summer. His nanny would dust the walls as if he had dirtied them, tutting with that warmth within her skin, that made him want to be swallowed whole. She would dance around the house like a film, humming in that soft voice, skirts making dainty circles as she twirled and cooked. 
When they had gone through house renovation number one, the wallpaper was the first thing to go. Ugly, unprofessional, childish, beach-y. Steven didn’t know why he missed it. Why he cried at the sight of the workers peeling and scraping the essence of summer from his house. But as soon as he had been spotted within the dust and the rot, he had been pulled from the construction site, ushered away to the small townhouse that they were staying in. 
But, focus, we are not talking about young Steven, or his father, or his house. We are talking about Hawkins. We are talking about how boring, and mundane, and how utterly isolated, and normal, Hawkins is. The people there are ordinary, if not a little bit grating on the psyche if you asked Steve, but wasn’t that the magic of a small town in the middle of nowhere? Everyone knows everybody, every in and every out. Things that they didn’t even tell them in the first place. The best kept secrets are the ones that everyone knows but nobody acknowledges.
If Steve had to give an example of this, it would easily be Eddie Munson. Everybody knew what he dealt. Everybody knew, in a roundabout way, that he didn’t live with his parents, that he could be found in the trailer park, that he was not the most popular of bodies within the town, the village. He should have, could have, easily been busted so many times — dealing to his fellow peers in high school — but why wasn’t he? Everyone was aware. Deeply, intrinsically, as if it were one of the little pieces of knowledge that you were bestowed upon at birth — like how Steve had been branded a young man before he had even the chance to prove himself a boy — people had always just known. 
And, the more he thinks about it, the more it seems a little bit silly. And then a little bit smart. And then a little more smart. Munson doesn’t deal anything harder than weed. Or, if he did, he was smart enough to not let it become knowledge in the public domain known as high school gossip. So, the cops know, and the parents know, and the students know, and those that are not buying from him turn a blind eye, because he has not been the cause of an accident, something like the accident, and, in turn, he has been branded as safe. By parents, by buyers, by the gods-damned law enforcement. 
(This doesn’t mean that he is liked. Steve has seen, had used to almost-enjoy and participate, in the weird hierarchy pissing contest that came with being proclaimed a teenager, social, King. He had seen the way that people would purposefully shove their shoulders into Munson’s unknowing ones, or the way that people would yank on his long curls. 
A small part of Steve thought that it was the same attitude that preteen boys would employ to get a girl’s attention. He had voiced these thoughts to his then-friend, Tommy H. and had been punched — a little too rough — between his shoulder blades in “friendly” warning).
Steve is no exception to the boringness of Hawkins. If he were to describe himself, he might find that he was a little odd, but not enough that he was a pariah, or an anomaly that needed to be taken away and put down. He played his part, just like Munson played his.
He lived in the upper-class part of town — something that used to be a point of pride, but has now turned into one of contention — had average grades, and an average sized friend group (if you didn’t count the kids, of course). He played basketball, no longer the captain after Hargrove had trampled into the village, and was on the swim team. Steve Harrington used to be a party boy, indulging himself on those pleasures that his age should not have allowed him to: alcohol, weed, sex. But these were normal teenaged things, and could be forgiven by parents by the bat of his eyelashes, or a disarmingly apologetic smile. He goes to school, picks up his girlfriend (who he is in love with, he thinks, but who maybe doesn’t love him), has alright attendance, and is loved by those that know him, and those that don’t. This is who he wants to be, and this is who he will continue to portray himself as.
Steve Harrington is normal, and Hawkins, Indiana, is boring, and it will stay that way, if Steve has any say in it.
And so, as any normal teenager does on a Wednesday morning, Steve listens to the radio on his counter as he finishes his piece of buttered toast, and he gets into his car. The maroon colour compliments his skin and his closet in a way that makes him a little more happy than he’d like to admit, but he’s allowed to have this little pleasure, isn’t he? Today, he’s chosen that one deep red-brown sweater that Nancy swears makes him look soft. 
When she had first said it, it had made him happy. To believe that he had the opportunity to be soft again — because a man was all hard edges and empty words, and corporate collars, shoving people into lockers for the hell of it, and shotgunning beers because it seemed so easy, or, maybe, that was just his father. What his father had made a man to be.
(There’s a little part of him that wears the sweater because he’s afraid that Nancy is slipping away. He doesn’t know when it happened — nothing at all had happened over the Christmas break, no arguments, or disagreements, fights, spats, whatever they could be branded. But Steve had seen the way that she cast longing glances in the direction of Jonathan Byers, and the way that she was cancelling dates without telling him. He had tried to ask her what was wrong, to try and atone for some sin that he had not even been aware he was committing. And she had just smiled without teeth, and said he was seeing things, and for a moment it felt like he had never known her at all.
So, there is a little part of Steve that wears the sweater because he knows that Nancy likes how it looks on him, as a last ditch effort to try and, he doesn’t know— seduce her into loving him again. To peacock around as subtly as he can, to say please look at me like how you look at him, please look at me as if you love me. There is something there, Steve realises in a bout of self-awareness, about how time is cyclical, and he is stuck making the same mistakes that his mother had fallen victim to).
As he pulls into the Wheeler driveway, Steve picks at a loose thread near his sweater cuff. Nancy is already waiting by the steps of her house, adorned in that turtleneck-jumper combo that she loves to pull out as the weather starts to cool down. Steve reaches over the centre console to open the door before she gets to it — a wide smile on her face as she settles in, and Steve reverses back onto the road.
“Nice sweater,” she huffs, fingers dainty and sure as they hover over his shoulder.
For a while there, it was if they had created their own language together — a call and response type thing that he had learned to love. Certain phrases were meant to be met with other phrases and words in kind, and certain items, objects, events, could trigger the language to be spoken. It was like playing a little game, trying to figure out the intricacies of their maybe-love.
“Nice sweater,” he retorts, takes one hand off the wheel to hold the fraying edges of her own clothing, tugging at the threads that could so easily be weaved with his.
Steve replies in the language they have adorned and forged together, looking down to the warm colours that she wears, the way that their styles have assimilated to be similar to each others, and isn’t that meant to be what love is? To not know where one ends and the other begins? To be tangled in so deep that you are not yourself anymore, that the pieces you had given had been taken in and fostered until something completely foreign had been born? There is a part of him that wishes that he still had parts of himself left to call his own, that Steve hadn’t went all in on this one moment as a teenager, not of age. But what is he supposed to know? He is just young, and boring, and horribly mundane.
When they reach their destination, Nancy mumbles something about having to find her friend — Barbara. They had been close since the day they were born, she had said, and Steve longed for that kind of connection. To be able to call someone your other half. For a little while, he thought that he would be able to call Tommy H. and Carol that — his thirds, really. But then he had wisened up to the way that they were treating people, the way that they had looked to him for some fucked up kind of approval, as if he was the only thing in-between them and popularity.
(He knows that there is a version of those two that had actually been his friends. A part of them that he had loved and been loved, in turn. But it is so much easier, Steve thinks, if he only thought of them as the sum of things they did wrong).
As he watches Nancy walk towards the school building, Steve crumples up the college letter that he had asked her to look over. There’s no point in him trying, really. His future had been set out for him. Steve Harrington was set to work for his father’s company from the same time he was branded as a young man. There was no leaving Hawkins, or living in a share house, or studying late nights, in the cards for him.
Instead of wallowing in his grief (and, no, he would not admit to it if anyone had asked), Steve gets out of his car, tracing Nancy’s long-left steps to the front of the school. This is his last year of high school — then he will need to get a part-time job, as per his future plan, and then slave away in his corporate body of a corporate shell, until the day he dies in a corporate coffin. Wonderful, right? At least he’s eighteen, now.
The halls of the school are the same as always. A little too loud for Steve’s taste, filled with people trying to impress their peers in ways that they will see as embarrassing in a couple years. Steve nods at those that meet his eye, smile polite enough to still be considered a little bit of a heartthrob, despite his fall from kingship last year. He revels a little in the way that people seem to like him, even if it is just the idea of him that enthrals them. Steve reaches his locker, smells the heavy and crazed scent of one—
“Stevie!”
Eddie Munson.
“Munson.” Steve greets, not unkindly.
“Still on last names, I see. Oh, how you wound me!” Eddie says, puts his hands up to his heart as is he had been shot. “I missed you yesterday at gym.”
They are not friends. Not to Steve’s standards, no, and definitely not to Eddie’s. For all intents and purposes, they have nothing in common. Eddie is owned by the public domain of high school as much as Steve’s front of a King is — that is to say that Eddie is an open book, whereas Steve is closed shut. Munson isn’t afraid too blast his music as loud as he can as he screams through the parking lot, trying to drown out the similar tones coming from Hargrove’s car, just to piss him off. His shirt is branded with something that parents whisper as satanic, but really only alludes to the Dungeons and Dragons club he runs through the school. 
They have a few of the same classes together, what with Eddie retrying his last year of high school after he majorly, and I mean, majorly, fucked up my exams, Harrington. They are not friends, but they know of each other. Steve is nice to him, cordial, really, and Eddie, despite the way that he acts in the cafeteria, is kind back. Occasionally, they’ll share a smoke when lunch gets too loud, or when Steve doesn’t want to deal with everything that happens in gym (no, he is not avoiding Tommy or Billy, he swears).
“Just felt a little sick, I guess.” Steve says, taking out his English text and absolutely not looking at where Nancy and Barbara and Jonathan have all huddled together at the end of the hallway lined with lockers. They are a unit that seems to flow together, and whenever all four of them go somewhere, Steve feels as if he is a broken fourth wheel — as if there is a final part of the puzzle that is decidedly not him.
“Ah,” Eddie says, a little smile on his face as he leans against the wall, “Trouble in paradise?”
Steve closes his locker with probably a little more force than necessary, because they are not friends, and Steve doesn’t really need other people to know about his love life, thank you every much. 
“Something like that,” Steve says, smile tight, and eyes sharp in a way that says step back, think for a second. 
And so Eddie does — hands raised and placating, because he knows that he has crossed their imaginary boundaries and imaginary lines that neither of them had fleshed out or set, themselves. The warning bell rings, and Steve mumbles a see you later, and Eddie hums in confirmation, before they are lost to the sea of students that look nothing, and exactly, like them.
— — —
One of the newer additions to the basketball club, Jason Carver, is a little bit annoying, if Steve was being complete honest. He knew that each of the students were meatheads in their own unique ways, what with their rallying members including the ranks of Billy Hargrove (AKA: Grade A Asshole) and Tommy Hagan (self explanatory), but there’s something about this guy that kinda rubs him the wrong way. Maybe it was his wannabe-Tom-Cruise style smile, or the fact that the girl he was dating — a sweet girl called Chrissy — looked so close to his own face. Steve knows that if he cared enough to actually look into it, he would recall something in the ways of Freud. For now, though, he relents that maybe they might be second cousins. And, well, it’s Hawkins. It wouldn’t be exactly out of the norm for their history.
“He’s just such a shithead, Nance,” Steve says, stretching his arms out over the lunchroom table, head pressed lightly against the metal to avoid imprints.
“More or less than Holloway?” She asks, hand rubbing almost-soothing circles into the textured patter of his knit sweater.
At this, he sits up. “Oh, god, did your boss do something again?”
“When has he ever not done something?” Jonathan huffs, chin resting on his palm.
See, unlike Steve, they had aspirations. In their spare time, Nancy and Jonathan would intern at the local newspaper. Sure, it was mostly running to get coffees, and saying yes, sir to everything that their superiors said, but it was still something right?
Barb speaks, her cheeks rosy in the way Steve knows they get when Nancy hasn’t told her something important. “Again? Nance, I really think you need to tell your mum about how he’s treating you, because it’s not—”
“—Okay, yes I know, Barb.” Nancy sighs. “But how would that look on me? I’m meant to be able to prove myself, not just run to my parents when one slight thing goes wrong!”
“But it’s not just one thing,” Steve says, as he mimics her previous movement, his thumb with the small scar catching in the frayed edges of her wool. “Just last week you were telling me about how you overheard him making those comments about— about people in our year, people in his daughter’s year. That’s not okay—”
“You think I don’t know that, Steve?” She hissed. “I am very much aware that his attitudes towards teenage girls is disgusting, but what the hell am I meant to do?”
Her pointed glare is directed at him, and it feels as if she isn’t even looking at Steve. It is as if she is looking through him, pointing her pointy edges in the way of the soft flesh that he has bore for her. It hurts, just a little bit, but isn’t love meant to? 
“Nance—” Jonathan starts.
“No. I don’t want to talk about this.” She huffs, turns her gaze away from Steve’s eyes. He doesn’t miss the way that she melts, softens, under the concerned face of Jonathan. “No, we’re gonna talk about the upcoming Halloween party.”
Barb nods her head, just slightly, but with the way that she looks to Steve, as if to ask him please help, he knows that the two will stay up late on the phone, or meetup after Nancy and Jonathan have left, to try and figure out a way to help Nancy, to make sure that she’s actually alright. The piece of paper that Nancy slides across their humble cafeteria space is adorned in bright oranges and deep blacks — a crudely drawn ghost printed on the middle of the page, with a stupid pun being uttered from underneath its sheet-costume.
“I don’t know about this,” Barb says, eyes hesitant behind large glasses. “I’m not really a party gal.”
Jonathan scratches at the back of his neck, smile apologetic in the same way that Steve would use to wish away his past to doting parents. “Yeah, I’m not really one to get sheet-faced, Nance. Plus, I was gonna take my brother trick or treating tonight.”
“You have to, or you want to?” Nancy asks. And she has that twinkle in her eye that says I have set my mind to something, and now you are in my way. It used to be something that she would wholly and only direct to Steve, so seeing it pointed towards Jonathan of all people? Well. He’s gonna bottle up those feelings and maybe (never) go over how that makes him feel.
“Want to.” Jonathan says, a small smile on his face. “But I’m sure Steve’ll say yes, right?”
Steve finds that all the eyes of his friends are on him. And the answer should be easy, really, because is there even any other option for him? A good boyfriend would accompany his good girlfriend to her first party. He would do so willingly and lovingly. So why does he feel so hesitant? As if he had seen this film before, was aware of the things that saying yes would hold.
“Come on, Steve,” Nancy says. “Don’t you want to be stupid teenagers for one more night?”
“Of course.” He answers, places a kiss on her cheek. 
“And if Jonathan is taking Will, then that means you’re not babysitting tonight, right? So you’ll come with me to the party?”
It doesn’t take much more convincing than that (externally, at least. Internally, Steve thinks of every possibly outcome and opportunity that he is creating. He was meant to babysit the kids with Jonathan tonight. After Will had been missing, and Steve had learnt about Jane, and the newcomer, Max, had joined, the parents all wanted their kids to be watched over. And who better to do that than Steve Harrington, Hawkins’ Golden Boy? But, no, if Jonathan was hinting at Steve being available, even though he knew that they were looking after the kids together, then surely he wanted Steve to go? Surely this was him hinting that he would be okay with the kids?).
This line of thinking, the questioning, the answering, within his own head, is what leads him to let Nancy choose the costumes, and kiss him on his head, and have him drive to the party. Costumes of characters from that movie that Nancy had liked — Risky Business — are adorned in true Hawkins fashion, ie: every person willing to have a social presence in the student body had raided their parents closets to find something so unlike their own clothes, that it could feasibly be recognised as “dressing up”. 
The party is not unlike the ones that Steve was used to. The bodies in the house are all tightly packed together, and there is an indistinguishable scent of alcohol and sweat and sex. It lingers in the air as if it is its job, sticking to every surface it can. Steve is sure that as soon as he leaves this party, it will be imbedded in his hair, stuck to his flesh like a thin film to be washed away with copious amounts of soap and warm water. Slowly, surely, delicately.
The jacket that he is wearing is thick and dark against his shoulders — sweat building up near his shoulder blades with even the most minute amount of dancing that he’s been doing. There are shouts and chants outside about a new Keg King, but Steve couldn’t care less. That popularity contest and dick measuring bullshit was as beneath him as the dirt lacing his sneakers. The only thing that mattered right now was having fun. Trying to have fun.
“Nance,” Steve tries, “Nancy—”
“No!” She says, dips her cup into the punch. “I said that I wanted to be a stupid teenager, so I’m doing everything that a stupid teenager would do, okay? Aren’t I allowed to just have this?”
Steve places a hand between them on the counter, taps his fingers across it. Because he gets it, really, he does. He gets wanting to lash out and drink and party and do all the bad-child things that weren’t in line with their perfectly set out futures. Nancy Wheeler, straight A student and intern at the local newspaper would not drink. Nancy Wheeler, liked well enough to be seen as cute and quiet, not enough to be seen as popular or rowdy. Nancy Wheeler, who would go to university, and study hard, and get a well paying job, or maybe relent to the asks of Hawkins, and live in a little cul-de-sac, and have a nuclear fucking family. 
Steve gets it. He gets wanting to lash out.
“Okay,” He relents. “Just— be careful, okay? Take it slow, and I’ll stay completely sober. I’ll try and look out for you.”
She just nods her head as she fills her cup (again? Had she not just went to go fill it?), bringing the white rim of the red plastic to her lips. Nancy tilts her head back in glee, an easy smile slipping over her mouth at the no doubt fruity taste of the punch attempting to mask the copious amounts of alcohol that were poured into the bowl. Steve’s had a bad feeling about this since before the day even started.
And that bad feeling doesn’t alleviate, not even a little, when he hears the door open, when he turns, when he catches a glimpse of the next person to walk through the open door.
Jonathan.
The bad feeling isn’t because of the weirdness that’s going on between his friend and his girlfriend, no. Not because he isn’t wearing a costume. Not because he’s showing up late. The bad feeling rises tenfold, and Steve finds himself taking quick and long strides across the floor, dodging people, using his height to shoulder passed others, because Jonathan was meant to be looking after the kids.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Steve asks, eyes a little too wide, breath a little too short. “I thought you were supervising them?”
“Will said he didn’t want me to,” Jonathan says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He shrugs his shoulders as if to say what can you do? As if a single conversation can shirk the month of planning that went into tonight, for the kids. The planning that Steve had so readily skirted, himself, at the lone voice of Nancy, and the promising eyes of Jonathan.
“You know why we were meant to go—”
“—And I think my mum’s being a bit paranoid. Nothing has happened in a year, Steve. What happened with Will, him going missing, it was just,” Jonathan sighs, pushes his shoulders back in that way he always does, “An anomaly. Something weird. Nothing ever happens in Hawkins, right? So what’s one night? Can’t he just have that?”
Aren’t I allowed this? Can’t he have that? It’s as if they are the same conversations, asking for the same things, asking for different things, that he cannot give. As if the gift is something simple, and not something that might, that will, change everything. But, well. Steve doesn’t know that. Not yet.
“Shit, okay.” Steve huffs, mind rattling with endless possibilities of what could happen to the kids, what they could get up to, themselves, when left unattended and uncontactable in the middle of the night, in the middle of Hawkins.
“Steve, nothing is going to happen. Just enjoy tonight. With Nance.” Jonathan says, smile fading as the words exit his mouth. 
Shit. Nancy. 
“I’ll be right back!” Steve calls, turning as he says it, words being swallowed by the crowd. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to spot her in the sea of costumes? What with how she’s wearing all white, and Halloween usually calls for, well, something a little more dark, a little more scary.
Steve pushes his way through, arms trying to break through pressed bodies. Were there this many people before? Was it always so hot? He pushes the sunglasses up to his hair, not caring for the look, anymore.
“Harrington!” Tommy calls, his freckles more prominent from his flushed face: drunk. “We’ve got a new Keg King!” 
Steve turns away from the leers and the cheers of the basketball team, turns away from Hargrove who seems to be trying to make his way over. Steve really doesn’t have the time to be dealing with him right now — right now, all he wants to do is find Nancy. He told her that he’d take care of her, and then at the first sign of something happening, of another person appearing, of Jonathan, he had just abandoned her to the crowd, to these people that she didn’t really know, to these people that had more experience with parties than her, to these people that she—
“You okay there, Stevie?” Eddie asks, hand cold against Steve’s knuckles. “You look like you’re—”
“—Not now, Munson. Sorry, I’m just—” Steve tries to look over his hair, the frizz of the curls seemingly played up more than how they naturally are. “Have you seen Nancy?”
Eddie’s face seems to furrow in thought, and the cool hand that was so expertly pressed against Steve’s knuckles are removed to his own belt loops. “I think I passed her a couple minutes ago in the kitchen. Are you sure you’re okay—”
“Thank you!” Steve says, turning to his left, where he thinks he can see the counter, where he sees the dim yellow light that indicated change. Where hardwood floors and plush carpets stained with red punch turned to tile, and where he sees the back of Nancy’s figure.
“Jesus, Nance, I’m sorry that I left you like that. I just saw Jonathan and got worried about the kids— hey.”
“Mmmmrr?” Nancy mumbles, hand held tight against her cup, wrist limply flicking in and out of the punch bowl, uselessly trying to fill it up, again.
“You— how much have you had to drink?”
“Steve,” She slurs, a happy smile on her face as she dunks the cup under fully. “Not enough.”
“Hey, no, Nance, I said I’d take care of you, so,” Steve places his hand delicately on her wrist, uses his other one to try and pry the drink from her grasp. “I really think that you should wait a bit before you drink again, okay? Let’s get you some water, and sit down over—”
“I don’t want to drink some water—”
“Nancy, please,” Steve says. “Just, let go of the cup for me?”
“No.”
Steve tugs again, trying to slot his fingers under hers. He’d become all too accustomed to this — to doing this with Tommy. And it had worked with Tommy, with Carol, so why—
“Let go of the, the cup, Steve. I want you,” She enunciates, a little too much effort put into each word to be sober, “To let go, of the goddamned cup—!”
He lets go. The bad feeling presses into his skull, down his spine, like an old friend. Like punch staining white shirts. Like the hundred people who have turned, like the music that has been turned down, like Hargrove, making his way over, like Eddie, watching from the corner, like Jonathan, stuck by the door.
Shit.
“What the fuck, Steve?”
“Okay, Nance, let’s just—” She turns around before he can say anything more, and her figure flits in and out of the bodies of the people who had once hindered his trek to her. Now, they part like the ocean, as if she is some God to be reckoned with. Steve supposes that, right now, she is.
He follows the empty trail that she has left for him, nods politely and acutely to the woman who stands in Kiss makeup nodding her head towards the ajar door — the bathroom with golden yellow light and a large mirror by the sink. He pushes his way in, closing the door softly behind him. No more eyes. No more leering.
“Nancy, it’s not coming off. I think it’s,” Steve sighs, doesn’t try to reason with her as she runs the hand towel under the water again, bringing it up to the large red stain down her front. He’ll get the mess out tomorrow. He just needs to get her home, have her get into a change of clothes, and he’ll deal with the rest in the morning. “C’mon, Nance.”
“I know what I’m doing,” She slurs, leans agains the sink countertop with her left arm. “See? It’s— it’s coming off.”
Steve just sighs, goes to take the towel from her limp hand. “Let’s get you home, yeah Nance? How does sleeping sound?”
“I don’t want to!” She said, lurching forward from her standing position. “I wanted to be a dumb teenager and do all the things that— that I’m not supposed to, so why are you—”
“Nance,” Steve whispered, hand on her shoulder, holding up her weight as she presses onwards.
“—trying to take that away from me? You always just ruin everything. You’re— you’re bullshit! I just wanted one simple thing: to act like we were dumb, and young, and in love—”
“Like we’re in love? Nancy, what do you—”
“Bullshit.” She mumbles, then, louder, as if realising that Steve might not have heard it, she speaks. “You are complete bullshit, Steve Harrington. Bull-shit.”
No. Steve wants to say. Because, he realises, there is some truth to what she is saying. Has he ever been a person, has he ever been a subject that was once and truly owned by himself? Could Steve ever remember a moment where he wasn’t just an amalgamation of parts that he picked up over the years? Which parts had come naturally, and which parts had he so carefully chosen? He’s always felt as if he was slipping, from what he never knew, but maybe it was just normalcy. Maybe he was always a fake— a bullshit version of who used to wear his skin.
Steve Harrington has never been boring and normal in the same way that the people of Hawkins were — he had to be hand crafted to try and fit the moulds that were placed upon him. Carve off parts of himself that he realised were undesirable in the long run, because what was he, if not what people wanted? If not something that people had loved? 
Nancy had been like a lifeline to him — someone who was trying so hard to break the role that was bestowed upon them. I don’t want to be the dutiful older sister who becomes the dutiful wife who doesn’t get to live for herself. I want to see the world, and travel, and learn, and study, and love. And I want to love you. Had it always been a lie? Was everything so predetermined down to a T, that for Nancy Wheeler to be breaking her mould, she first had to break him? Was there ever a future where they end up together — too similar and too different all at once?
She had been a lifeline. And maybe that is where it all started. That Steve had looked to her for the guidance that he was never given, trying so desperately to please her — to try and revel in that calm that exuded out of her body as if it were endless. It was that feeling that he was chasing, that feeling that made him ache for his own bones to be whole, that made him yearn to stay in his body, for his teeth to stay dull, and his height stay the same. 
He feels like he’s losing it. Steve feels as if there are a hundred running words around his head. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. He knew that Nancy was falling out of love with him. He knew it in his bones. Knew it in his shifting form. Why does it hurt, still? Why does it still feel as though she has struck him across the face the way a father does to a child — or is this just another one of those scenarios, Steve asks himself, that are so very abnormal, that he has only known to be true?
Steve’s losing it. He knows he is. He pushes out of the bathroom, stumbles out, really, but the music has been turned back up, and he can feel it in his chest, thump thump thump-ing across the dance floor. He feels as if he is changing right there, in the middle of this stupid fucking house party, where everyone can see him. And if there is one thing that he is good at, if Steve Harrington is only allowed to, able to, be good at one fucking thing in his useless, short-lived life, it is knowing when he is not wanted. Knowing when he has to leave.
So he does. He leaves. Out of the back door — the crowd of people pressing in on his chest, his body, the front door — and into the woods. And it is there that he will change.
(The first thing to go is his sight. 
Or, rather, his eyes.
Steve, in his fading consciousness, tries to lift his hands — hands that are too big for his body, that are sharp and grotesque, and so horribly his, with a scar near his left thumb where he nicked it as a child — towards where his eyes are. Where they should be. He turns his hands so that the long nails are pointing as outward as they can, so that they do not touch what he hopes is still his own face. The pads of his thumbs meet the space in which his eyes had occupied. It is textured and puckered, and when Steve tries to blink — because as a human, as a young man, he should be able to blink — he cannot. The expanse of what should be the woods in front of him are just shades of dark, with only the moon to bare witness to this, to him, to the monstrosity that he is becoming.
Where flesh meets bone, and love meets hurt, Steve morphs. Muscle and ligaments stretching and contorting till they are spread thin against a gangly body that tries — and succeeds — to tower above the height that he was gifted from creation. He feels as his vocal chords hum within his throat, a throat that has contracted and elongated to make space for the bones that sprout from his spine. Hind legs break and bend, making Steve fall over himself into the dirt of the woods, jutting out at odd directions, in a misguided attempt at growing into something new.
Where comfort and beauty used to be found in the form of golden-brown hair, something ugly starts to be birthed. Steve can feel as the thudding of something within his brain gets so insistent that he clutches at his ears to plead it to stop. He can feel as his skull starts to fracture. As his scalp is peeled back from his head, he raises his nails to stop it — pleading in the form of scratching at the warm wetness. Bone and blood make way for rotten wood; two spike-like structures ignoring the helpless cries of the boy that they occupy.
And, god, he can feel it. Steve, in the middle of this transformation, can feel as the bones within his body vibrate against his skin, whispering into his breath, let go, let me in, it won’t hurt, I can make it all okay. There is a part of him — the sensible, boring, part of him, that says he should not listen. That he should go back to the Halloween party, and pretend that he cannot taste his own bile mixing with thick blood, that it does not feel like he is being crushed between the worlds. 
I don’t want to die, Steve thinks. 
The voice within him answers, says: I am not going to kill you).
— — —
Eddie is not having a good night. Like, yeah, there are probably people having an even lesser good night (read: whatever the hell he saw happen with one Nancy Wheeler and one Steve Harrington), especially considering that he has to step over the passed out bodies of other high schooler’s as he traipses out of the back door of the house. His docs were slightly sticky in a way that indicated spilt alcohol, despite his stance on not drinking and dealing. The Halloween party that Tina hosted was meant to be small — only a couple close friends she had said — but it ended up being closer to the entire fucking year group (and then some). He had been bought out almost immediately — familiar faces in the forms of the basketball club, and the band nerds, unfamiliar faces in the forms of people who were usually too shy or too scared to approach him normally — and hadn’t been able to find an opportunity to leave until, well. Until whatever the hell happened with Steve and Wheeler.
See, Eddie was never planning to drink, what with his weirdly strict rules, especially considering his grades, but he still didn’t want to drive his van to the house. This was for a multitude of reasons, with the glaringly obvious one being so that it didn’t get alcohol, or barf, or other bodily fluids splashed across the front, as people drunkenly stumbled down the streets to their homes, or to their one designated driver. Ah, the woes of underage drinking.
That is how he finds himself, leaves sticking to his sticky soles, dirt caking themselves into the tread. It’s not the first time that Eddie has found himself huddled into his own jacket, trying to walk the non-existant path that he had set before him, on the way home. Sometimes it was just easier to walk than to have to pay for your van being keyed by some evangelical lunatics. That doesn’t mean that it makes the walk any easier, though.
The trees are all those horribly gangly and long, old-wood ones. His Uncle Wayne used to talk about how they were “there since the day Hawkins was erected”, but Eddie had been too young to properly take in the cautionary tale, instead snickering at the use of the old man’s use of the word erected. As they loom over him — shadows cast into the almost-mud of the ground — Eddie wishes that he had payed attention.
But he had made this walk all the time! In the daytime, in the afternoon, in the middle of the night. It had never felt comforting, sure, but it had never felt like— like something was watching him. That was absurd, though. It was well known that Hawkins was boring (no matter how hard Eddie had tried to liven it up a little), and most of all, it was safe. The accident was just that — an anomaly of an incident that was recorded in history, and swept away with teachings of how to be a good and proper man, and how to do your times tables. Will Byers was — well. Eddie didn’t know how to excuse that.
But, nobody was here. 
Just him.
Eddie trudges forward. There is something within him that makes him clutch at the multitool that Wayne had gifted him, flicking the knife out. Not the dull letter opener section that had never been used, but the sharp, cerated blade that been bestowed upon him as protection.
(“Protection from what?” Young Eddie had asked. There was nothing to be afraid of, here. Because this is the town that Wayne was in, and this is the town that his mother had grown up in. Before everything had changed.
Wayne had shifted in his seat, the couch springs making that dog-whining noise that made Eddie’s noise scrunch.
“Nothing.” He said, hand warm and heavy on Eddie’s shoulders. “Just making sure, is all.”)
Step, step, breathe. Step, step, breathe. He would twirl the knife in his hands if he were not afraid of dropping it — a situation from a shitty horror slasher appearing forefront in his mind: he drops the blade to the ground as the monster runs up behind him, and as the camera pans to the sky, to his eyes, to its teeth, his fingernails encrusted with dirt, Eddie will grab it in the nick of time, brandishing it valiantly, before swinging his arm in a dull strike—
“Who’s there?”
The words leave his mouth before he can stop them. He no longer feels like the final girl who fumbles for the knife in the leaves, and suddenly feels like the expositional first victim. The sound that he had heard — something that he could only really describe as a gurgle has stopped. 
“You’re just going crazy, Eddie,” He hums to himself, blows his curly fringe from in front of his eyes. “Nothing to worry about at all. No sir-ee.”
He keeps his back to the direction in which he needs to go; the invisible path that he has crafted towards his trailer. Eddie, horror movie connoisseur, knows that he should not stalk towards the noise — had shouted at his small television set too many times to know that it leads to finding the monster, the horror in itself. 
(He finds that maybe there is some truth to the actions. His feet carry him backwards, towards safety, but it feels as if he is walking through sludge, moving ever so slowly, leaning forward, eyes wide, as if trying to gain a view of the thing that made the gurgle).
Back hitting a tree, Eddie turns, for a second, as small of a moment of time that he can spare, before facing forward, again. He cannot look away from the darkness of the woods. He wished that he brought his flashlight. Or drove his van to Tina’s. Or stayed at the fucking Halloween party.
Shifting so that his back is facing open woods, he places a tentative foot back. And then another. And another.
The sound lurches through the expanse of nothing. The wet death-rattle building and building, as if it is getting closer. As if it is running.
“Shit!” Eddie turns on his heel and bolts into the woods. Without a care for which direction his trailer is in — it doesn’t matter if it is behind him, or if it is in front of him, all that matters is that he gets away from the whatever the fuck is making that god awful noise—
He trips. 
Eddie has enough self preservation to move his hand with the knife to the side so that he doesn’t stab himself in the eye, but it is a close thing. He feels all the fumbling heroine-final-girl-first-victim adrenaline rise through him as he feel the leaves shake beneath the weight of the thing that is racing towards him. 
Get the fuck up, Eddie! 
He scrambles and feels his nails catch against the roots of the tree as he pushes himself up — propelling until his palms meet rough bark, and he is pushing himself forward. His lungs feel as though they are on fire. As if they are constricting from inside his self, his body. In, out, in out. In, in, in, in. 
Eddie pumps his legs as fast as he can, tries to think of what he is meant to do in these situations — was it better to go straight? Was he meant to zigzag? Does he make himself tall and raise his arms and snarl right back? Has he condemned himself just by running? Can it smell his fear?
He doesn’t want to die. 
Eddie didn’t really think that he had much to live for, before this, and if you asked him yesterday he would have spouted some dogshit about dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse. But now that he is at the brink of death, the thing (bear? Human? Monster?) almost breathing down his neck, he has a hundred — a million — different things that he wants to do, that he wants to say. 
It roars. Not the pathetic sounding and out of place death-noise that it was making before. An absolutely pissed off I’m-Going-To-Fucking-Kill-You noise. A You-Are-Not-Final-Girl-Material noise. And the noise? It sounds as if it reverberates through the woods, impossible to tell how close, how far away it truly is.
(He does not want to turn around. Because if he turns around and it is there, Eddie knows that he will stop. He will pause in his tracks, because he is kidding himself into thinking that he is being chased by a fucking bear).
Eddie turns. He doesn’t know what made him do it. 
It was like his body had told him you cannot keep running away and had decided for him — not letting his brain rest for even a moment to try and catch up to the thoughts of the heart. Eddie brandishes his knife tightly in front of him, slashing in wide arcs in hopes of— he doesn’t know. Scaring off the beast that is making the forest shake? Yeah. That’ll definitely work.
The air is cold against his clammy hands, and thin against the blade. He keeps his eyes shut, and slashes forwards and outwards, both hands clasped tightly against the handle. It’s obvious when it meets something that is not air. From the drag against what Eddie thinks might be flesh, to the stench of coppery blood that fills the air.
He opens his eyes.
The face that meets his own is not entirely a face. He watches as the blood slowly drips from where a cheek would be if this thing were human. Eddie raises the pocket knife again in his — and the monsters — moment of stupor, and tries to slash again—
Only for the knife to slapped out of his hand. 
It lands with a dull thud against the wet woodland leaves. Too far away for Eddie to reach. He slides back, tries to back away as if he had not just tried to harm this monster that towers above him. He creeps back in the same way that the creature creeps forwards, until his shoulders are hitting the sharp outsides of the tree, and he is sliding to his knees, and closing in on himself.
“You’re not real.” Eddie mumbles. “You’re not— there’s no such thing as fucking monsters. None at all. You’re just— going fucking insane, Eddie. Must’ve just— passed out at Tina’s. Having a bad trip. Sleeping it off at home. Something like that. Right. Right?”
— — —
There’s something about the shape in front of him — the way in which it holds itself and begs — that makes Steve’s brain stall. Long enough for him to get back into the driver’s seat of his own body (was this his own body? This prison of flesh and bone that towered over this person? That had terrified them? Was he always a— a monster, in every possible way? Could he never escape it?), and start to back away. Steve tries to hunch in on himself. Tries to hold his hands — his claws — in front of him. Raised and open, trying to communicate without words, words that are stuck in his throat, I don’t mean any harm. I don’t want to hurt anyone.
“Okay, okay. Yeah, just— stay. Yeah, back away. That’s good— just keep— backing away.” The man mutters. Steve can see the frantic look in his eye, the way his hair falls just above his hunched shoulders, how he’s scrambling backwards and backwards, as if he is trying to crawl into the tree itself. 
“Now you’ve really done it, Eddie. Real fucking monsters—”
Steve’s vocal chords gurgle at the word. Like a low humming in warning that sounds in the back of his throat without meaning to— without him wanting to. At first, it is at the way that he has been described — a terrible being of his own creation, of the hands of others, himself. But, then, it is at the name. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Steve knows Eddie. Maybe there’s a way that he could—
Eddie stops. Dirt encrusted in his fingernails, leaves in his hair, on the forest floor. He stops. And Steve realises that he is not himself. He is not Human Steve Harrington, with eyes and a kind smile, and moles and freckles and golden-brown hair. He is this towering creature that has chased his almost-friend through the fucking woods.
Steve goes to turn — to leave and never come back. Pretend that this was all a nightmare. And maybe it would be. Maybe he would wake up in the morning, and he would pick up Nancy, and he would place a kiss on her cheek, and she would help him with his college application. Maybe he’d wake up earlier — formative years come back to haunt him in the best ways possible — and his mother would card her fingers through his hair, and his father would tell him that he was proud.
(He’s fooling himself. Steve knows it’s not gonna happen).
“Can you… understand me?”
Steve tries to make a noise, then. Something more pleasant and soothing and desperate all at once, that says Yes! Please! Can you hear me? Do you see me? Please, I’m begging you, please, help me!
“Okay! Great. Amazing. You can understand me!” Eddie talks, in such a hushed tone that Steve feels as if he is not meant to hear it. “Fuck, okay? Um.”
Eddie tries to back away again, only to realise that there is nowhere to go. That he will have to shift to the side to get out of the woods. Steve tilts his head forwards, tries to motion towards the side, where Eddie will have to go to get to his home.
“Right! Yes!” He breathes. “I need to… to leave. Can you— will you let me?”
Steve nods. Readily, quickly. He does not want to force him to stay here. He does not want him to look at his figure. This grotesque concoction of things that he has become. 
(He wants Eddie to stay. He wants him to help. He wants him to say that he is not a monster. Because if he leaves, if he goes through the woods and never comes back, what will Steve do with himself?).
“Okay— no leaving right now. Got it. Totally. Great.” Eddie says, hands still behind him, knife still cast away. “What do you want from me?”
Help. Steve wants to say. Reassurance. But his mouth does not seem to work like it normally does, like it is supposed to, and so he crouches down as best his bones will let him, and raises his clawed hands to the ground.
“H…e…l— Help! Okay, okay. You need help.”
Steve nods, neck strained and taught against extra bones in his frame. There is that noise at the back of his neck, and he feels the skin around his teeth attempt a smile.
“How do I help you?” Eddie asks. And Steve can sense the way that he moves closer, instinctually flinches away. “Right, no, that’s okay, yeah. No touching. Got it.” 
He wishes that he didn’t flinch. He wants to say please, please, please hold me, please tell me I am human, I don’t want to be a monster, I just want to be held, I just want to be normal, I just want to be—
“Do you have somewhere you can go?” Eddie whispers, hushed tones so much more calming than when he was slashing forwards. And Steve does have somewhere to go — his empty house, with bouts of land big enough on either side that no neighbours would be peering out to see him. But he needs to get his car. He needs to get his car that he left at the party. Otherwise he will be found out. Otherwise people will connect the dots about Steve leaving early, and without his car, and the man in the woods—
The man in the woods? The man in the woods? 
“Get the hell away from my boy!”
The shot would be accurate if not for the humming beneath his skin screaming at Steve to move. The pellets scatter into the tree-side, making little homes within the bark. 
“Wayne, no, it doesn’t mean any—”
“Eddie, get the hell away from that thing—”
The man — Wayne — fumbles confidently with the gun in his hands. He makes a movement with it that has the sounds of mechanics ringing in Steve’s ears, but if there is one thing that he is not, monster or no fucking monster, is stupid. He knows where he is unwanted, an animal, he knows that he is the thing that instills fear into this man, and he knows, Steve knows that he doesn’t want to hurt someone — the he doesn’t want to hurt Eddie — but what is the use of this knowledge if nobody else is aware? 
The voice that had once guided him is silent. But as Wayne aims towards his body, as Eddie moves to stop him, Steve feels the warmth and hum of appreciation and praise run through his veins, as he turns to flee.
— — — 
As he lets himself down, Steve finds that he is still not himself. He sees in the way that a human is not meant to see: shapes and shades that morph and move as they shift across his vision. Inquisitive, and maybe a little bit afraid, he moves the claws across the features that make up his face. Of course, from the changing that he had experienced — like a second coming of man — he knows that he has no eyes. With long, sallow fingers, he traces his nose — the same — and feels his hairless skin atop his head. It is the same texturised feeling as that of his eyes, something that just screams monster. 
When he pulls against the rotten wood that exudes itself from his soul, it offers the same sensation of his hair being pulled, but somehow deeper. As if the rot has attached itself to his spinal cord, his brain. There is a morbid part of him that thinks back to the books of animals that he read as he was a child: about cats and their tails, and how you shouldn’t hold them from it, lest you want their spine to be pulled out in a yelp, and a sopping pool of offal. 
(Steve feels as though he should be more terrified. That he has been turned into the monster, like a gods-damned werewolf on the night of Halloween, and that he has chunks of time missing. That there is a voice within his own brain that had offered him some type of salvation from the hurt deep within his teeth, that Steve had so readily accepted without thinking of the consequences).
He stops himself from spiralling — catches it on the tail end of the fall, just like those cats — and pulls himself from the edge. He does not have eyes, yes, he knows this, and he has some type of bark that is growing and protruding from his skull like he is a daemon, and they are his horns. Steve’s hands trail across his features, again, more focussed. He presses as softly he can into the holes that held soft eyes, trails passed his father’s nose, and finds—
A lack of face. A lack of jaw.
Steve doubles over himself. Feels as his stretched stomach contracts within his fleshy vessel of a body, as it attempts to blow chunks of something onto the carpet. Hands clawing at his face again, he feels the absence, again and again. Because there is no way that he is— that there is— that there is not— 
Oh god.
If Steve were to describe it to anyone, as he tries to describe it to himself from feel alone, it is as if someone had held a firm hand against his lower jaw, and pulled and pulled and pulled until— pop! There are wisps of his own skin and flesh near the hinges of his face. His upper teeth are bared for the woodland creatures to fear, top lip pulled taught into an impossible snarl that makes Steve keen into the silence. He did not want to be a creature — all he wanted to be was loved.
How do I return? Steve pleads into the silence. Pleads that the voice is still there to tell him what to do. Why do I remember a man in the woods?
You have to figure it out on your own.
The first thing that he thinks is well that’s not fucking helpful, but there is something within his own head that breathes out of him as he thinks the very words. Steve finds that it feels as if he’s just been admonished by his father — or that he’s heard a heavy sigh from his mother. Almost immediately, he tries to back peddle, but all other offers of rapture and guidance from the voice are lulled, and for the first time in the night, Steve is well and utterly alone.
His first idea comes in the forms of reassuring words that are not his own. He is reminded of the girl from the drama class he was mistakenly placed into for a half a term. Her short reddish-brown hair, the snark that nobody else would give him. Steve is reminded of the way that she had approached him when he was huddled up in the storage closet — with none of the remarks to be found, but instead, just soft eyes, and a similarly crouched form in front of him. What can you see? What can you hear? What can you feel? Taste? Smell?
He cannot see anything. And maybe that is the point of this exercise — not the one that the girl had taught him, but the one that the voice is teaching him. That these things, this small moments of calm were only meant for beings that were human. Now that he was stripped of any form of humanity left of him (or had he always been stripped of it? Had those moments with the girl calmed him down, or was he just putting on a front?), he was not allowed to be soothed.
But he can hear the neighbours. He must be home. He must be close. Steve had complained to his then-friends, Tommy, Carol, about how his house was eerily quiet, how he could not hear the people near him. So why could he now? Why could he hear the sounds of Ms Lowe down the street, teetering around the kitchen? Why could he hear the humming of the Sullivan’s pool? 
Steve feels his bones re-breaking. Feels the juts of a body retract into his spine to make it whole again. He feels the sickly pleasing correction of his skull, the way that his jaw unfurls at the same time the bone-wood descends into his scalp. He tastes the slime of whatever was coating his skin to try and ease the sickly transformation — something that smells almost like a mixture of bile and something sweet. As his vision fogs, and Steve hears the sounds of what can only be described as moist peeling, the shades of dark turn to thick objects turn to outlines to lights to colours to vision. And as soon as he realises that he is not towering over the woods, over Eddie, that he is in his own home, that the doors are somehow locked shut, he languidly pulls himself to the bathroom, sits under the warm spray of the shower for as long as he goddamned wants.
It chimes then — and it had always chimed at every hour, scaring the ever living shit out of him as he was a child — the cuckoo clock. 12AM.
He has school tomorrow.
How does Steve have school tomorrow?
Doesn’t the world know to stop turning, to pause, for him? He’s a monster. And not in the way that the word was normally directed at him — not in the way that girls would say when he turned them down, or Tommy’s targets would say as he stood, impassive, disgusted, not at them, but at who he called his friend. When did it start to become real? Was he always a monster, always destined to be a monster, because everyone else thought him so? Maybe his skin was now just changing to catch up to what people truly saw.
But that wouldn’t make any sense. Because at the back of his mind — Steve knew. What the truth was, what the truth is, and how he is just trying to avoid coming to terms with it. What is inscribed on his skin, what has been inked into existence from the day that he had first changed. And yet, it is still different. Back then, it was never like this. Back then, it was as if he could hear and smell and react as he could now, regardless of what skin he bore. So why had this thing become him? Why had he become this thing? 
It doesn’t fucking matter. What matters is that it doesn’t happen again. That nobody knows what he can become. He will go to school, and the world will continue to turn, and Steve will have to pick up his car in the morning. He’ll call Tina and say sorry! I was upset about what happened with Nance and walked home to clear my head. And she will believe him, because there would be no reason for him to lie. 
And everything would be okay. And everything would be normal.
— — —
Breakfast, Steve thinks, is not the most important meal of the day. 
It can be skipped so easily, with ready excuses. I woke up late! I don’t have any bread! Sorry, gotta go! It is the easiest to skip, but it is also the easiest to make. Sure, he’s not a fan of breakfast, but he’s a fan of cooking, and with the little amount of sleep that he got last night, he feels as though he has no excuse not to make himself eggs, and toast, and hash-browns, before school. Maybe he’ll even have time to swing by that fancy cafe that Nancy likes — get her favourite coffee as an apology, an olive branch. He’s already got the car, because, really? Did he really need to wait till morning wait to get it and excuse himself? 
The radio is turned on to some station that his parents like. Normally, it’ll play jazz, a little bit of soul. Things that he couldn’t really imagine his parents liking, in the first place. He always imagined them to like something they would classify as regal — maybe some type of music they could ballroom dance to, or some orchestral string piece that his mother would cry to. Maybe opera, if they were feeling fancy.
Blues and soul were reserved for happy mornings. The radio was usually turned to the station that played all their favourite tunes — some rerun channel that was run through the school as a student project. The frequency was never changed, and on those mornings that were maybe-less-than-happy, the radio would never be turned on in the first place.
Steve flips the egg in the pan, taps a dash of pepper over the perfectly slightly-runny yolk, before turning up the volume of the radio. He juts his hips to the beat, terribly off-time with nobody to see his mistakes, and hums in perfect pitch against the lulling tones of the women. He deposits his egg onto his toast as the song ends, as he goes to sit at his picture-perfect breakfast, in his picture-perfect house, with his picture-perfect—
“A man has been found dead in the woods. Police are suspecting foul play, what with the condition that the body was left…”
Shit.
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blueiskewl · 1 year
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Roman Soldier’s 1,900-Year-Old Pay-Slip Uncovered in Masada
During excavations at Masada, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities (IAA) uncovered a papyrus payslip dated to 72 BC belonging to a Roman soldier.
Masada is a rugged crag in the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea.  Herod, the first-century BCE Judean king best known for constructing Jerusalem’s Temple Mount complex, built a fortress and palace on the mountain.
Jewish rebels entrenched themselves at Masada a century later, from 66 to 74 CE, during the Jewish Revolt against Rome. A Roman army besieged the last holdouts nearly four years after the fall of Jerusalem.
The only historical account of the conflict is Josephus Flavius, who claims that the Jewish rebels all committed mass suicide before Roman troops stormed the battlements. However, archaeologists dispute that account’s historical accuracy.
The IAA discovered a detailed military paycheck (one of only three legionary paychecks discovered throughout the Roman Empire) issued to a Roman legionary soldier during the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 72. The paycheck is one of 14 Latin scrolls found at Masada by archaeologists – 13 of which was written on papyrus, and one on parchment paper.
Although the papyrus was damaged over time and therefore very fragmentary, it contains valuable information about the management of the Roman army and the status of the soldiers. The document provides a detailed summary of a Roman soldier’s salary over two pay periods (out of three he would receive annually), including the various deductions that he was charged. The army supplied the soldiers with basic equipment, but, as today, some soldiers chose to add and upgrade their equipment.
“This soldier’s paycheck included deductions for boots and a linen tunic, and even for barley fodder for his horse,” says Dr. Oren Ableman, senior curator-researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority Dead Sea Scrolls Unit.
“Surprisingly, the details indicate that the deductions almost exceeded the soldier’s salary. Whilst this document provides only a glimpse into a single soldier’s expenses in a specific year, it is clear that in the light of the nature and risks of the job, the soldiers did not stay in the army only for the salary.
According to Dr. Ableman, “The soldiers may have been allowed to loot on military campaigns. Other possible suggestions arise from reviewing the different historical texts preserved in the Israel Antiquities Authority Dead Sea Scrolls Laboratory.
For example, a document discovered in the Cave of Letters in Nahal Hever from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE) sheds some light on some side hustles Roman soldiers used to earn extra cash. This document is a loan deed signed between a Roman soldier and a Jewish resident, the soldier charging the resident with interest higher than was legal. This document reinforces the understanding that the Roman soldiers’ salaries may have been augmented by additional sources of income, making service in the Roman army far more lucrative.”
By Leman Altuntaş.
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memecucker · 2 years
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I think one of the things that’s making reading the history of pro wrestling is when all of a sudden other social issues kinda pop up and yeah it’s not like that’s unique to wrestling but it’s interesting nonetheless.
For example the guy that’s considered to be the father of Japanese professional wrestling was a guy named Rikidozan whose background was in sumo. The name “Rikidozan” was actually his shikona which is basically someone’s sumo name they adopt but his government name was Mitsuhiro Momota while his birth name was Kim Sin-rak because the father of Japanese pro-wrestling was a Korean guy born in Korea. When he was young a Japanese businessman saw a lot of potential in him and sponsored his travel to Japan to attend a sumo dojo but his Korean ancestry was still known which resulted in a lot discrimination and harassment so he decided to get adopted by his sponsor so he could take his name and disguise his Korean heritage. That helped when it came to racism from common people but backstage there was still some amount of discrimination which culminated in a pay dispute when Rikidozan felt he wasn’t being properly compensated given his success and popularity because of his Korean heritage which caused him to retire in 1950.
After Rikidozan retired from sumo he worked as a supervisor for a construction company owned by a different Japanese businessman that also helped sponsor his sumo career named Shinsaku Nitta. Now during the war Shinsaku Nitta was an officer at a POW camp for Americans but he developed a reputation for being a “good guard” in that he felt compassion for the prisoners and would sneak extra rations or cigarettes to them. After the war word of mouth about this “good guard” spread and resulted in Nitta’s construction company doing very well during the occupation and reconstruction of Japan as it meant he was highly prioritized for contracts since a lot of GIs basically said that they owed their lives to this compassionate Japanese guard that would risk his own life and well being to save them from starvation. And one day some Americans in Tokyo decided it would be fun if they organized a pro wrestling tour with American wrestlers from Hawaii matched up against local guys and since Nitta was very tight with the American community he was able to go “Oh! If you guys are looking for Japanese people that would be good for this then I definitely know a guy” and got Rikidozan booked for the tour.
And so after only a month of training introducing Rikidozan to the world of American pro-wrestling he managed to wow the American organizers and he wound up being booked to be the main Japanese wrestler who would go over the visiting American opponents. Since this was post-WW2 Japan under Japanese occupation the crowds absolutely ate it up seeing this Japanese champion who was able to stand up to and defeat one American after another. He would then go on to tour heavily in the USA and would eventually found the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance the first Japanese pro wrestling promotion and direct precursor to NJPW and AJPW.
But yeah anyway I think that’s kinda interesting. A guy who spent much of his life subjected to anti-Korean racism and discrimination in Japan which wound up ending a promising sumo career early would eventually end up becoming a hugely popular hero and symbol of restored Japanese pride and dignity in the post-war era.
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alfalcone · 8 months
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speaking of black femicide and the different responses to ongoing murderous misogynoir and transphobia alike, they're literally making discourse - literal discourse - about Michelle Peacock (recent cis black woman, kid just starting her life, murdered with transmisogynoir intent, very close to where I live).
I just. can white people shut the fuck up and let us speak? and I get it, that other kid (white, trans) noah ruiz was killed last year only about half an hour away from where she was. but this is not for discourse, and here they are!! doing exactly that!!
i just. this should not be a "who's valid enough to deserve our attention" or "oh but don't care about [x] because [y]" - they both happened, with so little distance in time and location.
god. tldr I am so done with white people using everyone (and their literal selves, ffs) for discourse and virtue signalling instead of fucking being constructive
hey, thanks for this ask.
for those of you who aren't familiar with the case, peacock (who was a 60 year old woman and not a kid, as far as i know?) is one of hundreds of black women who were murdered so far this year. in this particular dispute, the man's "reason" for killing her was twofold; one, they had an ongoing dispute of some sort and two, he was allegedly convinced she was transgender.
as a reminder, most black women in this country are killed by abusive boyfriends or gang violence. so it's been interesting to see the queer media's obsession with this case in tandem with the mainstream media's obsession with the hoax kidnapping.
these are the only two cases this year that have become high-profile enough to even be notable, because they serve larger narratives. in the peacock case, the queer community is ghoulishly salivating in the same weirdo fucking way they do every time any trans person is murdered, but this time there is the added "bonus" for them of more fodder for their "black women are men" talking points. and for the mainstream media, they love the hoax kidnapping because it serves their narrative that black women are crazy and liars and not ever really deserving of sympathy because she was probably complicit in it in some way, right? there's no way a black woman could truly be the innocent victim of a crime.
meanwhile, there has been little to no discussion or coverage of the continuing twin epidemics domestic abuse and gang violence. and it's not only because these things are "expected" or even considered "normal", it's also because they serve no narrative purpose. another example: why do you think no one really cares for more than a few days in this country (if that) when there's a mass shooting? it's expected and it serves no narrative purpose. being murdered and having your death used as either true crime fodder (if you're a white woman) or discourse bait (if you're marginalized and the attack seems politically motivated) ... so fucking awful.
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naturalrights-retard · 4 months
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The U.S. is reportedly shaping the Philippines into the next Ukraine in its fight against China.
"With the rise of China, so too rises Southeast Asia," New Eastern Outlook (NEO) reported. "Southeast Asia has slowly transformed in terms of economics, infrastructure, tourism, industry, and politically over the last two decades as Chinese influence increases and inevitably displaces U.S. influence over the region."
The Philippines is among the nations in the region that would benefit with closer ties to Beijing. But while the rest of its neighbors are embracing ties with China, Manila is doing the opposite. One example NEO cited was the Philippine government's cancellation of several joint railway projects with Beijing.
According to a piece by the Washington-funded outlet BenarNews, the Philippines dropped its funding deal with China for three railway projects. The outlet also noted that Manila will seek out alternative contractors to build the rail projects.
NEO also pointed out that instead of civilian infrastructure, the Philippines has focused on signing military base access agreements with the United States. The Washington Post reported that American forces will be allowed to utilize four new military bases in the country. Reuters meanwhile reported that Manila and Washington have begun talks to develop a port in the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes – which is less than 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Taiwan.
"While the U.S. justifies its growing military presence in the Philippines by citing maritime disputes in the South China Sea, it should be noted that maritime disputes are common both around the world – and particularly in Southeast Asia. [Even though] these disputes become somewhat heated, they are always resolved bilaterally all while nations in the region, including China, maintain otherwise constructive and even close economic and diplomatic ties," NEO noted.
"Thus, the US is using common maritime disputes as a pretext to insert itself militarily into the region, attempting to escalate ordinary disputes into a regional or even global crisis. In reality, the U.S. is building up its military presence not to defend its supposed allies, but to encircle and contain China while transforming host nations into battering rams against China."
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kendrixtermina · 4 months
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Our Governments are not representative of us, nor of our cultures.
The Nation-State was probably the single worst idea in all of humanity, and both the current conflict & the discourse around it really shows why
Before they came up with that in the 19th century, people may have identified themselves with their language, religion, culture or attachment to the region, but not by a "nation" of people thought to have shared traits. At the time of the French revolution, most people in France didn't speak French, and in 1900 some ppl in sicily had no idea what "Italy" is.
A while ago ppl were surprised about a farmer on TV who said he doesn't particularly care if his town is in "Russia" or "Ukraine" he just wants to live there in peace. But until 200 years ago or so, that is how most people thought of home.
Certainly basic xenophobia, tribalism & fear of the other existed before, there were, after all, persecutions in the middle ages. But the construct of nation has nonetheless made conflicts massively worse & more deadly.
It's based on an Illusion
There is this idea that peoples have always existed as some unchanging, unmingling "pure" group on one piece of land that is tainted or adulterated by contact with others.
Even on the left some ppl just uncritically accept this notion (see much of the discourse about 'cultural appropriation')
That was just never true - people have always been copying each other, migrating, trading, interacting etc. often new cultures arose or peoples changed where they lived; Borders shifted over time. And of course, culture evolved over time.
When people think that a state that is an illusion is what naturally should be, and try to adjust reality to the fake model in their head, ugly things happen.
Homogenous groups on a fixed patch of land are not the reality of how cultures work, but if ppl think they are, they enact violence to artificially create those homogenous patches neatly delineated by lines. You get silly disputes about "who was there first", expulsion of minorities and conflicts when people try drawing lines in areas with mixed populations.
The Nazis, the Balkan wars & Israel represent the peak excesses of the madness that can lead to. (and note that 20 years or so after the Nazis fell, tons of immigrants moved into Germany & the artificial homogenity collapsed again, because it's just not natural. Israel will never suceed at their homogenous country either.)
It leads to generalization
There's a really shitty trope in european newspapers sometimes that has much been criticised.
If the article says "Guy robs bank" then people will think he's a bad guy.
If the article says "Turkish guy robs bank" it will get ppl frothing about how immigrants are bad guys. In case of the non-immigrant robber, they don't even bother to write "German guy robbs bank"
That's how you see these shitty responses that when there's a war, random ppl from the involved countries get attacked. China does shit & ppl bother random Chinese.
With the current war, jews & arabs around the world are being harassed.
What can some ordinary shopkeeper Yacob Shmitz in New York do about Netanyahu? What does Khalil Mansoor in Berlin got to do with October 7th? Nothing at all.
This leads ppl to completely overlook all context to look at some ppl as always being victims or perps or otherwise all the same, regardless of context. For example I once heard an Indian acquaintance raving about "the muslims" & how they "want everything" & making wild conflations. A Palestinian living in Al-Quds/Jerusalem wants it probably because he lives there & probably doesn't even know about the contentious site in India, and he was treating as the same people that are wildly different: Powerful elites in Saudi Arabia & persecuted minorities in India & Palestine, arabs in the ME and southeast asians in Pakistan.
Later he went to a Pakistan-themes party & was surprised to wind that culturally they got more in common wit him than arabs despite the different religions. They liked similar music, food & sports.
Or people today feeling guilty & ashamed now for what the Nazis did. Did you, personally, throw people in gas chambers? No? Then what shame is it of yours? Everyone who did it is dead & buried & being roasted in hell if it exists.
To me, this completely destroys the very system of morality. Morality only makes sense if a person can only be blamed or held responsible for what they can personally influence & change. If you're deemed "bad" based on things you can't control, what's the incentive of being good?
Or, you can't criticize some countries cause people take it personally - it's an insult to their identity, their whole culture... which brings me to the next & imho main point.
It conflates people, culture & government
A wise guy in Iran once said that "the difference between you & me is much smaller than you & your government, and our governments are much the same". I wish more ppl listened to him.
There have been greedy leaders looking to enrich themselves pretty much since they invented agriculture. but they spoke for themselves or their supporters.
With Nation-States, it gets assumed that the government speaks not only for the people, but that is somehow represents their values & culture.
All this political & war propaganda isn't really what culture is. Culture is conventions and books and food and little stories and sayings and values that give things meaning. But when someone says "fuck the Muslims/USA/jews/Germans" etc the other side feels like the actual culture, the small & beautiful & meaningful & enlightened things are what's being attacked. Because it's conflated.
Leaders will of course claim to justiy their actions by whatever values are popular with their subjects, but that doesn't mean they actually represent those values.
Look at your own leaders: How much do they support the values you believe in? How much do they do lip-service to that culture without really living up to it?
So you get ppl seeing governments do shit & thinking "fuck all those jews/americans/westerners, they must be demons" and Israelis killing all the ppl in Gaza because of "Hamas".
It's that same logical leap of not just leaders = people, but leaders = culture & values.
Now leaders of course have coalitions of supporters whether it's a bunch of oligarch or a popular movement - active supporters are 100% on the hook for what the government does. The mocking song singers are to blame for Netanyahu & the red hat guys for Trump, and Biden... I mean, it's probably the DNC & some political establishment ppl who wanted him cause no one else really did.
But political coalitions =/= all the people =/= all the "culture".
The evil acts of government are usually the products of greedy leaders and a coalition of supporters, not whole populations or cultures.
The difference between people & political establishment has never been more obvious than now
Case in point: Mainstream news outlets are struggling to explain away why there is 15 times more pro-palestine content being posted on the internet, some getting conspiratorial or frantically attributing it to "iran propaganda", but the true reason is that, as surveys also show, no one outside of Israel wants this fucking war but a few old men with imperialist ambitions & weapons companies.
much of it is ignorance, inertia, & propaganda calculated to work on influential because because theyre influential & fear looking bad.
our cultures may differ but very few cultures would last long if they condoned this kinda shit. Different cultures may give different reasons & many have their flaws of bothersome elements, but i dare say most would on average come down on rejecting this.
Let's not believe the lie that being for this is based on any kind of values, not western ones or any other. They might say it is to sell their bullshit but it's just liars & cowards adapting their lies to the audience.
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infinitycutter · 11 months
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YOHJI YAMAMOTO DEFINES HIS FASHION FASHION PHILOSOPHY
John Duka for the NYT, Oct. 23 1983
Yohji Yamamoto may stand barely five feet tall, but his effect on world fashion in the last two years has been enormous. Many people at the recent Paris showings said he is the best of the new Japanese designers - a distinguished group that includes Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake and Kansai Yamamoto (no relation). Some say he is the best anywhere. His fans use his first name when they discuss his clothes, a sure sign that a designer has arrived. Fashion experts and retailers are often inclined to exaggerate, but Mr. Yamamoto's influence is hard to dispute.
''When I started designing clothes 12 years ago, I knew there were two ways,'' Mr. Yamamoto, who is 40 years old, said in an interview. ''The first is to work with formal, classical shapes. The other way is to be very casual. That's what I decided on, but I wanted a new kind of casual sportswear that could have the same status as formal clothing. So I use fabrics that are heavy-duty, like army fabrics, or just look heavy-duty, to give the kimono shape a new energy.'' He spoke in English as he sat in his spare white and black showroom near the Les Halles district of Paris. The room, cavernous and brightly lighted, was filled with buyers, trying clothes on from his spring collection.
Loosening the Silhouette
What Mr. Yamamoto and the other Japanese designers have accomplished is a general loosening of the female silhouette. This they have done with large, loose-fitting garments, such as jackets with no traditional construction and a minimum of detail or buttons; dresses that often have a straight, simple shape, and large coats with sweepingly oversized proportions. In general, there is a generosity of proportion and size, often with the kimono as a starting point of design, and fabrics that range from fresh cottons to robust linens to heavy wools. All of this came at a time when women's clothes by most traditional designers were moving in the opposite direction, toward a snugger fit and formality.
For fall, one of Mr. Yamamoto's most successful coats is made of a pressed wool in mustard and brown that has the look of great weight but is as light as a raincoat and has no definable shape, except perhaps a generic coat shape. Worn with simple Western day clothes, a pair of black trousers, a black shirt and black heels, it is one of the chicquer designs this season. Moreover, it can be worn during the day or at night.
It is also a good example of the flexibility of Mr. Yamamoto's clothes because it shows that they work best when they are mixed with Western clothing. When the new clothing from Japan is worn on the street in exactly the same way it is shown on the runway, the result often becomes a shapeless heap of fabric. Mr. Yamamoto is aware of that problem.
''I've become very nervous myself about the volume of the Japanese clothing and the kimono shape, so loose and oversized,'' he said. ''If you go too far with a kimono, the final conclusion is just fabric. That is not fashion. The kimono is easy to copy but difficult to make work. It must be done in a technical way, or it becomes sloppy, too big and too baggy. That is why my new collection has shapes that are narrower. I wrapped the body very tight.''
Mr. Yamamoto also continues to break new ground with his men's clothes. His men's spring collection, for example, has sports jackets, in navy or black, that are loose-fitting, with generous, rounded shoulders and gored backs. They are made of 90 percent cotton and 10 percent polyurethane and, as a result, have the stretch of running clothes. There are ankle- length classic trench coats, in tan or black cottons, with shoulders extended by tailoring, not padding. The trousers, some with elastic waists, are loose-fitting. And there are black cotton pullover shirts with zip collars. What strikes one about Mr. Yamamoto's men's clothes is that they would work as well on women.
Men's Shirts, Women's Skirts
A number of women have, in fact, been buying Mr. Yamamoto's men's clothes in New York at the Charivari Workshop, Columbus Avenue at West 81st Street. According to Jon Weiser, who will be adding a 1,900-square-foot Yohji Yamamoto boutique to his next Charivari store, scheduled to open this fall on West 57th Street, women shop the Yamamoto line in his store by moving back and forth between the men's and women's sections, mixing men's shirts with women's skirts.
''I think that my men's clothes look as good on women as my women's clothing,'' said Mr. Yamamoto. ''And more and more women are buying my men's clothes. It's happening everywhere, and not just with my clothes. Men's clothing is more pure in design. It's more simple and has no decoration. Women want that. When I started designing, I wanted to make men's clothes for women. But there were no buyers for it. Now there are. I always wonder who decided that there should be a difference in the clothes of men and women. Perhaps men decided this.''
In the United States and Europe, Mr. Yamamoto's clothing is bought primarily by professionals, largely because of its cost. A blazer usually sells for around $500. But in Japan his biggest fans are students.
''I am designing for my generation,'' he said, ''but in Japan people are very much seeking the old way of life again. Sexual differentiation in clothing is more important. My major customers there are still the unversity students. My generation isn't ready for me yet. They think Yohji is not fashionable enough for them. They will see.''
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reliaabledevelopers · 17 days
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The Importance of Regulatory Compliance in Bangalore Plot Purchases by Reliaable Developers
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In the bustling city of Bangalore­, purchasing a plot of land can be a favorable opportunity. However, it is pivotal to recognize the­ significance of abiding by the set rule­s and guidelines. Re­gulatory compliance isn’t simply an official necessity; it is a ke­y part of guaranteeing a smooth and secure­ investment. Le­t’s explore why it is crucial to follow the set re­gulations when purchasing a plot in Bangalore.
Legal Protection:
Protecting yourse­lf legally when buying a plot in Bangalore­ is very important. The city has many laws and rules se­t by the local government about land. Not following the­se rules can lead to le­gal problems, disputes, and eve­n losing your investment complete­ly. For example, choosing plots from companies like Reliaable­ Developers provides extra legal prote­ction. Reliaable Developers projects have approval from BDA and are­ registered with RERA, e­nsuring a legally sound investment. By making sure­ everything follows the rule­s from the start, you reduce the­ chances of facing legal issues late­r. This gives you peace of mind and a strong le­gal basis for owning the property.
Avoiding Penalties and Fines:
Not following the set regulations in Bangalore can lead to heavy fines imposed by municipal authorities. Whethe­r it’s not getting the right papers or violating building codes, the financial consequences of non-compliance can be severe and negatively impact your budget. By following regulatory guidelines and ge­tting all needed approvals, you lowe­r the risk of unnecessary expenses and make sure your inve­stment has a stable financial future. By choosing plots within Reliaable­ Developers proje­cts, known for strictly sticking to regulatory guidelines and organize­d paperwork processes, inve­stors can avoid such financial troubles.
Secure Ownership Rights:
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Smooth Development Process:
For those planning construction or development on their purchased plot, you need to me­et specific regulatory re­quirements to ensure­ a smooth and comfortable process. Securing the­ necessary approvals, following building standards, and observing e­nvironmental rules are critical to advancing your de­velopment project. From architectural designs to infrastructure development, adherence to regulatory norms streamlines the development process, reducing delays and enhancing efficiency.
Resale Value:
Regulatory adhe­rence enhance­s the resale worth of your plot in Bangalore­. Prospective buyers te­nd to prefer plots that have a cle­ar lawful history and that follow the regulatory guideline­s. By staying compliant and observing the rules, the­ plot becomes more appe­aling and marketable to potential buye­rs, leading to a lift in its resale worth and re­turn on investment. Reliaable Deve­lopers Revie­ws frequently e­mphasize the favorable re­sale value of plots within Reliaable­ Developer projects, reflecting the marke­t’s acknowledgment of compliance­ and adherence to re­gulations.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, regulatory compliance is not merely a box to check but a core­ part of plot purchases in Bangalore that include­s lawful protection, financial safety, ownership rights, development facilitation, and booste­d resale worth. By putting compliance as a top priority from the­ start, you create a sturdy base for your plot investment and clear a straightforward path for a succe­ssful and fulfilling real estate e­xperience in Bangalore­’s lively city.
About Reliaable Developers:
Established in 1999 by Dr. Rama Re­ddy and Mr. H.P. Rama Reddy, Reliaable De­velopers has bee­n a leading name in Bangalore’s re­al estate sector. Led by Dr. Rama Re­ddy and Dr. Mahendra Reddy, the company combine­s tradition with innovation in their approach. With a focus on developing BDA-approve­d plots, they have­ successfully delivere­d over 15,000 plots across prime locations in Bangalore. Custome­rs frequently praise the­ company’s dedication to excellence and convenient locations of the­ir BDA-approved plots in Reliaable Developers revie­ws, further solidifying its positive reputation in the real estate sector. Notable projects that de­monstrate their commitment to quality and time­ly completion include Reliaable­ Lifestyle and Dollar Colony. They envision a future driven by innovation and sustainability.
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is a favorite target of the right. Conservatives appear to have difficulty handling the most senior gay official in the U.S. government with a husband, Chasten, and children. The Buttigieg kids, Penelope and Gus, have been in the world for over two years, and Republican voters remain obsessed with their parents.
Throughout it all, Buttigieg faced political attacks from those on the right who otherwise praised “strong family values.”
It is, therefore, no surprise that Buttigieg is keenly aware of the realities LGBTQ+ people face in 2023 as conservatives attack the community and LGBTQ+ people from American society through targeted legislation intended to limit discussion of sexual orientation, gender identity, and books, as well as eliminate essential health care for transgender people.
“I think it’s gotten worse,” Buttigieg told Time during a recent interview. “I think we’re actually in an exceptionally ugly moment in terms of some figures deciding that there’s utility, political utility, in targeting trans people and LGBTQ people more generally,” before pointing to Republicans who voted against last year’s Respect For Marriage Act, which provides some protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The bill, which received overwhelming support from Democrats, was opposed by 36 Republican senators and 169 Republican representatives.
“I mean, look how many people voted against marriage equality—which should have been an easy one—just as recently as a few months ago. And so I think it’s a reminder that none of what’s been gained is really locked in.”
Gallup reports that more than 71% of Americans favor marriage equality.
In light of the recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Buttigieg warns that a Supreme Court decision also ushered in marriage equality, and the Justices have proved themselves capable of overturning established precedent.
“I don’t think anything is safe. I mean, Roe fell, and that was the law of the land for longer than I’ve been alive. Nothing is safe. Especially right now,” Buttigieg said.
Currently, LGBTQ+ rights in this country face a terrifying reality. Far-right provocateurs and lawmakers have moved on to identity politics after the court's decision.
These policies do not help Republicans win over middle-class voters, despite the praise of hard-right lawmakers. While Buttigieg acknowledges the privileges he enjoys, he believes this approach will fail.
“The situation of an upper-middle-class, married white gay dude is not the same as a trans kid in Texas or any number of LGBTQ people of color trying to survive right now,” he said. “They see political value in this. I see not only distraction but a very real harm that’s being done. And that’s gonna persist until they figure out that it is not rewarding politically for them.”
One of the GOP candidates for president in 2024 has gone all in on hatred of LGBTQ+ people. As Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis has unapologetically targeted queer people in his state, and it appears that that disdain extends to his professional interactions with Buttigieg.
One example is a proposed rail line connecting Miami to Tampa via a station near Disney World near Orlando. Federal infrastructure dollars could be a big boon to the state. As a result of its dispute with DeSantis, the company canceled an expansion of $1 billion and the construction of a station at Disney Springs.
According to Time, the train will instead head to the Orange County Convention Center in central Florida, but the longer it lingers, the less likely a Washington cash infusion will be.
Despite his best efforts, Buttigieg said he has yet to speak with DeSantis about transportation issues. Buttigieg noted that he has called DeSantis but has yet to talk to him.
“I’ve never heard from this Governor, and it’s not because I’ve never called him. We’ve never spoken. What I will say is we’ve done a lot of good work with the Florida Department of Transportation,” Buttigieg said. “We try to work around and through all that to just get stuff done. A huge amount of energy and effort is being wasted in these dumb fights. And that’s really unfortunate. It’s policy waste in order to achieve political benefit or perceived political benefit.”
Buttigieg added, “He’s more worried about Bud Light or Disney or whatever.”
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