Poem: "Worth Defending"
This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It fills the "Blood" square in my 10-1-20 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. It has been sponsored by a pool with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ng_moonmoth. This poem belongs to the China's Mistake, Shiv, and Finn Family threads of the Polychrome Heroics series.
Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It features threatening thugs, attempted kidnapping with intent to traffic, child endangerment, being outnumbered, assorted weapons, evasive maneuvers, violent use of superpowers in defense of self and others, with appropriate force, blood and mess, epic 911 fail, petty theft, low self-worth, insecurity, and other mayhem. This is the hurt part; the comfort part will appear in a subsequent poem. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
"Worth Defending"
[Thursday, February 4, 2016 at around 4 PM in Mercedes, California]
Shiv and Edison strolled along
the sidewalk. The late winter sun
was pleasant in California.
Edison had wanted to go
to the food truck park, and
Shiv had offered to go along.
The rule was that nobody went
anywhere alone for at least a month,
because Boss Finn was still wary,
and Shiv couldn't blame her.
Besides, there was a new truck,
Shrimpy's. Shiv was determined
to eat his way through the menu of
shrimp cooked with world seasonings --
everything from adobo to za'atar.
He was debating between
the green goddess dressing
and the mango-lime dip when
two men stepped in front of them.
"You're coming with us now,"
one man said ominously.
"Fuck no," Shiv said,
backing away as he
put Edison behind him.
The bushes by the sidewalk
rustled and then gave way.
There were four thugs now,
all big and tall and bulging with
muscles as they closed together.
The two on the ends held knives,
but all of them had guns and
other weapons hidden too.
"We're taking the boy,"
said the leader, "and we'll
take you too, for a bonus.
Maybe they'll pay extra."
Shiv licked his lips.
"Edison," he said,
"Watership."
Edison dropped
to the ground, spun
on his fingertips,
and darted away
in a random direction.
He zigged and zagged
as he went, making it
impossible to hit him.
The thugs never had a chance.
Shiv flung out his power in
a wide arc, shattering ribs and
shoving them through lungs.
All four attackers went down,
most of them gasping and
clutching their right sides.
The leader was stubborn,
though, and he tried to reach
the bolt pistol he'd dropped.
Shiv kicked it away and
broke the thug's arm.
"Stay down," he advised.
The leader tried to get up,
reaching for a backup weapon.
"Fuck it," Shiv said, and broke
two more ribs on the left, stabbing
them through the lung above
and below the heart.
Finally the leader
went down and
stayed down.
Blood bubbled from
his mouth and patches
of it on his chest stained
his white shirt like scarlet dye.
Looking around, Shiv saw that
Edison had gotten clean away,
but the attackers were all
gurgling for breath.
"Son of a bitch,"
Shiv muttered as he
pulled out a burner phone.
He hit the voice scrambler
and then punched the number.
"911, what's your emergency?"
Shiv rattled off the address,
then said, "Four bad guys down,
need some ambulances here."
"What's your name, sir?"
the dispatcher asked him.
"None'a yer fuckin' business,"
Shiv snapped. "I'm just
a bystander who druther
not watch the bastards
die of punctured lungs."
"How do you know that
they have punctured lungs?"
the dispatcher demanded.
"Cause I'm the one who
done it when they attacked,"
Shiv said. "Y'know what,
fuck this and fuck you. I told
you the address, so if they die,
now it's your fuckin' fault."
Shiv snapped the burner phone
in half, and then in quarters.
Walking briskly, he found
a sewer drain and used
his superpower to turn
part of the phone into
confetti that he dumped
down the metal grill.
Moving on, he repeated
the process at other drains
until his hands were empty.
Shiv jinked around a corner,
shucked off his plain blue hoodie,
and handed it to a homeless guy.
"Gee, thanks!" the man said
as Shiv hurried onward.
Twisting his route
to throw off any pursuit,
Shiv nicked a gray hoodie
from a clothesline to cover
his black T-shirt, and then
flipped up the hood to cover
his distinctive white-blond hair.
He didn't worry about the jeans
because everybody wore those.
Shiv swept his superpower
in wide arcs, searching for
anyone carrying weapons
or anything else suspicious.
He didn't find anything.
Apparently they had
thrown all their men
into one frontal attack.
Stupid, but if it was
the enemy making
the mistakes, cool.
Shiv knew those four
wouldn't be getting up
to bother him again.
He thought back to
the lessons he'd gotten
from Dr. Bloch about
anatomy and self-defense.
Shiv had easily grasped
the instructions on where
and how to strike, both
to disable and to kill.
He hadn't killed them
because it wasn't needful.
Some of the stuff, though,
hadn't made sense until now.
"Self-defense is not just a set
of techniques; it’s a state of
mind," Dr. Bloch had told him,
"and it begins with the belief
that you are worth defending."
Shiv knew damn well he wasn't,
because he was muscle and
getting roughed up was just
part of his job -- but Edison
was absolutely worth defending.
Shiv maybe owed Dr. Bloch
another favor or two.
If it hadn't been for
a whole lot of info
on stopping power,
that street fight might
have gone way worse.
Shiv was sweating
in the mild winter air,
and his hands were
starting to shake.
He just wiped them on
his jeans and went faster.
The Finn house appeared
as he trotted toward it,
making Shiv skid to a stop.
What if something else went wrong?
Or what if the Finns got pissed
with him for being so violent?
Taking a deep breath, he went inside.
* * *
Notes:
"Self-defense is not just a set of techniques; it’s a state of mind, and it begins with the belief that you are worth defending."
-- Rorion Gracie
See a site map of the Pho Real Food Truck Park in Mercedes, California. It's inspired by pho, a Vietnamese street food.
Shrimpy's is a food truck that specializes in shrimp. They stock 25 spice blends from around the world, so you can get your shrimp seasoned however you want. Shrimp can be deep-fried, air-fried, boiled, or grilled. The breading for the fried shrimp is hypoallergenic. A rotating menu of 10 sauces complements the dishes, including green goddess and mango-lime. They also have 5 side dishes, 3 desserts, and 5 beverages on rotation.
Watership Down is a novel about rabbits fleeing from various hazards, hence "Watership" as code for "run like a rabbit."
Bom Bom Bunny is a Terramange-American series of stories for preschool children that introduces basic safety skills like being quiet, staying still, watching, keeping out of the way, running away from danger, and screaming your head off. The main character is a rabbit who learns those skills to avoid predators. The tone is actually warm and positive, about how gaining new skills lets you explore exciting new places.
Self-defense for children typically focuses on things like safe falling and running away. Know how to run for self-defense.
Parkour is about moving freely through the environment through a variety of techniques. Groundwork is essential to the practice. Watch videos about groundwork and see an example of groundwork around obstacles. That exercise with the tennis ball on the string is probably one of Edison's favorites. These provide excellent preparation for self-defense by promoting fitness, speed, agility, situational awareness, creative problem-solving, and unpredictable motion.
Despite local-America's interests in fitness and self-defense, and the general advice that running is an excellent way to avoid dangerous confrontations, I found zero material on how to practice running for your life.
Dr. Bloch has furnished Shiv with a thorough and customized education in anatomy for self-defense including vulnerable targets. They used a variety of three-dimensional models and worksheets to capitalize on Shiv's tactile and visual-spatial learning modes. See a full skeleton model, a skeleton with labels, a full body puzzle, a torso model with labeled parts, and chest anatomy. This tailored and relevant education equips Shiv to use his superpowers with maximum efficiency and effectiveness in a serious confrontation, so he can achieve both stopping power and appropriate force. While most people might distrust a criminal with detailed anatomical knowledge, Dr. Bloch correctly identified Shiv as more defensive than brutal, and that is exactly what we see here. Notice that Shiv doesn't have to wait until the thugs attack: he can scope them out as soon as they appear, identifying weapons and bones quickly.
Broken ribs pose a serious threat because they can lead to punctured lungs and sucking chest wounds. Shiv's superpowers allow him to sense sharp and hard things, with bone toward the lower end of his spectrum. He can't perceive soft tissues in the same way, but he can now use his knowledge of anatomy to estimate where those soft parts should be. This allows him to select ribs that can be pushed through lungs without damaging the heart. He can tell that pushing front ribs toward the back will go through lungs, but cannot necessarily tell whether they have also gone through skin. He's still learning.
Stopping power is the ability of an action to cause an opponent to cease posing a threat. This is often described in terms of injury or lethality, but these are distractions. What really matters is how well something makes your opponent quit bothering you. Discussions span guns, martial arts, and so on. Bear in mind that pain alone often doesn't work if the opponent is drunk, drugged, or a total badass. This is why the more brutal martial arts often focus on breaking bones and joints: a broken part cannot function, regardless of whether or not its owner feels any pain. Anything that disrupts breathing has stopping power simply because that forces the body to direct all efforts toward air flow, so broken ribs have moderate to high stopping power depending how bad the break is.
Super combat ethics get even more complex.
Self-defense should use the the minimum level of force that will end the conflict. The use of force exists on a continuum, but is also more complex because of proportional factors which compare the respective threat level of attacker(s) and defender(s). This angular use of force model illustrates the thin line of ideal action which will be effective but not excessive. This circular model shows how options overlap moving from lower to higher levels of force. Extra factors such as social status, weapons, or superpowers can change the level of appropriate force in a given situation. In this case, the attackers were armed, the defenders were outnumbered, and a small child was the primary target, all of which added justification to Shiv using overwhelming superpower force in defense of self and others. And he still used disabling rather than lethal attacks, even though lethal force was absolutely justified by the severity of that situation.
Dominance theory defines certain interactions among individuals in regard to status. Because fighting is dangerous (the combatants could be injured or killed) it is better to settle status through dominance displays instead. Most cape fights are dominance fights, where the goal is to gain access to desired resources or activities, rather than to maim or kill. Conversely, submissive behavior acknowledges the opponent's dominance and serves to end the conflict. In human fights, staying down signals submission while getting up or reaching for a weapon signals aggression. So long as someone remains an active combatant attempting to cause trouble, it is justifiable to take further action to stop the threat.
Black people typically learn not to call emergency services because that is often ineffective and/or dangerous for them compared to how it works for white people. Ambulances respond slower to poor and minority neighborhoods. Medics discriminate against patients of color, treating white patients better.
In this case, the neighborhood is white and affluent, Shiv is white as a lily, but he sounds black over the phone. The dispatcher reacts to his accent and manner, since she can't see how he looks, and the result is bad.
It is fairly easy to fool people with a simple disguise. Superman's disguise is a lot better than most people realize. Learn how to disguise yourself. Quick changes in clothing or hair can throw off someone following you. A prepared switch can be dramatic; reversible or convertible garments maximize variability without the need to discard or obtain anything.
Psychology is a vital part of self-defense. The philosophy varies dramatically between the most nonviolent (like aikido) to the most aggressive (like krav maga) martial arts. (This does not necessarily correlate to effectiveness. The most formidable martial artist I've seen in person this life was a tiny aikido master who barely bothered to disguise his superpowers in a public performance.) The ethics of self-defense also span a wide range of stances. It is up to each individual to choose a mindset, philosphy, and ethical framework that they feel comfortable enough to use.
Self-worth is the appreciation of one's own virtues, talents, and contributions. Emotional maltreatment contributes to low self-worth, which has negative impacts. There are ways to build self-worth in yourself or in young people. Here's a handy worksheet for tracking interactions that raise or undermine self-worth.
Labeling youth as violent actually makes crime a lot more violent. The correlations among foster care, violent labeling, and criminal behavior are especially dire. And yet somehow, Shiv's streak of decency is surprisingly wide.
ng_moonmoth. This poem belongs to the China's Mistake, Shiv, and Finn Family threads of the Polychrome Heroics series.Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It features threatening thugs, attempted kidnapping with intent to traffic, child endangerment, being outnumbered, assorted weapons, evasive maneuvers, violent use of superpowers in defense of self and others, with appropriate force, blood and mess, epic 911 fail, petty theft, low self-worth, insecurity, and other mayhem. This is the hurt part; the comfort part will appear in a subsequent poem. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
"Worth Defending"
[Thursday, February 4, 2016 at around 4 PM in Mercedes, California]
Shiv and Edison strolled along
the sidewalk. The late winter sun
was pleasant in California.
Edison had wanted to go
to the food truck park, and
Shiv had offered to go along.
The rule was that nobody went
anywhere alone for at least a month,
because Boss Finn was still wary,
and Shiv couldn't blame her.
Besides, there was a new truck,
Shrimpy's. Shiv was determined
to eat his way through the menu of
shrimp cooked with world seasonings --
everything from adobo to za'atar.
He was debating between
the green goddess dressing
and the mango-lime dip when
two men stepped in front of them.
"You're coming with us now,"
one man said ominously.
"Fuck no," Shiv said,
backing away as he
put Edison behind him.
The bushes by the sidewalk
rustled and then gave way.
There were four thugs now,
all big and tall and bulging with
muscles as they closed together.
The two on the ends held knives,
but all of them had guns and
other weapons hidden too.
"We're taking the boy,"
said the leader, "and we'll
take you too, for a bonus.
Maybe they'll pay extra."
Shiv licked his lips.
"Edison," he said,
"Watership."
Edison dropped
to the ground, spun
on his fingertips,
and darted away
in a random direction.
He zigged and zagged
as he went, making it
impossible to hit him.
The thugs never had a chance.
Shiv flung out his power in
a wide arc, shattering ribs and
shoving them through lungs.
All four attackers went down,
most of them gasping and
clutching their right sides.
The leader was stubborn,
though, and he tried to reach
the bolt pistol he'd dropped.
Shiv kicked it away and
broke the thug's arm.
"Stay down," he advised.
The leader tried to get up,
reaching for a backup weapon.
"Fuck it," Shiv said, and broke
two more ribs on the left, stabbing
them through the lung above
and below the heart.
Finally the leader
went down and
stayed down.
Blood bubbled from
his mouth and patches
of it on his chest stained
his white shirt like scarlet dye.
Looking around, Shiv saw that
Edison had gotten clean away,
but the attackers were all
gurgling for breath.
"Son of a bitch,"
Shiv muttered as he
pulled out a burner phone.
He hit the voice scrambler
and then punched the number.
"911, what's your emergency?"
Shiv rattled off the address,
then said, "Four bad guys down,
need some ambulances here."
"What's your name, sir?"
the dispatcher asked him.
"None'a yer fuckin' business,"
Shiv snapped. "I'm just
a bystander who druther
not watch the bastards
die of punctured lungs."
"How do you know that
they have punctured lungs?"
the dispatcher demanded.
"Cause I'm the one who
done it when they attacked,"
Shiv said. "Y'know what,
fuck this and fuck you. I told
you the address, so if they die,
now it's your fuckin' fault."
Shiv snapped the burner phone
in half, and then in quarters.
Walking briskly, he found
a sewer drain and used
his superpower to turn
part of the phone into
confetti that he dumped
down the metal grill.
Moving on, he repeated
the process at other drains
until his hands were empty.
Shiv jinked around a corner,
shucked off his plain blue hoodie,
and handed it to a homeless guy.
"Gee, thanks!" the man said
as Shiv hurried onward.
Twisting his route
to throw off any pursuit,
Shiv nicked a gray hoodie
from a clothesline to cover
his black T-shirt, and then
flipped up the hood to cover
his distinctive white-blond hair.
He didn't worry about the jeans
because everybody wore those.
Shiv swept his superpower
in wide arcs, searching for
anyone carrying weapons
or anything else suspicious.
He didn't find anything.
Apparently they had
thrown all their men
into one frontal attack.
Stupid, but if it was
the enemy making
the mistakes, cool.
Shiv knew those four
wouldn't be getting up
to bother him again.
He thought back to
the lessons he'd gotten
from Dr. Bloch about
anatomy and self-defense.
Shiv had easily grasped
the instructions on where
and how to strike, both
to disable and to kill.
He hadn't killed them
because it wasn't needful.
Some of the stuff, though,
hadn't made sense until now.
"Self-defense is not just a set
of techniques; it’s a state of
mind," Dr. Bloch had told him,
"and it begins with the belief
that you are worth defending."
Shiv knew damn well he wasn't,
because he was muscle and
getting roughed up was just
part of his job -- but Edison
was absolutely worth defending.
Shiv maybe owed Dr. Bloch
another favor or two.
If it hadn't been for
a whole lot of info
on stopping power,
that street fight might
have gone way worse.
Shiv was sweating
in the mild winter air,
and his hands were
starting to shake.
He just wiped them on
his jeans and went faster.
The Finn house appeared
as he trotted toward it,
making Shiv skid to a stop.
What if something else went wrong?
Or what if the Finns got pissed
with him for being so violent?
Taking a deep breath, he went inside.
* * *
Notes:
"Self-defense is not just a set of techniques; it’s a state of mind, and it begins with the belief that you are worth defending."
-- Rorion Gracie
See a site map of the Pho Real Food Truck Park in Mercedes, California. It's inspired by pho, a Vietnamese street food.
Shrimpy's is a food truck that specializes in shrimp. They stock 25 spice blends from around the world, so you can get your shrimp seasoned however you want. Shrimp can be deep-fried, air-fried, boiled, or grilled. The breading for the fried shrimp is hypoallergenic. A rotating menu of 10 sauces complements the dishes, including green goddess and mango-lime. They also have 5 side dishes, 3 desserts, and 5 beverages on rotation.
Watership Down is a novel about rabbits fleeing from various hazards, hence "Watership" as code for "run like a rabbit."
Bom Bom Bunny is a Terramange-American series of stories for preschool children that introduces basic safety skills like being quiet, staying still, watching, keeping out of the way, running away from danger, and screaming your head off. The main character is a rabbit who learns those skills to avoid predators. The tone is actually warm and positive, about how gaining new skills lets you explore exciting new places.
Self-defense for children typically focuses on things like safe falling and running away. Know how to run for self-defense.
Parkour is about moving freely through the environment through a variety of techniques. Groundwork is essential to the practice. Watch videos about groundwork and see an example of groundwork around obstacles. That exercise with the tennis ball on the string is probably one of Edison's favorites. These provide excellent preparation for self-defense by promoting fitness, speed, agility, situational awareness, creative problem-solving, and unpredictable motion.
Despite local-America's interests in fitness and self-defense, and the general advice that running is an excellent way to avoid dangerous confrontations, I found zero material on how to practice running for your life.
Dr. Bloch has furnished Shiv with a thorough and customized education in anatomy for self-defense including vulnerable targets. They used a variety of three-dimensional models and worksheets to capitalize on Shiv's tactile and visual-spatial learning modes. See a full skeleton model, a skeleton with labels, a full body puzzle, a torso model with labeled parts, and chest anatomy. This tailored and relevant education equips Shiv to use his superpowers with maximum efficiency and effectiveness in a serious confrontation, so he can achieve both stopping power and appropriate force. While most people might distrust a criminal with detailed anatomical knowledge, Dr. Bloch correctly identified Shiv as more defensive than brutal, and that is exactly what we see here. Notice that Shiv doesn't have to wait until the thugs attack: he can scope them out as soon as they appear, identifying weapons and bones quickly.
Broken ribs pose a serious threat because they can lead to punctured lungs and sucking chest wounds. Shiv's superpowers allow him to sense sharp and hard things, with bone toward the lower end of his spectrum. He can't perceive soft tissues in the same way, but he can now use his knowledge of anatomy to estimate where those soft parts should be. This allows him to select ribs that can be pushed through lungs without damaging the heart. He can tell that pushing front ribs toward the back will go through lungs, but cannot necessarily tell whether they have also gone through skin. He's still learning.
Stopping power is the ability of an action to cause an opponent to cease posing a threat. This is often described in terms of injury or lethality, but these are distractions. What really matters is how well something makes your opponent quit bothering you. Discussions span guns, martial arts, and so on. Bear in mind that pain alone often doesn't work if the opponent is drunk, drugged, or a total badass. This is why the more brutal martial arts often focus on breaking bones and joints: a broken part cannot function, regardless of whether or not its owner feels any pain. Anything that disrupts breathing has stopping power simply because that forces the body to direct all efforts toward air flow, so broken ribs have moderate to high stopping power depending how bad the break is.
Super combat ethics get even more complex.
Self-defense should use the the minimum level of force that will end the conflict. The use of force exists on a continuum, but is also more complex because of proportional factors which compare the respective threat level of attacker(s) and defender(s). This angular use of force model illustrates the thin line of ideal action which will be effective but not excessive. This circular model shows how options overlap moving from lower to higher levels of force. Extra factors such as social status, weapons, or superpowers can change the level of appropriate force in a given situation. In this case, the attackers were armed, the defenders were outnumbered, and a small child was the primary target, all of which added justification to Shiv using overwhelming superpower force in defense of self and others. And he still used disabling rather than lethal attacks, even though lethal force was absolutely justified by the severity of that situation.
Dominance theory defines certain interactions among individuals in regard to status. Because fighting is dangerous (the combatants could be injured or killed) it is better to settle status through dominance displays instead. Most cape fights are dominance fights, where the goal is to gain access to desired resources or activities, rather than to maim or kill. Conversely, submissive behavior acknowledges the opponent's dominance and serves to end the conflict. In human fights, staying down signals submission while getting up or reaching for a weapon signals aggression. So long as someone remains an active combatant attempting to cause trouble, it is justifiable to take further action to stop the threat.
Black people typically learn not to call emergency services because that is often ineffective and/or dangerous for them compared to how it works for white people. Ambulances respond slower to poor and minority neighborhoods. Medics discriminate against patients of color, treating white patients better.
In this case, the neighborhood is white and affluent, Shiv is white as a lily, but he sounds black over the phone. The dispatcher reacts to his accent and manner, since she can't see how he looks, and the result is bad.
It is fairly easy to fool people with a simple disguise. Superman's disguise is a lot better than most people realize. Learn how to disguise yourself. Quick changes in clothing or hair can throw off someone following you. A prepared switch can be dramatic; reversible or convertible garments maximize variability without the need to discard or obtain anything.
Psychology is a vital part of self-defense. The philosophy varies dramatically between the most nonviolent (like aikido) to the most aggressive (like krav maga) martial arts. (This does not necessarily correlate to effectiveness. The most formidable martial artist I've seen in person this life was a tiny aikido master who barely bothered to disguise his superpowers in a public performance.) The ethics of self-defense also span a wide range of stances. It is up to each individual to choose a mindset, philosphy, and ethical framework that they feel comfortable enough to use.
Self-worth is the appreciation of one's own virtues, talents, and contributions. Emotional maltreatment contributes to low self-worth, which has negative impacts. There are ways to build self-worth in yourself or in young people. Here's a handy worksheet for tracking interactions that raise or undermine self-worth.
Labeling youth as violent actually makes crime a lot more violent. The correlations among foster care, violent labeling, and criminal behavior are especially dire. And yet somehow, Shiv's streak of decency is surprisingly wide.