#thesis defense essay

[ctrl-alt-cel]

when i was 13 i wrote an essay explaining the rationale of puppyshipping to some guy in a skype chatroom. found the essay again. wanted to rewrite it. without further ado:

HERE’S HOW PUPPYSHIPPING CAN STILL WIN: THE SEQUEL: 2 PUPPY 2 SHIPPING (4.3k words)

⠀

kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship stands at an awkwardly undefinable place in canon: they're not on good terms, but they're not enemies either. they know each other too well to be called passing acquaintances, but kaiba hardly acknowledges jounouchi as a duelist, let alone a potential rival. at best? they're mutual nuisances.

or, that's how jounouchi and kaiba choose to define it. both of them would love if their dynamic were that simple, nothing more than a back-and-forth of petty insults—but that’s not the truth. and they'll dance around the truth for five whole seasons, purposefully downplaying why they’re so obsessed with provoking each other whenever they’re in the same place.

they're foils.

—but the term "foils" is so dulled within fandom lexicon now that it can mean literally anything from two guys who just disagree with each other sometimes, so i'll sharpen this further. jounouchi and kaiba see their counterpart less as an individual person but more a representation of who they could have become if they had respectively, in their eyes, never learned the lessons they needed to. they project their own ideals onto the other and come away thinking they already know how the other operates, and the fun thing is, even when working from conjecture, their assumptions of one another happen to hit far closer to home than they have any right to.

so really, they can't leave each other alone because they can't stop seeing their failures reflected back at them. the other is a defective version of themselves that they need to correct because they can't stand constantly acknowledging who they used to be, so they try to bend the other to be more like their own image—an "i can fix him (by dragging him down to my level)".

⠀

jounouchi and kaiba’s parallels run down to their origins, both set up against abysmal family situations they have no choice but to make the best of. seto and mokuba are orphaned at a young age until seto gets them adopted, while katsuya is separated from his sister and stuck with a deadbeat father who can't carry his own weight. trapped in an environment where nobody expects anything worthwhile from him, katsuya joins a gang and lives out a self-admittedly miserable existence before befriending yugi, while seto is in a battlefield of his own, faced with protecting mokuba while enduring against the nightmare that is gozaburo kaiba’s parenting.

what they do to survive those conditions determines the outlooks they carry for the rest of their lives: jounouchi learns that losing is inescapable and the best you can do is learn how to cope with it, whereas kaiba learns that losing is something you must protect yourself from because there's only so much you can afford to lose.

jounouchi is positioned as the underdog, fighting tooth-and-nail for every victory he can manage, while kaiba has power in excess and holds to the belief that it’s all he really needs. one would argue that they have the perspective the other lacks—they argue that they have the perspective the other lacks. but in my opinion? it doesn't actually matter. what interests me is how they treat each other as a result.

⠀

side: seto kaiba

kaiba degrades jounouchi a lot. like, to an uncomfortable extent. you know that one post that’s like “why does bullying exist? why are you mad that i’m ugly?” why is kaiba so mad over the fact that jounouchi loses so much?

it’s projection. he’s just holding jounouchi to the same standard he holds himself to. you need to be powerful if you want to play the same games as kaiba, and seeing jounouchi so openly lean on his friends, ask for help, and have the audacity to lose sets kaiba off because he’s not playing the way he’s supposed to. kaiba rubs jounouchi's losses in his face because he believes that's what loss is supposed to look like, and that it’s jounouchi’s fault for not understanding that yet. kaiba is trying to teach him. to kaiba, this degradation might as well be an act of generosity.

while kaiba stayed true to his own ambitions, seizing kaibacorp from gozaburo and turning it into a children's entertainment company, he beat gozaburo at his own game not by inventing new rules but by playing it better than his adoptive father ever could. and as impressive as that is, it’s not sustainable. gozaburo kills himself when faced with his own defeat, and kaiba internalizes this lesson: that all losses are final, and it’s better to die than adapt to the consequences of a defeat. gozaburo’s death was a suicide, but in the context of their game, kaiba might as well have killed him regardless.

he mirrors this when he threatens to kill himself in duelist kingdom, his heightened emotions catastrophizing losing the duel to immediately equal failing mokuba and coming to the conclusion that if he loses mokuba he’d rather be dead. being someone so fervently self-reliant, any alternate solution, a possibility that he can lose here and still find a different way to rescue mokuba never crosses his mind. and, look, this isn’t his fault. this is the only way of living he’s ever been taught. he’s never learned how to cope in the event of failure because he’s never had the luxury to fail to begin with.

he's burned and rebuilt himself over and over again to survive in the world he operates in, and that’s why jounouchi pisses kaiba off so personally. jounouchi loses so much and so messily, and kaiba tries to show him that if he doesn’t start reinventing himself from the broken pieces of his defeats until all that’s left of him are jagged edges the same way he has, he’s never going to win. but jounouchi…does win. and keeps winning. and even when he does lose, it’s as if he creates new victories for himself, like there’s still value to playing a game with someone when you don’t win it—power of friendship bullshit and whatever. jounouchi is still here, a competitor that kaiba can no longer write off as much as he desperately wants to. (and, yeah, it is pretty ironic how jounouchi will jump through a million hoops to get kaiba to look at him, but he doesn't realize that he doesn't need to do anything to keep kaiba’s attention, only continue being himself.)

jounouchi refuses to compromise who he is and still manages to get far when in kaiba’s mind, that shouldn’t be possible; he’s supposed to be punished the way kaiba was. jounouchi is proof that you can take a devastating blow and move on from it, that even when you do fuck up spectacularly, there’s still something worthwhile in starting again tomorrow.

so kaiba constantly needs to prove that he’s better than jounouchi, that jounouchi isn’t even worth his time in order to justify his worldview. because if kaiba isn’t right, then he'll have no choice but to confront the fact that the war is over. that his circumstances aren’t instant life or death anymore and that even though he’s freed himself from gozaburo’s influence, there’s still further growth as a person he could stand to undergo, now divorced from the harsh conditions of his upbringing. jounouchi is a testament to how it’s possible to make peace and move on from the past without constantly bleeding for closure, that maybe, kaiba’s headlong quest to get the last word on his rivalry with yami yugi may not actually be as fulfilling as he thinks.

but admitting that you might need to change the way you live feels like a defeat in and of itself—it’s infuriating to hear that after everything you’ve had to learn, the way you live now isn’t good enough. that surviving insurmountable trauma doesn’t inherently make you better or more worthy than other people—it just traumatizes you, and is something you must heal from. so, instead of reflecting on these revelations, it’s so much easier for kaiba to tell himself that jounouchi is only ever graceful when he’s dead.

⠀

side: katsuya jounouchi

jounouchi is very stuck on this idea that he needs to be useful. his dad is an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and he believes it's not only his duty to pay his father's debts, but to be the household's sole source of income. his sister needs eye surgery and he believes it's his responsibility as an older brother not only to pay for it, but to act as her primary emotional support to get the surgery and throughout her recovery process. haga throws yugi's exodia into the ocean and jounouchi blames himself for not stopping it. jounouchi gets mind-controlled by malik and blames himself for causing his friends anguish from it. mai literally gets jounounchi’s soul stolen and he apologizes to her for messing up and making her sad. it's habitual, jounouchi doesn't know how to stop taking on the burdens of other people.

if you live with the mentality that you’re inevitably going to fail for long enough, you’ll come away with the belief that caring about your own wellbeing isn’t worth the effort. it depends on how pessimistic you want to read it, if it’s just his love language or jounouchi compensating for the damning act of being himself, but jounouchi quantifies his worth by how much he provides for other people. he’s always jumping in the line of fire for the sake of others because if you constantly undervalue your own wellbeing, you always have less to lose. as the underdog, he may not be as overtly powerful as kaiba or yugi, but he can still give himself away, and he’s convinced himself that it’s what he’s supposed to do. jounouchi is still new to this whole friendship thing. after a lifetime of supporting himself by himself, he doesn't know when he's allowed to ask for help yet—he’s supposed to be the help, dammit.

a key distinction between jounouchi and kaiba’s upbringings is that while kaiba’s biological parents died in an accident, jounouchi’s parents are still alive and they choose not to be responsible for him. jounouchi is conditioned to fend for himself by himself because having a parental figure actually present in his life isn’t a luxury he gets to have. to jounouchi, there has to be a reason why his mother only takes shizuka and never goes back for him in the six years he’s left with his father, and he rationalizes this with his notions of masculinity: he’s a strong man who can handle it. jounouchi is not delicate, he can endure it. men are responsible for their own circumstances. kaiba is hyperindependent out of a mixture of spite, paranoia, and self-defense. jounouchi is hyperindependent because he believes he deserves it. it’s the reason why he believes he’ll finally have a good relationship with his father if he just wins enough money to pay off his gambling debts—jounouchi can fix everything if only he were man enough to, and he can get people to stay if he demonstrates himself useful enough.

so death doesn’t carry nearly as much weight to jounouchi as it does to kaiba. in kaiba’s eyes, death is the punishment for failure, but to jounouchi, death is just the natural consequence for the kind of life he leads. he can't stop himself from fighting for the people he loves until he’s spent everything and forced to stop (read: dies), so during the several times jounouchi is confronted with his own death, he meets it with a solemn acceptance. like, yeah, it sucks, but he doesn’t regret the actions he took to end up here—he’d do it all over again, frankly. it’s better to die than not give everything he can, and at least he was able to give his life in service to someone else. it’s not necessarily good to die, but it doesn’t matter as much if he does.

so where kaiba is afraid of losing, jounouchi is afraid of outliving his usefulness (and being abandoned as a result), and kaiba disrupts jounouchi’s worldview specifically because he puts his ideology on the defensive. to jounouchi, kaiba’s presence never demands a question of “what can you do for me?” (nothing, kaiba doesn’t want jounouchi to do anything for him, and frankly, he’d be insulted if jounouchi even tried) but “what makes you worthy of standing on the same level as me?”, and jounouchi can’t sacrificial lamb get set on fire die a billion times into getting kaiba into seeing it his way (rather, that would only prove him right: kaiba would love nothing more than for jounouchi to lose the ability to fight and finally align with his preconceived notions of how the world works), and he can’t argue that his value is in how much he provides for others because that’s a non-answer. kaiba doesn’t care.

kaiba’s presence forces jounouchi into a position of self-reflection: jounouchi works so hard to preserve the friendships he’s created, but who is he—what does he value about himself in the absence of it? jounouchi needs to acknowledge something inherently valuable about himself if he wants to counter kaiba in any meaningful way, and it’s not like he doesn’t have valuable qualities either: he’s tenacious, he’s resourceful, he’s a quick learner—it takes intelligence to rank as high as he does in tournaments, but he undervalues all of it. these traits are all to be expected, they don’t actually count as extraordinary when it’s him. they’re only remarkable when they’re being applied to something greater. jounouchi believes he has the potential to become strong (and valuable by extension), only with the stipulation that he’s never actually there yet. he focuses too much on his inadequacies, constantly pontificating on how he needs to become a “true duelist”, but by the way he speaks about the title, the only way to be a true duelist is be named yugi muto, i guess.

so it’s very jounouchi-esque for him to miss this point with near deliberate precision and try to make himself useful to kaiba anyway. while kaiba is bent on seeing jounouchi fail to prove that his cynicism is superior to jounouchi’s altruism, the inverse is that jounouchi sees his old self in kaiba and he’s dying to teach kaiba a lesson. during battle for bronze, jounouchi states that they used to be the same, people who only relied on themselves and thought they’d be fine living like that. the argument jounouchi makes is that living that way is fucking miserable. he calls kaiba out: you’re supposed to be having fun. why are you playing duel monsters if you’re not having fun? he’s trying to show kaiba that he can be useful and teach kaiba things if kaiba would just let him, but for reasons mentioned in both of their sections, kaiba isn’t interested in being taught anything.

while less malicious in display, it's important to note that jounouchi’s method of trying to teach kaiba doesn't make him the better person here. jounouchi isn’t coming from a place of understanding when he lectures kaiba, he’s coming from a place of misdirected self-flagellation. and from kaiba's perspective, jounouchi is just dispensing unwarranted advice for the sake of his own ego. the most egregious example is when jounouchi picks a fight with kaiba in duelist kingdom, demanding they duel when kaiba is clearly not in the mood, busy with more pressing matters like, i don’t know, trying to rescue his abducted brother? so, okay, maybe a little bit inconsiderate on jounouchi’s part.

they're two ideological extremes: kaiba lashes out at the world while jounouchi gives himself to it, and jounouchi will keep barging in on kaiba with his life lessons because it’s the only way he wants to engage with kaiba’s arguments otherwise. jounouchi interprets kaiba’s rejection of his ideals as the equivalent of the stubbornness jounouchi had before befriending yugi, and he uses it as a reason to keep pushing, not understanding that while he may have found the most honorable path for himself, you can imagine how constantly burning yourself for others isn’t very…appealing. or sustainable. and that maybe it’s something you need to work on, actually.

⠀

conclusion: how i WIN

what’s fun about jounouchi and kaiba is how wrong they are. they genuinely can't live the way the other demands them to, their respective environments won’t allow it. if jounouchi chased victory with the same cutthroat relentlessness as kaiba, he probably never would have left his gang. or, at least, he’d lose the selfless devotion and consideration he has for others, traits that helped him build his support system, and he never would have found the friendships he values in his life—his willingness to change and start again was how he was able to befriend yugi to begin with. (and if you wanted to get really extreme with hypotheticals, his self-destructive tendencies could have grown so severe in the absence of a support system that he probably would wind up getting himself killed somewhere. lol.) inversely, if kaiba granted himself the freedom to worry less about the outcome as long as he enjoyed himself, he’d put mokuba’s safety at constant risk. kaiba’s guarded nature isn’t without reason, there are powerful corporate executives who would love to see him fail, and there are very real consequences if kaiba slips up for even a second and gives his opposition any leeway. the way they live works for them because it’s theirs. it’s not so much that either of their lifestyles are in dire need of correction, but that the other represents the possibility that they could be living better.

and this is fantastic because it means that, despite what they think, neither of them are in the “wrong” and must learn to change their idiot ways or that the solution is to strong-arm each other into some kind of compromise. it’s a battle of perceived weakness. they need to, naturally and individually, accept that the traits they’ve always deemed immature and beneath them can be just as vital for survival, even when it’s not necessarily their own.

jounouchi and kaiba are essentially the most extreme example of two people who want what’s best for each other (gone wrong!) and puppyshipping is appealing because them getting together requires that they stop punishing themselves for who they used to be. they expect too much out of themselves and then inflict those demands onto each other, but if they’re not wrong for the ways they’ve overcome the circumstances they were left in, then it’s equally true that the ideals they abandoned to survive weren’t inherently naïve just because they weren’t given the space to utilize them. sometimes life will push you to your limits in the hope that you fail, and there’s no deeper meaning to it. it’s not life’s way of teaching you a necessary lesson to make you stronger or a test to see if you deserve to live, or that it’s your fault when it breaks you. sometimes there’s no great meaning to suffering. things happen, and you will adjust to it in order to live. when kaiba and jounouchi believe they know each other as much as they know themselves, pairing them is the hope that they’ll respect themselves enough to respect each other, that they’ll one day be able to embrace the parts of themselves they’re the most ashamed of.

(or, you know, for the alternative crowd, they most definitely can make each other worse.)

for two men who claim to be so self-assured in their own lifestyles, jounouchi and kaiba are fascinating because there’s so many layers of denial at play: the denial that they see anything in each other, denial that there may be aspects of the other that they’ve come to envy, denial that they even care, and it's so tempting to imagine if all of it was forced open. jounouchi and kaiba choose to maintain this delicate equilibrium where they never actually confront anything because the idea of admitting vulnerability viscerally disgusts them, and it begs what would happen if the balance irrevocably tipped for once. watching them is like watching a pencil teetering on the edge of a desk, always this close to some kind of breakthrough. i won’t even lie to you puppyshipping pisses me off half the time because i just want to shake them around until something metaphorically breaks.

kaiba and jounouchi never let each other become complacent in their pasts: whenever their personal tragedies and childhoods are brought up in the context of one another, it’s never because they are being vindicated for continuing to dwell in them, but because they are being contested on how much the mindsets they’ve carried over from their pasts should be allowed to determine their futures.

returning to canon, kaijou operates through the language of competition. jounouchi tries to prove himself as a competitor so remarkable that kaiba can no longer deny him, while kaiba already knows he’s remarkable, and that is precisely why acknowledging it pisses him off so much. so they’ll play their game: jounouchi will provoke kaiba into fighting him because he enjoys going up against challenging opponents in the hopes of becoming stronger, whereas kaiba keeps trying to set up situations where jounouchi will lose to the point of letting him die because he wants so badly to believe that losing does equal death and jounouchi’s existence is the most inconvenient counterargument of all. and obviously, jounouchi keeps not dying. and it's endlessly infuriating—almost slapstick at this point, that much to kaiba's frustration, no matter what he does, he can never make jounouchi submit for very long.

jounouchi and kaiba spur each other on to a ridiculous extent: kaiba enjoys pushing jounouchi past the breaking point, whereas jounouchi enjoys getting pushed to his limits to test his own capabilities. whether that’s necessarily a good thing though is…well…hmm. anyways. 

their dynamic is the type of messiness only two prideful high schoolers can get up to. maybe it’s just kaiba's repression and jounouchi's recklessness, but there is a fascination with each other that they’re incapable of leaving alone. there’s intimacy in knowing someone so well and fearing that fact, but kaiba and jounouchi never respond to this fear by avoiding it—they’re engaging with it time and time again. they infuriate each other with a passion that never sits still. kaiba and jounouchi seek a validation from their counterpart while simultaneously denying each other from it, and it’s mean, but invigoratingly so.

at some point, it’s not even about wanting validation anymore, but point-blank wanting its keeper by any capacity: wanting a visible reaction to their effort as proof of reciprocation, proof that says “i’ve finally affected you just as much as you affect me.” because kaiba and jounouchi want to leave a mark on each other, they want their counterpart to fully understand how much they’ve affected them, and they want to witness that reaction themselves. it’s no longer this big, nebulous ideological debate with a reflection: the pull between them is made both physical and personal. so, like, not to go the trite route of arguing that two men who can’t stand each other were ~secretly attracted to each other this whole time~, but how else are you supposed to word this?

in some hypothetical universe where they do come together, even the ways they love manage to compliment each other in its own clumsy way. seto kaiba never does anything in moderation: if he hates something he will destroy it, if he loves something he will possess it, and if he is obsessed with something, he will single-mindedly pursue it at the expense of everything else. his repression manifests itself in a passion so pressurized it’s all-consuming against everything it comes to contact with. inversely, katsuya jounouchi loves freely and transparently: showing affection comes as naturally as breathing to him. he embodies the belief that love is not only about the grand gestures, but the day-to-day acts of warmth and casual acknowledgments that it's there. a man who wants to be wanted by someone so badly it aches paired with someone who makes no reservations as to what he's committed to, capable of a love so overwhelmingly insatiable that it is neither fickle nor delicate, and a man who finds the act of trusting others with his affection so unthinkably humiliating that he’s convinced himself it’s something beneath him paired with someone who makes it look infuriatingly easy. they are going to invent a new language to love each other with. i believe in them. i would not write two separate essays titled “here’s how puppyshipping can still win” if i did not believe in them. 

ultimately, it feels cheap to build kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship off what life lessons they could "teach" each other reformation-style when they already have a legitimate dynamic in play. they can be good for each other, or they can tear into each other in ways they’d never expect to be capable of. there’s something exhilarating in knowing there’s someone who has that kind of power and wanting to keep them within your reach, a buzzing excitement in knowing someone who can not only withstand you at your worst, but fight back at you with twice as much vigor. sure, there’s potential for growth here, but that’s because there’s potential for literally anything.

kaiba and jounouchi inspire reinvention and self-determination from each other at the best of times and enable each other’s most self-destructive tendencies at their worst. so i think. puppyshipping is the most fun. when you ship them the same way you leave a fork in the microwave to watch it explode. the end.

TL;DR: me x the guy who keeps breaking my worldview and forces me to reevaluate myself every time i see him which i hate so much that i just want him to DIE

#puppyshipping #violetshipping #seto kaiba #joey wheeler #ship analysis #character study #not intended to convince anyone of anything this was a silly project to do on the side for MEEE #also i genuinely dont think any of the points i make are new #in my quest to be as holistic as possible and read every puppyshipping-adjacent meta analysis i could get my hands on #defense essays. criticism. livejournal blogposts #ive found several times that every point i make has already been made before in some kaijou 200k longfic posted in like 2011 #so if this essay is for ANYONE who isnt me. #its for the kaijou fic authors who have put in the work. god's strongest soldiers etc etc #actually. might reblog with an actual afterword citing my favorite ygo analysis i read in prep for this lol #i allude to a few of them in certain sections but i think youd have to be REALLY chronically online to notice #(coughing) #anyways special thanks to the friends who kindly beta read a document titled 'YAOI THESIS FINAL.docx' #fer + voski + cherry + sully + eric + cleo + gabby + chris + clover + vio #dear god i have inflicted this essay onto so many people #i love you. #you have enabled me and now we're all paying the price #yugioh

[boy-above]

bruh why the heck my for you tab just covered in posts where ppl are taking fandom way too seriously today

#i'm sittin here having to scroll past gargantuan essays on the stupidest shit today #i'm sorry people don't like your favorite female character but you didn't need to write a thesis on why everyone who disagrees with you #is a misogynist 😭😭😭😭 #filtering is your friend compadre #marshal meows #marshal gets harshal #i kept running into ppl saying this kinda stuff abt m*ki from dr and im like #and it's like i'm sorry i don't like this fictional lady who has no pleasant qualities #a backstory meant to be tragic but is so ridiculous it has the opposite effect of what the writers intended #and who was written to orbit around a male character #you can disagree with me if you want but if your only defense is to call everyone who dislikes her a misogynist #then i think you need to workshop that a bit #sorry i'm being a negative nancy i'm just tired lmaooo

[silkflovvers]

I feel like I pick apart and analyze all my favorite characters down to the molecular level, but all anyone ever sees from me online is my silly little delusions and AUs because that's how I cope with falling in love with every tragic character I'm introduced to.

Like yes, I know their deep lore by heart and know they could never live this way in canon, but I really need this character specifically to adopt 5 kids and live in a quant little farmhouse and raise bees, because that's a Much Happier ending than what the franchise gave me.

#txt #ive read more scientific essays on alchemy in the past year than i did reading scientific anything while researching for my thesis defense #but here i am putting albedo in bunny suits instead of putting any of that knowledge to creative use #out here drawing flamejaye cuddling when i know theyre more likely to die on separate battlefields tha ever share a bed #no one can stop me these are MY delusions and im in control of them #forget canon it made me SAD #anyway this is vaguely avout every piece of media i love #says the person who mostly enjoys mysteries and horror media #i dont expect the franchise to give me a happy end because i can do that myself thank you

[the100thballoon]

reblog with the title of your thesis and a bad description of what it's about!

#thesis #college #school #thesis defense #studying #essays

[susiephone]

I always find it weird whenever people say "this book started off as FANFICTION!" as like... shorthand for saying the book is INHERENTLY bad.

Like, I've read a lot of shit fanfiction. I've also read some breathtaking fanfiction. The same is true of books. The "fanfic is the death of art and books are always superior" crowd always seems to forget the existence of bad books, in a similarly frustrating manner to how the "fanfic is always superior to books and I've never read a book I liked better than fanfiction" always seems to narrow their view of books they read and hated in high school, and milquetoast bestsellers.

My point is, one isn't inherently better than the other, and, to borrow a point made in the video essay "An Exhaustive Defense of Fanfiction," they're ultimately two different things and comparing them is pretty apples-and-oranges.

So whenever someone is like "oh this book was originally fanfic" my response is just, "...Okay?" in the same way it would be if someone was like, "oh thus book was originally a master's thesis." Like, cool bit of trivia but not really relevant to how I judge the final product.

If a book is a shitty book, it's because it's a shitty book, not because it was originally something else. If it wasn't properly translated into the new format, that's a fault of the writing and editing, not the original format. Like, "Cats" isn't a shitty movie because it was originally a stage musical, it's a shitty movie because the source material was not properly translated into a film. Does that make sense?

#writing #booklr #reading #books #fanfiction #fanfic

[queers-gambit]

Affirmation King

prompt: ( requested ) attending university as a full-time student is hard, but your boyfriend makes some of the stress worth it.

fandom masterlist: FX's The Bear

word count: 3.1k+

note: author gives unsolicited advice in the form of sharing a citation website to make college essays a little easier! this is not meant as promotion or anything, it's just your author trying to share a resource they know of.

warnings: cursing, small hurt large comfort (reader snaps a little at Carmy but he handles it like a fucking pro), author gives unsolicited college advice in the form of a recommended website, reader is in a masters program and not undergrad, fluff.

The 16 inch screen glared into your retinas, fingers feeling numb from the hours pounding away at the loose keyboard. When the screen started to warble and darken, your head ducked down slightly to try and preserve your visual; glaring up at the offender when they pressed the screen closed after forcing you to retract your hands.

"You're cute and all, but not so cute as to interrupt me like that," you deadpanned, eyes wide and burning from your lack of lubrication via blinking.

"You've been sat here for hours, it's time for a break."

"Funny when I say that to you, it's always, 'Get outta my kitchen.'"

Carmy smirked, "Come eat something."

"Let me finish this essay and - "

"No, it's time for a meal."

You felt your irritation spike, narrowing your eyes slightly, "I'm on a deadline, Carmen, so either be fucking helpful and productive or get the fuck out of my space. I've got work to do and you're just slowing me down."

He offered a patient look, asking, "Is that what you really wanted to say?"

You paused, then shook your head, "No... May I try again?"

"Of course," he nodded.

"I appreciate you trying to... Alleviate some of my stress," you spoke slowly, stringing the sentence together in realtime, "but this project isn't something I can ignore right now, so, I'd like to finish this thing before we do whatever else."

"Better," he teased, knowing you ran a short fuse when stressed out and overworked. "What's got you riled up?"

"I have this 20-page paper due."

"20 pages!?"

"It's not that bad, honestly, once you have your thesis together," you chuckled dryly. "it's just time consuming and meticulous."

He frowned and stepped forward to press a kiss to your forehead, mocking in a sarcastic tone, "You're doing amazing, sweetie."

"I'm so tired," you pouted up at him. "Do I really need this degree? This is so much stress for such a little thing such as a piece of paper that cost me $50k just to say I'm allowed to join the work force."

"Hey, hey," he laughed. "Just remember what you're working towards. You're one assignment closer to your internship turning into a full-time gig, right?"

You nodded, "You're right. I want that job so bad... I just hate how busy I feel - it's like, how can I remember to eat let alone write 6 different response posts to my classmate's work?"

Carmy nodded with empathy, "Just remember that end goal, baby. Keep grinding, keep moving. Almost at the finish line, right?"

"Right," you nodded with a smile. "Thank you, angel face."

Carmy smiled at you before softly asking, "Want me to bring you anything? Something to eat, drink, a condom?"

"Stop quoting Mean Girls at me!"

His hands shot up in defense, deflecting, "I was just trying to be a gracious host. If the missus wants anything, I'll make sure she has it."

"Pretty sure 'missus' is a term used for wives - " His groan made you laugh lightly, then covering, "No, thank you, baby, I'm okay. I should only be about another hour or so...?"

"All right, yeah, sure. I'll start dinner in 30, okay?"

"Sure," you smiled, already distracted again as you lifted your screen again to stare at the Word document that had been haunting your hard-drive for about 3 weeks now.

"Hey," he interrupted, "don't forget your glasses."

"Thank you," you mumbled, reaching for the special, blue-light filtering glasses Carmy had gifted you when you first started your Master's program. He claimed staring at a computer screen was going to cause long-term damage (he read an article) and got you a pair, which, you had to admit, made a huge difference.

Your hair was raked into a new bun as you reread the last of your essay, trying to get back in the academic mindset in order to finish the last bit of your assignment. There were textbooks spewed around your work table; laptop plugged in, highlighters and pens and notebooks within reach and a nearly-finished bottle of water was set to the side. You wrote ferociously once you got back on the right mental track, feeling your headache stir to life as you blindly reached for your water bottle.

However, when you picked it up, you blinked in mild shock when the bottle was heavier than before. Glancing over, you realized Carmy had replaced the bottle because there, under where it had sat, he left you a handwritten note:

replenish what you lost from crying!

You chuckled, knowing you were a stress cryer and when tackling big assignments like this, you were ten times as stressed as usual. Still you worked, even putting your headphones on to play soothing background noise - like rainfall. Your neck cramped, back ached, temples throbbed, and hands were cramping. Still you worked, using sticky notes to flag the important quotes you wanted to use from your textbooks and notebooks. Your stomach growled, your eyes begged for reprieve, chest felt tight, and shoulders were too tense.

Still. You. Worked.

Deadlines were important to you, and while you were a professional procrastinator, you always turned everything in on time - no matter your mental state. You could smell whatever Carmy had started cooking, focused on writing as you only used spellcheck as you went - and still you worked. You knew you surpassed the hour limit you told Carmy, but you couldn't stop, you were so close to finishing, it almost put tears back in your eyes, but this time out of relief. You only paused to look at online sources and apply chapstick, cracking your tightly-wound knuckles, and when you finished the last body paragraph of the essay, grinned to yourself.

All that was left was your conclusion, to create a bibliography, and to edit - but you were almost home free!

Suddenly, you jumped in fright when a hand planted on your shoulder; whipping around to see your boyfriend's own startled expression. "Sorry," Carmy apologized with a wince when you removed your headphones, "didn't mean to scare you, just wanted to check on you."

You nodded, 'Yeah, no, I'm almost done. Like give me 20 minutes, almost done-almost done."

He smiled softly, "Dinner's ready when you are."

"I'll be there soon, thank you, angel face."

"Can I help with anything?"

"Uh," you cocked your head, "you know what? Maaaaybe..."

"Really?" He grinned, perking up. "You never let me help!"

"It's not really work, per se," you amended, "but would you mind letting me read this out loud to you - see if it makes sense? The mark of a good writer is to act as if the audience knows nothing about the subject and make them understand, and you're exactly that."

"Lemme hear it," he nodded, taking a seat, "I might not be much help but I can still try."

You agreed and finished typing the outline of your conclusion, then scrolled to the top of your word document, and explained to him what your class was before starting to read. He listened intently, sitting on a spare stool with his elbows resting on his knees; keeping him leaned forward to provide his undivided attention. You managed to reword a few sentences, only noticing they didn't make sense when you read them out loud. Once or twice, Carmy even offered an alternative phrasing you liked - making the changes and rereading, then continuing through your assignment.

By the end, you were able to beef up the conclusion and Carmy was grinning at you in pride. "That's real good, baby," he complimented, "it all made sense and rolled nice together. I think that has to be an 'A'-worthy paper."

"You should be the one grading theses, my professor's the worst," you frowned. "It's why I got so in my head, I got a fucking 76 on my last essay and need to do really well on the next few to help average my grade."

"What about the tests?"

"We don't have any, this class is all about writing material and turning it in," you pouted.

"Hey," he spoke seriously, making you look at him in question, "I'm really proud of you."

You giggled nervously, "Oh, yeah? Why? What for?"

"For doing this," he nodded to the desk. "Look at all you're doing, baby, there's no way I'd ever be able to keep up with this kinda shit. You're doing such a great fucking job - I want you to remember that. What you're doing ain't easy, but you're handling this like a pro."

"I cry, like, everyday..."

"So what? You still get shit done while emoting - call that multitasking, baby."

"Got me there."

"Seriously, though, you're not told enough what a fantastic job you're doing; how strong and resilient you have to be to deal with this kind of stress day-in and day-out. I see the hard work you put in," he promised, "and I want you to know how fucking proud I am of you. It's all gonna be worth it one day, but until then, I love watching you grind through school. I might not take the classes with you, but I'll help however I can, whenever I can."

"Thank you," you whispered. "It's really nice to hear... I feel myself burning out and it's nice to be reminded that what I do now will influence my future. Validates me in feeling stressed out, you know? Sometimes, I feel silly 'cause, like, there's so many bigger things to be upset about and here I am, stressed out at a place that's guaranteed to stress me out..."

"It's not silly, it's normal. College ain't easy," he reminded, "and you're just trying to keep yourself afloat."

"Yeah, but there's bigger things in life than something trivial as my education."

Carmy scoffed at you, shaking his head, "Ain't no way."

"What?"

"My girl just said her feelings are trivial... Nah, she said her emotions about her education is trivial," he shook his head again. "Should wash your mouth out with soap - talkin' crazy like that. Baby, you know, first and foremost, your education is high on our priorities list, but your emotions? You think they're trivial? Nah, if anything causes you to have any emotion, it's valid - it's not something silly or redundant."

You pouted slightly, "You always know what to say."

"Hungry?"

"You're the perfect man," you laughed, looking at your document again and humming. "Okay, so, lemme just cite my sources and turn this in."

"Then you wanna have date night?" He smirked.

"No, no, I'm so tired - "

"I meant we can stay in."

"Oh, then count me in!"

"Change into something cozy when you're done, we can watch a movie with dinner. Yeah?"

You agreed, accepted his kiss of encouragement, and then took his leave to reheat the dinner that had surely cooled off. It didn't take long to cite everything when you used an online citation source website - that IS N O T plagiarizing! It's a handy-dandy tool you discovered your undergraduate freshman year by an actual professor. It was as simple as choosing which style, APA or MLA, and then to either paste the URL of the website you need sourced or you type in the book's information. Hit the generate button and BAM! A perfect citation for your bibliography every single time.

Or if you didn't like that, you could always just Google citation examples and do your best to write it out yourself. But the website, Citation Machine dot net, was a great tool. After perfecting your in-text citations and saving your work, you uploaded it to your university's assignment portal, crossed the essay off your to-do list, and stretched on your feet.

Cleaning up your space minimally, you hustled to your bedroom to get a quick hot, relieving shower, change, and then met Carmy in the kitchen. "Hey," you sighed with a soft smile.

"Hey, doll. All done?"

"For tonight," you groaned, "but tomorrow's a new day with new assignments."

"That's a future problem we'll handle at a later time," he eased, showing you your dinner plate. "Ta-daaaa!"

You grinned, "Oh, baby, this looks amazing!"

"Yeah, well, I kinda figured as a full-time student right now, nobody was gonna remind you what incredible job you're doing, so, I'm more than happy to step up to the plate. And what better treat than your favorite meal, huh?"

"Thank you," you whispered, pecking his lips.

You often thought his love language was "food", but then you realized it was technically under the acts of service and quality time. He loved cooking for you - it was like a gift. He loved cooking with you - it was time spent bonding. He loved introducing you to new dishes - it's a present! He loved when you let him give you a culinary lesson - it was time well spent.

"C'mon," Carmy lead you to the living room, both crashing on the couch you had been gifted from your grandmother's house when she was put in a nursing home. Normally, you wouldn't have splurged on something like this, but considering it was free, you and Carmy were happy to use it. Settling together on the couch, you got cozy under a shared blanket and Carmy flicked some movie on for background noise, but instead of watching, he just asked you about your coursework.

You told him what you could, shaking your head and huffing about how annoying your program was. How hectic. How jam packed and fast-paced it all seemed to be. How your head felt like it was spinning. How you couldn't nail down workable coping mechanisms and just felt totally out of control. You were spiraling.

You needed this rant session.

Carmy listened intently.

He never once tried to say, "oh, but if you had time management," or anything like, "if you do THIS instead..." or some bullshit, "my way works better." His bright and wide blue eyes watched you the entire time, sighing when you got to the end of your meal and vent session.

"It just feels like, I turn in one assignment, I get three more right after. Turn in those three, and all of a sudden, there's another 10!"

"Does the syllabus say anything about that?" He wondered.

"No, it just said what our reading schedules were and when major assignments are due. But those dates all got shuffled around that it feels like a train wreck. You know, if the original schedule was kept from the syllabus, I wouldn't feel so worked up! It's the rearrangement and added assignments without warning that's throwing me off."

"That doesn't sound easy," he validated. "Anything I can do to help?"

"No, you're doing more than enough," you whispered, pecking his lips. "Thank you for dinner."

"I made dessert, too."

"No!" You gasped with a grin.

"Mhm - wait here. I'll grab it."

"Wow, dinner, movie, and dessert?" You teased, "I'm being spoiled tonight."

"You've been working your ass off for weeks now," he smirked, standing from his seat to pick up your plates, "this is the least I could do. I know I said it, but you know how good a job you're doing, right? Damn, baby," he chuckled, "ain't no way I could ever handle shit like that on the regular."

"I could't do what you do, either."

"We all balance our crazy different. Want some tea? Wine?"

"Tea would be great."

"Comin' up."

When Carmy returned, you pulled the blanket back to let him sit again with the dessert plate between you both; two steaming mugs of tea sat on the coffee table. "What's this?" You wondered, seeing a sort of pastry.

"Marcus told me 'bout this," he chuckled. "Kinda like a poor man's version of this one thing he makes. So, look, it's Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, right? In the middle, there's raspberry preserves - or jam if you want that instead. It's baked then drizzled in melted white chocolate."

"Wow, you got all fancy on me," you beamed.

"Hardly, more like I was a little impulsive after hearing your essay. Figured you could use some dessert - you really earned it, baby. You always earn dessert," he grinned, "but tonight, you were kickass. Know that? Hear me?"

You shook your head, "This is nothing compared - "

"Hey, hey, nah," he interrupted, "nah, nah, don't do that, don't try to invalidate or downplay yourself. Look, shit is always hard in college, right? But you handle it so well, I can see the work you're putting in and the little reward you receive in return, and know that shit's gotta add up for you. But my baby just keeps cool, does her work, and does what she can to earn the grades she does. Right?"

"I mean, I try to..."

"You succeed. C'mon, lemme hear you say it. 'I kick college's ass.'"

"I kick college's ass."

"'I work hard.'"

"Carmy - "

"Saaay it!"

You huffed, "I work hard."

"'I'm an incredible hard worker.'"

"I'm an incredible hard worker."

"'I am only human.'"

Another breath in, repeating, "I am only human."

"'I am a success.'"

"I try to be a success."

"That wasn't the quote."

"Well, I don't know if I'm succeeding because grades aren't finalized yet and I have - "

"No, no, no," he smirked again, "you're still successful 'cause you're doing such a kickass job. You could get a fucking 'D' on something, and guess what? You're still successful 'cause you don't let this tear you down, you learn from mistakes and apply whatever lessons you learn to your upcoming assignments. Some people say you might even learn more from losing and failing than from undisputed success. Look, I'll be honest, I thought my job was hectic as shit, but hearing your essay tonight? Goddamn, you're not just beautiful, but so fucking intelligent, too. Baby, I was shook - that sounded like some academic paper that college kids need to defend their thesis or some shit. Something scholarly, not some assignment you gotta hand in by a deadline so you just wrote down whatever. So, give yourself credit and tell yourself you're a success."

With a long, deep breath, you answered earnestly, "I'm a success."

"Good girl," he muttered, handing you a fork finally. However, unlike Mikey all those years ago, you didn't launch your utensil at anyone and used it to cut off a corner of pastry.

You moaned when you tasted the gooey goodness. You managed through a mouthful, "Mmhhh! Mhm! Mhm! If you make this every time I have some assignment pissing me off and stressing me out, I'm afraid I'll get used to this treatment."

Carmy grinned, "You deserve whatever dessert you want, whenever you want. Huh? Yeah? Lemme hear you say it."

With another grin, you mused, "I deserve whatever I want, when I want it... And however I want it!"

"Atta girl!"

"You're so fucking corny," you laughed lightly, feeling as if you were falling in love with him again, "but thank you, my Affirmation King."

requesting rules and masterlist

The Bear masterlist

#carmy berzatto #carmy the bear #carmy x reader #carmy berzatto imagine #carmy berzatto x reader #carmy x fem!reader #carmy berzatto fluff #carmen carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto #carmy berzatto x female!reader #carmy berzatto x you #the bear #the bear fx #the bear hulu #hulu the bear #carmen berzatto fic #carmen berzatto x you #carmen berzatto fluff #carmen berzatto x reader #carmy berzatto fic #carmy berzatto fanfiction #the bear carmy

[beautifulhigh]

Hi hi!! It's unfair of me to ask you to actually write the full essay on the rwrb red room kiss scene, but I saw your tags and am very interested in at least what the main thesis would be, if you feel like sharing!! No worries if not 😊 Have a good night/day/whatever time it is where you are!

The last few weeks have been, well. They've Been™ and I'm going to use this wonderful ask to dust off my overthinking tag and write a meta post on this movie, these boys, and then hope more than three people care what I have to say.

The Red Room kiss scene is Iconic™ and Important™ and in this essay I (really) will discuss agency, framing, and why it always had to be Alex to be the one to make the move.

While book!Alex takes book!Henry to the Red Room, here he's waiting. Bundle of nervous energy. He doesn't know what to do with himself, how to hold himself, how to present himself when Henry turns up. He's backlit in this (which is a theatre technique, I see you Matthew) but it also adds to the drama and tension of the scene.

The (in)famous painting of Hamilton, about to bear witness to things.

We jump cut between Alex trying to find... something. Here he is realising his shirt has come slightly undone and he wants to try and be somewhat presentable. At least for the moment. But it speaks to Alex's physicality in this scene because he is shifting and moving so much that his clothing is shifting. There's also an interpretation that this suit represents the formality of the situation - the Prime Minister's dinner, at which he (the First Son) and the boy he wants to kiss (the actual Prinec) are supposed to be front and centre and the picture of formality.

He's coming undone in this moment because he's the First Son and he's waiting for the Prince, but he's also Alex and he's waiting for Henry.

Ah, yes. The casual lean against the wall. Fancy seeing you here, your Royal Highness, what do you think of the menu? But there's grounding here too. When you're spiralling focusing on a physical point of contact between you and and something can help ground you.

It's also a defensive stance in a way. You shall not pass, I'm not moving. Alex is claiming space and territory and he's controlling it.

"How dare you fucking kiss me, run away, ghost me, then walk into the White House like nothing changed." This is closed off, defensive, protective - probably why it's the quickest of the poses to be dismissed. He's got his back against the wall like he's scared or ready to come out fighting. And, in a way, both of those are true.

Book!Alex is mid-crisis on his bisexuality and while he logically knows he is very much into Henry, he's not gotten to the point of turning theory into reality.

Movie!Alex is more chill about being into guys, but this attraction to Henry is confusing him. He hates the guy. He wants to punch him in the mouth. With his mouth.

(What? That's literally book canon: and if he weren’t already hell-bent on destroying Henry’s infuriating idiot face with his mouth right now, he would consider doing it with his fist.)

Casual lean against the table, less staged and jarring than the extended arm against the wall.

But then Henry walks in and Alex stands to attention and he is... rapt. He is calm and composed and he is focused. We're back to the back-lit position which helps frame him with a near-halo effect.

And you can see that he is relaxed. There's a slight drop in the jaw, his shoulders are sloped and rounded. Because none on what he was trying to convey before matters. Henry is here.

"Look" he starts with - he's expecting a fight. He's expecting Alex to go off on one for the kiss, for the liberty taken. Even if Alex is willing to forget that it ever happened, take Henry's secret to the grave, Henry gets one thing right in this.

"my behaviour was appalling"

Because it was. Look, Hen, I love you and I'm with Alex in the feeling that I will go to war for you to see you happy and safe. But you did kinda kiss him without consent (harsh reading) and you did ghost him without apology (soft reading) and for a boy raised in the Royal Household that... well... it's pretty much top items on the Very Bad Behaviour list. He did not act with decorum or dignity, he did not act in the way that his status and position demands.

(That's OK, Hen. Because the boy under the linden tree wasn't the Prince. It's OK to not be him, and Alex is going to spend the rest of his life loudly loving the man, not the prince.)

"Shut up, stop talking." // “Shut up, shut all the way up, oh my God,” Alex hisses

Because even though both versions of Alex said he wanted to talk to Henry, in the moment that's the last thing he wants to do. And actions speak louder than words, right?

Why it had to be Alex

Henry needed to make the first move, that New Year's kiss, because there needed to be something to make Alex realise that this thing he's feeling is very much reciprocated, and that Henry wants it too. If Alex had kissed Henry for the first time on New Year's Eve/Day then it would have been too much of a leap. Alex, at whatever stage of his bisexual journey, has no clear idea of Henry's orientation at that party. It's only with retrospective viewing that he realises that Henry was low-key flirting, and that the sharing of these deeply personal moments wasn't just a "two bros in a hot tub" thing.

So Henry had to kiss Alex first but then he had to run because there was no way that the mostly-closeted, private Prince could accept that a) he fucking kissed a boy, b) said boy is the one he's been dreaming of since Rio/Melbourne, and c) the boy kinda?? kissed him back?? Henry will have been having a low-grade anxiety attack all through January (and trying to reclaim some control with the date he went on in the book).

In this moment, Alex knows all the pieces. He's played this logic game to its conclusion and he knows all the facts. 1) Henry is gay. 2) Henry is into him. 3) He's into Henry. That last fact is something Henry isn't fully aware of (or at least can't bring himself to believe it to be true) and so it has to be Alex.

He doesn't want Henry to say something that would get in the way of this, doesn't want to hear any kind of pre-prepared speech of "yeah, we're better off as friends" that always happens when the couple get too close to getting together too early in the run time. Alex is full on shutting that down, shutting Henry up, and he gives as good as he got.

"Wait a minute" // Henry’s too shocked to respond, mouth falling open slackly in a way that’s more surprise than invitation, and for a horrified moment Alex thinks he calculated all wrong, but then Henry’s kissing him back, and it’s everything.

And this time it's both of them. Framed between Hamilton and the books. The American political trailblazer and the literary. In the space between? There's our boys.

Alex's hand is on the wall again and he's controlling the space but Henry is very much in it. He's protective but in a different way.

In one frantic motion, Alex knocks the candelabra off the table next to them and pushes Henry onto it so he’s sitting with his back against—Alex looks up and almost breaks into deranged laughter—a portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Henry’s legs fall open readily and Alex crowds up between them, wrenching Henry’s head back into another searing kiss. They’re really moving now, wrecking each other’s suits, Henry’s lip caught between Alex’s teeth, the portrait’s frame rattling against the wall when Henry’s head drops back and bangs into it. Alex is at his throat, and he’s somewhere between angry and giddy, caught up in the space between years of sworn hate and something else he’s begun to suspect has always been there. It’s white-hot, and he feels crazy with it, lit up from the inside. Henry gives as good as he gets, hooking one knee around the back of Alex’s thigh for leverage, delicate royal sensibilities nowhere in the cut of his teeth. Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants. He drops a hand onto Henry’s thigh, feeling the electrical pulse there, the smooth fabric over hard muscle. He pushes up, up, and Henry’s hand slams down over his, digging his nails in.

The sensibility of the suits is on its way out, they're not the First Son and the Prince. And Alex is taking the lead.

Agency

Henry is somewhat passive in this - although he is fully engaged - but it's Alex who set this in motion. Pun intended. Alex who pushed him against the wall. Alex who pushed him up onto the table and hiked his leg up around his hip, Alex who is driving in. Because Alex needs Henry to know that third fact. The one he's worked out, the one that Henry is just catching up with. This isn't payback, it's not some prank. Alex Wants™.

There's a scene I'm writing in my current FirstPrince WiP in which Alex and Henry have a charged moment. And Henry wants to act on it but those princely sensibilities get in the way and he can't let himself be led into doing something that could be used against him. If Henry made all the moves then the accusation of him taking advantage, of the inherant imbalance that comes with status and titles and positions of power. So in the scene, and here, Alex takes the lead. There's no way anyone could accuse Henry of forcing Alex into doing this.

(Good luck getting Alex to do ANYTHING he doesn't want to.)

So Alex gives and Henry takes and he gets the memo very quickly.

Fact number three. Alex wants this too.

Then Movie!Amy walks in on them (which IMO is way funnier than Book!Amy hissing through a crack in the door) and these idiots try to act like they weren't redefining International Relations a second ago. Alex is by the painting, Henry is by the books. They've gone back to their sides and they're playing at being interested in what they find there. But they're not, it's all for show, someone who gives a passing glance at this point sees this part of them, this side of them The First Son and the Prince: the politician and the literary.

They're both backlit, they're in line even if it doesn't look like it, Alex is no longer on Henry's right, and they're both trying to act like the people that others could see them as.

But we - and they - know better. 1) Henry is gay. 2) Henry is into Alex. 3) Alex is into Henry.

4) Everyone is on the same page now.

(Also I know Casey talked about seeing the Red Room on a White House tour and so that's why they included a scene in that room in their book, but I cannot ignore the fact that red = love and passion and danger and fire [the counter to the water motif] and it's a warm colour designed to excite.)

#jen answers stuff #overthinking jen is overthinking #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #prince henry of wales #red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb movie #meta post #long post #henry fox mountchristen windsor #otp: history huh

[genderkoolaid]

By being unhappily straight, those of us who are not men are off the hook for our complicities with men. We are off the hook for the many women who become men, the men who become women, and the many people more who are simply neither or both; for the fact that, to quote Sophia Giovannitti’s essay in the online journal Majuscule, ‘gender is never fixed; gender is always broken’. Worse, we are off the hook for creating deep care and nourishment for ourselves and others within the world as we find it. We are collectively turned off, in my assessment, and part of us does not want this to change because, were it to change, we wouldn’t get to be women anymore in the classic sense of wishing collectively we were turned on. To radically transform heterosexuality, in contrast, might begin, as Seresin says, ‘with honest accounts of which elements of heterosexuality are actually appealing.’ Giovannitti’s essay, titled ‘In Defense of Men’, invokes one such account, within a critical response to the heterofatalism thesis.

– "Collective Turn-off" by Sophie Lewis

#m. #quotes #collective turn off #heterofatalism

[golvio]

The whole video was about people who fucking hate writing essays trying to make a living writing video essays, building up their reputation as “essayists.”

When I heard the imitative writing style, I immediately was reminded of certain times when I was back in school, where teachers giving tips on essay writing would give examples of students who’d start their intro paragraph with a copy/paste of a cited Webster’s Dictionary definition of a word that came up in the book they were analyzing.

While they’d technically cited it correctly, they spent more time regurgitating the dictionary definition than actually setting up the thesis statement that should’ve been the backbone of their essay. They hated having to think about what they’d read and weren’t confident enough in their own ideas or opinions to properly own them, so instead they’d hide behind a more legitimate and official sounding source.

Yes, Billy, we know what the definition of “nostalgia” is. We all had to look it up the first day the teacher said it during our class discussion about the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby. But what does that word mean in the context of The Great Gatsby? Most importantly, what does this word mean to you now that you’ve finished the book and had some time to think about the story and how Fitzgerald’s descriptions made you feel about each character? Don’t you have any opinions of your own that you at least want to try phoning in a defense for in exchange for a grade?

It betrays not only not giving a shit about the subject matter or what skills the course is trying to teach you—it betrays you not considering your own thoughts and feelings worth giving a shit about.

Look, I get essay writing is hard. I struggled with essays immensely and dreaded them until something finally clicked during my junior year of high school. And yet…these people aren’t students who still have time to learn better. They’re grown-ass adults trying to make a career out of a medium they can’t stand and have no genuine respect for solely because they can get ad revenue from the nerds who actually enjoy this stuff. The most passion and original thought they’ve ever put into their work is when they frantically tried to cover their own asses for rehashing quotations from original sources instead of bothering to put any meat on their essays!

What a miserable existence! Why spend your life lying about something you don’t love even if the money’s good? I’d rather be shat upon for my own words and work than spend the rest of my life trying to bullshit the disciplinary committee.

#hbomberguy

[postapocalyptic-cryptic]

@messyspacespades HI THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST

Basically, I started out thinking "I bet I could write an essay about how tf bayverse is military propaganda for this class about toys and entertainment." Consulted my prof and she gave me the green light bc she's wonderful. Dove into the research sauce and the first thing I pulled up was an essay detailing how the US military actually funded Bayverse.

They gave money, they gave props, they let them film parts of it in the fucking Pentagon.

Obviously, this piqued my interest. I looked a little further and found a Master's thesis about the USAmerican politics of TF. This was right up my alley (my area of expertise is pop culture and american politics) so I started going a little crazy. I found out that not only did the Department of Defense fund Bayverse, they gave specific instructions on how bayverse would be written/portray the US. Apparently, this is a common thing that the DoD does regularly.

So that was part of the essay. The other part was about how the first bayverse movie pushes an american exceptionalism agenda and justifies American presence in the Middle East. It was super fun to write, and now it's gotten me money AND an opening slot at a symposium which is WILD.

#RAHH THANK YOU FOR ASKING I'M SORRY IT TOOK ME A HOT MINUTE TO GET BACK TO YOU

[sevenyeargap]

welcome to my very own analysis of edgeworths character and insane rambling on why i write him Like That. first of all i want to rec one of my favorite essay on political theory/legal philosophy of possibly all time aka the discourse on voluntary servitude by la boétie (which you can read here, its also a fantastic text to read in these coronation/anti-monarchy times)

anyway, if you don't want to read it (although it is quite a short and clear read), the main thesis of this essay is that basically a corrupt political system/dictatorship (here called a tyranny) doesn't stay in place because people are afraid of change and rebellion, but because people don't want anything to change, and they're satisfied with their condition, therefore complicit with the system (see also MLK's quote on white moderates "but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'")

the tl;dr here is that a system stays in place because no one does anything to change it, and people prefer turning a blind eye to the situation but its not because they're afraid of a new system, it's because they're scared of what it will take to get this new system.

with that being said i think that edgeworths anger and resentment at the legal system post turnabout goodbyes wouldn't be directed at the system right away because he upheld the system. he loved it! (which btw is so so much worse than killing his father. he didn't kill his father but he's complicit in enforcing a terrible legal system!!!!!!!! awful)

and miles loved this system!! i think that even at the worst point of his bratworth era he still believed he was Bringing Fair And Real Justice and was doing The Right Thing. but what happens when you realize this system is deeply, incredibly flawed? when you've spent your whole life fighting for it? deliberately ignoring the ugly parts of it in favor of maintaining a perfect win record?

that's when you choose death!!!! (literally or figuratively depending on how you analyze it.)

i looooove edgeworth celebrating his not guilty verdict but he would start thinking about what he's done. which again is so much worse than simply killing his dad. like he literally says that in rfta

and thats so??? fucking sad!?!!! because how is he supposed to trust in himself now??? phoenix (no matter how good his intentions were) HAS entirely destroyed his whole worldview!!!!!!!! and thus the unnecessary feelings line but you can read more about my thoughts about that line here (tl;dr this line for me a) challenges his views (see supra) b) didn't phoenix "steal" his dream of becoming a defense attorney, in a way? phoenix had the chance to move on and change things for the better but miles... didn't.

ANYWAY edgeworth gets angry at individuals, after turnabout goodbyes, because he hasn't realized how deep the corruption runs yet - he's angry at phoenix, at misty, at everyone who either failed to protect him (misty, mvk, the mvk household, maybe even his own dad for """leaving him behind"""???) OR tried to protect him from this system (phoenix, maya - because how dare they challenge his views on this system he has oh so loved?) also you can read this post here because it really summarizes my feelings about his aa1 arc

every day there is a new media where two people are fighting together for a system. they both come to realise the system is flawed, and while one of them tries to take the system down, the other decides it is still necessary and must be protected at all costs. why is it always the first one who becomes the villain? who is deeply sympathetic but goes too far in their quest for justice? i think for once it should be the second one who is trying so hard to protect the system they believe in that they slowly slip into tyranny

i dont really have a conclusion here but i will say that i think The Note and edgeworths year off were necessary (as tragic as it was) for both edgeworth & phoenix because theyre insane they need some time to think about how much they don't know nor understand each other anymore at this point in time. anyway. thanks for reading?!! i hope this made sense. mwah!

#ace attorney #miles edgeworth #ace attorney meta #i wrote a good chunk of this the evening after i had a final sdjkdsf so hopefully this will make a bit of sense also its so LONG IM SORRY #🦔 : chatters #tw suicide mention

[viv-hollande]

As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out. 

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised. 

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad. 

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me. 

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them. 

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me. 

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important. 

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future. 

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this. 

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable. 

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind. 

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it. 

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest. 

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they? 

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another? 

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from? 

Mongolia. 

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack. 

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't. 

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away. 

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about… 

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes. 

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes. 

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives. 

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats. 

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War. 

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children. 

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome. 

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for. 

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis. 

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end- 

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup. 

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around. 

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you. 

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points. 

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism. 

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense. 

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups. 

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go. 

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way: 

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are: 

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order: 

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers. 

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening? 

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities. 

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide. 

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important. 

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism. 

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do. 

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization. 

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause. 

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts. 

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No. 

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game. 

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification. 

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement. 

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics. 

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage. 

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case. 

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel? 

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide. 

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one. 

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member. 

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant. 

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not. 

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager. 

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts. 

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime. 

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare. 

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine. 

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes. 

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart.  And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got. 

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

#long post #really long post #israel palestine conflict #i/p conflict #i/p #israel gaza war #antisemitism #islamophobia #war crimes #crimes against humanity #ethnic cleansing #viv lectures #fuck bibi #fuck hamas #free palestine #ceasefire now #kicking the hornet's nest #and the bee's nest

[toonqueen]

Duckvember Day 17: Agent Duck

Soooo I have an OC in Ducktales/Darkwing Duck that is an Agent. Agent Gemini works for Shush for the paranormal department. She /appears/ not to be a magic user. She actually has a gun that can cast spells with cartridges that do different spells. (A little bit like Darkwing’s gas gun but does more.  She has a wide range of helpful spells in those cartridges. 

She tries to act all serious and very law abiding but she has a relaxed side that can find humor in things. She’s also not /that/ lawful. If something the agent has been sent to capture is just misunderstood, she’ll let it go and fib to SHUSH. 

Agent Gemini is always willing to help others. She is very secretive about her past though.  Maybe I will spill secrets on a later prompt. MAYBE.

Here’s a picture of her I commissioned from @emilylorange

I also had a job resume written for her for RP land.  For her work prior to now working for SHUSH.

WORK RESUME:

Agent Gemini’s files start out with many high recommendations from other agencies around the world that she did positive work for.

All her cases are well written and detail apprehending targets. For someone that gets into paranormal situations though her encounters are written very dry. It's not different from reading an average police report of an average criminal. Instead though, it’s fighting werewolves, vampires, demons, and stopping the awakening of elder gods worded like it's just another day at the office. Many of these cases mention that when a situation gets hard she retreats, then pulls herself together and ends up getting the set target captured in the end.

Quite a few cases are often finding out the situations weren't paranormal at all. Ghosts end up being regular mortals distracting authorities from finding treasure the deceased homeowner left behind.

Her thesis works however are written with more energy and entertainment value. Some of her theoretical papers of the paranormal include:

--How to Win Cryptids and Influence Hunters

A long essay on how hunting criminal supernatural beings is more than just showing up and capturing them. The only way to a successful mission is to use the environment around them as a part of the trap. It seems partly like some metaphysical pseudoscience but other makes a lot of sense. Especially the part about getting to know the politics of local hunters and working with them if they prove to be reliable.

--Modern Paranormals and the Morons that Bother Them

This essay is filled with many theories of there being ‘new age’ paranormal beings that operated outside of the usual rules of the old school supernatural beings that are usually hunted. The essay seems to study personal interactions with modern paranormals and divides them into different categories.

It also explains how these new age anomalies are between a rock and a hard place. On one side they often have hunters aggressively going after them. On the other side older supernatural beings do not help these newcomers under the umbrella of protection and comradeship they share with fellow ‘old school’ paranormals.

--The Trice Paradox

A long essay describing different theories on why the Nega-Verse and Posi-Verse exist. It includes theories based on natural cataclysms like the meteor that took out the dinosaurs, supernatural interference, and even an elder god battle that may have caused reality to split. The essay calls the Prime-Verse’ the ‘Middle-Verse’ instead. It also theorizes that not all alternate dimensions have the Nega and Posi-Verse.

--Evoking Erinyes and other Arcane Accomplices for Fun and Defense

A much shorter essay than the others that answers follow up questions to the essay, ‘How to Win Cryptids and Influence Hunters.’ It also adds information of using helpful summons, charms and artifacts in the same way you would get supernatural beings and hunters to help.

--------

Education

Starts out with regular public school and high school in Duckburg. It then goes to a year of college in Rome. Then to a semester in Eldritch Academy. She ends up finishing a degree in Egypt. Her majors include Archeology, Linguistics, and Cryptozoology. Her status of graduating from the Egyptian college lists her as a Almurid min Alkasandra.

There is a lot of referral letters are at the end of her file. Much like the praising at the beginning there are a few notes added by other organizations. All her previous jobs were paranormal organizations. However she does have experience in going undercover for several cases when needed.

An organization out of the Middle East had her investigating old supernatural reports and theorizing what could have happened even decades ago. She was very hard working in her research and gave above average results. Her reports were accurate and professional. She often had a great insight and often found physical evidence of creatures and artifacts.

An organization out of Europe gives Gemini high marks and a high capture rate. However, they also express a concern that she allows certain targets that are not violent threats to go free. Though this cannot be proven since her catch rate is already high as it is.

In lower South America she worked with a research group that was about finding artifacts that may have supernatural properties. While she did great field work there were concerns she always took the physical risks to protect the rest of the team. She acted like she was more durable than the rest of her team. Though she did show to survive some impossible things she still would spend weeks in the hospital from injuries.

In Mexico she worked for an organization that did a mixture of hunting and artifact retrieval. They give her high marks and recommendations. They did have concerns about her stress and work with prior organizations and recommend her speaking to someone once a month off the record.

Her last job was for an organization at the Four Corners in the United States. Heads of the organization give high recommendations but also share concern of how she would often try to work alone even when a partner was required for a case.

#duckverse 2023 #duckverse #agent gemini #ducktales #darkwing duck #SHUSH

[mister-eames]

1/? If you wrote a thesis on Arthur and Eames I would literally carry it around in my pocket & read it daily, so I’m begging you!! Please don’t spare your 5k essay on why you think Arthur thinks he doesn’t have a chance with Eames!! I Wanna know your thoughts on this!! Because I think it’s a combination of elements. Firstly I think initially Arthur truly believes Eames doesn’t like him. They’re too different. Arthur is everything Eames isn’t & vice versa. & even tho the saying goes “opposites

2/? attract”.. sometimes you just clash & that’s that.. I think at first he also mistakes Eames playfulness, his snark, quips & attempts at riling Arthur up as genuine condescension & disdain. I also read once in a fic where Arthur made a comment about how nobody likes the pointman cos at the end of the day it’s his job to pick apart everybody else’s work & point out the weaknesses. So the idea that a guy like Eames, who as a forger has one of the most creative/artistic roles in dreamshare. --- 3/3 would be interested in a guy whose role often involves probably telling people to tone it down... yeah. Not gonna happen. & then I think there’s that fear of mixing business with pleasure. The idea of ruining such a great working partnership by bringing something as messy as FEELINGS into it? I think that’s something that would make Arthur not even entertain the idea of ever having anything more with Eames because how could he ever risk losing Eames as a work partner?

---

Aha, are you ready? Obvs these are all just my headcanons, and that the beauty of inception is that the characters can be who we want them to be, all interpretations are valid, etc etc...

So, with Arthur and why I think he thinks doesn't have a chance with Eames. You're right that it's a combination of elements:

I think, at his core, Arthur like, all of us, carries some kind of emotional bruising when it comes to loving and being loved. And like, all of us, Arthur does not think he's perfect. He has self-perceived flaws. Every single one of us, as human beings, has insecurities - even Arthur. I think he uses all of the surface, logical, 'rational' arguments like not wanting to mix business and pleasure to justify not actually addressing these hurts and insecurities.

You know my personal headcanon for Arthur, generally speaking canonically, is that he did not come from money. He grew up poor with a parent that wasn't, say, well enough to be there for him the way a child would need. That he was the caretaker in the household most of the time.

And, bear with me here, on Arthur caring about his looks - Arthur is buttoned up to all hell not because of vanity, but because of how he will be perceived--- he wears his suits less like armour and more like a weapon. Arthur, to me, is scrappy, not defensive.

But despite how he presents himself, deep down Arthur still is that fourteen year old version of himself, the one that lashed out everyone Eventually, he learned to control that anger, the one that showed everyone else where he was wounded -- but he never addressed the ways he was hurt, or the parts of him that has always been deeply lonely. As an adult he isn't keen on loving anyone else because it's always been a one-way transaction. He does not know how to interpret loving someone and being loved in return. For him, what does that even look like? Arthur doesn't want to love anyone because he's never received the same output of love he gives out. And maybe he thinks something is wrong with him, for feeling affection the way he does and never truly getting it back in kind - platonic, familial or romantic.

So he wears his weaponry to keep people from getting too close to touch, figuratively speaking. And maybe Eames takes him on face value for a beat too long.

While I don't really consider Arthur and Eames to be opposites, I do think they are flip sides of the same coin. They share a basic foundation, beliefs, ethics - but can also clash where they combine. It's like when you just... get someone on a basic level, like you share a frequency without needing years of getting to know them. Like when you meet someone and you just know you must have known each other in a past life. Arthur thinks that this weird, antagonistic thing he has with Eames is something different, isn't it? Except, it isn't. It's just love, baby.

Arthur feels it, with Eames. That 'something'. Over time it develops into a feeling that is both thrum and quiet. Like his whole body is vibrating but also completely still just by being near him, thinking about him.

But, at least initially, Arthur is just too... wary to place his money on it, that feeling. It's never provided dividends before.

Which isn't to say that Eames is the one to show Arthur he is 'worth loving', or anything like that. I believe that Arthur comes to that realisation all by himself - realistically, they're both still young and young enough to be insecure at the time of the film. Late 20's, 30s? Babies, in the grand scheme of adulthood. They are only just consolidating out who they are, really. But Arthur, at some point, realizes its okay to put his sword down and be loved in a different way from those who'd said they'd loved him before. To have someone take care of him, to run point for him. He gets better at reading love languages.

And I think, to address Arthurs own insecurities -- we all also have that kind of rose-tinted view of the ones we love while thinking we are plain and unremarkable - we look at them and go fuck, you are amazing, you are incredible, you can do anything and you don't even know it, how do you not know how powerful you are?? --- that's part of it too. Maybe he looks at Eames, Cobb and Mal and thinks just that. Maybe he wonders in what world would Eames ever look at him the same way? Maybe he does underestimate his own power and he takes it all too seriously and to heart when he's not perfect. Maybe he can't look past his own fuck ups in life and in work that it truly clouds his perception of himself and his compatibility with others.

That, I think, are the basic fears Arthur has. It's like inception, right, these 'simplest version of ideas' manifest in more convoluted ones. Those fears get translated and articulated into very simple 'reasonable' arguments he hoodwinks himself with so he never has to face his own vulnerability: it would never work out. I don't like the way he does x, y, z. He is so annoying. He doesn't even like me like that. It'd be bad for business. It's not worth the risk. We're here to work.

So I think Arthur leaves his attraction to Eames like a mailbox slowly accumulating with more and more junk mail. He'll clean it out some day, pushed aside in his own mind, left unattended by him for a long time without realizing the pile is growing. On this, some of my fave fics are the ones where Arthur has this sort of... comically misbehaving subconscious because of his ignored affection for Eames. The ones where there are errant projections who fawn over Eames, or the ones where his subconscious is literally incapable of hurting him. I think Arthur is not.. repressed... as an individual, but the feelings he has for Eames are so large and encompassing and that he's tried to fit it into too small of a box, and that box is spilling out at the sides. What he feels cannot be contained or disposed of. He would be that kind of hot mess.

But, Arthur, you darling fool. The feeling is mutual.

#10000% pure self indulgence #like actually #but i don't even care #thank you so much nonnie for letting me indulge so much on Arthur and maybe go overboard on him idk cant stop wont stop it makes me happy #there's something just so remarkably human in these two #these blink-and-you'll-miss moments of vulnerability in the film #my brain can't stop latching onto reasons why arthur is a fucking disaster sweetheart of a human bean #anyway #love these two idiots forever! #arthur x eames #dreamhusbands #inception

[fallowhearth]

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2021

This is not a review. It will probably be a bit of a ramble about my approach to reading history and thinking through why I bounced off this so many times. This is also about letting myself off the hook - I'm going to let this one remain unfinished. I don't need to finish reading it.

After I dropped out of grad school (highly recommended), it took me a good few years to be able to stomach picking up a history book again. But, I do really enjoy the discipline. There's a reason I wanted to do it as a career. I eventually found a way back in - from YouTube video essays, to a few podcasts, to reading history from outside my field. I had the most success with ancient/pre-modern histories; obligatory Tides of History plug as I've loved all the deep dives into genetic history and archaeology (and gotten quite a few great book recommendations). I don't have any particular knowledge in these fields, I don't have the language skills or context to interpret sources myself, I've never even taken an ancient history course. So reading these I have no option but to basically rely on the expertise of the historian, to see what they say about various topics and about each other. It's the opportunity to read history like a layperson, and hey, it's pretty interesting!

On the one hand, Dawn is engagingly written - I'd call it kind of magazine style? - and tells a compelling story. But, the whole time I'm wondering, but is any of it true?

My impulse when reading something from within my area of academic expertise is to go and take a look at some of the sources myself. It's always a useful sense-check; it's due diligence. History is by its nature kind of subjective. Historians don't just deal in lonely facts (to paraphrase someone whose name escapes me), but in interpretation and argumentation. Everything has been passed through several human filters before a historian even looks at it. So, in a room full of historians you respect, you can have a lively, contentious discussion where no two people have quite the same reading of the source. There's a skill you pick up after a while - you get a sense for the range of defensible interpretations of a particular piece of evidence. You'll feel more affinity for part of that range, based on the things you believe about how the world works, your particular axe to grind, other things you've read, niche academic beef, etc.

I'm confident I've read at least a few of the sources Dawn uses, and I've definitely read within adjacent bodies of sources. So, I have an incredibly strong need to go and take a look at the specific things they're basing their argument on. I trust my own judgement; I want to establish that range of defensible interpretations, I want to see what readings I'd pull out first, I want to see what the distance is between Dawn's point on that range and mine. The problem is that I can't. Even if I wanted to dive back into the archive, I literally don't have any of the institutional accesses that would allow me to. Also I really don't want to. So I'm constantly feeling this itch I can't scratch at the back of my mind while reading Graeber and Wengrow's work.

The broad version of Dawn's thesis is something like: 'humans have experimented with diverse ways to live and organise their societies across space and time, in ways that are not accommodated by the teleological models developed within the colonial context'. I'd say, yeah, I pretty much agree with that! (In fact it's a thesis I'd love to nail to the doors of many popular history writers.) But I get the same sense reading Dawn as I did reading various provocative works of global history (many of which I really like): the broad thesis is generally defensible, but it falls apart on the page-to-page level. Of course I can't actually confirm this since, well, I haven't done my due diligence!

#entering the grad school trauma zone for the sake of posting #anyway I'm open to suggestions for my next attempt at reading #though I think Weavers Scribes and Kings has been on my list for a while

[compacflt]

pre-publishing notes for slider (actually i meant to poast this yesterday i just forgor 💀), just to put them out there

as per usual i peddle an extreme amount of mis- and straight up disinformation about the aerospace & defense industries in this one. as a general rule of thumb if it sounds like i researched it poorly and/or made it up, that’s because i researched it poorly and/or made it up. like every scene i was like ‘that wouldn’t happen :D’ and wrote it anyway

this one-shot renders my third one-shot (about ice & hangman) entirely obsolete, as if the rooster one-shot didn’t already do that. so just ignore the hangman one. (i only wrote that one cause i felt bad about tagging my fics hangster when they’re barely in it.) Also, this one-shot kind of directly contradicts the end scene of “debriefing” in pretty much every way. i don’t really care, because this is a much stronger ending, but just throwing that out there—this one-shot doesn’t really jive with my other writing for plot/character arc reasons & im too lazy/sick and tired of my other writing to go back and retcon any of it

i only research things i am mandated to by school/a job/journalistic code of ethics, or that i think are interesting, or that i know will not depress me. divorce depresses me so i did not research divorce. Also im pretty sure marriage doesn’t work the way i described it “sign the papers & that’s it” but idgaf . shrug. im having fun

something i Didn’t make up, though: the thesis that iraq/afghanistan went so poorly in the long term partly because our armed services & especially that generation of commanding officers were prepared for total warfare with a near-peer (like the ussr) instead of counterinsurgency tactics against mountain-based guerrilla warfare-stratted forces (like Al-q*eda etc). that’s a very real thesis that ive read in multiple mil history books (“the generals,” ricks; “mil history for the modern strategist,” ohanlon) & co-opted because it’s kind of, in a fucked up way, a good metaphor for ice’s whole deal—he’d been expecting a traditional officer’s life with a woman etc (aka traditional warfare against the ussr, the us’ sworn enemy) and instead found happiness in the weirdest of places, another dude (aka guerrilla warfare) and no one taught him the right strategy for dealing with that; so, pigheadedly, like some US commands in the Middle East for a decade, he just dug in his heels & refused to budge/change his "total traditional war/heteronormative"-based strategy even if it obviously wasn’t working.

In a similar vein just so i can beat the allegations that im strategically dumb, the “strategies” against the ussr the boys are playing with in the usna section are intentionally the most dogshit strategies on earth. do not invade russia in a land war. especially not when nukes are on the table. the point is they’re ALL bad at strategy (strat as a metaphor for interpersonal communication).

i get the words “moderate” and “modulate” confused a lot. there’s a couple times in this one when I use moderate and mean modulate. Now it’s too late to edit it. by which i mean i am too lazy. editing anything on ao3 is a Sisyphean task. not worth it.

there's a lot to be said about my ice & maverick's respectability, which is to say, as slider points out, their life together is incredibly normie and boring and regular, except that they're two guys. like there's nothing super subversive going on here. "in the grand scheme of things is this really so bad?" is the question. politically this is a little funky. for metatextual character-arc reasons ice has to agree to an official marriage to prove that by the end he's not afraid to legally legitimize their relationship, but the heteroflexible/straight-passing/socially conservative ice & mav that I have written also probably aren't the kind of guys to acknowledge the struggle & strife & subversiveness of the queer community before them that fought for them to have that right. to quote from an essay by Lauren berlant & Michael Warner ("Sex in public"): "Respectable gays [ice & mav, distancing themselves from other gays] like to think that they owe nothing to the sexual subculture they think of as sleazy. But their success, their way of living, their political rights, and their very identities would never have been possible but for the existence of the public [visibly queer] sexual culture they now despise." just throwing that out there as something that is weighing on my mind having now finished writing this. I think that issue (ice & mav's relationship with/debt to the lgbt community) could be explored with a character like rooster, who might be much more a part of that struggle (especially pre-dadt-repeal)...but idk where or how I would write about it. just something to chew on. I keep finding different ways to politically interpret what I myself have already written which then keeps leading to more fucking one-shots. This slider one for instance was a reinterpretation from the 1980s Cold War politics lens of nuclear doomsday & how that affected a generation of men making shitty/suicidal decisions about their lives. an endless cycle for me. "just one more interpretation...i swear just one more..."

#re: me bullshitting about a&d industry: it’s so freeing to just make shit up guys #for the rest of my life i will have to be (get to be) steadfast in research & ethics #for fanfic? fuck that #virgin journalistic brain: SOURCE????? #chad fanfic brain: I MADE IT THE FUCK UP!!! #process poasting #edts notes #my whole job this summer is just going to be fact checking/research work for aerospace/defense journalists so #i will learn about the industry THEN. and probably look back on this series and weep in embarrassment #but that’s life #im proud to be embarrassed of my past writing including the earlier parts of this series #bc it means im learning/growing as a writer/researcher etc #the gen z impulse to overshare 😐 #oh well if u guys aren't used to it by now with me idk what to tell you. im an oversharer/overwriter. someone end my turn of show & tell