Summary: There are relationships that are borne of instant attraction. Or those that are borne of a shared experience that draws people together. But the relationships that grow from a friendship can sometimes be all that's needed.
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Nori knows he has to thank the first year who stood between him and Azuma-senpai. The pitcher with blazing golden eyes.
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Characters: Miyuki Kazuya, Kuramochi Youichi, minor character roles (Narumiya Mei, Sawamura Eijun, Harada Masatoshi, Kominato Ryousuke, Kominato Haruichi)
Relationships: Kuramochi Youichi x Miyuki Kazuya
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Total Word Count: 4447
Zine: Take Off (KuraMiyu wedding zine) on Twt
Summary: Consistent. Familiar. Loving. Thatâs what mornings were in the Kuramochi-Miyuki household. Game days were less of that, but when your partner tells you to stay behind after the game, and everyone else seems to know something you donât, you can either fall back on the feeling of consistency, familiarity, and love, or you spiral.
Before anything I just want to say I am a Canadian (immigrated from India as a child). Iâm not Black, and not American.
But Juneteenth is a fascinating and wonderful day to exist. So I wrote this to remind my fellow Canadians that just because Black slavery was officially abolished that day in USA, that didnât mean our history is squeaky clean on the subject.
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So today is June 19th. Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth National Independence Day. It is a federal holiday in the USA and in fact many of my American friends have the day off (enjoy yâall).
A quick recap for my fellow non-Americans, the reason for this holiday is to commemorate the âofficialâ end of slavery in the United states, when Major General Gordon Granger gave the order for the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas (June 19th, 1865). This marked the end of the American Civil War.
Today, the holiday is a day of festivities and remembrance. Mitch Kachun, a famed historian, defined 3 goals for celebration of Juneteenth: to celebrate, to educate, and to agitate (Kachun, 2006; Hume & Arceneaux, 2008).
To celebrate: often including barbecue, athletic games, dancing, music, drinking, parades, baseball games, rodeo, etc.
To educate: learning about the African-American experience. This often includes reading the original proclamation by General Granger.
To agitate: seeking attention or legal action for some cause that might benefit African-Americans â this includes raising awareness for the issue of slavery reparations
Now there is certainly more that could be discussed about Juneteenth but as neither an American nor a Black person, I feel like this is where my commentary should stop. However, I live in Canada and Iâm constantly aware of the fact that Canadian history is not perfect. So Iâm going to try and contribute to goal 2 of Juneteenth, with a Canadian spin on the subject.
(I've put the remaining under a read more because it's long, but at the end there are references for everything. I really recommend you read the entirety of Cooper's "The enslavement of Africans in Canada" because it is chilling to see how much Canadian history was erased from our textbooks)
The first reported Black slave in Canada (British North America at the time, BNA) was named Olivier Le Jeune. No, to be specific, following the kidnapping of a 9-year old boy from Madagascar and his enslavement, he was forcibly converted to Catholicism, baptized and given this name. We donât have documents of his original name. This occurred in 1629 (Cooper, 2022). Slavery became the predominant role for African Canadians between 1629-1834. Comparatively, in the USA (and also during its role in the BNA), slavery was practiced form 1526 - 1865.
In Canada, part of our history lessons as children, weâre taught that southern USA was pro-slavery, northern USA was mostly anti-slavery, and that Canada was the free land. That many of the slaves who escaped from the south would eventually make their way to Canada to be considered free men and women.
But we still had slaves. And in fact, both the French and British colonial regimes legalized slavery and fully gave enslavers property rights in and over Black bodies. âA central component of this arrangement is that the stolen person, the slave, becomes the property of the enslaver. As property, the enslaved is objectified and commodified, like a horse, piece of furniture, or livestockâ (Cooper, 2022).
To note - certain regions of Canada (i.e., New France near the St. Lawrence colony) had slaves with more than 50% being Indigenous rather than Black. However, across the board, between 1760-1834, nearly 100% of the enslaved men, women, and children in Canada were Africans.
During the 18th century, more than 3.4 million captive Africans were brought to BNA by British slaving ships. In fact, the labour of these slaves gave so much power to the British that it made the empire the âmost powerful and richest realm in modern history.â
And for the record, there are historians who will claim that the numbers of enslaved Black people were lower in Canada compared to Southern USA, Brazil, or the Caribbean but what is not accounted for is the fact that Canadaâs economy at the time was built on trade and migration. The maritime colonies relied on the sugar trade from the West Indies, a major hub of enslaved Africans. So either directly, or indirectly, Canadian households were dependent on slavery.
In 1793, following the creation of Upper and Lower Canada (in 1971), Upper Canada introduced a statute law banning the âimportation of new slaves into the colony.â This was specifically due to the valiant resistance of an enslaved woman, Chloe Cooley, who resisted her sale and travel to New York. The level of violence she caused against her enslaver caused the new governor of Upper Canada to want to protect his people and prevent the harm by new slaves. This did not lead to abolition and ending of slavery, but it began the process of it within Canada. In fact, children born to enslaved mothers after 1973 were eligible to receive their freedom at 25, and the subsequent children would be born free.
Chloe Cooley was also the reason for Upper Canada being eventually considered âfree soilâ and the later development of the Underground Railroad. Much would have been different without her sacrifice.
The Slavery Abolition Act, passed by the British Parliament on August 1st, 1833, was what ended Slavery formally in Canada. But similar to USA, that didnât mean that Black Canadians were suddenly considered equivalent to White Canadians. Segregation was prevalent in the same way as it was down south.
Canadian confederation occurred on July 1st, 1867. The new Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald? Well he was had famously said that he did not desire Black immigrants in Canada. That the country was formed for the White man, with no Black immigration allowance for 100 years. In fact, in 1911, an order-in-council prohibited Black people from immigrating to the country based on the paltry excuse of âclimatic unsuitability and inassimilability,â regardless of the fact that their people had been forced to adjust and assimilate to Canadian climate/culture for well over 200 years.
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Expanding the topic a little, it is important to consider the right of voting in Canada and the difficulty for women and BIPOC to vote historically. It is well known that in nearly all Western nations, the Womenâs suffragist movement was required for women to be even considered people, let alone vote (timeline).
In Canada, certain British colonies had allowed women to vote for various reasons, including women with no criminal record being allowed to vote in 1792 in Lower Canada. But by 1834, the UKâs Imperial Reform Act had led to the restriction of the womenâs vote on the basis of polling stations being âdangerous conditions.â By 1867, all 5 of the original signing provinces that led to Canadian confederation had banned women from voting.
Interestingly, when Black slaves were freed by the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, they were considered British citizens and entitled to vote. Now obvious racial discrimination impeded their ability to exercise their right often, particularly for Black women who had to fight based on race and sex. in 1848, Black men in Colchester, Canada West (later Ontario), attempted to vote in the electiosn for the parish/township officers. They made up only a third of the townâs population but were physically blocked by the white men present (Henry-Dixon, 2016).
In 1872, Chinese Canadians were banned from voting in BC - prior to that they had made up a majority of the voters in some BC districts. It should be noted that the majority of Chinese immigrants during this period were hired as labourers for the Canadian Pacific Railway. To be specific, they were hired as cheap labourers (often paid less than 50% of their White counterparts). They were not given adequate housing or medical care. This mass entrance of Chinese immigrants to BC and the areas around the Trans-Canada railway, have resulted in the large Chinese communities in the country.
Returning to the vote, the Indian Act was passed on April 12th, 1876 as a way to eradicate Indigenous culture, force assimilation into the White-Euro-Canadian society, and required status Indians to voluntarily give up their status/treaty rights to vote. Regardless, Status Indian women were barred from the vote.
Japanese Canadians lost the right to vote in BC, in 1895.
In 1907, all âHindusâ referring to anyone originating from the Indian subcontinent were disenfranchised in BC.
It took years of Suffragist movement across the provinces before the first province, Manitoba, allowed women of British descent/citizenship, 21 years+ to vote. In 1916. Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Yukon, follow suit across the next few years.
In 1918, most Canadian women are allowed to vote in federal elections, however Indigenous women must give up their status/treaty rights to do so.
1929, Women were legally considered âpersonsâ and could hold seats in the Canadian Senate.
1924 - Status Indians who were veterans of WWI were allowed to vote federally. 1931, Japanese Canadian veterans were given the same right (these were the first Japanese Canadians with the right to vote).
1947 - Chinese and South Asian Canadians gain the right to vote federally and provincially (ex: Indigenous and Japanese Canadians).
1988 - People with intellectual disabilities are granted the right to vote.
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Overall it takes until 1988 for every group of people in Canada to be allowed to vote. Some of us were alive when not everyone was allowed to vote in Canada. And to this day, BIPOC individuals face racial discrimination in the work place, in society, in the government, and online. So it is important we donât erase Canadian history because the USA is so much louder about its story. Weâre not âbetterâ than them.
While Juneteenth is a day for Black Americans to celebrate, educate, and agitate, its also a day for the rest of us to let them celebrate, to learn, and to support the agitation.
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References:
1. Janice Hume & Noah Arceneaux (2008) Public Memory, Cultural Legacy, and Press Coverage of the Juneteenth Revival, Journalism History, 34:3, 155-162, DOI: 10.1080/00947679.2008.12062768
2. Stuckey, S. (2005). Mitch Kachun. Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808â1915. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 339.
3. Cooper, A. (2022). The enslavement of Africans in Canada. Canadian Historical Association with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada
4. The Enslavement of African people in Canada (c. 1629-1834) (https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2020/07/the-enslavement-of-african-people-in-canada-c-16291834.html)
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A love letter to the contradictions of Sawamura Eijun
Caveat: there was no real point to thisâŚI just wrote until my brain was quiet đ
Second caveat: this is very much my projecting onto a character and very much influenced by how I write him
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Although we donât know what exactly Eijunâs family does, itâs pretty clear that this isnât a baseball legacy family. Which means as the only son of a Japanese family, Eijun is likely experiencing a lot of unspoken societal pressure. To support his family moving forward, to continue the family business, etc. While itâs clear his family is extremely supportive of his dreams, he likely still shoulders a lot without addressing it. As the eldest daughter of an immigrant family, I resonate with some of those societal pressures. We never see any explicit details of stress associated with his family, but I cannot imagine that affording to send their high school kid to an out of province school would be cheap, so maintaining his baseball scholarship is paramount. We know he wants to fulfill his middle school teamâs dreams, so its likely heâs also shouldering the belief that he needs to succeed to keep his family from being disappointed in him, or shattering their dreams. When I got into university, while my parents never outwardly said it, there was definitely a silent pressure of me succeeding where their dreams werenât. Parents work hard for their kids to succeed after all.
Not to mention the fact that at the start of the story, Eijun is not a powerhouse baseball player. Heâs passionate, but even he is aware of his shortcomings. So now heâs leaving everything heâs ever known on the off chance that maybe heâll be good enough. Boy the stressâŚ. On top of that, heâs the epicentre of a friend group and dragging them further into what is their hobby but his obsession and meaning in life. First he failed as a friend, captain, and ace to get them to the top and now, from his perspective, heâs âabandonedâ them for loftier goals. He simply cannot disappoint his friends who supported him with everything they have.
Then when he gets to Seidou, he doesnât find the unrelenting and constant support and camaraderie he had back home. He finds teammates who donât wake him up after making him play video games all night, he finds a teammate who will rat him out, and a coach who canât afford time for leniency or understanding. And itâs not to say that Eijun doesnât make mistakes or that the team is being unfair/rude. But the social whiplash of friends who love and tease him, to people who donât know him pulling pranks? Teachers who know Eijun since childhood and understand how the boy behaves, versus a coaching team who are dealing with 100+ teenagers? Itâs not easy.
Now, Eijun makes friends easily - innately kind, friendly, passionate and outgoing. Not surprising he draws people in like a moth to light. And over time he gets better at baseball, at becoming a person the team can rely on. He practices, practices, and practices. Until the grooves of his fingers have imprints of the ball permanently present. Surely, heâs getting the respect of his team, the coaches? Heâs not ace material yet, but heâll get there definitely.
And then the game with Inashiro, the yips arc.
Back home, his friends and family love him because heâs been there forever. Even if Eijun had no baseball, his family and friends would never stop loving him. We might never see it, but I sincerely doubt that Eijun would have reached out to his family/friends for support in this time. I honestly donât think he would find it helpful longterm. Because he has a different demon now - canât pitch to the inside, which means he canât really play baseball at the level he wants to. Which means he canât support the team (bells ringing at abandoning a second team). I donât blame the teenagers for not knowing what to say to Eijun or how to comfort him; these are children, Eijun doesnât come to them for support or even act close to how their expecting, and they think space might be helping. But I canât help but think that from Eijunâs perspective, that this is the final nail in the coffin. He wasnât good at baseball before, but at least heâd started to become useful to them team. So maybe he can find his place here the way he was able to at home? But now he canât even be useful, why would they love him? They only know him in the context of baseball. So itâs no surprise that Ochiaiâs words sink into his head - how else can you be loved if youâre not useful?
I canât even imagine the clusterfuck that goes through his mind when he finds out about Miyukiâs injury and how long the catcher hid it. To be clear, Miyuki owed Eijun nothing, and Miyuki is an idiot no matter what for hiding the injury. But again, from Eijunâs perspective, the anxiety of watching someone he respects and cares about hiding an injury and not at least telling him, his âpartnerâ? Anxiety is a bitch.
Thereâs so many times in the story where Eijun could easily feel less than, feel unwanted, or having not âearnedâ the respect heâs fighting for. Seeing the focus on Furuya when Eijun needs to practice as well; getting subbed in so late when Furuya is floundering only for Eijun to do incredible? A less anxious person would likely be offended. I canât help but imagine that Eijun actually feels a bit guilty - he wasnât good enough fast enough to start the game, to show the coach that he was the better option; but also his friend was suffering and all he could focus on was pitching.
Itâs obvious that when Eijun is uncomfortable or nervous, he gets formal and loud. He fights back when people tease him, and heâs deeply emotional. As someone very similar, it sounds like he hides his hurt and anxiety by becoming the centre of attention. By being loud and drawing the attention that way, itâs harder to see his nerves. No wonder itâs shocking when heâs finally quiet during the yips arc, or when he sits away from the team to try and analyze the game himself. Heâs the teamâs mood maker, but also he gets to hide himself a little whenever heâs loud which means when heâs quiet, that part of him gets to take a bit of a rest. Itâs not to say that Eijun isnât a loud person, but the loudness of a happy person and loudness of an anxious person are very different.
Thereâs a lot of bravery in feeling so much all the time, putting yourself out there to be harshly criticized and still striving for the thing you love.
a feel like the new generation of fanfic readers NEED to understand that clicking on a fic (interaction) does nothing. ao3 has no algorithm. your private discord discussions of fic do not reach the authors. if you do not actively engage with writers they will stop posting. this isnât social media this is community.
NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.
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everyone in the notes we are all holding hands. everyone who hasnt worked on a wip in weeks or months or years, its okay. we are going slow but we are going
Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE
Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted
Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative
Purity culture is ruining fan culture and you all are fucking annoying
Too many children in the comments like âI think authors should be able to share ko-fi links :) itâs just niceâ and âOP is just a cop.â Homie, OP is trying to keep AO3 fully functional without interruption. I will report your ass, too, because I value fic artists and our freedom of expression and my audience and our shared history far more than I value the few bux you wanna make on a commission.
It is not hard to link to your Tumblr or Twitter with a vague message like, âIf youâre looking for my other works or other ways of supporting me, go here: link.â I have had people buy me coffees after enjoying my fic and asking where to support me. I threw up a link to my Tumblr and people cared enough to follow it. They were fully understanding when I explained in the comments that they could not commission me and I could not link them directly to any donation platform, but they could go to xyz link to read more. And they did! Nobody has to put AO3 directly on the firing line.
Go ahead and commission independently. Just do it anywhere else except on AO3. And then donât come crying to the community when you, personally, get a C&D from a massive corporation.
AO3 is our bullet shield. Tumblr will pull your shit down. Wattpad wonât fucking protect you. LJ and FF.net already sold our asses for one (1) corn chip. AO3 is trying to protect us, you goddamn lemmings.
If you cannot follow the rules that protect fanspaces, you do not belong in our fanspaces.
The only people who misunderstand this are doing so intentionally and maliciously. Do yourself a favor and block the infants who think this isnât a big deal.
Please remember that this ALSO INCLUDES FANDOM CHARITY AUCTIONS.
When you post charity auction fics, DO NOT note that they are commissions in any way. You can note them as âhere is my thank you gift to X for such-and-such eventâ but please please PLEASE do not list them as commissions.
I think a lot of younger people are seeing this as a moral panic by OP. These are NOT being laid out as moral injunctions! This is not about being good! This is about covering your own ass and keeping fandom away from larger-scale legal trouble. No one is saying âIf you break the rules youâre BEING BAD!â Theyâre trying to tell you âbreaking these rules is DANGEROUS for yourself and potentially others as well!â
do you know where "no beta we die like x" comes from and how it is used?
The term "beta" in this context is short for "beta reader" - a person who reads a fic while it's still in the editing stage and helps the writer get it ready to post. Some betas check grammar. Some check canon compliance. Some are sensitivity readers. There are lots of things that betas can do.
So functionally, saying "no beta" means that the writer didn't get this checked by a second person before they posted it. It's a warning that there might be errors or typos etc. It's mostly used when an author has written something quickly and is posting without doing a lot of (or any) edits first.
As for where it comes from? It all started with a bumper sticker.
This image was an internet meme at one point, and it got meme'd on in the form of "no ___ we ___ like men"
Here on tumblr, one of the versions that got really popular was from now-deleted user @grec1a who created this version:
From there, it migrated to AO3 as the "no beta we die like men" tag, and very often the word men is replaced by the name of a character who dies in canon.
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my favorite thing about this post is that a handful of people have gone "oh wait! this is tangible proof that i don't need to be embarrassed about leaving a lot of comments!! i'll stop being so ashamed!" YES!! ao3 authors basically universally will die for people who comment spam. we love to see it and we do not find you weird or annoying At All.
think about it this way: we ourselves are weird enough to have spent several hours, days, or Months writing down this story. we are weird enough about the content to do that! why on Earth would we be mean and judgmental toward people who care enough to get excited about reading it?? we shared it Specifically For You To Get Excited About!
