#Badges of Slavery

[reasoningdaily]

It would be easy to drive right by the Lee County Stockade. The decrepit white concrete building sits in the shadow of a school bus depot and looks like the kind of place that long ago outlived its purpose. On a breezy, overcast day in mid-January, Shirley Green Reese, dressed in a white pantsuit and silver accessories, stood at the stockade door, directing a stream of reporters, filmmakers and locals to step inside.

She began describing the early morning hours of July 1963 when she and a wagonload of at least 14 other girls ranging in age from 12 to 15 were dropped at the jail more than 20 miles from their homes. They had been arrested just a day earlier during a nonviolent civil rights protest at a movie theater in Americus. Holed up in the stockade for weeks, they waited and wondered if their efforts would have an impact.

“I feel very honored that we can share the story and that some people are excited about it and are accepting of it,” Reese said. “Some can’t believe it happened in 1963, and some still have questions about it.”

Known as the Girls of Leesburg Stockade, their story has been shared by news outlets and in books, films and lectures for the past several decades, but to most Americans, including many residents in the southwest Georgia counties where the events took place, the women are largely unknown. They had joined the movement to be seen as Americans with the full force of civil rights, and like many other young protesters of the era, the details of their stories were subsumed by the larger narrative of the civil rights movement.

Caption

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In 2015 Reese and the nine living Leesburg women collectively broke their silence about the time they spent in the Leesburg Stockade.

Now their memories have worn thin. Some of the women recall details that the others do not, and there are disputes about who was actually jailed in the stockade and for how long. But what the girls from Leesburg Stockade now collectively possess that they did not in the past is the desire for their efforts to be seen, heard and understood.

The stockade is now owned by the local school district. There is talk of preserving the building as a historic landmark. Last year, students at the high school worked to have the girls of Leesburg recognized on a historical marker. The marker, in partnership with the Georgia Historical Society, will be dedicated later this year to commemorate the spirit and sacrifice the girls showed during the summer of 1963.

The young seek a role

The road to the Leesburg Stockade began miles away and years before the girls were locked up.

A nascent civil rights effort had been brewing in that pocket of southwest Georgia as the 1950s gave way to the turbulent ’60s. It centered around Albany, and by 1962 had made its way to Americus, 38 miles north.

Children were encouraged to be part of the movement, as they had been in Albany and in Birmingham. It was a controversial tactic, but one that became a signature of the resistance. If a town could lock up its black children to avoid integration, what would it do to their parents?

“Around April of ’63 is when we started asking the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) workers, ‘When are we going to go and test these places and restaurants to serve us?’” said Sam Mahone, one of the early leaders of the Americus-Sumter County Movement. “At first, SNCC didn’t think Americus was ready, but the students didn’t want to wait.”

After a series of mass meetings were held at local black churches to energize the crowds, direct action protests began. The first target was the town’s segregated movie theater.

Having slipped away from home on a Saturday afternoon while her parents were downtown, Reese and her best friend Mae Smith-Davis decided to attend the mass meeting at Friendship Baptist Church. When they arrived, the group was already planning to go to Martin Theater.

The pastor and SNCC workers gave them instructions. Don’t talk to anybody. Follow everyone closely. They joined the line and marched toward downtown.

Law enforcement in Americus responded with brute force: water hoses, cattle prods, nightsticks. They arrested protesters by the scores. Some were adults, but the overwhelming number of those taken into custody were teenagers, some as young as 12. When the city jail filled, surrounding counties offered space. Boys and girls were separated, although they were often held in the same building.

‘No swinging doors in Leesburg’

As the protests continued, the stockade in Leesburg filled with girls.

Paddywagons brought them to the stockade, a remote, low-slung structure surrounded by woods and bordered on one side by a lonely stretch of country road.

The building was by then a relic, gloomy and filthy. Bars covered the windows, but much of the glass was broken, giving easy access to bugs. The stockade’s sole toilet would not flush. There was no soap. Water from the shower head trickled in a thin stream. Day in and day out, the girls were fed either scrambled egg sandwiches or four rare hamburgers a day.

Some of the girls were ill and afraid.

Lulu Westbrook Griffin, 69, had joined the group of protesters at the church knowing she would likely end up in jail, but she wasn’t prepared for the trauma she would feel.

“We weren’t used to going off and staying overnight anywhere,” said Griffin, who was 12 at the time. “We went to church, to school. We didn’t even walk out of the house without our parents’ permission.”

Though she was in the company of other girls, Griffin said the experience left her with bouts of crying and nightmares that would persist well into adulthood. She had joined the movement to feel empowered, but her one act of protest left her feeling weak.

Diane Bowens’ activism had been brewing long before she attended the protest at the theater. By then, she was fully invested in the movement. In the stockade, her commitment didn’t waver, said Bowens, then 13. “If you were going to be a part of it, you were going to be a part of it,” she said. “There were no swinging doors in Leesburg.”

Outside world takes notice

As the days turned into weeks, other girls arrived, a signal to the ones already there that the protests continued back in Americus, 27 miles north. But here, the story of the girls of Leesburg Stockade gets muddled. Some reports have said there were more than 30 girls at the stockade arriving and leaving between mid-July and mid-September, but the only visual evidence of girls being held in the stockade, an image shot by a SNCC photographer, pictures 15 girls. Some girls, those from wealthier families in town, have said their parents paid a fee and got them out before the others.

SNCC kept tabs on what counties the children were taken to and where they were being kept, but they didn’t always have names for every child, especially if the child gave a false name. Which is what Carolyn DeLoatch did.

DeLoatch, then 15, had begged her parents to let her get involved in the movement and they’d relented, telling her she could go to mass meetings but to not intentionally get arrested. But there DeLoatch was in August, locked up.

Their days in the stockade were filled with talking, sleeping, praying, singing and wondering when they’d go home, DeLoatch, now 70, said. The monotony was about as intolerable as the food. But by being in Leesburg, she felt she was doing something important.

“It was bearable because it was all of us together,” DeLoatch said. “We were all demonstrating and we wanted people to know that we wanted to be free.”

After several days, her father paid a fine, possibly $45, she said, and she was brought back to Americus. Her father told her he was proud of her, she said, but within three days, her parents shipped her off to a South Carolina boarding school for black girls.

>> RELATED | More historical markers in Georgia, along with more scrutiny

Reese was still in the stockade when Danny Lyon, a young white photographer for SNCC, showed up. Though their parents had come to look in on them and pass fresh clothing and food through the bars, they didn’t have the means or influence to get them out. “Nobody had any rights. Who were they going to go to?” said Reese.

It was mid-to-late August and the girls pressed their faces against the bars staring at Lyon and stretching their arms through the panes framed with broken glass. He lifted his Nikon and started shooting. “I remember touching them through the bars and we said ‘Freedom’ — that was a code word for the civil rights movement,” Lyon said. “The fact that someone from the outside world was there was incredible to them.”

His visit lasted less than 15 minutes, he thinks, but it resulted in the only known images of the girls and the conditions in which they were being held. Not long after the pictures appeared in the black press, the girls were released. It would be the last time for several decades many of them would acknowledge their connection to the Leesburg Stockade.

Readjusting to their lives

On their return to Americus, the girls were dropped right back into their lives.

“I just remember being happy to get out of there,” Bowens said. Though her arrival home was celebrated, Bowens grappled with her feelings. Her mom pressed to know if anyone had sexually assaulted the girls. Her brother threatened to hurt anyone who had, though no one did.

“I just closed off that part of my life,” said Bowens, 69, who would go outside and sit under the house for hours crying. “Just knowing that someone would treat you like that and do that to you. I was feeling sad. I felt like, Is this it? Is this all there is to life?”

As they journeyed from teens to young women, many of the Leesburg girls’ worlds spread beyond the confines of southwest Georgia to New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and beyond. The 15 girls captured in Lyon’s now famous photo would go on to become pastors, civil servants, educators, authors and public speakers.

When Bowens met her husband, she began to feel better. He had been in the movement as well, and they would talk about all the things that happened in Americus. Raising her four children and building a long career as an inspector in the automotive industry changed her outlook, but Bowens still feels sad sometimes. “Things are better now, but basically things are still the same,” she said.

School had been in session for weeks when Reese walked into Sumter High after her release from the stockade. “Not even the teachers asked where I was coming from,” Reese said. “My grades started falling.”

Reese began diving into extracurricular activities — choir, dance, basketball — to keep her mind off those weeks during the summer. “When I first got out, I didn’t feel whole,” she said. She fed off the energy of close friends who were talented, had a positive attitude and were accepting of her.

After high school, her mother sent her to Savannah to live with her aunts. Reese enrolled in Savannah State University and embarked on an educational journey — ultimately earning a doctorate in philosophy from Florida State University — that would bring her some measure of solace and success. She went on to become the first black female athletic director in the state of Georgia.

“I pushed the stockade out of my mind because I had to get an education. That is what my parents had pushed all our lives,” she said.

Though she spent less time in the stockade, DeLoatch was nonetheless marked by the experience. For her, it was an “awakening.” Before Leesburg, she was sheltered by her educator parents, her father a school principal and her mother a librarian in Americus’ segregated school system. They were part of the town’s tiny black middle class.

Leesburg and the Americus movement taught DeLoatch that civil rights would only come with a sustained fight. She went from being voted “most civic minded” at her boarding school to later participating in the Poor People’s Campaign while a college student at Virginia Union in Richmond, she said. Eventually she became a city planner in Chicago and the mother of two. She watched with pride as her son decided to register to vote as soon as he turned 18: no literacy test to pass; no poll tax to pay.

“There was no problem,” DeLoatch said.

Making their voices heard

Leesburg was a moment in DeLoatch’s life but not the only important one.

“I moved on but I used that to help me become the person I am: the kind of person who doesn’t let anybody push them around; the kind of person who is secure in my personhood,” she said.

But the impacts of childhood trauma can linger, said Vincent Willis, assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at the University of Alabama. Willis is writing the book “Audacious Agitation,” on the experiences of student protesters in southwest Georgia during the civil rights movement. He’s including a chapter on the larger Americus movement and has interviewed some of the women who were jailed in the stockade as girls, he said.

“That 14-year-old girl is still in there somewhere,” Willis said. “The idea that time heals all wounds, I argue against it. They’re told to get over it, that the battle was won, but there are always lingering effects. There’s always psychological damage.”

Griffin was first among the girls of Leesburg Stockade to share her story on a national platform. In 1996, she saw a book, “Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement,” with the photographs Lyon had taken at the stockade. “The pictures had no names. I thought, wow, I need to put a name to these faces,” said Griffin, a retired educator.

She would later write a book and hold speaking engagements at schools. When she began planning a documentary, which premiered in Americus in 2003, she contacted some of the other women, she said. Some of them were still reluctant to speak out about the past, fearing repercussion from locals. A few years later, in 2006, a reporter from Essence magazine wrote a story, and some of the women who had previously been reluctant began to speak out.

Reese returned to Americus for good in 2002. She got involved with local civic organizations, including the Boys and Girls Clubs of Americus-Sumter County and the City Council. “I felt I needed to get back in there and help the kids move forward so they would not have to go through what we went through,” Reese said. For years, she had suppressed her feelings about the stockade, but since returning to Americus, she has vowed to keep telling their story.

“We as a people don’t want to address something like this because they feel like things are better now. But we can’t let them forget the past,” Reese said. “Even if they don’t care, I care.”

[thisisthevoice]

i find discussions about faith, religion, and (a)theism really fascinating but r/atheism is NOT it. those mfs havent changed one iota

[ausetkmt]

https://x.com/ThatsAlpaca1/status/1702049556718907492?t=k3G9KPwrZn9zeocWog3K5A&s=09

[apas-95]

As it apparently needs to be restated - race, ethnicity, and nationality are not themselves the basic drivers of history. Political-economic class is.

The European practice of placing African people into chattel slavery was not carried out on the basis of any innate characteristics of 'blackness' or 'whiteness' - those categories did not exist before the slave trade, they were created in support of it. Europe at the time found it would be beneficial to have a class of slave workers for its colonial projects, and it had the military, political, and economic might to subjugate Africa and African people to that end. Had you asked a Prussian and a Scotsman prior to the institution of African slavery if they were both members of a common 'race', they would have found the idea ridiculous - and yet, transport those two ahead in time, and perhaps to settlements in the Americas, and suddenly they were both Whites. Whiteness (and its necessary counterpart, blackness), then, is not some intrinsic quality based on the tone of someone's skin, but a political and economic category constructed to differentiate between those people that could be oppressed and made chattel by the slave trade, and those that could not.

This is true for all these systems of oppression - though they may be divided on supposed lines of biology or locality, they are not inherently based on biological factors, those are functionally coincidental, and are constructed as justifications for a system necessitated by purely political and economic reasons. Nazi oppression of Jewish, and Roma, and Slavic [and etc.] people was not fundamentally based on any inherent quality of e.g. Judaism, but on the economic needs of German capital under the burden of postwar reconstruction and 'war reparations' paid to the victorious powers. It was not blind hatred, but the inevitable result of a society built in pursuit of profit - one whose ruling class held a cold, calculated need to expropriate wealth, weaken worker organisation, and seize and depopulate land to strengthen the composition of capital. It was still necessary for this system to split the population into one group of 'legitimate targets' for victimisation, and one of reassured, protected accomplices, though there were no obvious physical, 'biological' features to base these on - so they were constructed, both through propaganda that exaggerated physiology, and through the appending of obvious badges and marks onto those targeted. Again, these were sets of features, and categories, created to support a system of oppression and exploitation, not the reasons it came into being in the first place.

Again, these are fundamentally political and economic categories, and can only be properly understood as such. If not properly understood as being based, first and foremost, on material interests of classes, then any analysis of them is unstable. For example: appeals to the supposed ancestral claim of zionists to the land of Palestine, and thereby to indigineity, can only be refuted with an understanding that indigeneity is a political and economic characteristic, of relation towards the oppression of a settler state, and not some characteristic of where one's ancestors were born. None of this is to say that race, nationality, etc don't function as axes of oppression - but that they must be understood as manifestations of the existing political and economic material interests of classes that drive the development of history, if they are to be fought against.

[riyo-soka]

The Organas and the Lars family are all well aware that the children they’re raising each have a sibling somewhere in the far reaches of the galaxy. They can never say anything, since Luke and Leia would be in grave danger if the truth of their heritage were to get out, but sometimes the twins’ adoptive families can’t help but think about the other child that they will never know.

Breha notices her daughter’s title causes her to struggle with finding companions her own age and wonders if that loneliness might have been lessened had the twins never been separated. Sometimes, she imagines taking Leia’s brother by the hand and introducing him to the people of Alderaan as a beloved member of the Organa family just like his sister.

Beru starts stitching a family tree -a tradition among slaves and former slaves on Tatooine, meant to bring together families that were separated by slavery- but struggles to finish it when she realizes it’s too dangerous to include her niece. After the war, Luke and Leia create their own, and Leia displays her connection to the Lars family line like a badge of honour.

Bail is always concerned about Luke’s wellbeing somewhere in the back of his mind. The Lars family are supposed to be good, hardworking people, but even under Obi-Wan’s protection, Tatooine is a hostile place to live: especially compared to a temperate core world planet like Alderaan. Since he is unable to directly intervene so far out in Hutt Space, his contacts within the rebellion are occasionally tasked with checking in on the state of things in and around Tatooine’s settlements. On the occasions where Owen and Beru found themselves struggling to put food on the table, an off-world traveller would soon arrive offering to pay handsomely for something like mechanical help or a ride to Anchorhead.

Owen tries not to dwell on what-if scenarios and focus on keeping his nephew safe, but raising a force sensitive child -much less a force sensitive child of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala- is stressful on the best of days. When people in town murmur under their breath about how odd the Lars boy is, he worries. Both that the empire will take the whispering about Luke being odd seriously, and that the little girl Obi-Wan told them about when he arrived with baby Luke hidden under his cloak might be put in danger by those same whispers.

[arc-misadventures]

MFK Jaune but instead of Kill its Enslave: High Elf Winter, Dark Elf Cinder & Wood Elf Pyrrha

Jaune: MFE

Nora: Hey, Jaune?

Jaune: Yes?

Nora: Wanna play a game?

Jaune: No... The last time I played one of your dwarf games I broke three ribs.

Nora: Nononono! We won't be playing such games! The others said they would punish me again of I did...

Jaune: Oh, that's good. Okay, what is this game?

Nora: MFE! It's like, MFK, but instead of killing someone you enslave them!

Jaune: Enslave?! Nora, I am a holy paladin of the, Rusted Knight Order1 You know how I feel about slavery! We have gone out of our way many times to kill slavers! Do you think I would allow such a thing, let along play a game with such a thing?!

Nora: Relax, relax, relax! You're not actually going to do such a thing! You're just saying of the three woman I give you, which one would you do it to.

Jaune: The hell is the difference?!

Nora: Okay, just think about it as kinky roleplay, no slave markings, and things like that, okay?

Jaune: Grrrrr! Fine! We'll play your stupid little game, if only to get you to shut up.

Nora: Awesome! Okay, your choices are! Our wood elf friend, Pyrrha Nikos!

Pyrrha: M-M-Me?!

Nora: Our lofty queen, the high elf, Winter Schnee!

Winter: I am considered a form of royalty among the elves, Nora.

Nora: And, our mysterious dark elf of the party, Cinder Fall.

Cinder: MFE? Hmmm... This should be fun~!

Jaune: Elf's? You want me to play a game where I have to 'enslave' one of the players, and they happen to be an elf?!

Nora: Ya!

Jaune: Nora?! Do you have any idea how many slave rings I've broken up that didn't have at least one elf slave in it! I immediately assume that an elf is a slave of some sort if she has any brandings, and chains on her!

Cinder: Ohhh! So that's why he was so worried about me when we first met. I thought it was because I was a dark elf.

Winter: It is nice to see that he cares so much about us. In his own strange way,

Pyrrha: I think it's nice that he cares about us so much even if it's a little strange.

Nora: Yeah, so?

Jaune: WE are going to have some serious words after this, Nora...

Nora: Okay...

Jaune: I'm gonna do the 'enslave' part first to get it out of the way. So I will 'enslave...'

Jaune: Cinder...

Cinder: Oh? Can I ask why?

Jaune: Do I have to...?

Cinder: Please?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: Haa... Considering you're a dark elf, and you have a habit of tying people up in various ways, and quite quickly at that! I thought you would be the least upset at being... enslaved.

Cinder: Upset about being enslaved? Well, if I was enslaved by someone like that Cardin, or Mercury fellow's we arrested the other day. I would have been quite... furious. But, if it was you, Jaune~? If it was you who enslaved me... Well, I think I would quite enjoy it, Master~!

Jaune: Y-You would?!

Cinder: You, binding my hands, wrapping a collar around my neck, dragging me through the streets for all to see that you own me. And, to see that all I was wearing was some rags that barely covered my body. You taking your searing hot rode, and reshaping my body to perfectly fit around you? Oh, I would quite enjoy that, Master~!

Pyrrha: I would like that too!

Jaune: You would?!

Pyrrha: I would worship the ground you walk on, Master! I would be your foot stool to rest your feet upon! I would allow you to take your frustrations of dealing with, Nora's antics upon my body as a badge of honour! I will beg to receive your disciplinary touch, and allow me to use my body as your personal toy to relive your bodies stress! I am yours to us as you please, Master!

Jaune: W-W-What?! Winter! Help me!

Winter: Help you? You think I would dare help you enslave my country men! You think I would help you hold them down, to strip their bodies bare, to hold them in place as you forcefully penetrate their cores, and desecrate their chastity! To help you prepare their bodies as your brand them with your mark. Only for you to take me, bed me, fill me with your declivous, heavenly seed, to raise you child~!

Winter: Ahhh~!

Winter: No! I wouldn't like that at all!

Jaune: What the fuck?!

Nora: Ladies, ladies! Come down, you're scaring our darling paladin.

Pyrrha: I'm sorry!

Cinder: I'm sorry, I just wanted you to understand I was okay with you enslaving me.

Winter: My apologies, I let my... bodily desires get the better of me.

Jaune: What the hell?

Nora: You see here, Jaune. These find elven ladies each are in love with you, and all have a slave kink that the will only have with you, Jaune as their master~!

Jaune: She's kidding, right guys?

Cinder: Oh, I am completely head over heals for you, Jaune. And, the thought of being your slave sounds... oh so intoxicating~!

Pyrrha: I've loved you since I first met you, Jaune! It doesn't matter where, or what we do, so long as we do it together.

Winter: Your reaction to dealing with my father's behaviors. Made me understand what actual affection, and love was like. And, I want to continue experiencing that love with you.

Jaune: You, you guys really feel that way..?

Pyrrha: Yes!

Winter: Of course!

Cinder: Always~!

Jaune: Guys...

Nora: So that's how you're going to do things fearless leader?

Jaune: What am I going to do, Nora?

Nora: You're going to marry all three of these beautiful elven woman, and you're going to enact their enslavement fantasies when you fuck them! That's how it's going to happen, right ladies?

Jaune: I should do all of that?!

Pyrrha: Marrying, Jaune~?!

Cinder: Mrs Cinder Fall Arc~? Oh now that sounds lovely~!

Winter: Marrying the man I love, and pissing off my father in the process; What better gift could I ask for? What do you say, Jaune~?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: Well... I wouldn't really mind it... if it was you three.

Pyrrha: YES!

Winter: That's wonderful!

Cinder: Then let's consummate the marriage at once then!

WP: Yes!

Jaune: What?

Cinder: Let's go ladies!

Jaune: Whoa hey?! Nora?! Nora help me!

Nora: Wait!

Jaune: Ahh! I'm saved!

Nora: My payment?

Jaune: Payment?

Winter: Here you go, as we agreed upon: One bottle of sacred elven tree syrup for your help.

Nora: I thank you for you business. Have a nice day.

Winter: Oh, we will~!

Jaune: What?! You sold me out for a bottle of syrup?! You traitor!

Jaune:

Traitor!!!

[hero-israel]

#4 sounds like white people at the end of slavery… “we didn’t want to end it because what if there’s retaliation? There have already been slave riots. Imagine what would happen if we gave them freedom or if we became the minority?” It’s not speculative it actually happened the fears had basis. That’s what number four sounds like. It also feels like you only care about one view point like you expect me to believe y’all are perfect victims that did one thing in retaliation?

#4 sounds like that to you because you are an American who thinks the whole world is America and all history must be the same as yours. So you should start by asking yourself what it is in your cultural upbringing, and what in the media you consume, that has you automatically believing the worst possible claims against Jews, to the point of seeing it as understandable for us to be mass murdered.

Jews did not - and do not - want to live in an Arab or Muslim majority society not because of any issues related to "slave uprisings" you are teleporting into this discussion, but rather because Jews had already been brutally oppressed, persecuted, and genocided by Arabs and Muslims for 1,000+ years before Israel or political Zionism were ever invented. Mohammed himself got his hands dirty with this, wiping out the Jews of Yathrib and renaming the gore-drenched rubble into something called "Medina." No less a source than Maimonides wrote in 1172 "God has entangled us with this people, the nation of Ishmael, who treat us so prejudicially and who legislate our harm and hatred…. No nation has ever arisen more harmful than they, nor has anyone done more to humiliate us, degrade us, and consolidate hatred against us... We bear the inhumane burden of their humiliation, lies and absurdities, being as the prophet said, ‘like a deaf man who does not hear or a dumb man who does not open his mouth’.... Our sages disciplined us to bear Ishmael’s lies and absurdities, listening in silence, and we have trained ourselves, old and young, to endure their humiliation, as Isaiah said, ‘I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheek to the beard pullers.’”

Because there is a long history of this, there is much you can read about it, if you care.

Some very random examples:

The "badge of shame" was invented in medieval Baghdad, only later migrating to Europe

Life for Jews in Yemen: The Jews of Yemen were treated as pariah, third-class citizens who needed to be perennially reminded of their submission to the ruling faith…The Jews were considered to be impure, and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim’s food. They were obliged to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk on his left side, and to greet him first. They were forbidden to raise their voices in front of a Muslim. They could not build their houses higher than the Muslims’ or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering a Muslim quarter, a Jew had to take off his footgear and walk barefoot. No Jewish man was permitted to wear a turban or carry the Jambiyyah (dagger), which was worn universally by the free tribesmen of Yemen. If attacked with stones or fist by Islamic youth, a Jew was not allowed to defend himself. Further, the Jews were forced to wear sidelocks or peots. The wearing of such long and dangling peots “was originally a source of great shame for the Yemenites. It was decreed by the imams to distinguish the Jews from the Muslims”. More degrading and insulting decrees to the Jews were the Atarot (Headgear) and Latrine Decrees. The former was a seventeenth-century decree forbidding the Jews to wear a headcovering or turbans. The Latrine Decree was a nineteenth-century edict in which the Jews were forced to clean out public toilets and remove animal dung and carcasses from the streets. Another discriminatory edict was the Orphan Decree which gave the Zaydis the right to convert to Islam any child under the age of thirteen whose father is dead. Further, evidence by a Jew against a Muslim was invalid and a “Jew was forbidden to pass a Muslim to his right, and whoever did so, even unwittingly, could be beaten without trial; the Jews were forbidden to make their purchases before the Muslims had completed theirs; a Jew entering the house of an Arab or the office of an official was only allowed to sit down in the place where the shoes were removed” . Tudor Parfitt summarizes some of these laws in the following: [the Jews] were required not to insult Islam, never strike a Muslim, or to impede him in his path. They were not to assist each other in any activity against a Muslim…They were not to build new places of worship or repair existing one…They were not to pray too noisily or hold public religious processions. They were not to wink. They were not to proselytize. They were not to bear arms. They were required to dress in a distinctive fashion in order not to be mistaken for a member of the Muslim occupying forces. In other words dhimmis had all the times to behave themselves in an unostentatious and unthreatening manner, one appropriate to a defeated and humbled subject people. They were to avoid the slightest show of triumphalism and they were forbidden any activity that could lead to proselytization. Yemenite Jews were “excluded as it almost always…from affairs of state, and from the great institutions of the country”

1941 Farhud pogrom (Iraq)

1929 Hebron Massacre ("They cut off hands, they cut off fingers, they held heads over a stove, they gouged out eyes. A rabbi stood immobile, commending the souls of his Jews to God – they scalped him. They made off with his brains. On Mrs. Sokolov’s lap, one after the other, they sat six students from the yeshiva and, with her still alive, slit their throats. They mutilated the men. They shoved thirteen-year-old girls, mothers, and grandmothers into the blood and raped them in unison....")

1921 Jaffa Riots

1920 Nebi Musa Riots

1910 Shiraz Blood Libel (Iran) ("In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews: "…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans… If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him… unmercifully… If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods… Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them... Sometimes the Iranians intrude into the dwellings of the Jews and take possession of whatever please them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defense of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life... If... a Jew shows himself in the street during the three days of the Katel (the start of Muharram)…, he is sure to be murdered")

1840 Damascus Blood Libel (Syria)

1839 Allahdad Pogrom (Iran)

1834 Hebron Massacre

1834 Looting of Safed

1700 Jerusalem oppression / apartheid: ("Muslims are very hostile to Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city… the common folk persecute the Jews, for we are forbidden to defend ourselves against the Turks or the Arabs. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he (the Jew) must appease him but dare not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even harder, which they (the Arabs) do without the slightest scruple...")

1679 Mawza Exile (Yemen)

1660 Destruction of Safed

1500s Iran: ("After the ascension of Shah ‘Abbas II the Jews of Isfahan faced a lot of persecution. Most communities were forced to convert to Islam. Furthermore those who refused to convert would have most of their inheritance taken away as the inheritance laws at the time allowed for those who converted to Shia Islam to inherit the property of non-Muslim family members. Some communities did not convert and were thus forced to wear a special badge to show that they were Jewish. The maltreatment of the Jews weakened their community ties and influence throughout the region. By 1889 there were only around four hundred Jewish families left in Isfahan and most very poor.... by the middle 20th century 80% of the Jews of Isfahan lived on the verge of poverty.")

There's so much more I really don't know where to start or where to end. Afghanistan revoked all Jewish citizenship in 1933. Turkey banned all Jewish names and held massive antisemitic pogroms in 1934. Iraq banned Hebrew schools and Hebrew names in 1936, pogroms throughout Libya 1945, Syria fired all Jewish government employees 1946. Tripoli pogrom 1785. Algiers 1805. Cairo 1844. Istanbul 1870. Safed 1517 and 1799. Jerusalem 1665 and 1720. Granada Massacre 1066. Fez Massacre 1033. How many Wiki links do you want, how many textbooks?

This is an old, old conflict, and the Americanized "colonizer / slave plantation" frame is off-topic.

[moon-pepper]

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that understanding history is necessary to prevent the worst parts of it from repeating, so I spend a lot of my free time trying to learn about things like colonialism, slavery, genocide -- and it worries me to no end to see how much the majority of people don't seem to understand even about events everyone is familiar with. I used to be baffled that anyone could genuinely believe slavery was "just how things were back then", but it makes sense when you realize that most history lessons only deal with what the people in power decided to do; public outrage about a particular action only matters in the historical context if that outrage led to actual mass revolution. Even before we get to the layers of whitewashing and propaganda constantly applied to history, there's an innate bias toward treating major political movements as though they just appear and disappear entirely at random. Which leads me to wonder...

Do fellow gentiles realize that the Nazis weren't new?

What I mean is that most coverage I see of the Nazi ascension to power in Germany presents them as this new, fringe group that came to power out of nowhere through solely violent means. Sometimes there will be explicit mention of the fact that antisemitism was extremely prevalent throughout Germany (occasionally even the rest of Europe!) prior to Hitler's political campaign, but oftentimes it seems implicit that mass antisemitism in Germany began when the NSDAP first formed. Even when the prior existence of antisemitism is brought up, the Nazis are portrayed as a new, unique evil; they did things that no democratic society would ever dream of doing, things that could only be achieved by either completely hiding them from the public or by threatening anyone who spoke against them. "Nazi" is simultaneously an easy epithet for any excessively cruel or restrictive person and a label that is far too severe to seriously apply to anyone because the Nazis were so evil in a way that nobody else was that nobody is truly deserving of comparison.

The thing is, though, that the policies put into place by the Nazi government in order to enable their genocidal end goal weren't original. Even setting aside the fact that they're often viewed as the inventors of genocide despite Hitler openly admitting that he got the idea from the treatment of Indigenous peoples by the U.S.A. (highly recommend watching this BadEmpanada video to learn about that), very few of the Nazis' beliefs or actions were original to the Nazis. The conspiratorial, racially-puristic ideas that the Nazis touted were derived from contemporary conservative thinkers all across the West, and many of the antisemitic legal policies they implemented as part of their Final Solution were practices that had been standard throughout Europe for centuries prior.

The infamous yellow-star badges used to identify Jewish citizens? Those were first devised and enforced the region (by both Christian and Muslim rulers) at least as early as the 800s; it was 1215 when Pope Innocent III declared that all Jewish and Muslim people living in Catholic lands should be required to wear identifying clothing with the explicit goal of segregating them from Christians. The Nazi ghettos to which Jewish citizens were forcibly relocated were inspired by ghettos which had existed to segregate and isolate Jewish populations for centuries; the only real difference is that these new ghettos were just preludes to concentration camps rather than being meant for long-term habitation. Just about every part of Western society had some form of restriction (mandated or voluntary) banning Jewish people from occupying certain jobs or limiting their presence in universities going back centuries before the Nazis existed. There were more than 350 years where Jewish people were not legally permitted to live in England.

The reason I bring all of this up is because, even among people who are conscious of Europe's widespread antisemitism prior to the rise of Nazism, there's a strong notion that the Nazis were so detestable because they came out of nowhere; that they completely defied the norms of the day and took their antisemitism to a level that even the deeply antisemitic societies of past Europe never would have.

In reality, the Nazis weren't much of an escalation -- they were a return. Legal segregation, expulsion, and even slaughter of Jewish people really only began to end when the Enlightenment came and public sentiment in the West began to favor secular government. The first country to abolish legal restrictions on Jewish people was Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Russia maintained its restrictions on Jewish citizens' rights up until it also saw revolution in 1917. The idea that Jewish people were responsible for all of society's ills and needed to be subjugated and exterminated was not a new idea that took hold of Germany due to its economic suffering after World War 1; it was a very old, very popular idea that most of Europe had only just begun to abandon and which was brought back in full force the moment it became politically convenient.

Consider how this compares to present-day politics. Jewish Germans were only granted equal rights in 1871 -- Adolf Hitler's father and mother were 34 and 11 years old, respectively -- and when the Nazi Party formed only 49 years later, the majority of adult Germans would have grown up in or been raised by parents who grew up in a world before religious desegregation. The Nazi Party's promise to the German public was not to introduce a newly bigoted society, but to bring back the bigotry they had grown up with and ensure that it would never leave again; they succeeded by using Germany's post-war suffering to "prove" their society was declining and blaming that decline on a recent major societal change, thereby convincing Christian Germans who were still deeply antisemitic that you see? we let the Jews have rights and not even fifty years later everything is awful. Many Germans did not need to be lied to or forced into supporting the Nazis because, to them, the Nazis were just fighting to revive the "Good Old Days" of their youths.

As a political party, the Nazis were functionally identical to all of the modern-day pundits eagerly proclaiming that racial equality and LGBT equality and religious diversity and welfare policies are destroying the country. Any period of significant economic downturn, any large cultural shift, any major catastrophe no matter the cause is automatically the decline of Western Society to them -- and the blame for that decline is always placed on the most relevant pro-equality social movements. What makes the Nazis unique is not their goals or the beliefs that fueled them; what makes the Nazis unique is that they're the latest and largest example of a group like them gaining power and then rapidly losing that power, which makes them simultaneously martyr idols for subsequent fascists and sacrificial vessels through which liberals can pretend the world's evils were expunged.

Any major shift in favor of granting rights to the oppressed inevitably stirs up a proportional conservative backlash with the effort of reversing course -- not just by revoking those new rights, but by making the previous inequality worse so that it becomes harder to undo again. If we care about ensuring an equitable future, it is vital to understand that the fight for that future does not end with a law being passed. It ends only when equality for all is so well-established as a social norm that there is no way to benefit from pushing for its destruction. Do not get complacent.

[writereleaserepeat]

Hear No Evil - Chapter 1

Rowan is an activist with the Pet Liberation Front. He has spent the better part of a decade assisting the cause as a multimedia specialist, but never spends much time with the victims he is so intent on saving. After going undercover as a buyer to capture systemic abuse on camera, he finds a broken boy that steals his heart. Before Rowan knows it, he has a rescue pet at home. Both Rowan and his new houseguest must take steps to heal and adjust to their new normal.

Masterlist

// Chapter 2 (tbd)

CW: bbu, bbu-typical institutional slavery, mention of noncon, noncon touch, sexual and nonsexual nudity, it/its pronouns used to dehumanize

“ID, please.”

Rowan handed over his driver’s license with a smile to the woman behind the counter. Marie, her name tag said, with a smaller typeface beneath that read she/her/hers. A faded cartoon sun sticker was wrapped halfway around the edge of the badge, almost completely covering the familiar WRU logo.

“Mr. Bailey,” she said with a soft smile in return, “welcome to today’s Opportunity Sale. Is this your first time attending one of WRU’s most special events?”

“No, I’ve been before.” 

It was hard to keep his voice level, especially at first. He’d been to dozens of these events around the country, and each was proving to be harder on his spirit than the last. The weight of the phone in his shirt pocket, already recording, weighed him down as much as his words.

Opportunity Sale. He loathed the euphemism. It was a liquidation, a fire sale, a last chance for the souls the institution had broken beyond repair. These so-called pets up for sale today were what WRU considered damaged goods, defective products. These are pets who don’t live up to WRU standards of excellence, they’d say, so we’re offering them at a discount, each sold as-is.

The “defects” varied. Some were marred by years of physical abuse, no longer able to perform the tasks they were trained for as their bodies failed. Others had simply lost their minds, slipped into catatonia, a permanent dissociation that rendered them a husk of the person they’d once been. Sometimes, albeit rarely, there were victims that WRU couldn’t fully break and bend to their whims, pets who were marked by attitude and defiance that no typical buyer would tolerate. Some were simply old, the incessant labor and abuse having weakened their bodies, unable to fulfill their purpose with the grace and ease that was expected.

They called it an opportunity, but It was nothing more than a last-ditch effort to recoup the costs that went into each “product.” Fully breaking a person’s mind took considerable time and money, and a broken pet sold for pennies on the dollar was still better for WRU’s books than a total loss. 

Those pets that weren’t sold before the close of business would be unceremoniously euthanized before the next sunrise. 

“If you’re familiar, then I’ll spare you the usual spiel about how this works,” Marie continued as she ran his ID through the desktop scanner. If she noticed the edge to his voice, she didn’t show it. “But I’ll give you a few reminders, just to refresh your memory. WRU salespersons will be stationed throughout the sales floor, wearing yellow shirts and WRU name tags just like mine. They’re available to answer any questions about merchandise or to help close any sales. We also ask that you refrain from live video or photographs for the privacy of our staff.”

“Got it.” Rowan felt the lie sticky on his tongue. The staff present today would be afforded no privacy, not if he could help it. Their atrocities, their complicity in this system, would soon be aired to the growing world of people who cared. Even this interaction at this front desk would be on tape, ready to share with the world in a matter of days. 

“Wonderful,” Marie said as she handed his ID back with a pamphlet tucked beneath it. “You can find the map of our sales floor in this brochure. Domestic will be in the front right through the double doors, Platonic towards the center, Romantics and all other classifications behind the black curtain on the left. I will say that we’re particularly low on Platonic inventory for this event, so if that’s what you’re after, I’d recommend coming back for next month’s Opportunity Sale. If you’re looking for anything specific, a WRU salesperson would be happy to assist.”

Rowan retrieved his ID and the map out of her hands, and he silently hoped she wouldn’t notice his fingers shaking. 

“Got it, thanks for your help.”

A final smile was all he afforded her before turning to the heavy double doors beyond the entryway. 

As he stepped closer to the threshold of purgatory, a familiar memory rose from the back of his mind. It always did at these places, the familiar sensation overwhelming him as his subconscious dragged him back nearly fifteen years.

---

“Hey, prof, are we there yet?”

Benny’s familiar voice cut sharp through the otherwise low murmur of conversation on the bus. 

“Benny, please,” Professor Engelhardt groaned, exasperation obvious in both her face and her voice. “I would appreciate it if all of our volunteers could act their age. You’ll know when we get there, I promise. In the meantime, try and exercise even a modicum of patience”

Rowan felt Grey squeeze his knee, and when he looked over the other young man gave him a toothy smile.

“For once, the loud-mouth has a point,” Grey said as he stifled a giggle.

“I have to agree,” Rowan agreed as he swallowed a laugh of his own. “It feels like we’ve been staring at nothing but cornfields for the last two hours. Where could we possibly be going this far out of the city?”

“Professor Engelhardt did say it was essential to our training as PLF volunteers, and I know that it’s a requirement for anyone who wants to do investigative work for the PLF. But as far as I know, there’s no WRU facilities out west of the city like this.”

“You’d be correct.”

Rowan looked up as his ears burned in embarrassment, the tired professor looking down at both him and Grey from the aisle. She continued, seemingly unaware of the blush that also tinged Grey’s cheeks. 

“This is a required journey for all volunteers who are looking to take the next step in their PLF activism. We’d rather you each know now whether this kind of environment will be too much for a sensitive stomach. And you’re also correct on a second count, Greyson. We’re not going to any WRU facility, at least not yet. You each have a considerable amount of training ahead of you before you go quite so far.”

By now, Professor Engelhardt’s voice had grabbed the attention of the other volunteers squeezed into the rattling and repurposed school bus. Faces of all ages, from the hopeful university students to the equally tired retirees, were rapt as their chaperone continued. Rowan’s stomach felt like it was doing somersaults as she spoke.

“We’re going to a cattle slaughterhouse. It’s time that you all experience for yourselves what it’s like when blood soaks the floor and all you can hear is screaming and heavy machinery. You need to see what happens when a collection of personal choices and systems meant to harm come together to determine whether something lives, or whether it dies. These aren’t humans, and they can’t speak to you to share their stories, but you’ll have plenty of time to see those horrors with your own eyes as you continue as volunteers. For now, let’s get you accustomed to keeping a straight face amidst the suffering and bloodshed. Given some of your aspirations, that shouldn't be much to ask.”

This time, Grey grabbed Rowan’s hand. Rowan gripped it back until his knuckles turned white.

--- 

That same smell followed Rowan now, the acrid stench he first experienced in the slaughterhouse on that humid August day. It was a lingering copper heavy in the air, a whisper of blood among festering wounds and fluids. WRU certainly tried to cover their tracks, make this place seem welcoming and inviting to the public, hide the litany of abuse that propped the system up. But to Rowan, and to anyone who knew better, there was no hiding the stench of ammonia and waste that clung to skin as much as sweat. These were sins that neither Pine Sol nor bleach could cover.

Rowan pushed through the double doors and entered the sales floor. It was showtime. 

The repurposed warehouse was milling with bodies. There were throngs of buyers meandering between yellow-clad WRU salespeople and black-clad Handlers, some chatting cheerfully while they contemplated buying a living being, others already busying their hands with prodding the “merchandise.” 

Opportunistic buyers hoping to get a pet at a discount came in a few standard flavors. There would be the middle-class families, unable to afford a brand-new pet, but still hoping to score a Domestic that was good enough to help around the house. There were the desperate perverts who were looking to try out a Romantic, see if flesh was better than silicone to get their kicks. And then there were the truly depraved, those hoping that they can find a legal way to torture - and likely murder - a living being without the threat incarceration hanging over their heads.

Rowan was posing as a long-curious buyer who might finally cave and get a Romantic all for himself. He wanted to be charismatic and sure of himself, but prove to be a bit more hesitant when it came to the “merchandise” itself. He was dressed smart, like he had money, but erred towards frugality. This would drum up the sales people, get them to incriminate WRU and its horrors under the guise of a sales pitch, the very thing that would generate sound bytes perfect for the pro liberation materials. 

He started with the Domestics, he always did. They were typically positioned at the entryway, intentionally so, as both the most in-demand and publicly palatable part of the system. Most families and prospective buyers wouldn’t wander past this point of the warehouse, not needing to look any further. 

A few of the victims were kept in cages, others on long leashes for handlers to parade around. It all depended on the state they were in, how well they’d be able to sell themselves as much as the salespeople did. 

“You look like a busy man,” a woman clad in WRU-issued yellow said with a smile in Rowan’s direction. “What do you say about never having to cook for yourself again? What about coming home to clean laundry every day without needing to think about it?” 

“That does sound tempting,” Rowan answered as he slowed to a halt. 

He looked at the man attached to the saleswoman’s lead, a tall and gangly thing, hunched shoulders with a distant look in his eyes. The defect was readily apparent: he was standing and leaning on a pair of forearm crutches, rather than the expected kneeling, because he was missing most of his left leg.

“This is one of our best deals of the day,” she continued her pitch with practiced ease, “I can guarantee you that. A flawless all-around Domestic, with great command responsiveness and attentiveness. It’s perfect for a busy working man or a family with a few kids. We’ve got it marked down today due to an obvious defect with its legs, which means it moves much slower than we’d expect from one of our model Domestics. Likewise, it can’t assume many of the expected kneeling positions, and struggles to move from position to position otherwise. This pet requires a patient owner, but the reward for that patience is a model that otherwise works as expected.”

This man would likely live another day. Rowan couldn’t see many other physical signs of damage beyond the amputation, and so long as this one ended up with someone who kept up with his medical equipment and any other treatments, he’d likely have many more years of service ahead of him. Maybe he’d even live long enough to see the whole damn system dismantled.

Still, it was Rowan’s job today to get incriminating sound bytes and video, so he pressed back. 

“I don’t like how tall it is,” he said, staring at the man who’d tower over him if he wasn’t slouched over his crutches. “I’d hate someone to think it has any kind of authority or power over me. It would be embarrassing in front of guests.”

“Rest assured, this model is fully obedient and appropriately subservient. After nearly a decade of service, there have been zero complaints of defiance or insubordination. Its last owners simply couldn’t bear the aesthetics of a Domestic like this. They’ve left glowing reviews of its service, and had it receive additional training in hand washing and minor repairs of delicate clothes. Really, this is a steal, and it’s more than discounted for the cost of a leg.”

“I understand,” Rowan said. “Still, I’m not a very tall man, and this one is just too much for me to handle. Your pitch is good, though, I’m sure you’ll have someone take it off your hands.”

“Of course, we want to make sure that each customer gets a pet that’s best suited for their needs, even if it is at an Opportunity Sale like this. If you’re interested in a shorter Domestic designation, we’ve got one over there with my colleague Dominic.” She pointed to the far end of the Domestic zone, to a tall man in yellow with a pet in a cage beside him. Rowan swallowed disgust once more.

“I’ll go check it out, thanks.”

And he did. He walked slowly, moving deliberately from side to side so his camera captured everything. This included the sight of a Platonic falling to their knees as an electric collar went off around their neck. The would-be purchaser gave a lecherous smile and ran her hand through the panting pet’s hair once the crackle of electricity faded. There would be no fairy tale ending for that unfortunate soul. 

“I saw my colleague Debbie point you over here,” the WRU employee said as Rowan came within earshot of the cage tied to the warehouse floor. “Do you mind if I give you the sales pitch while you look the merchandise over?”

“Well, the fact you’ve got this one in a crate while the others are out and about isn’t promising,” Rowan tried to lament as he gazed through the bars of the cage.  

“Ah, but that’s part of the story.” Already the salesman was working to weave a tale, and it was one Rowan would listen to with well-practiced feigned interest. The man gestured at the crate with an expression of false sorrow before he continued. 

“This one isn’t in a crate because it’s a danger to you. No, it’s a danger to itself, and only then because it’s so stricken by grief. You see, this pet is from our very first Domestic-Care line of products, the latest from WRU in home-care solutions. Its extended training made it perfect for older buyers looking to have a Domestic with a bit of extra training in handling low-complexity medical equipment like wheelchairs, walkers, shower chairs, stair lifts, and more. It was paired with a loving owner, carried out its tasks dutifully, and went years with a perfect record. All check-ins from WRU were met with glowing reviews. 

“Given the opportunity, it follows routines to a degree of meticulousness few of our pets have a predisposition for. Genuinely, this pet has always been one-of-a-kind. However, its owner passed away from circumstances entirely beyond this pet’s control. It went out of its mind with grief, and no matter how many new homes we’ve placed it in, and no matter the attempts we’ve made to re-train it, it escapes and runs right back to its old master’s home.” 

Even now, Rowan could see the pet searching for the door, their eyes following the flow of people in and out of the sales room. The human feelings were there. They always had been, and Rowan could all but feel the grief himself. That panicked searching for a way out, that desire to run into the arms to the person that this human felt they belonged to. A desperation for a door to an old life, a familiar voice, an expected touch. Grief as manifest through complete brainwashed devotion. 

Rowan knew better by now than to let his emotions seep through onto his face.  

“So, it’s a runaway risk. A certain runaway, in fact.” 

“I wouldn’t say anything with certainty,” the employee said with a nerve-tinged laugh. “In fact, the reason this particular model is on the floor today is with the hopes it connects with someone as deeply as it connected with its first owner. There’s no guarantee of that, we know, but it’s worth the shot. We’re hoping the right person will come along today and help them find peace. In the meantime, we’d recommend a home outfitted with windows that lock, and doors that are equipped with biometric verification that the pet can’t bypass.” 

The only peace this pet would find would be its death later this evening. No one in their right mind would take a runaway, not a casual purchaser, and not even a liberation group. The risk of a successful escape was just far too great.

The pet wouldn’t meet Rowan’s eyes even now, as it returned hunting, searching for the familiar face it was expecting. A face that would never come. There was no solace in knowing that soon, for the faithful at least, pet and owner would be reunited. 

“Unfortunately, I’m not equipped to handle a runaway,” Rowan said as he looked up from the crate with a sigh. “Honestly, I feel like these Domestics have just sidetracked me. I was here to look at the Romantics, really.” 

“Then you’ll want to head right behind that curtain over there,” the man said with a gesture to the tall velvet curtains that cordoned off nearly a third of the warehouse. “There are plenty of additional WRU employees there to help you find a model that’s suitable to your needs.” 

With a nod, Rowan turned to walk towards the curtains. He lingered for a moment, just long enough to stick his fingers through the bars of the cage at his side, a chance to let the pet seek out comfort if they wanted. No touch came, and Rowan walked away with a familiar pang in his heart. He knew by now that he was never going to save them all, not yet, but it didn’t ease the pain. 

Another flash of his ID was all it took to get him through the foreboding curtains. WRU absolutely didn’t want families and reporters seeing this side of the system, after all. The Romantics division might have been the second best-selling of all the WRU models, but it was also the most secretive. There was good reason for that. 

As soon as Rowan passed the threshold he was hit with the thick aroma of sex and fear. There was a more sinister atmosphere in the rooms that existed behind the curtain, air heavy with that adrenaline-twinged sweat of broken pets who were fighting for their lives, some being used live for demonstrations on the sales floor. Even after all this time, Rowan’s stomach wasn’t quite accustomed to it. 

He kept his chest forward and shoulders out. That was the best way for his camera to capture the sights and the sounds, because after all, that was the reason he was here. He wasn’t here to save these victims, as much as he wished that was the case. He was here in the hopes that their suffering would give those that came after them a fighting chance, that airing these atrocities to the world would bring the system to its knees one day.

The first sight that drew his attention was a man cinched to a table, an unusual arrangement for even the most “defective” Romantics. There were already two potential buyers there, hands on the naked pet, touching his body and fondling his genitals. The pet was unflinching, his chest rising and falling steadily, lips giving out soft sighs and moans in a practiced rhythm. 

“I didn’t expect this one to be so popular,” the WRU employee said with feigned exclamation as Rowan meandered over. “But young man, you certainly have good taste. This model is one many once would have believed was unsalable, but here, at the Opportunity Sale, it’s being given a second chance. Not only that, but it’s proving to be the center of attention.” 

‘What’s wrong with it?” Rowan asked bluntly, still surveying the scene. Something had to be wrong, and even his own seasoned eyes hadn’t figured it out yet. The pet’s gaze was unfocused, its body still, just as a Romantic was trained to be unless given the command to engage. 

“Another tragedy, I’m afraid.” The salesperson didn’t sound saddened at all. “There was an incident during its training that left it paralyzed from the mid-back down. This means that, as a Romantic, its functions are limited. It can’t sustain an erection anymore, and it can’t engage in certain types of play. However, it's still just as tight as our standard buyers would expect, and its mouth is an absolute dream. You’d be responsible for the additional care costs of a paralyzed pet, but for someone with limited sexual needs of their own, this model will more than fulfill.” 

At least once each Opportunity Sale, Rowan swore to himself that this was finally the time he was going to be sick on the job. He’d see something so horrific that there was no answer except to choke up bile and spit there on the sales floor. He’d likely out himself as a PLF agent in that same breath - after all, who else would be so concerned about the well being of pets? - but it almost didn’t matter. These horrors were too much to witness, much less bear as the victim was bearing them now. 

He swallowed the lump in his throat. At least that sales pitch would make a great sound byte for the pet liberation materials. 

“Uh, yeah, that’s not what I’m looking for. I’d definitely want one that’s younger and, uh, more mobile.”

“Understandable,” the salesperson said with a nod. “There are plenty of other options here today that might suit your fancy. Feel free to keep browsing, and as always, you’re welcome to ask a WRU employee for any assistance or further direction.”

“Thanks.”

And Rowan did keep browsing. He browsed carefully, angling his chest to capture all of the angles he could, kneeling down to “inspect” pets that were sprawled naked on the floor. The path he took around the Romantics section was methodical. The disabled pets, the catatonic pets, the ones with abuse written on their skin, Rowan tried to capture them all. When he could he gave their hands what he hoped was a squeeze of comfort - possibly the last they’d receive in their too-short lives. 

He was nearly to the back corner, at which point he’d loop around to the front and make a graceful exit, when he saw another Romantic in a crate.

Unlike all the others, this one made Rowan stop in his tracks.

The man in the crate was young, possibly ten or so years younger than Rowan himself. He had a thick hair of black curls and he was looking through the bars of the crate with searching, hopeful eyes. It was almost like he was waiting for something, someone, to notice him. Most of the pets here were defeated, on their last chance at redemption, already chewed up and spit out. Their spirits had been dampened. Somehow, some way, this one was still fighting. 

It was like a thread in his chest pulled Rowan up to the crate. His feet were moving without him commanding them, unlike anything he’d experienced at a sale like this before. He was caught up in something special, something different, about this victim. 

“You have a good eye,” the saleswoman said with a warm smile. “This is possibly one of the best deals we have on the floor today, so long as you’re willing to be a little patient.”

“What’s wrong with this one?” Rowan asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the boy kneeling almost eagerly behind the bars. 

“Let me start off by saying that this pet is in great physical condition. Not only is it one of the youngest we have here today, it has passed almost all of our physical examinations with flying colors. Its strength, speed, and tactile abilities are within or exceeding our typical parameters. Not only that, but this particular pet has something that is typically reserved for only our most exclusive customers: it has dual training, and is classified as both a Romantic and a Domestic.” 

“That’s not something you typically see at an Opportunity Sale, I suppose,” Rowan pretended to muse. He already knew that what she had said was the truth. Dual-classification pets took many more months of training than single-classification, and it often showed in both the abuses and expenses associated with keeping one. A Dual-classification pet could easily cost as much as a down payment on a house. 

“Exactly why this is such a great opportunity,” the saleswoman beamed. “As a Domestic, it even has specialty training in French cuisine. You’ll be eating like royalty every night if you so please. As a Romantic, its skills and abilities are considered quite standard, with experience in training for light bondage.” 

“So, why aren’t you telling me what’s wrong with it?” 

A sigh. Dramatic, almost despairing. It was an act of practiced sympathy that soured Rowan’s stomach even further. 

“Unfortunately, this one seems incredibly selective with the orders it follows, if it follows them at all. No amount of effort from our most experienced WRU handlers have been able to adequately refurbish it. As I said, its behaviors and capabilities are within or exceeding WRU standards, and it certainly seems eager to please its keepers, but I can make no promises on its compliance with specific commands.”

The boy looked up at Rowan for just a moment before turning his gaze back down. From that brief glance, Rowan wouldn’t have put him a day over twenty-five. But God, he just looked so lost. He didn’t seem lost in the way that many others at the sale today did, that catatonic, too-far-gone glaze over their eyes, the will to live entirely sapped out of them. Instead, it looked like this boy was hunting for something, someone who would notice him, give him attention in return.

Rowan couldn’t help himself. He saw it as a sign that this victim wanted to live, wanted to make it off this floor alive, wanted to connect with any human being that came by and could give him a chance. It was a spark, and against his better judgment, Rowan hoped that he could one day stoke it into a fire. 

“How much?” 

The words left his mouth before he was able to swallow them down. His heart began to race almost instantly: this wasn’t the plan, it was never the plan. He was supposed to get in, take some footage, and get out. He wasn’t trained for anything else. He wasn’t prepared to engage in rescue activities, especially not like this. 

Yet Rowan had never known anything with a certainty such as this: he could not leave here without saving this boy. 

“Wow, you’re won over already?” The saleswoman’s voice was light, but she was already pulling out a clipboard with a stack of paperwork on it. “I haven’t even given you all of its physical details yet. You can’t see quite how tall it is in the crate, can you? Here, let me get you its height, weight, vaccine record, some of its other statistics-” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Rowan managed, almost breathless from the sudden influx of stress. “I want this one. How much?” 

“Because it’s lacking in one of the most essential features of a WRU product, the ability to listen to owner commands, it’s offered at a significant discount. This one is seven thousand and five hundred dollars before tax, and the seven percent state and local sales tax will be applied at checkout. We also have optional add-ons, like the pet care package that insures all well-being visits, vaccines, and dental care at any WRU-sponsored pet clinics, as well as training class vouchers to impart additional skills.” 

Rowan had already retrieved his wallet from his pocket, fingers trembling as he pulled out his ID and method of payment. That was a lot of money, yes, but who was he to put a price on a life? His car could hang on another few years, probably. Maybe. It was just money, he’d be fine. 

“I’ll take the base package. I don’t need anything else.” 

The rest of the sales floor became distant, dull, and Rowan took the pen into his hand as the saleswoman shoved a pile of paperwork in his direction. Tomorrow morning, she said, this boy would be delivered to his front door. Initial on this line, sign here, what’s today’s date? It was a blur and Rowan was hardly aware of what his own hands were doing. 

He couldn’t hear her over the thundering of blood in his ears, and the rush of adrenaline made it hard to steady the pen in his hand. He penned his signature on the final line and the saleswoman congratulated him with words he could hardly make out. It didn’t feel real, like he was walking through a dream. 

Rowan was going to be a pet owner. 

---

The din of conversation in the massive room almost overcame the incessant ringing in the pet’s ears. Not much was capable of drowning it out these days, not since it had become so loud. It never stopped, anymore. 

It couldn’t hear the words that were exchanged all around it, those busy groups of people moving back and forth, their legs passing its crate by without stopping. It had a hard time hearing words, no matter how hard it tried, and whether it was somewhere busy like this or otherwise. It wanted to be good, it wanted to listen, it wanted to make its master and its handlers pleased. But the pet couldn’t do that anymore, and deep in its gut, it knew that’s why it was here today. It was here with all the other pets that were broken, that were missing things, that cried when they were brought into the room this morning. Those pets were bad, and the handlers had no trouble saying as much.

The pet wanted to believe it wasn’t like those broken pets. That it would go back to Master, or have a new master, and be able to please them like a good pet should. But for that to happen it had to be on its best behavior. Handler Green had said so, that the pet would be thrown out if it didn’t try its very best to listen and be good. Handler Green had shouted this over and over, as though the pet was being disobedient just by existing, rather than unable to hear him. It didn’t want to be disobedient, and it wished that the handlers didn’t have to repeat themselves so much. It wished it could hear right, like the other pets were able to.

A pair of legs stopped beside the crate, toes pointed towards the yellow-shirt woman that wasn’t a handler, but the pet was told to behave for nonetheless. The pet looked up, eager to see who might be interested, perhaps someone who wanted it. The man’s eyes met the pet’s, and it quickly averted its gaze back towards the ground, cheeks burning. It was a novice mistake to make eye contact with a person like that. If it didn’t get itself under control, remember its training and very best manners, the pet knew that it was destined to fail. 

Maybe it was a broken pet after all. It certainly had the bruises and scarring from seemingly endless corrections by handlers, anyway. 

Those legs finally walked away and a blanket was thrown over the top of the pet’s crate. It yelped in spite of itself as the darkness descended. Did this mean that it had failed? Was that single glance enough to seal its fate, destined it to never have another Master to serve, no second chance to prove itself? Was this the end - alone, in the dark, unable to hear anything but the shrill ringing that had become its only companion? 

I want to be good, it thought to itself, tears splashing down from its watering eyes to its knees. Its fists balled up, hands shaking from the sadness and the longing. I just want to be good.

---

Taglist (please ask if you would like to be added or removed, I know it's been a while :))

@honey-is-messi @octopus-reactivated @maracujatangerine @squishablesunbeam @tragedyinblue

@clairelsonao3 @den-of-evil @cepheusgalaxy @aswallowimprisoned @kira-the-whump-enthusiast

@honeycollectswhump @rekiroyalstraightprincemaru @whumpzone @peachy-panic @whumplr-reader

@dislexiher @cc1010foxy @onlybadendings @panstardalia @tempoghast

@dokidokisadness @anonfromcanada @starfields08000 @bloodredfountainpen @pumpkin-spice-whump

[hold-him-down]

Belleview Chapter One: Welcome to Belleview

Notes: ~11 years after the beginning of The Fighter, this is not a Luke/Leo story but is in-universe.

TW: Institutionalized slavery, nonsexual nudity, starvation mention, human euthanasia mention, degrading language, all the things.

✥ ✥ ✥

From the outside, it is a beautiful campus. Elegant in its simplicity, with three brick buildings forming a crescent at the mouth of a long, rose-bush lined drive that intersects wrought iron gates.

Today, police swarm it, more for the optics than anything else. They’re not here to enact change, or to start building moral credit, but they are here, and so he smiles, shakes hands, introduces himself.

He opens the double-paned glass door, which sits just in front of a set of reinforced steel bars, and he’s immediately met with the silence of a reception area from which all of its workforce has been escorted out. 

Almost all.

“Lincoln Prescott?” says a singular man, in his mid-twenties on his best day, peeking around the corner. He’s nervous, skittish even. Fidgeting palms run down his sweater and he smiles, but it’s not the smile of someone who’s happy, welcoming, comfortable, warm. 

Lincoln returns the gesture and nods. He doesn’t extend his hand. Instead, he turns over the key he’s just been handed, and he reads the man’s name-tag.

Jared Fisher, Handler. Level Two. 

Jared smiles sheepishly and takes off the name-badge. “I wasn’t sure if I should wear it. I guess… I guess it’s not really needed anymore.” He holds it out to Lincoln, who stares at it for several seconds, before he sets it on the counter behind him.

“Uh,” Jared says, cutting through the silence of the massive waiting area. “I’m sorry. I know, I’m sure, that you’re not– I get it, I mean. I know I’m the enemy here.” 

Lincoln narrows his eyes, shaking his head once. 

“They said if I– Uhh, they said they’ll take it into c– consideration, I guess. When the trials start. When… whatever is going to happen, happens.” He swallows, and Lincoln feels something that is related to sympathy, but not quite it. He lets that feeling fizzle quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone," Jared says quietly. 

There’s silence again. Lincoln lets it settle over him, watching the ex-handler’s fidgeting intensify, before he says, “Oh. You’re waiting for me to speak.” 

Jared shrinks.

When the final nail in the coffin of support for the trade and consumption of government-sanctioned slavery had been hammered in, there wasn’t the type of frenzy that anyone expected. That morning, people, by and large, woke up, had their coffee, showered. They caught their trains to work, they read their news and they watched, closely, but there wasn’t an uproar. They stole glances at their phones and monitors for updates, for news, for what happens next. 

Truth be told, it had been heading this way for a while. Within the last ten years, individual states had begun passing legislation that, in hindsight, paved the path for widespread challenges to the system, led by a few congresspeople who finally woke the fuck up. Things turned violent early, with protests, rallies, boycotts, demonstrations… everything imaginable. 

Videos of workers being tortured, followed by videos of workers recounting their own stories, began making national headlines. Consumers of workers’ labor fought hard to sway public opinion back to the positive outcomes the system had brought the country, but with each passing week, with each new video of a worker strapped to a table being violated in unimaginable ways, it was a losing battle.

As local legislation was passed, certain states became a kind of safe-haven for runaways. And eventually, things started going federal. 

The most significant bill, the one that fully outlawed the use of worker labor and reinstated the ‘freedom’ of current workers, was going to be codified that morning. It wasn’t unexpected, at that point, but still, the infrastructure, the plan, was… well, it had holes, to say the least.

The workers who were deemed functional, by some arbitrary metric, would be relocated to massive government-owned housing units. They would share rooms by the half dozen, be fed, given medical attention, and slowly be reintegrated into society. No one knew exactly how that would work, but it had been successful in the states that had already outlawed worker labor (with some notable exceptions), so the plan, half-assed as it was, was set into motion.

Former safehouses were repurposed as halfway houses for those who were less “independent.”

Individual volunteers were gathered who would open their homes to those who were unable to care for themselves but didn't pose any significant safety or medical risk.

In the days leading up to the vote for reinstatement of worker rights, when it was clear how things were going to go, people did go into a frenzy. Hospitals scrambled to hire, doctor’s offices scrambled to modify policy, the call for volunteers to offer shelter, food, medical assistance, jobs… it was madness.

But that morning, the morning the final nail landed, it was quiet.

Jared leads Lincoln down a narrow hallway, spouting off information as he does. The linoleum tiled floor is clean, but peels around the edges. The walls are white, chipped along the corners and where the doorframes meet the drywall. The ceiling is white, but there’s a yellow cast. The fluorescent lights that line the halls give it a sort of eerie post-apocalyptic vibe, and it’s fitting.

The building, Belleview, is eerily quiet. There’s no obvious screaming coming from within, so it’s already better than he expected. 

Jared slaps his keycard against a box outside a set of double doors, and Lincoln takes a breath. The volunteers are gathering outside by now. His group of nurses, doctors, caretakers. They could be with him, but he wanted this run-through alone. To give him time to make sure the plan that he spent the last week finessing would work.

Jared stops at the first door, and pushes a button outside of it, bringing to life a screen. There’s a name on the top, and Lincoln glances through the information he’s shown. Jared presses another button, and the door unlocks audibly, the light above it turning from red to green.

Inside is a man, with nothing else. Brown hair, blue eyes. He doesn’t look at them. 

“This one can get aggressive.” Jared’s voice is matter of fact, as he points out the information on the tablet. “They come here to… you know, to be of whatever use they can be until they…” he whispers, and Lincoln offers him the briefest of glances. He regrets it immediately. “Expire.”

Lincoln turns his attention back to the screen, and so Jared continues. “We have 21, uh… residents, right now. I think that’s what we’re supposed to call them now. They were… well, you know. They were workers, but the rejects, I guess. They’re in… they’re in various states of um…”

Lincoln clears his throat tersely, throwing a warning glance to the ex-handler. 

“Well, okay. I’m sure you’ve been briefed, and if not, I’m sure you will be.” He begins walking again, letting the last door close without another glance, as he approaches the next. “We tried to take as good of care of them as we could. They’re fed and watered and we tried to... whenever we could, some of us tried to offer them some comfort.”

He stops at the door. “Obviously, they’re here for a reason, so they don’t tend to be super… uh, super cooperative or trainable or anything. They’re usually just… they’re here for a short time, and then–” He stops himself this time, without the warning glance.

“We call this guy Tank, but I think his real name is Tyler, if that means anything to you.” 

Lincoln nods. “Does it say here? Anywhere on here? What his name is?”

Jared fiddles with the screen for several seconds before it comes to a demographic page. It lists 20 inhabitants, and presumably, their room numbers. 

“Look at that,” Jared says then, interrupting Lincoln’s review. “Looks like I was right, it is Tyler. That was a guess.”

Lincoln takes a breath, because there’s no benefit to causing a scene here. If Jared was offered leniency, then he was a handler who, at least on the surface, wasn’t as bad as he could have been. 

“Anyway, this one used to be aggressive, too." The door opens and Jared gestures to the man who lays on his stomach, bandages across his back. "But now? Nothing going on in there.” He points to his own temples, and lets the door swing shut. He switches to the video feed, where Tyler stares into the camera.

Jared continues along to the next room, and Lincoln follows behind him, his thoughts racing.

Lincoln Prescott was already in his car on his way to the site he’d been assigned to oversee before they even finalized things in the White House. It’s a temporary solution to a very serious problem, they said. It would take ten to fifteen days to get those who were in no shape to get to a halfway house the medical attention they needed and find suitable placements for them. 

In the meantime, they were safest where they were. He was needed to help organize the volunteers and medical personnel, and to act as a sort of director of the temporary housing facility.

So he drove. He knew it would be bad, maybe the worst of the worst. He had been briefed. He was given a stack of files of the inhabitants that he would be overseeing. He looked it over that night, and every night since then. He spent the last six days memorizing every face, every backstory.

It was a site to house those that the government had deemed unable to be placed, for one reason or another. Too violent, too unpredictable, too difficult to be trained. From what Lincoln could gather, these workers served any and all purposes. Their primary reason for existence was, it seemed, to trial training techniques, to trial drugs, to motivate the workers who were difficult, to show that there were worse fates.

They ranged in ages from 19-26. None survived longer. 

“Doctor Prescott?” Jared asks, from somewhere far away. Lincoln looks up from the tablet, and Jared is already down the hall at the next door. Lincoln takes a breath, biding his time. They’ve gone through eighteen of the men, with Jared's special commentary on each of them. Twice, Jared had promised that he wasn't a bad person, and that the culture had been one thing, but now it was another, and he was ready to pivot.

Only once had Lincoln felt himself snap, and had to excuse himself before serious harm was done.

Some of the men were given the accommodation of a bed, some of them were given clothing, some had rotten food in their cells, some had broken bones, open wounds. Some slept fitfully, and some slept so completely still that Lincoln thought that they might not be alive at all. Jared had assured him, in those moments, that they probably were.

Jared opens the door to the twentieth room, with a small, “We call this one ‘Felix.’ I think you’ll like him,” as he does. The man, short blonde hair and dark brown eyes and at least forty pounds less than his frame should support, blinks himself awake. He sits in the corner of the tiny room and stares at Lincoln. He tries to smile, but the tremors that rock his body make it hard to buy. He doesn't wear any clothes, and has one of the DLS-issued shock collars affixed to his neck. His ribs shake when he breathes too deep, but again, he tries to smile, even as he backs further into the corner.

Jared is speaking to him, but Lincoln doesn’t clock exactly what’s being said. The man looks so afraid, but still, he lifts his fingers in a sort of wave, shaking as he does. Lincoln waves back, offering him a small smile in return.

“We’re not allowed to euthanize them,” Jared is saying. 

“What?” 

“When they hit the end, I mean. We have to give them enough food, give them enough water. If they choose to stop eating or drinking or… whatever, that’s on them. We can’t assist them. Once they’re too far gone, sometimes we’ll just stop trying to get them to eat, and let them go.”

He thought, by now, that he’d heard it all. His eyes widen. “Is that where we’re at with him?”

Jared shrugs. “He’s sick. The director said he’s gonna go any day now, but it’s better if we don’t directly cause that.”

Lincoln doesn’t attempt to keep the hatred out of his eyes.

“He knows,” Jared says. “They all do. Once we stop pulling them for testing, it’s only a matter of time. He wants you to pull him, though,” he continues. “He wants to know it’s not his time yet. He wants to show you he can still be of use. He doesn’t really speak anymore, but he tries to be sweet, so we will keep him in rotation.”

“Stop talking,” Lincoln says then, his fist in a tight ball but, remarkably, not around the man’s throat. Jared’s mouth snaps shut. 

“Show me the last one, and then you’re finished here.” 

As they retreat away from the man’s cell, the door closes behind them, and Lincoln watches the hope leave his eyes.

They make quick work of the last door, and the weasley man leads Lincoln back through the main wing, mumbling about how there were several wings they didn’t tour, but he at least got to see all the residents, and how if he has questions, he is more than happy to take a call, day or night, and how… 

✥ ✥ ✥

The volunteers stand in a haphazard group, each with a color coded name-badge to at least give Lincoln a starting point as to their role. He begins by directing the doctors and nurses to rooms, providing instructions on how to access the rooms, providing instructions on how to access the medical files, providing whatever information he can.

They’re working on finding placements for each of these boys, he tells them. But they all require intensive, specific treatment. As they find placements, they’ll be housed, and once they’ve placed the last boy, the volunteers will be reassigned.

As the last of the volunteers heads inside to get their own bearings, Lincoln takes a step back, regarding the innocuous building. 

“I guess that’s that,” Jared says from behind him, taking a step forward and extending his hand out once more. Lincoln looks down at it, shoving his hands into his pockets, as Jared mumbles,  “Welcome to Belleview.”

UNTITLED SYSTEM COLLAPSE STORY TAGLIST: @pigeonwhumps @peachy-panic @whump-cravings

[goldenwoods]

I don't want to beat the dead horse of 'Harry Potter's depiction of enslaved house elves is disgusting' but...I simply can't help myself. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I made this account to rant, after all.

So, I knew that Harry Potter never solved systemic slavery, nor even condemned it as a system. Treating house elves badly was a big no, but enslaving them in general? Debatable to say the least, says the narrative. But a recent conversation with a friend made me remember some details about just how bad it was.

First of all, though the freeing of elves via socks is a repeated element, information regarding how house elves are enslaved (or indeed, how they are born) are never shown. It's some nebulous 'bound by magic' thing and George said they come with old manors (huh?). The narrative deliberately presents all of them in an already enslaved state. Enslavement is, in the Harry Potter universe, the natural state of elves while freedom on the other hand is something that requires an external 'act', something unnatural. Elves are not shown to naturally possess autonomy which is thereafter systematically deprived, rather, they are born as part of a wizard family's property. This is pretty disturbing and sets the foundation for the narrative's whole "slavery is okay because house elves like it!' thing.

The second problem is Harry Potter himself. Harry is infuriatingly passive in front of disgusting acts of slavery. And it's not because he's a shy or apathetic character. Harry will stand up for people, is quite rash about it in fact, and even at his calmest will issue an appropriately scathing remark. But when Winky, someone who's whole kind has been enslaved and abused for who knows how long, sprouts of stuff she's been conditioned to believe like 'we're not paid, and Dobby wanting to be is unbecoming', or 'we're not supposed to have fun' or 'we do what we're told', Harry doesn't tell her 'No? You are entitled to individual autonomy, enslaving you is wrong.' but he's just like 'eh.....Dobby's cool, let him live his life.' and when Hermione complained about their oppression, the book states, literally, "Harry shook his head and applied himself to his scrambled eggs." and "True, both [Harry and Ron] had paid two Sickles for a S.P.E.W. badge, but they had only done it to keep her quiet." and regarding a professor using house elves to test for poison, Harry simply thought 'welp, guess Hermione's gonna be pissed about that, better not mention it'. (???) What the hell is going on with the good guys here, Rowling? Is this the approved attitude towards slavery?

Thirdly, of course, is the whole 'house elves love being enslaved' thing. Which...silly me for thinking Rowling was trying to critique systemic oppression...and not trying to shove it under the rug after using one poor oppressed elf to characterise bad guy Lucius. I mean, Hagrid's reasoning as to why we shouldn't free elves is absurd, he explains that it's 'in their nature to look after humans, that's what they like', they'd be unhappy to have their work taken away, and they'd be insulted if they got paid. Which is, first of all, a demonstrably untrue statement, because Dobby loved being paid. ('in their nature' generalisations proven to be inaccurate? What a shock!) But even putting that aside, how does this translate to slavery? You could...I don't know, free them and let them voluntarily be cooks, cleaners, servants, whatever, instead of keeping them under a 'magical bound' that makes coerced self-harm possible. They can...take care of you and be your servants if they really want to without being your property. What the hell.

Last but not least is how the only time the narrative made Ron Weasley ('good guy' who's exasperated by Hermione's house elves movement) openly consider the well-beings of house elves is when they wanted to set up Ron and Hermione's big romantic kiss. There's something so gross about Rowling trying to finalise her haphazardly-written romance with her poorly-written slaves, a group that she had, in the last few books, already mercilessly exploited for "comedy" via Hermione's unsuccessful activism. And it's...not even that significant. Ron: 'Hey, don't you think we shouldn't trap enslaved elves in a sieged castle that's about to become a death pit?' Hermione, and the narrative by extension: 'You're amazing, Ron! For showing them basic decency!' *aggressive kissing ensues*

And then Rowling made a whole crowd of house elves (along with a bunch of other systemically oppressed races that she couldn't bother writing properly) rush into battle on Harry/Hogwarts' behalf because wow, isn't he benevolent towards the enslaved? They love him! Like...no, Rowling, you didn't earn the 'all races unite' moment, rather you screwed it over so badly that your feel-good climax presents a picture of slaves rushing to defend their masters, who, I might add, just kind of forgot about them and decided that establishing nuclear families with a bunch of kids and no evil baddie anymore means 'all is well', systemic issues be damned.

[reasoningdaily]

The Attica Prison’s inmate-led riot turns the prison into a democracy

Attica was a pot simmering and waiting to boil over for decades. finally on 9/9/71 it happened. Nelson Rockerfeller and the new york state troopers caused a situation that became unforgettable in american history. the massacre all occured because they refused to bargain with the prisoners, on human rights within the institution.

This is why the 13 amendment must be included in the Badges of Slavery or there can be no repair thru Reparations.

[aoharushiyo]

the recipes for... | track 1 — chocolate pudding

Translation: en Proofreading: aca, dimi, kimi, myun, jay, jelly

Content Warning: light jokes about death

PatiBattle is my life. A masterpiece containing the quintessential element, the character that gives meaning to my very existence— yeah, you heard that right: his name is Chiyoda Reito.

PatiBattle is my life. A masterpiece containing the quintessential element, the character that gives meaning to my very existence— yeah, you heard that right: his name is Chiyoda Reito.

---

"Come the hell on, if I don't get there soon, it might all be gone…!"

I was held back after school for ages by the teachers today. Some lecture about my behaviour in class or something. Stuff like my attitude being all over the place, or reading manga under my desk in class… But why today, of all days? Of course, I just had to run my mouth and say that I'd listen any other day, please let me off just for today… but that just ended up adding oil to the fire and I got held back even longer.

[ Next Restock TBA ] "…"

I flew into the anime shop I frequented and stopped in front of the display case for newly stocked merch. I hadn't been able to pre-order, so all the merch I wanted had all already been snagged.

"Seriously… I wish this would stop happening…"

And it's just my luck that I don't have any friends I can ask to buy merch for me.

"'Restock TBA'…? The very concept of this should fuck right off."

Student life may as well be slavery. Sure, pointing and laughing at the working class and calling them corporate slaves has been a thing since ages ago, but isn't being a student pretty much the same thing? At these places called 'schools', you're physically limited to what you can do, you're forced into doing club activities after school, and even once you get home, you've gotta do homework or chores… All that takes up a shit ton of time. Adults always overestimate the amount of free time we kids have.

"Fuck…!"

Despite all of that, somehow I'm making do with the little free time I have. Attending events, making shrines, exchanging official and blind box merch, buying out merch stocks[1], nui outings, birthday pilgrimages…

"Aah… my life has no meaning anymore… Just end me already…"

I just couldn't take it any longer. I stumbled out of the store, and, after sparing only a glance to make sure no one was around, started hitting my head against the wall, over and over. Over, and over, and over. I failed. I'm a failure. I'm sorry, Reito, I'm so sorry that I couldn't bring you home.

The theme for the acrylic standee set this time around was 'Training Camp - First Year, Winter ~Wedding Cake~'. A set that dressed every single character in exquisite bridal attire. Not being able to get something like that on the day of its release is absolutely unforgivable. I might as well just die.

The way back was freezing cold. The weather sucked ass, too.

---

Today, I decided to go home instead of returning to the dorms. Here, I can do whatever I want without anyone getting in my way.

"…Yeah, I guess it'll do."

My feelings of frustration needed some kind of outlet. All of the love I was so ready to shower on my new standee had to go somewhere, too — so I eagerly channelled it into something else.

"Aren't you looking pretty good now?"

I held up my apron, extremely pleased with the crooked rows of can badges and pins that covered its entirety. Naturally, the apron was in Reito's image colour. And right over the chest, where my new merch should have been, shone in its place a new, extra-large aluminium standee.[2] That's right. In this patisserie kitchen, we don't have ita-bags — we have ita-aprons, obviously.

"I've gotta finish this before Reito's birthday…"

I guess you could say it's like a way of measuring love. If this weight is the weight of my love, then even if it's heavy because of how many things I've slowly added to it, I can't get enough. I just can't get enough of the insanity of wearing it. Merch of Reito is in ridiculously high demand, so it's really not great for my wallet, but… I'm fine with that. Because only then does it feel like I'm giving up even my soul for Reito.

"Now then…"

Finally satisfied with my sparkling, gleaming rows of badges, I moved onto the next part of my daily routine — checking socials. After all, numerous new fanworks are being created every day.

"Searching for… 'PatiBattle!'…" With great enthusiasm, I searched for every single keyword that I could think of. 'Patissier Battle', 'Chiyoda Reito', 'ReiOu', 'Rei0u', 'ChocoPudding'…[3]

"Damn, this person's art is so good… wait— wait, they drew this!? This is insane! Fuck, oh fuck… I can't take it, it's so radiant that I can't even look at it properly…!"

This must be what it means to be happy. Being able to see the masterpieces being born every day is happiness. While happily wading through my feed, I spent hours lost in the online world.

"…Ah."

There it was: Reito/Shouta. And… blocked. It's like I never saw it in the first place. It really was a shame that they didn't understand the better dynamic. But staying in your own lane makes the world go 'round, so never having to see it again was good enough.

And finally, after checking everything else, I'd left the best for last:

"Sanseiu-sensei…!"

Sanseiu-sensei, the god of ReiOu. Even if they hadn't uploaded anything new, I could spend hours rereading all of their older works.

"What's wrong? Could it be… is that embarrassment I see?" "H-hey! I still can't believe it… What would someone like you see in me…?" "If you keep saying things like that, I'll just go ahead and eat you up." "Mmph…!?" "…Delicious." "R-Reito-kun!" "Aren't you so sweet? Maybe… even sweeter than chocolate."

"Aaah, it's still this good every time I read this!? Even though I've read it before? This flavour never gets old no matter how many times I reread it! Seriously! What the fuck! I'm gonna go insane!"

After rolling around on my bed, I grabbed my pillow and screamed into it while writhing in glee. How was I supposed to remain sane after reading that!?

"It's so cute! It's so cute that I'm gonna die! Killing me directly would be less painful, Sanseiu-sensei!"

Throwing my emotions into this much disarray… that was the power of the great Sanseiu-sensei. I'd heard that they tabled at a large convention a few months ago, but…

"I wanna meet them and thank them…!"

I wanted to go so badly, but…

"…I can't deal with crowds…"

---

[1] 無限回収 mugen kaishuu refers to the act of buying the same merch over and over without caring about the cost. If you've ever seen one of those huge birthday shrines with a million of the same pins? That's the energy.

[2] アルミ arumi basically is a shortened form of ‘aluminium’. This could refer to a can badge, but it could also be an aluminium standee, which is a cutout of an artwork from an aluminium can. Since Ushio is saying that instead of the acrylic standee, he got an arumi, and also that he mentioned can badges earlier, I've gone with this option.

[3] 礼王 is Ushio's OTP, Reito/Ouji. He'll explain this later! After this, he searches for 礼玉. Note that 玉 looks like 王; it's pretty common to use something to censor part of the name so that it doesn't appear in searches. I've replaced the O with a 0 to replicate the same effect since it wouldn't make much sense to literally transcribe it. 'ChocoPudding' is another version of their ship name (which he will also explain later).

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[azureashes]

The Queen of Curses

As promised, the long awaited sequel! This is a gift fic for the awesome, amazing, epic, kind, lovely, warm, and all around makes the world a better place @xxdoncrazyxx. Happy belated birthday! <3

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18+ Minors DNI

Sukuna//Reader - a sequel to a Goddess for the King of Curses

TW: size kink, triple penetration (kinda), drowning, death, impalement (is that a word?), corruption, mindbreak, lots of blood, lots of cum, sexual slavery, violent death, dubcon I guess, (although reader is pretty into it... psycho XD), DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, also yandere

„Serve?“

Your voice barely reached your ears. It came out distant, as if someone else had spoken.

“Mm,” Sukuna dismissed with a casual wave of his hand, leaning back on someone else’s throne, one leg crossed over the other, crown and scepter tossed carelessly at his feet. Power was his crown. He had no use for the trinkets of weaker men.

 “They’ve served me well enough,” he frowned, displeased by your hesitation. “Now it’s your turn to serve them.”

You knew your voice would falter if you spoke, so you said nothing. Weakness did not arouse Sukuna’s pity – if he had such a thing – it merely provoked his sadism.

“Don’t tell me there’s a problem… goddess,” the last word was spoken on a sneer as he lifted his chin, the black markings on his face twisting along with his twisted expression.

You swallowed thickly and glanced up at where the cursed spirit sat, perched on the seat of power that only yesterday belonged to a man who had ruled at least a hundred miles in every direction. Today, his skull served as Sukuna’s soup bowl.

Two of Sukuna’s arms relaxed on the elaborately fashioned golden armrests, a third propped up his chin, while the fourth was held out towards you, a single finger beckoning you closer. You had consigned yourself to being his toy, and even after all these months of travelling with him, he had not yet grown tired of your old moniker.

Did he do it on purpose? To remind you that your worth wasn’t nearly as elevated as you had once imagined it to be? Or did he simply relish the knowledge that he had brought a goddess – even a fake one – to her knees? You bit your lip, your mind racing to piece together a suitable reply. The only matter was, in the year since Sukuna had knocked your self-worth from that pedestal, you’d been scrambling along on the floor, trying to piece it back together and figure out where it really belonged.

You were a woman, not a goddess, he had said. And the devil of it was, you only felt like a woman when his crimson eyes were burning into yours as he forced himself onto you. It wasn’t always pleasant, but you savored it all the same. Every scar he left on you was like a badge of honor. Proof of your lived experiences.

But to share you with his lackeys? You didn’t care who or how high-ranking they were. You didn’t care if they were powerful enough for Sukuna to feel they deserved you as a reward, you didn’t want to share your body with anyone but him. Being his vessel was the only worth you had left.

“I simply did not realize,” you began slowly, lifting your chin to return his gaze through half- lidded eyes as you swept towards him in response to his beckoning, your skirts swirling around you as you did so. “That my Lord was in the habit of sharing his possessions with others.”

You marched up the two steps towards the usurped throne solemnly, your eyes never leaving his, until you came to stand in front of him with all the poise of your upbringing. Sukuna lifted a hand towards your face with a deceptive gentleness, his sharp, black fingernails scraping past your cheek as his fingers raked through your loose hair.

“My possessions?” he purred, as if pleased you had come to think of yourself as such. His hand closed into a cruel fist as he jerked you forward by your hair, sending you face first into his lap. You supported yourself by bracing yourself on his knees, but his unforgiving grip did not allow you to rise.

“I do with my possessions what I will,” Sukuna reminded you, his voice serpentine and cold in your ear. “Or else, I break them and throw them away.”

The burning pain in your scalp was not even the beginning of what you knew he could do to you, and you cursed the warmth coursing through your treacherous body, a body that had come to learn that pleasure and pain were devilishly intertwined.

“Then forgive me,” you whispered, turning your face towards him with difficulty, “That I would rather be broken than be made to submit to someone other than you.”

He could be angered or pleased by your defiance, there was no way of knowing, and frankly, you no longer had the sense of self-preservation to hope for either.

The moment held, the air between you taut like a hunter’s bowstring as he frowned at you. You wondered what he was looking for as he searched the depths of your eyes. He would find nothing there but sincerity.

Something shifted in his gaze, and his frown deepened. You could not say whether he was puzzled or surprised, but when his brows furrowed, you were acutely aware that the scales had tipped against you.

“Your insolence reminds me, we need to break in the dungeons, don’t we?” A cruel laugh fell from his grinning lips. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I bet you’ll feel right at home.”

He dragged you down the three steps to the hall and then along further passageways. Some of his minions glanced at you in surprise, but they knew better than to look for too long. He dragged you down roughly hewn steps that led into darkness, and you stumbled along behind him, struggled to find your footing on the irregular stairs. You were greeted with a darkness so thick it was almost palpable against your face.

Apart from the moans of prisoners deeper within the underground prison, the flickering of the torchlight in Sukuna’s hand was the only sound that met your ears.

You started as a heavy, barred iron door swung open with a deafening creak like a cat’s yowling and with a flick of his wrist, Sukuna sent you tumbling headfirst into a prison cell, your face striking the uneven slabs of stone roughly. The iron bars slammed shut behind you with a deafening clatter, rattling the walls with their weight and as you turned to Sukuna, you could see that his maniacal sneer had returned.

Whatever had been puzzling him, throwing you into the dungeons seemed to have taken his mind from it. “Rot here, then, if you’re so insistent. If you won’t feed my men, you might as well feed the rats.” His eyes sparked maliciously, “Or are you too good for them, too?”

You gingerly wiped at the blood on your forehead but steeled yourself and turned to offer the demon a curtsy.

“Thank you, my Lord,” you glanced up at him, wondering what was going on behind the bloodlust in his eyes, behind the ever-present hunger for violence. “I will do my best to enjoy my stay here.”

“At least cry, won’t you?” Sukuna frowned, the pleasure vanishing from his face. He gave you a disappointed look then turned away from you with a yawn, suddenly bored, “Die here then for all I care.” And with that, he ascended the steps and was gone, the thick oak door to the dungeons falling shut behind him and robbing you of what little light there had been.

There was no point crying, you knew. Sukuna could abide your tears, your screams, and your begging. What he could not stand, was boredom. And so, that was what you would offer him in the face of whatever he sought to torment you with. If he wanted a reaction out of you – if he wanted you to alleviate his boredom – he would only achieve that by giving you something you wanted in return.

At least, you hoped that that was how it would work.

--------------------------------------------------

Several weeks passed before Sukuna seemed to remember you. And when you were brought out of the dungeon, hungry and dirty, your hair a ragged mess and your clothes disheveled and torn, you blinked and shielded your eyes from the torchlight – your senses overcome. You were given little time to adjust, however, and hastily ushered down one hallway after another. The further you walked from the prisons underground, the more extravagant these walkways became. The more intricate the sconces, the more elaborate the rugs beneath your feet.

The curses you had grown somewhat close to over the year of travelling together cast sympathetic looks as they led you to what you could only assume was a main hall of sorts. You ran your fingers through your tangled locks and tried to rub the grime from your cheeks. If they had taken you out of the damp dungeon, it could only mean you would now be presented to Sukuna once more. You could only hope he would not attempt to give you away again.

As the black-lacquered, double doors were opened to allow you entry, the grandeur of the opulent room met your eyes, a stark contrast to the stone and iron you had become reacquainted with over the last few weeks. Thick, maroon-velvet brocade hangings were draped from tall windows that ran from floor-to-ceiling, their tassels were woven from gold thread, just like the intricate gold filigree detailing spread across the elaborate curtains themselves. The floors were of marble tiling, interlaid in a mosaic pattern. Tapestries lined the walls, carrying the history of the country Sukuna had conquered, meaningless images now.

All this splendor was lost on the King of Curses, who would have been every bit as imposing and awe-inspiring if he were in a dilapidated hut. As it was, he lounged against an armchair made of the same velvet as the curtains, as women crowded around him in varying states of undress. A buxom blonde with glittering dark eyes stood behind him, her hands sliding down the defined muscles of his chest, across those black markings you often traced with your eyes, and on bolder nights, gingerly, with the tips of your fingers.

Beside her stood a brunette, with eyes of emerald, hanging from his neck, her tongue tracing the prominent veins that ran along the thick column. Two women sat on the floor at either side of him, one resting her head against his knee, the other with an arm draped over his thigh, pressing her heavy breasts up against his calf. Each of them had auburn hair, like polished copper and freckled, sun-kissed skin. Twins. Yet another beauty stood at his shoulder, with skin dark as sin that glowed like burnished bronze in the light of the sun. Long lashes curtained her dark eyes, veiled with mystery and allure. Her thick, coiled hair framed her head like a halo – an image divine.  

But the woman you could not tear your eyes from, was the one perched on his lap. Her silks had fallen to her waist, revealing pert, full breasts and skin like the purest cream. She turned to look at you as you entered, flushed cheeks, sky-blue eyes, hair like liquid ink – in short, she was a vision of beauty like no other. She smiled at you, a pitying, taunting smirk and yet, all your eyes saw were her swollen, well-kissed lips.

You dragged your eyes away from her, a haze of red seemed to cover your vision and you knew you could not allow yourself to be baited into an emotional response. Various other women were spread throughout the room, all equally beautiful. Some lie on their backs, panting with exhaustion, others leaned against the furniture, apparently collecting themselves, while others still were completely motionless – likely unconscious. You did not let yourself consider the alternative state they might be in.

Clearly, Sukuna had made recent use of them. You were aware that he had taken to collecting women after you, although generally you kept to your own chambers and were spared having to interact with them. He took noblewomen of his pleasing, generally the daughters or young wives of the deceased lord or king. If she survived the first night, she was rewarded with the honor of joining his harem – where she would be allowed to repeat the experience until either her body or psyche wore out. Some did not last the night, others survived but lost their minds – which bored Sukuna - and a select few took to their new lives with vigor, like the inky-haired harlot currently warming the cursed spirit’s lap.

Steeling yourself, you straightened your spine and returned your gaze firmly to Sukuna, refusing to allow any feelings of inferiority to creep into your mind. You were his first conquest. And though he might have a collection of queens and princesses, you were the only goddess he had yet to claim, rags or no.

“You called, my Lord?” your voice betrayed no hint of emotion – as level as your gaze.

Sukuna grinned at your non-response, revealing sharp canines and that same glee in his eyes that could always be found when he had thought of a new way to hurt you.

“Well, well, well… look what the cat dragged in.” His voice had no use being that sultry, it had no business sending that familiar heat pooling in your stomach after all he had done to you. His deep baritone seemed to penetrate your very skin.  

The tangles in your hair, the stains on your face and clothes, you were as out of place as a swine in an ablution chamber and yet – you refused to be beaten. You were his first, you had to be special somehow. After all, for who else would Sukuna put on such a show?

Sukuna wrinkled his nose as he waved a hand in front of his nose, as if there were an unpleasant stench drifting over from you. “Looks like you’re still alive - even if you don’t smell like it.” His sadistic smirk was still apparent at the edges of his mouth. The women broke into gleeful titters, joining in on his mirth at your appearance.

All he wanted from you was a response. For you to burst into tears. To beg his mercy. Even anger would do, you supposed. And yet, you couldn’t. You wanted something from him as well. And perhaps it was suicidal arrogance that prevented you from giving into him as he wished, but you were willing to take that risk, gambling everything on the hope that he would give to you a piece of himself that he gave to no one else.

You wanted to be something to him. Anything.

“I could not afford to delay, when summoned by my Lord,” you responded smoothly, showing no sign of the discomfort you felt.

“Is that so?” Sukuna purred, resting his temple against the knuckles of his left hand.

“And yet, what makes you better than these morsels?” he mused, running his clawed fingers through the silky, black locks of the woman on his lap. “That you dare to defy me?” Clearly, he still recalled where your last conversation had left off.

You doubted the women present were aware of how literally Sukuna used the term “morsels”. It was a game to him, and you needed to play your pieces carefully, all while figuring out the rules – as viable to change as they were at his passing whim.

“I would not dare, my Lord,” you murmured quietly.

“Then serve my men, brat.” His smirk disappeared and, in its place, an inquisitive light sparked in his half-lidded eyes. Why shouldn’t you be made to serve others, he seemed to ask. Why would you be reserved for him alone?

You wondered if this was still about rewarding his underlings, or simply about drawing a line between the two of you – once more showing you your place.

You weighed your words carefully, “I am ever in service to my Lord, and deem myself unfit to divide my attentions as you propose.”

Before Sukuna could respond, a sharp laugh, malicious and high rang through the room. “You dare to defy our beloved lord?” The woman in his lap gave you a once-over her expression making no attempt to hide what she thought of you. “You poor thing. Like a drowned rat making demands.” She had a melodious, lilting voice but its airy quality was dampened by the mean-spirited manner in which she spoke. She had to know who you were, and as such, fully intended to take you down as a final stepping-stone to becoming Sukuna’s favorite.

As if Sukuna had such things.

“Look at you! You reek of filth and whatever droppings have piled up in the dungeons. Do you really think you deserve a place in Lord Sukuna’s harem?”

She sidled from Sukuna’s lap, so focused on you she failed to see the frown forming on his face.

She flipped her lovely hair over her shoulder, “Serving our master is an honor bestowed upon our royal bloodlines.” She gestured vaguely towards the women in the room. “How dare you put on such airs when you’re clearly nothing but a filthy whore? You’d do well to be grateful to be in his mere presence, and spread your legs for whoever he commands, –“

Her speech was cut abruptly short when Sukuna’s large hand closed around her head, his fingers almost meeting at her face. His displeasure emanated from him in dark waves of cursed energy visible to the naked eye.

“Who gave you permission to speak?” his voice was dangerously low, soft almost, and yet it reverberated throughout the room – a clear threat.

It happened almost too fast to follow, the muscles banding along his forearm flexed, half a whimper escaped her lips as her eyes sought yours in a panicked plea for mercy through the gaps in his fingers, and then his hand closed into a fist and blood spurted violently in all directions. You flinched as the spray of blood spattered across your face and clothing. The women jumped to their feet, screaming.

“Know your place, fool.” Sukuna growled, as he released his hold on the lovely woman, and she crumpled to the ground – her silky hair all that remained of her once-lovely countenance. As the woman fell away from between you, Sukuna’s scarlet eyes, still burning with displeasure beneath furrowed brows, connected with yours.

You held his gaze as chaos erupted all around you. There was intention in his gaze, that he knew what he had done, and could not take it back. He had ceded ground to you. He had flinched first. For all he played the part that you were meaningless to him, he had killed a member of his harem for your sake, and that truth weighed heavy, undeniable between you.

Even as the remaining ladies tore for the exits, screaming and sobbing, you raised a hand and spoke simply and clearly, in a compelling manner you could not unlearn after all your years at the temple. “Ladies.”

A spellbound silence fell over them, as they took in your standoff with Sukuna, the way your eyes were fixed unwavering on one another.

“You are as yet in the presence of our Lord,” you reminded them. They seemed to come to their senses, even as you could hear a few of them sniffling behind you.

Sukuna lifted his chin, apparently at ease with you taking control of his harem. He leaned back into his chair, his eyes contemplative.

“Remove her from our Lord’s presence,” you admonished them, giving them a purpose to overcome their shock. As if startled awake, they shuffled towards the young woman, and after at first being indecisive as to how to proceed, one group took hold of her hands as the other grabbed her ankles and she was carried from the chamber, one way or another. The remaining women hovered uncomfortably.

“Get out,” Sukuna dismissed with a wave of his fingers, his penetrant gaze still fixed wholly on you.

They were all too willing to leave and had departed within seconds, leaving none but the two of you in the expansive hall.

Sukuna regarded you warily for a moment, taking you in from head to toe before beckoning you closer with a single finger. “Come.”

You approached, your chest constricting with feeling. You wanted so badly to mean something to him, for him to give you a new identity after having stripped away your old one. You did not so much as flinch as you stepped through the puddle of blood and drew closer to the fearsome giant of a man seated before you. You slowed just before him, but Sukuna took a crushing hold of your hip and drew you closer still, until you stood between his legs and looked up at him, his nose a breath from yours.

Up close, you looked right into his sanguine irises, glowing with bloodlust, and another kind of hunger still, a hunger you could not help but feel was reserved for you.

“She was right, you know,” Sukuna muttered, his breath ghosting over your lips. “You really are a filthy whore.”

“So long as I am yours,” you whispered back earnestly, your gaze wandering from his probing eyes to his full lips, “I would gladly be less than that still.”

He seemed to consider that, discontent with the direction the conversation was taking. It was just as you had thought earlier, he did not take favorites. But if you were not a favorite, and also not a dispensable member of his harem… then what were you? “You do not bore me,” Sukuna frowned, his hand closing around the nape of your neck, his fingers curling into your tangled hair. “That is why I keep you, nothing more.”

In a moment of weakness, you responded to his callousness with bleeding sincerity. “I need you,” you confessed, your heart rioting in your chest at the thought of being so vulnerable in the face of his unfailing cruelty. “I need you to tell me who I am. What I am. I need to be yours to be anything at all.”

Sukuna seemed to be taken aback at your unprompted confession. He scowled, baring his canines, “You are nothing to me, I’d as soon crush you as fuck you.”

It was truth, plain and simple, and more of a response than you had expected him to entertain. You sighed, resigned, and leaned into him, your hands sliding over his powerful shoulders, your fingers curling into his hair. You knew you could not win. But at least you were in his arms, that had to count for something. “Your wish is mine as well, Sukuna-sama.”

When your lips touched his, he seemed unable or unwilling to play this game any longer. He closed his fingers in a cruel grip on your hair – a hold he seemed to favor -, controlling your movements. He leaned into the kiss, devouring you as promised, consuming and dominating you until you felt your knees go soft as butter – unable to support you. Sukuna’s grip on your hair and hip seemed to be all that was holding you aloft. As if to make good on his threat, you felt his sharp canines bury themselves into your lip, felt blood gush forth and drip down your chin, even as Sukuna sucked at the bleeding gash, drinking down your blood hungrily. The stabbing pain seared through you, accompanying a rush of endorphins to your mind – a mind that could make no sense at all of the jumbled mess of emotions spiraling through you.

Sukuna was the one who had taught you everything you knew about pleasure, and he had taught you that pleasure and pain went hand in hand. You were certain he could push you over the edge by inflicting pain alone. And so, even as Sukuna wounded you and drank of your blood, you could not help but moan into his mouth, light-headed and delirious with need.

You did not see how Sukuna’s eyes slid open, how he regarded you with a questioning gaze. How he began to grasp the truth of your confession - that you needed him to claim you far more than you desired to live. You relished pain, and might even welcome death, in exchange for identity – an identity only he could bestow.

Why did you become more interesting the more he dealt with you? Whenever he felt bored, he only had to summon you to sink his teeth into you, literally and figuratively.

“What will I do with you?” he muttered, scarcely realizing he had spoken against your mouth until you whispered back, “I find myself wondering much the same. Every time you look at me,” you swallowed the blood that pooled in your mouth, “every time you touch me.”

Sukuna took you in from head to toe through half-lidded eyes, as if truly seeing you for the first time since you had stepped into the hall. The clawed fingernail on his thumb traced along your hipbone and he frowned. “There’s not much left of you.” There was no pity in his voice, only complaint.

You did not respond. He was certainly aware of the fare that was to be expected in the dungeons. You’d always come out a little worse for the wear, but this was the first time he had left you there for weeks, and you had grown thinner as a result. But that was only to be expected, surely, he knew that?

“Tch,” he scowled, “shouldn’t a goddess be more resilient?”

“I’m not a goddess,” you reminded him.

“You are whatever I say you are,” his eyes burned with challenge, “Don’t forget it.”

You could not look away, you could not speak, you could scarcely breathe. Something had changed. You did not know quite what it was, but the standoff seemed to have passed and, in its place, there seemed to be a sense of acceptance, an admittance of the fact that your identity was somehow intertwined with his own, against all odds.

You were recalled to the moment as Sukuna snapped his fingers and a cursed spirit, sickly green in hue and covered with boils, spirited out of thin air at your side.

“Prepare a bath,” Sukuna frowned.

The cursed spirit stumbled over himself as he folded the hands of his six arms in a show of obeisance, mumbling a hasty agreement before disappearing altogether.

You waited awkwardly as Sukuna beheld you, his clawed hands running along your form, feeling where flesh had given way to bone during your stay in the dungeons. Your lip bled still, though he paid no heed until it dripped onto the back of his hand. An irritated sound escaped the back of his throat, and he brushed a thumb over your lip, sending coils of dark energy into your torn lip, sealing the flesh closed once more. His cursed energy was like the kiss of ice and sent shivers down your spine, without fail, each time he used it on you. It was a wonder that a force so malevolent was capable of healing at all, and you could feel it pulsing within you, more faintly with each beat, until it dissipated inside you.

You could not help the choked sound that escaped your lips. You had missed him. His touch, his cruelty, the taste of his dark energy. He was far more intoxicating, far more potent than the noxious smoke you had seen the priests partake in on occasion. And far more dangerous.

“You’re weak,” Sukuna scowled, as if confronted for the first time with the reality of your human nature.

You felt heat rush to your face. Hopefully he had not heard the shameful sound you had made. It would not do for you to appear desperate.

“I am only mortal,” you admitted, hoping to distract from your misstep, “you have proven the weakness of our kind at great length these last few years.”

“You dare complain?”

“No, my lord. I simply state the obvious. My kind is not enduring.”

“Hmph.” He released you finally, and your skin almost immediately mourned the loss of his touch. “And yet, you have lived where other women have died.”

You could not quite wrap your mind around that admission. Had he attempted to torment other women the way he had with you? And had they died at his hands? You did not quite know what it would take to kill you. Before Sukuna, you had had no experience with illness, pain, or death. And now, it seemed a given that when Sukuna took you apart, he would put you back together again. When he split your flesh open, he would seal it once more. Why did the others die? Or rather, why did you survive?

Before you could put the matter to question, a pop and wisps of green smoke announced the return of the imp along with other cursed spirits that seemed female in nature.

They had spirited along a large tub of water and several glass bottles of varying tinctures and perfumes. At a nod from Sukuna, they tore your robe from your shoulders, revealing your grimy, naked form to the attendants present – and worse, to Sukuna’s watchful, crimson eyes. The spirits crowded around you, some with rough rags, others with coarsely bristled brushes, and others still taking the various bottles in hand to spill their contents on your head, your shoulders, on the rags they held. Without waiting for a signal, they began scrubbing at your body, purging you of the filth of the dungeons. Thin, spindly fingers massaged your scalp, verbena-scented suds spreading through your hair. The rags and brushes seemed to scrape the skin from your flesh and yet, you could not truly pay them heed, entranced as you were by the way Sukuna’s gaze followed their hands as they scrubbed at your back. His eyes taking in the trace of the suds they drew over your abdomen, the thorough washing between your breasts, soap suds trailing down the length of your legs, the rag washing between your thighs…

It was a different kind of humiliation, to be so intently observed by him, to be so naked in the middle of the hall for all present to see. And even without looking at him, you could feel his gaze on your skin, the way it prickled beneath his intent stare. Finally, they poured bucketfuls of warm water over you, washing away the suds. Sukuna seemed not to care that the scarlet rug running the length of the hall was soaked, or that water was pooling at your feet and flowing towards him. Did he ever care for consequences, when he wanted something?

He crossed over to you and traced your protruding hipbones with a long, black fingernail once more. His frown revealed – likely without his knowing – that he somewhat regretted putting you away for so long. He liked to sink his claws into you, to bury his fangs in you… He could hardly do that when you were almost nothing but skin and bone with no soft flesh to fill his hands with.

His eyes traced your form leaving a trail of burning desire on your skin as his gaze burned a path up your navel, over your dripping breasts, your exposed collarbones, your swollen lips, before at last meeting your eyes. The very world around you seemed to flicker like a mirage as you held his gaze and in the blink of an eye, you were no longer standing on sodden carpet, but in the baths attached to his very own chambers, where innumerable candles were set all along the perimeter of the room, on tables, counters, and windowsills. The flickering, dim light filled the chamber with equal parts light and shadow, that flickered on your faces in turn.

In the center of the room was a basin in the ground, lined by emerald tiles, each with a golden pattern swirling through the green. The basin itself was a bath of sorts, large enough for three at least. It was filled with steaming water that was pale mint in color – an herbal bath it would seem. Rose petals were scattered across the water’s surface, and the scent of earthy herbs as well as a faint note of citrus wafted over in the steam to greet you, almost beckoning you closer.

The sound of water sloshing caught your attention and you turned to see Sukuna lowering himself into the bath. He leaned against the slabs of stone behind him and rested an arm on either side of himself as he released a barely audible, content sigh. Your expression softened. He really was always at attention, braced for violence, muscles tensed in anticipation of battle. You could imagine how the steaming bath water must provide him some rare relief.

He ran a hand through his russet hair and your gaze caught on the droplets of water that seemed to trace down the prominent veins of his muscular forearm. At ease, as he was, his head tipped back, his unruly hair swept back by the residual water of his hand, you were dazed by his inhuman beauty. His features were undeniably those of nobility, a king in the truest sense, you could not help but ask yourself how it was possible for a man so cold and cruel to be so undeniably beautiful. Even the black markings on his face only served to accentuate his bold features.

His dark lashes lifted, and those carmine eyes seemed to pierce right through you, pinning you in place. Unable and unwilling to escape from his all-encompassing gaze, you merely stood before him, drinking him in. He did not beckon you closer, or say so much as a word, but the command in those eyes was clear. “Come.”

And so, you did.

Dipping your toes into the water, the warmth seemed to pull you in, melting you down to your very bones as you stepped fully into the bath. You were keenly aware of his eyes on you as you lowered yourself into the murky waters of the herbal bath, concealing your nakedness. Heat rushed through you that you could not fully attribute to the temperature of the water. You hoped he would not see that the tips of your ears had gone red - and that he would not recognize it for what it was.

You drew closer still, drawn in by an inexplicable magnetism as if his dark essence were a black hole sucking in your very soul. He never took his eyes off of you for a moment, and the effect was intoxicating as he waited, watching, like a predator tolerating his prey frolicking before him in a delusion of safety, not yet in a mood to disillusion it.

You had missed him. You always did. His power was your lifeline. His invincibility, your shield. In his shadow, you were safe from all but him. And you never wanted to be safe from him – as foolish as you recognized that sentiment to be. Water dripped from your fingers as you reached for him, gingerly tracing the inky markings on his face. You ran a delicate fingertip along the line of his jaw, traced his cheekbones with your thumbs, followed those symbols line for line until you could draw them with your eyes closed. When your fingers journeyed lower exploring those same markings on his chest, he tipped his head back, relishing in the sensation.

You remembered the blonde whose hands had brushed past these same markings and your stomach burned with a nauseating, possessive ire. You wanted to purge her touch from his skin, wanted to burn her very image from the scroll of existence until nothing remained but a scorch mark. You leaned in closer to him, replacing your fingers with your lips, and trailed mindless kisses along those symbols, and then, growing bolder still, traced them with your tongue. When a wordless murmur of appreciation spilled past Sukuna’s parted lips, you glowed with pride.

“On your knees, goddess.” Sukuna growled, overcome with desire. What little patience he had, decidedly spent.

You acquiesced, sinking to your knees, the water just above your elbow. He opened his eyes, taking you in, the goddess kneeling in the water before him, water dripping from your hair, disappearing between your breasts. The way your eyes were caught on his shaft, the head of it just peeking out from the water’s surface.

“Well?” he began, seeing your hesitation - that ever present mocking tone painfully apparent. “Should I call in someone else?”

Your eyes snapped towards him, irritated, and he grinned in the face of your upset. You lifted a hand to his member and wrapped your fingers around it - frowning because of course your fingers didn’t close around it - and pleasing him with your mouth, as he was clearly expecting you to, would be a herculean effort. You could see, even without looking at him, that challenging grin on his face and the malicious spark in his eyes.

You alleviated his boredom, he had said, but the thing was – you liked surprising him. You reveled in the expression he made when you defied expectations. When you jumped headfirst into whatever he expected you to balk at. And ever since he had broken you so thoroughly on that table months ago, you no longer feared pain – you feared only abandonment, being discarded as a pawn that had outlived its use by the only one that could seal every split and crack within you with nothing more than his dark aura. The one who could fill you so thoroughly with himself, with his cursed energy, that you thought you might forget having ever felt empty.

The lives of the world were forfeit, their villages were forfeit - all that mattered was staying by his side, drunk on his power, for as long as you were able.

You bowed your head beneath the water and held your breath as you licked up the underside of his shaft, slowing as you reached the bulbous head and broke through the water’s surface. You traced the tip of your tongue along its slit. Sukuna hissed and his head tipped back once more. His muscles tensed, and this time, it was your turn to grin. Using both hands, you cupped his shaft again, and closed your mouth around the head of his cock. Your jaw immediately ached at being stretched so wide but the grunted curse that echoed throughout the bath chamber spurred you on. Water dripped from your face, and you knew you would have to time your breathing precisely to survive this encounter.

Your hands ran along his length with your movements as your head bobbed up and down. Up – you inhaled through your nose, swirled your tongue around the head, twisted your hands, and breathed. Down – your ears filled with water, you exhaled, took him in as deep as you could, and squeezed the remaining length of his shaft between your hands. Again. Again. Again. The guttural sounds that fell unguarded from those proud lips hummed right through you like the most potent drug, driving you to continue. You were feeling quite skilled and proud of yourself, you could do this – you could have him helpless beneath your ministrations.

And then one of his hands gripped the back of your head.

Panic was the first thing that shot through you. Sukuna, in the throes of his lust, would not care if you could breathe. A second hand fell on your shoulder, and you opened your mouth to remind him that you were human, that you were breakable, that you could die – but not fast enough. One moment you saw him, his head still tipped back, two arms resting on either side of him as the other two held you firm, and the next – nothing but water as that impossible length thrust into your mouth, straight towards your throat. You gagged underwater and thrashed, trying to free yourself, if only for a moment, to breathe, to try again with warning, but Sukuna had no cares for your distress. He was concerned only with his own release and if he registered your existence at all, then only as a means to an end.

He attempted again and again, to penetrate the narrow canal of your throat, each thrust only worsening the sensation, your body rebelling against such abuse. Water splashed everywhere as you writhed, desperate for a breath of air, but by the third thrust your throat gave way with an awful popping sound, dulled by the pressure of the water against your ears. The awful penetration was intense, it hurt so terribly that your core tightened in false anticipation of the pleasure that usually followed on the heels of pain.

You struggled to regain some semblance of calm, knowing only a level head would help you hold out long enough to breathe again. But each time he thrust into your throat, your body convulsed in protest, and your lungs burned for air. He pushed your head down with more force as he approached his release, his hips bucking as he drove more forcefully into you, not noticing as your thrashing slowed, your strength ebbing.

You dimly felt his release, as if from beyond a veil. You heard a growl of pleasure, loud enough to shake the walls, loud even through the water. You felt the way his shaft twitched as copious amounts of thick, bitter fluid gushed down your throat. You registered distantly the way it continued pulsing against the walls of your throat even in the aftershocks of his pleasure. And then you felt nothing at all. Not even a sense of relief when his cock finally pulled free from your lips.

Sukuna exhaled, a breathy sound of relief, slow and drawn out – rough around the edges. He dragged a hand through his hair as the world came back into focus. The cool air of the chamber in contrast to the dizzying warmth of the bath, steam still rising, made him acutely aware of each droplet of water where it clung to his skin. He felt alive, powerful, every inch of him thrumming with an energy he only knew when he gave in to his baser urges with you.

You.

Sukuna cocked his head to the side as he took in the sight of you, your wet hair clinging to the skin of your back as you floated, face down, in the bath before him. He frowned. You were not weak. He knew that. Or else, how could you dare to tempt him, knowing you were not a fitting receptacle for his lust – knowing the most fleeting of touches was enough to cost you your feeble life?

You approached him readily, spread your legs for him willingly, and only rarely begged for your life in the face of certain death – uncertain if your climax or the reaper would reach you first.

“Tch.” The sound left his lips unwillingly. He wasn’t ready to let you go yet. You had been the first of his harem, and he was ever expanding it, hoping to find another like you. But there didn’t seem to be another temptress like you on the face of this wretched earth, one who craved him above all else. Above any mortal bonds, misguided virtues, or sense of identity or dignity. You clung to him like he was your salvation – and not your destruction. Your desperation amused him. Everything about you did, and he was not ready to go back to being bored again.

He buried his long fingers into your thick hair, black, sharp fingernails scraping against your scalp as he pulled you out of the water, towards himself. You were alive, albeit barely. And his clear, sanguine gaze roamed the length of you. He was ancient, and he had seen nearly everything there was to see in his centuries of existence. If he didn’t crave the sensation of blood on his skin with a maddening intensity as he did, the mortals might have considered him a god. As it was, he liked the insides of people better than their outsides.

You were a rare exception, he mused as he dragged a pointed, black talon upwards along your skin, past your hipbones, up your navel, along the curve of your swollen breasts, teasing along your collarbones, before drawing to a stop at the prominent veins running down the column of your lovely throat – all the more appealing to his eyes for its fragility. Like glass so thin it might crack with a breath. If your skin tensing beneath his touch was not proof enough, the pulse beneath his finger confirmed – you were alive, still.

Good.

He was far from done with you.

He flipped your positions with no regard to your unconscious state. Your upper body sprawled along the marble tiles, water dripping from you and pooling beneath you as he positioned himself between your legs. Two powerful arms braced on either side of your immobile form as one of his hands gripped your hips, lifting you to meet him as the fourth hand spread your legs for him.

You would have enjoyed this, he thought, if you were awake.

The head of his cock, alert and ready for a second round, prodded at your entrance. Sukuna’s ruby eyes were fixed on your expression, waiting for the moment you jerked back to life. Would it be with a scream of agony or ecstasy? The not knowing was as delicious as the anticipation. He knew he could bring you back from either.

His second cock sprang to life, rubbing against your slit and brushing against your clit as the first member made its way inside you with slow, lazy thrusts. He released your hip and placed a hand against your back, his spread fingers mirroring the bones of your ribcage. He could crush it beneath his hand as easily as he had the head of that shrew who had mouthed off against you. Ruining the moment that had been weeks in planning.

How he had wanted to drag you before him. To see the jealousy in your eyes as he adorned himself with meaningless whores. He had wanted to fuck them in front of you until you begged him to stop – or to take you instead – or to… what? He didn’t know, but he would have eaten up your response regardless. You were terrified of him, he knew, but instead of running from him, you ran towards him.

He ran his tongue along his teeth, hungry for you again. He was beginning to realize it was a hunger that could never be sated. A hunger that might be turned against him if anyone caught on. If you commanded anything more than his passing interest, would you be considered his weakness?

He remembered the feel of the blue harlot’s skull imploding beneath his fingers. Blood gushing to the floor, shards of her skull cutting at his hand, only for the scrapes to be healed immediately by his cursed energy. And between the dripping blood, your eyes meeting his evenly, boldly, unafraid of the sudden display of violence.

Were you his weakness?

The thought prompted something akin to anger within him. He had no weaknesses. With a violent thrust, he sheathed himself within you. Halfway inside you, the head of his cock barred by the end of your velvet core, Sukuna was met with a burning need for more. To prove to himself, to you, to anyone who would dare to surmise otherwise – that you were nothing.

The shaft of his second cock rubbed against your clit, as it slid up and down your belly, the head of his member nestling between your breasts – caged between them and the cool, wet marble beneath you. With each thrust, it slipped up and down between your mounds, heightening Sukuna’s pleasure. The first member pounded into you with abandon, sledgehammering into your body, your unconscious body slamming against the marble with each reckless thrust.

Your eyes flew open in shock as a violent cough consumed you, expelling the water from your lungs. The burning sensation between your legs and a fiery agony in your core confirmed, you were up to your throat in Sukuna’s cock. Drowning in him in an entirely different way. You tried to brace yourself against the marble and lift your body, but Sukuna’s callous hand against your back crushed you back down to the ground ruthlessly, the marble cracking beneath you – or was that just your ribs?

There was pleasure too, ungodly pleasure through the pain. The kind you relished. You groaned despite yourself. Sure, you had nearly died only moments ago. But that was moments ago - almost an eternity ago already. Now you were being crushed beneath him, beneath his gaze, beneath his ministrations.

You turned your head to the side, the only freedom of movement you were allowed and met his eyes. You were reminded of that day so long ago, when he had taken you in your own temple, against a table not quite so hard as the marble beneath you. The way he had met your eyes with a curious gaze then.

This was different.

There was a burning fury in his eyes. A demonic possessiveness. As if the devil had been taken by the devil. He seemed intent to burrow his way straight through you. To prove something to someone, likely himself. Did he want your body, your blood, or both?

How badly you wanted to give whatever it was he would ask of you.

Your lips fell apart and nothing but short, breathy gasps fled your mouth each time he rolled his hips and plowed into you, his grip on your back for purchase, as another held onto your leg still, opening you wide for him as he thrust deeper into you, turn for turn.

A feral growl burned from his chest as the messy, slapping noise of skin against skin echoed through the chamber, water splashing over both of you.

There was an end to your cavern, but Sukuna did not seem to care. His pleasure took precedence over your anatomy, he pounded against your cervix, not caring when your body shook violently with pain, except to pin you more firmly in place.

How your brain was capable of processing such torturous pain at the same time as the heights of pleasure, you did not know. Your mind was a foggy place filled with nothing but the steam of the chamber, the water growing even hotter with the energy rolling off of him in waves and the scent of him, the feel of him, all around you. This would be a good way to go, a dark voice whispered within you.

That second cock pulsing between your breasts, rubbing against your clit again and again in time with the violation of his thick, thick shaft within you was an unholy combination that teased you higher and higher, until you cared not for the pain, for the trembling of your rebellious body. It didn’t understand - the pain was worth it, it was delicious.

The syllables of his name burst from your lips in small, delicious, agonized gasps, as the heat coiling within you tightened further and further into a madness only his brutality could release you from.

You fell from the precipice, shattering around his monstrous cock, at the very same moment that he penetrated your cervix.

Whether it was a scream of climax or of agony, you could not say. It started as one and devolved very quickly into another. But Sukuna was far from satisfied.

Even before your climax had truly ended, the agony tore through you. Tears pooled and streamed from your cheeks in mere moments. The pain was too much. You were too weak. You whimpered miserably. Hot tears mingling with the cool droplets of water that had dripped to the marble.

“Now, now…” Sukuna purred, his mask of mockery not firmly in place through his brutal anger, “don’t give up so soon.”

You sucked in a pained breath as Sukuna slid out of your womb only to bite down on your tongue, muffling a pained scream as he slammed back into that inviolable part of you.

He lifted your face from the marble, drool and tears falling from your face, contorted in pain. “Didn’t you say you were my whore?” he tutted. “What use is a whore if I can’t even fuck you properly?”

There was rage you could not place. Why was he so angry? Had he been holding back all this time? Was this what Sukuna was like when he gave in to his urges? Was this what he needed of you?

“What was it you wanted again?” he growled into your ear. “Identity?” The playful mask was more firmly in place now, concealing the fury that still thrummed beneath the surface.

“Is it worth this?” You felt his tip brush the opposite wall of your womb and bit down on a whimpering sob.

“Aw,” Sukuna mocked, slowing. “Do you want me to stop?”

You knew, without knowing how, that he would kill you if you agreed. This was some sort of twisted ultimate test. A game he was playing with himself, to find out what you were worth.

You’d be damned if you were going to lose.

You were losing sensation in your legs, your ribcage burned – there was definitely something broken – and your throat burned still from his earlier abuse, but you had a fire of your own within you that refused to cool. A blaze that sometimes wanted to swallow the world and spit out the ashes. You’d been raised a goddess, abandoned as an appeasement, and twisted into a slave and a whore. No pain of the body could compare. 

There was nothing you couldn’t take.

“Why?” you seethed, your eyes meeting his with the combined, burning resolve of the Furies of legend, a growl of your own building in your throat, “getting tired?”

He did pause, then, his wrath giving way – however briefly – to surprise. He stilled, his lips curved into a smirk, and then his shoulders shook as he tipped his head back with laughter. It echoed against the walls and fell, cruelly metallic, back to your ears.

“That’s the spirit!” he barked, finally, and using his grip on your hair as an anchor pummeled into you. With even less regard for your well-being, he clearly had every intent of impaling you on his cock – in the literal sense of the word.

A slit on his abdomen teased open, a smirk playing against your posterior, that long, thick tongue you had become very familiar with teasing between the mounds of your backside, seeking out the puckered entrance beyond. One of Sukuna’s hands drew back to clap against the smooth skin and the resounding sting seemed to spread upwards and through you. But it was so tame in comparison to the pain of your insides being rearranged, that it was almost a sensation of relief.

His tongue prodded at your anus and penetrated the tight ring of muscle with something like a laugh as the wet, thick muscle, slid along the tight walls within you, sliding deeper than should have been possible, in and out, further and further along with each poking thrust, wriggling deeper inside of you, tasting every inch of you.

You were completely out of your mind. With the one cock pleasuring itself between your breasts, the tongue inside of your intestines, and the second cock stretching the walls of your womb to their outer limits – it was a wonder you were still conscious at all.

Your tongue lolled out of your mouth and your eyes rolled to the back of your head. He was everything, he was everywhere, there was nothing and no one but him. He could have you, he could consume you, he could kill you and keep your corpse to fuck as he pleased. There was nothing he could ask of you that you would not give. They had been lying to you all along, you knew, the Great Evil was your purpose, not to vanquish, but to be consumed completely by it. No heaven could compare, the goddess Terraria be damned. She would have gotten on all fours for him, too, if she could – begging for the favor of his cock.

But she couldn’t, because he had chosen you and you alone.

And then he tore through the walls of your womb.

There was a scream so loud it hurt your ears. You wanted to ask for it to stop but couldn’t work your mouth to form the words – and then you realized you were the one screaming. The anguish was like nothing, the delirium of the pain was addling your brain. You wondered if you were dying.

Sukuna did not stop.

Your scalp burned from him dragging you up by the hair without pause. Your leg ached as he arched it up and used it to anchor himself as he pumped deeper and deeper into you. How you had the presence of mind to register either of those sensations was a wonder to you.

Your scream was never-ending, the need for breath was secondary. Sukuna laughed, loving the sound of your agony. He bent low to kiss the throat that bled such a beautiful, awful sound and then he bit into your flesh, eyes gleaming at the scarlet ambrosia that spilled from your lovely veins.

He tore into you, pain upon pain. Through your stomach, up your esophagus – and now you could truly feel him in your throat.

And then he came with a shudder, a groan of release reached your ears, soft and intimate and lovely.  You felt his release everywhere – or rather you no longer knew where one part of you ended and another began. So attuned to his sensations, his desires, his lust as you were, you too, climaxed through the pain, tremors running through your body as he let you drop back onto the cold tiles. You were in heaven and hell at the same time. It was so like Sukuna to take you there.

You opened your eyes blearily and recognized that the marble had indeed cracked. Just like your ribs. A cough tore through you, pain intensified exponentially by your ravaged insides and when you spit up the blockage, your eyes focused enough to recognize – blood and cum.

When he finally pulled out of you, the one thing stemming your bleeding was torn mercilessly away and blood gushed forth from you with abandon. Blackness tinged the edges of your vision almost immediately at such sudden loss of blood, as your body registered how thoroughly it had been wrecked. Sukuna’s second member, still pulsing, pulled away from between your breasts and the tongue that had been nestled inside your intestines also slipped back out, disappearing inside Sukuna’s abdomen once more. He took hold of you, almost gently, by your shoulders, and turned the two of you back around until you were draped limply over his chest as he leaned back against the cracked marble. He curled your wet hair around his fingers thoughtfully, as the thumb of another hand stroked your shoulder almost comfortingly. You noted dimly that you had been right, this was a good way to go. His eyes fell to yours, meeting your gaze with an intensity you had not thought possible.

When his eyes roamed over you and stopped between your legs, you followed his gaze. It was so much more blood than you had realized. The minty green water was spoiled almost all the way through with coils of thick, red blood. Enough to dye almost the entire bath. There was nothing beautiful left of this bath chamber.

“Why not ask me to stop?” Sukuna murmured, so quietly you only heard it because of how close his lips were to your ear.

You swallowed thickly. You were tired. Tired, physically, of course, but also tired of the lies that had built up your entire life. Sukuna had been the only truth in your life – a brutal, cruel, ruthless truth. But a truth, nonetheless. Was it so strange that you would rather be a true whore than a false goddess? Maybe your sense of gratitude towards him was foolish and mistaken, but it was there. 

“I didn’t want you to.” You admitted, your voice almost lost with your fading consciousness.

Sukuna was silent a moment, stroking your hair away from your forehead as your eyes fluttered closed, listening to his heartbeat as your own faded away.

“Do you still want it?” he muttered, almost hesitating despite himself. That his hesitation was for your sake went completely over your head. With great difficulty, you opened your eyes one last time in confusion. “Identity?” he added, a frown on his beautiful, proud lips, the black markings on his face smooth as the plane of his forehead as he regarded you distantly, making a decision you could not possibly weigh. “I won’t take it back even if you beg.”

Tears burned at the corners of your eyes, but your body lacked the resources to bring them to life. Instead, you nodded with what strength you had left. You would always want identity - a true identity - given by none other than Sukuna himself.

Then your eyes closed for a final time as an exhausted breath fell silently from your lips. Sukuna watched you quietly a moment longer, considering your request. A lock of pink hair fell over his forehead as he ran a hand up and down your lifeless arm.

You did not know what you were asking for, but he did. It would be cruel of him, selfish. He paused in a moment of uncharacteristic, unprecedented mercy. But when did he deny himself something he wanted?

Mind made up, he lifted a hand and poised a black fingertip over your chest, beneath which your heart lay hidden, resting at last. All concern for your eventual regret dismissed, Sukuna dragged the sharp talon over your skin, splitting the flesh and revealing the life-giving organ beneath. Why not bind you to his side for all eternity? It was what he wanted and what he wanted was all that mattered.

He cut open your heart, revealing the chambers of the muscle in their final twitches of life. A black smirk twisted his features. Why not? Why not treat himself? Why not enslave you?

He curled the fingers of his hand into a fist, piercing the palm of his own hand until he drew blood. He opened his fist and watched with eager greed as the inky blood that had pooled in his palm dripped down into your open heart.

It took only moments for his cursed energy to do its work. It swirled around you, sealing your heart back shut with a snap, sewing your skin together above it until not even a blemish remained. Your back arched as your heart pumped Sukuna’s blood through you, tainting your own. Your very body raised off of him slightly, lifted upwards by the dark energy coursing through you, healing every wound and injury throughout your ruined body.

The flow of blood that had been spilling out between your legs ceaselessly, stopped abruptly, and the red and green water dissolved into nothing but an inky black surrounding the two of you. Sukuna’s smirk gave way to an unapologetic grin as he watched you change before his eyes, beneath his hands – entirely his. Unbreakable now.

With a gasp, your eyes flew open as a different kind of pain surged through you – a pain akin to anger at its very extremes. Light shone from your form, intermingling with the darkness, burning through your skin. An anguished groan left your lips as you fought the foreign influence, but it was fast, it was powerful. It was Sukuna himself inside you – although in an entirely different way.

And because it was Sukuna, you let him have you. You let him flow through every inch of your being and embraced him – alive, elated, enlightened. It wasn’t unlike a climax to have him delve so intimately into your being, settling into your very nerves, your pores, between your cells. You were alight with him and it was euphoria like nothing you had ever known.

When the delicious torment had finished coursing through you, leaving nothing but the tantalizing tendrils of his being lingering just beneath your skin. You were suddenly awake like you had never been before. Awareness flooded you, of the birds beyond the bath chamber, the water dripping onto the tiling, and Sukuna’s heart thudding darkly, so close to you. You turned on him – suddenly ravenous for him. Needing ever more of him to replace the cursed energy that had stopped coursing through you with such intensity. You wanted him to give you more, to consume you or let you consume him – you weren’t sure which.

You straddled his hips and pinned him against the marble at his back – suddenly stronger than you had ever been – and pressed your mouth to his, with a hunger like nothing earthly. Still, there was an anger within you, just beneath the surface, like a living being, waiting to be provoked to life. His anger, you realized. It was the rage you glimpsed every now and then between his mocking smiles and punishing caresses. An emotion that always lived with him – one you now shared.

You groaned into his mouth, running your tongue along his teeth, biting at his lip, teasing his tongue with your own – coaxing him to fight back, to battle with you, to play with you. But he merely leaned back with a smirk, enjoying your little rush of need. He kissed you back leisurely, slowing down when you needed speed, and gentling his touch when you craved wild, reckless abandon. The damned contrarian. He was doing it just to upset you, you knew.

A growl built in your throat, and he heard it, his grin widening.

“Well, would you look at that?” he muttered, the surprise in his voice causing your eyes to open as well. His expression gave you pause, stemming the raging need within you.

Something was wrong.

You didn’t know what he was seeing, but the look in his eyes scared you, more than anything you had experienced since you had come to know him. It made you feel like you had made an awful, irreversible mistake. It made you want to tear the skin from your face without quite knowing why.

“Looks like there was something of the divine in you after all, goddess.” There was a mocking tone to his low voice, his hushed murmur intimate and forbidden. His breath against your ear sent an icy shiver racing down your spine. His cruel intonation, just the way his voice sounded when he was testing the limits of your capacity for pain, heightened your sense of alarm. Something was terribly, terribly wrong and Sukuna sounded as if it was not at all a surprise to him. You whirled towards the water trying to see a glimpse of your reflection in its inky black, trying to see what he had seen. You held your breath, waiting for the ripples to settle, waiting in horrified anticipation.

And there it was. Whatever he had done to you had changed you. There were black markings on your face, not unlike his own, if somewhat more delicate in appearance, across your collarbones and wrists as well, the design of which cut off abruptly here and there. Your hair and your eyes, too, had gone an inky black, not unlike the water the two of you were submerged in. But interlaced through the black locks were strands of white, stark in contrast – and almost cruel to look at. Just like your left iris, which seemed to have been cut through a third of the way with white, leaving that eye half-black, half-white.

You did not need Sukuna to tell you what it meant. He had turned you into something demonic with his cursed energy, but it had not been able to take over completely because somewhere within you, unbeknownst to you, the power of the goddess had slumbered.

The temple had not been lying to you.

Your world turned on its head as you struggled to come to grips with the meaning of this awful realization.

Sukuna’s hands curled along your waist to meet at your midsection. You saw in the water’s reflection the way he watched over your shoulder as your hands dragged down your face in abject horror. Ever a grin on his lips at your torment.

“You knew this?” you gasped in disbelief. Had he not been the one to disillusion you? To tell you that you were no more than a woman?

Sukuna bent his head to nip at the junction between your neck and shoulder. “Have I ever pretended otherwise, goddess?” he teased against your skin.

The nickname was jarring, and you suddenly realized why he had never given it up. He had known all along what you were. And perhaps destroying your belief in yourself, was how he had broken you down in the first place, defeating you with barely any effort at all. Had you truly attempted to fight him after he dispelled your divine barrier or had that simply been enough for you to concede defeat, convinced you that you were in the wrong place, fighting someone else’s battle?

Now here you were, in the arms of the very one generations of worshippers had prayed for you to defeat, tainted entirely with his blood, his energy. Already, he was parting your legs again, ready to partake of you, liking you even more in this tainted state.

You tipped your head back against his shoulder despite yourself, still wanting him, despite everything. Still willing to give yourself over to the evil that you had been cautioned against your entire life. “Am I a goddess, Sukuna?” you whimpered, the vaulted ceiling above you blurred as tears pooled in your eyes.

His fingers found the apex of your thighs, fully healed now.

“Not anymore,” he laughed cruelly, and you felt your heart breaking into pieces. His fingers slid along your slit, pleased to have been gifted a blank, uninjured slate.

“Then, what - ?” Tears spilled over your cheeks but the question died on your lips as his fingers found their way inside you. Your eyes slid shut and a breathy moan echoed throughout the chamber as your back arched in pleasure. Whatever he had done to you had heightened your sensations exponentially, as your body responded to him in a way that was wholly unnatural, as if every inch of your being was poised in limbo, waiting perpetually for his touch, waiting to submit to him always.

“Mine,” was the answer growled into your ear. The reverberations burned into you through his chest, his voice vibrating through your ear, down your exposed throat.

And then he took you as if that was the only thing that was true, the only thing that mattered.

----------------------------------------

Power.

It spilled out of you, from your very fingertips. Part Sukuna and part something that was entirely your own. Something had broken within you. You saw now, the pieces that made up your being. The divinity, the curse – and the broken woman between the two. All of those were you.

When Sukuna re-entered his harem, with you at his side, a hushed silence fell over the assembled. You had no patience for the harlots before you. Too many of them, no different from the girl in blue who had learned her lesson too late. They, all of them, had made eyes at Sukuna and worse – plotted to have you removed from his side. Sidling up to him coyly as you had seen. They didn’t know about the undying rage within you, how you waited for it to be provoked, to justify a lashing out of power, to give reason to the destruction you longed to unleash.

You saw her one moment, a lovely blonde – the same whose fingers had traced the markings on Sukuna’s chest - whispering something to another behind her hand, her eyes on you. The next moment, the candlelight flickered, and a scream tore through her as the ground at her feet softened, drawing her in. Horror filled her eyes as she struggled to make sense of her predicament. Some eyes amongst the gathering flicked towards you, piecing two and two together.

You made it slow; it was more satisfying that way. She sunk down to her knees, clawing at the flagstones around her, begging for help, but her friends only staggered backward, terrified to be the next to face your ire. She was up to her neck before she turned her helpless gaze toward you, begging for mercy.

But you weren’t feeling merciful.

You did not even glance at Sukuna as the rest of them turned towards you, unsure where to place you, struggling to make sense of the changed hierarchy. But it had changed, and you were feeling charitable enough to educate them on it.

Darkness seemed to gather wherever you focused your anger, your power. And the cursed spirit that was looking at you in disbelief was next. Lest the fools think only mortals were under your thumb.

Not being human, he caught on a bit quicker, and almost immediately began begging for his life. His gaze caught between Sukuna’s mirth and your wrath. Burying him alive would be boring – you had already done that once. What if you crushed him as Sukuna had done? You wondered what that would feel like. You concentrated the air around him, formed it into a solid, invisible cage, and shrunk it bit by bit. You watched the agony contort his face, watched his body shrink in turn, until blood spilled from the split skin of his crushed form – until his bones broke; until there was nothing left to hurt. His screams had abated, and that was the end.

Tch.

You searched for your next target and found that everyone in the room had gone silent and had fallen to the floor, prostrating to you. You frowned and turned to Sukuna, suddenly understanding his awful, murderous boredom. There seemed to be nothing worse.

There was a broken, bitter part of you that mourned your lost mortality, your lost divinity. A part that only found relief when someone else was screaming. Sukuna would understand, and he did. It was ín the subtle inclination of his head, the smirk that teased his lips. His scarlet irises were pleased. He seemed so taken with you that you found it hard to care for the parts of yourself you had lost.

He nodded towards the plateau before you, upon which sat a throne that seemed to have been built into the very ground itself, large enough for two to sit comfortably side by side. It was overlaid with gold, but you suspected stone or iron lingered beneath that. It was the only explanation you could come up with for the formidable seat. High-backed and elegant, intricate designs were fashioned into the metal, inlaid with rubies and diamonds, and cushioned with embroidered red velvet. It was the throne he had sat upon when demanding you service others, but that memory felt centuries old. Distant, irrelevant.

This was the largest kingdom Sukuna had conquered to date and the throne room represented that accurately with its luxury. The palatial chamber was built in such a way as to carry the voice of whoever sat on that throne to every corner of the court. Structured so that wherever you stood, you faced the central figure perched upon that seat of power. The fool who had ruled here had seen to that, assuring that no one dared to turn their backs on him, assuring that he had all present in his view from his elevated seat of power. Perhaps, it was justified in a sense. This kingdom was a hub of trade and wealthy in resources. Not only that – it was located central to the neighboring kingdoms, strategically situated for negotiation, attack, or defense, but Sukuna cared little for that. A throne was no better than chains to him.

Sukuna glanced over his shoulder at the assembly and the bloodlust glinting in his ruby irises was a warning enough to have them scrambling to clear the room. A command they read clearly.

Cowards. Bloodlust of your own still itched in your fingertips, and you longed to see what havoc you could wreak.

The king of curses led you up the few steps to the throne, stopping just before it. He withdrew a hand from where it rested in the crook of his white robe and took hold of yours. Lifting it up to his mouth, he brushed his lips over your knuckles, an action that sent shivers up your spine.

“Rule over this rabble for me,” he commanded, tightening his grip on your hand. Your gaze slid, unbidden over the throne beside you. He wanted you to rule? You could not fathom if it was kindness, generosity, or another form of punishment you had yet to wrap your head around. His mouth was set determinedly, and his eyes peered at you with no hint of that malicious mirth that usually lined his lovely scarlet eyes. There was nothing but earnestness within them, join me, they seemed to say, be on my side. Do as I do.

You held his gaze a moment and understood. He had no interest in ruling, in holding court over his subjects, in negotiating trade and regulations. His only interests were on the battlefield and between your legs. Rule for him and leave him free to cleave through his enemies, their screams echoing in his ears – his own version of nirvana.

You envied him for a moment, suddenly taken with a bloodlust of your own. How you would like to be beside him, cutting down the legions as you had seen him do. Blood and screams thick in the air. Afterwards, you would sate your lust with him in your tents. Each of you ravenous and still drenched in blood. Grappling for dominance until he overpowered you and the two of had had your fill of each other. Bloody and content until you did it all again the next day.

You still weren’t certain how much of these new facets of your personality were your own and how much of it was the natural consequence of Sukuna’s blood within you. It would be too simple to assume it was all his influence and you held no accountability for the dark desires burning within you. In truth, you knew a part of you had enjoyed this even before he had changed you so markedly. You had always enjoyed the display of power that was his wrath on the battlefield. And when his eyes had met yours on your travels, when he had taken you with blood still on his hands – you shivered at the thought. You had enjoyed that even when you were human. Even when you were divine.

But it wasn’t a goddess or a slave he was asking you to be now. Not even a reward for his loyal minions. No, now he was asking something else entirely.

“A queen?” you said quietly, turning from the throne to your maker. “Is that the identity you would bestow upon me?”

He smirked and took hold of your shoulders soothing his thumbs over the tension in your muscles. “I’ve stayed here too long,” he muttered, changing the subject as his hands meandered down your form and untied the sash around your waist. He pushed your robe from your shoulders leisurely, offering no explanation for his actions. Queen or goddess – he could have you whenever he wanted you, however he wanted you. He turned you, entirely naked now, towards the throne and you followed in the direction his hands guided you, struggling to understand what he was after.

He maneuvered you onto the throne, on your knees, holding onto the high back of the solid seat as he positioned himself behind you, his lips at your ear. You felt wickedly exposed and out of place and so you sighed with relief when the frigid air at your back was replaced with his solid, heated form. You wanted to kiss him, but his hand snaked around your neck, taking hold of your chin as he turned your face away from him, giving him access to your throat instead. He nibbled at your ear and nipped his way down your throat as he freed himself from the confines of his trousers, ready to take you on the very throne he was giving you. He ran his hand along his members, and the two fused into one. The very sight of his impossible girth had your heart dropping into your stomach. You could never have taken that before he had turned you.

“Would you like that?” he asked, as he sunk into you slowly, inch for delectable inch, running his tongue along your pulse as he did so. “For them to call you a queen?”

You moaned in delirious ecstasy. You could never have enough of him. Your insides made way for him, welcoming him, needing him. He had changed the very essence of your being. You needed him the way you needed air and water – he could take you anywhere, any way at all, and you would thank him for it.

You arched your back and rocked against him impatiently, feeling him filling your core more completely, and could not help the whines of pleasure that spilled freely from your lips. Sukuna held the sides of the high-backed throne and crushed you between himself and the soft velvet, allowing you to fuck yourself on his cock with a desperation you would have taken care to conceal before. His canines buried themselves in your throat, prompting fresh blood to spill forth and he closed his mouth over the wound, drinking it down greedily.

He rolled his hips into you, his need as great as yours, prompting more needy whimpers from you. It was never enough with him.

With reckless abandon, the two of you found your own rhythm as you pushed against him, driving yourself to new heights. You could feel him within you, deeper than should have been possible, you could see him bulging through your skin, see exactly how deep he was, and you pressed a hand to your skin in awe as you felt him thrust into you with abandon. The head of his shaft was within your very ribcage, you noticed dimly, intoxicated with lust and pleasure. The kind of penetration that had killed you once, but your new body could take the pain. Your new body was made for him.

Gasping, panting, you fell from the heights of ecstasy, tumbling down headfirst through shockwaves of pleasure. When Sukuna suddenly, unexpectedly, pulled away from you. You had less than a moment to grieve the loss of content as he slipped out of you and took hold of your shoulder, turning you until you were sitting properly on the throne. You looked up at him, confused and still dizzy with pleasure. This was where he belonged, standing over you, all enigmatic lethal beauty, looking down on you like a god in judgment. His cock in his hand, his face flushed with lust and desire, intensity burning in eyes as red as your blood that dripped from his lips – the sight of him had your pulse singing in wanton need - and then he came.

His copious seed doused your form entirely. Warm, sticky fluid gushed over your face, over your chest and legs – all over the throne you sat on. Shock and humiliation set in as you tried to make sense of what had transpired. Sukuna braced himself, still, with one hand on the back of the throne as he leaned over you. His cock still dribbling ejaculate onto you. He panted, catching his breath, and then his expression broke into a grin as he took in the sight of you.

Like a cum-drowned mouse.

He took hold of your chin and kissed you on the lips with a tenderness that belied your current state. “No matter who calls you a queen, sweetheart…” he purred, lingering at your lips, heedless of the sticky, white liquid dripping from your chin. “Don’t forget that this is the throne you rule from.”

He leaned lazily over you, reaching down to retrieve the crown on the floor, one he had discarded since occupying the castle. One that had remained there, worthless because Sukuna had deemed it so, and placed it on your dripping head.

“Don’t forget that you are my whore.”

You glanced up at him, your eyes full of wonder despite yourself. He was cruel – and you loved him for it.

“I might forget anyway,” you replied boldly, not bothering to make an attempt at cleaning yourself up. He was clearly enjoying the sight.

His ruby eyes glinted with mirth and malice – a sentiment you recognized now. That sensation you also felt every now and then. Give me a reason, it seemed to say, give me the slightest excuse to unleash my rage on you.

It was tiring keeping it in all the time. You understood.

You crossed your legs paying no mind to the stickiness between them, one over the other, every bit the stature of a queen, even crowned in gold, and robed in his seed.

“You’ll have to come back and remind me.”

A true laugh, short and surprised, fell from Sukuna’s lips. “Oh, I will,” he promised, his grin evidence of how much he was enjoying you. “You can be sure of that.” Both a promise and a threat – and sweeter than any lover’s confession.

Heat pooled in your belly at his assurance, and then without so much as another word, he disappeared.

He was truly gone. He hated being kept indoors, he hated courtiers, and he hated his own clean hands. He needed to be tearing into something, you knew, and so you understood when he went back to war like a lion to his prey. You could not ask him to stay.

You washed yourself and cleaned the throne – and then you ruled.

You oversaw all matters of state that so bored Sukuna and made sure his kingdom flourished. You were determined to have his approval when he saw the progress his capital had made. There was pleasure in all affairs of government for you. You seemed to have a natural affinity towards it. You soon established a reputation as a ruler who was equal parts harsh and fair. You did not relish taking the last sheep of some poor farmer, and so the peasants tended to welcome your rule. The rich and powerful, however, were another story entirely. As were the miscreants who resorted to crime. You relished the moments when a fool came to challenge you. You delighted in all the different ways there were to take a head from a body.

But those challenges soon came to be few and far between as word spread quickly – the Queen of Curses was not to be toyed with. Any slight, real or imagined, was met with a quick and cruel response. Their caution drove you mad with the need for violence. What was the purpose of the power buzzing in your veins, if you had no one to eviscerate with it? More often than you cared to admit, you envied Sukuna’s freedom on the battlefield. What you wouldn’t do to feel someone’s pulse slowing beneath your palms, to feel their blood running between your fingers. If you did not have challengers and fools to punish, what were you to do with this craving for bloodshed?

When boredom became too much to bear, you brought people out of the dungeons to fight to the death in the courtyard square. 18 prisoners fought one another, and you promised the victor freedom. It was a brilliant sight. Your eyes lit up at their desperation, their cunning – their violence. It reminded you of your beloved.

And when the victor kneeled before you, to receive your royal pardon, all exhaustion and weariness – you killed him, of course. There was no lie. It was a freedom, of sorts.

And of course, it would not do for word to reach Sukuna of you pardoning prisoners. On the contrary, you hoped he would hear of your cruelty, of your violence. You hoped it would make him lust for you and bring him back home.

And sometimes, it did. When he heard tell in hushed tones of the Queen of Curses’ latest cruelty. Some horror beyond imagining meted out on whoever had been fool enough to offend her, he hungered for you with a passion that left a trail of broken women in his wake – and still his lust was not sated.

He would be haunted by the image of you, that once pure, innocent face of a goddess stained with blood and smirking in pleasure as you took some fool apart piece for piece. As you murdered and tortured and wanted more still, as you listened to screams the way he did – as songs of praise to your power. And the need to take you, to fill you, to wreck your body with the ravages of his lust drove him to impatience and distraction – and nothing in the world could keep him from you then.

You knew this, of course.

And every time you meted out punishment, crueler than the last, you hoped this was the one that would bring your cursed king home. Because even if all the world called you the queen of curses, you were never more content than when you were his whore.

[antebellumite]

top 5 antebellum politicians, not including presidents

For the sake of not making this response boring, Im going to personally remove all three of the triumvirs from the running. All three of them are now in Spot 0. Benton and Hayne can be there too.

Which leaves five spots for...

John Randolph of Roanoke literally the MOST fascinating guy. Hes wilder than a herd of horses hoarse on meth. literally created a slur. he brought dogs into congress and stripped in the house of reps and got into verbal and physical fights. he dueled everyone to the point where his contemporaries commented that he should be in a straightjacket. he asked the cousin of the person he was dueling with to be his second in the same duel. he was a dramatic bitch who ordered a european badge of honor to be made for him in honor of that duel. he bemoaned that no one would care about him when he died. when he was near death he painstakingly made his way to the us congress gallery to hear henry clays beautiful voice one last time. whenever the wife of a congressmen he was insulting was in the gallery he doubled down on his insults. when he died he freed the people he enslaved but he did a piss poor job so everything just fell apart. he has tuberculosis but it was contained solely to his dick and so he suffered an inferiority complex and an inability to progress past puberty because of it. and also maybe he had klinefelter syndrome bc of a imbalance either ways, my name on discord is john randolph hrt not because i GENUINELY think he would support hrt, but because the fact that there is a CHANCE he would is still higher than the rest of his colleagues.

Henry Wise also the most insane guy of the time period. like jror, got into fights, but this was way more about slavery. he picked fights with jqa all throughout the gag war. surprisingly woke on several topics including thanksgiving and the rights of native americans. he says some of the funniest things ever sometimes. he thinks abolitionist is a slur. he became a general in the confederate army but got kicked out for being a bitch. somehow flip flopped between every. single. political. party. of his era. including almost becoming a republican near the end of his life. his irreverence for law and order is astounding. he bullied john tyler and literally everyone in congress. the fact that he was drinking buddies with franklin pierce and got him elected but also got pierces friend killed in the cilley graves duel is insane. the fact that in order to try and get henry clay the presidential nomination he literally bent his knee at hugh lawson white and did the equivalent of the uwu face is insane. the fact he more or less murdered john brown is insane. the fact that ralph waldo emerson said that if brown and wise were in a different life, they could have been friends is even more insane. like damn ralph waldo emerson now is NOT the time to be shipping abolitionist john brown and the slavery supporting secessionist governor of virginia who murdered him together. also not going to lie the fact that he never sought a pardon after his involvement in the confederacy is actually a breath of fresh air for this time period. go girl acknowledge that you are undeserving of a pardon or forgiveness for your crimes. i honestly cant do this guy justice without just telling you gto look at my #the field of blood tag. this guy. also i will not lie i did not actually understand his violent tendancies (which to his credit he wasnt like a maniac or anything ) until i saw his photograph. and uh yeah. shaking hands meme between jror and henry wise and the connecting factor is looking feminine and having a serious complex because of it.

Hugh Lawson White his hair. the way hes the only antebellum politician whos wikipedia page actually says what his personality and style was like. fascinating.

Charles Sumner hes such a loser. he deserved so much better. once he fell of a train. he was called his great impotency. he got caned one time and thats all everyone ever remembers about him. his main biographer did him SO DIRTY. he might be ace he might be gay. the hermaphrodite by julia ward howe is probably about the love triangle between julia him and samuel howe, julias husband. he has incredibly modern beliefs about things! hes funny and he has a three way benign rivalry betwen himself seward and douglas. he waxed poetic about daniel websters head and then felt betrayed by him. he once stroked his own head glumly. his eyebags. he got hit with a brick once. his handsomeness is the work of legends. hes awkward and gentlemanly and depressing and optimistic and so many many things its beautiful and he was beautiful and i love him so much! i love his friendship with mary todd lincoln and the way he was basically looming in abraham lincolns window every other night throughout the civil war.

William Plumer Jr. LITERALLY my guy!! his anecdotes are all so fascinating. the time he had a very dramatic meeting with daniel webster about Fate and Destiny. his involvement with preserving american history from the very beginning. just lovely and wonderful and i basically yassify him whenever i imagine him in my head. just wonderful. and these are basically all of them i think, though i like a lot of congressmen of this era.

Bonus, have a drawing of henry wise, a calhouny hugh lawson white for some reason, and fem plumer!

[lochlander]

After some misadventures with the stove, Guadalupe is ready to introduce herself and her fellow future homesteaders.

Guadalupe Herrera Cruz grew up in Texas. Her father was the type to insist on Texas's independence--Señor Herrera had fought in the Texas Revolution against Mexico, a badge of glory that he kept with him long past the days when Texas traded in its independence for the support of the United States. One of the strongest principles of the leaders of that Revolution, which he passed along to Lupe and her siblings, was his opposition to slavery of any kind. When the Civil War started and Texas joined on the side of the Confederacy, Lupe knew she could no longer stay in the Lone Star State. She worked as a housemaid in Boston throughout the war, befriending a young teaching student. When Éireann told her she was bound for Montana, Lupe decided she was ready for her own fresh start.

Did you know that Filipinos were the first documented Asian travelers to North America? I didn't, until this challenge, but Maria Divina Hilaga could have told you. Her great-grandfather settled in Louisiana a decade before the Revolutionary War; her grandfather served in New Orleans during the War of 1812 (though the battle was in 1815). Divina has never seen the Philippines--she was born in Baton Rouge--but her family and her community have taught her a lot. She's fluent in English, Spanish, and Tagalog, knows enough French to tell you what for, and has passing use of Malay, Cebuano, Chavacano, and Mandarin. Divina's a knowledge sim who is always looking to learn something new; when she heard that local legend Antoinette Benoit had succeeded in her foolhardy plan to settle a parcel of land in Montana Territory, she knew the next place she wanted to learn about.

With all that his companions have been through, Alessandro Rossi's journey to Kainai is relatively underwhelming. He didn't fight in any wars, he didn't flee any conflicts, he and his brothers had their own bedrooms in a well-furnished house next to the vineyard his Sicily-born father managed in Connecticut. Maybe that's why Alessandro came West--he felt he was too comfortable. If that's the case, then he's the latest in a long line of middle class people underestimating how much work the farming life takes; an old-fashioned cottagecore influencer, if you will. He's easily been at the host house the longest--and while he's building his hope chest, he's still figuring out what he plans to do with his future. Apparently frigid winters aren't great for wine grapes.