#Impervious (Unrepentant)

[slrmagazine]

EXTINCTION A.D. Drop New Single Feat. Matthew Kiichi Heafy and Announce New Album

EXTINCTION A.D. Drop New Single Feat. Matthew Kiichi Heafy and Announce New Album. #extinctionad @ExtinctionAD

Extinction A.D., the relentless purveyors of ferocious hardcore tinged thrash metal, have announced today that they will unleash their fourth studio album titled ‘To The Detested,’ on August 16th via Unique Leader Records. Alongside today’s announcement comes the debut of their latest single and accompanying music video, “Impervious (Unrepentant),” featuring guest vocals by Matthew Kiichi…

[goopyish]

If I made a fear and hunger oc they'd just be an unrepentant gleeful serial killer going around being the only person happy to be stuck in The Dungeon/Termina. They're seemingly just part of the bloodthirsty rabble that's already ubiquitous to the setting but with a completely intact mental fortitude and willful sadism. Their psyche harmonizes so well with the ambient cruelty that there was never any need for an outside force to take that control from them. They wouldn't be impervious, btw, just unbothered.

[amistytown]

The Brothers Comfort a Bullied MC

I started writing this thinking it would be something short and sweet I could finish in a day, and then it turned into this. MC remains gender neutral, and I currently don’t write for the dateables, but when I do I could always write a part II if people are interested. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it, anon, and thank you for the request! As always, I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors that may have gone unnoticed. Trigger warning for mentions of blood, violence, and physical and emotional bullying. Thank you to those who take the time to read my work; it’s greatly appreciated!

LUCIFER

Immediately notices you’re quieter than usual, face sullen and void of the beautiful smile Lucifer has grown accustomed to. He’s determined to figure out what’s troubling you, undeniably concerned for your wellbeing; you’re the exchange student, though, more importantly, you’re his human, and your happiness is his own. That night he calls you to his study, always willing to make time in his busy schedule to accommodate you, especially when his human is in need. Your eyes are dark and swollen, and your head is bowed as you enter; you look exceptionally fragile, his heart aching at the sight. Behind closed doors he doesn’t hesitate to pull you into his embrace, pressing a light kiss to your forehead while he runs his fingers through your hair; he can feel you relax against him, hands twisting in his shirt as you bury your face in his chest.

Bursting into tears, you cry in his arms, and he holds you close, gaze soft as he consoles you, gently rubbing your back and whispering words of comfort. You’re his priority, his pride and joy, and he won’t rest until he knows you’re okay, wanting to soothe your aching heart. Flames dance in the fireplace, casting the room in their golden glow and emanating a heat that dries your tears and warms you both body and soul. Lucifer cradles you to him in one of the chairs situated before the hearth, watching over you as you curl up in his lap. Patiently he waits for you to speak what’s on your mind, unburdening yourself of your worries, his anger quiet and cold once he learns of the demons tormenting you. They are foolish to bully the one he loves, and to do so on school grounds; they will certainly be punished for their crimes—he will see to it personally.

Lucifer reassures you will no longer endure such harassment, encouraging you to confide in him; there’s little you can do or say to bother the Avatar of Pride, and he wants to help when able, providing his undying support. Your mood lifts significantly, and his heart swells as you cup his cheeks to draw him into a kiss, your lips smiling against his and sweetening the moment. He won’t allow you to leave his side the remainder of the night, and you’re eager to remain in his company, lounging in his study while you wait for him to finish his work. Though his focus is elsewhere, and he decides to turn in early, carrying you to his room where he tucks you in, hugging you to him beneath the blankets. The next morning, he excuses you from your duties, ordering a day of rest and relaxation; you deserve it, after all.

MAMMON

The Avatar of Greed is attending class when he overhears a low-level demon taunting you, throwing insult after insult while you try to focus on your studies; though the longer you ignore them, the more they push back, your face falling as their words leave their mark on your heart. Mammon’s blood is boiling, and he’s out of his seat, towering over the demon in an instant, a hand wrapped around their throat. Lucifer intervenes, putting an end to the chaos, but Mammon is unapologetic, his elder brother’s lecturing doing little to quell the fire still raging beneath the surface. He’s your protector, and he won’t hesitate to defend you—the consequences be damned.

To say he’s worried about you is an understatement, he refuses to leave your side, determined to protect you at all costs. A lowly demon is harassing you? The Great Mammon will deal with them personally, and once he’s finished, they won’t think twice about hurting his human. He loves you, although it’s difficult for him to admit at times, but you’re his world, and he hates to see you upset. Words do hurt, he knows all too well, so he’ll show you how loved you are by holding your hand and pulling you into his warm embrace, allowing you to cry on his shoulder—anything for you. Your tears wet his jacket, body shaking as you sob, finally breaking down from days of bullying. He wishes he noticed sooner, but he’s here now and will take care of you.

As soon as school is over for the day, he’ll make certain you’re comfortable and help you unwind in the peace and quiet of your room; tell him what you want and it’s yours, no questions asked. He’ll order your favorite food, which you enjoy while watching a movie, finding solace in one another’s presence. When you smile for the first time that day he’s elated, appreciating how beautiful you are—heart, body, and soul—if anyone deserves happiness, it’s you. His arms encircle your waist, drawing you close, and you kiss his cheek in thanks before resting your head on his chest. The soft touch of your lips renders him speechless, his heart pounding as he breathes in your scent, sweet and heavenly. Once he composes himself, he returns the kiss with fervor, promising to always protect you.

LEVIATHAN

The downside to attending class online is he can’t see you throughout the day. After school he makes sure the two of you have plans, whether it’s playing videos games, watching anime, or simply enjoying each other’s company. He’s devastated when you cancel on him, but more concerned you’re feeling unwell; humans are fragile creatures, and he needs to take care of his Henry. Of course, those self-deprecating thoughts linger at the back of his mind, telling him you cancelled on purpose—who wants to waste their time on a gross otaku like him? However, he collects himself, dismissing them for your sake, and knocks on your bedroom door with trembling hands.

Light cascades from your room into the hall, his eyes widening when they meet yours, your gaze glassy and cheeks stained by your tears. For a moment he wonders if he is to blame, trying to recall everything he said and did since breakfast, to find an answer, only to confuse himself further. Yet you smile at him, anchoring him to reality, and he hates how it fails to reach your eyes. He can’t help enveloping you in his arms, forgetting how to breathe now that you’re so close, and he’s certain his heart is about to break as you begin to sob into his chest, clinging to him in desperation. Your cries hurt him dearly, and he wants to cry himself seeing you upset, but refrains, staying by your side to offer what support he can give.

In the privacy of his room, he’s extra attentive, hesitant but soft touches and worried glances in your direction while he wraps you up in his blankets, even allowing you to hold his Ruri-chan pillow for comfort. The tub is snug with the both of you inside, his face red and burning, though he’s glad you look much happier, safe and warm in his embrace. He puts on a lighthearted anime hoping it’ll lift your spirits further, the laugh that escapes you music to his ears. The episode ends, and you finally tell him the cause of your pain, opening your heart to him, his hold tightening when tears gather in your eyes once again. His insecurities are now forgotten, replaced by a wave of anger that consumes him, and he fights to keep his demonic aura at bay. A lowly demon dares to hurt you? He’ll make them rue the day they decided to torment his player 2. Until then he’ll let you know exactly how special you are, indulging you the rest of the night.

SATAN

Satan is browsing the books in the RAD library when the comfortable silence is unceremoniously shattered, dissolving into chaos in a matter of seconds. Angry shouts reverberate off the walls, forcing their way beneath his skin—warm, uncomfortable, yet addicting—setting him alight. He can feel the intensity of every word, his heart pounding, pulsing in his ears with each syllable, the Avatar of Wrath unable to deny he appreciates the beauty of the heated exchange unfolding before him. Although he considers himself a demon of knowledge, making a name for himself in the Devildom for his intellect and held to high standards, he’s not impervious to his sin. He’s irritated, his concentration lost, but a part of him enjoys the pandemonium, wanting to tempt them further into madness. A scream interrupts his thoughts, a pitiful sound, and his blood runs cold. He knows you, your voice, and to hear you cry out is enough to break his resolve.

A hand firmly closes around your throat, blood welling beneath clawed fingers, as you’re forced into a corner. The panic in your eyes fills him with an uncontrollable rage, and he yearns to rip the heart from the demon who threatens you, the very person he holds dear to his own. Wrath overpowers all rationale, and he doesn’t mind, your life greater than the image he’s meticulously cultivated over centuries. He lunges at the demon without warning, grip bruising as he wrenches them away and drives them into the nearest bookshelf, watching it topple over in a cloud of dust and debris. An eerie hush falls over the library, curious gazes on the fourth born, but he’s indifferent, dragging the wretched creature from the wreckage; a grin spreading across his face at their desperate pleas—they only fuel the fire raging within. However, their life is spared due to Lucifer’s interference; Satan’s sure he’s instilled enough fear in the demon’s mind to last an eternity.

The resulting lecture from Lucifer leaves Satan with a headache. He’s unrepentant, his wrath reduced to an ember, but it still smolders, hot and heavy in his chest. When he enters the House of Lamentation, he finds you waiting to throw your arms around him, and despite his anger, he melts against you, calmed by your presence—so sweet and inviting he could lose himself in your very embrace. You’re his saving grace, and he’ll protect you as fiercely as he loves you, hating to see you scared and vulnerable, especially at the mercy of another. Even now he can see the remnants of fear and taste the salt of your tears as he kisses your cheek, fingers ghosting over the dark bruises on your neck. There’s a twinge of anger, but also dread knowing another hurt you and how quickly they could have taken you from him. The familiar smell of books is soothing, the large stacks scattered about his room bathed in moonlight. You’re curled up in his bed, listening to him read aloud with your head on his shoulder, his free hand stroking idly through your hair. At that moment, you look content, smiling at him, and he can’t help leaning over to capture your lips in a kiss, glad he can bring you comfort during the darkest of nights.

ASMODEUS

After school, Asmodeus sees the exhaustion in your eyes and the lack of color in your face, your natural glow seeming to fade throughout the day. Avoiding his gaze, you wilt in his arms when he pulls you into his embrace, his heart aching with desire when you are resistant to his charms. You don’t look at him in adoration or hug him back as tightly, basking in his beauty and praising him while he kisses your loving smile from your lips. Instead, you stare at the ground, body tensing when he cups your cheek, and although you lean into his touch, tears spring forth, hot beneath his fingertips. He can hardly stomach seeing you so distraught, his darling human, helplessly watching you fall to pieces in front of him.

The halls are silent aside from your sobs as you cry into his shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck while he carries you up the stairs to his room, whispering words of love and comfort in the hope they’ll soothe the pain that bleeds to the very depths of your soul. He’s grateful you allow him to hold and console you, trusting him to care for you in a moment of vulnerability, clinging to him without fear and seeking out all he’s able to offer. Your tears stain his blouse, and his makeup is mussed, yet he pays no mind, rocking and hushing you until you’re unable to shed another, chest heaving with each strangled breath that escapes you. Placing a tender kiss on your forehead, he hums sweetly, angelic voice lulling you to sleep. He watches over you after tucking you into his bed, affectionately stroking your face. For now, you rest your weary head, and once you awake, he’ll figure out what’s troubling his poor human, hoping he can put your mind at ease.

Dinner is your responsibility tonight, but Asmodeus doesn’t dare wake you, stepping in on your behalf. His brothers are well fed, and he makes sure to prepare an extravagant meal for his love, happy to serve you in the comfort of his bed. In fact, he feeds you himself, and you laugh as he cheerily extends a spoonful in your direction, blessing him with your beautiful smile for the first time that day. Beneath the silken sheets, he lays beside you, and you curl around him, glancing at him shyly before thanking him with a light but sweet kiss he savors long after you’ve parted. Yet you still look pained, and he encourages you to confide in him, cradling your head to his chest. Your voice is strained, barely above a whisper, but he hears every word, blinking tears from his own eyes. How long did you endure such harassment at the hands of those demons—on RAD grounds no less—suffering all on your lonesome. He’s appalled, wishing he could have protected you and sad he could not, however, he’ll make it up to you; anyone who hurts you is better off dead anyway. From here on out, he’ll take greater care of his human, keeping you safe in his arms.

BEELZEBUB

Finally, lunchtime! Beelzebub is weighing his options as he makes a beeline for the cafeteria, the rumble of his stomach echoing loudly in the halls. Though all thoughts of food vanish when he turns the corner to find you on the ground, a group of low-level demons looming over your trembling form. They flee the second they notice the Avatar of Gluttony, reeking of fear. He considers following them, goaded by his anger, which rages within, hot and intense, pulling a feral growl from his throat. However, the sound of your cries reaches his ears, a somber melody that brings him to his knees. He kneels beside you, brows knit in concern, and gently wipes your tears away before catching you as you throw yourself into his embrace. The rest of the world no longer matters, only his human while he holds you in the now empty corridor, heart unbearably heavy.

Carefully, he lifts you off the floor into his arms, mindful of his strength as his holds you, your body feeling soft and warm and awfully fragile under his touch. Yet you lean against him, sighing into his shoulder and seeking comfort from him—a large, scary demon, one of the most powerful in the Devildom. He’s glad he’s able to protect you, but there are times he worries you’ll look at him differently, your eyes wide with worry like the demons’ who ran at the mere sight of him. Your gaze is loving, and you snuggle closer, thanking him; he feels a little lighter knowing you’re safe, and that you trust him to take care of you. The palms of your hands are scraped, blood drying to your skin—a reminder of what those demons did to you—and he presses a kiss to your fingers, vowing to teach them a lesson they surely won’t forget.

The emptiness of his stomach is agonizing, a pain that runs deep, but he desperately wants to stay with you, comforting his sweet human who needs him now more than ever. He’ll gladly miss lunch for you, putting you above his sin despite the influence it holds over him, and tending to your injuries. The school day passes by slowly, however, he keeps a watchful eye on you, your smile filling him with a happiness that helps him through the last of his classes. Afterwards, he offers to bring you to your favorite bakery; food always manages to cheer him up, and he thinks you deserve a treat. On the way home with bags of decadent desserts and pastries, he hums, reaching for your hand, which fits so perfectly in his own. Again, you smile at him, and he’s glad he’s found a place by your side, brightening your day and you his.

BELPHEGOR

The Avatar of Sloth awakes from a dreamless sleep, hating how cold and empty his bed feels without you beside him. In a daze, he wanders into the hall—pillow in hand—the thought of holding you tightly against him, soaking up your warmth, tempting him down the stairs. Most nights he finds himself sneaking into your room and slipping into your bed, your body seeking his out in the darkness and welcoming him into your embrace. He’s thankful you’ve allowed him into your heart, Belphegor cherishing the intimacy between you, a love he once considered a mere fantasy. Though he pauses outside your door with bated breath, listening to the melancholy rise and fall of the cries echoing in the corridor—your cries. 

Throwing the door open, he peers into the darkness to find you huddled beneath your blankets, eyes wet with tears as you glance up at him, clearly startled. Adrenaline rushes through his veins, hands shaking, and he swallows against the panic, slightly reassured you’re safe in bed, but the miserable look on your face is more than he can bear. You whisper his name, voice rough and shaky, your pain tangible. The mattress dips beneath him, and he pulls you into his lap, cradling you to him. His gentle gaze sweeps over you—his human who deserves all the love in the three realms—and he kisses your tears away, wishing to free you of your burdens. Sleep can wait. You’re far too precious to him, and he’ll do anything to see you smile again, helping you piece your heart back together even if it takes the rest of the night.

Time is endless with you in his arms, your cries fading into quiet sobs as you lean into his touch, relaxing under the loving caress of his hand on your cheek. You regard him hesitantly, unspoken words on the tip of your tongue, and he’s nothing but encouraging as he kisses your forehead down to the tip of your nose, earning him a small yet beautiful smile that vanishes all too soon. Belphegor is eerily quiet while he listens to you, sad you felt the need to keep this a secret—alone with your worries—angry at himself for not noticing sooner, and livid at the demons who foolishly hurt you, instilling you with such fear you dreaded school each morning; they’ll regret laying a finger on his human, and he knows he’ll enjoy their agonized screams when he gets his hands on them. Until then, he promises to love and protect you, watching over you as you fall into a peaceful sleep at his side.

Tag list: @luminari-mc​ @yukihaie​

[tomatograter]

Could I ask for your thoughts on Rose and her connections to the other kids? I think that Rose is one character that many people just boil down to "goth alcoholic lesbian" and it bugs me a lot, so I would like to see a different and nuanced analysis on her.

I've gone back and forth in answering this (or rather HOW to answer this) for a long while. I think Rose is one of the most crucial characters for Homestuck as a narrative, and she's incidentally always been one of my favorites. What i mean by this is that explaining rose is hard, in the way that 'summarizing every other HS subplot' is hard. Objectively, I can’t tell you why rose is good, much in the same way i can’t force you to like pineapple on pizza, but i can try to explain why *i* like rose.

So I'll try to start with a statement: Rose is a difficult little girl. She’s not sweet or compliant or naturally inclined to be motherly or comforting or even KIND, broadly speaking. She’s a cynic, a hater, and a proto-intellectual who wants to feel like she has already figured out everything that has to be ‘figured’ about the world. (Spoiler alert, the conclusion is “it sucks. Blow it to bits.”)

The things that upset her the most are the things she doesn’t know or cannot make sense of. Why does her mother act in such erratic ways? Why does she constantly debase herself in shameful displays of negligent rationality and responsibility? Is it all a game to her? Is this how all adults are, messy and unkempt and deranged? (According to Freud, whose’s name is certainly mentioned enough by Fellow Online TruthSeekers Of The Human Psyche to be considered the utmost authority in just about everything there is to know, no questions asked, the response is “i guess?”) What the fuck even happened to her cat, anyway? Anybody got a baseline 101 on mortality? Does anyone know what the fuck is going on, ever? Is humanity fated to an automated cycle of dull incompetence??????

Rose hoards and utilizes even the most esoteric forms of knowledge as her shield, sword, and building blocks against the fog of uncertainty most people describe as ‘reality’. To truly know something is to rob it of its power and make it your own, ensuring you are not only safe, but impervious to any harm it could possibly cause. Her ambition and defiance set her apart even from the other betas, who wanted to follow the rules and invest in teamwork. Where jade is whimsical and vaguely helpful in a informative tutorial pixie-like way, rose’s advice is delivered via sarcastic remarks and looking for cheats by conversing with the devil. She antagonizes the patronizing questline she's been given in favor of ripping SBURB a new one. Rose is firstly concerned with improving herself, and then maybe sort of (kind of, nothing is settled on stone, what happens, happens) pass it onto her own if they REALLY cant figure it out. There’s a sense that she would sacrifice just about anything to granted the ultimate form of knowledge, the appropriate response and middle-finger to anything, and she hungers for it, which proves to be a little self-destructive. 

Except as much as she wants to put up a veneer of detached, individualistic intellectualism, she still cares far too much for the simplest human accomplishments. She cares for her friends. She envies the lives they've led, and they sound so intriguing when compared to her sterile routine. Her pet cat was once her biggest companion and source of comfort, and finding him dead crushes her. She legitimately would've liked to have a good relationship with her mom, which as we all know ends up more or less the same way. (I tend to disagree with most people who treat rose's living situation as 'pretty good/dramaticized', having a guardian who's almost never sober isn't a comedic or easy experience.) Her quest is borne out of insecurity, uncertainty, and stubbornly trying to prove herself right. Because somebody has to be.

Her faults are just as interesting to me as her qualities, for all the 'mean goth lesbian' talk the way she misses her mother and tries to reverse-engineer a connection with her beyond the grave by dabbling with the same poisons is incredibly compelling, and speaks to a side of rose's many people take for granted: she doesn't have all the answers. She's improvising. She's, like, 15 years old and trying so hard to come off as a badass but she can barely contain her wondering babble long enough to show up for an important date in time. Even in her self-sabotage rose is earnest.

This isn't the sort of narrative you usually see applied to women in fiction, or even when it IS applied, it is only to admonish their efforts and promptly slot them into a love-interest shaped hole. (Because yeah, rose being a lesbian and not falling for any of the assumed important guys does matter very much actually.) Even her turn to grimdarkness pulls from tropes reserved to epic gritty brooding male heroes- avenging her family, wrecking anything and everything in her path, Frank Castle Punisher style. I like rose because she's like matilda, if matilda went wretched sick at age 11 and took the first chance she saw to pierce an ogre through the eyes and ride its corpulent cadaver down a waterfall. She's an unrepentant monstress, cloaking herself in mythos that justify the existence of the unknowable and unjustifiable when rationality predictably falls short of truth, and a snooty little know-it-all who wants to create something so raw and important people will have no choice but know her name, and most importantly, she gets away with it. 

[faerieavalon]

Avalon or Solas or Felassan or Abelas (or any combo of t h i c c thigh boi) building a roundhouse. Bonus points if Felassan was conscripted into helping and disappears at some point. Upon investigating they find Felassan inside sipping on a tasty drink and s n a c c. Ancient shenaanannangians >:D

Oh man, this was a tasty challenge. Here’s a quick mess for your indulgence.

The raised voices broke her peace in the new garden and Ara’lan had to investigate. Construction had been happening in stops and starts ever since the Breach was closed. People still flocked to the Inquisition’s banner and if more of them had pointed ears than others, then at least no one said anything about it. This was more than the sounds of builders, though. She followed it down the path until she came upon a sight that froze her in place. 

Solas stood on a rock, looking from the building to a parchment in his hands. From the depth of his frown, she could tell he wasn’t pleased. It was his voice she heard, bickering in sharp tones with Abelas. The former Sentinel and his old friend Avalon were bare to the waist, impervious to the chill biting in the air as they worked. While the elders argued, the younger seemed quite content to continue packing clay into the woven wood walls. He was whistling a happy little tune, too. The structure was growing to be a simple mud hut with a strong, peaked thatch roof. A couple of small families would be kept warm and safe inside through the mountain winters. 

Why they were the ones doing construction, and why they were arguing about it, was too interesting a puzzle to pass up. Ara’lan crept quietly closer, ducking behind a boulder to listen in.

“The entrance needs to be at the south wall,” Abelas grumbled. “Facing east will catch the wind and drafts will linger.”

“I have enough experience building in this climate to know differently,” Solas offered back a bit louder than before. “These plans have been used for ages without concern.”

“Respectfully, there was magic to secure the entrance then. We are lacking in that luxury now.”

“We will not be once I enchant the walls. Unless, of course, you never finish constructing them.”

It was so ridiculous she had to clap a hand over her mouth to hold in a giggle. Whatever possessed them to take on this project, she couldn’t guess.

“They’re a mess, aren’t they?”

He whispered so close to her ear she felt his breath on her neck and squeaked in surprise. Turning quickly, she caught Felassan’s grin as he peeked around the edge of her hiding place.

“What are they doing?” she whispered back.

“They got into an argument about human and dwarven construction techniques. Gatsi dared them to prove him wrong.” Felassan shrugged. “They’ve been at it for hours.”

“How did you avoid being involved?”

He laughed softly. “Oh, I’m helping. I was sent to get snacks and water.”

She narrowed her eyes at his completely unrepentant grin. He was carrying no such supplies. “And where are they now?”

“I got hungry on the way back.” He winked at her and produced a cookie from one of his many pockets. “Last one if you want it.”

[askaniritual]

this is made up in my head and stuff i’ve read in fic but i just find the idea of karkat and sollux being absolute unrepentant assholes to each other very charming. two people who are so over the line mean to each other all the time that everybody in their vicinity is like “woah maybe let’s take it down a notch?” but they are completely impervious to this. this is normal for them.

sollux is my special little guy but like. again because i have read no canon i have no idea if the special little guy i’ve invented in my head has any relationship to the canon character who as far as i know is dead for like. most of the comic. but the guy in my head is very special

[chonkychungus]

Blog Roll || FFXIV Edition

Time for a blog roll since I have a few new characters I would like to bring more attention to. The latter three were all originally NPCs I intended to introduce in Aladar’s story at various points, but like a fool I went ahead and attached sentimental value to them. Now they’re all full OCs waiting for me to traumatize them and ruin their happy little lives.

 I hope you enjoy the small drabble I attached to each character that gives an idea about their backgrounds. Two of the blogs are still a work in progress but I hope to have them ready soon.

                                                          ( @finishing-touch​ )                                   Ｂｌａｃｋ Ｍａｒｋｅｔ Ｓｍｕｇｇｌｅｒ                                                              AKA Grumpbapy

Steel chimes in every step, his footprints seared in the warm sands and his scent on dusty wind. He is a penniless mongrel in an immutable land, his sole fidelity belonging to the fulgent coin and he who holds it in his palm. Blood both innocent and wicked coats the edge of his blade - ruin and misfortune following his wake. Unrepentant and ambitious, web of lies and foul schemes a plenty, he plies his trade stealing for and from men who know no forgiveness.

It is among thieves and vipers he finds his sanguine flourish and shines, that crazy diamond.

                                                  ( @spiral-cut​ )                                                      Ｈｉｇｈｗａｙｍａｎ                                                            AKA Clownbapy  

He sings songs of spring, virgin milkmaids, and unabashed revelry while stalking the mountain passes and the highland roads of Vylbrand. Roving caravans and green adventurers alike fall prey for his ruses, for he is an endless font of mischief and mayhem. He strips them of their valuables and their dignity, leaving naught behind but an everlasting memory and an immense shame to accompany it.

Content and copacetic is he spending his freedom as an irritating pebble in the Yellowjacket’s boots, indulging in brigandry and drunken squalor; all the while blissfully ignorant of his birthright as the bastard of an Ishgardian nobleman.    

                                                           ( @lord-of-arms )                                            Ｈａｎｄ ｏｆ Ｒｅｔｒｉｂｕｔｉｏｎ                                                           AKA Officer Big-Mac

The Syndicate’s hands remain buried in the pockets of every Brass Blade, each soldier an expendable cogs in the monetarists’ schemes, save one. He remains impervious to Ul’dah’s corruption, bound in blood to a creed of his own. Brandishing an infallible bulwark to shield the meek and a pitiless hammer to smite the wicked, he zealously pursuits the unjust for their crimes. But none remain invulnerable to the temptations forever. A storm brews on the horizon, and even the mightiest weapons come to rust in the rain.

He is the law in a lawless land, a paragon of justice, a thrall to his honor, and the eternal sun in the darkest night- doomed to be eclipsed by the moon.

                                                         ( @blasting-zone​ )                                             Ｔｈｅ Ｓｉｌｖｅｒ Ｂｕｌｌｅｔ                       AKA Mr. I have a history of losing my shirt AKA Le rouge BEEF

Uneasy lies the head that bears the crown as the burden of a heavy mantle falls from an ailing father to the reluctant son. Assuming the reins of a company of no small renown, he leads a cadre of mercenaries previously engaged in quelling rebellions, covert search and rescues, and an acting military force for the bidder with the deepest pockets. A motley bunch of sellswords both green and seasoned, hail from every corner of the crystal and stand ready at his disposal, yet a darkness festers in the hearts of the few dissidents, and their displeasure threatens to fracture the collective.    

Unaccustomed to the obligations of his role, he herds his pride between the politics, overcoming the disgruntled opposition, grapples with the frail mortality of the lives in his charge, and a legacy falling beneath the threat of vanishing from a moment’s single mistake.    

[razieltwelve]

Blanket (Final Rose)

Weiss glared. She glared mightily indeed. And the miscreant who had stolen her electric blanket simply blinked at her and closed her eyes.

“How dare you!” Weiss growled. “That is my electric blanket! You can’t just steal it.” X     X     X

Sally the true salamander opened one eye. She didn’t know why the pale human was so upset, but the blanket was warm, and she liked being warm. As the pale human continued to wave her arms around in the air like a chicken, Sally closed her eye again. She had better things to do that listen… like sleep.

X     X     X

“Yang, you have to do something about your pet!” Weiss stomped over to Yang. “She has commandeered my electric blanket!”

Yang looked over to where Sally was enjoying Weiss’s electric blanket. “Yep. She’ll do that. She does it all the time at home. Heck, whenever Ruby uses hers, she just crawls right into bed with her.”

Weiss’s eye twitched. “You let a lizard sleep in the same bed as your sister?”

“If you’re worried about cleanliness, it’s fine. Sally’s a true salamander. They regularly clean themselves by covering themselves in flames. You could actually eat off her back, and it’d be cleaner than a plate unless you took a blow torch to the plate first.” Yang shrugged. “Besides, Ruby thinks she’s cuddly. Not as cuddly as Zwei, but, well, Sally does enjoy a good rub on her belly.”

Weiss was not the least bit mollified. “Well, it’s my blanket. I want to use it, and I’d rather not have to share it with your pet.”

“Fair enough.” Yang turned on the heater in the room. “I’ll just put her on the heater.” She walked over and lifted Sally out of the blanket. The six-feet-long reptile gave an annoyed hiss but settled when Yang put her on top of the heater. “There you go, Sally. That warm enough?”

Sally made a sound of contentment and closed her eyes again. She was comfortable enough for now… but she would get back to that blanket later.

X     X     X

Yang was awakened by an ear-piercing shriek in the middle of the night. She was out of bed in an instant, as were Blake and Ruby, and the three of them stumbled to their feet as a still-screaming Weiss rolled out of bed and tumbled to the floor.

“There’s something in my bed!” Weiss screamed. 

Yang’s eyes narrowed. Sally wasn’t on the heater anymore, and she had a sneaking suspicion as to why. Sighing, she used a ruler to flick Weiss’s blanket off the bed. Sure enough, Sally was there.

“Sally…” Yang said. The salamander looked utterly unrepentant.

“How dare you!” Weiss growled. She jabbed one finger at the salamander. “Get out of my bed this instant.”

Sally hissed and turned to face Weiss. Despite her normally placid behaviour, she was still a six-feet-long lizard, and her teeth were very obviously sharp. She gave Weiss one last glare and then leapt toward Yang. The blonde caught her out of the air.

“Yeah, yeah, you can bunk with me for tonight.” Yang patted Sally on the head. “But no more sneaking into Weiss’s bed, okay?”

Weiss glared. “I’ll be watching her.”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

True salamanders are exceptionally rare. In the wild, they will often seek out the company of mammals and birds due to their love of warmth. An adult true salamander is typically six or more feet long and capable of generating flames hot enough to melt steel. This makes an adult true salamander exceptionally dangerous, and they have been known to drive off Grimm with relative ease.

The largest known specimen is almost thirty feet long. That particular true salamander can generate flames of similar intensity to plasma and has been witnessed fighting off entire packs of Grimm. The shroud of heat it can surround itself with is so intense that it can simply incinerate almost anything that comes within fifty feet of it.

The scales of true salamanders also become more durable over time, so larger and older specimens are largely impervious to bullets and most weaponry. Sally has a while to go before she gets that durable, but she’s already able to shrug off small-arms fire and small bladed weaponry.

Vanille believes that the highly complex genetic matrices of true salamanders contain additional genes that only activate once a true salamander has met certain conditions. She believes that some of these genes may actually be able to produce wings. That is, dragons may be real… as the final stage of a true salamander’s evolution. 

In the wild, young true salamanders are typically adopted by chocobos who carefully raise the true salamander, catching food for it and driving off larger predators. As the true salamander grows larger, it adopts a protective role, watching over the nests and hatchlings of the chocobos.

The reason for this alliance is due to chocobo behaviour. Chocobos will typically huddle together at night for warmth, and true salamanders find this sort of huddling behaviour to be very nice since it lets them bask in the warmth of the flock. How exactly chocobos know how to do this is unclear. It is believed to be instinctive.

There have also been cases of wolves and other animals adopting true salamanders for similar reasons. A true salamander that has been adopted by a group will typically watch over that group once it becomes strong enough to do so. Given the immense lifespans of true salamanders, this means that a true salamander can watch over generations of other animals.

In terms of power, an adult true salamander is formidable enough to pose a threat to an Ancient Sheep. They very mightiest specimens can be as powerful as entire teams of huntsmen and huntresses.

Although the exact conditions through which a true salamander might evolve into a dragon are not currently known, Vanille believes they must be very difficult to meet since no such living dragons have ever been found although there are some skeletal remains that might belong to them. She hopes to learn more by studying true salamanders like Sally that have been observed since a very early age.

Sally’s behaviour is due to the members of the Rose-Branwen-Xiao-Long household indulging her. She has her own special enclosure back home, but she prefers to either sleep curled up to Zwei or curled up to one of the humans. When Yang is home, she’ll often wake up to find that Sally has crawled into bed beside her. If people are watching television, she will typically just crawl onto the couch to nap beside them.

[eilidhink]

[swallowpropriety] "Oh, I wonder who that reminds me of." Thomas is a shit. An utterly unrepentant shit that takes great delight in reminding Eilidh and James of their commonalities. [ LISTEN ]

Eilidh fixed Thomas with a glare that had set lesser men to cowering, but he seemed impervious. It struck her suddenly that he was probably accustomed to receiving similar glares from someone else. She looked away suddenly, slouching with deliberate carelessness in her seat.

“I have no fuckin’ idea who you might be talkin’ about.”

[sidpah]

Olivia’s Funeral

1.

The grass still damp from last night’s showers and dawn’s fine lace of dew. At my love’s funeral the morning’s grown bright; counterpoint to the bodies forming a crescent of sorrow around her grave… All morbid, dark… cold negative sunspots sucked from the canvas into a cluster of interminable black holes…

There are tears tattooed on their cheeks and lacey veils covering veils, lest someone think them crass should one slip, allowing a glimpse of a dry naked eye. Man’s machinery lowers her casket into the ground.

The fake turf laid over the mounds of freshly disinterred dirt seems a fitting metaphor. She’s been stitched back together and airbrushed, her blood removed and flesh chemically preserved like a fetus in a jar. Her casket will never rot. She’s been rendered impervious to all organic forces; she has been torn, banished from nature, cast as another figurine of concrete or bronze, robbed of her humanity and left a dead monument to something that was once supple and filled with conscious wonder. Perfectly fouled and of no use to anyone or anything. Even the fresh earth from which we were supposedly molded, according to the black book presiding over this ceremonial sham, is too raw and vulgar to be acknowledged. No grass grows that artificial green, staggered in even rows like hair plugs.

I hate them all right now for doing this to her. I could without remorse slay every one of them, but they don’t know any better. They’re doing what they feel is right. Heaps of delusion. Futility. Angst. A silver necklace for her birthday strung around her preserved hips stretched flat… I’m a mad mad man and she’s a mad dead woman…

“Tell me it’s true!” I yell into the coffin, “Tell me you want this marrowless skeleton the way its severed head wants your body as a rack to dry out its old moldy bones… The way it still wants to be cuddled up against you in there, our bare skeletons rattling together like two deer in combat…”

 Three years we spent together under the cold rain… We held our breath so long we sank below even our own worst self-images – Even the Sun came out to watch us bury her… just long enough to bless our weary ranks with her warm soft benediction – But all the maudlin eulogies they sing! I could never do anything but rejoice in her presence, and this is how they whimper and fawn…

I’d love to draw her back to life; sweet Russian fingers in my hair – To hold her thin whittled form against my own just once, beating, pulsating, radiating for all dog-eared eternity… They say she’s here with me now like she’s with them wherever they are (body shattered to nine even souls for each of us to call upon in bidding, in lust) but I never feel her around… They’re lying… naïve… And I’m clenched too tight and cynical to hope. In every corner I see her patient hands carving life out of walls with the heart of a beautiful radiant muse. And though it’s been so many years since we’ve been touched, both the portrait walls and my face, they’re still breathing, so I think maybe I can make it a little longer too –

In her honor I shall learn to speak a purer tongue. One that only she will understand – a voiceless mind-noise so loud she could never miss it – I’ll be forever tied to her silent black and white as her inky voice spills from my hand – Drunk in her presence, I’ll stumble up each shrouded mountain pass and here within this old nightmare is where I’ll find the splinters of her sad withering face, but beside it, the essence of her bellowing soul, her fierce bellowing soul, her fierce bellowing lightning soul, her broken humble radiance hanging against the misty treetops –

She’ll wear her silence naked, forsaking every monotonous fear that once trapped us beneath the ceilings of our rain-bleached cave… No word describes the senseless bliss forgetting all the stupid chances we’ve taken… like we have taken every bleary kiss for granted…

Oh, how I wish I could dream her back to life in a dream from which no one ever wakes – It can’t be long before I’m with her again – It’s only eight steps across this fragile world, but right now it feels like I’m somewhere lost below my own drying footprints…

 I walk to the edge of the hole, standing on that plastic grass. Scrape my foot against it and hear each blade stretch and release in a rapid bbbrrrupppttt of gunfire. The silver casket, so inert, so conspicuous, so shiny before the mud. Perfect. For a second I see the veins of a map, Africa maybe, superimposed over the metal. Then it’s only lined shadows of cypress limbs crossing and retreating.

I want to be with her in there.

I bend and scoop the first handful of dirt to pitch in. I don’t give a shit if I’m acting out of sequence. Mourning is no regimented discipline. I stare down at it, the casket and then the dirt, unaware of the preacher’s dry monotonic sermon…

In a moment of true inspiration, the kind reserved for visionaries, the artistic elite, the veil pulled wide to allow brief admittance to the beguiling other world, I dig beneath a seam in the plastic grass to find a large rock unearthed by bulldozer.  I lift one, my thumb tracing its crevices and chips; we bond, the rock and I, in that moment of exploration. Then rearing my arm back for maximum leverage, I hurl it with as much energy as I can muster in this, my decrepit state, against the pristine coffin. There comes a dent and the paint chips. One gasp rises in tandem from every direction. Except from below. From within the casket’s lightless interior I hear her voice softly whispering her gratitude.

My work is done, I understand. So without further consideration, I choose to follow her in. It’s the right thing to do. The only action worth doing. Spreading my arms wide, and just missing the fists and wingtips of her incensed family and cosmetic friends coming to punish this unrepentant heathen, I tumble headfirst into my lover’s grave.

 2.

Gazing up out of the wide grinning grave mouth, the first thing to catch my attention, so telling, is a pair of black shorts creeping up smooth young thighs… tucked slightly inward so I can nearly steal a creamy glimpse… The girl’s eyes diverted on a yelping dog… Plastic is this whole world… Frozen in its panting and lust-gorged drool slavering from tongue to steel casket floor… My own canine slobber pooling on a sunflower’s rough face lying on her vault… Seeds ripped loose by wind, by bird, by hands only imagined, but the dying flower is right here between my fingers… Film dust on monochrome surface… The screen is wiped with mold spores consuming the past… I am in desperate need of help…

I fell in love when she revealed her roots of dark red hair and green eyes… Now driven underground… From down here, below the footsteps of men, I see! All my lovers, I see! I see!

I raise my eyes from their low damp vantage point, finding only sex in every body. I clinch my eyes and draw my hazy conception of life energy up to the heart center to bring light to this darkened cavern… To clear out webs and congested filth ringing locked patterns like tapeworm holes… Freeing gnarly habits of their twisted hungers stuck for centuries in this uneven muck of mind.  If there’s no cage, how’ve I been trapped in it?  Where does the greed and asinine repetition of error lie dormant when I’m so certain I’ve been cured?  

Let the eyes slide up Pingala and Ida, through glowing channels past the spine and slip silently into the center of Anahata radiating the arms of a fractured green star, so that I may finally see compassionately thoughts and spirit break free of heavy beating form.

Cyrus conquered Babylon, but what man has conquered his own wicked fires?

[thisdaynews]

The Final Lesson Donald Trump Never Learned from Roy Cohn

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-final-lesson-donald-trump-never-learned-from-roy-cohn/

The Final Lesson Donald Trump Never Learned from Roy Cohn

One of Donald Trump’s most important mentors, one of the most reviled men in American political history, is about to have another moment.

Roy Cohn, who has been described by people who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel” and “a new strain of son of a bitch,” is the subject of a new documentary out this week from producer and director Matt Tyrnauer. It’s an occasion to once again look at Cohn and ask how much of him and his “savage,” “abrasive” and “amoral” behavior is visible in the behavior of the current president. Trump, as has been well-established, learned so much from the truculent, unrepentant Cohn about how to get what he wants, and he pines for Cohn and his notorious capabilities still. Trump, after all, reportedly has said so himself, and it’s now the name of this film: “Where’s My Roy Cohn?”

Story Continued Below

What Cohn could, and did, get away with was the very engine of his existence. The infamous chief counsel for the red-baiting, Joseph McCarthy-chaired Senate subcommittee in the 1950s, Cohn was indicted four times from the mid-’60s to the early ’70s—for stock-swindling and obstructing justice and perjury and bribery and conspiracy and extortion and blackmail and filing false reports. And three times he was acquitted—the fourth ended in a mistrial—giving him a kind of sneering, sinister sheen of invulnerability. Cohn, Tyrnauer’s work reaffirms, took his sanction-skirting capers and twisted them into a sort of suit of armor.

It’s the past quarter or so, though, of Tyrnauer’s film that is perhaps most salient at this stage of Trump’s first term. It deals with the less discussed but arguably much more trenchant lesson of Cohn’s life—not his decades of dark-arts untouchability but his brutal comeuppance. Cohn did not, in the end, elude the consequences of his actions. He could not, it turned out, get away with everything forever. He was a braggart of a tax cheat, and the Internal Revenue Service closed in; he was an incorrigibly unethical attorney, and he finally was disbarred; and only six weeks after that professional disgrace, six months shy of 60 years old, Cohn was dead of AIDS.

Now, less than 14 months out from next year’s election, with Trump facing historic legal and political peril, it’s getting harder and harder not to wonder what he might or might not have gleaned from watching Cohn’s wretched unraveling. Trump is beset by 29 federal, state, local and congressional investigations. Poll after poll shows he’s broadly disliked. He could win reelection, obviously, but it’s true, too, that he’s an unusually endangered incumbent. Trump, to be sure, is not weakened by physical sickness, and he has not been pursued by prosecutors and other committed antagonists for nearly as long as Cohn was. And as powerful as Cohn was perceived to be at his peak, he was never, it almost goes without saying, the most powerful man in the world. Even so, the question looms: Will Cohn’s most accomplished and attentive mentee ultimately suffer a similar fate?

“The maddening thing about Cohn and Trump,” Tyrnauer told me recently, “is that they have this sort of Road Runner-versus-Wile E. Coyote knack, where you think the boulder is going to fall on them and crush them and they escape just in the nick of time.”

“There’s a certain American romance to getting away with it. We all secretly admire the guy that can,” said Jim Zirin, a former federal prosecutor who is a regular interviewee in the film and also has a book coming out next week,Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits, in which Cohn plays an unavoidably prominent role.

“But I, as a lawyer, particularly,” Zirin added, “believe in justice, and I believe that at the end of the day, sooner or later, everyone has to pay for it.”

Just look at Cohn.

“We had him. He wasn’t getting out of this,” Martin London, one of the lawyers who led Cohn’s disbarment, tells Tyrnauer. “He was a pinned moth.”

***

The government long had tried to take him down, “a vendetta,” Cohn thought, for his role with McCarthy—and he had not fallen, or so much as flinched, and it had granted him, as a New York politician put it inNewsweek, a certain “jugular mystique.” Many came to view his checkered record as not noxious but enticing.

“He was a prototypical Teflon man,” Zirin writes in his book. “The more unscrupulous he became, the more his law practice grew. He was the man to see if you wanted to beat the system.”

“He did whatever he wanted, and he felt he was good enough at everything to get away with it,” Robert Cohen, who worked with Cohn at his firm, says in the film, “and he did for a very, very long time.”

“Roy,” according to an attorney in his office, “couldn’t have given less of a shit about rules.”

“I decided long ago,” Cohn once toldPenthouse, “to make my own rules.”

He was acquitted in ’64, and he was acquitted in ’69, and he was acquitted in ’71, all the while thumbing his nose at the feds, but Cohn’s screw-you stance was a lifelong philosophy, entitlement plus boldness.

He was “an incredibly spoiled princeling of an only child,” Cohn cousin David Lloyd Marcus told me. “He always got his way,” recalled his favorite aunt. As an adult, the resting expression on his face, which was marred by a scar that ran like a scrape down the middle of his nose, was a mixture of “arrogant disdain” and a “whipped-dog look,” people observed, “caught somewhere between a pout and a challenging glare.”

He didn’t pay his bills, all but daring his creditors to sue him for what he owed—tailors, locksmiths, mechanics, travel agencies, storage companies, credit card companies, stationery stores, office supply stores. He didn’t pay people back, “friend or foe,” wrote his biographer, Nicholas von Hoffman, who reported that a captain of his yacht calledDefiance“had a mental map” of “ports we couldn’t go into because we owed thousands of dollars.”

He didn’t pay his taxes, either, racking up millions of dollars in liens. Taxes, he believed, went to “welfare recipients” and “political hacks” and “bloated bureaucrats” and “countries whose people hate our guts.” He ceaselessly taunted the IRS, calling it “the closest thing we have in this country to a Nazi or Soviet-type agency”—subpoenas from which, he said, went straight into “the wastebasket.”

He drank champagne spiked with Sweet’n Low and habitually picked food off other people’s plates, thinking that manners for some reason did not apply to him. He told his chauffeurs, the drivers of his Bentley and his Cadillac and his money-green Rolls-Royce, to run red lights. “Just go!” he would yell, reaching over to the steering wheel and pounding on the horn.

He was preening and combative, look-at-me lavish and loud. It was an act. The truth was he hated what he was—a lawyer who hated lawyers, a Jewish person who hated Jewish people, and a gay person, fiercely closeted if haphazardly hidden, who hated gay people, calling them “fags” and expressing his conviction that “homosexual teachers are a grave threat to our children,” according to both his biography and autobiography. In his book, Zirin calls Cohn “a quintessential hypocrite, a classic Tartuffe.” He wanted the world to see only the person he “shaped and invented,” in von Hoffman’s words, “a secret man living a public life.”

And as a litigator, Cohn had earned a reputation as “an intimidator and a bluffer,” attorney Arthur Liman would write, “famous among lawyers for winning cases by delays, evasions, and lies.” He was unorganized and largely disinterested in specifics, relying less on preparation and more on his belligerence and his vast, nonpareil network of social and political connections that spanned parties and stretched from New York pay-to-play clubhouses to the backrooms of Washington as well as the Oval Office.

“People came to me,” Cohn explained inPenthouse, “because my public image was that I was unlike most other lawyers. Not the typical bill-by-the-hour, do-nothing, cover-up shyster but someone who won’t be pushed around.” His clients called him a “pit bull” and “a shield” and included mob bosses who met in his office to use attorney-client privilege to dodge potential wiretaps. “He’ll bend the rules to the limit,” a New York law professor once toldNewsweek. “He will stop at nothing,” a law school classmate once toldEsquire.

His biographer likened him to Houdini.

Cohn, however, preferred a different comparison. “If you can get Machiavelli as a lawyer,” he once said, “you’re certainly no fool of a client.”

He was roundly, practically fetishistically unapologetic, remorseless, shameless, “totally impervious to being insulted,” said gossip columnist Liz Smith, living by a code of blunt, come-at-me audacity, accessible only to those unhampered by morality.

“He made his legal and political career,” in the estimation of the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, “in a milieu where money and power override rules and law—indeed where the ability to get, and get away with, what lesser citizens cannot, is what proves membership of an elite.”

“Cohn,” Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Murray Kempton wrote, “brought an aura perfectly calculated to attract rich men who are not quite respectable.”

Trump found him irresistible.

***

“Trump,” the late Wayne Barrett wrotein 1979, “is a user of other users”—a keen, foundational insight, true then and true now. And with the exception of his father, whose fortune made possible the life he’s lived, Trump used Cohn more than he used anybody.

From 1973, when Cohn started representing the Trumps after the Department of Justice sued them for racist rental practices at the thousands of apartments they owned, through the rest of the ’70s and into the ’80s, when he served as an indispensablemacherfor Trump’s career-launching maneuvers, Cohn became for Trump something much more than simply his attorney. At a most formative moment for Trump, there was no more formative figure than Cohn.

Tyrnauer and Zirin remind viewers and readers that Cohn imparted an M.O. that’s been on searing display throughout Trump’s ascent, his divisive, captivating campaign, and his fraught, unprecedented presidency. Deflect and distract, never give in, never admit fault, lie and attack, lie and attack, publicity no matter what, win no matter what, all underpinned by a deep, prove-me-wrong belief in the power of chaos and fear.

Trump was Cohn’s most insatiable student and beneficiary. “He didn’t just educate Trump, he didn’t just teach Trump, he put Trump in with people who wouldmake Trump,” Marcus, his cousin, told me. “Roy gave him the tools. All the tools.”

“He loved him,” early Trump Organization executive Louise Sunshine told me.

Why?

“He was ruthless.”

So, though, was Trump.

Cohn was diagnosed as HIV-positive in October 1984. He insisted his illness was liver cancer. “Even at the end, he refused to admit that he was gay,” Wallace Adams, one of his boyfriends, tells Tyrnauer, “and he refused to admit that he had AIDS.” But everybody who knew him knew. And when Cohn’s feared, famed capacities started to sag, as he grew more and more weak and less and less useful, Trump began to transfer work to other attorneys. He called Cohn on occasion to express encouragement. He invited him to Mar-a-Lago for a dinner with others. But these gestures failed to paper over what some close to Cohn considered Trump’s effective abandonment. “Dropped him like a hot potato,” Cohn’s secretary, Susan Bell, told me. “He really did.”

By the end of 1985, Cohn was pale, frail and gaunt. His right eye was a maze of red lines. His mind wandered often, and his voice wavered to the point of a whisper. He would use one hand to stop the other from shaking. At his annual New Year’s Eve party, limos double-parked outside his Upper East Side townhouse, the A-list guests ran the gamut as usual, from onetime Tammany Hall heavy Carmine DeSapio to gossip columnist Cindy Adams to celebrity artist Andy Warhol. Cohn bucked up enough to don a white dinner jacket with a red bow tie with sequins but fooled nobody. “God,” thought Warhol, according to his diary, “he looked so sick.”

His physical diminishment ran parallel to his legal jeopardy, gutting him of the wherewithal to mount the kind of fight for which he had been so vaunted. The IRS mobilized to seize the townhouse and his cottage in Greenwich, Connecticut, filing for $7 million in back taxes. Circling, too, was the New York State Bar, bringing to a head its three-year-plus disbarment proceedings based on accusations of “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation,” stemming from four separate cases over the course of three decades—that he didn’t pay back a loan from a client until disbarment was underway, that he misappropriated escrowed property of a client, that he forged a signature on a client’s will, and that he lied on his application to the Washington, D.C., bar.

Trump, along with New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, TV personality Barbara Walters, attorney Alan Dershowitz, conservative columnists William Safire and William F. Buckley and others, testified on Cohn’s behalf as a character witness. But in late June, Cohn was disbarred. His conduct, according to the top appellate court in the state, was “unethical,” “unprofessional” and “particularly reprehensible.” In public, he remained tough-front defiant. He called those who had made the decision a “bunch of cheap politicians,” a “bunch of yo-yos,” a “bunch of nobodies.” He said he “couldn’t care less.” He said it “doesn’t bother me in the least.” But he cared a great deal. And it bothered him a lot. He talked to law partner Thomas Bolan and cried. He knew what was coming. He wrote a will and tried to “finish it” but fumbled pitifully with a bottle of pills.

Early that July, his secretary saw him just once. “I had come in the front door, and he was just descending the stairs,” Bell told me. “And he was just coming down, and he had a man on either side of him helping him walk, and he was very, very thin. You could see every bone in his ugly face, and he had thrush all around his lips. And as I walked by him—I had to go by him to get to the elevator—he looked up at me, and he said, ‘Hello, Sue.’ And I said, ‘Oh, hi, Mr. Cohn.’ And I got on the elevator, and I cried. And I didn’t like him, but I’ve never seen anybody so devastated.”

A month later, Cohn was dead.

A crowd, his crowd, of some 400 people assembled for his memorial service at Town Hall, the landmark New York venue. Bolan and DeSapio and former mayors and borough bigwigs and businessman Bill Fugazy and Republican Senator Chic Hecht of Nevada and Rupert Murdoch and Roger Stone. And Trump. They remembered him as loyal and funny and smart. They remembered him as an anticommunist patriot with an “almost insatiable interest in gossip.” Bolan eulogized Cohn as a victim of “the liberal establishment,” of “foes in the media,” of “political enemies” who “tried to shoot him down.” Fugazy said his longtime friend had “hopped the tables” until he finally was felled. He said Cohn had “lived life at the edge of danger.” Trump did not speak. He wasn’t asked. He stood instead in the rear of the room, contemplating, perhaps, all that Cohn had done for him, and who might be able to replace him, who could build on what Cohn had bequeathed. But there was just one Roy Cohn, and Trump, even at 40, maybe more than anybody, had to know it.

Cohn’s cousin doesn’t believe in karma, but he can’t help but think there is a final reckoning. “You can only outrun that fortune, and your own mistakes, and your own ego, and your own nastiness,” Marcus told me, “for so long.”

“The open question,” Tyrnauer said when we talked, “is whether Trump’s luck will hold up or whether—like Cohn—he’ll run out of road and face a tsunami of legal difficulties that will diminish him or put an end to the game that he’s played so effectively.”

“We were all brought up to believe, whether it’s an eye for an eye, it’s religion, it’s Greek tragedy, it’s whatever, that justice is going to catch up with everybody,” Zirin added. “The jury’s still out on Donald Trump. We don’t know whether he’ll get his comeuppance.”

But Tyrnauer reiterated the last lesson of Cohn.

“He got away with it,” he said, “until he didn’t.”

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