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mixelation · 8 months

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oh yeah i also wrote some of the fall out of the chunin exams from minato's pov

the [...] marks an unwritten scene or two lmao

***

Minato looked at the genin’s report first thing in the morning, opening it even before his assistant brought him coffee.

He was surprised it was in Tori’s handwriting and not Itachi’s. Itachi had always been picky about reports (and everything else anyone might do), and Minato often found his notes even on subordinates’ individual reports. Surely Itachi hadn’t told Tori to do the report. But the alternative also seemed strange. Who could convince Itachi not to at least write his own notes?

The format was also non-standard, but Minato didn’t mind it. Tori had somehow condensed the entire mission into a single page, front and back, with important events succinctly outlined in a logical, easy-to-read flow. To this page she’d stapled twenty-seven pages of what seemed to be notes on the conversation they’d had to produce this report, which were more detailed but not in an order that was easy for an outsider to follow.

The contents of the report turned out to be insane.

Minato had talked in length with Kushina about her version of events. He knew the details of the actual exam, their plan and Iwa’s eventual attack. He knew that, somehow, Itachi would end up rescuing Kushina alone while Tori and Deidara had gone after Morino. He knew what Itachi had deemed important for him to know immediately, which was that Tori had elected to make several decisions to manipulate Konoha’s international relations.

He had assumed the way they’d accomplished these things would be wild. He’d somehow underestimated how wild.

For one thing, apparently Deidara had fought the Tsuchikage. This was stated very matter-of-factly in the middle of a paragraph with no particular fanfare, and made Minato choke on his coffee.

There weren’t even any supplementary notes about this fact. Deidara had barged into the Tsuchikage’s box, screamed to a bunch of foreign dignitaries about Iwa kidnapping his sensei while everyone was distracted by the tournament, and then he’d fought the Tsuchikage. That was it. No further comment.

Deidara had also done this with enough skill to then leave the battle site in sufficient chaos that no one had been able to immediately follow him. This at least had detail; Deidara had simply broken enough of the building that the Tsuchikage’s guard he hadn’t killed needed all hands on deck to save their important foreign visitors from its imminent collapse.

Jiraiya had linked Deidara to a lot of destroyed structures– and buildings which were only partially destroyed in very sophisticated, calculated ways– but what the fuck. Deidara was eleven. A team of Iwa demolition experts couldn’t pull that off nearly as cleanly.

Part of Minato’s assumptions had been that Tori and Deidara had stayed together. Tori was extremely clever, and probably much more talented in fuuinjutsu than she let on, but she was very demonstrably not well-skilled in combat, and she’d shut down her own chakra in a last-ditch effort to stave off her own poisoning. That she would stick to a more combat-oriented person in a support role had been her MO as long as Minato had known her.

This, it turned out, was an incorrect assumption to the degree that Minato wasn’t even really sure how Tori had accomplished what she had. She had… simply walked into Iwa T&I, if he was reading this correctly. The report simply said she’d “infiltrated it through the back door.” Her supplemental notes clarified she’d done this via “the super secret jutsu of being twelve and unintimidating.” Then she’d called on a random T&I employee that she described as “looking slightly confused about his job (you know the type)” and convinced him they were meant to be relocating prisoners to help her move Morino.

These… these were not normal infiltration tactics. Minato had no idea what she was talking about.

At least with Itachi, Minato knew he was one of Konoha’s best and brightest. Minato would never order him to infiltrate a place by himself, but he understood how he’d done it with ample abuse of genjutsu and murder. He didn’t understand how Itachi had known where Kushina would be, and this was never commented on, but this question was extremely low priority.

Minato called back in his assistant and asked for a second coffee, and for her to schedule an all-day meeting the next day with Team 4 and some of Konoha’s leadership.

He probably wouldn’t keep everyone there all day. But he wanted everyone available.

The rest of his day was spent in more meetings on the Iwa fiasco. Morino was stable and talking, which pleased him. Tori’s report was copied and passed around to various offices for record-keeping and analysis, to see if anyone could divine Iwa’s motives and goals from their actions.

Shikaku sauntered into his debriefing with Minato with a copy in his hand.

“What the fuck is this?” he said, waving it.

“Team 4 is… resilient under stress?” Minato tried.

“More like Team Disaster,” Shikaku snorted, then dropped into a chair across from Minato.

Minato liked Shikaku. He’d call them work friends, maybe, as much as a Kage and his subordinate could be work friends. Shikaku was several years older and had usually been stationed in different parts of the war from Minato, but their sons were the same age, and Shikaku was always open for commiseration about the joys and challenges of fatherhood. Minato didn’t really get invited to afterwork events, but sometimes when they were both working late, Shikaku would show up with a couple beers and a few moments of friendly chat.

Today Shikaku’s friendly observation was, “Do you think they’re lying?”

Minato stared at him, nonplussed. “About what?”

Shikaku slapped the papers he was holding with the back of his free hand. “All of it. Some of it. It’s pretty unbelievable. A team of our best Jounin couldn’t pull this off.”

Minato frowned down at the original report, laid out on his desk. It did… well, it had occurred to him that some of Tori and Deidara’s parts, which neither Kushina nor Itachi had witnessed personally, might be exaggerated.

“Itachi was with them when Tori wrote the report,” Minato said finally. “He wouldn’t put up with a story he didn’t find believable.”

“He’s a genius, but he’s still only thirteen,” Shikaku said. “I’m not saying it’s likely. I’m saying it’s possible. Both Inoichi and I agree you didn’t do enough to vet those two.”

Minato sighed and leaned back in his seat. They’d been over this. He, too, would have liked to vet Tori and Deidara more and give them a longer probation period, but he’d also needed them for this mission.

“Let’s assume it’s a true and fair report of events for today,” Minato said at length. “I’ll let you and Inoichi grill them to your hearts’ content tomorrow.”

Sikaku raised his eyebrows. “And grill them I will,” he promised. “Fighting the Tsuchikage and his guard in close combat? Being twelve no jutsu? C’mon.”

They moved onto what Minato actually wanted Shikaku to talk about. It was unclear what Iwa’s motive was, or what their plan had been, if any, and for how long they’d been planning it. Their many, many analyses of Iwa’s movements and communications leading up to the chunin exam had borne no major red flags.

Tori’s report had made the astute observation that the window for synthesizing and then implementing the chakra poison before it broke down was quite narrow. Iwa would have had to produce it all during the week prior to the tournament, which meant there was some advanced planning, but they theoretically could have made these plans after Team 4 had arrived.

“They would have had to arrange all the equipment and ingredients too,” Shikaku pointed out. “That would have taken months.”

“Unless they already had it for other reasons,” Minato said. This idea, unfortunately, raised a bunch of other questions about why.

“True,” Shikaku replied. “But they’ve never used it before, and we have no intel on what they might need it for that they couldn’t get some other, less convoluted way.”

Shikaku had also gone through the reports on the exam itself, both the half-page Tori had dedicated to it and Kushina’s sprawling initial report she’d penned while babbling to Minato about how she was okay, she promised.

“There’s at least four places I believe an assassination was attempted,” Shikaku concluded. “Your Team Disaster just… didn’t notice, somehow.”

“Oh,” Minato said. He… also hadn’t noticed.

“The first is during the second phase of the chunin exam,” Shikaku said. “Kushina-san states that Tori was attacked by six other participants.”

“Oh,” Minato repeated, now seeing the problem. This had really been a blip on his radar too; Kushina had not expended an ounce of concern for her weakest student. This detail had only made it into the report as an example of Tori making friends immediately with a Kiri-nin in line for the Seven Swordsmen.

But no, actually, they had split up the Konoha genin and sent them off with inadequate weapons. This would have seemed immediately suspicious and unfair, if only it had slowed any of the genin down remotely.

“If I’m right that they were assassination attempts, the earlier attempts are sloppy,” Shikaku observed. “They might have been less well planned. A rushed decision, maybe.”

“Why?” Minato asked.

Shikaku stared at him meaningfully. “You waltzed one of their pet project kids right in there and said he was yours.”

Well.

“That reason doesn’t explain the poison synthesis,” Minato said finally.

“True,” Shikaku agreed. “It’s not the best theory. But we don’t have a best theory yet.”

The last item they discussed was the one that gave Minato the most anxiety.

“The reason they chose chakra poisoning…” he started. The main reason villages had started trying to stock it during the war was that it was one of the very few ways to reliably take down a jinchuriki.

Shikaku let out a long, tired breath.

“We’ve had no known intelligence breeches on Kushina-san,” he said finally. “My current theory is that because she’s a wildcard and all they really knew was that she has high chakra reserves, they wanted something guaranteed to work. But I have no way to verify this.”

“I get Jiraiya on it,” Minato decided.

The Tsuchikage’s communication on the matter arrived by hawk late in the evening, which was about the fastest turnaround time Minato could have expected.

Minato was, at least, in a decent mood when he received it. Kushina had brought Naruto and a home cooked meal up to the office for dinner, and he’d had a good forty-five minutes of laughter and a good-bye kiss from his wife. Shikaku hadn’t come by with a beer, but Akimichi Chouza’s wife had sent a tin of sweet sticky rice treats up to the other two thirds of Shika-Ino-Cho, also working late on this, and a couple of them had ended up on Minato’s desk.

The Tsuchikage’s letter was brief. He did not mention Kushina at all, offering no apology, explanation, or even acknowledgement his village had done anything to her. Instead, he wrote condolences for Minato’s out of control team and forgiveness for their incredible feats of property damage.

As an act of good faith, we will not request monetary compensation for said damages, only that your team be appropriately disciplined, the Tsuchikage’s secretary had written. We do request an international statement from you, disavowing the heinous and untruthful lies your genin chose to shout at our guests in what we could only assume was a poorly considered prank.

Damages listed all but outright admitted that Deidara had indeed personally attacked the Tsuchikage and then sauntered off largely unharmed. Minato couldn’t help it. He laughed.

What the fuck?

xXx

[...]

xXx

Two things of note happened the following week.

One, the Mizukage sent him a letter, penned by her own hand.

I have heard a terrible rumor, which if true, we in Kiri find most sympathetic, the letter started. Further down the page, she continued, Of course, Kiri must discourage any unnecessary retaliation, especially given… [here, Terumi Mei listed a non-exhaustive list of six different post-war treaties] …but know that should this escalate, Kiri is ready to honor its alliance, if we find this rumor to be true.

Terumi Mei then requested Konoha’s official statement in a tone that Minato would venture to call gossipy, and hinted that she wanted to know if he wanted her to contact the Tsuchikage or not. She’d left a lipstick print next to the Mizukage seal, which… Minato was not going to unpack.

Their alliance with Kiri wasn’t especially strong. Kiri had switched their allegiance from the Konoha-Suna side to Iwa-Kumo midway through the war; they’d only negotiated from a peace agreement up to something more like an “alliance” when Terumi Mei had taken over. Their shinobi still regularly clashed along the border, and all their alliance meant was that Minato and Mei just sort of politely looked away and didn’t escalate. On top of that, one of the post-war agreements, as insisted upon by the leader of Ame who’d strong-armed his way into negotiations last moment, was that no shinobi village could enter into an alliance which would require them to join another village’s declaration of war. In other words, an “alliance” didn’t mean Kiri would fight with them, or even lift a finger for them, should the need come.

But it was probably the most positive letter he’d ever gotten from another Kage.

Kiri’s support was also, notably, not something Oonoki seemed to believe Konoha had achieved in his communications. This was a definite win for them.

Nice job, Tori, Minato thought.

Then he buried his face in his hands at the thought. No. Tori could never find out that had worked the way she’d thought it would, or else she would interpret this as carte blanche to do whatever she wanted.

The second thing that happened threw their entire intelligence department for a loop.

He received a letter, not by hawk, but in the form of an animated, flying paper crane. It landed on his desk and then just sat there while his entire ANBU guard descended upon it. Minato was shuffled out of his office while a total of ten experts verified it was safe to touch.

Eventually, someone unfolded the paper to discover it was a letter.

Ame has uncovered some information you might find interesting, a feminine hand had written. We invite you to visit to talk it over. Attach one of your Hiraishin to this paper and come by whenever you wish.

Under it she’d written:

You may bring whoever you like. Your Team 4 seems interesting, for example.

“There’s no way that’s not a trap,” Shikaku said when Minato read it outloud. “Definitely don’t do that.”

Shikaku was right. No one in their right mind would invite Minato to send in a Hiraishin marker. Still, Minato pouted about it to Kushina in bed.

“No one ever invites me,” he complained. Hiruzen had visited other villages plenty of times. Other Kage regularly got to go show up for Chunin Exams, at the very least. But nooo, everyone politely suggested he just send a representative, because he was the scary guy who’d just plant markers to break in again whenever he wanted and kill everyone or whatever they thought would happen.

“I wouldn’t plant a Hiraishin marker on an ally,” Minato said.

Kushina looked up from her second attempt to get through the most recent Icha Icha.

“Yes, you would,” she said bluntly.

Minato pouted some more.

#reborn au #idk sometimes i write characters processing events before i actually write out what happens because. like.#it helps me categorize what i need to make happen and how it could happen #so the actual details might change and the scene might get cut for redundancy but here u go #also i legit forgot danzo is still around being a nuisance so pretend one of the missing scenes is him showing up to undercut minato #while minato goes: AAAAAAAAAH

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mariacallous · 4 months

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On a sunny April afternoon in 2006, thousands of people flocked to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a rally with celebrities, Olympic athletes, and rising political stars. Their cause: garner international support to halt a genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“If we care, the world will care. If we act, then the world will follow,” Barack Obama, then the junior Illinois senator, told the crowd, speaking alongside future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That same week, then-Sen. Joe Biden introduced a bill in Congress calling on NATO to intervene to halt the genocide in Sudan. “We need to take action on both a military and diplomatic front to end the conflict,” he said.

Flash-forward 18 years, and the prospect of genocide again looms in Sudan amid an explosive new civil war. But this time, there are no rallies, no A-list celebrities, no calls for outside military intervention. Few world leaders pay anything more than lip service to condemning the atrocities.

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced some 9 million since the conflict began in April 2023. The United States accused both sides of committing war crimes and atrocities and concluded that the RSF and its allied militias have committed ethnic cleansing.

Western officials and aid workers working on Sudan say they are vexed, and horrified, by the lack of international attention and resources the conflict is receiving—particularly compared to the global response to the conflict in 2006, which was the progenitor of the current conflagration.

If this trend continues and there is no forceful international crisis response, they warn, Sudan will likely collapse into a failed state and could face full-fledged genocide once again.

“You can’t help but watch the level of focus on crises like Gaza and Ukraine and wonder what just 5 percent of that energy could have done in a context like Sudan and how many thousands, tens of thousands of lives it could’ve saved,” said Alan Boswell, an expert on the region at the International Crisis Group.

The top general of the SAF, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, jointly seized power from a transitional government in a coup in 2021. Tensions between the rival sides escalated and finally erupted into war in April 2023.

In the 13 months since, the RSF has entrenched its positions around the national capital of Khartoum, forcing the SAF to relocate its headquarters to the coastal city of Port Sudan. The RSF has made steady gains in seizing control of Darfur and advancing southward and eastward against SAF forces. The SAF still controls territories around Khartoum and up the Nile River, a vital strategic route to Egypt; along the Red Sea coast; and the eastern borders with Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The conflict has also expanded into a full-fledged regional proxy war. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Riyadh’s arch regional rival Iran, back the SAF, while the United Arab Emirates is reportedly funneling arms and military supplies to the RSF. The RSF also reportedly receives support from Chad and from Russia through its affiliated mercenary groups.

The focal point of the conflict now is on El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the center of fighting. The RSF has taken control of vast swaths of western and southern Sudan in its war against the SAF. El Fasher is the last SAF stronghold in Darfur, occupying a strategically important position for trade routes from neighboring Libya and Chad.

The RSF recently began its advance on El Fasher where an estimated 2 million to 2.8 million civilians have sought to take refuge from the fighting. (Precise figures are hard to come by.)

“The risk of genocide exists in Sudan. It is real, and it is growing every single day,” Alice Nderitu, the U.N. special advisor on the prevention of genocide, warned in a U.N. Security Council meeting last week.

A lengthy report from Human Rights Watch documented how the RSF and allied militias committed widespread atrocities, including mass rape, child murder, and massacres of civilians when it captured the Sudanese city of El Geneina last year. U.S. and U.N. officials and human rights experts warn that the same will likely happen if the RSF takes control of El Fasher, but on a much wider scale. The United States and aid groups have accused the SAF of blocking vital food aid from entering the country and RSF forces of looting humanitarian stocks, exacerbating the crisis and pushing regions of the country closer to famine.

“The potential fatality generation here is off the charts,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health who runs a research project that monitors the conflict in Sudan. “What will happen when the RSF takes El Fasher? Exactly what is happening in every other place they control.”

“There is Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-level casualty potential,” he added, referring to the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II that killed up to 225,000 people.

Aid organizations and officials who work on Sudan have long decried the relative inattention the conflict in Sudan gets compared to Ukraine or the war in Gaza. Some 20 million people—or 10 times the population of Gaza—are at risk of famine in various regions of Sudan. “Very few people who don’t work on Sudan know that Darfur is on the brink of famine,” Boswell said. “Obviously, everyone knows about the risk of famine in Gaza.”

U.S. President Joe Biden’s own social media posts about Gaza versus Sudan provide another, albeit imperfect, window into the attention each conflict receives. Biden tweeted about Israel or Gaza at least 107 times in the six months since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that started the Israel-Hamas war. Since the war in Sudan began over a year ago, he has tweeted about Sudan four times—three of which were about the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum right after fighting broke out.

Aid groups are strained for resources to tackle the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. In February, Doctors Without Borders warned that in one refugee camp alone in North Darfur, one child was dying every two hours of malnutrition. In April, on the conflict’s first anniversary, aid groups said the international humanitarian response plan to aid the Sudanese was only 6 percent funded. At a donor conference that month in Paris, countries pledged $2 billion more—though that is still only about half of what aid groups estimate the country needs.

Biden appointed a special envoy for Sudan in February—Tom Perriello, a former U.S. representative from Virginia and State Department veteran. Most experts have cheered Perriello’s new push to hold cease-fire talks in the months since and engage U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill to bring more levers of U.S. power and financing to bear on Sudan, but they also fear his efforts may be too little, too late for the civilians trapped in El Fasher.

“It will be very hard to deescalate the situation, though everyone should try. But there is an aura of inevitability that this is all going to blow up,” Boswell said. “The degree of mobilization from all sides is hard to walk down.”

Diplomatic and aid officials working on Sudan have some theories on why the atrocities in Darfur and across the country are receiving such little attention now compared to the 2000s, but none gives a full answer.

In 2006, the United States was still reaching the heights of its post-9/11 “war on terror” campaign. Sudan, under former dictator Omar al-Bashir, had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden as he built up al Qaeda’s global terror network, and “bashing Bashir and his genocide in Darfur couched nicely with [counterterrorism] priorities” of the U.S. government at the time, said Nicole Widdersheim, a former senior National Security Council official now with Human Rights Watch.

The memories of failed and successful international interventions to halt genocide—Rwanda in 1994 and the Balkans later that decade, respectively—were still relatively fresh in the minds of policymakers. The costly Western campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya that later exposed the shortcomings and blowback of military interventions were still underway.

It also preceded the current era of great-power competition, where Washington is intensely focused on countering Russia and China. Sudan also competes with the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine for international attention and humanitarian resources. Others suggested racism built into Western foreign policy played a part. “It’s seen as yet ‘another war in Africa like all the others,’” said one official dryly. Not one single factor can explain it all, experts concluded.

“Gaza is taking up the always limited American public interest and activism on a foreign crisis, but to be fair, there was nearly no public activism or engagement on the Sudan war before” the Israel-Hamas war, Widdersheim said.

Experts say the relative inattention Sudan has gotten from the top echelons of the White House and other Western powers that could have influence in pressuring the warring sides in Sudan to sit for peace talks has led to the current protracted state of the war.

Biden hosted Kenyan President William Ruto for a state visit this week, where the two called on “the warring parties in Sudan to facilitate unhindered humanitarian access and immediately commit to a ceasefire” toward the end of a lengthy joint statement but did not elaborate further. U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield have also been outspoken about urging an end to the conflict in Sudan.

Successive cease-fire talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, over the past year, brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia, failed to clinch any lasting deal. Those talks were led on the U.S. side not by a top White House official or Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but by the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Molly Phee.

Behind-the-scenes efforts by some members of Congress in December 2023 to appoint a special presidential envoy on Sudan—one who would report directly to the White House, rather than an envoy reporting to the assistant secretary of state—were unsuccessful, multiple officials and congressional aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration dynamics. Perriello was appointed two months later.

Perriello in mid-April said that cease-fire talks would resume in Jeddah “within the next three weeks,” but so far those talks have yet to materialize. Several current and former officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the talks in Jeddah could resume in June, by which point the RSF could have already captured El Fasher from the mostly cutoff SAF forces.

“The need to start formal peace talks in Jeddah is absolutely urgent, and the United States is working exhaustively with partners to make that happen,” said a State Department spokesperson. “But we are not waiting for formal talks to begin—rather, we have accelerated our diplomatic engagements to align international efforts to end this war, mitigate the humanitarian crisis, and prevent future atrocities.”

Cease-fire talks have worked in limited ways in the past, such as when the United States got both sides to briefly stop fighting in Khartoum so it could evacuate its embassy in April 2023. “When the right leverage is put on the table at the right time to get the RSF and SAF to stop fighting, it can be done,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudanese policy analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory, a Sudan-focused think tank. “The international community has just chosen not to deploy that same leverage this time around.”

Khair added that the Jeddah talks format has failed before, and it will likely fail again. “The concern is that because of the laziness and complicity of the international community at this point, you don’t have any diplomats who are looking for a new way of doing things. Jeddah in many ways is blocking the start of any new diplomatic efforts or other good ideas that could be effective.”

“Diplomats are fixated on Jeddah now, simply because it’s already there,” Khair said.

As Perriello engaged in frenetic diplomacy, he has also publicly marveled at how little attention the scale of the conflict and death in Sudan is receiving on the international stage.

“One of the things that to me captures just how invisible and horrific this war is, is that we don’t have a credible death count,” Perriello said during a congressional hearing in front of the 21-member Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month. “We literally don’t know how many people have died—possibly to a factor of 10 or 15. The number was earlier 15,000 to 30,000. Some think it’s at 150,000,” he said. During the course of Perriello’s hearing, senators cycled out of the room due to scheduling conflicts, often leaving only one senator in the room and 20 empty seats.

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niqhtlord01 · 2 years

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Humans are weird: In the line of duty

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)

The bulkhead slowly rose and Feneci walked on to the command bridge with her film crew. It wasn’t the most ideal of jobs she had been tasked with over the years but it was proving to be one of the most taxing.

She was never fond of interacting with humans and when she had been told by her editor that she would be covering the evacuation convoys from the Temeril homeworld onboard the human cruiser “Queen Ann” she had rightly protested. Humans were known to be suspicious and untrusting of new comers and she had felt as much when she and her crew had first set foot on the ship as it escorted Temeril ships to their refugee locations.

The human’s never said anything openly to her or her team. They treated them with respect and answered all of the questions they were able to; yet there was always a lingering presence in the air that radiated off the general crew that Feneci couldn’t help but summarize to be a general disdain. To them this ship was their home and she was an outsider that had been forced upon them to raise awareness for the ongoing crisis. This feeling thankfully was not shared with the ship’s captain who Feneci had finally been able to secure an interview with.

“Welcome, Ms. Feneci.” An old human in a captain’s uniform stated as the bridge crew parted to let him through. Unlike the other humans he radiated no such ill intent and his smile appeared genuine. He held out a hand for Feneci who took it to shake in standard human greeting rituals.

“Captain Amar, thank you for sparing the time to meet with us.” Feneci replied. “I know you must have your hands full with the evacuation efforts.”

Captain Amar released his hand and straightened out his uniform before motioning Feneci and the camera crew to follow him to the captain’s chair. The chair was situated at the back of the bridge so that the captain could observe the on goings of his entire crew but not higher to give the impression he was lording over them.

“You give me too much praise.” Captain Amar replied as he sat down in his chair. Feneci sat opposite him as the camera feed went green to show the recording had begun. “The real praise should be given to the Temeril’s for organizing an evacuation so quickly.”

“There are those, including some within the Terran government itself, that have stated that the entire evacuation process is unnecessary; that the Temeril homeworld could have been saved had the adequate tectonic stabilizers been deployed.”

Feneci looked down at her data pad for the notes she had written for this interview. “They say the cost of the stabilizers would have been a fraction of what this fleet of ships is now running.”

Captain Amar rocked side to side in his chair as if debating internally how to respond to this statement. After a moment to collect his thoughts he replied. “It is not for me to question the policies of my government, but I can assure you that having seen the Temeril homeworld from orbit adding a few tectonic stabilizers would have only delayed the inevitable.”

“You are an expert in seismic theology?” Feneci countered, hoping to catch the captain in a trap of words.

“I’m afraid I never had time for such studies,” the captain admitted, “but from high orbit I saw a lake of fire the size of a continent appear in the span of three days; consuming everything it touched like a gapping maw of some great beast of old.”

The captain shook his head regretfully. “The Temeril homeworld would become their tomb had we not come to assist with the evacuation and soon to be relocation effort to a new homeworld once we have finished establishing a colony on Techlon V.”

Feneci waved her hand around the bridge. “Since when does evacuation and relocation efforts require military escorts?” She held out a pad for the captain to see. “By our recent count there are at least five military grade vessels in this convoy alone, including this ship we’re on right now which is a cruiser class no less.”

For the first time the captain looked uneasy. “We have received recent reports of marauders operating in the area; preying on isolated ships or small convoy’s to steal either their ships or the passengers onboard.”

This was an actual shock to Feneci. Not only had she not heard any of these reports before, but she was surprised that the human captain would reveal it so freely.

“Was this information made public to the Temeril’s?” she asked, to which the captain shook his head.

“At the time there was a concern that many would instead seek to remain on the planet when faced with the potential danger in space that the marauders posse.” Captain Amar admitted. “As such it was felt that only after the trip was underway would this information be released.”

“Do you have any idea how deceitful that is?” Feneci pressed. “You intentionally withheld vital information from these people!”

Before the captain could reply alarm bells rang out around the control room. Bridge crew that had been ideally listening to the exchange scattered back to their terminals and sounded off their findings.

“Unknown cluster of contacts approaching from the rear of the convoy,” the scanner officer sounded off, “twenty minutes until they’re on us.”

In a flash the captain was up from his chair while Feneci bade her camera crew to continue filming. This would only further highlight the mismanagement the humans had over the convoy as a result of her report.

“Unidentified vessels this is Captain Amar of the Terran Alliance,” Captain Amar stated with authority, “you are approaching a evacuation convoy from the planet Temeril under our protection; identify yourself.”

There was no reply save the resounding pings from the scanner terminal indicating the unknown ships location. The communication officer shook his head and looked back at his captain.

“Full spread across all channels.” Captain Amar stated and the communication officer replied in kind.

“I repeat, this is a Temeril evacuation fleet under the protection of the Terran Alliance; you will identify yourselves at once.”

Once more silence.

“They’ve increased speed, ten minutes to contact.” The scanner officer called out.

“Escorts two and three, break off from the convoy and intercept the approaching vessels; and send word to Terran command we will need reinforcements.” A tactical hologram appeared above the bridge showing not only the formation of ships in the convoy but the approaching craft as well. At the captain’s command the two mentioned escort vessels began pulling away and set course to meet the unknown vessels.

“Escort three is asking for permission to engage if provoked.” The communication officer called over his shoulder looking at Captain Amar. The captain paused to consider his next steps before replying “Permission to engage only if fired upon first; we don’t know if these are the raiders we heard about or some convoy ships that were late to the party.” The officer nodded and relayed the order to the escort ships.

Feneci watched as the two opposing forces drew closer until finally they were right on top of each other when suddenly the coms channels were alive with chatter.

“This is escort two, contacts are not friendly! I repeat, they are not frie-“

The transmission was cut off half way as Feneci watched the marker for the second escort ship vanish. Captain Amar slammed his fist into a nearby terminal leaving an indentation.

“Escort three break off and rejoin the Queen Ann;” Captain Amar barked, “escorts four and five form up on us as well. Keep them away from the convoy at all costs.”

This time Feneci felt the entire ship lurch beneath her feet as the engines powered on and the ship began to turn around. Another round of pings came from the scanner terminal.

“Another twelve contacts just appeared and they’re heading right for us.”

“Clever bastards.” Captain Amar remarked as he took up his command chair once more. “They sent a small force ahead to gauge our numbers. They must think we’re easy pickings if they’ve fully committed now.”

“How far until the convoy reaches the jump point?” the captain called to his scanning officer.

“They need thirty minutes to reach the edge of the system before they can make the jump.” was his answer. Feneci added the time in her head and the raider fleet would easily reach them before they could escape to the jump point. The convoy would either be captured or destroyed dealing a crippling blow to the Temeril people.

“Ms. Feneci, I believe you should make for the hangar bay, get on your shuttle and head back to the convoy at once.” Feneci turned to see Captain Amar addressing her directly. “I can no longer guarantee your safety and this ship is about to enter into combat; we will buy as much time for the convoy to escape.”

“You’re not seriously going to fight them are you?” Feneci found herself asking despite herself. From the tactical hologram it looked like a swarm of red angry dots was rushing them while a thin blue line of Terran ships stood between them and the convoy.

“We were entrusted with the safety of this convoy and the Terran Navy has never shirked its commitments before.”

With that the captain turned from the reporter to focus on the battle at hand while a pair of naval guards stepped forward to escort the crew to the hangar. The last sight Feneci had of the captain was of him directing targeting orders as the first barrages of incoming fire impacted the shields. -------------------

On this day during the stellar year of 2573, a small Terran fleet under the command of Captain Amar Jabal protected an evacuation convoy of defenseless Temeril’s from a horde of marauders.

Outnumbered three to one, Captain Amar did not hesitate to engage the enemy fleet to buy the fleeing Temeril’s enough time to escape the system safely. The battle was fierce and uncompromising as both sides dueled it out in the void of space with the brave human captain using every trick in his book to keep the enemy focused on him.

Moving his ships in close to threaten the enemy carriers, the vile fiends were forced to keep their fighter wings close at hand to defend their carrier ships rather than chase down the fleeing innocents.

When presented with the overwhelming power of his flagship, the cruiser “Queen Ann”, the raiders found that alone they could not pierce through the mighty shields of the vessel and were likewise pinned in place engaging it lest they be picked off one by one.

But as the battle unfolded the Terran fleet lost many of its ships as they heroically held the line until only the Queen Ann remained.

With her decks breached in a dozen places, weapon systems damaged beyond repair, and her communications cut from the rest of the rescue fleet that was already on their way at max jump speed; the Queen Ann defiantly rammed the enemy flagship and detonated her jump drive in a final act of defiance. The resulting explosion and shower of debris crippled the few marauders that remained leaving them unable to continue their barbarous hunt against the Temeril’s which had safely made it to their own jump points and fled the system.

When the Terran relief fleet finally arrived in system they found a dozen survivor pods from the Queen Ann that had jettisoned from the vessel moments before the captain had initiated the ramming maneuverer.

The surviving crew stated that the captain had ordered all hands to abandon ship and that he alone remained to initiate the final act against his enemies stating: “It has been an honor to serve alongside each and every one of you. You have done the Terran Navy proud, so hold your heads high in the days to come.

As for myself, it makes a poor captain that does not go down with their ship; and I will be damned if I let these bastards make my Ann into another trophy in their motley fleet of vagabonds and cowards.

Look for me on the horizon when you reach the solar seas of the afterlife.”

In honor of his sacrifice, it has been announced that the new Temeril colony known previously as “Techlon V” is to be renamed to “Amar Prime” and that the Temeril people have already put forward an application to join the Terran Alliance.

Reporting live from Amar Prime this is Feneci Jubal. -----------

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #story #writing #original writing #niqhtlord01

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lunarubra · 6 months

Text

Pairing: Cillian x OC (Jiyan Fabris)

Summary: Just more Jiyan shenanigans where she cannot avoid to include Cillian.

Warning: Mention of Death, Fluff, English not my First Language.

Words: 4471

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Part 4 - Whispers of the Waves

The thing about building furniture was that, when in the middle of it, it was really necessary to have a stable mind to understand where it all begins and where it all ends. Also because most of the time the plans never really work out.

Jiyan was good at planning; planning was at the core of her being. Wanted to start a study and translation from a Greek text dated to 300 B.C., you needed a plan. Or, you were living on a boat and wanted to organise a basic dinner, a plan there would be helpful. Still needed to build a series of kitchen cabinets, shelves, and drawers because she still was living in the middle of a construction site, ta-dan, you needed a plan.

So she was quite disappointed when, after a whole morning and most of the afternoon of work, she did not consider that being just one person— even if a really crafty person—still would not solve the fact that the whole kitchen counter was a single piece of wood weighing too much to even consider moving it on her own. And apparently continuing to stare at it would not solve the problem either.

In this instance, she missed her brother. It would have been so easy to bully him into helping her. Sadly, he was on the other side of the continent.

It was a cloudy Sunday afternoon in Dublin, and for once, the weather was not completely depressing. It was one of those days that Jiyan started to classify as “yes, it is still cloudy and there is no sun, but it could be much worse.” Who knew, before the end of her contract maybe she would start to enjoy this characteristic weather of Ireland.

Still, she was in a dilemma and would love to find a solution. After months of cooking on a camping gas stove and a wood stove, having a final functional kitchen would be quite an achievement.

If it hadn't been Sunday, she would have just asked Sean from the garage shop downstairs. After a couple of months, they had reached quite an understanding; he wasn't a man of many words, but Jiyan started to appreciate his silences while he helped her move materials or simply checked in on how she was doing in that small studio with ongoing renovations. She also suspected he knew what happened that night at Connor’s; the pub was just around the corner from there, and Sean did not live far from his shop.

It was during the week that she met Cillian again, the same week that Sean one morning just showed up, telling her that a guy would come later to change all the locks on the door and giving her his mobile phone again, saying that if something happened and she needed help, she could always call; he and his wife were only 15 minutes away.

But still, it was Sunday, and she didn't have the courage to call him because the kitchen counter table was too heavy. So, she was back to where she started.

Seated there on the floor, staring at the wooden countertop, Jiyan began to reflect on the past few weeks. It was the first time in the last year that she could finally feel some of the weight on her chest dissipating.

She had started to appreciate working at the university again, something that had become somewhat performative for a while. She had finally connected with her colleagues, most of them professors or researchers, but from quite an international background. She particularly bonded with a very smart colleague in the department of Ancient Languages, an expert in Old Gaelic named Scott, who had lived in London for years before recently relocating back to Ireland.

However, most of her social time was spent in a rather Irish fashion, at the pub with Cillian, or even going out and exploring Dublin with him. They had gotten to know each other well, and it didn’t take long for them to become quite close and truly enjoy spending time together. After that evening at the pub, he had invited her to a small concert where his brother and some friends would play. Their performance was really captivating, and Jiyan realised how much she missed live music in her life.

After the show, they spent the night laughing and talking, getting her the chance to see Cillian with some of his old friends and learning about many of his most embarrassing memories from growing up and being in a band. She really cherished that evening, and even though feeling this kind of connection with someone scared the living daylights out of her, she found solace in it.

He was reserved, but at the same time, he wasn’t afraid to show his emotions and share moments with her. She discovered that the best way to get to know him was to start talking about anything related to music or books or art. She still couldn't help but smile when she thought about one evening at the pub where they engaged in an intense argument about the comparison of darkness found in Russian and Irish novels. They were both such nerds.

Taking her phone out, without overthinking, she wrote him a message.

“As an actor, have you ever had a role where you learned telekinesis? If yes, I need your expertise.”

It didn’t take long to get an answer, “I am almost scared to ask, but why?”

“So you learned telekinesis for a role?” she replied back, but she never got an answer because a few seconds later he was calling her. She answered immediately and put him on speaker.

“So, should I know the nonsense you are going through on this lovely Sunday afternoon?” his voice echoed around Jiyan.

“Well, you know that my place is not really up to normal standards?”

"You mean that studio you always avoid mentioning, and the fact that you're living in a scam where your landlord is letting you stay rent-free only because you're renovating the studio for no money?"

“Well, come on, Sean is not scamming me. He even changed the locks!”

“Wow, he changed the 30-year-old lock, sorry then I take it all back.”

"Anyway," she dismissed, "I was almost finished building the kitchen structure, you know? Then I discovered that apparently, even if I am amazing, I still cannot put on my own a whole piece of countertop that weighs at least 30kg. So that’s why I am asking about telekinesis."

From the other side, she could just hear complete silence.

“I could bargain a lesson in telekinesis for a whole homemade Mediterranean dinner,” she tried again, and when she still got no reply,

"And a bottle of really good Italian wine," she finally added.

“I can be there in 30,” he finally said.

“I owe you one, really Cillian, thank you.”

“Yeah, no worries. I was almost tempted to stay silent for a little longer and see you sweat for another minute. Who knows what you would have offered.”

“At this point? To finally have an operative kitchen and not cook on a damn camping gas? The sky's the limit,” she joked back.

“Yeah yeah,” he laughed, “I'll see you soon,” and then closed the call.

Jiyan put away the phone and then looked around at the complete mess her studio was. Maybe she should at least try to make it presentable. Maybe.

"Can you pass me the 6mm wood drill bit, please?"

If someone had told Cillian that he would spend one of his sacred Sunday afternoons in a studio resembling a construction site, helping an ancient language researcher build a kitchen structure, he would have laughed hard and dismissed the idea as lunacy. Particularly because he had no idea what it meant to build something from scratch or how he could help with anything DIY. As an actor, he was good at faking anything, but apart from that, pretty useless when things got practical. However, to his astonishment, there had been various improvements since he arrived almost an hour ago, mostly without his input or help.

Upon his arrival, he found only a semblance of a structure that could resemble a kitchen. But after assisting Jiyan in putting up the countertop and then mostly staying out of her way, she worked her magic, and now there was an almost finished structure, with a still-disconnected kitchen sink, a worktop, drawers, and now a cooktop.

"You know I have no idea what you're asking for, right?" he answered.

She just sent him a pointed look and then turned around to fetch whatever drill bit she needed. See, he could help a lot just by staying out of her way.

"How do you know so much about DIY, anyway? Was it taught during your Aramaic lessons?" he asked, leaning against the nearby wall.

“Nah, that was more during Latin,” she joked back, before adding more seriously, “My father taught me, he's a maestro d’ascia, I wouldn't know how to translate it, but he's like a really good wood carpenter who can turn any piece of wood into a boat and fix anything. He is one of the really talented one in Venice.”

"So you worked a lot with your father?”

“Something like that. We lived on a sailboat until I was 10, and there was always stuff that would break,” she said. “If you're in the middle of a storm, you need to be quite inventive to repair any part of your boat. When I was a kid, it was the most interesting times at sea.”

“Wait, you lived on a boat?” he asked, sounding shocked.

“Mmmh-mhh,” she just nodded, focused on screwing the structure to the wall.

“You can't just nod to the fact that you lived on a boat.” he repeated.

“I was born on a boat too, if you think it’s important, just outside Venice,” she said, turning around and smiling at him.

“How?”

“Well, you see… my father met my mother, they really liked each other, and then when a man and a woman really like each other, a magic happens—”

“I meant why you were born on a boat, you little gremlin.”

She chuckled and then, turning back to whatever she was doing, she said, “Apparently just bad planning. My mum didn’t think she was in labour and waited too long. When they finally understood that I was coming, they tried to get to Venice as fast as possible, but the sea was low tide, so my father became my mum's OB and ta-dan, here I am.”

He just stared blankly at her back. “And then you just stayed and lived on a boat?”

“I grew up with two hippies as parents. They wanted to ‘live by the sea and be free,’” she said ironically. “So they thought we could sail around the Mediterranean Sea and the African coast, on a boat in the middle of nowhere. My mum could still work on the boat as a book translator, and my dad found odd jobs around. It kinda worked out until I was 10.”

“Then?”

“Then they finally decided to separate, thank god for small mercies,” she said with a dose of old exasperation. "They had my brother as an exit present. My mum got a job at the University in Trieste, and my father started to work as a skipper for rich people.”

“You don’t sound so happy about travelling around the world on a boat.”

She finished working and put away the drill and the screws, turning around to meet his eyes.

“It was… intense. It could be a lot, a lot of new beautiful places and people but also a lot of isolation and loneliness. I never had a friend until I finally moved to Trieste with my mum. I never spent time with other children my age. All my world was the sea, my mum, my dad... and a lot of imagination.”

“Still, ten minutes of your life sound much more exciting than 20 years of mine.”

“Not a lot happening in Cork?”

“Always a lot happening in Cork. I just wasn’t the most outgoing kid. I wasn’t comfortable with many people. The band helped a little and taught me how to adapt to different situations, but I spent a lot of time on my own reading and playing music. Even if I wasn’t good at staying on my own, so I would get into troubles.”

“Would love to hear about those troubles, Murphy,” she joked. “Wasn’t that different on the boat, you know? I didn’t even know what a movie or TV was until I moved to Trieste. My first 10 years were made of a lot of books, like really a lot, and listening to many music cassettes from my dad’s collection,” she said. “But still, you had other people. From what your brother told me, you were out at gigs and pubs all the time.”

“Well yeah… music really showed me what life could be. Playing live music was a rush I never felt before, like…”

“Good sex or drugs?”

He blushed at that but answered, “Well, yes, but don’t tell my granny I said that, it would kill her.”

She smiled at him. “Your secret is safe, you little druggie.”

“Oh come on, like you don’t know what you're talking about, you're the one who said that!”

“Sure, sure. If you say so,” she chuckled. “So now that I almost have a fully functional kitchen—”

“Amen to that,” he said flatly.

She just ignored him and went on, “Do you want to stay for dinner, or did I traumatise you too much with all this furniture building?”

“Well, I was promised a bottle of wine and a nice homemade meal if I recall correctly. Or did you just lie to use my brute force?” he asked, pausing for suspense, then added in a fake desolate tone, “I feel used, Jiyan.”

“If I needed brute force, I wouldn't have called you. You may be a good actor, but, you know…” she said, alluringly looking at his physique. “I don’t think strength is one of your best features. And now that I know your level of woodworking skills or any kind of DIY, I could have asked the first person on the street. You're a hazard, Murphy.”

Cillian opened his mouth in fake shock. “The disrespect! After all my sweat and tears on these wood boards.”

“Like when you didn’t know the difference between a screw and a drill bit?”

“They're both pointy things! They all look identical!” he said with exasperation.

“Or like when you were helping to put up the kitchen counter and you wanted to put it upside down?”

“Listen, if you don’t understand my artistic side, that’s not my fault. It just looked better,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

She giggled and looked back at him, causing his heart to skip a couple of beats. She really looked cute when she smiled like that and glanced at him, her eyes seeming brighter and deeper.

“If you say so, Murphy,” she said a few seconds later. “Anyway, Restaurant chez Jiyan can offer some homemade pasta with fresh Sicilian pesto, if you want to stay?” she asked, a little hesitantly.

“Like I could say no to that,” he answered with another smile. “I just can’t stay too late. Tomorrow I have an early morning because I'm going to drive to my parents' in Cork. On Wednesday is Paddy’s Day.”

“Oh, damn, I completely forgot about that. That’s why most of the people left campus this weekend? The library was almost empty yesterday.”

“Who goes to the library on a Saturday?” he asked, amused.

“Someone that has to submit a complete study of a translation and interpretation from 300 B.C. by the end of the month,” she stated flatly.

"Fair enough," he chuckled.

After that, they seamlessly transitioned into the rhythm of the kitchen, with him effortlessly following her instructions while they continued to joke and chat about everything under the sun. The atmosphere felt oddly domestic and comforting, as if sharing that small space she had meticulously crafted and preparing something together had created a bubble that disconnected them from the outside world, deepening their connection even further. It was reminiscent of those moments when they delved into discussions about books or music, where everything else seemed to fade into the background. In this limbo of comfort and familiarity, they found solace in each other's company, effortlessly flowing from one topic to the next, never running out of things to share, laugh about, or discover together.

He pondered what the next step might entail, sensing a mutual wariness about where their relationship was headed. Although she never divulged details about her past relationships, he could sense her fear of fully embracing this connection, knowing that vulnerability meant opening herself up to potential pain and heartache once again. At times, he caught glimpses of the pain and sadness hidden behind her eyes, like a veil draped over her soul. While he couldn't pinpoint the source of her anguish, he could feel its weight, a burden she carried with her.

As for himself, he felt a subtle shift in his perspective. He recognized that this connection with Jiyan was unlike any other, yet he couldn't shake off the nagging worry that taking it to the next level might somehow tarnish its purity. Past experiences had taught him that initial excitement often faded into routine and performance, leaving him feeling disconnected and unfulfilled. He refused to let history repeat itself with Jiyan, even if their bond felt refreshingly different in the present moment.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, they had two smoking plates of pasta in front of them, while Jiyan, unable to find a wine bottle opener, was attempting to open the wine with a screw and a screwdriver. Damn this woman, he thought, shaking his head.

After successfully opening the bottle and grinning like a kid on Christmas, she poured it into two mismatched mugs, handing him one. Apparently, the new functional kitchen still was not completely furnished and lacked essentials, like wine glasses.

“Proud of yourself, aren’t you?” he asked with a smirk, toasting to her mug.

“Well, I finally cooked a real meal in my new kitchen, built by me.”

“A lot of ‘me’ in that sentence, a little full of yourself, aren’t we?” he teased.

She answered by sticking out her tongue playfully. "Thank you, Cillian, for helping today. I could not have done it without you" she sing-songed, her tone light and teasing, before turning more earnest. "But in all seriousness... Thank you. Even if handling a drill isn't your forte, I could not have done it without you."

“I’m sure there’s a compliment somewhere in there,” he said, smiling. “So, Bob the builder, where are we gonna eat this amazing meal? On the floor?”

She smirked at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Follow me, Murphy,” she said, before heading to the nearby windows and opening them. Without hesitation, she jumped outside.

“What?!” he exclaimed, his worry spiking at the sight of her jumping out the window. But then, like a good magic trick, he saw her standing outside, motioning for him to pass the plates and cutlery.

Approaching the window cautiously, he noticed an old metal grate just below, the kind used for emergency exits, and next to it, a small metal ladder that had clearly seen better days.

“What are you doing?!” he asked, trying to suppress the worry he felt watching her standing on that grate with no fences. Just a few steps and she could fall down.

“Come on, I’ll take you to my fancy dining room. Pass me the plates and the stuff,” she said, her tone lighthearted. “Ah, don’t forget the wine!”

Cillian stared at her for a few seconds, then shook his head and followed her instructions. He immediately noticed how much more graceful she looked climbing outside the window. Even with her guidance, he felt like a clumsy oaf.

“Okay, now just let go and come onto the grate,” she instructed.

He looked doubtfully at her and then down at the aforementioned grate. The height was giving him a headache. Why couldn't they just have a table and chairs like everyone else, and why was he following this seemingly deranged woman around?

“Are you sure it's stable?”

“Yes, come on, I’m hungry!”

“Oh, my apologies if I don’t have a suicidal instinct!” he said, perhaps with too much energy.

At that, she clenched her jaw and stiffened her posture.

“We...we don’t need to go if it’s too much,” she said more quietly. “We can eat inside, on the floor?”

He shook his head again and finally trusted the grate, which, to be fair, didn’t move or shake.

“No, sorry if I raised my voice. Heights are not one of my strong suits. Let’s check out this rooftop of yours.”

She smiled at him hesitantly, putting her hand on his arm as if she wanted to say something, but then she turned around to climb the ladder, balancing the wine bottle in one hand. It took a couple of minutes to pass her everything, and finally, he climbed up too, being careful not to look down.

He had to admit, it was really nice, a little spartan and industrial maybe. The sky had cleared since his arrival, casting a warm glow over the late afternoon, and in the distance, the shimmering sea stretched out to meet the horizon. The rooftop, a patchwork of flat surfaces interconnected with neighboring buildings, offered a panoramic view. At one corner, a low wall marked the boundary where the rooftop sloped downward, and there sat Jiyan, gazing out at the expanse of the sea, a wine mug in hand.

“Okay, it’s nice,” he said, sitting in front of her, taking his plate, and having his first bite, which exploded with flavours in his mouth. “Wow, this is… wow.”

“Noşigyan,” she said with a smile.

“No-si?” he asked.

“Enjoy your meal, in Kurmanji.”

“Ah, then… Bain taitneamh as do bhéile.” he said in Irish.

“Bwin tat…?”

“Bain taitneamh as do bhéile,” he corrected softly.

“Bwin tat-nyuv oss duh vay-il-eh,” she tried again.

He chuckled. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Aramaic, much easier,” she stated, taking another big forkful of pasta. “A nice colleague of mine is an Old Gaelic tutor. He invited me to go out with him and his boyfriend for St. Patrick’s Day. What should I expect?”

“Lots of green, traditional music, and many pints of stouts.”

She laughed, taking another bite, “Not sure if I should go, to be honest. Also, there's Newroz on Saturday, and it could be too much excitement for one week.”

“What’s Nefroz?”

“Newroz”, she corrected softly, “It’s the Kurdish and Persian New Year celebration. We celebrate the arrival of spring and the new year. There's a small community of Kurds here in Dublin, and they got authorization from the municipality to light a bonfire. Which is kind of a big deal.”

“A bonfire?”

“Yes, it’s the central part of the celebration. It's to purify yourself for the new year and spring, to burn all the impurities that you accumulate during winter. But I'm not sure if I want to go.”

“Why not? It seems important to you.”

“It is. I love it. Also, because I would finally get to eat decent Kurdish food, and I miss my culture and Kurdish people, or just speaking Kurmanji again.”

“Then?”

At that, she put away her fork and hugged her knees, looking away at the sea. That veil of deep sadness that he sometimes sensed and saw in her eyes was present between them.

"Have you ever met someone, anyone, and within mere moments, realised they were your person? Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but as if a connection sparked instantly, seeing facets of yourself mirrored in them," she paused, taking a deep breath. "Recognizing yourself in them. Knowing, in just a brief encounter, that regardless of what unfolds or how paths may diverge, they'll remain a constant presence—a confidant with whom you can truly share yourself," she spoke softly, her gaze drifting elsewhere, as if lost in another realm.

You. He immediately thought, but didn’t voice it.

"Well, yeah, I suppose," he responded tentatively. "There's Niall, we've been inseparable since school, and then there's my brother—he'll always be my rock. Who's that person for you?"

"Samyah," she replied, her voice faltering slightly as she uttered the name. "She was my best friend, my person, and well... and now she's gone. It's been incredibly hard, it kinda broke me. And going to Newroz without her scares the shit out of me. Enjoying it without her feels like leaving her behind… and I am not ready to leave her behind."

"Then don't go alone. I'll come with you," he suggested, his hand resting gently on her arm as he locked eyes with her. "While I never had the chance to meet her, if she was your best friend, I can't imagine she'd want this from you. You're not leaving her behind; you're honouring her memory by celebrating for her too."

"Aren't you supposed to be in Cork?" she inquired.

"I can return by Saturday, and honestly, I'm curious to experience Nebroz. There isn’t too much excitement in a week for me, I am Irish, we are built different" he explained.

"Newroz," she corrected him with a gentle smile. "And yes, she'd probably scream at me for even considering skipping it."

"Exactly," he affirmed, his grip on her arm gentle but reassuring.

"Spas."

"What?"

"Thanks," she said sincerely, resting her head on her knees while still hugging them tightly to her chest, her gaze fixed on him. Her long, dark hair fell in soft waves over one side of her face, lending her an aura of gentle vulnerability. Cillian couldn't help but think she looked more beautiful than ever, like he was unravelling the mysteries of a cherished book. Returning her smile, he continued to meet her gaze.

But their moment was interrupted by the ringing of his phone from his pocket, signalling his brother's call. Silencing the phone, he made a mental note to return the call later when he was home.

"Guess I should head out soon, even though I'm dreading that ladder down there," he said, breaking the serene atmosphere.

"One step at a time?" she offered, rising to her feet and extending her hand toward him.

"One step at a time," he agreed, taking her hand gently. In that simple gesture, he felt a silent pact forming, one that transcended the simple act of climbing down a ladder.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this chapter. Your feedback, in any form helps me to continue write this story; and comments makes me happy. See you at the next one :)

tagging who could be interested: @cillmequick, @raincoffeeandfandoms, @emotionalcadaver, @ayomurphys, @beaniegender, @natalie--rushman, @duckybird101, @audiblysmiling, @call-sign-shark

#shadows of the sea #jiyan fabris x cillian murphy #cillian murphy x oc #cillian murphy fanfic #cillian murphy fanfiction #cillian murphy

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notwiselybuttoowell · 5 months

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Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and human rights expert.

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the Guardian that states failing to take meaningful climate action and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.

Boyd said: “I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”

The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment was finally recognised as a fundamental human right by the United Nations in 2021-22. Some countries, notably the US, the world’s worst historic polluter, argue that UN resolutions are legally influential but not binding. The right to a healthy environment is also enshrined into law by 161 countries with the UK, US and Russia among notable exceptions.

Boyd, a Canadian environmental law professor, said: “Human rights come with legally enforceable obligations on the side of states, so I believe that this absolutely should be a game-changer – and that’s why states have resisted it for so long.

Boyd said: "By bringing human rights into the equation, we now have institutions, processes and courts that can say to governments this isn’t an option for you to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and phase out fossil fuels. These are obligations which include regulating businesses, to make sure that businesses respect the climate, the environment and human rights."

Over the course of his six-year mandate, Boyd met thousands of people directly affected by rising sea levels, extreme heat, plastic waste, toxic air, and dwindling food and water supplies, while undertaking fact-finding missions to Fiji, Norway, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Portugal, Slovenia, Chile, Botswana and Maldives.

“Powerful interconnected business and political elites – the diesel mafia – are still becoming wealthy from the existing system. Dislodging this requires a huge grassroots movement using tools like human rights and public protest and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers.”

On his first trip as special rapporteur to Fiji, Boyd met with community members from Vunidogoloa, a coastal village left uninhabitable by rising sea water, who were forced to relocate to higher ground. Last year in Botswana, he met with Indigenous people from the Kalahari desert no longer able to handle the worsening heat and water scarcity.

Over the past 30 years, the world has pinned its hopes on international treaties - particularly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris accords – to curtail global heating. Yet they do not include mechanisms for holding states accountable to their commitments, and despite some progress, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to rise and climate breakdown is accelerating.

It’s not just taxpayer subsidies propping up polluting industries and delaying climate action. The same multinationals are involved in negotiating – or at least influencing – climate policy, with a record number of fossil-fuel lobbyists given access to the UN Cop28 climate talks last year.

Boyd said: “There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies. There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table.

“It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same.”

In his final interview before handing over the special rapporteur mandate, Boyd said he struggles to makes sense of the world’s collective indifference to the suffering being caused by preventable environmental harms.

#excerpts #(<< as ever more in article)#climate change #captialism #humankind

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ominternational01 · 8 months

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lessergoodnow · 10 days

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Attacks against human rights defenders and obliteration of civic space in Gaza unacceptable, says UN expert

16 September 2024

Israeli Defence Forces continue to intentionally starve and kill civilians, while human rights defenders face enormous challenges conducting their peaceful work, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor said today.

In recent months the oldest human rights organisation in Gaza, the Palestinian Human Rights Centre (PCHR), has seen staff members killed and its offices damaged beyond repair in air strikes and ground attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces.

“There is literally no place left for human rights defenders and civil society actors to continue documenting the litany of human rights violations to which Israel is subjecting the people of the Gaza Strip,” the Special Rapporteur said.

Two women lawyers from the PCHR were killed in February 2024. Nour Abu al-Nour died along with her two-year-old daughter, her parents, and four siblings in an air raid on her house in Rafah on 20 February 2024. Two days later, Dana Yaghi and 37 family members were wiped out in an Israeli air raid on a house to which they had relocated for safety in Deir el-Balah, 14 km south of Gaza City.

“It is a terrible tragedy that justice for these two women human rights defenders, their family members and their children, seems so far away. Human rights defenders keep hope alive for justice through their work but are becoming victims themselves. This is why Israeli authorities seem so intent on targeting and silencing them,” she said.

The PCHR headquarters in Gaza City and branch offices in Jabalya, Khan Younis, and Rafah have all been severely damaged in air raids and ground attacks, forcing staff to relocate and rent office space and logistical support at skyrocketing prices, while some international funding has been suspended. They have also been subjected to a vitriolic online smear campaign by the Israeli group, NGO Monitor, which has falsely accused PCHR of being linked to terrorists.

“Human rights defenders have told me that they will continue their work despite this online defamation, which is targeted at drying up their international support and intimidating them,” Lawlor said.

“This organisation continues to bear witness, document and record gross human rights violations and war crimes. Many Palestinians have spoken to them on condition of anonymity. Such is their fear of Israeli repercussions if they are to be publicly identified.”

Recent media reports have highlighted Israeli surveillance of PCHR, and other Palestinian human rights organisations, including Al-Haq and Addameer in the Occupied West Bank, for much of the past decade, in relation to information they were submitting on Israeli human rights violations to the International Criminal Court.

“I repeat my call for human rights defenders to be recognised as essential in times of armed conflict, and to be protected. As independent observers, lawyers and researchers, they document and preserve evidence of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and ensure the possibility of accountability and justice,” Lawlor said.

The physical integrity of Human Rights Defenders should be protected against attacks and harassment, unlawful killings should be promptly and independently investigated in accordance with international law, and measures adopted to protect them against future serious violations, she said.

The expert has previously raised these concerns with authorities in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territory.

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beardedmrbean · 5 months

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A human rights organization representing ethnic Armenians submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court on Thursday, arguing that Azerbaijan is committing an ongoing genocide against them.

Azerbaijan’s government didn't immediately comment on the accusations. The neighboring countries have been at odds for decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and are already facing off in a separate legal case stemming from that conflict.

Lawyers for the California-based Center for Truth and Justice, or CFTJ, say there is sufficient evidence to open a formal investigation into Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other top leaders for genocide. They have submitted a so-called Article 15 communication urging the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan to look into alleged atrocities.

Khan’s office will now consider the evidence submitted and determine if the court will open an investigation, a decision expected to take months.

“My goal here is to get the highest bodies that protect human rights to take some action, not just mere words,” Lala Abgaryan, whose sister Gayane was killed by Azerbaijani soldiers in 2022, told The Associated Press.

Her sister’s body was badly mutilated and images of the abuse were spread online. Abgaryan says the pictures were so heinous that she suffered psychological damage after looking at them.

Long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted in 2020 into a war over Nagorno-Karabakh that left more than 6,600 people dead. The region is within Azerbaijan but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Last year, following a lightning military campaign, Azerbaijan retook the disputed territory. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000, more than 100,000 of the region’s ethnic Armenians fled, although Azerbaijan said they were welcome to stay and promised their human rights would be ensured.

Prior to Azerbaijan’s offensive, Armenia and former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo accused Azerbaijan of committing genocide by creating conditions aimed at destroying Karabakh Armenians as a group.

A group of around 30 people gathered in the rain in front of The Hague-based court Thursday to hand over more than 100 pages of documents.

The rights organization said it has submitted a dossier of evidence containing the testimony of more than 500 victims and witnesses.

“These atrocities are captured on social media, by Azerbaijani soldiers themselves, where you hear them laughing, making comments, and taking the dead bodies that they’ve just slaughtered and beheaded,” CFTJ leader Gassia Apkaria told the AP.

Legal experts say that genocide may be out of reach for the court. Armenia is a member of the ICC, but Azerbaijan isn't, leaving prosecutors with jurisdiction only over crimes committed on Armenian territory. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Forcing nearly the entire population to relocate to Armenia, however, could fall within the court’s remit. Deportation is considered a crime against humanity.

“There is no way this was an exodus by chance,” says Mel O’Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and genocide expert.

The court has moved forward with an investigation under similar circumstances into possible crimes committed by Myanmar against the Rohingya minority group. While Myanmar isn't a member state, neighboring Bangladesh is and around 750,000 people have fled across the border after being forced from their homes.

The CFTJ’s request came amid two weeks of proceedings between Armenia and Azerbaijan at another global court in The Hague. The United Nations' top court, the International Court of Justice, is hearing arguments related to a pair of cases stemming from the conflict. Each country has accused the other of violating a racial discrimination treaty.

#nunyas news #waiting for the crickets to start up

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is-the-primate-vid-cute · 2 years

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So, I was looking at animals native to Texas, and it says that Japanese macaques were introduced to a sanctuary in Frio County.

I was wondering if you knew why that was done? I see that Japanese macaques are listed as LC on the conservation list, so I'm assuming it wasn't for conservation efforts, but I see no other reason to introduce them to a whole new area like that.

Its actually an interesting story. Born Free Primate Sanctuary is one of the worlds largest monkey sanctuaries, and right now they are at capacity housing 600 individuals on 186 acres.

The sanctuary started in the 1970s when a rancher whose primatologist daughter was studying macaques in Japan heard that as a result of humans feeding them, the macaque population had multiplied to the point where many had migrated to Kyoto and were becoming problem animals for residents. The Japanese government was going to cull the population, which is why Edward Dryden offered to take 150 macaques from Japan to live on his Texas ranch.

Now to be honest, this probably wasn't ideal. This was someone with a soft spot for animals who just wanted to help, but didn't have experience caring for primates. Luckily, a lot of land and presumably consulting with his daughter who was somewhat of an expert means that the relocated macaques did well in Texas despite needing to adjust to the climate.

Of course nowadays, you can't just have a couple hundred monkeys even if you're doing a pretty good job of looking after them. The mid 90s saw a huge fundraiser to buy more land for the sanctuary, and in 1999 the Animal Protection Institute took over managing the sanctuary to help them expand their reach so that more monkeys could live and thrive on the expanded grounds.

This was a terrific move, because now many of the sanctuaries residents are victims of the pet trade and wildlife trafficking who are able to have a chance at a better life. Texas is one of the worst states for exotic wild animal "pets", so the fact that this sanctuary exists to take them in and educate people on the damage of owning pet monkeys is fantastic. They are dedicated to education and to providing the best in captive quality of life. Despite them being referred to as a "free roam" sanctuary above, the residents are in enclosures to contain them to the sanctuary, the biggest of which is 52 acres! With an enclosure that massive, the monkeys are living essentially in nature just with the necessary supports from samctuary staff.

Additionally, to protect the residents (many of whom were traumatized from being pets, roadside attractions, and test subjects) the sanctuary is not open to the public. However, you can still see the monkeys online through the sanctuaries website and social media. They have 11 different species from descendents of the original macaque population to vervets and baboons!

Going in to research this place I was worried it would be bad, but I was happy to be surprised by a history of dedicated primate love. You can learn more and support the sanctuary through their website (linked above). 🐒💖

It should be noted Born Free is an international anti-captivity animal rights organization and while we support Born Free Primate Sanctuary we do not support the entirety of Born Free's many campaigns.

#inquiring minds want to know #mod j #born free primate sanctuary #born free sanctuary #macaques #texas #officially cute

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mariacallous · 1 year

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In 2019, on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, a group of “rainbow hunters” embarked on a mission at a prestigious Shanghai university. They were school employees, mostly campus workers and student counselors, tasked with finding anyone with attire or accessories associated with the LGBTQ community. Those found with the rainbow flag, a prominent symbol of the gay rights movement, or other related items were given warnings and told their “parents would be ashamed” of them.

That afternoon of May 17, the university removed all visible rainbow flags and followed up by shutting down an unofficial student-run club advocating for the rights and welfare of LGBTQ students.

“I knew the crackdown was coming sooner or later, but I didn’t expect it to come so quickly,” said Bonnie, a co-founder of the university’s LGBTQ club, who has since graduated and relocated outside mainland China.

In recent years, gender and sexual minorities in China have been increasingly targeted by the authorities and social media platforms, limiting their advocacy and outreach. Most recently, in May, the Beijing LGBT Center was unexpectedly closed, and in 2021, WeChat abruptly shut down several accounts belonging to LGBTQ groups from different universities without any reason.

But nine former and current students from five Chinese universities, some of whom wished not to be quoted, told Foreign Policy that student-led LGBTQ groups have been under immense pressure for years. They’re seen as a “cult” and labeled as “radical” and “illegal” organizations and have been dying a slow death even before the recent crackdowns. Foreign Policy isn’t naming the schools and clubs or disclosing the students’ real names to protect their identities and from possible repercussions against them or their families.

“The media reports have been fixated on the 2021 crackdown,” Bonnie said. “But we were silenced much earlier than that. I wonder if our existence will disappear from memory, as the large focus is on the WeChat crackdown. I envy those organizations [blocked by WeChat] because they can unite under the same flag. But how do we tell our story?”

Bonnie met Jerlin and CMM during her freshman year in the fall of 2017 in Shanghai. Jerlin had already proposed an LGBTQ association as a freshman in 2015, but the university had yet to approve his request. Student-led organizations usually need to apply to relevant university departments, detailing their purpose and benefits to the student community and are required to find a teacher who would supervise them. Regardless of the approval, the trio, however, printed hundreds of flyers inked with the slogan “unofficial, unorthodox,” calling like-minded students interested in gender and sexuality issues to join the club. The three distributed them in dormitories and slid them underneath doors, which Jerlin said was “just like doing the job of a door-to-door salesperson.”

“We are determined to eliminate ignorance through knowledge, combat ignorance with reason, replace apathy with empathy, and treat discrimination with equality,” Jerlin said of the motivation behind starting an LGBTQ club at the university.

In its first year, the club organized movie screenings and book readings on gender and invited experts to speak about safer sex and body anxiety issues. Members also started a campaign to raise awareness and empathy toward LGBTQ students, where they went around campus with a placard asking a simple question: “I’m gay. Are you willing to hug me?” Students said many of their classmates, even those who claimed to be open-minded, often made fun of LGBTQ individuals and even called them derogatory names.

A national survey conducted in 2015 by the U.N. Development Program among some 28,000 LGBTI individuals revealed that only 5 percent of them chose to disclose their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression at school or in the workplace, fearing discrimination. A 2019 survey by the Chinese Journal of School Health involving 751 LGBT students showed that 41 percent of them had been called names and 35 percent verbally abused.

By October 2018, Jerlin said their club was already on the university’s radar. Club events were being “supervised” by school administrators, and a planned interaction on HIV/AIDS was abruptly canceled. Then the university introduced new rules prohibiting outsiders from entering the school library and study rooms, where the group hosted events. Students were then also required to reserve study rooms unlike before.

“This is when I realized the school was engaging in a witch hunt against us,” Bonnie said. “The intense scrutiny of the club made many students believe we were nothing but trouble and an illegal organization. So many of them, even those who claimed to be gay, started hating us.”

Gu Li, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University Shanghai who studies the development and mental health of LGBTQ individuals, said many university-level students could be struggling with their sexuality and self-acceptance issues. He said student groups and their organized activities may serve as an opportunity to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity while connecting with others.

“How those groups are organized and what activities they conduct are more impactful than the mere presence of the groups,” he said.

China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and declassified it as a mental disorder in 2001. The country’s LGBTQ community has since made significant strides—they’re more vocal in addressing their rights, and their visibility has grown dramatically. The community has been emboldened by small yet significant victories: In a 2014 landmark case, a gay rights activist sued the local government department in central Hunan province for defamation; in 2016, a same-sex couple sued a civil affairs bureau, also in Hunan, for rejecting their marriage registration, even though China doesn’t recognize marriage equality; and in 2020, viewers welcomed a video advertisement featuring a man bringing his male partner for the Lunar New Year dinner. In bigger cities, gay and lesbian bars attract large crowds, while drag shows and voguing provide a vibrant entertainment space and exposure for the queer community and allies.

The positive signals indicated a seemingly tolerant attitude toward the LGBTQ community, both from the public and the authorities. But those small wins have mostly been short-lived, as the rhetoric against LGBTQ individuals in certain quarters has turned sharply negative in the past few years. Many nationalists view their identity as a “Western ideology” similar to feminism. There are arguments against Western-style gay pride parades and rainbow capitalism in China, saying for many LGBTQ Chinese, “their familial role and national identity take precedence” over sexuality.

Meanwhile, both the central and local governments have been aggressively promoting incentives for young people to marry and have children amid China’s record-low marriage and childbirth rates. A made-up “masculinity crisis” and malicious targeting of effeminate men have also led to a shift in attitude toward LGBTQ acceptance. In recent years, television channels have blurred rainbow flags, and social media platforms have banned “sissy” men during livestreams, a term that the official state-run Xinhua News Agency described as a “sick culture.”

Then, in 2020, Shanghai Pride, a series of events rather than a parade, abruptly ended, and this year, the Beijing LGBT Center, which had been a crucial support system for the community, shut down due to “force majeure”—a common euphemism for pressure from the authorities—after almost 15 years, raising concerns over the shrinking space for the LGBTQ community in China.

Lik Sam Chan, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-chair of the International Communication Association LGBTQ Studies Interest Group, said the suppression of LGBTQ activities in China could have stemmed from the ruling Communist Party’s fears of potential Western influence through such events. He said those opposing the LGBTQ community were developing a group identity by negating others and defining “what is not us.”

“What has happened in the last one or two years is an obvious, targeted suppression of LGBTQ-themed activities,” Chan said. “The LGBTQ movement and the #MeToo movement are an unfortunate target, set up by the nationalists, to solidify their sense of Chineseness.”

Targeted suppression and intolerance are creeping in at universities sooner than many in the LGBTQ community expected. In June, graffiti featuring a rainbow flag with accompanying text saying “Love is love” on a campus wall at a Dalian university in northeastern Liaoning province was vandalized. Such displays of anti-gay sentiments at schools were, however, not uncommon and frequently made rounds on social media previously.

Amy, who briefly led a university-approved club that also advocated LGBTQ issues at another university in Shanghai, said she joined the group after having a “vague idea” about her sexuality. When she came across the club in 2018 during her freshman year, Amy said she was fascinated by the rainbow flags and the diverse events the group organized, mostly focusing on gender and sexuality.

“It made me feel at home,” she said.

But the situation took an unexpected turn in the spring of 2019. Amy said a school administrator advised the club to pursue more feminist issues and “avoid LGBTQ topics.” She said a teacher repeatedly questioned her sexuality and asked if she was attracted to women. The teacher cautioned her multiple times to “not cross the red lines,” specifically referring to LGBTQ issues and the rainbow flag. Amy said the same teacher told her not to wear a rainbow flag pin after she was spotted wearing one during an event.

“‘You don’t want a stain on your resume, do you?’” Amy said, recalling what the teacher once told her. “Is it because we are inappropriate to be seen in public? It was isolating, and I felt I was being treated as an outcast.”

Amy’s experience is not an isolated case. In 2022, two female students at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University were given disciplinary warnings after leaving 10 rainbow flags at a campus supermarket counter. The students, who belonged to the school’s LGBTQ club, Purple, attempted to sue the Education Ministry over the incident, but a court in Beijing, where the university is located, didn’t accept their lawsuit.

“Symbols are powerful,” Chan said, referring to the rainbow flags and other memorabilia. “They are infused with meanings and emotions. When the LGBTQ community is constantly suppressed and their rights are not recognized, it is even more critical to maintain the visibility of these symbols so that we don’t forget our goal.”

In many other countries around the world, including the United States, there have been worrying threats against the LGBTQ community. In China, former and current university students with whom Foreign Policy spoke said their most pressing goal was to just be able to exist, though they felt there was a perceived attempt to slowly erase their identity. Taking away online and offline platforms, where they mostly shared their experiences, from coming out to combating sexual harassment to education on safe sex, is causing further harm.

When WeChat deleted dozens of accounts related to LGBTQ student groups at universities—including Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University—the messaging platform didn’t just disband online groups but severed a network that connected hundreds of thousands of people. The move came abruptly in July 2021, with many still trying to understand the reason behind it. The accounts were said to have “violated regulations”—a standard censorship catchphrase used when posts deemed sensitive by the authorities are taken down. And while some groups are still operating covertly, often under disguise, many others have shut down altogether.

A day after WeChat closed the LGBTQ accounts, Chinese firebrand nationalist commentator Hu Xijin wrote in his WeChat blog that public opinion toward the LGBTQ community was “generally inclusive” and that the government’s policies were “progressive.” But he then added that the LGBTQ community “should not seek to become a high-profile ideology in China at this time.”

But for LGBTQ individuals, their identity is not an ideology. And they say the ongoing suppression is proving detrimental to their mental health.

A study published this year surveying nearly 90,000 LGBT and gender-nonconforming students at 63 universities in the northeastern province of Jilin indicated a “higher prevalence of depression, anxiety, traumatic stress, nonsuicidal self-injury, and suicide risk” than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts. The report concluded that there is an “imperative need to improve mental health and prevent suicide” among these individuals.

A yet-to-be-published survey by Li from NYU Shanghai in partnership with the gay dating app Blued also pointed to a similar trend. The partial result, shared with Foreign Policy, showed that of the 4,310 men surveyed on Blued, 57 percent of them reported various degrees of depression, from mild to moderate and severe.

Li said various factors are contributing to the deteriorating mental health among LGBTQ people, including internalized homophobia, prejudice, and discrimination.

“We will need more care for LGBTQ people in China, such as providing more LGBTQ-affirmative psychotherapies,” he said. “Having LGBTQ-supportive communities and schools and having mental health resources available will make people feel less depressed. They will have a positive impact.”

But for now, those involved in the student LGBTQ groups said they were facing tough mental health issues.

Amy said she struggled throughout the summer of 2019: She felt frustrated, unaware of how to operate the club, and was “unsure about my identity as a lesbian and the club’s leader.” She said she forced herself to work until 2 a.m. and often questioned her efforts to keep the club afloat. Finally, in August 2020, with no support from the university, the club ceased its operation. She said she sought counseling at a facility run by the Beijing LGBT Center, where she was diagnosed with depression.

“Memories associated with this period have been filtered to only feelings, which were full of tears, fear, and disgrace, along with other members of the club,” she said. “We want the threats and shame forced on us to be documented.”

Bonnie, too, said she often questioned her conviction toward the cause and spiraled into depression for an entire year in 2019 after her university group ceased to exist. She said she was even reluctant to post anything on social media and felt she was “always being watched by people.”

In 2021, Bonnie left China. These days, she mostly dedicates her time to feminist causes and sometimes interacts with those still advocating for LGBTQ issues in China. She sees a part of her in them, trying to keep the spark alight even despite the darkness. And every time she remembers their collective struggles, Bonnie said she finds solace listening to “Hey You,” one of her favorite tracks by the English rock band Pink Floyd.

The lyrics remind her to be optimistic: “Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all / Together we stand, divided we fall.”

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uwmspeccoll · 2 years

Photo

Decorative Sunday

In 1899, American potter and ceramicist Adelaide Alsop Robineau founded the monthly publication Keramic Studio with her husband, the French ceramics expert Samuel E. Robineau. Initially, the ceramic artist and social reformer Anna Byford Leonard shared editing responsibilities, but within a few years, Adelaide took over sole editorship and the publication stayed in print under that name for twenty years. The above images, collected in a portfolio of 50 plates (40 black and white and 10 color), were reprinted images from a monthly magazine called Design - Keramic Studio, published in Syracuse by the Keramic Studio Publishing Company, date unknown.

The earliest incarnation of Design - Keramic Studio I have been able to locate is from May 1919, suggesting Design - Keramic Studio was the next incarnation of Keramic Studio, which had concluded its run in that name in 1919. Design - Keramic Studio took a broader look at the decorative arts beyond ceramics and was marketed toward “the art teacher, student and designer.”

Adelaide Alsop Robineau passed away in February of 1929, and art educator Felix Payant took over editorship of the magazine, which was rebranded as Design but continued to bear Keramic Studio as a publisher for a number of years. Payant remained in his role as editor until 1947. Eventually the magazine relocated to Indianapolis and continued publishing until Fall of 1977 under a number of different publishers.

Find more of our Decorative Sunday posts here.

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

#Decorative Sunday #Keramic Studio #Adelaide Alsop Robineau #Adelaide Robineau #Anna Byford Leonard #Anna B. Leonard #Ceramics #Pottery #Decorative Art #Decorative Arts #Decorative Plates #Design #Design Keramic Studio #Felix Payant #olivia

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cant-get-no-worse · 10 months

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helllooo

what are your thoughts on scaloni having doubts about his future in the national team ? what do you think is going on ?

love your takes they’re always so well put together

Hii Ro 🫶In the 7 hours it took me to answer, a plethora of information more or less clearing up what happened appeared on twitter sooo... but since I had 2 or 3 other asks about it I'll take the opportnity to round things up briefly for people unaware of the general situation! I'm in no way an expert btw, this is just what I understood/lived as an expat arg and got from my arg side of the family.

So as per Gastón & other news outlet, Scaloni (perhaps some other members of the technical staff of the Argentine NT as well) has had a problem with the AFA for some time now. If we had to resume state of affairs :

The AFA (Argentine Football Association) show

Governing institution of football in the country which would deserve a fourth star of its own for its spectacular dedication to worsen itself by the years. A true marvel of corruption and incompetence display. Its first chairman had presidency from 1979 to 2014, and after he died things went a bit avok (not to say he hadn't already himself some corrupt payments scandals to his name). But essentially, before there was one mogul-in-chief who ran things, whereas after people started to mess it up even more.

For a quick and famous example of how things were (are) run there, the 2015 presidency election opposing Luis Segura to Marcelo Tinelli saw them tie at 38 votes each. There were 75 voting members in the comity.

Anyways what does it matter eh, Segura (elected) lasted two years before he was forced out for "aggravated administrative fraud" (fancy terms they have).

Evidence of discontentment from the players can be found in press comments and some Messi's instagram posts circa 2016 where he highlighted AFA's "disastrous" way of running things. It was also made public by a security agent that they had to come to Messi amidst an internal dispute with AFA to ask him to do something about their 6-months due salaries — quite maddening if you think about it. Regular informations of coaches and staffs not being paid for the competition they'd worked in would come out.

Precedents beefs

Amidst all those organisational/financial/political corruption issues, it's no surprise then for there to be precedents of players, employees and coaching staff beefing with AFA. Tata Martino and his entire team resigned in July 2016 following disagreements.

Tapia

AFA current chairman Chiqui Tapia (in place since 2017) is quite a controversial figure, drawing wide support & affection one day and outrage the other. A few time ago he was praised for having relocated a U-I-Forgot world cup in Argentina, allowing our evicted team to come back to the competition (only to lose again lmfao). Recently tho, it was more outrage that prevaled for how AFA passed a regulation stipulating that the Argentine first championship wouldn't have a three-places relegation anymore. Many pointed it as the death of an otherwise already wobbly championship. He's also branded with various nicknames such as Chiqui Mafioso, pointing at his meddling with politicians (including former Economy Minister and 2023 presidential elections runner-up, Massa) and other shady stuff.

So what's up with Scaloni ?

So now here are a list of stuff people/journalists have come up with over the day regarding the potential reasons for Scaloni's declarations + some own thoughts :

6 days ago - still in the middle of Argentine's presidential elections - a journalist asked Scaloni in a press conference about the clubs' privatisation - a tumultuous topic that has been thrusted on the hands of politicians for more than a decade now. Some think the journalist was mended by Tapia or others to get Scaloni - coach of the National Selection, fresh out of a treble and thus getting lots of media attention and support from the people - to publically stand against the privatisation of the clubs and thus directly or indirectly to give support to presidential candidate Massa, supported by, as I was saying earlier, Chiqui Tapia.

Still on the political, journalists report that last week Massa asked, via Tapia, for a photo with the national team's players who refused : Tapia thus tried to pressure Scaloni in persuading them to do so.

General weariness of the way things are ran at AFA - who apparently have not taken their three peat as a hint to professionalize a bit and have still not paid the coaching staff or players for the WC win in Qatar. They also have been running up and about the globe to face really lower-ranked selections in order to bring cash in which not only tires everyone due to travel but is not to the taste of Scaloni as he'd want to keep playing against levelled opponents in the perspective of the 2024 Copa América and to find an actual usefulness to the games instead of pure exhibition for money.

So all of this = could be a way for Scaloni to publically put pressure on AFA during the break before the next international break in March, to see how they are going to react and let him time to decide if the issues have been fixed or not for him to continue as head coach.

It's worth noting apart from the political turmoil that Scaloni has also been head coach of a national team for about three years now, experimenting immense pressure which is of course at its culminating point now that they've won everything and are expected to continue to do so. A lack of motivation, a feeling of being overwhelmed by the pression can be factors for his statement. In this, I'm dabing a bit into personal experience as I'm recalled of Pep Guardiola's similar situation with FC Barcelona. Once you're on top of the world, with world-class/heavy names players filling the locker room, in a place that puts football above much things, you're bound to take a pause and look around to figure out what the sweet fuck you're going to do now. As they say it's not the destination that counts, it's the journey : the motivation can drag you for one, two, three years to every culminating point you see shining, but once you've conquered all those peaks, you can be left quite empty-handed and disoriented cause you have to find a new hunger to hit a new road again.

So here's a resume + my take of whatever's happening at the moment! I think that it could go either way, although I would be surprised to see him go before the Copa América. Whatever he does, honestly, and even though I'd be truly fucking sad and bitter to see him go, I wouldn't say a bad word about his decision, whatever it may be. How could we say anything about the guy who ended several decades long drought of trophies, put a team as close as a family together and led them to win us three trophies in the span of two years? I love him very much and whatever he does, I'll just be thankful. but yeah aimar do your job omg keep him until june for gods sake

#friends ask <3 #anon ask

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