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spencerreidsconverse · 3 years

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When Evil Doesn't Sleep

summary: Spencer has been gone far too long on a case and when he finally returns home, reader shows him just how much she missed him.

word count: 3.4k

warnings: smut, implied dom/sub undertones, pet names

Pairing: Spencer Reid/Female Reader

A/N: My first fic!!! I hope you all enjoy! <3

“Y/n I’m really sorry but it looks like the case is going to take a lot longer than we thought. We had a recent development and the profile is now pointing to a partnership so now we’re hunting down two unsubs”. You sighed as Spencer rattled off his apologies through the phone before putting him out of his misery “Spencer honey, you don’t have to apologize. Quit worrying about me and focus on catching the bad guys.”

To say you missed Spencer would be the understatement of the century. He had been in Utah for six days already and now with a pair of psychos your odds of finding him in your bed by the end of the week were growing increasingly slim. It didn’t help that you had been swamped prepping for an extra class you’d agreed to take on at Georgetown where you worked as a Criminal Psychology professor. Between both of your hectic work schedules you hadn’t had a real weekend to yourselves in a few months, and while you knew when you first started dating Spencer that it was an inevitable of his job, it had never been this crazy before. They say evil never sleeps but lately it hasn't even taken a catnap.

“I love you Y/N. I promise I’ll come home to you soon and take you out on a real date. I’m sorry darling, I have to go. I’ll text you when I get to the hotel tonight and if you’re still up we can talk for a bit okay?”. “Alright Spence, I love you too. Stay safe okay?”. “I promise, goodbye love.”

Your farewell barely made it past your lips when the dial tone cut you off and once again your boyfriend of three years vanished from your side of the country. You let out an exasperated sigh before reminding yourself that there were other people who needed his help and that you could wait for his attention - at least until that night. Continuing the trek up the stairs of your and spencer’s shared apartment, you managed to haphazardly balance your grocery bags in one hand while unlocking the door and disabling the security alarm, internally cringing at the high shriek that rattled through your brain.

Walking through the living room, you sat the bags on your kitchen counter and began reorganizing the small fridge space to fit all the perishables you had brought home, absentmindedly hoping they wouldn't spoil now that it would be just you for several more days. Moving to the cupboard you replaced the few grab and go snack boxes you had made up to try and encourage Spencer to eat more throughout the day and refilled the paper plate stash that quickly became a requirement after you realized neither one of you could tolerate doing dishes every night. You ripped open the cardboard packaging of yet another microwave dinner and set the timer before leaving to change into more comfortable attire.

Opening the door of your shared bedroom, the smell of vanilla wax melts and dryer sheets hit you like a brick and immediately sent a pang of loneliness through your chest. Spencer was usually around by the time the chores needed done, and you rarely had to do them yourself. Unfortunately, the laundry was piling up and you needed something to distract you so you spent the day running errands and cleaning the apartment more thoroughly than necessary. You walked over to the stack of black dresser drawers and pulled out the first pair of pajama pants you touched, Spencer’s old caltech sweats that now fit you far better than him considering he had received them when he was 14. They looked more like capris on him now and it was embarrassingly difficult to convince him to buy a new pair that fit him properly. You slipped on a tank top and pulled your hair back before making your way lazily to the bathroom to take off the remnants of your simple makeup.

After scrubbing your face clean and pulling your dinner out, you moved to ready the couch for yet another night of binge watching cheesy 90s movies. You selected Clueless and watched the vibrant colors pop across the screen while you dived into your meal, making a poor attempt to ignore the slight freezer burnt taste that lingered after every bite. You finished your dinner and set the bowl aside before covering yourself with a blanket and allowing yourself to sink into the cushions, desperately awaiting Spencer's text.

You were jolted out of your doze by the loud buzzing of your phone against the wooden coffee table. Clumsily you reached for it and managed to swipe the answer pad before it sent your genius to voicemail. “Hello?” you managed before a yawn ripped its way through you suddenly. “Hey Y/N, I’m sorry it’s so late. I didn't mean to wake you, I figured you’d still be up. You should go back to bed love.” For the first time, you noticed the neon green numbers on the microwave. 12:30. You stifled another yawn and shook your head in an effort to wake yourself further “No way, I just dozed off while watching a movie. I was waiting to talk to you. Besides, I’m up now anyways so you might as well stay on with me for a bit. Did you get any further today?” “Well, JJ had the idea that the partners were originally a typical dominant/submissive partnership but that something in the dynamic must have changed because the MO began to deteriorate. We think the partners must have split up now, because we’re finding similar pieces of the previous MO at separate crime scenes.”.

You processed the information he fed you slowly due to your semiconscious state but eventually you put your words in order well enough to respond. “That should be helpful though yeah? I mean, they’re used to working in a partnership so being suddenly separated from your other half so to speak would throw you off track quite a bit right?”. You could practically hear him smiling through the phone as you drew the conclusions the team had come to only a few hours prior. “Yes. We’re hoping to be able to draw them out and trap them. Play them against each other.”.”Does that mean I can stop sleeping on the couch soon?”. You heard him let out a dejected sigh - you knew he hated that you would force yourself onto the cramped couch when you had a king sized bed a few hundred feet away but he understood.

When he had come home in the early hours of the morning after an abrupt end to a case a few weeks after you had moved into his place, he had caught you curled up on the sofa with a throw pillow stuffed under your head. When he questioned you about it the next morning, you simply answered that the bed felt too big without him and that you couldn’t stand the empty feeling. “Sooner than later I hope my love. Y/N I really wish you wouldn’t do that to yourself. It’s horrible for your body. It can put you at a much higher risk for chronic back and neck pain as well as-”. “Spence. I’m not a giant like you are. I fit on the couch much better than you do, and I barely notice the difference.”. You both cringed, hearing the lie clear in your voice. Still, Spencer must have felt bad because he humored you. “If you're sure. What did you do today my love?”. You smiled sadly hearing in his voice just how desperate he was to escape from his reality and come home to you.

”Well, I straightened the house. In fact, it’s so clean i think we could use it as a sterilization room.”. He let out a soft chuckle and you could hear him begin to relax as you recounted the rest of your day, excluding the part about the microwave dinner. Spencer loved to tell you how many of the ingredients were one step away from processed garbage and you decided to opt out of the lecture for the evening. He had more than enough to worry about without having to focus on your diet while he was away. After a half hour of light conversation, a loud yawn betrayed you as you were excitedly discussing the cute puppy you had met on the way to the market. Spencer immediately requested that you hang up and get some more sleep but you refused. After a few minutes of bickering, you relented on the condition that he would read to you until you had fallen asleep. You curled up under the fluffy blanket as Spencer’s even voice recited the collection of Grimm’s fairy tales quickly lured you to sleep.

You woke up the next morning as sunlight peered through the curtains, stretching your body out to ease the aches from the previous night. You smiled softly as your screen lit up with a text from Spencer wishing you a good morning and an update that they had a solid plan for boxing in the two unsubs that afternoon. “If all goes to plan I should be carrying you to our bed before midnight tonight.”. Your smile widened and you sent back “Can’t wait to truly see you - and love you- tonight. I’ll be waiting.” You plugged your phone into the charger and straightened up from the night before when your phone went off again. The one word message glared at you from the screen and you let out an involuntary giggle. “Tease.”. You hoped it gave him something to look forward to until he was back in your arms. You sent back a simple “XO” before deciding to reread one of your favorite books for a few hours to kill some time. You made yourself a sandwich for lunch and had a few glasses of water as the clock slowly ticked by. You were over halfway through the lengthy novel when you received another message.

“We apprehended both unsubs. Hotch is postponing the paperwork until Monday so we can go straight home. I’ll see you in a few hours baby.”. You jumped slightly in celebration before finishing your current chapter, marking your place, and all but skipping to the shower to shave and exfoliate your skin. You knew Spencer would still be heavily worked up once he arrived home and luckily, his favorite release included intertwining your bodies as close as possible and loving you sweetly and slowly.

You took your time in the shower careful not to nick yourself with your razor. You scrubbed your scalp with your nails, letting your stress and soreness melt away under the steam. You waited until the water ran cold before turning the knob and stepping out, wrapping yourself in a fluffy towel and blow drying your hair until it layed perfectly even. You applied lotion all over your skin and stepped out of the bathroom to slip on your black silk robe, knowing it wouldn’t be worth it to dress up further. Spencer would be desperate to feel your skin against his and any fabric in his way didn't stand much of a chance.

You made an actual meal for dinner, a pasta dish with chicken that could be easily reheated for Spencer when he grew hungry later in the night. You helped yourself to a serving and after quickly cleaning up the kitchen and storing the leftovers, you retreated to the bedroom to wait for his return.

You were half paying attention to the feed you opted to scroll through on your phone when you heard the door creak open and bags drop to the floor. You set your phone on the bedside table and ran towards the foyer, all but throwing yourself at the exhausted man in front of you. He took a step back from the impact but still enveloped you in his arms and pulled you impossibly tight into his chest. “Hi baby.” you whispered against the scruffy skin of his jawline, peppering kisses up towards his earlobe. He let out a long sigh of relief and picked you up off the hardwood floor, wrapping your thighs around his waist resulting in a high pitched giggle to erupt from your throat. He kissed you then, slowly at first but quickly building more passionate. Your lungs were burning when he finally allowed you to pull away, opting to kiss down your neck to your collarbones and the skin of your chest that was newly exposed as your robe slipped open.

He carefully made his way back to your room, continuing his kisses back up to your shoulder, stopping only to leave marks you knew would only grow darker as time passed. At the very least he was sure to only mark you in places you could cover with little difficulty. “I missed you so much Y/N. The entire ride home all I could think about was you waiting for me in our bed. My gorgeous girl.”. You felt your chest heat up at his words of admiration, wrapping your fingers into his curls and pulling his lips towards your own once more.

You felt him groan against you and moved to quickly unbutton his shirt, slipping it down his arms and tossing it in the general direction of the hamper. He pulled you up with him then, so you were both on your knees, chest to chest as he pulled your robe fully down your back to the swell of your ass where he grasped at you through the slick fabric. You let out a whine and you pulled his belt off, undoing his jeans desperate to continue. He grinned against your neck and pushed you down so you laid flat on your back, completely exposed to him. He kissed at your stomach, making his way down to your inner thighs. He licked a slow wet trail from your pelvic bone to the top of your clit as you whimpered desperately. “Spence, please… I need more”. He humored you, creating slow small circles with his tongue moaning at the taste. You cried out as he created the perfect amount of pressure on your clit, legs threatening to close around his head when he moved to slip one of his fingers easily inside you as the mix of your own wetness and his saliva aided him. He smirked as he felt your thighs flex before using his left hand to throw one of your legs over his shoulders at a time. He pushed a second finger in, curling them up to perfectly reach your g-spot with every thrust. Soon though, you grew impatient with just his fingers. You needed more and you knew just how to get it.

“I want you so bad Spence. I’ve waited for so long and I just can’t anymore. I need to feel you deep inside of me.”. You were positive those words would leave him just as needy as you were and he proved you right when he kicked his pants the rest of the way off and went to line himself up against you. “Wait.”. He stopped immediately, examining your face for any indication of what was wrong. “What’s the matter baby? Are you okay?”. You shook your head and smiled at his concern before switching your positions so his back was resting against the pillows as you straddle his thighs. He smirked at you as he caught on, trailing his hands up the front of your legs to rest at your hips. “You gonna ride me angel?”. You responded with an eager nod and he squeezed your hips, pulling you up further so you were hovering above him. “Sit pretty like my good girl then.”. You whined softly at his words before slowly sinking yourself down around his length, sucking in a harsh breath at the stretch. Even with how wet you were, the adjustment took longer than usual due to the dry spell you were both suffering from as of late.

When you finally felt stretched out enough to move, you slowly ground your hips forward flush against his. He groaned out, lifting you back up so you were almost completely off of him before pulling you back down. You moaned both at the sensation and the idea of being manhandled by the genius below you. You realized what he was asking though, and began bouncing yourself up and down his cock, stopping every few thrusts to grind your clit down on him. You let out soft moans, and after a few more minutes you felt his fingers dig deeper into your hips and his breaths quicken. You knew he was close and as if on cue you started rubbing fast circles against your clit as he spoke again.

“Baby girl I’m getting close. You gonna cum with me angel?” You nodded furiously in response and you felt him start thrusting up to meet you. You panted as you hurried towards the edge of your orgasm, holding on until his thrusts grew sloppier. “You ready to cum with me baby? You gonna cum on my cock?” “Yeah.. gonna cum all over your cock Doc.” You fought to keep the grin off your face when he moaned at the title. He thrusted deep into you twice, before he ordered your release. “I want you to cum now baby. Cum all over my cock.” You felt your orgasm rip through you, electricity shooting through your limbs. Spencer groaned loudly as you tightened around him before pulling you down deep and releasing inside you.

You both fought to catch your breath as you rode out your highs before you found yourself slumping against his chest, suddenly drained from your activities. You felt him chuckle at your drastic change in energy as he wrapped his arms around you again. “I know you just washed the bed sheets and we’re both sweaty but do you think a washcloth will suffice for tonight?”. You nodded against his chest before slowly lifting yourself up and off of him, rolling onto your back on the other side of the bed. Spencer swiftly made his way across the hall, returning to wipe you down gently with the warm fabric. You shivered as the cool air dried your skin, watching him move throughout your room.

He slipped on a fresh pair of boxers before tossing the washcloth in the hamper along with his previously discarded clothes. He hung your robe on the back of your bedroom door then flipped the light switch off before rejoining you in bed to slip under the blankets with you. You immediately curled up into his chest, sighing contently as the sound of his heartbeat filled your ears. You kissed his chest and whispered goodnight, drifting into your first real sleep since before he left.

The next morning you and Spencer went shopping after you successfully convinced him to upgrade to a smart phone with video call abilities. He had begun to shut down the idea as he always had before but after the mere suggestion of what it could do to better your late night hotel room chats he was the one pulling you towards the nearest phone shop. You smiled politely while Spencer took his sweet time weighing the pros and cons of each model, letting your mind drift to the first time it would come in handy. As you finally neared the checkout counter, you took Spencer's hand in your own and gave it a gentle squeeze. After running his card through the machine, the salesgirl gave him the small plastic bag and wished you both a good afternoon.

As you exited the shop, you looked up at him, nudging him to get his attention “What do you think of an app controlled vibrator?”. He stared at you incredulously for a few moments, almost stopping dead in his tracks. After recovering from the initial shock at the vulgarity of your suggestion, he shook his head with a soft smirk and nudged back against you. “Tease.” he called you once more. “That’s the reason you love me right?”. He pulled you into his side, kissing you softly. “One of many Y/N. One of many.”

#spencer reid #Spencer reid/reader #spencer reid/you #Spencer reid x reader #Spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds #cm #Spencer reid smut #smut #Spencer reid x you #Spencer reid fanfiction

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nitholites · 4 years

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Daminette Soulmate AU

Inspired by this post by @thepeacetea. Thank you for making an AU with so much Badass!Marinette possibilities. We. Stan. Epic. Marinette. I took a few creative liberties by changing how soulmates work a little bit, I hope no one minds too much. If people want more of this, I'll see what I can do. But, if this inspires anyone to write or add onto this- I personally highly encourage it! Seeing the works of art people can make from one thing are always inspiring to me. I'd love to see what, if anything, comes from this.

That's enough from me- time for the fic!

Marinette sighed, letting her mind wander back. She remembered knowing several languages before she hit double digits, her body reacting to surprise by calming her mind, spinning around, assessing the situation, and figuring the easiest way to... disable whomever startled her. It took a surprising amount of self control to act like a normal kid, which made her wonder.

Who the heck was her soulmate?

She had to have one- not because she wanted one but because of all the skills she couldn't explain having any other way. She remembered asking her parents about soulmates, and getting a few answers. Soulmates weren't common- actually being extremely rare. The bond was usually the same, though. A kind of skill share.

The more your soulmate used a skill or integrated it into their life, the more normal the skill felt to you, becoming habit over time. Which is why Marinette always knew the exits, shadows, hidden corners, number of people in a room with her, direction, and how to... disable anyone at any given time.

Her footsteps were always silent, and she kept to the shadows of the room by habit. Several times, she accidentally sneaked up on her parents or friends when she thought she wasn't being sneaky at all. She was surprisingly talented at gymnastics, and the sport was relaxing to her, so she continued it all through school.

When she became Ladybug, she could only make a mental note to thank her soulmate profusely for knowing so many self-defense styles and aggressive fighting.

At first, Chat had a major crush on her, but after showing him he wasn't her soulmate (by yelling at him in every language she knew [which were about 5 he didn't]), he had to accept the facts.

Life went on, and soon Lila was brought into the picture. Adrien didn't help, and the class soon left Marinette behind, bullying her and excluding her. But still, Marinette continued to do the best she could as the class representative.

Two years after she became Ladybug, Marinette won her class a trip to Gotham to tour the city and learn more about the American school system. They'd stay for the remainder of the school year (about two months) and would have the chance to intern under several high-class businesses, industries, and names. Rumor had it that whoever earned the right to would work with the Waynes during the summer for their internship, a huge boost to the lucky winner's resume.

Marinette organised everything for the trip- the hotel, activities, tours, school, etc- nearly without help (if you counted Tikki and Luka- two of Marinette's last friends and people who didn't even go to her school!).

The plane ride to Gotham wasn't very interesting. Marinette sat in the back alone while Lila and her lackeys gossipped and lied (both knowingly and unknowingly) about this and that. Every so often, Marinette would hear something about a Dimitri Wayne?

She inwardly scoffed, wondering if Lila meant the only blood Wayne child. Marinette had done quite a bit of research into Gotham, it's heroes vigilantes, villains, and important figures. 99% of Lila's claims about the Waynes could be disproven by a simple Google search, yet...

Marinette sighed, watching the sheep flock to the wolf.

There's nothing I can do for those who swallow such obvious lies.

They reached Gotham around 9pm, going straight to the hotel and getting their rooms. Marinette, predictably, was alone. She was thankful for that, though, because then she could leave and go Ladybug-ing whenever she felt she needed to.

Of course, Marinette knew the rough locations of everything she'd visit, but... it would be handy, seeing Gotham from the air and in person.

"What do you think, Tikki? Should Ladybug say hello to Gotham?"

"Not Ladybug, per-say. What if Hawkmoth figured out we weren't in Paris?"

Marinette nodded at the flying Kwami, hovering right in front of her face. "A change in identities, then. Think you can whip up something I'd like?"

Tikki nodded with a smile, thinking for a moment before shooting her Chosen a thumbs up. "Tikki, spots on!"

Before she left, she took a look at herself in the mirror, smiling at the new outfit.

Her hair, once midnight black/blue, was red with black stripes, gathered up into a bun at the top of her head with a black ribbon tying it together and the ends sticking up to form antenna-like things. Her bangs, once swept to the side now framed her face, the left side red and the right black. The ends brushed her chin, but never seemed to get in her way. Her mask was black like the rest of her outfit, red decal swirling intricately across the fabric. Red accents outlined where her gloves, boots, and sleeves were against a black background. Instead of the skin tight onesie, her outfit was split into four parts- the top, bottoms, gloves, and boots. Her top took a different style, looking more like a Chinese or Japanese kimono top, the bell sleeves covering her palms and loose. Red swirled around the top in descrete roses, red lining the hems. Her gloves were red, black roses stitched into the fabric on the back. Her pants were black and only reached her mid-calf, red roses stitched near the cutoff. Her ankle boots were plain black, the three-inch heel not inhibiting her in any way shape or form (thankfully) and her yo-yo was still strapped to her hip, but harder to see. On her back was a staff like Chat Noir's, but black and with spots indicating the button.

She tapped her chin, humming in thought. "I suppose I'll need a new name for Gotham." She shrugged, deciding to think about it later. She easily opened the window and hopped out, getting used to using the staff almost immediately as she vaulted over the roofs near the hotel, quickly gaining distance.

Nightwing frowned, eyes tracking the strange red and black figure who was easily taking down thugs twice their size. Seems like a new vigilante's in town, he thought, bringing a hand up to his comm. "Has anyone seen a new vigilante around?"

"No one's reported anything, why?"

He slid farther back into the shadows of the ally way he was crouched in, watching as the- what he could now tell- woman glanced around the small area. "I may have found one. See if you can find anything on her, Oracle. We'd better figure out if she's friend or foe before jumping in."

"Copy that. For now, track her."

"Way ahead of you," he said, silently jumping after her when she used some kind of baton to leap over the closest building.

Marinette paused, stopping on the roof. Her tail seemed more interested in finding out who she was than kidnapping or attacking her, as they would have done so an hour ago when she let them close. She knew she couldn't allow that- no matter who was tailing her. She pulled her yo-yo off her hip, keeping her tail carefully behind her even as they slowly and stealthy approached. They sounded male, if the heavier steps meant anything.

With practiced ease, she opened the weapon, reaching into the glowing pink and pulling out the Fox Miraculous. She had long since started putting the Box of Miracles in her yo-yo when she transformed, careful to keep the Miraculi out of Hawkmoth's hands. She slipped the necklace on, nodding once at Trixx. She held out her hands as she said, "Trixx, Tikki, unify."

Orange replaced the red in her costume, an orange glow surrounding her for a second. No more red was found on the heroine, the dark color replaced by a dark orange and the staff replaced with a flute on her back. She turned on her heel towards her tail, a carefully blank look on her face. "Come out," she demanded, suppressing her surprise when Nightwing appeared.

Neither spoke for a moment, eyeing each other and mentally figuring each other's strengths and weaknesses. "Why were you following me," she asked, keeping her spine straight.

"The better question is, why are you here? Gotham has more than enough protectors."

"I won't be here for long. The League has made it's decision loud and clear, and I won't 'waste your time with pranks'," she angrly spit out, heavy quotations in her sentence. She watched as mild confusion spread on the bird's face, but felt only a slight ping of regret, her emotions having watered down and muted over the years of fighting Hawkmoth. Ladybug couldn't be compromised, after all.

"What are you talking about?"

"Ask those receiving requests for help about a French heroine named Ladybug," she said, pulling the flute off her back. She played an ancient tune that flew into her fingers, removed the instrument from her lips, and fired the glowing orange ball towards the ground, shouting, "Mirage," as she did so. Orange smoke filled the area, a million masked heroines going in all directions and tricking the sensors in Nightwing's mask as she went back to her room, only staying awake long enough to feed the Kwamis and fall into her bed.

Red Robin frowned as he and Oracle looked through the footage from earlier, replaying it over and over. "Magic?"

"Has to be," he said, his brows furrowing as he scanned the footage once more. "There's no holographic projectors, and she didn't seem to know about the hidden cameras on him."

Oracle hummed, fingers flying away. "Any luck finding sources for the so-called heroine in France?"

Tim had been looking ever since the girl mentioned heroes in the country, only finding the Ladyblog. He didn't count it as credible, what with the obvious CGI. "No. Just a fake source," he said, sighing. "Maybe we should look through the League records. See if we can find anything."

"Way ahead of you," Barbara said, hitting the final key decisivly. "Four clips, one response."

"Play them."

A girl in a red and black spotted mask looked into the camera, the Eiffel Tower in the background. In accented English, she spoke. "Hello. My name is Ladybug, and I'm a new hero for Paris. My city is being terrorized by a villain who preys on any powerful, negative emotions he can find using the power of the Butterfly. I haven't been a hero long- today marks the full week. But I know we need help. My partner and I don't know what we're doing yet, and I can only drag us through battles so often until we run out of steam." Her blue eyes softened, hope and uncertainty in them.

"Please. If you get this- send help. Preferably someone with detective abilities and a good handle on their emotions so we can find Hawkmoth faster. I don't want to think of what damage Paris would go under if we had to fight an Akumatized member of the League..." She sighed, giving the camera a hopeful smile. "Bug out."

The next was in the middle of the day, giant bubbles floating in the air. The camera zoomed in on one, seeing adults trapped. The angle shifted to the streets, where kids were running rampant without supervision. "I don't know if I can fix the damage they'll do," the same voice called from out of the shot. "My Cure only works with very specific damages- and I don't think this counts. Please- the longer this goes on, the more powerful Hawkmoth becomes." Her voice held so much hope, it was nearly painful. "Ladybug out."

The next was again in the middle of the day, but this time, the streets were flooded. Only a few hundred people could be seen safe on roofs, and Ladybug did a full sweep of the city on camera before landing beside a blond hero in a black cat costume. "Syren is the most deadly Akuma we've seen so far," the heroine- Ladybug- said somberly. "I don't know what this will do to my people's mental health. It's already been months since Hawkmoth started his reign, but the changes may be permanent. Even a week after he started, I could see the changes in my people. They're more... empty. Like shells of the people they once were, scared to feel anything for the threat of Hawkmoth and harming their loved ones. I only pray my power continues to erase the memories of all those who become Akumatized, dead, or under the victim's control. My people are traumatized enough already. If anyone sees this, please.... send help."

The final clip showed a furious Ladybug staring into the camera, fires raging behind her. "It's been over a year since I first asked for your help. After so long, I thought I had accepted that no help was coming. But understand- you're leaving the fate of the world in a few teenagers hands! We can't keep going on like this- we'll burn out and Hawkmoth will win! Look at what Hawkmoth caused this time!" She turned the camera slowly, gathering the flaming city of love on screen. Craters filled the streets, no building over a story was intact. Bodies littered the streets- some charred and some bleeding. The Eiffel Tower was in pieces, crushing more people. Flames wracked the once-beautiful city, ash blocking the sun. "He will only get stronger, as will the Akuma he creates. But we won't without guidance and training! And no one on Team Miraculous has any kind of detective training- we aren't getting any closer to the source of the problem! And if Hawkmoth defeats both Chat Noir and I, the entire world may be doomed, depending on his wish." The camera was set down, Ladybug walking in front of it with a spotted object- something looking like a frying pan- in her hand. She threw it up, shouting "Miraculous Ladybug," as she did so. Millions of pink dots swarmed the city, fixing all damages and bringing people back to life wherever they touched. She swung down to a boy with black hair tipped blue, camera on his face, yet it was blurred to protect his identity. "Sir, tell me about this attack. I'm sorry to bring it up so soon, but the League cannot ignore an innocent's cry for help."

When he spoke, his voice went through a some kind of modifier. "Okay, Ladybug... Well, my sister and I were walking home from school. We had band practice later today- I guess that's cancelled. Anyway, we were minding our own business when Inferna came. I tried protecting my sister, but..." He took a deep breath. "She was too fast. My sister burned alive right in front of me, and I couldn't do anything."

"I'm sorry," Ladybug said, a hand coming to lay on the boy's shoulder. "I'm sorry we didn't stop her in time. That you had to see this. That you have to remember. If I could wipe that memory from you, I would, but..." A heavy sigh came from behind the camera. "Thank you for sharing." The process repeated with a couple more people- some young some old, and some who died during the experience. All were traumatized from this Akuma, and previous, yet they had hope. At the end, Ladybug turned the camera on herself, face stern. "I know this may not seem possible to you. I know this may look like editing, and that this may be a waste of time. But if you think that, spend a weekend in Paris. See for yourself what we've become. Ladybug out."

The only thing left was a letter from the League. It amounted to, "Don't send in prank calls anymore. You're taking away from those who need it."

Tim and Barbara were furious. But this issue needed care.

It was time to call the Batman.

Bruce's brows drew closer and closer as the clips played, his anger obvious when the letter was shown. But, unsurprisingly, his reaction was the most subdued of those in the room.

Anger freely rolled off of Jason, Dick, Barbara, Damian, and even Alfred. Tim had already started to get his feelings under control as his fingers flew across the keyboard, his face reflecting his concentration. "I don't recognize the signature on the letter," Bruce stated. Which was strange, because he kept tabs on everyone who worked for the League. Just in case.

"You're not the only one," Tim said, keeping his eyes on the screen in front of him. "I can't find this guy anywhere. I'm starting to think he doesn't exist, but..."

"That would mean the League has someone who's either working with Hawkmoth- who seems to be the one attacking Paris- or someone who doesn't want the situation to be known," Dick said, crossing his arms. "Neither situation is good."

"So what can we do about it?" All eyes turned to Damian until he explained. "She said Hawkmoth was using the people's emotions against them. Members of the League aren't exactly the most emotionally strong, and a lot of them use negative emotions to strengthen themselves in battle."

"You're uncharacteristically angry about this," Bruce observed, watching as his youngest didn't react to his statement outside of raising an eyebrow. This wasn't the first time Damian reacted differently than expected. Bursts of outrage or annoyance at specific groups of people, almost muted emotions, nearly inhumane emotional recovery. At first, Bruce hoped the Wayne was simply getting a better control on his emotions, but after a while of observing... He realized that wasn't the case. "What's going on, Damian?"

The teen hesitated, the expression he usually made when he scolded himself appearing on his face. "What's your view on soulmates?"

Bruce blinked, having categorized that specific response as less than likely. "I think if you have one, you should be able to decide to seek them out or not. To have the option of creating a life with them if you so chose. Damian, is your soulmate in trouble?"

"My first language, as you know, is Arabic. But my second is French- if you can call it a second. The language simply appeared in my head the same time I was learning Arabic as a baby, according to my caretakers. I'd switch between the two without thought as a child," Damian explained. "While I was learning other languages, the same thing happened to Mandarin. When I had a pastry for the first time after I moved in with you, I could instantly tell what ingredients the chef used, how much, and what adding more or less of certain ingredient would do to the final product. With all this, I've deduced my soulmate is a French-Chinese baker," Damian revealed. "Now, with this information about Paris..."

"You think your soulmate is in danger," Dick accurately guessed. "Damn, that must be infuriating."

"How many times have they died when help from the League could have saved them," Damian wondered. "How many times have we let them down?"

"You have to remember, Baby Bird- your soulmate gets your skills, too," Tim called, still clacking away. "Whoever they are, they'd put up one hell of a fight if anyone tried attacking."

"I'm aware, Drake. But that doesn't mean they're invincible to drowning and getting crushed."

"Why do you think they're in Paris, specifically," Dick asked.

"It takes effort to feel negative emotions now," the youngest Wayne said. "All of you know I don't have the longest temper. But when I'm not thinking about it, my negative emotions just... dissapere. All of them."

"If what Ladybug said was true, and their terrorist uses emotions to take control of the person, that's likely what the people have taken to to avoid being controlled," Dick hummed, frowns appearing on everyone's faces.

"For now, let's inform the rest of the League," Bruce decided, walking to the computer. "Let's see if anyone has an idea of what's going on."

Alfred, meanwhile, frowned. If the Ladybug is in play... the world is at stake.

Marinette never had good luck in her day to day life. She guessed all her good luck was spent as Ladybug, and she needed a luck balance or something. Which is how she chose the one outlet in the entire hotel that didn't work. Her phone died during the night, so she woke up late, the clock on the bedstand reading 8:17 am. The bus was set to leave at 8, but she wouldn't be surprised if Lila had convinced them to leave earlier. It was only thanks to the Kwamis that she got up that early, but she still missed the bus. She scrambled to get ready, sprinting out of the hotel after five minutes. She found a nearby allyway, ducking into it and letting Tikki fly out of her jacket. "We gotta hurry. Tikki, spots on!"

Damian scowled, pinching the bridge of his nose as the group in front of him scrambled to find their missing student. "Didn't you call roll," he asked in French, being the translator and main guide for Wayne Enterprises.

"Well, yes, but... I swear Marinette was with us!"

He was starting not to like the teacher too much. Or the gaggle of girls gossiping about how the missing student just wanted attention. "You realize Gotham has the highest crime rates in the US, correct?" At the teacher's shaky nod, he continued, his scowl deepening. "Then why on Earth would you allow one of your students to go missing?!"

He was about to rant more when the doors slid open, a girl with pigtails running through and out of breath. "I'm here," she gasped, her hands resting on her knees.

"Marinette! There you are."

The bluest eyes Damian had ever seen (a high honer considering his father and Grayson) looked up, holding regret. "Sorry, Madame. My phone died, so the alarm didn't go off. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't. We're going to have to hurry through this to stay on schedule."

"Now hold on," Damian growled, steeping between the teacher and her students. "You were just saying that she was in the bus this morning. Now you're saying it's her fault you didn't check the bus properly before leaving?"

The woman paled as surprise grew in the girl's eyes. "It's alright now," she said, standing and catching her breath. "I'm here and safe, and we're already behind. Let's just leave this in the past and go on with the tour."

"You don't seem to understand the danger you could have been in, miss...?"

"Marinette."

"Marinette. Any one of Gotham's rouges could have picked you up, or a common thief or mugger could have cornered you. Especially if you were alone."

"I'm aware," she calmly responded. "That would have been their mistake. There's a reason few Akuma come after me anymore."

"Oh, yeah," a dark boy with a red cap said. "I keep forgetting your crazy soulmate, dudette."

"Soulmate," the dark girl with glasses asked, looking to the boy in confusion. "Marinette doesn't have a soulmate. She would have told me."

Marinette sighed through her nose, seemingly gathering herself. "Alya, I don't like talking about my soulmate. I don't know what they're comfortable sharing about their skills, so I try not to talk about it."

Damian's respect for the small girl shot through the roof. "Yeah, but the dudette was awesome against playground bullies," the boy said, gathering attention. "Kim, you remember?" A tall boy nodded, a grin on his face.

"It was really cool to watch this tiny little girl in pigtails completely destroy them," he commented. "Dunno how she did it to this day, but there were always two things Marinette's never stood for. Liars and bullies."

"Then how come she is one," the glasses girl from earlier asked, her brows furrowing. "Something doesn't add up."

"Maybe she changed," a girl with sasauge hair said. "People do that."

All of a sudden, the atmosphere changed, interest becoming hostility. "Guys, let's just do this," Marinette said, looking tired. She grabbed the extra pass in the tub and plopped it around her neck.

Lunch couldn't come soon enough for Marinette and Damian. The former because she forgot to grab breakfast, and the latter so he could talk to his family about Marinette's treatment within the class. He heard everything said about her during the tour, and his anger at the class only grew. Usually, he wouldn't care and just be annoyed at the gossip, but even he could see how kind she was. Several times, she interacted with the staff the others ignored, seeing if she could help them carry something or open doors or pick up something they dropped. She was fluent in English, too, and more often than not whatever language the employee spoke first. Which was odd, since WE prided itself on its diverse hiring and multicultural assistance, meaning most people wouldn't be able to converse in so many languages.

She spoke in well over 10 languages- all ones Damian was fluent in, as well.

What a coincidence.

Word about the French angel spread fast through the building, as Damian heard whispers following his steps. At one point, a group of employees came up to him to ask about the French girl, wondering if the rumors were true.

Most of them were, but he was on a mission so he didn't spend much (if any) time dealing with the people. When he found an empty meeting room without anything booked for the next hour, he called one of the best people he knew to get to the bottom of this, as much as he hated admitting it.

"Hello?"

"Drake. I need a favor."

Lunch went by without major incident- besides Lila claiming a 'Dimitri Wayne' was her soulmate and childhood friend.

Marinette inwardly scoffed, knowing that Damian had been living with his mother until he turned double digits, and that he spent a year or two getting used to Gotham before ever announcing his existence to the world. Even then, no one is even completely sure what he looks like, let alone his friends, and those who actually knew him would be sworn to secrecy by the Waynes. Again, though, she realized how little power she had to change her classmates' views on the Italian and her tall tales. Marinette's instincts told her of someone approaching from behind, and she whirled around on her heel without much thought, pausing as she saw the tour guide walking up to the group. "Okay, lunch's over! Let's get this show on the road, hm?"

Her class quickly gathered around the tall man, ready to continue the tour. Marinette, like usual, was in the back of the group, sketchbook out and pencil flying across the page.

"You're very skilled at drawing."

She didn't jump or whirl around, having heard the approaching footsteps and slight muttering a while ago. "Thank you, but I still have a long way to go." She quickly wrapped up the rough sketch, then closed the book, sending a bright smile at the boy. "And thank you for speaking in my defence this morning."

"Think nothing of it." The teen waved his hand dissmissively, eyes trailing back to the front for a moment.

"Still. My name's Marinette, by the way. Marinette Dupen-Cheng."

"Damian," he said, nodding. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise!" She smiled once again, her shoulders a little more lifted than what they were before. "So, how long have you worked at WE?"

They talked amongst themselves for the remainder of the tour, Damian pointing out and explaining more than the guide for most of the tour. And when there wasn't anything educational to talk about, they spoke a little of themselves, getting to know the person beside them a little better. Damian also asked more about the situation in Paris, earning a sad look from the girl beside him and quite a bit of new information. All too soon, though, the tour ended. Over the course of their conversations, Damian learned that that morning wasn't the first time Marinette had been left behind, and quickly deduced that it wouldn't be the last with the children called her classmates. So, when the time to part came, he offered an alternative course of action.

"Gotham can be a beautiful city. Why don't I show you a few inspiring scenic places?" Marinette blinked at the teen, but smiled.

"Let me ask Madame real quick- I'm sure she won't mind too much."

#maribat #daminette #damian wayne #bruce wayne #class salt #lila salt #lila gets exposed #miraculous marinette #marinette dupen chang #mlb x dc #uncle jagged #alfred pennyworth #penny rolling #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson

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attack-on-multifandom · 5 years

Text

Fall on Deaf Ears

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugou x Deaf!Reader

Warnings: cursing, bullying, angst, mentions of suicide

Summary: Katsuki Bakugou always wanted to be strong so to cover any weakness he’d bully other people such as Izuku, but what happens when a new girl who just happens to not be able to hear shows up?

A/N: Not too long I watched the movie A Silent Voice (which I really recommend if you haven’t seen it) and it really made me want to to write a similar situation with Katsuki and Reader so here it is! Also the ending is kinda angsty and ends with a cliffhanger so if you want a part two lemme know and I’ll begin to write it immediately!💖💗 Also feel free to tell me if I got anything wrong about being deaf because I really don’t want to offend anyone!💗

Prideful. Overconfident. Self-absorbed.

Those are three words that you could use to describe five year old Katsuki Bakugou.

He currently was showing off his newly gained quirk to his three followers friends, plus a shy Izuku who stood in the back gazing in awe, all the while bragging at how great it was and how no one in the kindergarten could even dream of surpassing him and his quirk.

The teacher came out indicating for the students to come inside, for class was now starting and it was this specific class that would change young Katsuki Bakugou’s life forever.

“Okay kids, before we start I would like to introduce a new student here; her name is (Y/L) (Y/N) and she just transferred here from a different kindergarten.”

You didn’t do anything but stand there with a kind smile and a nervous look in your eyes indicating your uncomfortableness at being a new kid in a different school. However, Katsuki would soon find out it was not as simple and you being new that caused your anxiety to be so extreme.

“Not only is (Y/N) here new but she is also deaf, can anyone tell me what that means?”

One of Bakugou’s so called ‘friends’ raised his hand confidently.

“Yes, Tsubasa?”

“It means she’s dumb because she can’t hear.”

The whole class laughed, save sweet Izuku of course, but Bakugou only scoffed and examined the new girl closely.

She didn’t seemed bothered by the class laughing, in fact, she began to laugh her self, the sound coming out a bit strangled and weird since she could not hear her own voice.

The whole class went silent until everyone began laughing again, the kind smile never leaving the girl’s face because of her ignorance to the reasoning of the rude laughter.

“That’s enough class and no Tsubasa that is not what being deaf means, please save your ignorance for outside of class,” the teacher scolded the winged boy who simply scoffed and began to complain to Katsuki about how the teacher just had no sense of humor.

“To be deaf means to have lost the ability to hear; sometimes it’s mild and you can still hear things with the help of a hearing aid, and sometimes it’s more severe resulting in the complete loss of audible noise,” the teacher explained.

“(Y/N) has unfortunately the more severe case where she can not hear a single thing so please do your best with her and don’t use the fact that she can not hear as an excuse to exclude and bully her.”

The young girl finally took a seat as the class officially began. She of course didn’t notice all the whispering around her as everyone began to talk about their new deaf student.

In all honestly, Bakugou could care less about you and whether you had a disability or not, all he cared about was being the best and nothing was going to stop him from achieving his dreams.

Although Bakugou didn’t care about you, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to go out of his way to personally bully you just like he did with poor Deku.

Speaking of Midoriya, he soon became you’re only friend, spending time with you and even go as far as to learn sign language so he could communicate better with you.

You simply adored Izuku and his sweetness and always encouraged him that he would get his quirk sooner or later.

That simply was not the case for you.

Not only could you not hear, but you also were quirkless.

What an unlucky life you had.

You didn’t let that stop you from being optimistic and gracious that you at least had good parents, food, and a roof over your head. You were the epitome of kindness that made up for everything else that went wrong in your life.

———————————————————————

You distinctly remember the first day you first met Bakugou Katsuki.

You were playing on the jungle gym with Izuku, you pretending to be a princess in need of saving and him being your knight in shining armor.

You giggled, the strange sound not bothering Izuku in the slightest, he actually loved hearing you laugh because he thought you more than anyone deserved to be happy after all you had been through.

He quickly signed a ‘I am here to save you!’ As he finally reached the top of the jungle gym where you pretended you were being kidnapped.

‘My savior!’ You signed back as you both laughed and had a good time.

“Well look what we have here, a quirkless loser and a deaf quirkless loser, what a pair,” Katsuki joked as his group laughed behind him.

“Leave us alone Kacchan we haven’t done anything!” Izuku yelled feeling more defensive then usual because now you were being targeted and not just him.

A look of confusion formed on your features as you saw the distress on Izuku’s face and the smug look on Katsuki’s face.

You tapped your green haired friend on the shoulder and mouthed, ‘what’s going on?’

He sighed and shook his head as he grabbed your tiny hand and lead you off the play structure and away from the group of bullies.

“Hey where do you think you losers are going?!” Katsuki yelled as explosions began popping in his hands.

He grabbed the back of Izuku’s shirt and threw him to the ground, keeping his grip on Izuku as he began to use his explosions on him.

You watched on in horror as your friend was being attacked, tears streaming down his freckled cheeks from the pain and helpless he felt.

“Leave him alone!” You yelled the words sounding distorted as they left your mouth.

“Oh I almost forgot about deaf girl over here,” Katsuki said as he let go forcefully of Deku and began to focus his attacks on you.

“Why don’t you do us all a favor and never talk again, your voice is so annoying and no one can understand you!”

He finished his hurtful words by pushing you into the ground, his gang behind him cheering him on.

You stared at the ground for a second before you look up to Katsuki with a kind smile effectively making the young blonde’s eyes widen.

You intertwined your hands and made a forward motion with them, confusing Bakugou.

“What the crap is that suppose to mean?”

“I-It means she wants to be your friend,” Izuku muttered, his voice strained from the attack.

“Hah! As if I’d ever let such a helpless person be my friend! You’re useless not only can’t you hear but you don’t even have a quirk you’re just a waste of space and don’t you forget that!”

He pushed you one last time and left with his other two friends leaving you alone with Izuku.

He turned to you with guilty green eyes and immediately apologized for not being able to protect you.

You didn’t blame him at all neither did you blame Katsuki because you knew it was because of his own problems that he bullied you and you made it your personal goal to be friend him and help him with his issues.

——————————————————————

6 years later

With each passing year you tried becoming friends with Katsuki only to fail and be bullied.

He usually only verbally hurt you calling you useless and making fun of your lack of hearing, however sometimes he would take to physically hurting you either by pushing you or using his explosions.

He just couldn’t stand the kind smile on your face afterwards and the open gesture of friendship you would always extend to him.

Katsuki Bakugou couldn’t stand you and hated having to even go to the same school as you.

It was the first day of middle school and you did your usual walk with Izuku, six years never changing your friendship except that it was now even stronger then it was before.

You signed and joked as you made your way into the new middle school building.

As soon as you entered, a loud explosion went off in both yours and Izuku’s face, sending you both to the floor.

Loud laughter followed soon after that you could only tell by the way Bakugou’s eyes closed and his mouth widened.

“Wow it’s too fucking easy to send you guys flying now a days, are you both getting weaker or am I just getting stronger?” Bakugou boasted with a prideful smirk, causing Izuku to sigh and offer you a hand up.

‘Are you okay?’ He signed and you offered him a soft smile as you signed back, ‘I’m okay Izuchan thanks for asking.’

The green haired boy smiled back at you.

You offered Bakugou a small wave as you and Izuku began to walk away.

Bold of you both to assume he was going to let that happen.

For some reason when he saw you give Deku that soft smile and watched you both communicate in way that he couldn’t understand, it made his stomach churn and his heart feel weird.

He had never experienced this before and he didn’t like it which only made him angrier.

“Hey come back here you fucking weaklings!” Bakugou yelled while his ‘friends’ tried to tell him it wasn’t worth it.

It was fucking worth it if Katsuki Bakugou said it was worth it.

You and Izuku turned around only for you to be knocked down again, this time only you and surprisingly not Deku.

“Aren’t you gonna fucking say something or make that damn shitty offer to be friends, huh?!”

After all these years you had gotten pretty decent at reading Bakugou’s lips even through all the yelling.

It also gave you the excuse to look at Bakugou’s lips.

You understood every word he said which made your eyes widen in surprise.

Did he want you to ask him to be your friend?

Thinking that’s what he meant, you signed the gesture for friendship with a sweet smile on your face.

Immediately after he set explosions off on you causing parts of your shirt to be burnt and making you look like a mess.

Bakugou stood there and laughed his ass off as he walked away from the sad scene.

His heart now felt full and empty and the same time, a feeling he definitely decided to ignore.

———————————————————————

4 years later

Middle school was coming to an end and it was almost time for high school to start.

‘So Izuchan, have you applied for U.A. yet?’ You signed excitedly for you hoped your best friend would get into the school he dreamed of going to for a while now.

‘Not yet but I’m definitely going to soon,’ He signed back as you both entered the classroom.

“Well, well, well if it isn’t the most useless dorks in class,” a familiar brash voice spoke, not that you could tell how low and loud it was, but you did have a feeling that how it would sound if you could hear it.

“Kacchan could you please leave us alone for just one day,” Izuku muttered under his breath.

“Huh?! Wanna say that a bit louder shitty Deku?!”

You placed a gentle hand on Izuku’s shoulder and shook you’re head as if to tell him, ‘it’s not worth it.’

The freckled boy nodded and smiled at you as you grabbed his hand and began to lead him forward.

As soon as you tried to move, Bakugou stuck his leg out and you ended up tripping over it causing the class to erupt in laughter.

For some reason you weren’t feeling too kind in that moment and abruptly stood up and pushed Bakugou back.

Oh how stupid that decision was.

Explosions began to pop out of his hands in anger as he got ready to give you the worst burns of your life, but his plans soon came to a stop as the teacher walked in and made everyone go to their seats.

Bakugou glared at you as you sat down and mouthed, ‘after class I’m going to fucking burn you so bad you’ll think before even touching me next time.’

You felt no fear at his words only sadness.

You truly wanted to be friends with Katsuki, maybe even more, you didn’t want to make him angry or upset.

Class was long that day, the only disturbance really being when Izuku stated he wanted to go to U.A. and Bakugou made fun of him, but that was just the calm before the storm.

After class, Izuku said he had to go to the restroom before you guys left together so you agreed to wait for him out in the hallway.

You looked to your right to see Bakugou and his gang laughing while a girl leaned on him and seemed to laugh at everything he said.

Who was that girl, was it Katsuki’s girlfriend?

You wouldn’t be surprised if he had one after all he was very attractive and had a great quirk, but it still hurt to even think of that possibility.

Soon Bakugou realized you were looking at him and oh dear we’re you in for it now; he hadn’t at all forgotten that morning’s exchange.

“YOU!” He yelled loudly as he began to make his way towards you.

He was too far away for you to read his lips as you began to back away from his threatening form.

He grabbed your shoulders and pushed you against the wall forcing a strangled scream from your throat.

“YOU FUCKING USELESS DEAF BITCH, YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN PUSH ME AROUND CAUSE YOU FUCKING CANT; IM THE BEST AND I WILL BECOME THE NUMBER ONE HERO WHY DONT YOU DO THE WORLD A FAVOR AND TAKE A SWAN DIVE OFF THE ROOF AND PRAY YOU’LL BE BORN WITH A QUIRK AND PROPER EARS IN THE NEXT LIFE!”

Silence followed after that as you just looked down at the ground.

Katsuki Bakugou had just told you to commit suicide.

All the other insults you could take even if they did slowly eat away at your mental health, but this, this really did hurt.

Tears began to spill down your cheeks as you dropped to the floor.

Poor Izuku who was clueless walking to the scene immediately ran to your side and kneeled down next you.

“Kacchan what did you do!” He yelled out as he brought you close to him.

Bakugou remained silent as he watched you weep violently on the floor.

After all those years of insults and pushing you around, you had never once cried.

You would always smile that dumb smile that he liked hated, and then you would just go about your way.

His heart pulsed painfully in his chest as he continued to watch you cry.

His hands wanted to move to move to wipe away your incoming tears but he did no such thing.

He wanted to take back what he said knowing he went way too far but he did no such thing.

He turned around hearing Deku yelling but that wasn’t was caused him to turn around, no, what did was the sound of your voice.

“All I wanted was to be your friend.”

And that would be that last time Katsuki saw you.

It would be another six years before he laid his crimson eyes on you again.

#sorry for being big sad but i’d happily write a fluffy part two if anyone wants :)#bakugou x reader #katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #bnha #my writing

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doll-collecting-aerialist · 4 years

Text

The Story Of My Addy, In Honor Of Her Birthday.

(VERY long post.)

Growing up, the three American Girls I wanted most were Addy, Kirsten, and Cecile. However, Kirsten and Addy were always the top dolls I wished for, they probably tied in first place. I remember being about six or seven and flipping through my first American Girl catalog I ever received, along with Kit, my first American Girl. After staring at her respective pages, I flipped through the other Historicals. I was never too interested in the non-Historical aspects of AG as a kid (other than Mckenna), I was what one would class as an aspiring history buff. I thought all the dolls were gorgeous, but Addy in particular caught my eye. She was stunning.

I thought Addy was beautiful, and her pink meet dress was quite similar to a couple of my childhood dresses. If I wanted to be atmospheric I’d probably say I was wearing my favorite pink sundress the first time I was introduced to Addy, but realistically I was probably wearing my frog rain boots and my lobster pajamas. I had a fascination with footwear as a kid, particularly boots, and Addy’s shoes reminded me of Doc Martens. I had always wanted a pair of black boots, and I thought it was sick that Addy had “Docs.” I thought she was the most stylish out of the historical characters. I thought Addy’s hair was the prettiest out of the Historicals as well, it looked very soft and reminded me of my best friend’s hair. I also thought Addy had the prettiest face out of the dolls, I loved her nose and her eyes.

However, the people around me didn’t see Addy the way I did. I suppose you could call it a tradition for the girls of my elementary school to huddle around a new American Girl catalog when it released. My peers often marveled over the blond or light-red haired Truly Mes, and occasionally the GOTY. They rarely paid attention to the Historicals, and when they did it was usually a doll like Julie. When I brought up how pretty Addy (or Cecile) was, and how much I loved her, the girls would laugh at me. There soon became a group of white girls in my school who would laugh at me for wanting a black doll. They would call Addy horrible things, anything from saying she looked “dirty” to calling her the n-word. They said I probably only wanted Addy so “I could have a slave.” I would defend Addy and tell them that they were wrong, but if anything that made them more antagonistic towards her and me.

I was a very shy, anxious, soft-spoken kid, and so thinking about telling an adult made me want to vomit my Caprisun. The adults of my elementary school were also extremely dismissive of me anyway in some cases, and would become annoyed with me for reasons I won’t get into, other than that I was a “problem” child as a kid due to my home situation, being bullied, and not being accommodated in school for my disabilities. I knew I wasn’t going to be taken seriously by my teachers, and I didn’t want to gather up the courage to open up to one of them only to be dismissed. There were some adults that did see what was going on and would tell the girls to stop, but more often than not when the adults did witness the girls making fun of me, they’d turn the other way, or even condone it. Many adults asked me why I didn’t want a doll that looked like me, or asked why I didn’t want a “pretty doll.” There would be adults who would warn me that I would ruin Addy’s hair and that Addy’s hair was to difficult for me to take care of. Adults would often try to sway me to like another doll, usually a white, blonde-haired one.

I began to keep my love for Addy a secret. As an elementary schooler, I didn’t understand why everyone was upset with me for loving Addy, but the reactions from the people around me made me feel as though there was something wrong with myself. There wasn’t really anyone telling me that the people being racist towards Addy were the problem and that I was not the issue. My eight-year-old brain basically came to the conclusion that people wouldn’t be yelling at me if I wasn’t doing something wrong, and for a while, I felt ashamed for loving Addy. I still did love her however, and I would quietly stare at her page in the catalog for hours, becoming extremely upset with the fact that I would never have her. I adored all her outfits, they reminded me of the ones my mother and grandmother would sew for me. I wanted her Christmas Dress, Sunday Best, and Nightgown especially. I begged for a nightgown so I could be like Addy. I wanted Ida Bean and Addy’s lace-up boots. Basically, anything Addy related? I wanted badly, but I always kept it a tight secret.

An activity my family would often partake in growing up was going to the thrift store during half-off weeks. On one of these trips, my mother found quite a few historical American Girl books, including a copy of Meet Addy and Changes For Addy. There was also a copy of Merry Christmas Kit, Molly Saves the Day, Meet Felicity, etc... But I was extremely excited for the Addy books in particular. I carried my copy of Meet Addy everywhere, from the time I was in about fourth grade, until the time I was eventually pulled out of public school in the middle of grade seven. I always had it in my backpack, and I was to busy reading it to pay attention to the kids who liked to make fun of me (or my teacher trying to teach me for that matter, my book got taken up on multiple occasions.). Meet Addy and Changes For Addy were the only Addy books I was able to read until recently, except for the times I would skim through her books when my mother went to the library. Only this past year have I been able to actually sit down and read her entire central series rather than skimming/reading random chapters.

Addy’s books were my only meaningful education on slavery and the Civil War for a long time. Before I was homeschooled, my education on the topics were often skittered around, or had details omitted to make my state appear less complicit (Where I live, all history education in public school revolves around our state, excluding things such as world history. At least it did when I went to public school.). My elementary school only had thirty minutes of allotted time for history or science instruction, and even then it was treated as optional instruction. The allotted time slot was often used for extra math instruction, test prep, or free time. I’ve had to retake much of my history education when I became homeschooled, because the education I received in public school was poor. Before Addy's books, I had been taught that ‘slavery wasn’t that bad,’ and my first actual look into the topic came from her series. My only meaningful history instruction for a long time came from the American Girl books, but Addy’s were especially important due to how little education I got on the topics of slavery and the Civil War, and also due to how much misinformation I was taught when we did discuss these topics in class.

Addy’s books made me love her even more, and she was definitely one of my first crushes as an elementary schooler. I thought she was beautiful and strong, and I wanted more than anything to be like her. All my pink dresses became “Addy dresses” and I would pretend to dress up as her. I liked to draw her and write stories about her. My grandmother at one point gave me a doll outfit that was (coincidently?) extremely similar to one in an illustration in Addy’s book, and I loved it to pieces. I somehow found out about Addy’s stilting outfit, and that started my multiple-year fascination with stilts and begging my parents for them (I never got them). I learned to play mancala primarily because of Addy (and also for the fact that the kids at my summer camp that year based your popularity off of if you could play or not).

Addy was a strong character who was both a child and a girl, which I didn’t see much of, and I looked up to her immensely. She was also black, and although I’m not, seeing a strong girl character who was also in a minority meant a lot to me as a disabled kid. I was used to reading books about white, able body boys who were tough and strong, I rarely saw books that had girls who were strong, and if I did they were often adults, as well as able body and/or white. The disability representation in Addy’s books was also extremely well written, especially in comparison to much of the disability “representation” I was exposed to as a kid. I liked to read the chapters with M’Dear in Happy Birthday Addy, or the later books with Sam whenever my mother took me to the library. I was used to disabled characters “overcoming”, or being pitied in the books I would read, but M’Dear and Sam weren’t like that.

Eventually, I grew up never receiving Addy, and was pressured to put my dolls away. It wasn’t until a couple years later I would bring my dolls back out. My sister had her own American Girls at that point, so there was no weird obligation to let her play with my old ones, and I was no longer in public school where I would be made fun of for liking dolls. I had missed my dolls all the years they had been put away/given to my sister and I was so happy to finally have them back. After a while of having my dolls returned to me, Melody was released, which is really what completely brought me back into American Girls. Growing up, I wanted a Civil Rights American Girl badly. I am neurodivergent, and as a kid, I had a hyperfixation with the Civil Rights Movement. I wanted a Civil Rights American Girl almost as much as I wanted Addy, Kirsten, and Cecile, but she didn’t exist yet.

I immediately knew that I wanted both Melody and Addy in my collection as soon as possible (I had gotten Kirsten at that point. I wanted Cecile as well, but she wasn’t at the top of my mind as she is retired.). Although I no longer had a strange sense of reputation to uphold with my peers at public school, I did have a girlfriend. As a young teenager, I was so enamoured with the thought of having a girlfriend, that I often rushed into relationships with extremely toxic people, and this girl was no different. Aside from the usual “dolls are creepy” narrative, she also told me that she found Melody and Addy to be racist and that they offended her. She was very adamant that she would break up with me if I got Melody or Addy, and this scared my young teenage self who wanted a girlfriend (To this day, I do not know her exact issue with Melody.). I still got Melody that year, unbeknownst to her. I kept Melody a well hidden secret from her, but she had scared me enough to where I was afraid to get Addy at all. At this point I had started researching Addy constantly, and I knew the discourse surrounding her. I didn’t want to make my girlfriend at the time upset, so I held off on getting her. I have an AG store close to where I live, and I went a couple times after getting Melody and every single time I wanted more than anything to get Addy.

It would be a couple years before I would get Addy, as I got her this past January. I had started to become very antsy to get her, and in my wait for her had welcomed both Nellie and Josefina into my collection. About last September however, I made the mistake of bringing up how much I wanted Addy on an activism account I ran on Instagram, and immediately had people flooding me with all the usual Addy discourse. It took a long time to recover from that, and I had to shut down that account for a couple months. Since then everyone has cooled down about Addy, and I have some people who even follow me specifically for Addy. I’m not ashamed to admit that account has turned into more of an Addy Appreciation Account rather than an activism account.

My quest to find the perfect Addy became all I would talk and think about. If you were within a mile of me, you KNEW that I wanted Addy, and I wanted her badly. Shout out to my friends who allowed me to talk from sunrise to sunset about Addy with no breaks for multiple weeks in a row. I was constantly looking on second hand sites, thrift stores, anywhere I could to find the Addy I wanted. I had my heart set on buying a pre-Beforever Addy at that point, and I was doing everything to find a listing that was affordable and that I loved. Then came the day where I found an Addy listing that I immediately fell in love with. I don’t know what exactly it was about the listing, but I wanted THAT Addy. Unfortunately, the site wouldn’t let me check out and I was incredibly upset to the point where I had multiple of my own friends, and even people I didn’t know on my Instagram account mentioned earlier offer to buy me an Addy doll. My “activism” account is relatively large, and there was a group of people ready to all chip in and help get me Addy. I had people ask if they could buy the listing that I wanted, and then ship her to me. Addy was all I could talk about at that point, and I had only talked about her/posted about her for at least a month. It only made me more upset to find out that the listing I had wanted had been sold. Plot twist! It was my mother who bought her.

(This is the first photo I ever took with Addy, I didn’t think I had saved it, but my friend did!)

I cried for about two weeks until she arrived. I was so happy I was finally going to have Addy, I couldn’t believe it. I thought for so long that I would never be able to have her. When she finally arrived it was love at first sight. I didn’t cry immediately upon unboxing her, I was trying to keep my composure, as I was filming unboxing her to put on my Instagram. Mostly so my friends could see, but also because I wanted to keep the moment, and because some of my followers were interested. I cried after turning the camera off, however. For the next couple of months I was extremely protective of my doll, I had the fear that she was just going to be taken away from me again. I took her everywhere with me around the house, she slept with me, ate dinner with me, would attend my online classes and sweep the porch with me. I didn’t like going out in public when I couldn’t have Addy nearby, I still don’t really, not that it’s much of an issue as we are quarantined for the time being. I’m planning on getting a mini Addy that I can keep in my purse sometime.

Addy doesn’t stay on my shelf with my other dolls, she sits on my bed. Someday I hope to have her complete collection. That’s a far off, possibly unreasonable goal, but I don’t mind. My more attainable goal is to read all of Addy’s books, which I’m about halfway through doing. I recently got my first official Addy dress, her Christmas Dress, which she is currently sporting as we speak.

#american girl doll #american girl #addy walker #ag doll #dolls of color #ag #dolls

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evanvvoods · 5 years

Text

𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒊𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚

warnings: implied/referenced child & spousal abuse

tw: parental death

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EVAN WOODS: A PLAY IN FIVE ACTS

act i: the days were bright red

ellingham, qc (0-14)

evan michael woods was born on may 4th, 1995 as the first child of jacob and samantha woods. jacob, the owner of a semi-successful auto repair shop, was ecstatic about having a son and heir who would carry on the family name and his business, which he built from nothing. samantha, a hospice nurse, was just glad to have a healthy child. she hoped that becoming a father would help to shift jacob’s attention from his business to his family, because he spent long hours working and very little time at home. unfortunately for her, his priorities never shifted. not when evan was born. not when lillian was born, nor olivia, nor rosanne. in fact, as time went on, jacob grew increasingly obsessed with his business, wanting to expand it beyond a simple auto repair shop into a nationwide brand. as he became more invested in his work, samatha grew more invested in her children. she quit her job at the maison des marguerites, which she loved, to make sure her kids never felt their father’s absence.

jacob doted on evan, often speaking of him as if he were his only child, boasting about how he would grow up to be just like his father, a hard-worker and an astute businessman, even before evan had spoken his first words. on the rare occurrences when jacob would be home for dinner with his family, he would hardly spare his daughters a glance, choosing only to speak to his son. evan’s sisters began to resent evan for being the sole receiver of their father’s attention and often deigned to exclude him from their conversations like their father did to them. it wasn’t until years later when they learned that jacob’s attention was not something to be jealous of. as adults, they were grateful they only received their mother’s love and none of their father’s attention.

growing up, evan felt trapped in the mould his father had carved out for him. he wanted to make his own choices, his own mistakes, live his life like every other kid, not follow a rigorous schedule planned out by his father from his birth to (according to his father) his inevitable rise to fortune as a auto repair magnate. he didn’t even know what magnate meant, if he was being honest, only that he wanted nothing to do with his father’s business or auto repair or anything of the kind. the thing that evan loved more than anything was music. with school as his only escape from his father’s scrutiny, evan spent as much time as he possibly could in his school’s musicroom, learning how to play every instrument he could get his hands on.

samantha, who loved all of her kids equally, encouraged them all to follow their interests, including evan. she would listen to him talk about all the new things he had learned in music class when she tucked him into bed at night and she noticed there was a light in his eyes when he talked about music that was missing when his father was around. she managed to save some money and buy evan a guitar, without his father’s knowledge. the guitar was evan’s prized possession from age 10 to 14, until his father found it in the garage. jacob was furious with his wife for encouraging their son to waste his precious time on something that would take him nowhere in life. he smashed the guitar into pieces and forbade evan from playing music ever again. his father often went on rants about how musicians were lazy and too stupid to amount to anything, especially rockstars, who were effeminate and indecent, but after the guitar incident, his hate for musicians became more pronounced.

it was a few weeks after the incident when his mother picked him and his sisters up from school and drove them to the nearest airport, saying that they were going to boston for a week to visit her sister. except a week turned into two, and two turned into four, and then years had passed since any of the woods children had set foot in ellingham. jacob tried to contact evan on many occasions, he was furious at samantha for taking away his heir, and even tried to get custody of evan, but samantha fought tooth and nail to keep all of her kids together and away from jacob. it was a difficult divorce, seeing as samantha had no proof of her claims that jacob was a bad father and husband. to the outside world, he was a hardworking man, loving husband, and caring father. but less than a year after they’d left their entire lives behind, they were finally free of jacob.

act ii: and suddenly darkness, suddenly only darkness

boston, ma (14-18)

distraught at having to leave his friends behind, but overjoyed to finally have the freedom to live his life on his own terms, evan began to settle into his life in boston. samantha’s sister, lesley, was married and had no children of her own, so she was more than happy to let samantha and the kids stay in her home. samantha got a job as a nurse, the children enrolled in new schools, and life went on. or it should have. the divorce was costly, not just in emotional terms, but financially, and samantha had very few savings to begin with. evan, terrified of ending up back with his father, got an after school job to help out his family. the after-school job soon turned into two, which turned into three, and then he dropped out of school altogether when he was 17.

despite their situation, they still had dreams. samantha dreamt of a life where she would be home for the holidays instead of stuck in a hospital ward with the sick and elderly. evan dreamt of music school and his songs playing on the radio. his sisters had dreams, too. lillian dreamt of culinary school and michelin stars. olivia dreamt of her name on a marquee and her face on billboards all around the world. rosanne, the entrepeneur their father had always wanted, dreamt of an app which would help people with disabilities find free services which would make their lives easier. they all had dreams, but someone had to make sacrifices for the others to follow them. that someone was evan. shortly after his 18th birthday, evan enlisted in the us army, hoping the increased pay would be enough to make a difference to his family.

act iii: in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is,

various locations (18-22)

evan dedicated 4 years of his life to the us army, before he was honourably discharged following an explosion which took out most of the hearing in his left ear, as well as half of his unit. throughout those 4 years, he was stationed in many places around the world and he kept in touch with his family mostly through letters. unbeknownst to everyone, he wrote another set of letters, a set that he never sent, to his best friend back in ellingham. he hadn’t spoken to him since the day he had left and never tried to contact him after. his mother had decided it was best if they cut all ties with ellingham, to shake off the years spent there like a bad dream. at the time he had only agreed because he had no way to contact his friend, not with the sudden way they had left, and then as time passed, he realized his mother was right and he pushed his friend to the back of his mind.

but out there in the cold, desolate deserts, and the bleak, sterile army barracks, he thought of his friend often. he would lie awake at night in his cot or on a cold floor or a bed of sand, and he would remember him and he would let himself feel like that optimistic little boy again. just for a moment, his life was full of possibility and promise and friendship which was built around shared interests and happy memories and camaraderie, not survival and necessity and proximity. he would write to him and he would say all of the things he couldn’t say to anyone else. and then he would tuck the letter under his pillow or into his jacket and it brought him a sense of comfort that nothing else did. sometimes he considered the possibility of actually sending one. but he never did it.

he hardly speaks of his time in the army, but if he had the chance, he wouldn’t go back and take back his decision, because as he’d hoped, his sacrifice gave all of his sisters a chance to pursue their dreams.

act iv: the trees and the trees and the space between the trees, swimming in gold

boston, ma (22-24)

when he returned home to boston, his sisters were on their way to becoming everything they’d imagined. lillian, now 21, was in the best culinary school in boston. olivia, 19, was studying film and working as a production assistant in vancouver. and roxanne, 17, had just been accepted into a computer science program at boston university. his mother mostly made it home for the holidays and she got to spend time with her family more often than she ever could have if she were the only one working to support the family. evan was glad to see his family so happy, after everything they had been through, but he couldn’t help feeling resentful at times. he still didn’t regret his decisions, but he wished things were different and he could do what he loved.

he got a job as a mechanic, because it was the one thing he knew how to do, after all the years he spent with his father in the shop as a child. he hated it, just as he’d hated the violence of the army, but it was just one more sacrifice he had to make. it was difficult for him to adjust to civilian life again, and his family saw it. they saw how much he did for them and it hurt them to see him suffering while they were thriving. the encouraged him to pursue music again, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was the smashed remnants of a guitar.

still, after a heartfelt conversation with samantha, evan decided that he couldn’t continue on the path he was on. life in the city just wasn’t for him, maybe it never was, and he needed to get away. jacob had passed a few years back, while evan was still in active duty. to his surprise, jacob had left him his house and his business in his will, which made no mention of his 3 daughters. evan had simply allowed the business to continue as it was, letting the old manager take care of it, and renting the house out for extra income. however, since he was an army veteran on a budget who was looking for an escape from the city, he decided that he should give ellingham a second chance. he thought, maybe if he went back, made some positive memories there, it could make up for all the bad. he would take his father’s legacy of cold and calculated decisions and turn it into something good, something he and his family could be proud of.

act v: and the dark blue over everything, and them holding their breath—

ellingham, qc (24–)

that is how evan woods found himself back in his home town, 10 years later, a much different person than he had been when he left. the town had changed, too, including the people, but it was still ellingham, it was still home.

he came to ellingham with the goal of rewriting his past and making new memories to replace the old. but he’s also there to revisit the past and learn and grow from it. he wants to reconnect with his old self, who had hopes and dreams and the naiveté to think he could achieve them.

#about evan #full bio

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relatablemormonmoments · 5 years

Text

Saturday Morning and Afternoon Session Talks

(Note, I listen to Conference rather than watch it, names are probably butchered.)

Ulysses S. Suarez

We need the help of a faithful and inspired teacher, but we also need to teach

Teach your sons and their sons in the ways of the Lord

We need to raise our families in the Lord

Emerse yourself in Scriptures

How do we put principles in the gospel into the actions of our lives?

Actions speak louder than words

Most of our critical spiritual decisions relate to family. (story of a single divorced mother rearing her children)

Mother should guide her children

God wants us back in his presence

Pros: Encourages closeness within our families and with the lord, Encourages us to consider our actions of faith

Cons: The Family A Proclamation to the World, Seemingly excludes those with a poor connection to their families or who converted without their families or whose families have fallen away

Becky Craven

"Happiness, $15" -> cheap trinkets and souvenirs

We as a church are blessed to know how to find true happiness

Car stuck on train tracks-> conductor pulls on emergency break + whistle -> people are able to escape but car is destroyed -> woman watching claims that conductor didn't even try to stop, didn't try to swerve out of the way.

Keep our wheels on the track no matter what obstacles are in our path

Casualness can lead us from the path

World is laiden with distractions, decieving even the elect

We may drown if we aren't careful.

Actions in the "grey" (the "howevers, buts, and althoughs") = "That council does not apply to me"

"If ye love me, keep my commandments"

Doesn't mean being formal or stuffy, but being appropiate

Be more engaged & careful & modest

For the Strength of the Youth applies to each of us (no matter our age, position, or gender)

We need to seek the guidance of the holy ghost

How can we mark ourselves in the Image of Christ?

The world calls us a "peculiar people" which is a large compliment.

We need to widen the distance between ourselves and our worldly influence

Gift of repentance

When you are worthy to recieve personal revelation, you will be blessed and happy

Pros: Gospel is guide to happiness, Doesn't claim that the only way to happiness is through temple marriage, Discusses what leads us from true happiness

Cons: The analogy to a train is nice but doesn't make sense with the rest of her story and implies that there is only one path to happiness, insinuates that temple marriage is part of the path to true happiness, doesn't offer any solutions to avoiding distraction.

Brook P. Hales

God blesses us according to our desires and to his infite wisdom

Scriptures teach us

Lord carefully leads us even if we can't see the results

Lord prepares ways to overcome obstacles before they can occur (Lost Plates and Nephi)

How can God answer us? ->1. Son recieved coat too small, gave it away to another missionary who had been praying for one because he could not afford it (through other people) 2. Joseph (and his coat od many colors) 's brothers sold him rather than killing him, leading to blessings for Egypt and eventual redemption of their family (through.. better circumstances?) 3. Son not hired for dream job, but would have missed a life changing opportunity had he been hired. (Through denying us our wants for eternal perspective)

Patricia Parkinson -> Began going blind at 7 years old, had to go away to boarding school (very home sick) -> Went fully blind at 15, returned home and went to regular highschool-> Eventually gained success at university and in life -> Had a procedure, but came out saying "I'm going to be blind for the rest of my life, I know it, you know it, God knows it." -> Nephew tells her to ask Heavenly Father because Heavenly father grants all of our wishes -> She explains that HF doesn't give us everything when we want it. -> Hales remarks that she's always positive and happy in public but struggles with herself, her disability, and God in private -> she sees that God's hand is in everything

If we keep our commandments, we are blessed by God, even if its not how we expect or want to be blessed.

Pros: Nice approach on how we can struggle with our faith when God doesn't answer us how we want, Good examples of how God does answer us and why he may answer us like that

Cons: Some Ableism in his story about Patricia, simply claims that God will bless us for following commandments

UCHTDORF!!!!!!

Airplanes take 3 hours between Rome and Jerusalem in the present (would take 40 days to travel that distance in Jesus' time)

Even though the church faces persecution, we continue to grow

Put growth into perspective ( A very small flock indeed)

GERMAN SHEPHERD

In some places, the church is shrinking

We must share the good news of the gospel!

How can we fill that great commision in our daily lives?

Share the gospel with friends and acquaintances

Some go out and declare it boldly, others are more hesitant and hide behind the pew when daily missionary work is mentioned, why?

Lord doesn't require expert efforts, but he does require a willing heart and mind

We can draw close to Heavenly Father, Fill our Hearts wirh love for others, and read our scriptures

By doing this we will become better, happier, more authentic

Pros: It's Uchtdorf, Airplanes mentioned, Even small efforts matter

Cons: Airplanes mentioned only once, Encourages a lot of proselytizing in day to day life, Many members are leaving church or going inactive, Really short talk :(

W. Christopher Weidell

His (nonmember) brother (Mike) had Pancreatic cancer, could see the temple from his hospital bed.

Mike became friends with the priesthood leaders, kept askin hc about the church

Mike joined the church and gained strength

Had no pulse when on day gaining Melchezidek priesthood, has pulse as soon as Weidell enters room, he lives to gain the priesthood, but dies 5 hours later.

It takes remarkable efforts to minister

Don't give up on a "Not Interested"-hearts change

Desire tonhelp others achieve deeper conversion

Serving others

Want others to reach divine potential

Sensitive to trials and struggles

We are encouraged to follow the guidings of the Holy Spirit

Trust the Lord

Focus on what's important

It's never too late, you'll never wander too far from the path

Never too soon to extend an invitation

There is always hope

Pros: Heartwarming story about brother, hope if you are inactive and want to come back, hope if yiy have friends or family who have left the church for various reasons

Cons: Influences those really aggressive ministerers to keep going at it, which can weaken someones already weak bond with the church, ITS REALLY SAD, I CRIED OK?

Henry B. Eyring

United as one is the feeling we want in our homes

Families

No contention due to love for God (4th Nephi)

Symptoms of Spiritual Decline TM - How can we protect and increase feelings of love to combat them

Underlying cause=Satan

Reverse spiritual decline in family and in home

Remember the savior as you remember thine sins

Praying as a family brings you closer together

Family who prays together is together, even when far apart

Offer the gospel to your enemies

Examples of Parents

Worry about Celestial Kingdom and the Family Arrangements will be more wonderful than you can imagine

Pros: Talks about strengthening family bonds, NOT ABOUT THE PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD!!!, strengthen love for God=strengthen family, FOUND FAMILIES? NON NUCLEAR/TRADITIONAL FAMILIES? ?!?!, All you need is love, Love is all you need

Cons: May encourage abusive/extremist parents to shove gospel down childrens throats to "strengthen family" therefore pushing children away

M. Russel Ballard

Can't control what impacts our life, we can control how it impacts our happiness

Do the best we can each day

Heavenly Father loves you

Love God, Love Neighbors

Find peace and happiness in your life

We minister because we love others

Preform Temple ordinances

Keep it simple

Pros: Don't worry be happy, If you follow the commandments you will find happiness, Keep it simple (KonMarie LDS edition)

Cons: The whole we can control how it impacts our happiness doesn't include neurodivergent people, especially those with depression.

Mathias Held

Found a church (ours) where he felt at home

Personal growth, education, humanitarian efforts, self-reliance

Wanted to know everything about the church before joining

Mosiah 1:18

Confident that Heavenly Father would guide him

Through the power of the Holy Ghost we may know all things

Pros: Short and sweet, lists what attracts people to the church

Cons: May make some people in process of conversion feel left out or like they aren't on track/moving fast enough

Neil Anderson

God has given us a way to learn essential truths

See truths of God through the Eye of Faith

Spirit sons and daughters (AND CHILDREN, ELDER ANDERSON! AND CHILDREN!) lived with and worshipped god

We all knew God's plan for us

Prophets see ahead, not only the dangers, but the privileges and blessings

Faith, patience, and diligence

We are all part of a larger family

God will shine his approval on you

Pros: Its about the Plan of Salvation, Eye of Faith, We are all part of a larger family and should strive to help each other, I like the notion that the prophets are also seeing Good things because the world has been very much the bad place as of late..

Cons: I'm pretty sure this is the one where he mentions his LGBTQIA friend who was all like "we need to abandon the ways of the world and thus I be celibate" so... Slight homophobia maybe? I don't know I didn't write it down but a lot of people are bothered by this

Takashi Wada

Overcome darts of the Adversart

True feasting is an experience of joy and thanksgiving

Feasting on scriptures should build our relationship with God

Hearts filled with Gratitude

1. words of Christ increase spiritual capacity for revelation

2. when we struggle with our identity and self esteem, turn to the scriptures

3. live lives of others through the scriptures

A little boy handed Wada's mother a hymn book even though she coukd have easily accessed it herself, an innocent act of kindness he learned through the church and his parents

Hearts burn within us when we read the scriptures

Ye shall have eternity

Pro: This man??? so Sweet??? Hi I love him?, Very innocent stories, very funny.

Con: There is none. Perfect talk.

David P. Homer

"I'm sorry I didn't bear my testimony today, I love you"

1. Critical moments, multiple voices with competing directions, 2. Vital that we listen to the right one

We often focus on what's convenient

Popular =/= best

Mountain climbers' death zone= Spiritual too much time in bad places

Korihor

Impressions given by the Holy Ghost

Seek God's voice

Be doers of the word, not just hearers

Answers can be slow to come

Heavenly Father makes it possible to hear and follow his commandments.

Pro: His opening quote is really cute, Wow this is a call out talk

Con: You may feel called out if you don't follow commandments

Jeffery R. Holland

Adam and Eve closed door to immortality

Help comes from the Lamp of God

Offer broken heart and contrite spirit

Reduce clamor in our buildings

Be mindful of broken hearts and sad spirits around us

No shortage of suffering in the world

Lift load from those who are burdened

Bring tears to the Lord's Sacrificial Altar

Pros: calls people to acknowledge those who are hurt around us, calls people to stop using church for socialization

Cons: What is a Lamp of God?, How can we focus on broken hearts and contrite spirits without hurting them?

#book of mormon #mormon #queerstake #lds #ldsteen #tumblrstake #gencon #general conference #lds conference #mormon conference #latter day saints conference #latter day saints #the church of jesus christ of latter day saints

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defendtranswomen · 5 years

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I am too sick to write this article. The act of writing about my injuries is like performing an interpretative dance after breaking nearly every bone in my body. When I sit down to edit this doc, my head starts aching like a capsule full of some corrosive fluid has dissolved and is leaking its contents. The mental haze builds until it becomes difficult to see the text, to form a thesis, to connect parts. They drop onto the page in fragments. This is the difficulty of writing about brain damage.

The last time I was in the New Inquiry, several years ago, I was being interviewed. I was visibly sick. I was in an abusive “community” that had destroyed my health with regular, sustained emotional abuse and neglect. Sleep-deprived, unable to take care of myself, my body was tearing itself apart. I was suicidal from the abuse, and I had an infected jaw that needed treatment.

Years later, I’m talking to my therapist. I told her, when you have PTSD, everything you make is about PTSD. After a few minutes I slid down and curled up on the couch like the shed husk of a cicada. I go to therapy specifically because of the harassment and ostracism from within my field.

This is about disposability from a trans feminine perspective, through the lens of an artistic career. It’s about being human trash.

This is in defense of the hyper-marginalized among the marginalized, the Omelas kids, the marked for death, those who came looking for safety and found something worse than anything they’d experienced before.

For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.

I was one of these people.

They controlled my housing and access to nearly every resource. I was sexually harassed, had my bathroom use monitored, my crumbling health ignored or used as a tool of control, was constantly yelled at, and was pressured to hurt other trans people and punished severely when I refused.

The cycle of trans kids being used up and then smeared is a systemic, institutionalized practice. It happens in the shelters, in the radical organizations, in the artistic scenes—everywhere they might have a chance of gaining a foothold. It’s like an abusive foster household that constantly kicks kids out then uses their tears and anger at being raped and abused to justify why they had to be kicked out—look at these problem kids. Look at these problematic kids.

Trans fems are especially vulnerable to abuse for the following reasons:

— A lot of us encounter concepts for the first time and have no idea what is “normal” or not.

— We have nowhere else to go. Abuse thrives on scarcity.

— No one cares what happens to us.

This foster cycle relies on amnesia. A lot of people who enter spaces for the first time don’t know those spaces’ history. They may not know that leaders regularly exploit and make sexual advances on new members, or that those members who resisted are no longer around. Spaces self-select for people who will play the game, until the empathic people have been drained out and the only ones who remain are those who have perfectly identified with the agendas and survival of the Space—the pyramid scheme of believers who bring capital and victims to those on top.

My first puberty was a nightmare—faced with the opportunity to make my second one a healthy, healing experience, I was instead abused and broken. The community practiced compulsory BDSM sexuality, which was deeply inappropriate considering it was one of the only visible spaces for trans people interested in making games. I didn’t need that coercion in my life; I needed safety and mentorship.

I spent those years of my early twenties not making connections or gaining valuable socialization that I had missed in my youth, but being exploited and brainwashed in nightmarish isolation. I was scared away from the “inclusive” coding spaces, the “inclusive” conferences and their orbiting alt events, and everything else that people like to pretend is available for trans fems.

Things escalated at the Allied Media Conference of 2013. Unfortunately I was traveling alone. People from the abusive community overheard me asking about safe-space resources in Oakland and became angry that I was seeking to escape their community. I was intimidated in person by someone who had a great deal of social power over me. I had a panic attack and went to the bathroom to dry heave and cry. Shortly afterward, threatening messages began bombarding my Twitter and my phone, and the community began to develop a coordinated political response to my desire to leave. People suddenly stopped talking to me, and I felt the icy net of isolation drawing tight.

This was the only time a conference responded appropriately. AMC apologized, notified their security team to check up on me, and encouraged me to submit a talk next year. I came back and ran a workshop (with two friends for security) and a small amount of healing was possible.

This reintegration was not made anywhere else. I was excluded from the vast majority of game spaces because of what happened to me. Of course, the multimedia nature of AMC meant it had the least stake in preserving the reputation of games and other things that matter more than people.

When I got back home, I was kicked out of my housing. I later learned that the community had been contacting my landlord for months prior to the actual eviction, as well as spreading rumors throughout my field. These seed rumors are a common tactic in those spaces, cultivating a brittle structure around people that can be shattered when necessary.

Living was my sole attempt at innocence.

ATTACK

One of my abusers was sent a list of the nominees for the upcoming games festival Indiecade. Unfortunately, I was on the list. I ended up winning an award, ostensibly to recognize my feminine labor in the areas of marginalized game design—years of creating access for other people, publicizing their games, giving technical support, not to mention the games I had designed myself. Instead of solidarity from other marginalized people in my field, I was attacked.

Anyone else getting that award would have been able to just … get that award. But people like me aren’t allowed to just have careers. Feminist culture saw fit to give a pass to every man and every cis woman who got that award, but when a trans fem from a disadvantaged background stepped up, she somehow happened to be the worst. The culture was fine with me as long as I was window-dressing, but daring to excel got me kneecapped.

They spread rumors that I was sending harassing messages to people, even as the messages streamed one-way toward me. They said I controlled a misogynistic mob and was using it to attack people. (I had never been more alone.) I was called a pedophile, a rapist, an abuser (the typical dog whistles used in feminist spaces to evoke the dangerous tranny stereotype invading ur bathrooms.) Even when the rumors were debunked, even with a history of co-habitating respectfully with partners and a history of being a respectful tenant, the damage was never repaired. The purpose was to keep firing until I was gone, until every possible bad thing had been said about me.

The reputation game was used to paint a vulnerable, isolated trans girl, too scared to leave her room most days, as having power which she did not have—power which my abusers, veterans of queer and artistic scenes with decades of institutional privilege, did have.

It happened without warning or recourse, without a single attempt at conciliation. Multiple times I had noticed tension building and had asked explicitly for mediation. Each time this was refused. When you’re exiling someone for petty political reasons, it works best when they can’t tell their own story. By privately vocalizing concerns that I was being abused, I became a public target—presenting a false chronology to observers.

Previously their ostracism had been silent, made simple by the fact that no one cared about what happened to trans fems who made games. The fact that my games had inadvertently made me visible meant that the attack had to be devastatingly public, my fake crimes commensurate to the amount of disgust required to repel me. This is the danger of the token system—it elevated me to a level of violent politics I was unprepared for.

Very few people want to defend a target of disposability. I was told by one person that she couldn’t risk losing her job, another that she didn’t want to become a target too.

I was threatened into not defending myself, gaslit into silence, told that people knew “things” about me that were never explained. When I asked how I could do accountability, when I said I would do whatever they wanted, they said that I was “incapable” of accountability, that my crime was unknown and my sentence was permanent. That is the point where the body starts to die.

My attackers were expert pathological liars who had been getting away with it for years—entire fictional realities playing out on their social-media accounts like soap opera. Escaping from abuse is the most certain way to become painted as an abuser, and being an abuser is the most sure way to be believed. You know how movies are realer than reality? How the sound effects and physics become so normalized to us that reality seems flat and fake? Talking about abuse is kind of like that. Abusers know what sounds “real.” They are like expert movie-effects artists. Victims are stuck with boring fake reality.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND HEALTH

Social media is significant to my story because for a long time it was my only outlet as a disabled individual barred from many physical spaces, and a way to express myself artistically when traditional outlets were closed to me. However, it came with its own set of problems.

When I told another trans person that I had been abused, I was told in response that my follower count on Twitter was higher than hers.

I tried talking to people about my poor health, how I needed to withdraw and have space. After unfollowing most people related to games, a subject which was quickly becoming a trigger, I was told that I was “manipulative” for unfollowing, and my following list on Twitter was scrutinized and brought up as evidence that I still followed certain games people and that I was doing this to hurt people.

I was pressured not to post about certain things I cared about (“crystals,” ”slime”) and not to use my favorite emoticons. I was pressured to join in social-media smearings of other trans people (which I frequently rebelled against, to my detriment) and to RT things I didn’t want to RT.

My twitter was incompatible with the rest of the network because I mainly posted poetry-style tweets that had no connection to anything else. I would be accused of subtweeting or encoding hidden messages into my tweets. People would associate random words in my tweets with some random thing going on in their life that I surely must be commenting on.

Social media became a scientific metric for my abusers, a set of numbers and behaviors to obsess over and divine hidden messages. The games network constantly abraded against my nonparticipation—my desire for a safe, therapeutic online space, not a competitive one.

Feminist practice of declaring privilege and marginalization became a way to collect information about victims: Look at someone’s profile bar for their elemental weaknesses. Being frank about my health problems was never an advantage for me in feminist spaces, only something to be used against me. I was an object, an invalid on a bed that could be infinitely manipulated and extruded through social media to fit the agendas of a thousand bored strangers.

The ethereal potential of the net had become rigidly hierarchized and numbered to the point where I could be managed and controlled as efficiently as if I were in 3-D space.

MOBBING

CALL-OUT CULTURE AS RITUAL DISPOSABILITY

Feminist/queer spaces are more willing to criticize people than abusive systems because they want to reserve the right to use those systems for their own purposes. At least attacking people can be politically viable, especially in a token system where you benefit directly by their absence, or where your status as a good feminist is dependent on constantly rooting out evil.

When the bounty system calls for the ears of evil people, well, most people have a fucking ear.

When I used to curate games, I was approached by people in that abusive community who pressured me not to cover a game by a trans woman. Their reasoning was blatant jealousy, disguised under the thin, nauseating film of pretext that covers nearly everything people say about trans people.

When I rejected their reasoning and covered the game, the targeting reticule of disposability turned toward me. What can we learn from this? Besides “lofty processes in queer/feminist spaces are nearly always about some embarrassingly petty shit,” it’s about the ritual nature of disposability, which has nothing to do with “deserving” it. Disposability has to happen on a regular basis, like forest fires keeping nature in balance.

So when people write all those apologist articles about call-out culture and other instruments of violence in feminism, I don’t think they understand that the people who most deserve those things can usually shrug off the effects, and the normalization of that violence inevitably trickles down and affects the weak. It is predictable as water. Criminal justice applies punishment under the conceit of blind justice, but we see the results: Prisons are flooded with the most vulnerable, and the rich can buy their way out of any problem. In activist communities, these processes follow a similar pragmatism.

Punishment is not something that happens to bad people. It happens to those who cannot stop it from happening. It is laundered pain, not a balancing of scales.

If a man does something fucked up, all he has to do is apologize, if that, for feminists to re-embrace him. If a trans fem talks about something fucked up that happened to her, she is told to leave and never come back.

MOBBING

A common punishment for infanticide in the Middle Ages was living burial. This was a feminine-coded punishment, often reserved for women, one that allowed execution without having to actually be there at the moment of death. This line of thought pervades feminine punishment to this day.

One of the most common tools of exclusion is through mobbing, which is rarely talked about because unlike rape, murder, etc, it’s not easy to pin it on a single person (or scapegoat). Mobbing is emotional abuse practiced by a group of people, usually peers, over a period of time, through methods such as gaslighting, rumor-mongering, and ostracism. It’s most documented in workplace or academic environments (i.e. key points of capitalist tension) but is thoroughly institutionalized into feminist, queer, and radical spaces as well. Here is why it is horrible:

1) It has an unusually strong power to damage the victim’s relationship to society, because it can’t be written off as an outlier, as some singular monster. It reveals a fundamental truth about people that makes it difficult to trust ever again. People become like aliens, like a pack of animals that can turn on you as soon as some mysterious pheromone shift marks you for death.

2) The insidious nature of emotional abuse: How do you fight ostracism and rumors? They leave no bruises, they just starve you.

3) Mobbing typically occurs in places where the victim is trapped by some need or obligation: work, school, circles of friends. This can prolong exposure to damaging extremes.

For these reasons, PTSD is an almost inevitable outcome of any protracted mobbing case.

In ideological spaces, this damage is exacerbated by the fact that the victims are often earnest people who take the ideals to heart and can’t understand why the culture is going contrary to its own messages. They appease, self-incriminate, blame themselves—anything to be a Good Person. They don’t want to fight. Fighting sickens them.

From a report by the Australian House of Representatives Education and Employment Committee: “90 percent of people being bullied make the comment: ‘I just want it to stop.’ They don’t want to go down a formal path, but just want the behaviour to stop.”

Those who participate, even unwittingly, feel compelled to invest in the narrative of victims as monsters in order to protect their self-conception as a good person—group violence creates group culpability. For their ego they trade the career, health, community (and sometimes life) of the victim.

MOBBING AS WITCH HUNTS

One lesson we can draw from the return of witch-hunting is that this form of persecution is no longer bound to a specific historic time. It has taken a life of its own, so that the same mechanisms can be applied to different societies whenever there are people in them that have to be ostracized and dehumanized. Witchcraft accusations, in fact, are the ultimate mechanism of alienation and estrangement as they turn the accused—still primarily women—into monstrous beings, dedicated to the destruction of their communities, therefore making them undeserving of any compassion and solidarity.

—Silvia Federici

The term witch hunt is thrown around a lot, but let’s look at what it really means. Witch hunts, as discussed by Silvia Federici, were responses to shifts in capital accumulation, as is slavery. To jury-rig the perpetually self-destructing machine of capitalism, huge amounts of violence are required to obtain captive labor (fem and non-white). The effect is to devalue our labor as much as possible, and to destroy the bonds between marginalized people.

You see this in games and tech spaces where the intense amounts of competition and capital accumulation, both physical and social, are a breeding ground for mobbing. But the popular two-sided discussion of mobbing as carried out in numerous clickbait articles ignores the fact that mobbing goes all the way down—even as white cis women struggle for safety, they participate in the exclusion of others, creating a hierarchy of labor and competition. Because mobbing is a form of capitalist violence, the popular discussion (conducted by those who are intricately entwined with the flow of capital) must omit the nuances of mobbing in favor of a narrative that is about replacing uncool regressive masculine consumerism with liberal feminist consumerism.

When the people who are scapegoated happen to be from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, the culture calls it coincidence, clutching our respectable counterparts to their chest like pearls, a talisman of tokens to ward away reality.

SEXUAL MENACE

I saw a queer black woman, struggling to survive by her art, falsely accused of rape by a white queer. The call-out post was extremely vague and loaded with strong words designed to elicit vigilante justice. Immediately, hundreds of other white queers jumped on the bandwagon. Many of them likely didn’t know either of the people involved.

Accusations of sexual menace are a key weapon used against marginalized people in feminist spaces, because it arouses people’s disgust like no other act—the threat of black skin on innocent white, of trans bone structures on ethereal cis skeletons. It’s as common for many of us as cat-calling or any other form of ubiquitous harassment that cis feminists talk about, except no one wants to talk about it. It’s a way for the dominant people in the group to take us aside and say, you are not welcome here, or do this thing you don’t want to do or I’ll ruin your life. But frequently it happens without any particular thesis, just as a general tool to keep us destabilized and vulnerable. Don’t forget who you really are in the unspoken hierarchy.

Mobbing uses these rumors to trade a vague suspicion for the actual reality of violence. It’s like turning the corner and watching someone on the street having their teeth kicked in by a mob who assures you that just before you appeared, this person had committed some mysterious act which justifies limitless brutality.

DAMAGE

PTSD AS DISPOSABILITY ALCHEMY

I was, in effect, beaten until I had brain damage, over a long period of time. Unlike some other survivors of trauma, I was unable to heal because I was never separated from the source of the danger. I was never given the chance to vent, to express myself, to tell my side of the story—but I had to keep working, harder than ever, while being constantly exposed to violence.

The pressure on me was not merely to survive but to display no signs of the incredible amounts of damage pouring into me daily. To never display the slightest hint of anger, to never cry, to not argue with people telling me horrible things. Every hint of damage was an excuse to further isolate and demonize me.

The cost of resisting disposability was PTSD. It was catching a lethal amount of negative energy with my body and becoming a poison-processing factory.

My job is wired to give me electric shocks. What do you do when your alternative is homelessness?

“The allostatic load is ‘the wear and tear on the body’ which grows over time when the individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress.”

“Stress hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol in combination with other stress-mediating physiological agents such as increased myocardial workload, decreased smooth muscle tone in the gastrointestinal tract, and increased coagulation effects have protective and adaptive benefits in the short term, yet can accelerate pathophysiology when they are overproduced or mismanaged; this kind of stress can cause hypertension and lead to heart disease. Constant or even irregular exposure to these hormones can eventually induce illnesses and weaken the body’s immune system.”

To cover up the abuse and protect the “reputation” of the games industry, it was deemed worthwhile to lower my lifespan, weaken my immune system, and permanently damage my body.

Even if I drink multiple cups of water before bed I wake up with severe dehydration. An interesting side effect of being a trans fem on hormones is that spironolactone (an antiandrogen) is a diuretic, so the dehydrating effects of stress are added to the dehydration of my gender, tipping it over to agonizing extremes, the unspoken tax of pursuing both gender and a career. The amount of water in my body is political.

I wake up feeling burnt. Damaged. Corroded. I crawl up from an insane, nauseating, unreal pit and slowly come back to the world. I have constant headaches.

By the end of the day my neck and left arm are aching from nervous tics.

I forget things rapidly. Triggers leave me exhausted or panicking at inconvenient times, sometimes for days or weeks.

My hair fell out in handfuls. I still have a nervous tic of running my hands through my hair to pull out loose strands.

Having PTSD is like breaking a limb and never being able to rely on it as strongly. The sudden weakness of standing on it wrong, suddenly being unable to hold something, a fatigue and spasm of nerves.

It became difficult to diagnose other medical problems because of the all-consuming nature of the symptoms. It became difficult to talk about what happened to my body in general. When my hairdresser asked, the only way to explain the damage was by saying I had been in a car accident.

Attacks on marginalized artists go beyond merely denying them access to networks; they also damage a person’s faculties of expression.

For a long time, PTSD deprived me of the privilege of being a multitemporal being. The space of time I was able to safely think about shrunk to about a minute. Larger projects, the kind most tied to commercial value and to the media coverage apparatus, were difficult for me due to the traumatic potential of expanding my aperture of time.

The diversity-centric system expects more jobs to fix the problem, ignoring how long we’ve been damaged and made unfit for their jobs. They encourage the Strong Woman stereotype because it means taking the damage onto ourselves. We need more than jobs; we need social reintegration.

COMMUNICATION

INABILITY TO SHARE STIGMA

Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon feeling a connection to others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma de-humanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.

—Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

The worst thing is not having other survivors to commiserate with. I can think of people who went through similar situations and were defended, re-integrated. Their stories are paraded through feminist spaces, saturated through social media, and every time I’m exposed to them, I feel less safe, not more. This enhances my feelings of dehumanization: “Why was I not worth protecting in the exact same situation? I must not be human like them”.

I often have the overwhelming physical sensation of having a dead person in my life, someone as close as an identical twin. The sensation is of me being the only one still alive after a terrible accident, lingering like an unshriven thing. The inability to share stigma is even worse than the original act of violation. The greater part of a wound is its inability to heal.

INADMISSIBLE NARRATIVES OF ABUSE #1

The typical narrative of abuse on social media doesn’t include the problems of the most vulnerable, like how public verbal harassment may only be an ultimately minor part of a trans fem’s exile.

The most skilled abusers know that a good exile is done with pure silence, through the whisper network, by having the person wake up one day and have every second or third person she knows or who practices her profession block her and/or stop talking to her. No one tells her why. She has to painstakingly talk to every friend, every contact, every person she would normally have a cheerful conversation with. The electric shocks of knowing that every simple human interaction you have with a friend or stranger could turn into a nightmare of victim blaming or worse, a cold iciness where they pretend nothing is wrong. Imagine repeating that experience hundreds and hundreds of times, with no way to end it. After the noise, the long years of silence are what kill us.

The backchannels that should be used to protect people from abusers and rapists are instead used to protect abusers and rapists. Any usefulness these channels have is reserved for Real Women. No one warned me about any of the comically large number of predators in my professions. I was considered unrapeable, unabuseable, not worthy of protection. A trans fem can try to talk about her experiences of abuse for years and have no one listen, but the instant one of her abusers smears her, everyone is alert and awake.

One reason it took me so long to talk about my experiences was that I associated being able to speak against abuse with being an abuser. Because every abuser throughout my life was so good at being believed, I thought that being believed was the exclusive domain of abusers.

This is why my first months in therapy were spent convincing me that I wasn’t a sociopath, crazy, abusive, or any of the other terms I had been brainwashed with. Abusers don’t spend years disabled by those thoughts because they don’t care if they hurt other people.

INADMISSIBLE NARRATIVES OF ABUSE #2

And when verbal harassment does occur, it’s often cloaked in feminist language, making it impossible to fight.

If they call a woman a bitch, people comprehend that as misogyny. But they call trans fems things that are harder to respond to. Rapist, pedophile, male conditioning, etc. They call us things so bad that even denying them is destructive. Who wants to stand up in public and say they aren’t those things? Who has the privilege to not get called those things in the first place?

When I look at a cis woman these days, the first thing I think is, I bet no one ever casually called her a rapist.

TRASH ART

When it was really bad, I wrote: “Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms. Move a single inch and call it a victory. Mold my sexuality toward immobility. Lie here leaking water from my eyes like a statue covered in melting frost. Zero affect. Build like moss grows. Build like crystals harden. Give up. Make your art the merest displacement of molecules at your slightest quiver. Don’t build in spite of the body and fail on their terms, build with the body. Immaculate is boring and impossible. Health based aesthetic.”

Twine, trashzines made of wadded up torn paper because we don’t have the energy to do binding, street recordings done from our bed where we lie immobilized.

Laziness is not laziness, it is many things: avoiding encountering one’s own body, avoiding triggers, avoiding thinking about the future because it’s proven to be unbearable. Slashing the Gordian Knot isn’t a sign of strength; it’s a sign of exhaustion.

Although I’ve fashioned this reflection in a manner that some may find legible, it is not a fair representation of my sickness. Writing these paragraphs has taken constant doses of medicine, fevered breaks, a few existential timeouts, and a complete neglect of my other responsibilities. When I tried in true form to write – in my realest moments of sickness – all that emerged were endless ellipses and countless semi-coherent revelations.

—Alli Yates

With the trashzine, I tore up the pages because I didn’t have the time or energy to bind them. I put them in ziploc bags—trash binding. In this new form they were resistant to the elements and could go interesting places. I hid one in Oakland under a bridge, and posted coordinates online. Someone found it.

When read, they come out of the bag like my thoughts—fragmented, random, nonlinear. If dropped they become part of the trash.

SOCIAL DYNAMICS

COMMUNITY IS DISPOSABILITY

There are no activist communities, only the desire for communities, or the convenient fiction of communities. A community is a material web that binds people together, for better and for worse, in interdependence. If its members move away every couple years because the next place seems cooler, it is not a community. If it is easier to kick someone out than to go through a difficult series of conversations with them, it is not a community. Among the societies that had real communities, exile was the most extreme sanction possible, tantamount to killing them. On many levels, losing the community and all the relationships it involved was the same as dying. Let’s not kid ourselves: we don’t have communities.

—The Broken Teapot, Anonymous

People crave community so badly that it constitutes a kind of linguistic virus. Everything in this world apparently has a community attached to it, no matter how fragmented or varied the reality is. This feels like both wishful thinking in an extremely lonely world (trans fems often have a community-shaped wound a mile wide) and also the necessary lens to convert everything to profit. Queerness is a marketplace. Alt is a marketplace. Buy my feminist butt plugs.

The dream of an imaginary community that allows total identification with one’s role within it to an extent that rules out interiority or doubt, the fixity and clearness of an external image or cliche as opposed to ephemera of lived experience, a life as it looks from the outside.

—Stephen Murphy

These idealized communities require disposability to maintain the illusion—violence and ostracism against the black/brown/trans/trash bodies that serve as safety valves for the inevitable anxiety and disillusionment of those who wish “total identification”.

Feminism/queerness takes a vague disposability and makes it a specific one. The vague ambient hate that I felt my whole life became intensely focused—the difference between being soaked in noxious, irritating gasoline and having someone throw a match at you. Normal hate means someone and their friends being shitty toward you; radical hate places a moral dimension onto hate, requiring your exclusion from every possible space—a true social death.

CURATING QUEERNESS

An entire industry of curation has sprung up to rigidly and sometimes violently police the hierarchy of who is allowed to express themselves as a trans or queer person. The LGBT and queer spheres find it upon themselves to create compilations of the “best” art by trans people, to define what a trans story is and to omit the rest. Endless projects to curate, list, own, publish, control, but so few to offer support and mentorship.

The stories that reflect poorly on alt culture are buried in favor of utopianism that everyone aspires toward but where few live. People feed desperately on this aspiration, creating the ever more elaborate hollow structures of brittle chitin that comprise feminist/queer culture.

To find the things I wanted in queerness, I had to find those who had been exiled from it, those who the name had been torn from.

COMPLAINT AND PURITY

there is nothing “wrong” with a politics of complaint but there are several risks like developing a dependent relationship with “the enemy” politically neutralizing oneself by dumping all of one’s subversive energies into meaningless channels or reifying one’s powerlessness by identifying with it because it makes one virtuous complaint becomes a form of subcultural capital a way to morally purify oneself —Jackie Wang, the tumblrization of everyday life

Popular feminism encodes pain into its regular complaint/click cycle, keeping everyone on the rim of emotional survival. Constant attack, constant strength, constant purity.

Lacking true community, the energy spent is not restored. Those with more stability in their life can keep up the cycle of complaint, and those with lower amounts of energy are filtered out, creating culture that glorifies a “strength” not everyone can access.

There is immense pressure on trans people to engage in this form of complaint if they want access to spaces—but we, with our higher rates of homelessness, joblessness, lifelessness, lovelessness, are the most fragile. We are the glass fems of an already delicate genderscape.

Purification is meaningless because anyone can perform these rituals—an effigy burnt in digital. And their inflexibility provides a place where abuse can thrive—a set of rules which abusers can hold over their victims.

Deleuze wrote, “The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.”

ENDING

People talk about feminism and queerness the way you’d apologize for an abusive relationship.

This isn’t for the people who are benefiting from these spaces and have no reason to change. This is for the people who were exiled, the people essays aren’t supposed to be written for. This is to say, you didn’t deserve that. That even tens or hundreds or thousands of people can be wrong, and they often are, no matter how much our socially constructed brains take that as a message to lie down and die. That nothing is too bad, too ridiculous, too bizarre to be real when it comes to making marginalized people disappear.

Ideology is a sick fetish.

RESISTING DISPOSABILITY

— Let marginalized people be flawed. Let them fuck up like the Real Humans who get to fuck up all the time.

— Fight criminal-justice thinking. Disposability runs on the innocence/guilt binary, another category that applies dynamically to certain bodies and not others. The mob trials used to run trans people out of communities are inherently abusive, favor predators, and must be rejected as a process unequivocally. There is no kind of justice that resembles hundreds of people ganging up on one person, or tangible lifelong damage being inflicted on someone for failing the rituals of purification that have no connection to real life.

— Pay attention when people disappear. Like drowning, it’s frequently silent. They might be blackmailed, threatened, and/or in shock.

— Even if the victim doesn’t want to fight (which is deeply understandable—often moving on is the only response), private support is huge. This is the time to make sure the wound doesn’t become infected, that the PTSD they acquire is as minimized as possible. This is the difference between a broken leg healing to the point where they can run again, or walking with a limp for the rest of their life. They’ve just been victim-blamed by a huge number of people, and as a social organism, their body is telling them to die. They need social reintegration, messages of support, and space to heal.

— Be extremely critical about what people say about trans people, especially things said in vagueness. The rumor mill that keeps trans people out of spaces isn’t even so much about people believing what is said, it’s about people choosing the safest option—a staining that plays on the average person’s risk aversion.

— Ask yourself if the same thing would be happening if they were white/cis/able-bodied.

— “Radical inclusivity recognizes harm done in the name of God.” —Yvette Flunder

Marginalized spaces can’t form healthy community purely from rejection of the mainstream. There has to be an acknowledgment of how people have been hurt by feminist spaces and their models.

— A common enemy isn’t the same as loving each other.

— Don’t be part of spaces that place an ideal or “community leader” above people.

DREAM

On January 18, 2015, I woke up from a dream. It was early morning, still dark. I felt very sad that the dream wasn’t real. I wrote it down, like I’ve written down all my dreams for the last eight years.

“She was my abuser. She came to my house on the island. I begged her to stop what she had done, to clear my name. She would not. It had been two years of being abused like a child because of her. I turned to walk deeper into the house. I looked back. She had a knife. She stabbed me. It was the happiest dream of my life. Because finally an abuser had done something to me that people would pay attention to. When I woke up my entire spirit was crushed because I had not been stabbed. I felt the weight of all these years of abuse. I wished so badly I had been stabbed.

I pulled the knife out. I wrestled the knife away. I called my friend to come over and help me.

I walked along the beach of the island and saw for the first time how PTSD had numbed and corroded every perception I’d had since that August, this debilitating disease. I finally felt the brightness of the air in my lungs, the color of the sand and the waves. It was so beautiful. I just wanted to experience all the things that had been stolen from me.”

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nerysdax · 6 years

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PSA about putting Tomione in real life Nazi settings

After I’ve gotten some more questions as to why I have issues with writing a Tomione with the holocaust as subject (see this post: http://nerysdax.tumblr.com/post/173906911067/lust ) when I normally am pretty much “write what you want and fuck the haters”, I was wondering why and how to properly word it. Yesterday night I couldn’t find the words. It hit too close to home. Here’s why.

When I was a young teenager, I became obsessed with WW2. I don’t remember exactly what started it, probably the combination of a book (about heroic people fighting the Germans and crossing the channel to flee to England) and the knowledge my still young grandparents went through that war. I was fascinated. Wanted to know everything. I badgered them. My grandfather had been in a German labor camp and my grandmother had done some minor resistance work by delivering fake identity documents. They as so many of their generation didn’t want to talk about it, but I learned snippets of their history. Now I know I was asking them to relive a horrible time, back then I was a curious youngster, who didn’t understand and I wanted to know and learn about this war. I wrote terrible Mary Sue stories about my shooting Hitler and saving the world, or about liberating camps, or shooting those horrible, horrible Germans and collaborators.

I wanted to know more, so I read every fictional book available. I knew this war. I felt it was inside of me, but fictional books didn’t quite cut it. I switched to history books. I watched movies. I learned about the hunt for Eichmann. I studied what Simon Wiesenthal was doing. I read everything about the holocaust. The horrors of the elimination of Jews, gay people, Romani, mentally disabled and anyone else out of the norm. I read about Mengele and his horrible experiments. I wanted to understand. The more I learned, the less I understood. This was a war I understood, this was a war I knew all about. It was black and white. Good and evil. How did people allow for this to happen when the fictional books I had read spoke of the bravery? I wrote a story about a young girl in a camp (based a lot on Anne Frank in hindsight) who survived (alas not based on Anne Frank) while her family perished. After all I knew this war. I knew this, too.

I became more critical about my own country, the Netherlands. We were the country the most Jews got transported from, the most who never came back, even if you adjust to percentages within the population, we still were in the dishonourable position of being the lead. I learned about the collaborators from their children. I learned about the silent majority to whom “Ik heb het niet geweten” (the dutch version of “Ich habe es nicht gewusst”) really didn’t fly. You had to have known. How could you not? How could you stay silent? How could you tell on your neighbours? How could you take their belongings? Why, why, why? To my teenage mind, it all seemed so clear. You had to make the right choice. Easy. So why wasn’t it that way? I began to write more critical fictional WW2 stories. Stories about collaborators, stories about someone not daring to speak up and looking the other way over and over and over again, until finally they were liberated and could pretend none of it was their fault. This was my war. I knew it.

I read about the Soviets fight, the questionable delay of the Allied Forces invasion over and over out of fear for Stalin. The immense cost of the Russian lives, because that second front stayed away. I still burn a candle on May 9th out of solidarity for the Russian lives lost, even though in the Netherlands we commemorate the dead on May 4th. I wrote a story about the siege on Leningrad. This was my war. The more I learned, the more I knew, the more I became fascinated.

I focused on the rise of Hitler. The economic cost of WW1 to Germany, the poverty, the promises he made, the unexplainable attraction he had on crowds, the choices of the German population and the responses at first abroad. The unemployment he combatted. I knew the war, I wanted to know the start. You don’t start with concentration camps, you start with little things. I wrote about the “Kristallnacht” and the slowly excluding of Jews in everyday life. I began to understand how Hitler could’ve risen to power. I knew this war. I wrote a story about a young German Wehrmacht soldier and his choices and dilemmas.

I learned about Italy, Mussolini. How a country seen as wrong still saved a lot of his Jewish population, while we (the good guys) had not. I looked at Denmark where the Royal Family didn’t flee and exerted influence to save people, while ours had not. I looked at Switzerland and the questionable decisions of their banks with regards to the Nazi gold (which was never theirs to begin with). I learned more and more and more of this war. This war was mine. I wrote stories about robbing a Swiss bank after the war. I wrote a story where our royal family had stayed and its possible impact, including the questionable loyalties and position of then Prins Bernhard.

This was a war I knew. This was MY war. This was a war I began to understand.

Then I went to Auschwitz.

The immensity of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt it so profoundly that day. I still can’t think of that monument without crying.

And I realised something important.

I knew nothing.

This was not my war.

These weren’t my stories to tell.

These words belonged to other people.

“So we may never forget”. Yes, we need to remember. Yes, we need to retell the stories of those who were there, of those people it impacted on, of those who survived and those who did not. The real stories.

I often see people say when they write fiction about WW2, “We need to tell these stories so it never happens again.”

And I say, how arrogant. How arrogant of you to think that your fiction will do what the true stories of survivors did not. How arrogant to think you can appropriate something so horrific and do it better than those who lived it. How arrogant was I.

It happened and is happening again. We were there in Srebrenica; we stood by and watched. We were there in Rwanda, we stood by another genocide and did nothing. We are there in Myanmar, we make some fleeting comment about how bad it is what they’re doing to the Rohingyas and move on with our lives. We are there with North Korea; we don’t even comment about those concentration camps, because they only concern their own population after all. Those rockets that might hit ocean are a bigger deal to us. The internet, and before that, television means we are always there and we always do nothing.

We need to remember, we need to tell the true stories. Not for our amusement. Not for our entertainment. Not for our desire for angst. Not for a cheap thrill. But so that maybe someday, we will finally open our eyes and truly see. So that maybe someday, we will finally say, “stop, no further!” So that maybe someday, we will finally learn from history. So that maybe someday, when a person like Hitler tries to take control, we will say, “not on our watch.��

#tomione #volmione #tom riddlexhermione granger #personal

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flameontheotherside · 6 years

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Bullied/Bully

I was always targeted for things I can't really control like being "slow", socially inept, "crazy" and.... Ugly. Also didn't get enough if at all love and attention by my mother so I became an asshole too. Like being scrutinized or bullied to fuck is perfectly fine but if I break a rule or do something stupid, I'm grounded for weeks. My younger brother commits the same "crime", he's sentenced to half. I guess because I have to set example or whatever idk.

I take klonopin for generalized Anxiety stemming from the bullshit I've dealt with. Even still bullied in the workplace. But then I have at least 5 different guys who confess their still feelings for me and sometimes a random guy I meet just blows up my phone. The thought now of being alone with a guy other than Vince is terrifying. I let my asshole show when I see something someone is doing. Like a pet peeve (lol pun) is when people bring thier NON-SERVICE dog in to a store. A grocery store. It's just wrong and I'm sure illegal. So I make fun of them because they think it's cute to pretend to be disabled just so they can look cute with thier pansy dogs.

Tell me that isn't weird AF...

What's more irritating is there was this geeky girl who was in IT department fixing computers. One of the managers said she was weird after she left and I stood up for her. Then months later find she was talking shit about me. It hurt and I wasn't surprised.

I have like no idea what I do to people that make me a target. Socially ineptness is likely but it's not something I can help. I can't help it if a group of randome people talk about something I know a lot about... I have to jump in and correct them. That's happened several times and I have way too much information. Idk...

Just never really felt like anyone stuck up for me.

Even my own family criticized, excluded and belittled me for being different. My close cousin actually defended me. That's all I remember.

😘 💞 💕 ❤️ Love you guys, GN!

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧Don’t forget to take a look at Erik’s blog ran by his amazing mom Dr Elisa Medhus. Lots of stuff about his afterlife and shit. channelingerik.com … And YouTube

There is a new Twin Flame in spirit support forum: Spirit Spouse Support Group check it out!

Get your first Twin Flame/Mediumship reading free and take a look at affordable detailed readings here! (◕‿◕)♡

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catsandtruecrime · 3 years

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Historical True Crimes: Jonestown, and Why We Need to Stop Using the Phrase “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

The case of Jonestown is one that’s shockingly unknown to many young people today. I had personally never heard of this case until I was making my way through the Casefile podcast and I finally decided to dive into the episode titled, “Case 60: Jonestown (Part 1).” The description for the episode read “You may think you know the story, but do you…”

“Um…I don’t think I do know this story…” I thought, as soon as I read the description. I wracked my brain, trying to think of cases I’d heard before.

Jonestown…Jonestown…that sounds kind of familiar I think? Clearly it’s a town where something bad happened. I ran through my mental list of “Mass Shootings That Have Occurred in My Lifetime.” Aurora, Orlando, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook….nope, no Jonestown there.

I pressed play and Casefile’s standard disclaimer filled my headphones. “Our stories deal with serious, and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time that you need support, please contact your local crisis center. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes on your app, or on our website.”

There was a pause, and then something that I had never heard from the Anonymous Host before.

“This series on Jonestown deals with horrific events. The series deals with mass murder and suicide of men, women, and children, as well as other abuses. The episodes are graphic and distressing, especially episode 3. It will not be suitable for all listeners. Please use your discretion.”

Distressing these episodes were, but most distressing was the fact that I had no idea what Jonestown even was before listening to them. At Jonestown, America saw the greatest loss of civilian life in a single event until 9/11 occurred. Many of us vividly remember the tragedy of 9/11, but the tragedy of Jonestown has fallen by the wayside, and is almost even mocked in a way, by the widespread use of the phrase, “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

After I heard about Jonestown for the first time, I wanted to tell everyone about it. So here is me doing just that.

In short, Jonestown was a compound populated by a church-turned-cult, led by Jim Jones. Jones was born in Indiana in 1931, and grew up in a troubled household. His father was a disabled World War 1 veteran, and his mother was an outspoken factory worker, who was rarely home. As a result, Jones spent a lot of time alone in his younger years.

Noticing that little Jim was often playing outside by himself, a neighbor decided to invite him to church with her one day. At her evangelical Nazarene church, Jones found a sense of belonging for the first time. When he looked at the preacher, he saw someone to look up to, not because of his faith, but because of what the preacher inspired in others; the preacher was loved, adored, and respected by his congregation in a way that Jones wished he could be.

Eventually, Jones branched out to other religious denominations as well, and began going to their various churches. Jones was especially intrigued by pentecostal churches, as he enjoyed the theatrics and faith healings that these churches often offered.

By the time he was 10, Jones had decided that he wanted to be a preacher, and he was practicing on his friends and pets whenever he could. Eventually, he began preaching in lower income black neighborhoods, and he tended to focus on social justice and inequality.

*insert record scratch here* Time to pause the story for a moment. Knowing that Jones would be the one to eventually head the cult that became Jonestown, it’s important to discuss how cults work. We all like to think that we would never join a cult and that we’d be able to see what’s happening before we were to get sucked in.

Cults, though, tend to prey on the disadvantaged. Whether it’s due to poverty, racism, or religion, people who join cults tend to be those that are excluded from “the rest of us” in some way, and they’re people who are searching for acceptance and belonging.

Jones was coming into his own during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, during a time of intense civil unrest and mounting racial tensions in America. On top of that, there was also the imminent threat of nuclear war, which absolutely terrified many Americans.

With that information, and with the scene set, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

It’s largely questioned whether or not Jones actually believed in the need for equality, or whether he was just REALLY GOOD at honing his message to effectively target the people that he knew he could rope into joining him. He certainly knew how to speak and he had mastered the rhetoric that would grip people most tightly, dropping the ideas of desegregation, equality and social justice on the ground, small pieces of candy leading them into his gingerbread house in the middle of a Guyanese jungle, where they would ultimately meet their demise.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…Jones really began building his congregation when he was 21. Initially, he began preaching at a Methodist church in Bloomington, Indiana. When he began calling for desegregation and racial integration between churches, though, the Methodist church’s congregation (made of 100% rich white people) said, “Um…yeah, no thanks, dude.” So Jones said, “Well okay, then, I don’t need you anyway,” and he started recruiting people to form his own congregation, which came to be known as The People’s Temple.

Eventually, Jones became a sort of civil rights icon at the time. He preached in black neighborhoods and welcomed black citizens into his church with open arms. As Jones felt his steam building, he started abusing amphetamines and other drugs, which gave him the energy to visit potential worshippers and preach at all hours of the day and night.

With the energy came some more negative side effects, however. Jones became increasingly paranoid and was terrified at the prospect of a nuclear war. He had an intense fear of abandonment and regularly threatened anyone who tried to leave his congregation after they had joined.

As he continued to build his congregation, he shifted his messaging after reading through the entirety of the Bible. Jones paid particular attention to any negative events or contradictions as he read, ultimately coming to the conclusion that God will protect no one. Jones began telling his congregation that he was their only savior, and that he would be able to do more for them and protect them better than God ever would.

In 1963, Jones urged his congregation to move to Redwood Valley in California, claiming that they would be safe from nuclear war once there. Around this time, Jones and his congregation also began crusades, where they would take busses around the country, stopping along the way to hold events where Jones would preach, oftentimes in low income, minority areas.

During these crusade events, Jones would perform “miraculous” faith healings, in which he would appear to fix ailments and injuries. What the congregation didn’t know, though, was that all of these “healings” were staged.

In one example, Jones had one of his aides pose as an attendee; she sat in a wheelchair with a cast on her leg, appearing to have broken it and was unable to walk as a result. Jones approached the “injured woman” and willed her leg to heal, cutting off her cast and pulling her up from her seat. To attendees, it appeared that this woman had just been granted the ability to not only walk, but run down the aisles, all thanks to Jones.

Jones was also well known for wearing sunglasses no matter where he was. This wasn’t because Jones cared deeply about his eye health, though. They also served a couple of other purposes, like hiding his eyes from giving away his emotions or showing what he was really looking at. For example, when new members would come to his masses, his aides would take their names and phone numbers under the guise of needing a way to contact them for future events.

In reality, his aides would call people’s houses and would sometimes even go so far as to travel to their house and sift through their trash, essentially doing recon on their new members and gathering information about their lives. At the next mass, they would slip Jones a piece of paper with specific details about particular people. Reading from behind his sunglasses, he would call them out by name and reveal details about their lives that he (supposedly) couldn’t possibly have known. He claimed that he had ESP and that he was a prophet, hence why he seemed to “just know” things about his partitioners.

Jones started organizing fake assassination attempts on himself as well; at a time when notable civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr. were being assassinated, Jones needed to create the illusion that he was just as important as they were; he told his followers that there were countless people and organizations that wanted him dead. He also used this as an excuse to begin testing his followers’ loyalty.

Jones and his inner circle would write false declarations of child abuse, sexual assault, and even murder on behalf of Jones’s followers. They would be forced to sign the declarations, or else they would be ridiculed and beaten by other members of the church. If anyone wanted to leave at any point, Jones had a signed declaration on file for the person, stating that they had committed some crime, which he could hold over their heads and use to ruin their lives if they left him. He also had his followers sign blank pieces of paper so that he had access to their signature and could make it appear that they had signed just about anything he needed them to.

According to Julia Scheeres in the Sword and Scale podcast episode on Jonestown (Episode 50), Jones was “fascinated with the idea of control, and he wanted to see how far he could push people.” It was around this time in the 70s that Jones became obsessed with the idea of revolutionary suicide. He took the idea from the autobiography of Black Panther, Huey Newton. Newton’s idea was basically that you shouldn’t be afraid to go down fighting; for example, if the police are trying to shut down a protest, don’t go quietly, even if it means being killed. This was still a radical idea, but Jones took it even further.

Jones spun this idea to fit his own narrative and said that revolutionary suicide meant being willing to die “for the cause,” which was really dying for Jones himself. Essentially, he believed that his followers should be so loyal to him and The People’s Temple that they should be willing, and even happy, to die if Jones deemed it necessary.

At the same time that Jones was building his congregation, Guyana was a newly formed country in South America, and the government was struggling to provide enough food for their citizens. Ultimately, the government decided to lease land in the jungle to people who were willing to come to Guyana and build farms to contribute to the country’s food supply.

After a negative investigative article came out in New West Magazine, alleging abuse in The People’s Temple. Seeing his opportunity, Jones and his family, along with several hundred of his followers, moved to Guyana to build The People’s Temple Agricultural Project in the middle of the jungle. The journey to their roughly 3,800 acres of land took them to the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, where they had to journey by river to their settlement. They were roughly 6 miles from the nearest sign of civilization at the settlement that Jim Jones called Jonestown.

When his followers arrived to Jonestown, his aides confiscated their passports, money, and other worldly possessions. They were essentially stuck there, as Jim Jones had reportedly once told them, “If you want to go home, you can fucking swim home because we’re not paying your way home.”

Away from the pressures of American society and the American government, Jones was no longer afraid to be truly himself and make his increasingly radical views known. Armed guards patrolled the compound borders and temple members were forced to spend long days in the fields and participate in “White Night” drills, where Jones conditioned his followers into complacency regarding the idea of revolutionary suicide.

While they started out as a means to berate “disloyal” temple members, the White Nights eventually turned into what were essentially suicide drills. Jones would bring out a vat of punch (which was actually of the British brand, Flavor Aid) and urged his followers to drink from it. This idea had been on his mind for some time, as he had practiced this with his closest inner circle, even before relocating to Jonestown.

After everyone had drank their cup of punch, he would tell them that the punch was poisoned and that they would all be dead within the hour. Guards and Jones’s aides watched his followers, and anyone who appeared to be mad at their seemingly imminent death became targets for the rest of the night. Their lives were made harder and they were watched more closely after the drill if Jones was convinced that they wouldn’t be loyal to him and his commands in the end.

Tim Stone, one of Jones’s former aides, said that Jones once told them at a White Night, “Now I would like each of you to stand up and tell me how happy you are to die for the glory of socialism.”

While Jones produced videos for his remaining congregation still located in the US showing how happy everyone was at Jonestown, the reality was far different. At Jonestown, residents struggled to produce enough food for everyone and many people went hungry most days. Since they were quite literally in the middle of the jungle, they were also responsible for building their own shelters and there weren’t enough shelters for everyone. They crammed into tiny buildings and some members wrote home to their families about the conditions at Jonestown.

Eventually, enough family members of Jonestown residents became concerned for their loved ones and went to the US government for help. They believed (correctly in most cases) that their loved ones were stuck in Jonestown and weren’t being allowed to leave.

Congressman Leo Ryan got wind of this and his interest in the American settlement in Guyana was piqued. On November 14th, 1978, Ryan, along with two of his staffers, nine journalists, and 18 family members of Jonestown residents made their way to Jonestown. Once they got to Guyana, Jim Jones was hesitant to allow them into Jonestown, but when Ryan and the other visitors insisted on meeting with temple members, Jones reluctantly agreed.

Jones and his followers did a good job of putting on a show for their visitors, appearing happy to live in this utopia in the jungle. To the skeptical visitors, however, the act wasn’t good enough. They saw through the propaganda Jones was orchestrating and their suspicions were only confirmed when multiple temple members slipped the visitors notes, begging to leave with them and asking for help. When Ryan confronted Jones about the notes, Jones calmly replied that there was no need for concern; if his followers wanted to leave, they were more than welcome to do so.

On November 18th, 1978, Ryan and the rest of the visitors, along with 15 temple defectors, prepared to leave Guyana. At 5:20 p.m. a plane filled with defectors was preparing to leave when People’s Temple loyalists emerged from the forest and from behind tractors that were parked on the airfield. They were armed with guns and began shooting at the defectors and the visitors.

At the airstrip, Congressman Ryan, one defector (Patricia Parks) and three journalists (Bob Brown, Greg Robinson, and Don Harris) were killed. 11 other people, including staffer Jackie Spear, were injured. Spear was shot in the arm, but survived after hiding behind one of the plane’s wheels. Reporter, Tim Reiterman, along with the rest of the visitors and defectors, survived after fleeing into the jungle to hide.

At approximately the same time, Jim Jones announced another White Night over the loudspeakers at the compound. He called everyone to the pavilion building that was located in the center of Jonestown. As residents filed in, 25 guards, armed with rifles and crossbows, encircled the pavilion. Jones’s aides carried a large steel drum to the center of the pavilion and filled it with Flavor Aid as they had countless times before.

Next, Jones’s medical staff emerged and mixed cyanide, valium, potassium chloride, and chloral hydrate into the Flavor Aid. Jones pulled out a tape recorder, hit record and began preaching.

“In spite of all that I’ve tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our lives impossible…there’s no way to detach ourselves from what’s happened today,” Jones began, on what’s now known as Q042: The Jonestown Death Tape. Jones told his followers that an attack on the congressmen and the other visitors was occurring as he spoke.

He told his followers that once the world finds out about the attack, “they’ll parachute in on us,” and “they’ll kill your children,” referring to the Guyanese military and the United States FBI and CIA. Jones told his followers that the Guyanese military was already moving in, and that they would torture and kill all of them if they did not kill themselves. He instructed everyone to line up, babies and toddlers first, to take their cup of punch, which would bring them all peace. He told them not to fear death, and that it would be like falling asleep.

As Q042 progresses, you can hear children crying in the background, and the tape seems to stop and start throughout. On the Jonestown episode of Sword and Scale, Julia Scheeres points this out and describes that the reason for the starting and stopping is that people were protesting; each time someone would attempt to speak out, Jones would stop the tape, as he didn’t want it known that some of his followers were challenging him.

The only protestor heard on the tape is Christine Miller, who proposed that they should let the children live, or that they could instead take one of the planes at the airstrip and seek asylum in Russia.

As he shut down Miller’s protests, Jones kept preaching and encouraged his followers to drink. He urged parents to calm their babies and instructed older children to comfort their younger siblings. As everyone lined up, Jones’s nurses filled syringes with the punch. The first woman in line used one of these syringes to squirt punch into her baby’s mouth, before drinking her own cup of poison.

The nurses tried to coax hesitant parents into handing over their babies to have the poison administered, and those who refused were forced to hand them over by the armed guards. As babies and younger children began crying, Jones and the nurses told parents that it wasn’t because of any pain, that the punch was just bitter. Soon enough, though, the children started convulsing and writhing in pain. Their eyes rolled back into their heads, and eventually, one by one, they went limp with death, their mothers doing the same shortly after.

Tim Carter was one of the few survivors of this White Night and is quoted in Part 3 of the Casefile coverage of Jonestown, saying, “Outside, I saw a woman named Rosie on the ground, holding her dead baby…inside I just wanted things to stop. I looked to my right and saw my wife with our son in her arms and poison being injected into his mouth…my son was dead and he was frothing at the mouth…my wife died in my arms and my dead baby son was in her arms.” Carter also stated later, “They were fucking slaughtered. There was nothing dignified about it. Had nothing to do with revolutionary suicide. Had nothing to do with making a statement. It was just a senseless waste. Senseless waste and death.”

As panic ensued, nurses began pouring the liquid into people’s mouths and injected it directly into them if they resisted. In the chaos, two of Carter’s friends pulled him away from his dead wife and child, and the three of them escaped into the jungle.

Christine Miller, the protestor heard on the Q042 tape, was forcibly injected with the poison and died soon after.

As Jones’s most loyal followers continued to drink their own poison laced punch, they left the pavilion after they drank, in order to shield remaining residents from watching them die. As the field outside the pavilion filled with dead and dying people, bodies were dragged into rows and placed on their stomachs so that remaining followers wouldn’t see their contorted faces.

Eventually, as aides ran out of room to line the bodies up, they were piled on top of one another and one of Jones’s doctors walked around with a stethoscope to confirm that each person was dead and not faking it.

Roughly forty minutes later, the light had left Jonestown. It was dark, except for lights coming from the pavilion, and Jones concluded his final speech. He switched the tape recorder off. Instead of drinking his own poison as he had forced his followers to do, Jones chose to die with a single bullet to his head. After seeing his followers contort in pain and after promising his followers that their death would be just like falling asleep, Jones decided that that wasn’t how he wanted to die. It remains unclear whether Jim Jones shot himself, or whether he had one of his aides end his life.

Ultimately, 909 people died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. Of those, 304 were children.

The next day, a rescue team was sent to Jonestown, but they carried no medical supplies as they weren’t expecting to find any survivors. Shockingly, there ended up being 33 survivors who were either able to escape into the jungle, or avoided going to the pavilion all together for one reason or another.

Once recovered, survivors were airlifted to a Guyanese hospital, and then transported to a US Air Force medical evacuation aircraft. Some survivors who hid in the jungle remained there for up to three days before feeling safe enough to emerge. Many had been shot while trying to escape and had infected wounds by the time they were discovered, but all were simply glad to have survived the ordeal.

On November 20th, 1978, two survivors joined the recovery team to help identify bodies. In the end, only 631 of the 909 dead were identified, leaving nearly 300 people whose identities remain unknown. It took 8 full days to put all of the deceased into body bags.

The Guyanese government denied requests to facilitate the burial of the dead, leaving the American government to decide what to do with the 909 bodies being transported back into the country. Of the 631 identified bodies, barely half were claimed by family members back in the United States. The remaining 412 unidentified bodies and identified but not claimed remains were buried in a mass grave near Oakland, California where a memorial for the Jonestown victims now stands.

Larry Layton, who was instrumental in the attack at the airstrip, was the only one who was captured and faced charges for the Jonestown massacre. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison and completed his sentence in 2002. From everything I could find (which wasn’t much), it appears that Larry Layton now lives and works in Northern California.

One of the largest debates surrounding Jonestown is whether this should be considered a mass suicide, or a mass murder. Julia Scheere argues that it should be considered the latter, and that Jones had always had the intention of killing his followers in Guyana, pointing to the early suicide drills he conducted with his inner circle before moving to Guyana as evidence.

Scheere argues that a mass suicide was always Jones’s plan, and that many of the deaths that occurred in Jonestown can’t be considered suicides, as one third of the deaths were children who were forced to drink the poison, in addition to all of the other residents who were either forcibly injected with poison, or had it poured down their throats against their will.

Scheere also asserts that the use of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” is insensitive and offensive to both survivors and victims of the Jonestown incident, and I agree with that assertion wholeheartedly. Since learning about the Jonestown incident, this phrase has essentially vanished from my vocabulary, and it’s my hope that it only gets rarer and rarer as more people learn about the atrocities that inspired it.

There are obviously WAY more parts and pieces to this story, which I would definitely recommend learning more about the next time you need an internet rabbit hole to dive into. From Jones’s “Rainbow Family” to more in-depth accounts of all of the abuses committed against his followers, this is only the tip of the iceberg that is Jim Jones and Jonestown.

I’ve included references and additional readings and recommendations below if you’re interested, but even if not, I hope that the next time you hear anyone talk about “drinking the Kool-Aid,” you’ll think of the 304 children and 605 adults who perished in Jonestown on November 18, 1978, and pass this story on to whoever still feels okay saying this phrase. Besides…it was Flavor Aid…it wasn’t even Kool-Aid, anyway.

SOURCES/SEE ALSO

Sword and Scale Podcast, Episode 50

Casefile Podcast, Case 60: Jonestown (Parts 1-3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost, available to stream on Hulu

Jonestown: Rebuilding my life after surviving the massacre

Archive footage of Jonestown

Q042 Transcript and MP3

#true crime #jonestown

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kaylahill94 · 4 years

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bevelle · 7 years

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Where the Sun Shines: Part 1

(Part 1 of "Where the Sun Shines" from the seventh novel, The Game of Angels and Demons, is here! Within the novel, this story is divided into 3 numbered parts. This is part 1, which just so happened to end at the 10 page mark. Minimal footnotes included. Footnotes don't function correctly on mobile, so I suggest viewing this in an actual browser. Please enjoy!)

Vatican City. An independent country located on the east bank1 of the Italian Tiber River. It is the smallest country in the world, and to the 1.1 billion Catholics scattered across the world, it serves as a strong international community.

There is a department there called The Seat of the Disciples.

Within the organizations existing at the heart of the Vatican, The Nine Sacred Departments, the recognition and acknowledgment of beatification2, canonization, and existence of holy relics occur in the Canonization Department; while there is another department in which “miracle reports” are collected from around the world and then undergo strict investigations. They are then presented to a committee of eighteen cardinals who judge whether or not they should be recognized as true miracles. Among those working there are scientists, doctors, historians, and specialists in many other fields.

Roberto Nicolas was employed by the Seat of the Disciples as a cryptanalysis and folkloristics expert two years ago, and was still a novice miracle investigator.

A Monday in April, when bright rays of light poured down. It was a holiday for the Seat of the Disciples, as well. That day, out of all of the days in the year, was especially important to Roberto. In the morning, after finishing his prayers at the nearest place of worship, Roberto headed to St. Bernardo, the boarding school near his home.

St. Bernardo was Roberto’s alma mater, and was where he lived before attending the University of Rome. It was also a place overflowing with memories.

Upon entering the school grounds, he could hear the clear singing voices of the choir from a section of the building. He could see students in their navy blue uniforms and red ties running around the campus and playing soccer.

Roberto made his way to a certain part of the school.

There, in that old, beautiful library, massive mahogany bookcases filled the room, their shelves packed with an extensive collection of everything from adventure novels to philosophy books. The smells of ink and paper typical of old books wafted throughout the room. Outside a large, wide window was an elm tree, and the sunlight filtering through its leaves shone down on the reception desk brilliantly.

In the past, a single boy stood there. A beautiful library committee member with straight black hair. He was an upperclassman three years older than Roberto named Josef Lycolas Bartridge.

Roberto gently took a single book from the shelves. He then left the library and headed for the deserted, quiet place behind the building. It was in the grove of trees between the shed that housed the tools they used for annual events and the hutches they used for raising rabbits and chickens. Roberto often spent time there.

Before he entered St. Bernardo, he was in an abbey-operated juvenile facility. Before that, he lived with a man he called his "uncle" and his wife after they took Roberto from a police hospital.

Other than his name, Roberto had no memories of his childhood.

He listened to the whispers of the adults around him, and vaguely understood that he had seen something terrible, became ill, and lost his memory. However, talking about that was taboo, so Roberto didn’t even consider wanting to ask about it further.

He remembered doing things like sandplay therapy3 every day at the police hospital. Then, when his “uncle” could no longer support him, he was sent to a juvenile facility. Within the facility, which had been set up as an elementary school with strict rules, Roberto was treated as a “child with issues.”

The biggest reason for this was because he couldn’t speak to anyone.

Roberto truly couldn’t talk to anyone. Even if he tried to speak to someone, the words wouldn’t come out.

People talked to each other normally. That was odd to Roberto.

He lived as if he were wrapped up in a special membrane that prevented him from forming any kind of connection with the outside world. Whenever someone spoke to Roberto, the words would pass through that membrane as what he could only perceive as meaningless, grating noise. Because of this, Roberto was extremely shy, and without being able to speak, he was a problem child who could not fit into his surroundings.

The Sisters and Fathers taking care of the children at the institution saw Roberto as a nuisance, and to Roberto, they were also unreasonably bothersome. They desperately tried to force him to read Christ’s teachings aloud, and in accordance with their strict rules, when he was unable to, the rod was brought down on him. Each time, Roberto would react by closing his heart off even further.

However, to his good fortune, there was someone there who understood him. That person was none other than the head of the institution, an old pastor named Father Lombardo.

One day, Roberto was taken by the head priest—who was also in charge of his elementary education—to Father Lombardo’s room.

Father Lombardo’s room was very simple, with a large decorative cross and a landscape painting being all that Roberto could remember.

The pastor was wearing black glasses—he was blind. However, Roberto felt that he could see much more than what those with sight could see.

“Roberto, greet Father Lombardo,” the priest told Roberto in a strict voice. Roberto was startled, but of course, he couldn’t get any words to come out.

“Roberto, knock it off. You should be able to talk just fine. We can’t always give you special treatment. I told you that you would have to do this today.”

Roberto hung his head. The priest made an annoyed face, grabbed the back of Roberto’s head, and forcibly made him bow.

“He’s always like this. He’s truly a child with issues,” the priest said.

Father Lombardo, with his unseeing eyes, stared at Roberto. Roberto honestly felt as he if he were being looked at.

“Hm. So, in these past two years, this boy hasn’t spoken to anyone?”

“No, not at all. He shows no response to anything we tell him, and we’ve never seen him play with any of the other children, either.”

“However, that doesn’t mean he has a mental disability4. From what I’ve heard, according to the chairman, his test results are above average…”

“That’s true. However, he can’t live a normal life as a student like this. Once he’s finished elementary, I believe that he should be sent to the abbey.”

“Hm…”

There was a long silence.

Roberto was terrified under Father Lombardo’s incessant gaze, as if he were completely exposed.

“No… In the past, those at this institution with exceptional grades were given assistance in attending St. Bernardo Boarding School. We can’t exclude him from that simply because he can’t speak. If we do, it will seem like the church is discriminating against children with such problems. And… as far as I can tell, this boy, Roberto, is completely fine. I’m authorizing it: send this boy to St. Bernardo. If anything happens, I will take responsibility.”

“Are you sure? This carelessness may cause trouble for you in the future, Father.”

“It’s fine. Roberto.”

Roberto, who did not understand what kind of conversation was happening in front of him, was simply hanging his head.

“Roberto. Please make some good friends.”

Roberto’s life changed immediately after that. He left the facility and moved to the boarding school.

St. Bernardo Boarding School was a strict Catholic school full of children from very respectable families, and had a middle school section, high school section, and college prep section. While students would normally be placed in a six-person room and become accustomed to living together, for Roberto, the troubled child with good grades, as soon as he saw this, he decided on living in a small, one-person room.

Even so, being a child from an institution, he wondered if he was being watched around the school. There, he was suddenly thrown into a melting pot overflowing with young boys.

Every morning before class in a small church on campus, they would read scripture aloud and interpret it, and pray. “Merciful Jesus,” “Man of Truth,” the priests praised, and asked for all suffering to be resolved as they knelt in front of the statue of Christ. But even as he looked at the statue, Roberto couldn’t believe the scrawny, shabby man hanging from the cross was the Savior.

On top of that, he could only interpret the Bible as sounding like a journal of nonsensical daydreams. Looking back on it, it seemed like he didn’t believe in any of it back then.

As always, he was unable to speak. He also became anxious when people would address him, so even when his name was called in class, he wouldn’t respond. Not even he knew what made him so stubborn back then.

The one thing that could be said about him with certainty was that he was always alone.

That, and the other students all existed in bright, sunny place. They always talked, always laughed, and always had fun playing together like little puppies. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t enter that fun, enjoyable place.

Sometimes the boys would get lonely at the boarding school and would talk to each other about their parents. Parents seemed like very special and precious people, and being separated from them seemed to be difficult. But Roberto had no memories of his parents, and as such, he couldn’t understand their sorrow.

Faith, joy, sadness—Roberto couldn’t understand any emotion.

Still, he understood his studies, so that was a way for him to somehow spend his time at the school.

But unlike the bookworm he is now, Roberto didn’t choose specific books to read back then. There was nothing that he truly wanted to do. He simply studied because it was necessary to learn material for class.

Roberto had the labels of “child with issues” and “weird kid from an institution” stuck to him.

Perhaps that should have hurt him, but he was numb to such a feeling. He simply had the memories to not get in anyone’s way, and of hiding himself.

What interested Roberto most was the deserted, quiet area behind the library. It was in a grove of trees between the shed that housed the tools they used for annual events and the hutches they used for raising rabbits and chickens. There, Roberto had the pleasant shade of the trees, and a spot where the sun shone . During breaks, he would go there and spend time staring idly at the clouds. Only then did the inside of his heart become clear, and he could briefly experience peace.

He didn’t want to stand out, but thinking back on it now, he must have stood out as a mysterious child with heretical behavior.

He must have noticed him, too. This place is in plain sight from the reception desk in the library.

Roberto looked in the direction of the library from where he was laying under the elm tree, thought of his past self, and chuckled.

Vatican City is actually located on the west bank of the Tiber River. ↩︎

A recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name. ↩︎

A specific form of nondirective play therapy for children using a tray of sand and toys. ↩︎

The priests and nuns refer to Roberto as 「問題のある子」- literally, a child with problems. This is similar to “problem child,” which in Japanese is a single word: 「問題児」. However, given the context and Father Lombardo’s comments, the “problem” the priests and nuns are referring to when they call him a “child with problems” is their concern over him seeming as if he has a mental disability, given that he does not speak or respond when spoken to. He’s different from a typical “problem child” in that he doesn’t act out or cause trouble; it’s more of an insensitive way of the priests and nuns saying they think something is mentally wrong with him and subsequently punishing him for it (like hitting him with the rod). ↩︎

#my translation #vatican miracle examiner #vatican kiseki chousakan #t: where the sun shines #i'm going to start spelling roberto's last (technically middle) name without an h from now on #i like it better...

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