where do i go

  
Thank you so much for signing up to participate in this year's exchange. I appreciate and enjoy everything everyone creates every year and I can't wait to see what you decide to write. Additionally, I am open to treats if you feel so inspired.

I do want to warn you that, although I am able to post on time, the end of the year also happens to feature some heavy events for me and my family. This means that I generally don't get around to reading Yuletide gifts until well into the New Year. Please do not feel discouraged by a lack of or a delayed response—it truly is a treat to see what each new round of this exchange brings and I am so, so appreciative each time.

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 Hello, and thank you for participating in Yuletide this year. Below are some thoughts, noodles, and opinions about the fandoms and characters requested, which you are free to take or leave as you will, outside of the DNWs. 

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this is a work in progress, sorryyyyyyy

( BING BONG )

she's in the other room. i can hear her breathing, heavy puffs of air pushing against the plastic we've had to lay down to protect the carpet. i sat with her earlier today--because sitting is all she can do--petting her on the head, down her back, pulling loose strands of fur to clump near her rear legs. they're so swollen right now--mom says it's water retention--even as her legs and tail look bonier than they ever have. she's always been our baby rhino, a force of nature, stubborn as the day is long, clever in a sneaky way, loyal to a fault.

i understand why this is happening. it's easy to comprehend in a way that so many things aren't. this, though, more than him or anyone else, seems so unfair. she deserves better. she deserves to go out with a bang, with a silent whoosh of air in the night, with a dramatic flop to the ground, a final nudge to a ball. not with her mostly blind, unable to stand up, back legs basically paralyzed, one leg slowly consumed by a spreading sore, weird ooze coming out of various places, a stomach licked raw because she can't reach far enough back to clean herself, mind trapped in a body that's already half a corpse. it's the one thing you ask for, the one thing you as a thing that is alive deserve: dignity in death, a chance to go out on your own terms, one final moment to call your own.

and she--god, all i can think is: her ears are still so, so soft, and 5.15 p.m. tomorrow is still, somehow, too, too soon.

even during a pandemic, the fourth is for tradition.

it's for remembering to buy hot dogs at the grocery store while grabbing your mask from the passenger seat, celebrating steve rogers' birthday while reading about growing case numbers, listening to npr reporters recite the declaration of independence while scrolling past pictures of protesters on pennsylvania ave.

it's for random pop-boom-bangs all week, with showers of sparkles igniting near enough on the night of to remind you that there's still people out there, even if you haven't seen them in months.

it's for the sparkling firecrackers of the next-door neighbors, your brother going out to see friends once the sun goes down, for lighting candles just after nine because, goddammit, we'll have some kind of fire in here even if i have to set it myself.

it's for jumpy dogs, memories of sticky, crowded evenings on plastic-coated football fields, even stickier, crowded mornings, the sun beating down as the area's finest parade down main street, distributing cheap flags, free totes, melting candy, and the opportunity, just for a second, to really see something cool.

Dear white people,

Hi, I'm one of you. A bazillion generations of people who are concerningly pale mixed with a few who "just tan really dark" (read: like dry coffee stains on a napkin) boiled down into one white idiot with a computer. That's you, too, right? Cool, we've established some common ground.

So maybe, for once, you'll listen.

In moments like these—a phrase that should be unique, individual, calling to mind a single clear instance, an undeniable point of reference. Instead, it could refer to any of a hundred instances, any of a hundred crimes, any of a hundred summers that started not with a burst of joy but a flare of ever-simmering outrage.

In moments like these, it is important to remember the irrelevance of being all-inclusive in a verbal sense, of making sure that your semantics are precisely right, and, most importantly, of assuming that words and statements necessarily have an opposite.

That's right, I'm talking to you, #AllLivesMatter hashtagger, and you, #BlueLivesMatter Facebook group.

The point, the very essence, the goddamn undeniable reason for #BlackLivesMatter being the rallying cry of a movement is because apparently, that fact is not universally understood, that truth is not recognized by the system supposedly designed to uphold it, that reality does not match the one lived by Black people in America.

When was the last time you heard of a white man being choked to death by police? When was the last time you heard of police breaking into an apartment unannounced and shooting a white woman to death? When was the last time you heard of a white person running through a neighborhood getting shot by people who believed they might be a thief?

The answer to that is: never.

The reason for that is that—unlike George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, who were all Black Americans—white people are not systemically oppressed, stigmatized, ostracized, and brutalized by the society they live in.

Instead, white people—comfortable with this fact or not—built, maintain, reinforce, benefit from and contribute to a system of governance and policing that is designed to discriminate against people of color, most specifically and egregiously against Black people. The reason your hashtags are unhelpful and borderline disrespectful—along with other less polite descriptors—is that they take the realities of Black lives, of Black experiences in this country, hold them next to the struggles of white people, of non-Black women, of law enforcement employees, of any other of a host of options, and have the audacity to call them equal.

You can believe that all lives matter equally, sure. But that's not relevant right now. What's relevant is that Black lives are in danger, Black lives are being treated as disposable, Black lives aren't getting the respect and dignity that they deserve.

So save the sentiment for later. Much later. Learn how to say it in a way that isn't a knee-jerk reaction invalidating a cry for recognition and justice from a marginalized community because, just once, you feel like you weren't being represented. Despite the current configuration of our society, not everything is about you, and it's time we, as white people, shut up and did something about it.

Start with letting them speak, continue with raising them up and supporting then, finish by helping them dismantle the system that put us here in the first place.

Sincerely,

Someone who is tired

I watched--in the loosest sense of the term, it was by no means in one straight sitting--Star Trek's "The Menagerie" last night. Maybe the better word is "finished".

I finished "The Menagerie" last night. It's one of those that seems oddly fitting, if edging slightly into horror. A race of telepaths who can create illusory lives for themselves and any in their sphere of influence, and a man paralyzed, his mind trapped in a body that no longer responds to him. The reality is daunting, the illusion is disconcerting, and the episode itself condemns neither. It simply points out that the one thing that all humans have in common, the thing that makes them unsuitable for the Talosian's titular menagerie, is an ingrained dislike of being imprisoned, a need to be free, an inability to quietly sit in a cage. The fact that Christopher Pike is sitting right there, his body having become that prison for his mind is almost incidental.

wake up
get up—standing and proper
turn off the alarm, the faster the better
use the restroom and—for god's sake—wash your hands
remember not to look in the mirror
remember that he's dead
remember that we're not supposed to leave our homes, that you don't have work, that the only reason you're up is habit—you don't even hear the grind of the coffee maker anymore
get back in bed
pull up the covers, tell yourself it's because you're cold
scroll through twitter to make sure the sliding disaster of reality is still self-destructing on the same course as yesterday night
open a silly game to collect fruit
all the while wait to see if anyone will message you, if you're needed at all
give up sometime after nine, roll over and close your eyes again
you'll sleep and you'll regret it, these extra hours tinged with the same unease that keeps you up at night
wake up

I stood with palms up, but I did't believe
You whispered, "Hey, we need to do this"
I tried so hard I could feel
All my head and my heart in one
I loved so much I almost forgot I flew
I landed, but it didn't last
I wanted so much it killed me
If we could keep that feeling
I'd almost forget I'm getting old
And I wish you were the answer
I want to believe you're the answer
And I know, we know, I know

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school has somehow been double-cancelled because the adults in charge of managing lots of children didn't seem to think of the fact that the majority of kids will first take the opportunity to be asshats before doing what they're supposed to

he would have laughed...so hard