#all i say is vicious war crimes in a vague way

[adriles]

they are Cancelling me for dealing with my grief as best i can . also for the vicious war Crimes

[abizarreyodelingincident]

Braaaaaaains...

Jason Todd is legally – and biologically – dead. His family noted his lack of pulse at three in the morning, inside the cave, his body laid out on a table with medical instruments.

No, really, tell him something he doesn't know.

What else crawls out of a grave moaning and groaning?

Or, Jason thought his family full of the world's greatest detectives was smarter than this. Apparently not.

****************************************************************

It had been an ordinary night. Calm. The stage for very little costumed crime and barely more regular, non-insane crime as well. Half the menagerie that made up Dick's loving ragtag bunch of younger siblings had even taken the night off.

Nothing should have make him arrive to silence this thick, to this faint echo of sniffling.

He sprinted after the noise.

Damian's fine, left before me. Duke didn't go out, nor did Steph. Babs spent the evening with Cass in the cave, Tim swept the bowery and said he was going to stop by Jason's place to-

He collided with a shaking, tear stained Tim right outside the medbay.

There was a body on the closest table. Others around it, crying, pacing, muttering in denial.

Dick couldn't look.

No, no, please, please no. I can't do that again. I can't!

Scarred skin, too pale – to be Duke or Cass – by death. His breath hitched. No. He. Fuck.

He knew those scars. Those arms. That chest and that fucking Y from navel to shoulders.

“Dick! Jason... he was...  I found him in his apartment. And I brought him to the cave... but... Jason doesn't have a pulse. He's... cold...”

Dick stumbled.

No.

No, no, no, that... that couldn't be real.

He caught himself on his little brother. Brought himself into a hug too tight, as painful as the arms gripping his ribs and back. A grip meant for a lifesaving light at sea. For a safeline over a ravine.

Twice. He'd lost the same brother twice. And this time, he didn't even have the excuse of inexperience and unstable situations. He... he patrolled the city whilst his brother was dead, completely oblivious to the fact. How could he? How dare he not know?!

“Shh, Tim, I'm here. I'm here.” But not for Jason, whispered a vicious part of him.

“What's all this?”

Dick's heart just about stopped.

Damian stood at the entrance to the lockers' room, uniform folded under one arm, hair slightly damp from a shower and Bat-themed pajamas worn without shame. His mild annoyance was proof he had no idea of the drama that had happened not twenty feet from him.

With reluctance, he let go of Tim, a gentle hand lingering on his shoulder, before he took a few steps toward his youngest, most vulnerable brother.

“D-Dami, I... ”   Damn it, he had to be the one to tell Damian about this. Because otherwise, the person to break the news would be Bruce, and-

Shit.

Bruce.

Oh God. How could they possibly tell him- ? After all their fights, the goddamned shattering that had broken the man he had been, and their last conversations even being more admonishment about protocols that Jason had flippantly disregarded. Bruce would never recover. That was it. The end of Batman.

...But first, God he hated himself, wanted to just curl up in a corner and forget everything, first he had a young brother he needed to talk to. One... one little brother less than just this afternoon.

“Jason... ” He swallowed, his throat tight, his heart in denial, the words so damning, but needing to be said. “Jason did not make it. He... he's dead.”

Damian stayed thoughtfully silent.

Not... not the tearful reaction he had expected, but Damian had grown up surrounded by so much death and horror that he would obviously be guarded. And oh, Dick's heart went to his baby brother, and he truly wished he could

“I do not understand. Why such theatrics for the zombie?”

Dick gasped, knowledge warring with the flash of anger.

“Damian! He's our brother!”

“Did he lose his head?” Damian demanded, and Dick's mind buckled.

“Huh, no, but that doesn't have anything to d-”

“Then, why are you acting so weirdly emotional, Richard?”

Before Dick's temper could catch up to his mouth, the longest and most painful-sounding gasp erupted from the medbay, where, to the general shock of all, Jason's gray-ish body shot upward with both his arms raised.

Electroshocks didn't make you jolt like that.

Electroshocks, in fact, remained in their kit on the other side of the medbay, unused. Because Jason had seemingly been dead long before he had been brought to the cave.

That was roughly the moment when Dick's brain caught up with the first of many hints. Latched onto it with a fool's hope.

“... Damian... When you were calling Jason a 'zombie', what did you mean?”

Damian's brows scrunched up together, a look he meant to be intimidating, but had more in common with a disgruntled kitten. “Exactly that, Richard. Do we not have files on zombies in the computer? Dead bodies walking about animated by unholy powers?”

Jason's not- Dick forced the half formed thought to a halt. For once, he rather wanted to be very, very wrong in how he perceived his family.

“What's with all the noise? Can't someone try to sleep like the dead without screaming?” Jason groused. “Should have gotten myself buried ag-OOF!”

“JASON!” screamed the hysterical teenager that had launched himself at a very lively dead body.

“Huhh? Hi, Timmy?” Jason said blearily, ruffling Tim's hair, eyebags suspiciously prominent. “... Fear gas?”

The blinking slowed, the fog of sleep drifting away as he silently begged the rest of them for an answer.

Happily provided by a still crying Tim. “I thought you were gone!”

“What is dead may never die,” Jason quipped, his mouth twisting in that cocksure grin from his Robin days.

And Dick wanted nothing more than to stop right there, pass out from the relief and joy of his little brother being alive and kicking, but...

But... 

That joke. One of many morbidly unfunny jokes and puns.

Bone-deep fatigue crushed his back. A bitter curse for whatever higher forces messing with them echoed strongly inside his skull, before he gave in to the inevitable and inhaled a few times for patience.

“Jason. We thought you were dead-dead.”

With prickly, hedgehog style affection, Jason pushed Tim back and stood up, stretching. “Come off it, Goldie. I wasn't even decapitated. I mean, if you were really worried, you could have just called a necromancer or something.” His expression hardened. “But if you ever call a necromancer on my ass, I'll shoot your perfect glutes.”

Yup, yup, yup, this is happening.

Tim finally wiped the rest of the tears away, helped by one of Stephanie's handkerchiefs, when he froze. “Wait. Your skin's still pale as a corpse.”

The flicker of amusement in Jason's eyes killed it for Dick.

God, how could they have all been this idiotic? If Wally ever learned about this – Shit, did Roy and Kory know before him?!

They were going to laugh their asses off at him.

Jason, unaware of the world recalibration happening in his poor big brother's mind, shrugged and rolled his shoulders – who creaked suspiciously loudly, more like rusty hinges than normal body parts. “Eh, I'm just a bit hungry. Nothing a meal or two won't fix and get some blood flowing back under my s-”

“You're a zombie.”

They turned toward him.

“Way to cross the finish line on time, Mister Rabbit,” Jason drawled.

Barbara, for once, looked completely unprepared. “A zombie,” she repeated, dazed.

Stephanie's nervous giggle died out when she noticed the lack of humor. “... No!”

Cassandra furiously looked down, muttering in her fist. Duke, by contrast, had the expression of a person stuck in a very awkward nightmare.

Even Jason's good-natured ribbing faded in when faced only with the distant screeched of bats. “... Hm, guys, bats, roostery, parasites and octopi? This is old news. What's with all the... ”

He vaguely gestured at their faces.

“Old news?” Tim rasped like he was being strangled.

“I came back from the dead years ago! Come on! Am I in a parallel universe? Hey, Demon Brat,” Jason called, baffled, “you knew, right? I didn't imagine that, right?!”

“Of course, Todd. Mother informed me of everything. Besides, Grandfather's interest in your state of being was of interest for a few weeks. How could I have been ignorant about your zombified state of being?”

In the corner of his eyes, Dick noticed Tim's, Barbara's and Cassandra's expressions all pinching in displeasure. In a way, Dick was reassured. He hadn't been the target of a family-wide hoax to discredit him as an attentive and loving eldest brother. No, he was just naturally blind, apparently.

“He knew?” Tim growled, like it was a personal failing of the fabric of time and space.

Damian's tone was the exact opposite. “And none of you realized...?”

Dick squirmed. “I... huh... you see...”

His baby brother eyed him, completely unimpressed, and for once after years of partnership, Dick felt he deserved every single ounce of it.

“I see... I shall reevaluate the value of this 'detective training' I've been given if this is the result then,” he said, the nearest thing to completely disavowing his older siblings without saying so.  

In other circumstances, perhaps the others would have demanded that Damian stay and explain, but he suspected the quelling look it would have deserved prevented them. Not one of them spoke until Damian had disappeared upstairs and the elevator doors had closed.

“Jason, since when have you been a zombie?”

Jason blinked, jaw hanging. Juuuust enough for some of the scar tissue on his face to stretch past normal. Why did Dick only notice that now?

“Wait, you're all serious? How could you not know? I told you guys!”

And there was Dick's pride rearing its ugly head, because no, no he had not been told and maybe his deductive skills needed a very complete overhaul, but his memory was still excellent!

“You never said that. Heck, we weren't even talking until two years ago!”

“I literally told you all that I crawled out of my grave by myself, groaning the entire time. No experiment, no Lazarus Pit, just a body waking up in its own coffin and deciding to breathe fresh air. Does that not scream 'zombie' to you?”

They cringed.

“Not the only one that returned from beyond,” Babs mumbled. He could see her pull up the mental list right there.

“I greeted you all last meeting with a 'What's up, my bat folks? It's me, your favorite zombie!'. What did you think that meant?”

“That you're an asshole with a morbid sense of humor?” Stephanie quipped, and Jason momentarily paused his indignation to high five her. Fair's fair.

“Okay, but what about that time I got shot in the chest and I told you all not to worry about it?”

“I just figured you were going to get stitched up by Leslie or yourself, you know, regular bat neuroses,” Tim confessed.

Dick made a mental note to keep a much closer eye on Tim's patrols for the next few months.

“From a bullet chest wound?” Jason asked with an incredulousness that was not at all earned, because he was a freaking zombie!

“I thought your armor had blocked it! The hole wasn't bleeding!” Tim protested, cheeks red and tone defensive.

“Well, yeah,” Jason replied. “I don't bleed. It's like some fruit pulp or something. Ain't coming out if you don't press. My heart's not pumping.”

That's a 'nevermind' on the smoothie I saved for after patrol.

“Well, I know that now,” Tim said.

“I feel like I should write it down on the plaque or something,” Jason still sounded amazed, and might have pinched his arm just to be sure he hadn't been daydreaming, “Like, 'a good soldier AND A VERY DISCRETE ZOMBIE!' in big flaming letters. With a spotlight. And a dictionary opened on 'Zombie' or 'Undead'. You know, just in case the next batbrat to come along needs a few subtle hints about my true nature. What'd you think, Dick?”

He could not have been blushing harder than he currently was. “I think shut up.”

“Of course. What about when I shoved my deadly cold toes at Tim under a blanket?”

“Cold feet.”

“Never eating around you guys?”

“Daddy issues with Bruce,” Barbara deadpanned, and got a sock thrown at her for her honesty.

However, Duke, poor kid, turned green. “Wait, so when you offered me some jellied brain... was that not a death joke?”

Dick's stomach spontaneously shrivelled.

By the grimaces and sharp inhales all around, that was a common reaction.

Then the worst possible thing happened: Jason grinned.

He strutted, all confidence and brashness, and viper-quick, snatched an arm around Duke's shoulder. “Narrows, Nightlight, my tiny bitsy bro, everything I do is a death joke. My very existence laughs at death.”

Inside the batcave, the groaning was long-suffering and shameful.

“But that was actually brains,” Duke countered.

“Yeah. Calf brains. It's a delicacy.”

Tim massaged his forehead. What a mood.

Duke narrowed his eyes. “It was purely for the joke, wasn't it?”

Jason patted him on the back so hard Duke faltered. “One tragically wasted on your obtuse mind. I prefer me some Tête fromagée instead. Less like grainy jello.”

Stone-faced, Barbara wheeled herself toward the batcomputer. There, upon a series of quick clicks, she opened up the Bats's files. “Alright, you had your fun. Do you need to eat brains or are you just the world's least funny meathead?”

“I'm the world's most misunderstood vigilante!” Jason loudly protested, milking their pain for all it was worth. And then some. “But yeah, I do. No grey matter in there” -- he tapped his belly -- “no thinking up here.” -- his skull.

“Need some better quality brains then,” Tim stage-whispered to Stephanie.

Cass pointed the finger at Jason. “No killing for brains.”

Jason's good humor flickered with a flash of green. “Ain't ever done it, never will. It's a matter of morals, not hunger, Cass.”

Dick swooped in that minefield before it exploded.

“Great! Proud of you, Jay! You're the good kind of vegetarian zombie,” he said, putting an arm around his ginormous little brother's shoulders.

Wait a minute...

“Hey, you're older than when you died! Zombies don't age.”

“No, I was thrown into a Lazarus Pit, and the evil waters cured the malnutrition-induced delay on my growth. Haven't aged a day since.”

“I just thought you had a weird babyface thing going on,” Tim said.

Jason's grin turned sardonic. “Quite the opposite, Timber.”

Dick put his head in his hands in some vain attempt to prevent his brain from leaking through his ears.  With his luck, his little brother would 'playfully' eat some of it. “There's no way you look this rugged at biologically sixteen! I refuse to believe that.”

“Can you imagine my power if I'd been allowed to reach my full potential?” Jason leered, eyebrows waggling like waves in a sea at storm. “So many heart attacks.”

Barbara and Cassandra exchanged a silent look, and, after a solemn nod, Cassandra reached up to slap Jason upside the head.

“Thank you, Cassandra,” Barbara told her. “Jason, never do such a thing again.”

The disgruntled groan that followed must have been on purpose, because Jay was indeed an asshole.

“Besides, it's not like the world will ever know,” Tim said, cutting, a smirk hiding by his hand.

Dick really thought his little brother was far too relaxed upon learning that Jason was one with the undead. Sure, they had all encountered various levels of zombies during their missions, from all sorts of oral traditions and cultures, alien viruses and hidden nanobots piloting meat puppets. It wasn't even classified as a nation-wide crisis to encounter free-roaming zombies. But since the chronically unalive individual in question was one of their own, Dick felt he was owed at least a whole evening of frazzled panic and incomprehension for once.

“Oh?” Stephanie instead asked, sensing blood.

Tim shrugged. “Well, you know, no pulse, no blood flow,” he said with an angled eyebrow nodding at Jason's crotch

Stunned silence followed, their expressions varying from disgust, horror, unholy glee and, from Jason himself, wide-eyed shock that his shrimp of a little brother had had the balls to assimilate the zombieness fast enough to mock him for him.

Dick prayed for patience. For fortitude. And for an alternate timeline where he was an only child.

Why, for all the love of cotton candy and professional uncriminal clowns, did Tim put THAT image of Jason inside their brains? What had he done, him, a loving model for all of society, to suffer like this?

Maybe if he asked nicely, Jason would eat the image out of his head. He owed Dick that much after this clusterfuck of a conversation.

“Ooooooooh,” Stephanie crooned, miming getting dunked on. With acrobatics.

Jason huffed. “Like I was ever interested in the first place. I ain't Dick.”

“Okay, no slut shaming or virgin shaming, in fact, no shaming at all, please. In this house, we accept all sexualities, but we don't give out raunchy details about any of it, I only have so much brain bleach.”

“Share?” Duke pleaded in a whisper.

Oh, I wish I could, you young innocent soul.

A few beeps turned their attention back to Barbara and the batcomputer. “Well, that's one long overdue update to Jason's files. Anyone else want to share their 'obvious' medical condition?”

“Excuse you, being dead is not a medical condition.”

“I will make you wish for the peace of the grave, Jason.”

Droplets dripped from nearby stalactites.

A few bats flew overhead.

Jason turned to them like nothing had been said.

“Right. That was fun. Best night of my month. Can't wait to tell the Outlaws.”

Dick resigned himself to a series of unflattering texts by the absolute dickheads that were his second family. He could already tell the messages would blow up his phone to the Moon. 'You didn't know your brother that came back from the dead is a zombie?!'

“Have mercy and wait tomorrow morning?”

That smile could have been great or terrible. “You're lucky I'm in a spectacularly good mood, Dick.”

He had lifted his leg over his bike's seat when Duke was struck by genuine worry.

“Wait. Does Bruce know?”

Jason barked out a laugh.

“Of course he does! God knows he's got some massive blind spots, but he's obsessive, paranoid and I find subcutaneous trackers on me every week. No way he didn't get the hint before now.”

But, as his gaze went over the rest of them, his good cheer dimmed, his grin slipping off his face as surely as a bit of decayed flesh.

“... Right?”

[caiminnent]

my demise, my downfall [kylux, rated M]

Summary: Hux had no idea that Ren, his bedmate and partner in crime, was actually Ben Organa-Solo, the sole heir of First Order's biggest rival in the industry.

He didn't know Ben had a girlfriend, either.

Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Tags: Jealousy, Mutual Pining, Misunderstandings, Use Your Words, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Kylo Ren isn't Much Better, Canon-Typical Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships

Notes: Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash, cropped.

2.9K || Also on AO3

Hux wakes up to gentle caresses, a feather-light finger drawing unrecognisable shapes over his shoulders, down his back.

His eyes ache behind his eyelids, that didn’t-sleep-enough taste in his mouth. Torn between giving in to his body’s demands for rest and enjoying the soft touch while it lasts, he drifts on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, basking in the pleasant warmth.

Something rattles far behind him, jerking him fully awake. The touch withdraws.

Pushing his disappointment down, Hux takes a deep breath and rolls onto his back. Ren is sitting up in the middle of the bed with his legs stretched out, tapping away at his phone.

“Go back to sleep,” Ren says without looking, his tone sleep-gruff. “’s not morning yet.”

“Why are you awake, then?” Hux mumbles, though he doesn’t particularly care about the answer. A short night wasn’t enough to make up for six weeks of absence; Hux won’t be settled without at least a few more hours of sleep, another round and brunch.

Thank fuck it’s Sunday.

Ren doesn’t respond, focused on whatever he’s doing on his phone. Stretching languidly on the bed, “Come back here, Ren,” Hux purrs, kicking the covers away in the process. Ren’s eyes latch onto the bared skin.

“Can’t,” Ren says, shaking his head. The phone buzzes again, as if reminding them of itself—as if it gave Ren a chance to forget it. “Got plans.”

Hux’s mood sours. Plans. Ren has barely returned to the Core Worlds and he’s already making plans with others.

“What plans?” Hux asks, keeping his tone mild. It can’t be work; they don’t hide Snoke’s various demands from each other, if only so Snoke won’t be able to blindside them later. Ren doesn’t have any friends in this sector, either—none that Hux knows of, at least. Is it that girl? Is Ren running out of Hux’s bed straight into her arms?

Hux has never woken up in Ren’s bed, but he now knows how it would feel to be kicked out of it.

Ren is still typing, not even acknowledging the question. What the hell is he writing, a novel?

“Let me guess, then,” Hux says, poison-sweet. “Early breakfast with your sunshine?”

Ren freezes.

A vicious delight fills Hux. “Unless you two had urgent business to take care of at the Resistance HQ,” he continues evenly, ignoring the tension that thickens in the air between them. “First Order’s latest requisitions have put them in quite the bind; your mother is right to want you on-site, now that you’re—”

—pinned on the bed with Ren’s overly warm body covering his, Ren’s forearm across his throat and knees on Hux’s shins. Ren’s other hand presses Hux’s wrists into the mattress; so close to the knife Hux keeps between the mattress and the headboard, but at the entirely wrong angle to grab it.

“Bastard,” Hux hisses in Ren’s face, the bed groaning as he feebly tries to shake Ren off. Ren presses his knobbly knees harder into Hux’s legs in answer, as if trying to dig grooves into Hux’s bones. The pressure on his neck remains steady, only hard enough to make it uncomfortable to swallow. A half-hearted threat at best.

What a bloody embarrassment.

“You’re not supposed to know any of that,” Ren snarls, his nostrils flaring as he glares down at Hux. Hux stares back, keeping his gaze steady and his breathing even. He’s never been afraid of Snoke’s hound; that won’t change now. “I know Snoke forbid you from investigating me. Have you been fucking—fucking digging anyway?”

Hux scoffs. As if he’s got the time to dig into Ren’s life. “I was having a business dinner at the Starkiller last month, when you walked in with your lovely girlfriend.” It’s quite telling that Ren didn’t even notice Hux there, so captivated by her. “Have you ever noticed how her voice carries, Ben?”

Ren growls low in his throat like the beast he is, his shoulders and neck tensing. Inhaling deeply, Hux waits for the moment Ren will put his crushing weight on Hux’s windpipe, visualising his hands clenching and unclenching as his body struggles to draw air into his burning lungs, unable to even scrabble at Ren’s forearm. The spots in his darkening vision until he can’t see Ren’s face anymore. Waking up with bruises on his tender neck—or not waking up at all.

Ren can’t kill him, though. He isn’t allowed to, not until Hux outlives his usefulness for Snoke. Killing Hux now would mean Ren signing his own death warrant.

“That name,” Ren says lowly, his breath warm on Hux’s face, “isn’t for you to use. Nobody—nobody—can find out that you know it, or there will be consequences.” He gives Hux a long look, anxiety shining through the ebbing fury in his eyes. What happens if word of Ren’s real name gets out? What’s so important about it? “Hux. Do you understand?”

Hux scoffs. “Yes, damn you. I won’t tell anyone.” He wasn’t planning to anyway; this sort of personal information is more valuable as a bargaining chip. When the time comes, he’ll benefit from having leverage over Snoke’s protégé. It just might turn the tide in Hux’s favour.

Satisfied, Ren rolls off and away from Hux. For a moment, Hux can only breathe as his blood rushes back into his feet and hands with that pins-and-needles sensation. Something dark and ugly gathers in the pit of his stomach, a need to sink his teeth into Ren’s throat until he tastes blood rising in him.

Later. His chance will come later.

Ren’s found his trousers on the floor, putting them on. Hux feels oddly naked, vulnerable in only soft trousers while Ren dons his armour again.

Well, Hux is clearly not going back to sleep. Might as well start his day.

“I hope you realise that this cannot continue,” he says conversationally, stepping into his slippers. No point of pulling the sheets up; he’s going to throw them all in the wash as soon as Ren leaves anyway. “This double life of yours, I mean—it’s too much of a risk to allow.”

“It’s not a double life,” Ren grumbles, trying to shake the wrinkles out of his shirt. The spiteful part of Hux hopes that Ren won’t have time to change out of the mussed state Hux put him in before his plans.

“Well, what would you call it?” Hux asks, raising a brow. “Polished, charming Organa-Solo heir on one side, Snoke’s brooding enforcer on the other? Unless I’m wrong and you’re mixing business and pleasure, in which case Ben’s dry cleaner had better be very discreet.”

“I’m not—” Ren cuts himself off with a huff, his unbuttoned shirt hanging off his shoulders. His glare isn’t quite effective with the entire bed between them. “Look, Snoke knows. Okay? He encourages me to keep Ben Organa-Solo alive—to have past connections we can use. I’m doing his bidding.”

“Sunshine—or whatever her name is—she’s one of your honeypot assignments, then?”

Ren runs his teeth over his bottom lip. “I didn’t say that.”

The space behind Hux’s eyes is throbbing, the beginnings of a headache making itself known. Kriffing Ren and his kriffing inability to say one thing straight.

His robe hangs off the hook behind the door—a strategic mistake. “What, then?” Hux asks as he strides over to it, the luxurious fabric his lifeline to feeling a little more put-together. A little more like himself. “Care to explain how she fits into the picture?”

“None of your fucking business,” Ren mutters—suspiciously like around something. Hux is unsurprised to turn and find one of those death-sticks between Ren’s lips and a lighter in his hand, though annoyance is another matter entirely. “I’m doing my damn job; what more do you care?”

Hux fishes out an ashtray from his vanity with a pointed sigh, throwing it vaguely Ren’s way on the bed. Ren picks it up before dropping himself on the edge of the mattress, balancing the ashtray on a thick thigh.

“You wouldn’t be so cagey if you were only following orders,” Hux points out, ignoring the light tickle at the back of his throat. If Ren drops a smatter of ash on his carpets, there will be hell to pay. “What is it? Does she know something she shouldn’t?” Hux can make it go away, if she does.

“No, of course not. She knows nothing.”

Right. Very convincing.

Crossing his arms over his chest, “Is that so?” Hux asks, leaning a hip against the vanity. Ren barely glances at him before turning to the closed window, blowing the smoke out of a corner of his mouth. “Say, Ren, what does she think that you’re doing for a living? Snoke’s bodyguard works only so well when the man is bedbound. How do you explain your long trips abroad? Or the nights you return smelling of sex?”

Ren releases a long breath, loud in the otherwise quiet room. He ashes his cigarra and takes another drag, cool as you please, while irritation crawls underneath Hux’s skin.

It’s like Hux isn’t even kriffing there.

An odd desperation tugging at his chest, “Or maybe she already knows that you’re fucking someone on the side,” Hux throws, spitefully hoping for it to land.

Ren’s jaw works, his lips pressing into a line.

There.

It’s all of ten steps from his spot to Ren’s. “You’re loyal as a dog; I don’t imagine I’m your dirty secret,” Hux adds as he takes them slowly, satisfaction buzzing through him. Ren’s shoulders grow more rigid with each word, the ashtray moving as his legs tense. “Maybe it’s a thingbetween you two. Is that why you never shower here—because she likes smelling another man on you, feeling how open you still are from—”

“Rey’s my cousin, you jackass,” Ren snarls, a vein pulsing on his forehead. A knot unravels in Hux’s stomach. “What the fuck is it to you anyway? I know you don’t get lonely without me.”

The anger Hux was aiming for—the unmissable undercurrent of hurtin Ren’s tone gives him a pause. Hux hasn’t taken a lover since he and Ren started their… arrangement. He could have—and perhaps should have, instead of relying on his hand alone to get him through Ren’s weeks-long disappearances—but he didn’t even want to.

It worries him, sometimes.

“It’s a matter of security,” Hux says, waving it off. “Secrets have a way of leaking during pillow talk, you know that better than anyone.”

Ren laughs, bitter and hollow. Something in Hux twists at the sound. “Security,” Ren spits out, putting out the cigarra like it offended him personally. “Do you wanna do background checks on everybody I slept with while I was gone, then?”

Sharp hurt jolts through Hux.

Ren is staring at him with an intensity that borders on uncomfortable, waiting. Hux unclenches his jaw, breathing through his nose. “You’re an old hand at this; I’ll trust your judgment,” he responds, turning away. What is he doing, reacting to Ren? What the hell is wrong with him?

Ren grabs him by the wrist, jerking him to a stop.

Irritation rises in Hux again. “Ren,” he bites out in warning.

“No really, I think you should,” Ren says, a dark look shining in his eyes. “I don’t remember every name, but I can give you some other details. I’m sure your network of stalkers—sorry, slicers can find out enough.”

“My slicers have more important intel to chase after,” Hux bites out, looking pointedly at Ren’s hand around his wrist. The grip is loose enough that he might break himself free, but suffering the indignity of struggling doesn’t quite appeal to him. Once was enough. “Will you let me go?”

“Only if you admit it.”

Hux scoffs. “Admit what, exactly?”

“Admit that you’re jealous.” Hux goes ice-cold all over. “You hated thinking about me with Rey, didn’t you?”

Of course not. What a ridiculous claim. Hux holds a certain dislike for missing out on critical intel—understandable given his line of work—and finding out that he’s been left entirely in the dark about Ren, Snoke’s other right-hand man and the only person Hux remotely trusts in the First Order, was a bit of a hit. That’s all there is to it. He’s got no reason to be jealous of some girl who calls Ren by his given name, who can laugh and joke with Ren, be seen in public with Ren, who can loop an arm around Ren as they leave—

The dismissal gets stuck in his throat.

“Because I hated it,” Ren murmurs, looking into his eyes. Hux wants with his whole being to escape the depth of feeling in Ren’s earnest gaze—can’t look away. “Thinking about others warming your bed while I was fucked off on some bullshit mission that barely needed me—it killed me, Hux. Tell me you hated it, too. Tell me you want me to be only yours.”

Only Hux’s. As if Ren, with his constant need for attention and validation, wouldn’t chafe under Hux’s negligence.

Hux shakes his head, wishing he could shake off this spell just as easily. Ren must be similarly addled if he’s talking of fancies of flight like exclusivity. “You don’t know what you’re saying. This isn’t what we agreed on, Ren.”

The light in Ren’s eyes dims. Hux hates himself.

“You’re right,” Ren says, his tone just above a whisper. A glance downwards—he starts buttoning up his shirt like he’s being timed on it, only barely getting the order right. “Sorry I ruined it, I thought—never mind what I thought, I’ll just see myself out. You won’t see me again unless Snoke summons both of us, promise.”

Ren rushes past Hux and out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind himself. It hits Hux in the next moment that perhaps he should’ve stopped Ren.

Stars, what a kriffing mess. Hux intended only to stop Ren from jumping off a cliff in the hopes that Hux would follow, not to end what they had. Leave it to Ren to take it as an absolute rejection.

He takes a deep breath, running his hands through his hair. All right. All right. First step: He can’t let Ren storm off. Ren will be damn near impossible to get a hold of if he leaves like this; Hux’s network truly has more important matters to take care of. Hux needs to make him stay long enough to listen.

As for what Hux will say to fix this, well. He supposes he can tell Ren what Ren wants to hear. He can set his pride aside for a moment. It should be good, shouldn’t it? It should be enough.

It had better be enough.

Inside, Ren is nowhere to be found, his jacket and trainers gone. Hux hasn’t heard the Silencer’s roar, though. Hoping he’s not too late, he grabs his keys off the hook and dashes down the front stairs, catching up with Ren just as Ren reaches his bike.

“Ren,” he says, embarrassingly breathless.

Ren turns to him with wariness etched on his guarded face. He’s waiting for beratement, Hux suspects, or the tongue-lashing that Hux is famous for.

“I was lonely without you,” Hux confesses in a rush, words tumbling out of his mouth in his haste to get them out before they clog up his throat. “When you were away, I—I missed you. I did.” Do whatever you want with it.

A series of emotions cross Ren’s face, too fast to parse. A part of Hux—a part that will always remain Armitage no matter how hard Hux tries to purge it—wants to curl into a ball and hide from the moment Ren will laugh in his face for falling for such a blatant prank.

“Hux,” Ren breathes, breaking into a wide grin. It’s the goofiest, stupidest expression Hux has ever seen on his face—and entirely devoid of any mockery. “You missed me?”

“I won’t repeat it,” Hux says, ignoring the growing heat of his cheeks. Least of all in the middle of the street, where all his neighbours would overhear them if it weren’t shit-early on a Sunday—wearing nothing but his robe and slippers.

Stars. What a disgrace.

Ren’s phone buzzes loudly in his pocket. He fishes it out only far enough to silence it, letting it go to voicemail. “I really have to go,” he says with a touch of regret in his tone, running the backs of his fingers down Hux’s cheek. “But I’ll come back right after, okay? I’ll come back to you.”

Such coddling. Hux wants to roll his eyes, but the look on Ren’s face, the same one as when he said tell me you want me to be only yours, stops him.

“You had better,” he mutters instead. It’s a new sort of thrill, getting a genuine grin out of Ren.

Cupping Hux’s face, Ren presses a hard kiss on his lips before getting on his bike. Hux watches him leave with an inexplicably heavy heart.

He misses Ren already.

[judgmentofcorruption]

Episode 10–The Court Ends; Scene 4

Judgment of Corruption, pages 282-288

The massacre of the villagers of Zenosai committed by Tony Ausdin’s unit soon became known throughout Levianta.

“Zenosai Village Destroyed by USE Armed Forces Second Division! Military Morals Under Question”

“General Tony Ausdin, Vicious Slaughterer of Civilians! A Fool Who Was Promoted Only By Connections”

These were the provocative headlines that decorated the front page of the newspaper.

Glancing over these newspaper articles in the director’s room, Gallerian asked Bruno, “—I’m quite certain that the USE unified government had been concealing the matter of Zenosai Village…How did it leak to the press?”

“…This is just a guess, but I imagine it’s the work of the anti-war movement.”

“The anti-war movement?”

“People who have begun to make their presence known due to the heavy casualties of the war. The people of Levianta have not experienced war in quite some time. They have no immunity for it—And there are rumors that the anti-war movement is being propped up by Elphegort’s ‘Tasan Party’.”

“Those are the ones that made such strong objections after Heleus Gone’s trial.”

“The name of the organization is taken from that empire in the ancient era, but outside of that the party is fairly vague. First they start agitating for war, then suddenly they shift to being against it—There are some who mock them as simply wishing to make a show of themselves.”

“Whatever the case, now that all this has hit the papers—I suppose we can’t hold off on indicting Tony.” Gallerian stood.

“What do you intend to do, sir?”

“I’m going to see Tony. Once this goes to trial I’m certain I will be acting as head judge, but…I want to hear his side of things at least once before then.”

“If that happens then wouldn’t it be unwise for you to meet with him, given he’s the defendant?”

“I don’t see any problem. It’s for times like these that I’ve given the head of the prison such large sums of money.”

Gallerian straightened up and moved to leave the room.

Bruno called out to him, “Director Marlon—No, Gallerian.”

“…It’s been quite a long time since you’ve addressed me without honorifics. What is it?”

“Please bear this fact in mind. This time it was a friend of yours—Shiro, who was killed by this man.”

“…I know.”

Gallerian left, showing neither a smile nor a scowl.

.

Tony had been slim from the start, but the man who arrived in the visiting area of the first detention block of the prison looked far bonier than he had been before.

“—Are you not eating?”

Tony smiled weakly at Gallerian’s greeting. “The food here doesn’t suit me. …Well, I’m glad to see you.”

“You showed up in the paper.”

“I know. I can read the newspaper even here in prison, and I can listen to the radio too. –Someone in the unit must have been the whistleblower.”

There was a single jailer on the other side of the glass behind Tony, observing the both of them. But it seemed he couldn’t hear the contents of their conversation.

After giving that jailer a brief glance, Gallerian turned back to Tony and asked, “I need to know if everything they reported is true.”

Tony didn’t respond right away.

But eventually he resumed speaking, appearing to steady his resolve.

“The gist of it, yes. It is true that the unit that I led killed all of the villagers at Zenosai. That’s a fact. But…It wasn’t something I did out of curiosity or fun like they wrote in the paper. –They were all connected with the Asmodean army.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“A child of the village attacked me with a bomb…I came close to being killed.”

“And do you have any proof that the rest of the villagers were like that?”

“…You sound like my defense attorney.” Tony covered his face with his palms. “Proof? –No, I don’t. But if I hadn’t done something they probably would have done me in. That’s just what war is like! …Maybe you don’t understand that, staying cooped up in the Dark Star Bureau as you do.”

“…And Shiro?”

“That…was an accident. The gun just went off. Please believe me. I had no intention in the least of killing her—For what happened to her I am truly sorry. To both you and Bruno as well.”

I don’t know if Gallerian believed his words. I couldn’t tell that from his expression.

However, he made a face that was far more grief-stricken than Tony’s before him.

“You—will most likely be indicted, and then put to trial. It’s a grave crime for military soldiers to kill unresisting civilians. Given that you were in command of that unit, you’ll likely receive either life imprisonment if found guilty, or…capital punishment.”

“That’s why…I’ve been telling you, they were attacking me!”

“It’s doubtful your defense attorney will be able to substantiate that. Even if I’m the one acting as head judge, I can’t say anything to give the defendant an advantage in open court.”

“But isn’t it the judge that passes down the final verdict?”

“Well, that’s true, but—"

“…Please help me. I don’t…I don’t want to die in this place. My wife’s only just given birth to our second child…”

What did Gallerian think, watching Tony as he pitifully made his entreaties? His memories of college, the time he and Tony drank together to celebrate his promotion, or perhaps…Loki?

I had no way of knowing. I’m just a mere bat, so I cannot read someone’s mind.

--After a short silence, Gallerian opened his mouth.

“I understand, Tony. I will do my best to—”

“…I have money.”

“—Huh?”

“I’ve heard the rumors. That as long as they can pay, you’ll declare anyone innocent. In spite of all this, I’m still the general of the allied forces. I have enough saved up to pay a bribe for you.”

“…”

Tony continued speaking, irrespective of Gallerian’s speechlessness.

“Just say the amount and I’ll have my lawyer deposit the money into your account. He’s an attorney on retainer from my father’s day. There’s no way he’ll let any of this information slip to the public, so you can relax there. Come on—tell me how much, Gallerian.”

“…Ha ha ha…I see, that’s right…”

“…? What’s wrong?”

Gallerian hid his face with his hand.

When he removed it again, there was a wicked smile there.

“…Two million Ev. Deposit it within three days. Then you’ll pay me another two million once you’re declared innocent.”

“Oh, that’s cheaper than I was expecting. I thought you took more.”

“It’s a ‘friend discount’. Special—just for you.”

“Thank you, Gallerian. You’re the kind of friend a guy should have after all.”

The jailer came out of the door behind Tony.

“Time’s up.”

At that, Gallerian stood.

“See you, Tony. Let’s meet again in court.”

“Right!”

Turning his back on Tony, Gallerian left the visiting area.

.

I cannot read someone’s mind.

Even so, there is something I can tell.

Gallerian was, in the end…alone.

However—that was something that his own actions had brought upon him.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[aalt-ctrl-del]

welp, the trompers are plotting to do something heinous come inauguration. They’re getting their weapons and they’re headed to DC to enact terrorism on the nation.

I really want President Biden to hold his inauguration indoors, or somewhere else with high security, where they can’t force their way into. Those idiots, they’re plotting again.

tromp told them to “stand back and stand by”, he said that. Actual words out of his fat lips. tromp dismantled CIA security, and castrated the bureau of nation wide intelligence, thus these threats are being missed or ignored.

tromp isn’t really initiated his coup, as much as he is doing vicious damage and having his rabid dogs attack and throttle whatever is in their way. These people, they’re white and they are fucking crazy. They are deviates from the normal society and it’s people, which uphold integrity and order.

They are planning to harm former and current politicians. They have a lot of time on their hands, they have money to burn, and they have nothing better to do with their sad pitiful lil lives, they have to come out to disrupt our healing economy.

We are on the brink of something sinister and pointless. We have so much work to do, but tromp wants us back in the 1920s, hell, maybe he wants us back in time to 1859, before the Civil War. And the most obnoxious factor of all this, tromp doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care what happens. He just wants to see people hurt and maimed, because he won’t see retribution for his crimes initiating this. He just says something vague, and his moronic cultist take it and run, and make something else out of it. They are the worst of society, they are the canker and drag on our resources, and they went out there and voted for a tyrant wannabe dictator.

And they will views tromps GOP failure to remove tromp from office as complacency that they are correct, which has done the most amount of damage in this past week. We are BARELY A WEEK IN 2021, and already this year is a fucked up mess.

mike pence, you poor boy. Could’ve, should’ve enacted the 25 Amendment. What happens next, it’s all on you. This is yours and you will take it to your shallow little grave.

[moviemunchies]

The Patriot is a weird movie that has somehow grown on me? I think it’s a good movie, but I don’t know if it’s a great movie, and it’s about as subtle as a brick to the face. I wouldn’t say it handles the subject matter very well, cutting a few corners to make the story work. 

So The Patriot tells the story of Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), a South Carolina...farmer? Plantation owner? Whatevs. He’s a widower with several kids and a veteran of the French and Indian War, so despite the beginning of the American Revolution going on, and his oldest son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) joining the Continental Army, he advocates a peaceful solution to the conflict with Britain because he doesn’t want to be drawn into another war. But when a British dragoon leader Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs) shows up and shoots his son, Martin joins the war effort, and attacks the British in a brutal guerilla campaign leading a group of local militia.

If you’re from South Carolina, you’ve probably heard about this movie quite a lot, in part because it takes place and was filmed there, but especially because the protagonist is heavily based on American Revolutionary hero and militia leader Francis Marion (and some other South Carolinians from the time but they didn’t have a cool nickname so that’s the one we usually go with). It’s not precisely an accurate depiction of Francis Marion’s life by any means, other than he was a guerilla militia leader in the Revolution that hung out in the swamps. For starters, Benjamin Martin’s anti-slavery, which is not quite the attitude Francis Marion held towards the practice (but fellow SC native and Revolutionary hero John Laurens certainly did!); his plantation is staffed entirely by freedmen--a facet of the character that even Mel Gibson felt was a bit of a cop out, avoiding a chance to do a warts-and-all look at American history. Admittedly, this is a bit much to ask of the movie, I think. And Roland Emmerich, probably. 

Still, it’s a bit jarring to have a subplot about one of the militiaman, a black man, finding out that the Continental Army will free any slave that fights for the Revolution for a year when that’s not really a thing that happened at all. And Francis Marion wasn’t nearly as great of a guy as Benjamin Martin; although that may be exactly why there’s a fictional stand-in instead of the actual historical figure in the lead role.

There is often a conversation about the atrocities that the British (mostly Tavington, if we’re being real here) commit during the course of the film. Yes, he’s based off of the real British officer Tarleton, who is infamous in American history for being vicious and giving no quarter. And yes, atrocities happened. And to be clear, in-film, Cornwallis and other Redcoats call out Tavington on his brutality throughout the film, to the point that none of the Brits seem particularly torn up when he dies at the end. But burning a church full of people is a _Nazi war crime._ There’s no record of the British doing anything like that during the Revolution, and so people accuse this movie of demonizing the British. But while the British didn’t do this to American colonists, similar atrocities were committed against the Irish a hundred years before. So no, the British didn’t do this to _US_, but they did do it at some point. That probably doesn’t justify its use here in this movie, but I feel like it’s all important to keep in mind.

This all leads me to the idea of _The Patriot_ not as a history--it’s Hollywood, of course it’s not--but as a sort of mythologized version of the American Revolution. Maybe that’s a weird take, and that might make some people turn off from this movie, but for me it works. I guess that I haven’t been one of those “This movie’s inaccurate, so it SUX!” people for a long time.

The hero of our movie isn’t a man who wants to go to war--he does everything he can to try to avoid going to war, to convince his neighbors that war is not in their best interests, even though he believes in independence for the American colonies. It’s not until the war refuses to leave him alone, and begins to harm his family, that he fully commits to fighting the injustices he sees being perpetrated. Yeah, it’s kind of American _Braveheart_ but is that really a bad thing? As long as we know that’s what it is, I don’t think it is. If there were people out there who took this movie seriously, I don’t know that I’d be as lenient, but I have yet to meet someone whose opinion of history was seriously influenced by this film. Which is probably for the best.

I do understand though that the Plot kind of feels like it’s making the main character way too important to the war effort. It makes it seem as if Benjamin Martin is the only officer in the Continental Army who actually knows what he’s doing against the British. And while I like the character and his arc, I do think it’s a bit silly the way it frames the story in a way that would lead one to think that he’s fighting this war by himself. It’s not fantastic when a story dumbs down the rest of the Good Guys in order to make the Hero stand out--there are ways of accomplishing that without making everyone else incompetent.

And I’ll admit that the story’s structure is a bit… weird, I think. Sometimes Tavington just does terrible things, and I don’t know what this contributes other than adding angst. Towards the end of the movie, he gets information from some colonials before locking them in a church and burning it, but it’s not as if we see him do much with that information. It’s not really Plot Relevant. It just provides motivation for Gabriel to go after Tavington and shoot him with what should have been a fatal shot, and get killed, and give Ben MOAR ANGST. Of course it’s better to show the war as something that has casualties and consequences, but I felt that there were better ways to do it than this.

But this movie is telling an almost mythical epic story set in the American Revolution. Benjamin Martin isn’t a real person; he’s a legendary hero vaguely based off of a real hero. And in epics, seemingly pointless terrible things happen to the hero all the time to make his life suck. And like I said, this is a war movie (albeit, in an 18th century war), made before a lot of the discourse about Fridging came into public forums. Yeah, bad stuff happens, and it doesn’t always seem to make sense--that’s war. And the audience getting invested in the story, and being bothered by character deaths; well that’s kind of the point of character deaths in the first place, isn’t it?

Also it’s kind of an awesome historical action movie--I really like this period in history, because it’s a point where firearms have become commonplace, but haven’t yet become practical enough to completely replace melee weapons in battle. So we’ve got Benjamin Martin taking out Lobsterbacks with muskets, knives, and a tomahawk. It’s great, I love it. This is a huge part of why I love Assassin’s Creed III so much.

Maybe this movie isn’t that great, and I’m just projecting on it because of the lack of good American Revolution movies in the last twenty years…

I dunno. Decide for yourself. It’s a worthwhile watch. It’s got problems for sure, but I think it’s probably one of Roland Emmerich’s greatest films (maybe not a high bar), and a great film on its own merits. 

[Also you know Logan Lerman is in this movie? Yeah, Percy Jackson. He’s the youngest son in the family. And Adam Baldwin is a loyalist officer, which is so off from how he’s usually portrayed it’s weird.]

[armsdealing]

/ NUEVA RELIGIÓN.

there is always something left to love. when people ask, that is what they say. there’s always something left to love, and it’s because of that love that they do the things they do. what makes them kill. what makes them punish and desecrate the holy alongside the mundane. it is not hatred, not revulsion, not fear, but something else, much purer than all those things combined, what turns the gears of this barbarity: a conviction that cuts through diamond. a deeper knowledge about the world and the beings that live in it, than could be found anywhere else. a willingness, stripped of all pride, to use this knowledge crucially against transgressors, against liars, against evil itself -- without any kind of differentiation between men and gods.

                                                                   ***

nueva religión is a verse subservient to elements already established in the otherworld verse and the nulliverse. it’s basically an au of an au with strong magical realism and urban fantasy influences, as well as a background in mythopoeia and crime. theology and mythology are central themes of the verse, so talks about religion are bound to show up frequently. naturally, there will be general, verse-wise trigger and content warnings regarding: blasphemy, sacrilege, and violence. there will be mentions of unsavory topics in this post like gang violence/crime, abuse and drugs, so it is best to stop reading from this point onward if mere mentions of these topics trigger you. mental health comes first, always. of course, all specific disturbances will be tagged in a post by post basis.

continue if you wish to read more about this verse, and the characters involved in it.

FUNDAMENTALS.

as prev. mentioned, this is an au of an au. it centers around the well-known (as far as my blog is concerned, at least) reyes family and their efforts running a gang that also happens to have unorthodox religious beliefs. in this verse, the reyes never went to new york between 1970 and 1990. instead, they decided to settle completely in florida in a neighborhood of miami-dade county called carrion. there, they would gain a foothold by waging war on neighborhood gangs until they achieved complete control of carrion. now the area is the base of operations for everything they do.

the characterizations in this verse are drastically different due to: 1. the different setting 2. the different background 3. the different tone -- and while characters like marcelo still retain several core characteristics, it’s best to assume the characters will not behave in the exact same way as they do in their canon verses, and they will not respond the same. it might be jarring. it’s meant to be jarring, as this verse intends to explore a ‘what if’ type of scenario for the reyes family if they still decided to be active in the criminal world.

as it’s been hinted, the reyes have an alternative religion, complete with a central deity and minor gods. this religion is completely fictional, as are their ritual practices, and they are not meant to be similar to any real life religion or belief system.  

the neighborhood of carrion is fictional too, and while certain historical elements might be taken directly from real life, i don’t mean to make accurate depictions of them (this especially concerns the cocaine boom of the 80s and colombia’s la violencia between the 40s and 50s). i also don’t plan to use any real life gangs/criminals in this verse, and i won’t acknowledge their existence. 

the verse sways between urban fantasy and magical realism. while the magic is very much real, the extent of it will be unfamiliar to most people, and a lot of things will be deliberately vague. things in carrion work a particular way, people work a certain way, and it’s not the same for other parts of miami. 

LOS DISCÍPULOS.

known by a variety of names (los dorados, los reales, la justicia, la realeza, or the kings of miami) los discipulos de la nueva religión is the gang the reyes run. consisting primarily of werecats and humans of magical predisposition, they’re infamous in miami for their extremely violent ways and their vicious grip on carrion. 

though during the first decade they were focused on drug distribution (and were, for several years, in full control of the colombia-caribbean islands-usa cocaine pipeline), over time they have downsized their drug operation.

nowadays, the kings manage protection rackets for businesses outside of carrion, simultaneously protecting their home neighborhood from the influence of other gangs -- completely for free. they also perform armed robbery and theft outside of miami and hijack trucks. 

perhaps the thing they are most known for, however, is their vigilantism. notably anti-cop, the kings have taken it upon themselves to impart justice in their neighborhood and surrounding areas. this effort, unlike the protection rackets, is completely free of cost. essentially, they will go after those they consider to have evaded justice: murderers, abusers, p*dophiles, and rapists. they will also make a point to go after corrupted authority figures in particular: police officers, priests, and the occasional politician. as a result, they have been linked to various assassinations, but nothing has ever been proven as of right now.

the kings also pump a lot of money into carrion and surrounding areas. their businesses include, but are not limited to: a tattoo parlor, a hair salon, a barbershop, and a bar. they also run a private shelter and organize many activities for the benefit of carrion’s citizens. because of this, they’re pretty beloved within their community and outside of it. the popular consensus seems to be that if you need help and ask the kings for it, you’re guaranteed to receive it. 

EL CULTO / THE BELIEFS.

though the gang came to be around the 80s officially, el culto has been going on for much longer, evolving steadily into what it is today. originally started in colombia, it centers around one main figure: la Justicia, a goddess thought to be responsible for keeping balance in the universe by killing what needs to be killed and subsequently consuming it -- something for which she was given the title of Divine Devorer (or Divina Devoradora). 

la justicia is the guiding figure of their lives, and believers kill for her (human sacrifices and offering dead bodies being quite common). she’s considered the agent of retribution, above all other gods and above all other things.

the worship maintains that all other gods might as well exist, but they too have to follow the laws of the universe, and if they break them, then they too will be consumed by la Justicia. in that way, the goddess acts as a check/balance for other pantheons. and they don’t necessarily have to like that (many, in fact, hate her) but there’s nothing they can do about it. 

the culto is notably anti-catholic/anti-christian god, and in a certain way started as a direct response to the forced christianization of south america that happened during colonial times. missionaries were often killed around this time, and many churches were destroyed. because of this tightly knit history with catholicism, it’s not rare to see worshippers of La Justicia “appropiating” catholic imagery in blatant and mocking ways. 

el culto’s other deities are La Muerte and La Locura, representing respectively the two other laws of the universe. if la Justicia is the agent of order, La Locura is the agent of disorder, and La Muerte (death) is the only certainty in the whole universe. despite their massive power, the are considered minor in the cult -- they’re seen as two natural influences that prefer not to directly involve themselves in the world, unlike La Justicia, which must be constantly pursued and taken care of.

CARRION, MIAMI.

bordered with allapattah to the west, wynwood to the east, and liberty city to the north, carrion is a neighborhood in miami with a large latino population that represents about 70% of its makeup. predominated by dominicans, puerto ricans and cubans as well as colombians and venezuelans, it’s primarily a low to working class neighborhood with a big textiles market. it’s also well known for it’s food distribution centers and mercados, which a wide variety of tropical fruits.

apart from all this, it happens to be the homebase of the kings, and where much of the action takes place. carrion has a reputation for being a strange neighborhood, where weird things often take place and “nobody notices”. despite being somewhat quiet, it boasts an alarmingly high number of unsolved disappearance cases, only rivalled by the number of unsolved murder cases. it was pretty active during the cocaine boon of the 80s and it’s rumored there’s 20 tons of cocaine hidden somewhere from those times in the neighborhood. as far fetched as that sounds, in 2016 someone found 100k worth of jewelry hidden inside their kitchen wall during a house renovation, so -- let’s just say nothing is out of the question when it comes to carrion. 

CHARACTERS INVOLVED WITH THE VERSE.

MARCELO REYES

ALBA REYES

SAUL BAUTISTA

ELIÁN VALENCIANO

CAMILA VALENCIANO

JOAQUÍN

LEON ROMERO

[breakingdownsu]

Spiderweb Chapter Three

Note: This is coming out later than I anticipated, I'm under a new treatment regimen so I'm unsure of what writing time is available right now, but will hopefully keep updating on a semi-regular basis. Thanks for your patience.

…..

Pearl ownership turned out to be very different than Slim had initially feared. She had acquired enough cash over the orbits to afford a brand-new one, for her needs were modest, but her natural wariness over being in the company of other gems had her thinking it would be awkward to have a gem, even a gem that barely counted as a gem, permanently in her space.

But the pearl was so unobtrusive she kept forgetting it was there. She could spend entire quadrants going over spatter evidence with such focus that whenever she turned around and spotted the pearl, she jumped. It wouldn't move unless she told it to, so it was more-or-less a constant fixture in the corner of the apartment.

Slim asked it to pick up things, tidy the apartment, even process some of the more boring data for her, but she was naturally self-sufficient and there just wasn't much work to give the pearl. A fleeting thought of using the pearl for her carnal urges occurred to her, but it was gone in the next moment; Slim had never really had trouble with those urges in the first place, and she found the idea of doing that with the pearl oddly distasteful.

It wasn't until a full seven cycles passed since Orthoclase had handed over the pearl that Slim finally hit a breakthrough.

She had been analyzing some crime evidence that didn't seem to make sense. Improvising as she always did, she picked up an object of equivalent weight and heft to the supposed weapon (a small sulphide container) and swung it in the supposed trajectory of the evidence. But her swing was clumsy, and the container was heavier than she expected, it slipped from her grasp.

She had, more-or-less, hurled it at the pearl.

There was less than a single pelmetre between Slim and the rest pod that the pearl had been sitting on, and less than a parsec to avoid being hit. Slim didn't see the pearl move, but it had, and the container hit the back of the rest pod, smashing the control panel there.

“Hm. You dodged it,” she murmured, a little stunned.

“I'm sorry,” the pearl responded.

“No, don't be sorry,” Slim said. Her mind was ticking over fast, as it usually did when she was piecing evidence together. “Why did you dodge it? I didn't have time to tell you...”

“I have a basic self-preservation program in place, and you did not order me to ignore it.”

“I can do that?”

“It's recommended in the manual.”

“Which I never got, because you're illegal,” Slim mused, tapping her forehead. “And your previous owner didn't follow the instructions?”

“My previous owner didn't read the manual. She only owned me for three cycles before she lost me on the tracer.”

“I see.”

Slim wanted to test the pearl's reaction time, so naturally she didn't give any warning when she struck out and slapped it across the face. To her shock, the pearl didn't even attempt to defend itself.

“What...?” Slim sputtered. Her hand stung, she hadn't held back. “Why didn't you block me?”

“I'm sorry. Did you want me to block?”

A deep purple bruise was already blooming across the pearl's cheek. Looking at it, Slim felt a little sick.

“Well, yes!” she said, fiddling with her hair as she always did when she felt on edge. “You just told me you have self-preservation programming, I assumed you'd stop me and I wanted to see how fast you could...”

“You're my owner. I can't defend myself from you.”

“Even without me ordering you to let me beat you up?” Slim snorted, incredulously.

“Of course. It's a basic rule.”

Slim made a little noise in the back of her throat. She had assumed the pearls that had been mutilated by their murdered owners had been ordered not to defend themselves, but she hadn't realized that all pearls were programmed to be helpless towards their owners in particular.

“Okay,” Slim sighed. “I'm going to hit out at you again, and this time I do want you to try and avoid getting hit. In fact, I want you to avoid getting hit by anyone or anything from now on, okay?”

“I understand.”

Slim held off for about half a quadrant before she struck out again. This time, the pearl had been idling by the corner of the apartment and the only way to avoid Slim's fist was to jump over her.

She did.

It looked to Slim like the pearl had disappeared into thin air, with just the slight air displacement that set Slim's hair floating to indicate she had moved at all. Slim's fist just about glanced the wall, and the pearl was behind her.

That's interesting.

Slim knew from the evidence she had found that a pearl's physical strength was nothing compared to even the weakest of gems, but not much had ever been written about their speed. It made sense for them to be fast, they had considerably less mass than normal gems, but it seemingly had never been utilized in any real way.

A little shiver ran down her spine. The great advantage that the zoatox species had had against gemkind had been their unbelievable speed. Breeding, growing and attacking had all happened in the blink of a gem's eye, and every time gems managed to gain some upper ground the zoatox evolved and attacked in a new and more vicious way. Diamond Core's great and horrific sacrifice had just barely managed to stop them.

Whispers across Homeworld were saying that these murders bore the hallmarks of a zoatox attack. Perhaps they did, but pearls had been compared to zoatox more than once and for good reason.

Slim was just about to download the most recent pearl ownership manuals when her holocast rang. She didn't even have to look at it.

Another one.

…..

The markets were so busy when Slim made her way to the far quadrant it was hard to believe a gem had been shattered.

Let alone two.

Well, one and a half. We can't register a pearl as a gem shattering.

On the surface, it looked like the pearl was mere collateral damage. According to the witnesses (who were talking rapidly in the constructs about the little they had seen), whatever had struck Hematite had gone through the pearl. Slim inspected the perspex box the pearl had been inside, measuring the cracks.

There goes my theory.

Her mind had just been starting to come around to the idea that a pearl had committed these crimes, perhaps on the order of some gem that had seen possibility in their speed. Whatever had hit those targets had been long and thin, and could only do serious damage if they were used at high velocity. But she couldn't imagine a pearl destroying another pearl in the process.

On the other hand, pearls didn't seem to be capable of going against orders even at risk to their own safety, why wouldn't they destroy a pearl if they were following orders?

I don't know enough about pearls for this.

And that was probably why Orthoclase had handed over the pearl.

Lavender. That's its name. Her name.

“What are you thinking?” the commanding Amethyst asked her. “Turf war?”

“Unlikely,” Slim mumbled. “Hematite's had this shop here for seven hundred plus orbits.”

“So?” the Amethyst scoffed. “This whole quadrant changes hands every couple of orbits. Maybe she was a holdout.”

“Whatever you say,” Slim said, rolling her eyes.

The attack trajectory was once again coming from the ceiling. It had gone through the upper corner of the perspex box, through the pearl's gem, out of the base of the box and through Hematite's shoulder. The pearl wouldn't have felt a thing, but the Hematite had been in enough pain to scream, loud enough to attract the attention of every gem shopping in the district. By the time anyone was in direct line of sight, Hematite was shattered and whatever had attacked her was long gone.

All within the space of three parsecs at most.

No gem was capable of that kind of speed.

As far as they knew.

“Aw, they got the pearl too?”

A Spinel was lingering by the door (probably just released from the evidence constructs), staring at the perspex box with vague dismay.

“I'm afraid so,” Slim told her. “But even if it wasn't, it would have been taken in as evidence.”

“I know that,” the Spinel groaned. “I wanted to get dibs when it gets released on the pre-owned circuit.”

“Why? What's so special about this pearl?”

“It's freaky,” Spinel said with a cheerful grin. “Hematite used to sell tickets.”

Aha.

“Freaky how?” Slim asked, feigning disinterest by rummaging through her toolkit.

“Like, it's been dead the entire time she had it,” the Spinel explained. “Except sometimes it used to move when you weren't looking. Hematite kept it in that box to show she wasn't making it move. It was seriously spooky,”

Curiouser and curiouser.

“How shattered is it, exactly?” Spinel asked.

“Completely.”

“Ah, slag it,” Spinel muttered and slumped away.

Two mutilated pearls and a dead one that moved.

The squad dealing with the case were packing up and moving on. No doubt they'd be pinning this as a turf war between rival gangs and Hematite as an innocent bystander. Slim, of course, knew it ran much deeper than that, but she also knew they wouldn't listen to her.

…..

Slim lingered around the market stalls for a little longer than was comfortable for her. In the past it had been a good place to pick up rumours that lead to case facts, so it was worth the mild anxiety being surrounded by so many gems tended to provoke. They never clocked her for a patrol Amethyst; at her size, she was usually mistaken for a strangely-coloured Jade.

Even so, the cycle had nearly ended before she heard anything useful.

A downstreet stall selling offcut compound mixes was a quiet corner in the otherwise-crowded market, a steady stream of gems stopped by to drink compound and chat to the Iolite running the stall. Slim camped out there for a while before a Larimar stopped by and, over the course of three compounds, told her entire life story. Slim half-listened right up until she heard something interesting.

“She just hasn't been the same since,” the Larimar moaned. “It's like, nothing's really exciting anymore!”

“Well, why don't you hit the backstreet? They've got that blind pearl, it's supposed to be pretty nifty...” the Iolite responded. She sounded bored.

“We got banned from that place,” Larimar groaned. “She got carried away....besides, when you've seen the Murder Pearl take out old zoatox veterans everything else just pales in comparison.”

Murder Pearl?

“Better you than me,” Iolite shivered. “Personally I find the whole idea of murder pearls creepy.”

“Lucky for you there's only one then,” Larimar laughed. “But I asked and Hematite says she has no idea when the next fight is going to be. She says the pearl is down for maintenance, but like I believe that...”

There were many Hematites on Homeworld, and a good number of them involved in criminal activity, but Slim knew exactly what Hematite this Larimar was talking about. Only one Hematite was known for hosting underground fighting matches. She paid large amounts of cash to the Amethyst squadrons to look the other way.

…..

“I don't have it,” Hematite growled. “Don't you need a warrant?”

“Actually, I don't. I have authority to raid at random,” Slim responded. “I don't really feel like doing that, though.”

“Okay, what do you want? I can give you a few thousand...”

“I don't want cash, I just want you to answer some questions. All off the record.”

Hematite cursed under her breath, rubbed her temples and sighed.

“Okay, fine. I'll tell you what I can. Off the record. If it goes any further, I'll deny everything.”

“Deal,” Slim shrugged. “Tell me about the pearl.”

“It was a joke, okay? It was just some old broken pearl I got off the black market, got it rejigged and set it up in the arena. It was supposed to get smashed. It was never meant to fight.”

“But...it did fight?”

“It did. It fought and it won. Over and over.”

“How is that possible?” Slim asked. “Pearls aren't built for fighting, and from what I understand you get really tough gems volunteering for this kind of thing...”

“I don't know how, it just kept winning. It just...always found a way to kill them.”

“What orders did you give it?”

“I didn't give it any orders,” Hematite moaned. “I just said something stupid, like 'try not to die too quickly' or something, I don't know! I never had a pearl before, Larimar had a bunch of them...I didn't know what I was doing, okay?”

“Okay,” Slim agreed. “So, where is this pearl now?”

“No idea,” Hematite growled. “Orthoclase borrowed it and never returned it. Not that I want it back, it made me lots of money but it scared the slag out of me...Larimar left me for a while because of it....why do you want to know, anyway?”

“No particular reason,” Slim lied.

[dillydedalus]

november reading

so with lockdown #2, my master’s thesis done & handed in etc, i just had absolutely nothing going on so this month so... lots of books. featuring Houses full of statues and birds, an AU of weimar berlin, and... the plague?

someone who will love you in all your damaged glory, raphael bob-waksberg (audio) actually listened to this last month! anyway even tho i forgot about it, i actually really liked it! it’s a collection of short stories, all about love in some way, most with a strange twist - a couple wants a small wedding but the MIL insists they have to at least sacrifice 5 goats to the stone god and have a shrieking chorus, or it’s hardly a real wedding, right? that kind of thing. i really liked these stories; they were fun, hopeful without being cheesy (mostly), and the audio production, with lots of actors reading the different stories was fun. 4/5

the driver’s seat, muriel spark man this novella is nasty, but in a good way - sharp, vicious, mean but so well executed. it’s also pretty hard to discuss without spoiling it & i do think one should go into this unspoiled. but it’s certainly a classic of the unhinged women genre, showing lise seemingly making herself as noticeable, irritating and off-putting as she can on a trip to an unnamed (probably italian) city. 3.5/5

the empress of salt and fortune, nghi vo (singing hills cycle #1) a lovely novella set in an asian-inspired fantasy empire, which shows young cleric chih and their speaking hoopoe almost brilliant learn the story of a previous empress, a northerner who rose from exile as an cast-aside wife to power and of her servant, a peasant girl called rabbit. enjoyed the setting and the way this story unfolded through objects and rabbit’s retelling, and will definitely read the sequel novella which comes out in december. 3.5/5

pine, francine toon (audio) this is a crime/thriller type book with some horror elements about a young girl whose mother has disappeared mysteriously when she was very small. she lives with her dad in the scottish highlands close to a giant forest. the beginning is pretty cool & creepy, but then like 80% of it is just the girl being sad & wanting to know what happened to her mother & the dad being an alcoholic mess. and then most of the plot happens in the last 10% & isn’t great. disappointing. 2/5

where the wild ladies are, aoko matsuda (tr. from japanese by polly barton) a collection of short stories retelling japanese folklore stories about female ghosts/monsters with a feminist twist. on the whole, i liked these stories, but also found them a lot more light in tone than i expected; i guess i thought this would be more on the wild & raw side, so i ended up finding them a bit underwhelming. might also be a problem with lacking cultural context. will say tho that tilted axis press is great & i will seek out more of their books. 2.5/5

piranesi, susanna clarke (audio) god this was so good! so delightful! the House with its many rooms full of tides and clouds and birds and statues is a wonderful, magical yet melancholy setting, the narrator is kind & gentle & earnest, full of wonder and curiosity at the House and its mysteries (the contrast between the narrator’s and the Other’s attitude to the House... yes), the slow building up to the numerous reveals are just. very well done. the writing is lovely (did i almost cry about the albatross? yes) and chiwetel ejiofor is a great audio narrator. just all around lovely & the ending hits just right. 4.5/5

doomsday book, connie willis reading this book during lockdown #2.... a galaxy brain move i wouldn’t necessarily recommend. anyway this is set in a near future where time travel is used for historical research; oxford university is sending the young historian kivrin on the first mission to the middle ages (1320, which is perfectly safe, as far as medieval years go), but things go wrong and soon modern day oxford is under quarantine (ha. how wild. can you imagine.) and kivrin notices that some things are a bit off about where she is (spoiler it’s actually 1348 and y’all know what that means right... PLAGUE TIME). lots of people on goodreads found this slow and boring and while it is pretty damn slow (and for a world with time travel way too many plot points hinge on being unable to contact people by telephone), i found it riveting and uh dread-inducing throughout, but also really warm and immersive. adored this, was devastated at the end. even almost a month later i’m still in my feelings about it. 4.5/5

too loud a solitude, bohumil hrabal (tr. from czech by michael henry heim) a novella i intellectually appreciated but didn’t really love - the narrator works as a paper compactor in a nightmarish basement full of mice (that also get crushed by the hundreds) from where he imagines rat wars in the sewers but from where he also saves hundreds of books. it’s fascinating & well-written but as soon as it gets away from the nightmare paper-crushing basement, it just loses its appeal, especially when the narrator reminisces about his relationships to women (how to simultaneously put women on a pedestal and smear shit on them!!!). 3/5

i’m thinking of ending things, iain reid literary horror/thriller type book with a really intriguing first half, as a young woman is visiting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time while thinking of ending the relationship and things increasingly feel off (the parents are weird, there’s a picture on the wall that the boyfriend claims is him as a child, but is actually her, she gets weird voicemails from her own number). great sense of vague unease, very scary. then the second half kind of blows up the whole story in a way that i should theoretically find interesting but just found kind of underwhelming and not scary, especially since the ending then feels the need to spell it all out for you. 2/5

passing, nella larsen (reread) ugh this is brilliant and i almost don’t have anything to say about it so i’ll just summarise it i guess. it’s a novella about two black women in 1920s america, who knew each other as teenagers and who run into each other in a rooftop bar, where both of them are passing as white. irene finds out that clare is passing full-time, married to a white man who does not know that she is black, and although she strongly disapproves, she can’t help but be seduced (the queer subtext is strong here) into renewing their friendship, which begins to threaten her sense of stability and control. this book is pretty much pitch-perfect, has a lot of things to say about race, loyalty, what happens when categories we live by are threatened or destabilised, and is also just tight and elegantly written and. ugh. brilliant. 5/5

ring shout, p. djèlí clark an alternative history/fantasy book where the ku klux klan gets possessed by demons from another dimension and a group of black (and other marginalised) women (some men too) who are able to see these demons have to fight them from gaining more power through a showing of birth of a nation. note: the klan is still already evil without the demons, but their evil makes it easier for the demons to possess them. very cool concept, very cool setting, but i found the main character and some of the plot progression a little boring. 3/5

amberlough, lara elena donnelly (amberlough dossier #1) this is really just the nazi takeover of weimar berlin in an alternate world (literally... the denizens of the city of amberlough are amberlinians... the two epigraphs are from le carre and cabaret...), told thru an amberlinian spy (cyril) forced to work for the nazi-equivalent (the ospies), his secret cabaret mc/smuggling kingpin boyfriend (aristide), and rough-and-tumble sally bowles (cordelia). as such, it’s extremely my shit, although i will say that donnelly makes it a bit easy on herself by making the nazi parallel so very overt; the ospies’ ideology is not particularly detailed beyond ‘real fashy’ and wanting to unite four loosely federated states. it’s just.... a bit weaksauce, and while she does include an ethnic minority for the ospies to hate, this also doesn’t feel as fundamental to their ideology as it should. also cyril sucks. but these issues may be solved in the sequels & it was a lot of fun. also.... amazing cover. 3/5

the vanishing half, brit bennett very much in conversation with larsen’s passing, this is a 2020 historical novel about passing, colorism, and identity, in which desiree and stella, very light-skinned african american twins who grow up in a black town that values lightness very much, become separated when stella chooses to pass for white and marry a white man. the book is very immersive and engaging, and stella and desiree are interesting characters, but (i felt unfortunately) much of the book is focused on their daughters, whose chance meeting might expose stella/reunite the sisters/etc etc, but who weren’t as interesting. the plot also relies on coincidences a lot which is a bit annoying. still an interesting and entertaining read. 3/5

die stadt der anderen, anthology printed version of an art project where three pairs of authors were sent on trips through berlin, which each person writing about what the other person showed them and how they experienced the city through the other. there was nothing earth-shaking in this, but reading it during lockdown was lovely. in conclusion i love berlin... would love to experience it again some time. 3/5

the fire this time, edited by jesmyn ward collection of essays on anti-black racism in america, many in response to the beginning of the black lives matter movement. i don’t have much to say about it, but it is very good and i would recommend. as is often the case with essay anthologies about serious topics i don’t really think i can rate it.

intimations, zadie smith a very short collection of essays written during early lockdown. smith is always smart and fun but i wish these had been a little more focused on politics and less on personal experience, but like, you can’t really criticise a book for not being what you wanted it to be. ‘contempt as a virus’ was very good. 

superior: the return of race science, angela saini really solid, engaging and accessible discussion of race science and why... it’s bad & dangerous, both looking at race science in the past and the invention of race, and how it is returning and regaining influence (not to say that race science ever completely disappeared, but as saini explains, it moved into a more marginal space in the sciences after ww2). 3.5/5

the hive, camilo josé cela (tr. from spanish by j.m. cohen & arturo barea) spanish modern classic set in madrid during the last few years of ww2. told thru short fragmentary snippets with a huge rotating cast of characters, mostly lower and middle class, going about their days, with the theme tying them together being “the city, that tomb, that greased pole, that hive”, which is a very sexy line, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. the tone is v dispassionate and in combination with the huge cast it just made me profoundly unengaged. it also has the weird habit of changing scene in the middle of a paragraph, which i found rather confusing. 2.5/5 slave old man, patrick chamoiseau (tr. from french by linda coverdale) absolutely amazing short novel from the creolité movement aabout an old slave, seemingly resigned to his position, suddenly escaping and being pursued by the slavemaster’s terrifying monstrous mastiff through the forests of martinique, but really also about selfhood, relearning humanity, trauma and nature. the language is at turns sparse and lush and always gorgeous and the translation from french/creole uses endnotes (we love an endnote) and a strategy of doubling to retain some of the original language, which was really cool to read. so yeah this is brilliant. 4/5

mexican gothic, silvia moreno-garcia gothic horror novel about young mexican socialite noemí visiting her recently-married cousin in her new (english) family’s isolated, creepy and dilapidated mansion after said cousin sent a disturbing and strange letter calling for help. gothic horror shenanigans involving vivid dreams, family secrets and eugenics ensue. after a slow start, i absolutely devoured the second half in one afternoon bc once it gets going it REALLY gets going. not super-scary, but a nice creepy atmosphere & reveal. also loved how it combines the clear yellow wallpaper inspo (the cousin’s letter involves people in the wallpaper) and the focus on the english family’s eugenic ideology (not a fun fact but charlotte perkins gilman was a eugenicist), and the vain & flighty but also smart & stubborn protagonist. had a lot of fun with this. 3.5/5

i’m also still reading a tale of love and darkness by amos oz which is really good but which is taking me forfuckingever. 

[exodusfromeden]

Title: Medical Angels have too much time on their hands Character: Alastor Payne, and the Delphinium (Regeneration Unit) Summary: "Silly but wonderful things can happen in Heaven”

“What the fuck is that,” Diniel cursed, his left hand reaching out to grasp Laylah’s shoulder. “It’s moving, why is it moving?”

“I don’t know,” Laylah admits, looking vaguely uncomfortable as she looked towards Alastor for guidance but before the brown haired angel could reply, Diniel let out a high pitched yelp.

“It’s climbing!” His eyes went impossibly huge as he openly gaped at the small furry creature. “Is it suppose to move that fast?”

“I’m not-,” Alastor began, “I’m not entirely sure what it is, Diniel.”

“Yeah, but is it suppose to climb like that.”

“I don’t know,” the seraphim replied, his voice firm but not unkind. “I think it’s acting just like it sho—”

“Holy shit! Alastor, it just put nuts in its cheeks!”

Alastor’s eyes go large as he stares up at the small creature, it’s puffy tail fidgeting with every movement. ‘It can’t possibly be trying to eat that many acorns’ he thinks, ‘they’re almost as big as he is.’

                                 ______________________________ Rahmiel rubbed at the space between his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger, wiping away the stress that resided there. He shifted slightly, placing the bulk of his weight on his right foot as he adjusted his robes to rest over his face, his halo shining behind his head in an array of golds and greens.

‘Two hundred years old’ he thought to himself, watching the way Alastor watched Belial from his stationed position outside the training grounds. ‘Two hundred years old and following her around like an imprinted fledgling.’

He didn’t blame Alastor, not really, love is a natural thing, he knows this to be true… but love is a selfish thing too, it blinds even the most kind and gentlest of angels to the pain they inflict upon the souls of others. It is tragic, really, that this cycle has etched itself into the hearts of two of his closest friends—Alastor with his long haired champion and Miniel’s unrequited feelings for a smitten man.

He does not know how it will play out, does not want to even imagine the crimes they will carve into their ribcages for such feelings. There is a war coming, he knows this to be true, but he is a Domination and not a Principality, so he keeps his lips sealed and his eyes ahead, pretending not to see the lines of revolution scrawled down Lucifer’s spine.

(There is a war coming, he knows this to be true, and with it will come the scars, the lashings, and he can only hope that the wounds will scab over soon.)                      _____________________________________

Miniel is still soft when she meets Alastor for the first time, her body is still collapsable—piles of hydrogen gas strung together with bits of wire and string. She is young but so is he. Angels can never be truly young, never truly wear the skin of children, but they are youthful still and newly made with the scent of ozone still sticking to their feathers.

She remembers the fear, remembers the stardust dribbling from the hem of his cloak, remembers the way the sleeves had fluttered to reveal hands that were not hands but rather pieces of space mashed together into a form very similar to a hand. His eyes—if one could call them that, because truly there were not eyes as much as central points in the space of nothingness that masquerade as a face—had been emerald and moss woven together on a bed of sea algae and green tinted gas giants… and she had been afraid.

(For herself, for the pieces of herself that were still fragile and easily dismantled, for the small corner of her soul that had jumped at the feeling of his grace sliding against her own.)

But there had been excitement too. A vicious type that bubbled across her body and tinted her skin (not skin, never skin) a yellowish hue and her eyes a bright blue as she tried to smile with a mouth full of teeth and misplaced horror. (She had been young then, still soft and ignorant of the shapes she would later weave her body into.)

‘There is nothing to fear.’ He told her, before making a sound a smile would make if a smile could make a sound. He reached a galaxy tinted hand towards her own and spoke, ‘My name is Alastor.’

‘I am Miniel’ she had told him. ‘I am here to work under your wings, may Yahweh bless our meeting.’                               ____________________________

She screams the first time Alastor removes his hood.

(Not physically for there is no air in heaven, no way for the words to leave her mouth and reverberate through the bleached halls of heaven, but she reaches out with her grace and slams it down. It is very much like a scream.)

Miniel had expected the horror, all angels are terrifying and Alastor is the worst among them all, but she had not expected the reshaping. She had not expected to hear the cracking of bones ringing through his grace and echoing between her ribs.

The space, she had expected that too, had soaked outwards at first and dripped downwards like a gas turned liquid between seizing up and rising into the shape of a skull. His nose, long and straight with a turned tip, had come next, followed by the ears, neck and eyes. The stars had faded into a dark black as the color seeped from his face and slowly turned lighter as tufts of wispy brown hair tumbled from the base of his skull.

The entire process had only taken moments but it had been horrific and Miniel had to fight the urge to flee from the scene as her beloved mentor took form before her own eyes. She had not known it possible, for an angel who was not an archangel to create a form from nothing, but Alastor is not nothing, she supposes.

His eyes flutter open, a rich emerald staring deeply into her own and Miniel can feel her knees buckle under her weight and all she can think is AlastorAlastorAlastor.

“Lesson one,” he says. “Making a ves—”

But it is already too late because Miniel has stopped listening, her eyes locked upon the gentle slope of his jaw and neck.

‘Oh,’ she thinks in sudden understanding, ‘oh no.’

                      _______________________________________

Alastor remembers an angel from a lifetime ago—this Phounebiel is not the same one he left behind on the battlefield and as much as it pains him, he must accept that time has weathered the angel he had once known… but he is different too, he has become a man unrecognizable from the creature he once was. (He had been soft before in a way he can never be again, his ledger is dripping in blood and fatal overdoses and all he can think is how he had said goodbye to the brown haired boy he had been when he sealed Famine into that gravestone.) ‘You’d like my friend’ Alastor’s words come unbidden from his throat, twisting his tongue to the power of his will and leaving him wide eyed and mortified in the aftermath. He is sure the horror of his words shows on his face but Phounebiel’s smile never falters. ‘Who is your friend’ they say instead and Alastor feels a deeply seated need to scream at them that it’s them, that he is their friend. Instead he flounders and reaches blindly for a friend, any friend, he can give them. ‘She has red hair’ he says, ‘with long legs and eyes like dried grass, she’s pretty and very gay’ but then he freezes, ‘do you even know what gay is—most angels don’t, it’s a human thing mostly, a gender thing rea-’ ‘A gender thing?’ they questions and Alastor is reminded that such things don’t exist in heaven, not really, so he tries to explain. ‘Gender is, uhm’ he shifts in his seat wishing Shealtiel was here to help him, ‘gender is what you feel, while sex is what bits you have.’ Phounebiel looks confused, ‘are they not the same thing?’ ‘No,’ Alastor says, ‘humans can’t just pick like we do, sometimes they’re born in the wrong body.’ ‘Then why have the bits at all,’ they ask in abject horror. Alastor laughs, rubbing the back of his neck, ‘it’s a human thing.’

[ravenwytchbytch]

The Beggar Princess

Ch: IV - Loyalty

Elijah was as restless to continue his evening duties in the one placed he detested the most. The high council, where all business involving the crown, the realm, and its people were discussed and as always he listened to Ser Donovan read the account for the evening. High on the priority list as every evening since he had sat in the council was the rebellion, the only minor issue that needed the attention of the council was the date of his brother’s marriage.

“If we can begin I would like to settle on a date of the union for our Crowned Prince and Duchess Forbes.” He looked at the list of dates chosen by the Eminent Eüllo. “His Eminence believes that an auspicious day would bring great blessings for the union while providing hope to those in the land.”

Kol smothered chuckle, “Why not have them marry on the day father took the crown. That was truly an auspicious day.”

 Kol’s comment earned him a disapproving look from Elijah, “What day is more auspicious than the Treath celebration.”

“As you say brother the festivities along with the celebration should lift the spirits of the people.” Kol gasped in a feign attempt of surprise, “but I had forgotten about the rebelling lords and commoners.”

“Reports from the Southeastern camps have seen a dramatic drop in rebel activity. The lords in the region report that the calm brought to the countryside has seen a return to commerce to villages and the fields harvest is on their way“, Elijah announced in a steady tone.

“Yet, Lord Elijah, in the West I have heard by my own brother’s account that the forces there have tripled in the last few days.” Lord Salvatore Damon, a raven-haired upstart that had somehow been elevated to a Lord important enough to be in the chamber.

“Who cares about the West? Nothing but bought title lords, no offense Lord Salvatore, and vineyards.” Kol said mockingly. “Moreover what do we care for a region of field peasants?”

“These are our people-”

“Who are killed by their neighbors, their countrymen.” Kol interjected, “Honestly brother, we didn’t have much issue killing them before when we were seizing the throne and kingdom, but now split hair over them liking us.”

“I hate to agree with his highness but he is right. Crush the Western lords; the longer we wait In hope that they will be pacified by the marriage the more time we give the disgruntled villagers to side with them.” Damon seemed far too pleased at his idea.

“And if we continue we ignite the tempered flames of the nobles who have settled down in other regions.” Elijah slammed his fist on the table.

Staring down the three individuals in the room Kol and Lord Damon were like vicious dogs ready to strike the first blow between one another; meanwhile, Ser Donovan was the only one who had remained silent on the matter 

“And you Ser Donovan, while do you choose to remain silent on such matters?” Elijah had a hard time containing his anger.

Ser Donovan cleared his throat pausing for a moment to stare at the three noblemen before him, “The people are not so easily distracted my lord. They certainly desire a return to normalcy but to wager it all on a royal marriage, forgive me, but it seems a foolish gambit.”

Elijah’s control was waning he was at his wit’s end; Elijah slowly rose from his seat his eyes locked on all three.

“I see we will not have any progress today gentlemen. I think we can end our conversation for today.” Elijah dismissed the three councilmen present.

He was quick to the door passing by the three and not bothering to offer his hand for courtesy, Elijah was in no mood for courtly decorum. While in the past the appearance of Niklaus was sporadic, the King’s was completely absent. As always his father, and brother, Niklaus, had left the running of the country to him, and while 10 men were to sit at the table few bothered to come insulted by the absence of their King and Crowned Prince Niklaus, but it was nothing new for Elijah

Elijah could hardly remember the softer years of his youth, a vague image of what his father remained in his mind but since the day his mother remarried Mikael Mikaelson had shown to be far more hands-off, especially when it came to him and his older brother, Finn, well-being. If it was a task that was not to his liking he would ignore it completely. In truth in his younger years, his step-father had a great distaste for him and his brother. When his younger siblings had been born he did well to push them behind. After all, Mikael was a Duke; so naturally, his children took precedent over step-children whose father had been an Earl.

Despite the effort he threw to separate his siblings Elijah had been close to each one. Niklaus had carried the years of Mikael’s pressure of perfection as well as his criticisms when he fell short of his expectations. He was good at shaming the two of them simultaneously; one for not meeting his expectation and the other for realizing his best wasn’t that. Yet when the war had started Mikael had called on him for the support of his claim. He had given Mikael control of his father’s army all in the hopes of receiving in some vain attempt at acknowledgment.

It was in those months that Mikael proved the ever masterful manipulator, praising Elijah for his genius over his tactics, but giving the credit for the victory to Niklaus. Elijah scowled at the memory of his jealousy and truthfully his desperation for fatherly affectionate.

Even in his darkest thoughts, Elijah would recognize the familiar voices of Lady Petrova whose soft voice echoed up the courtyard. Simply fashioned in a long sleeved dark emerald linen dress her hair was done in a plaited fashion, atop her dark crown of hair was a silver circlet encrusted with emeralds.

“My lady the fabrics you’ve chosen were beautiful.” Her cheerful tone was uplifting tugging a small smile to the somber lord.

“I hope Prince Niklaus approves of it.” Lady Caroline had a soft smile and a softer way of speaking.

“What a sight to behold, no Lord Elijah?” Elijah mood spoiled in an instant as he slid his glance to his side.

“Yes, I am glad that Lady Caroline is in good spirits.”

“I was more interested in the tasty little brunette.” Elijah swallowed his building rage.

“You know very well that disgracing a lady-in-waiting for her royal highness is a punishable offense.”

“I’m glad to see that Prince Kol has been spared of such punishments.” Damons eyes locked with Elijah’s, “anyway she isn’t a princess yet,” 

Lord Salvatore leaned lazily against the balcony railing his eyes always holding a mocking gleam.

“What do you need?” his patience thin with the upstart noble.

“I’m appalled by your gruffness. I only wish to admire the view.” his voice was perverse it was enough to earn him a threatening look from Lord Elijah.

The cheery laughter below was the only thing that could divert his attention from the smug face of Damon Salvatore. Spinning and leaping gracefully below, Lady Petrova’s danced for her Lady Caroline. Elijah was mesmerized by Katherine’s graceful steps and dainty movement as she seemed to lose herself to a song only she could hear.

“She has quite a skill doesn’t she?” A growing anger burned in Elijah’s stomach at Damon’s remark.

Before he could retort he spotted a familiar faced heading towards the joyful scene. 

“Sister!” Caroline called out in joy stopping in mid-step to curtsy as if remembering herself.

A look of disgust fell on his sister’s face, “Hello, Lady Caroline.”

“How is your day, your highness?” Caroline asked pushing past Katherine to grab Rebekah’s hand. 

“Dull as always.” Her eyes scanning the chipper duchess, “Would you care to take a stroll? 

“I’d be delighted.” She motioned to her ladies once more leading the way with Princess Rebekah on her arm.

He felt a mixture of feelings at the departure of Katherine Petrova but the winning feeling was relief that she was no longer within Damon Salvatore’s leering gaze.

“It’s odd, there isn’t much to see on the eastern wing, just one way to the city walls.” He could hardly hold back the amused look on his face, “Isn’t where the former Queen-” Elijah did not need to hear the rest his feet had taken off before the old snake could finish his false realization.

He ran quickly down the stairway, he could not understand his siblings’ obsession of making the girl miserable. After all, no one in his family was free of their own crimes; each had a stained hand in the bloody aftermath of the noble family. From afar he spotted the group near Aurous Keep he was stunned by his sister’s viciousness, a false smile on her face but cynical look in her eyes was enough of a confession of her intentions.

Caroline hadn’t understood why Princess Rebekah had insisted on the east wing, the battlements, the city wall, and Keep was the only thing to see there.

“I’m sure you know the full history surrounding the Aurous Keep?”

“No, unfortunately, the keep must have been built during my absence.”

Rebekah pursed her lips whether trying to hold back a laugh or smile Caroline did not enjoy not knowing.

“At your time it may have been known as the Beata Keep. Do you want to know why it was changed?”

Uneasiness seemed to pass Princess Rebekah’s ladies something was not right. At the moment she glanced for the briefest of second to Katherine as she played around the small ring on her pinky finger.

“Why yes, yes I would,” she said with a steady voice and a soft smile.

Rebekah velvety laugh did little to shake Caroline’s resolve as she followed the blonde up the steps to the city wall.

“As you may have heard my father’s army was less than a fortnight away from the city gates.” Princess Rebekah this time had linked her arm around Caroline’s arm, a chill running down Caroline’s body, “The late Queen Justine had been going mad since the departure of your uncle, late King Emil, into battle. Many in the castle were worried for her, but mostly for her children’s safety, so in her paranoia, she did the only thing she thought safe. Immurement.”

Rebekah’s fingers dug into Caroline’s arm keeping her close to her side, “She ordered the guards to seal them in Beata keep until the King’s return, but as you know my brother Nik had slain him during the Battle of Stead. Her madness seemed to quicken behind those walls, one guard recalls hearing her shouting for her mother. Once the gates were open my father was quick to locate Queen Justine but what they found,” she gave a haughty laugh and devilish smile to Caroline and the murmuring group of ladies.

Rebekah moved onto the allure of the wall the view of the kingdom and the majesty’s road was breathtaking but Caroline could hardly admire the view as Rebekah pulled her closer to her.

“They found her ghastly white her once luxurious hair of gold matted and wild. Her clothes were covered in her own filth and blood. The smell of the keep was daunting and well,” she chuckled once more, “many of seasoned soldiers could not believe the things they saw. In one corner laid the tiny body of the princess her head bashed in by her mother. In Queen Justine’s bed were the bloated bodies of the young crown princes. For such a heinous crime my father hung her from the castle-“

Rebekah head jostled from the force of the blow, there was a gasp of shock from all that were present. Caroline watched in disbelief as Katherine stood in front of the injured princess her eyes burning. Rebekah cupped her injured cheek the warm feeling of blood flowed slowly in her hands.

“How dare you!” she screeched madly staring wildly at Caroline and Katherine. “I will have your hands for daring to-“

“Rebekah!” Everyone turned to the short of breath noble. Rebekah looked frightened for the briefest of moment.

The gathered ladies knelt in unison their eyes downcast as they cleared the way for Elijah. Katherine exchanged the briefest of look at Elijah before stepping behind him. There was no hiding the fierce anger of his sister but he would not make a spectacle in front of gossiping tongues. Taking her by her forearm they walked further down the walkway.

“I want that bitch’s hands!” her words trembled out with rage as she shot a daggered look to the defiant brunette.

“What are you doing here? Why would you bring Lady Caroline?” he shook his sister with anger.

“You’re mad at me!” she pulled away from him her anger redirected to him, “I did nothing wrong that rabid bitch-“

“Enough! You brought Lady Caroline for some malicious game and you’ve paid the price for it.” He dabbed his sleeve against his sister’s wet cheek, the wound was small but her face had already begun to discolor, “have your ladies take you to my chambers. I will summon a physician to tend to this.”

“I want that girl punished.” She slapped his hand away tears of rage burning in her dark blue eyes.

“We cannot or risk upsetting her mistress.” Rebekah scowled pushing past her brother her eyes burning with unquenched anger.

Caroline stepped back as Rebekah stormed down the stone steps Caroline flashed a condemning glare to Katherine.

“Lady Caroline, I apologize for whatever my-“, Caroline rose her hand finding it harder to control her anger.

“Thank you for showing mercy, my Lord.” Caroline turned away from him making her way down and away from the accursed place.

Katherine remained behind her eyes low and her head down as Elijah stood before her, “I am deeply sorry.”

Elijah tipped her head back his eyes locking with her own eyes, he was somehow always prone to losing himself to their dark pull, her scent was intoxicating and for a moment his rage turned into frustrating control. He scanned her delicate face, her gentle eyes, her pouty lips, and her slender creamy neck that had a silver chain resting around it. An all too familiar silver chain that had once rested on his mother’s neck now adorned itself between the valley of Katherine’s breasts.

It had been her wedding gift from his step-father and it was never far from her even in her final moments she had clutched the metal in her hand as she clung onto it for some strength. Elijah pushed her away far too roughly but he felt betrayed and embarrassed. The sudden realization that the innocence he had seen in her had been all in his mind. This confused and frighten beauty was no better than any of the title seeking wretches that clung to his brother Kol’s attention.

“Excuse me.” It was all he could muster as he hurried away from Katherine.

With Elijah’s hasty departure Katherine stood by herself on the city wall steps Katherine had a terrible feeling of loneliness that she hated admitting to herself.

Katherine dragged her feet as she made her way back to her lady and for good reason; she had acted irrationally to Princess Rebekah’s taunts. Rebekah’s plan had been obvious the moment she had uttered Caroline’s family members’ name. Even with that knowledge, she had felt the rage and disgust that Rebekah had provoked from Caroline. 

 Caroline would certainly be harsh with her for the next few days but she was certain she was not hated by her. Outside her ladies chamber door, she took a deep breath to brace herself for the silent treatment Caroline would surely give her.

Katherine was wrong as she felt the palm of her lady’s hand against her face, the barrage of strikes alternated from subtle blows to head to close-fisted whacks to Katherine’s back.

“I should have you whipped!” Caroline ragged breathing made her words shake, “How could you be so foolish!”

“I do not apologize for defending-” Katherine snapped back as she stumbled away from Caroline’s assault, “-you.”

Katherine stared in stunned disbelief, the ragged breathing had not been Caroline pent up anger but that of a distraught and sobbing friend. Trails of tears came down like a waterfall on Caroline’s face as the stained her cheeks.

Caroline struggled to compose herself, struggled to turn off the anger, the hurt, the fear, that had all come out after Rebekah had been struck. The awkward silence of the on looking ladies had Katherine motioning them out. Taking Caroline in her arms she whispered gently her apology.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered softly.

Caroline’s shoulder shook violently as she let her guard down, despite it being against her better interest, she showed the weakness she had been afraid of others seeing, “I don’t- I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to withstand such viciousness.” her words came out in a jumbled mess.

“You are Caroline. You are.” Katherine reassured as she gently guided Caroline to her bed, “I promise you, you will not break. I’ve seen you survive on nothing but on that strength.”

Easing her lady into bed Katherine spoke softly as unburden her lady of her slippers and loosened the lace on her tight bodice. Katherine stood silently by Caroline’s bedside for a few minutes until she was certain she had fallen to sleep, she could hardly blame her for the emotional exhaustion she felt. Taking a seat by the edge of the bed Katherine watched in silent vigilance of her sleeping mistress.

A/n: Hi guys I’m back with another long, unedited, chapter and I hope you guys could bear with me on these upcoming chapters and I promise that the next chapter there will be more Klaroline. Promise! I hope you guys enjoy it and again please review.

[libertariantaoist]

Upon waking this [Tuesday] morning, with some vague idea of what I’d be writing  about today – the weakness of the antiwar movement, the utter uselessness of  what passes for the “left,” the seeming impossibility of accomplishing anything  meaningful in the current political atmosphere – I went directly to my computer.  As is my wont, I first checked Twitter, and immediately came upon two tweets  that crystallized, in 149 characters each, my thoughts.

The first was this tweet by Glenn Greenwald:

Eric Boehlert, who works for Media Matters, is your archetypal Boomer-progressive  Clinton-worshipping Democratic party activist, the sort who shows up at a town  hall meeting called by some hapless GOP congressman carrying a sign adorned  with a hammer-and-sickle that says “Trump is a traitor!” Forgetting his liberal  past – indeed, ditching the historical memory of an ideological tradition exemplified  by such now-forgotten figures as Adlai  Stevenson – Boehlert and his numerous clones have embraced the methodology  and mindset of someone who was once their version of the Anti-Christ: Sen. Joseph  McCarthy. And, in the process, they are transforming their party and its liberal  periphery into the “left” wing of the War Party.  Not that the party leadership  hasn’t always been a sword in the hands of Ares,  but today the difference is that even the “left” wing – yes, even the sainted  Bernie Sanders – is jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon.

The second tweet was by journalist Mike Tracey:

That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being  waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States – and look at the faces  in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is  happening to their country,  and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most  of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied  bombs dropped by US-manufactured war planes, the rest killed by starvation.  The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen  – one of the poorest nations on earth – with the aid and active assistance of  the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even  deeper involvement by the US.

Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western  media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia,  where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against  official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media,  while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President  Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers  from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent  with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual,  they settled on one photo as the “iconic” image meant to convey the plight of  the Russian people. Here it is:

There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently  lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague  emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions  one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of those  Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition,  their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance – a militance  that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers,  their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us.

I don’t mean to denigrate the legitimate grievances of the Russians who oppose  Putin and his government. Yet I have to wonder what Western liberals think they  can do about it: expressions of support for that well-dressed well-fed woman  and her comrades are bound to have the opposite of their intended effect, much  like Russian expressions of support for anti-Vietnam war protesters during the  cold war era rebounded to the benefit of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon.  Beyond that, what are our options? Shall we launch a regime change operation  against the Kremlin, as we did in Iraq against Saddam Hussein, funding exile  groups and eventually invading the country? That seems off the table to all  but the crazies among us – although, let me tell you, the crazies are more numerous  and powerful than one would hope.

On the other hand, there is something Americans can do to alleviate  the situation in which the Yemenis find themselves. Our government is not only  supporting the murderous assault on those children but is also contemplating  even greater crimes on that blood-soaked soil. So where is the outrage? Where  is the coverage? Where are the “liberals”?

I’ll tell you where they are: they’re too busy holding witch-hunts disguised  as congressional hearings devoted to rooting out “Russian influence” and – yes!  – even “treason”  in the Trump administration. They have no time for those Yemeni  children, no energy to protest their fate, because all their passion is exhausted  in an anti-Russian crusade that they imagine will bring down the hated Trump.  It’s easy for them and their cheerleaders in the media to identify with that  Russian lady in the “iconic” photo: a photo that’s “iconic” because its subject  is so much like those who took it and published it and spread it worldwide.  Our Birkenstock-wearing Boomer liberals can imagine themselves in her expensive  shoes, being carried (ever so gently!) by the police to the paddy-wagon, much  like the anti-Trump protesters of “The Resistance” here in the US – except they  aren’t being arrested here, are they? Oh well, one can always fantasize…

I thought about all this while reading a  recent piece on The Nation – that flagship of the Old Left – on the  future of the antiwar movement. It’s quite a depressing read: indeed, it’s infuriating.  Not because they never mentioned Antiwar.com – I’m used to snubs from the left  – but because there are hardly any references to specific countries where the  US is currently militarily engaged: instead, we are told that these wars are  “secret.” To which one can only respond with astonishment: how “secret” is the  Afghan conflict, the fighting in Iraq and Syria, and US complicity in the Saudi  invasion of Yemen? The answer is: not at all. And NATO’s provocations aimed  at Russia are never mentioned, although The Nation has indeed run articles  warning of the dangers of poking the Russian bear.

Instead of concrete analysis of what the US is actually doing abroad, and how  to oppose it, author Daniel May writes about how to “merge social justice and  antiwar activism,” i.e. how to turn what’s left of the antiwar movement into  a playground for “social justice warriors” who are more concerned with “intersectionality”  than international action to stop the slaughter. And of course there is the  requisite Trump-bashing, which nevertheless underscores the complete lack of  any understanding of either Trumpism or what’s really going on in this country  on the part of the left:

“    [T]hough he was a loathsome vehicle for the message,  when Trump asked whether the United States should provide defense services for  Germany, Japan, and South Korea, when he questioned whether we should remain  in NATO, and when he lamented the disaster of the Iraq War, he raised issues  familiar to critics of American empire.”

Well, yes, and millions of Americans voted for him precisely because of that:  the sort of Americans who the antiwar movement has never had the slightest hope  of convincing, and has made no effort to reach out to. And of course they couldn’t  even bring themselves to make such an effort because, after all, those people  are “loathsome.”

?The left, today, is worse than useless – they’re an obstacle, perhaps the  greatest obstacle, to peace. The “liberals” who are the mass base of the Democratic  party have been rapidly transformed into left-neocons, whose virulent ranting  against Russia has made them into NATO’s most loyal foot-soldiers. This also  goes for those “leftist” hustlers who exist on the Democratic party periphery,  like Bernie Sanders and his supporters, who exist solely to raise the flag of  the “left”-wing – and then hurriedly haul it down once they’ve been gypped out  of making any gains by the party leadership.

It’s true that there are people on the left, like Glenn Greenwald and the folks  over at Consortium News, for example, who are sincere in their opposition to  the neocon-ization of American liberalism, but their isolation and small numbers  only highlight the fact that they are lone voices in the wilderness, drowned  out by the Eric Boehlerts and Adam Schiffs.

So – where are we? What does the current political landscape look like for  those of us who are fighting for a rational foreign policy?

On the left, as I’ve said, there is nothing – zero, zilch, nada. The  remnants of the old Marxist left have been absorbed by the “social justice warriors,”  and their agenda is simply to subordinate ending imperialism to their various  identity politics hobbyhorses.

On the right, we have a mixed bag: the old-style Republicans, of course, are  hopeless. However, as even May pointed out, the Trump people are another matter  altogether: millions of them voted for Trump on the basis, at least in part,  of his anti-interventionist rhetoric. Of course, as any student of American  history knows, “America first’ was the rallying cry of the biggest antiwar movement  on record, even bigger than the anti-Vietnam war movement. (By the way, that  war, World War II, was supported by the left, and the old America First Committee  is today demonized by liberals and leftists alike.)

Standing apart from both left and right are the libertarians, who, today, are  more confused and disorganized than ever. And in the Beltway, their representatives  are – like the left – viscerally hostile to Trump’s supporters, and, in the  case of the  Cato Institute, show every sign of going along with the anti-Russian hysteria  that’s has Washington, D.C. in its grip. As for the Libertarian Party, the record  of the Gary Johnson-Bill Weld ticket is hardly encouraging: in the end, the  campaign degenerated into a joke, with Weld advocating a “global” military presence,  and, in the end, all but endorsing Hillary Clinton. On the plus side of the  ledger, there are the old-style Rothbardians, who understand the possibilities  of right-wing populism: alas, they are few in number.

To summarize: we’re in pretty bad shape. But there is a silver lining: the  Trump voters may soon recognize the huge disconnect between what Trump said  and promised on the campaign trail –no more regime change, no unnecessary foreign  wars, no more “globalism,” anti-NATO – and what he’s actually doing in office.  By highlighting this disconnect at every opportunity, and screaming bloody murder  (literally!), we can win them to our cause.

Of course, readers of The Nation would be horrified by this strategy:  for them, these people are not only “loathsome,” they’re also “deplorable,”  as their heroine Hillary infamously put it. And there’s more than a few libertarians  – many of whom are simply liberals with a thin “free maket” veneer – who would  react similarly. The Trumpkins are too crude for their delicate sensibilities.

Well, isn’t that just too bad. As the great Camille Paglia would put it, my  message to them is: “Go take a  hike!” Let the liberals, the lefties, the “liberal-tarians” virtue-signal  to their hearts’ content, while the children of Yemen are sacrificed on the  war god’s bloody altar. The rest of us have work to do.

We’ll work with what we have, and do our job – which is to address the majority  of the American people, who have long suffered under the War Party’s reign and  are finally beginning to rebel in their own uninformed, inconsistent, and inchoate  way. Our job is to inform them, point out the inconsistencies of those they’ve  placed their trust in, and show them the way forward. We don’t shrink from it:  indeed, we embrace our task — because there is no alternative.

I, for one, am optimistic: we may have lost a great deal of the politically  conscious types, but we have an opportunity – for the first time in many years  – to win over the Great American Middle. And therein lies hope for a new generation  of anti-interventionist activists to take shape and rise to the occasion. Can  this country be saved from falling into the abyss of endless wars and inevitable  bankruptcy? I don’t know – but I have the feeling I’m going to spend the rest  of my life finding out.

[stormhavenmedia]

Authors note; As always follow the links and research on your own, believing random dudes on the internet is how we got here. Nothing in this should be taken as a reason to in any way hate any group. Racism is bad for you. My purpose here is to set the record straight and present the actual undisputed, but little known facts. Prejudice and Judgement are two different things. 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

George Orwell

   Recent years have seen the rise of Somali politicians in North America. The two most prominent examples being Ahmed Hussein, (Axmed Xuseen) Canadian Minister of Immigration during the first Trudeau government, and Ilhan Abdullahi Omar first term US congresswoman and famously leader of the progressive “squad”.

  Both Xuseen and Ohmar have similar backstories. They were welcomed by Canada and the US respectively as refugees. Both were supported by generous social systems in their first years in their nations that saved them. I say “saved them” because under the legal definition provided by the 1951 Refugee Convention, to be considered refugees they could not have returned to Somalia “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” So if they were legitimate refugees then de facto Canada and the United States saved them from brutal persecution. Both were given every opportunity to succeed, and succeed they did. Both received high-end educations not readily available to much of the population. Both were elected to high public office that incredibly few citizens can aspire to.

  Both Axmed Xuseen and Ilhan Ohmar have shown their immense gratitude by using every opportunity, and the full weight and very real privilege of their offices, to denigrate both societies with a literally endless stream of cringe-inducing epithets. The vitriol with which they assault the people and societies who sponsored them is incredibly vicious in both cases. Every “white” American and Canadian are brutal racists. We have no culture, no history of any note. Our home countries are merely constructs of “white-colonial-settler” supremacy. The societies that provided them with an elite education and elected them to high office, are according to them, irredeemable and inherently racist to their cores. This message is blasted into the national conscience by seemingly unlimited access to the corporate media, the odious CBC, academia and the utter adulation of the economic elite “woke” classes. Their views are even being heralded in the British medical Journal, The Lancet as scientific fact. The piece shown below generally asserts that all evil in the world, from slavery to colonization, originates with “whiteness” which must be swept from the earth.

 Our Somali heroes/victims claim positions of moral authority due to the inherently superior non “white” culture that spawned them. Their history is not stained with the conquest and subjugation of  the “other” as is all “white” culture. They hold themselves literally incapable of being racist.

  They both site their adherence to Islam, the religion of peace, and thus cement their position as historical victims. Both like to lecture the inherently racist “white” citizens who elected them about the massive deficits in  their culture, and their desperate need to end “white superiority” and “whiteness” itself in a vaguely genocidal incitement. Any dissent is met with furious tirades, and legislation, criminilizing Islamophobia.

   What follows is a history both Ohmar and Axmed and the legions of the “woke” hoped you would never learn.  Through deliberate and sustained action, our education systems have been manipulated over generations to ensure we forget our history. We are taught only the very selective facts those in power wish us to know. The warping of our education system has been very successful. I have a college level education and have studied history all my life yet much of what this was unknown to me. This has been a long game. It has allowed these two individuals, and many others to perpetrate some of the most epic gas-lighting in human history.

    One culturally iconic feature of Somali culture and language neither Axmed Xuseen or Ilhan Ohmar have chosen to share with us putrid “whites” is the word “Jareer”.  Jareer is an ancient Somali term of racist derision for the Bantu peoples, and anyone else they feel is racially inferior. Millions of Bantu people were hunted and sold in open slave markets in the ports of Zeila and Mogadishu for at least a thousand years. The fact is that Somalis were beneficiaries of the brutal Islamic wars of conquest that carved out the Maghreb wiping out the indigenous cultures. This meant they also enslaved Oromo and Nilotic  people. Somalis had a much different impression of these groups. Their capture, treatment and duties of the two groups of slaves differed markedly, with Oromo favored because Oromo subjects were not viewed as racially jareer by their Somali captors. Both the use of the term Jareer and the deeply held, openly racist, views of the Somali population persist to this day.

   In the 700 years immediately before Europeans came to Africa, Somalia was one of the centers of the brutally colonial Islamic Caliphates.  The Somalis created an empire based on trading with the burgeoning Islamic world being carved out with the sword from the Indus Valley to Europe, killing millions between the rise of Muhammad and the beginning of the European Age of Empire.

Irfan Husain, Islamic scholar speaking about the muslim conquest of India that began around 1000 AD,  “Demons from the Past”

“While historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistan…The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster.

“Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful. These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillage…”

 Much of the lucrative merchandise the Somali Caliphs taxed were chained human beings. While Europeans were busy in their mud huts trying to stitch together the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Somali Caliphates were instrumental in the trafficking on some 12 million human beings. They then continued the practice for another 600 years after European contact, until the Italian colonial administration abolished slavery in Somalia at the turn of the 20th century. Somalia’s slaving empire had lasted over a thousand years.

I will rely on mostly African scholars where possible for historical and cultural contextual telling of this story in detail.

 We begin with Nat Amarteifio; historian, and former mayor of Accra, Ghana’s capital. Speaking about the origins of Slavery

“There is a willful amnesia about the roles that we played in the slave trade……….The system already existed,” Amarteifio said. “The Europeans saw it. And thought: ‘Ah, we can try these people in our lands in the New World…..But Amarteifio says the Europeans weren’t going out and capturing Africans. They couldn’t — they got sick and died from illnesses like malaria. Some African ethnic groups went into business, warring with other groups so they could capture prisoners they sold as slaves to the Europeans. Amarteifio says they were organized and intentional about it. “To pursue slavery successfully, you need a highly organized group because somebody has to go out there — somebody has to locate the victims; somebody has to lead an army there; somebody has to capture them, transport them to the selling centers; all the time, keeping an eye on them to make sure they don’t revolt,” he said. “And then sell them, and move on.”

 https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-20/willful-amnesia-how-africans-forgot-and-remembered-their-role-slave-trade

Sandra E. Greene. Anbinder Professor of African History at Cornell University Speaking on the origins of African slavery.

“Very few Americans know that slavery was common throughout the world as well as in Africa”, says Sandra E. Greene. Greene’s research focuses on the history of slavery in West Africa, especially Ghana, where warring political communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enslaved their enemies, and the impact can still be felt today. “Slavery in the United States ended in 1865,” says Greene, “but in West Africa it was not legally ended until 1875, and then it stretched on unofficially until almost World War I. Slavery continued because many people weren’t aware that it had ended, similar to what happened in Texas after the United States Civil War.”

 https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/curious-history-slavery-west-africa

Senegalese Anthropologist, Economist and Author; Tidiane N’Diaye spoke to  Silja Fröhlich at Deutsche Welle,  

“According to N’Diaye, slavery has existed in practically all civilizations. This was also the case in Africa before settlers came….In central East Africa, ethnic groups such as the Yao, Makua and Marava were fighting against each other and entire peoples within the continent traded with people they had captured through wars. Thus Arab Muslims encountered already existing structures, which facilitated the purchase of slaves for their purposes…

..Back then, Arab Muslims in North and East Africa sold captured Africans to the Middle East. There, they worked as field workers, teachers or harem guards, which is why the castration of male slaves was common practice. Muslims, on the other hand, including African Muslims, were not allowed to be enslaved, according to Islamic legal views. Initially, the Arab Muslims in Eastern and Central Europe took white slaves to sell them to Arabia, ….But  the growing military power of Europe put an end to Islamic expansion and now that there was a shortage of slaves, Arab Muslims were looking massively to black Africa.”

https://www.dw.com/en/east-africas-forgotten-slave-trade/a-50126759

The African Slave Trade to Asia and the Indian Ocean Islands,

In: African and Asian Studies

Author: Robert Collins,

01 Jan 2006 Volume 5: Issue 3

 Speaking about the ancient origins of African slavery;

https://brill.com/view/journals/aas/5/3/article-p325_4.xml?fbclid=IwAR0bCEvWxYhemcUv4wQkwttRFfoXmJcE7W4OI6iDiQI2yQfCEDVIrLRmJ2s

Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery

By Catherine Besteman, 1999, University of Pensylvania Press, On Somali Identity and racial prejudice.

 SOME ASPECTS OF THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE FROM THE SUDAN 7th — 19th CENTURY, Yusuf Fadl Hasan

Chairman, Turkish Studies Unit, U. of K., 2000-(Founding) Vice-Chancellor, University of Sharjah, U.A.E, March 1997-February 1998.President (Vice-Chancellor), University of Khartoum, 1985-1990. President, Omdurman Islamic University, 1984-1985. Deputy Vice-Chancellor, U. of K., 1983-1984.Dean, Faculty of Arts, U. of K. 1975-1979.Director, Sudan Research Unit, U. of K., 1965-1072.Visiting Professor at the Universities of London, Qatar, Mecca, Riyadh, Tripoli, Cairo, Ahmadu Bello, Mousil, Bergen and Aden

Sudan Notes and Records

Vol. 58 (1977), pp. 85-106

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44947358?seq=1

Speaking to the origins of Islamic Slavery

  Slavery and Slave Trades in the Indian Ocean and Arab Worlds: Global Connections and Disconnections…Straight, No Chaser: Slavery, Abolition,and the Modern Muslim Mind

Bernard K. Freamon,  Professor of Law Emeritus on the Faculty of Law, Seton Hall Law.

http://www.yale.edu/glc/indian‐ocean/freamon.pdf

Speaking about the denial toward its history of slavery in the Islamic world.

   Some general historical perspective on the Trans Saharan slave trade and the enslavement of Europeans. 8th and 9th century AD

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-tcc-worldciv2/chapter/transsaharan-slave-trade/

“During the 8th and 9th centuries of the Fatimid Caliphate, most of the slaves were Europeans (called Saqaliba) captured along European coasts and during wars.[2] However, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of regions and included Mediterranean peoples, Persians, peoples from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, Berbers from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of African origins. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj (Bantu) slaves from East Africa increased with the rise of the Oman sultanate, which was based in Zanzibar. They came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili coast.[3] The North African Barbary states carried on piracy against European shipping and enslaved thousands of European Christians. They earned revenues from the ransoms charged; in many cases in Britain, village churches and communities would raise money for such ransoms. The government did not ransom its citizens.”

Gwyn Campbell

The International Journal of African Historical Studies

Vol. 22, No. 1 (1989), pp. 1-26

Published by: Boston University African Studies Center

https://www.jstor.org/stable/219222?seq=1

Speaking to the fact that the Islamic slave trade carried on without puase all during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and was in no way displaced by it. Here they are speaking about the early 19th century.

An article pointing to some of the implications of the Islamic slave trade on African women.

https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/

“While in the European “New W o r ld ”, the measure of a man’s stature was mapped out and calibrated on the physical dimensions of empire built upon the sinews of forced masculine labour, in the Islamic Orient wealth was a reflection of prestige, young girls the vessel of male h u b r is , the mats of male pleasure ground, the malleable material to be shaped to the master’s will.

Thus, women slaves in the Arab world were often turned into concubines living in harems, and rarely as wives, their children becoming free. A large number of male slaves and young boys were castrated and turned into eunuchs who kept watch over the harems. Castration was a particularly brutal operation with a survival rate of only 10%.”

“The combined effect of all these factors,” says Duncan Clarke, “was a steady demand for slaves throughout the Islamic world, which had cover story to be met from wars, raids or purchases along the borders with non-Islamic regions. Although some of these slaves came from Russia, the Balkans and central Asia, the continuing expansion of Islamic regimes in sub-Saharan Africa made black Africans, the major source.”

A paper discusing the modern reality of Somalia for non Somali’s

 Mohamed A. Eno, Dean at St Clements University Somalia; Associate Professor of African Studies and Senior Faculty & Researcher in the English Department, ADNOC Technical Institute, UAE.

Mohamed H. Ingiriis ,Graduate student at Goldsmiths, University of London

Omar A. Eno ;Adjunct Professor of African History and Director of the African Migration and Development Research Program at Portland State University, Oregon, USA

 Discrimination and Prejudice in the Nucleus of African Society: Empirical Evidence from Somalia

“The long silence of Somali studies toward what relates to prejudice, subjugation, and discrimination against the oppressed Bantu people in the country will be discussed before the conclusion finally wraps up the study with suggestions and recommendations for further research

During post-independence era and despite the repeated praise of the civilian regimes for democratic ideals, the Bantu Jareer (like the outcast groups) were not allowed to field their own candidate for parliament, not to think of cabinet post which was exclusively for Somalis . Often, bureaucratic barricades were used to shut them out at party nomination level. “The state and the SYL party feared that if a Jareer were fielded it would be difficult to defeat him in numerical terms; so they had to formulate strategies to deprive him at preliminary stages by every possible means,” comments Macallin Dhaayoow of Bandhowoow area of Xamar Jab Jab in Mogadishu.

Muuse Mocoow explains an episode which reveals how it was easier to scapegoat on a Bantu than any other person. “We have had situations in which we had to pay for crimes committed by others,” explains Muuse, a Bantu Jareer construction supervisor based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “My brother and my uncle were arrested for construction materials their boss had stolen from the construction project of his ministry in order to use it for the building of his personal house in Booli-Qaran. His high ranking police kin told him that if anyone could be implicated as the culprit, then he wouldn’t be taken to the National Security Court for stealing public property. Because as Bantu we did not have anyone to stand for our right, we became sacrificial lamb for the crime of every culprit from the ruling clans,” adds Muuse as he gets emotional with tears rolling down his face. “This is one of the reasons why many of us [Bantu] left Somalia because there are no Muslims. The law doesn’t protect us; the so-called revolution didn’t protect us; nothing protects us unless we are absent from the land. That is what we did.” Muuse concludes with these pitiful remarks: “We are here in Saudi Arabia, aged, and will probably die here. It is sad; but because of what has been happening in the country for the past 20 years, there is nothing to go back to. They (Somalis) became much wilder beasts. No human can associate with them.” The account given by Xuseen Juma Shongole reveals an exemplary case of how even the state provided not only a leeway to expropriation of the property of members of the Bantu Jareer community, but actually practically participated in the looting of the fertile farms adjacent to the rivers. According to Xuseen: We woke up one morning only to witness our livelihood including mature crops and thousands of fruit bearing trees bulldozed to the ground. There was a number of heavy machinery equipment because the government had decided to build a sugar factory in the neighborhood and saw it in its benefit to dislodge us from the area in order to establish an enormous sugarcane plantation to supply the factory. To add insult to injury, the staff of the project told us that we should stop ‘crying over land’ and be part of the ‘waged workforce’ that would be employed to work on our state-expropriated farms. That action told us that our livelihood was not important to the government and that the governor who was representing it was very cruel, arrogant and irresponsible.” In order to contribute to the argument related to the theory of heterogeneity of the Somali people rather than the untenable, old concept of homogeneity, we intend to highlight a distinct community that has been and still is the victims of persecution, prejudice and discrimination under the veil of the concept of egalitarian Somalia. The group is the Bantu Jareer ethnic community which, related to its African origin, is “permanently removed from the social boundary of Somaliness ” (Kusow 2004:)

 Modern Islamic Slavery

Africa is one of the few places on earth where slavery still persists. In fact African countries were some of the last to actually make the practice illegal. Muslims are once again trading Jareer slaves in open air markets in Tripoli, Libya

  “The footage released by CNN appears to show youths from Niger and other sub-Saharan countries being sold to buyers for about $400 (£300) at undisclosed locations in Libya…..These modern slavery practices must end and the African Union will use all the tools at its disposal,” Mr Conde said.”..

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42038451

 “Thirteen anti-slavery campaigners were sentenced for up to 15 years in prison in Mauritania last week, for their role in a protest aimed at denouncing the practice of slavery in the country. The government tribunal found members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) guilty of various counts, including attacks against the government, armed assembly and membership of an unrecognized organization. Mauritania is the world’s last country to abolish slavery, and the country didn’t make slavery a crime until 2007. The practice reportedly affects up to 20% of the country’s 3.5 million population (pdf, p. 258), most of them from the Haratin ethnic group

For centuries, the black Haratins have been caught in a cycle of servitude enforced by the …..descendants of Arab Berbers.

https://qz.com/africa/763470/the-last-country-to-abolish-slavery-is-jailing-its-anti-slavery-

activists/

 There Are 46 Million Slaves in the World — Here’s Where They’re Found

A chilling reminder from the Global Slavery Index.

Somalia remains 6th on the Global Slavery Index

An index measuring strength of response against slavery. Canada rates very high Somalia not so much.

Somalia is a failed state. I will not engage in argument here about why it persists in being so since its independence.

Somalia’s population has grown exponentially in the last 40 years despite having no viable economy or government. The country and the U.N. decry its lack of ability to support this level of population growth. Now while the countries of the west like Canada, which without immigration has a steady or declining population already, are exhorted to stop having children, yet no such admonition is given to the loyal followers of Islam.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/somalia-population/

While there is still slavery practiced by Somalis it just doesn’t bring in the big bucks like it used to. Many enterprising Somalis have turned to piracy on the high seas. Success has been mixed thanks in part to the Royal Canadian Navy.

 They have thus far been unable to base their economy on piracy in the same way as slavery and it has made the country less than attractive as a port.

Somalis have also become enthusiastic about once again subjugating their African neighbors to Islam and one imagines this is providing some limited employment. This should be viewed as part of an unbroken thirteen cenutry push to impose the will of Alaah on their fellow human by any means.

From a BBC report

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-15336689

“It emerged as the radical youth wing of Somalia’s now-defunct Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled Mogadishu in 2006, before being forced out by Ethiopian forces.

There are numerous reports of foreign jihadists going to Somalia to help al-Shabab, from neighboring countries, as well as the US and Europe.  It is banned as a terrorist group by both the US and the UK and is believed to have between 7,000 and 9,000 fighters.  Al-Shabab advocates the Saudi-inspired Wahhabi version of Islam, while most Somalis are Sufis. 

It has imposed a strict version of Sharia in areas under its control, including stoning to death women accused of adultery and amputating the hands of thieves.”

Al Shabab executed the passengers of a bus

 Al-Shabab’ Somali Jihadists have been welcomed 2020 with lots of Jihad

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) Jan 18, 2020 — At least two people were killed and more than 20 others wounded when a suicide car bomber targeted a construction site along a highway outside Somalia’s capital, police said Saturday. Six Turkish nationals were among the wounded, with two in serious condition, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. The Turkish construction workers appeared to be the bomber’s target, Somali police Col. Abdi Abdullahi said. Most of the casualties were police officers providing security for the Turkish workers constructing a highway between the capital, Mogadishu, and the agricultural town of Afgoye, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the city. The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group, based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the the group’s radio arm, Andalus. Al-Shabab often carries out such attacks in and near Mogadishu. Turkey has invested heavily in Somalia, with technical and development assistance exceeding $1 billion, according to the Turkish government. Turkish companies run the international airport and seaport in Mogadishu, and in 2016 the Turkish president inaugurated Turkey’s largest embassy complex in the world there.”

https://www.keloland.com/news/national-world-news/at-least-2-killed-20-wounded-in-bombing-near-somali-capital/

NPR, December 28, 2019…A truck bomb in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, killed at least 79 people today. More than 100 were injured. It was the worst attack in the city in two years, and the country’s president has placed the blame on the Islamist group al-Shabab”

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/28/792088722/somalia-bombing-kills-at-least-79

Critical Threats Project 2019 assesment of Al-Shabab capabilities and intentions

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/al-shabaab-area-of-operations-october-2018

“Al Shabaab holds territory surrounding the capital, Mogadishu, from which it coordinates complex attacks targeting the Somali Federal Government.[5] Increased counterterrorism pressure may have reduced the overall volume of attacks in Mogadishu, but the city is not yet secure.[6] Key al Shabaab sanctuaries persist in central Somalia, especially in Lower and Middle Shabelle regions, and in southern Somalia in Bay, Gedo, and Middle and Lower Jubba regions. Al Shabaab is able to project force from Somalia and safe havens along the eastern border with Kenya to attack Kenyan security forces and soft targets in Kenya’s Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, and Lamu counties.”

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/al-shabaab-area-of-operations-october-2018

     In closing I would set straight a couple of facts about Canada and slavery.

      Slavery has been part of all human cultures. It is in the earliest records we have. Europeans were the first Empire in human history to have abolished it. Canada as a Nation State responsible for our own affairs was formed in 1887. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833. No human being has ever legally been brought into Canada as the possession of another human being. In fact the colony of lower Canada, now Ontario, and its Canadian political class with the avid support of its citizens were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement. In 1793 the Act to abolish slavery was passed in the Upper Canada legislature

John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant Governor of the colony, had been a supporter of abolition before coming to Upper Canada; as a British Member of Parliament, he had described slavery as an offence against Christianity.[2][3] By 1792 the slave population in Upper Canada was not large. However, when compared with the number of free settlers, the number was not insignificant. In York (the present-day city of Toronto) there were 15 African-Canadians living, while in Quebec some 1000 slaves could be found. Furthermore, by the time the Act Against Slavery would be ratified, the number of slaves residing in Upper Canada had been significantly increased by the arrival of Loyalists refugees from the south who brought with them servants and slaves.[4]

At the inaugural meeting of the Executive Council of Upper Canada in March 1793, Simcoe heard from a witness the story of Chloe Cooley, a female slave who had been violently removed from Canada for sale in the United States. Simcoe’s desire to abolish slavery in Upper Canada was resisted by members of the Legislative Assembly who owned slaves, and therefore the resulting act was a compromise.[2] The bulk of the text is due to John White, the Attorney General of the day. Of the 16 members of the assembly, at least six owned slaves.[5]

The law, titled An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province, stated that while all slaves in the province would remain enslaved until death, no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves after passage of the act would be freed at the age of 25.[6]

This law made Upper Canada “the first British colony to abolish slavery”.[5][7] The Act remained in force until 1833 when the British Parliament‘s Slavery Abolition Act abolished slavery in most parts of the British Empire.

Chief Justice of Upper Canada William Osgoode followed up 10 years later

“In 1803, Chief Justice William Osgoode placed on the law books the ruling that slavery was inconsistent with British law. Although this did not legally abolish slavery, 300 slaves were set free in Lower Canada (the future Quebec). Citizens who wanted to bargain in the slave trade had no protection from the courts. The decline of slavery took place in Upper Canada as well. The short growing season and cost of feeding and clothing slaves, along with abolitionist sentiment stirred by Simcoe, caused more and more slaves to be set free. Future lieutenant governors of Upper Canada, like Sir Peregrine Maitland, continued the humanitarian spirit of Simcoe and offered Black veterans grants of land. The desire to stamp out slavery in Upper and Lower Canada was so strong that an application from Washington, D.C. to allow American slave owners to follow fugitive slaves into British Territory was flatly denied. Judges who favored abolition were handing down more and more decisions against slave owners; as a result, when the British Imperial Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, very few slaves remained in Upper and Lower Canada.

The decades after 1833 saw an increase in abolitionist sympathizers as the fugitive enslaved increased in number and found freedom in Canada. Anti-Slavery Societies also increased. George Brown, founder of the “Globe and Mail” newspaper, and Oliver Mowat, a future premier of the province of Ontario, joined the Toronto Anti-Slavery Society. At the first large and enthusiastic meeting at City Hall, it was resolved that “Slavery is an outrage to the laws of humanity and its continued practice demands the best exertions for its extinction.” The Society further declared that they would raise money to house, feed, and clothe the destitute travelers. Weeks and months spent making their way to freedom took a toll on the bodies and minds of the enslaved. Many died along the way. Still, thirty thousand (a conservative estimate) reached Canada between 1800 and 1860 according to the Anti-Slavery Society. Often upon reaching freedom, former slaves would kneel down, kiss the ground, and thank the good Lord that they were free, and then they would build churches for their spiritual growth and development, as well as that of future generations.”

http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/shows/list/underground-railroad/stories-freedom/abolition-slavery-canada/

     By way of comparison Somali Sultan Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim (1798 – 1848), the third Sultan of the House of Gobroon ruled Somalia. He was victorious during the Bardheere Jihad, which ended with the Baardheere Jamaaca being destroyed and the city of Baardheere being burnt to the ground. Somalia during his entire reign was shipping hundreds of thousands of chained Jareer Bantu slaves all over the Muslim world leaving the Sultan counting his gold.

 Somalia remains today a dystopian failed state desoite sustained efforts of the African Union and International actors. Its failure is driven by deeply ingrained racism and clan rivalry. Somalia’s disintegration was not caused by its brief European colonial period. Unless you want to argue that ending slavery was the sole cause of its downfall. Somalia’s current state and any hope for its future lies soley in the hands of Somali’s. I truly do wish them the best.

   The truth is that neither Axmed Xuseen and Illhan Ohmar, nor the brutal xenophobic Somali society they originate from have anything to teach anyone about tolerance or morality. Anything they know about pluralistic society they learned here in North America.

   Axmed and Ilhan have been working a very deft con on all of us. They are not the descendants of slaves, they are descended from some of the most brutal slavers the world has ever known. Somalis are not in any way the victims of history.  Somalis are among its most stubornly unrepentant perpetrators.

William Ray

           Somalia; A Racist Islamic Slave Empire Authors note; As always follow the links and research on your own, believing random dudes on the internet is how we got here.

[nothingman]

In trying to reckon with Donald Trump’s bizarre speech in Poland on Thursday, which was among the most troubling events of his troubling presidency, I couldn’t help thinking about Mahatma Gandhi’s supposed quip when asked by a British reporter what he thought of Western civilization: He thought it sounded like a good idea. As with so many famous quotations, the story is almost certainly apocryphal: It did not appear anywhere until almost 20 years after Gandhi’s death. But it endures for a reason, because it reflects the profound ambivalence and self-regard that lie at the very heart of the Western intellectual tradition.

President Trump professes no such ambivalence. He apparently thinks Western civilization is a good idea too, although it’s by no means clear what he thinks he means by that term and he is constitutionally incapable of irony or double meaning. Various commentators, including Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, have already pointed out that the propagandistic mishmash Trump delivered in Warsaw was aimed as usual at his most virulent supporters, and channeled a current of racism and white nationalism so overt it can hardly be called subtext.

THE WEST WILL NEVER BE BROKEN. Our values will PREVAIL. Our people will THRIVE and our civilization will TRIUMPH! http://pic.twitter.com/sozuVgdp5T

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2017

In this context, “Western civilization” presumably means the culture of white people in Europe and North America, as if that could be described as one coherent and continuous phenomenon, and as if any of those terms could be clearly defined. On one hand, Trump is deploying a false and dangerous form of mythology for narrow-minded, present-tense political purposes. (Breaking news, I know!)

Of course he doesn’t understand anything about the long and complicated legacy of what is conventionally called Western civilization, and if he did he would be against it. Trump’s self-appointed status as defender of the West is primarily about excluding or vilifying Muslims and other immigrant groups, and secondarily about marginalizing those Westerners who believe that pluralism and cultural diversity are in fact central values of our civilization (at least in its better moments).

On the other hand, there is a deeper level of historical irony at work here, one that Trump cannot possibly perceive. It’s possible that Steve Bannon, the supposed Svengali in his supposed doghouse, has some awareness of this irony, filtered through his discount-store, conspiracy-theory understanding of history. One could indeed perceive Donald Trump as the symbolic end point of Western civilization, or at least as the fulfillment of its most diminished and malicious tendencies. After Plato, Shakespeare and Descartes — after all the Dead White Males who did terrible things or magnificent things but were undeniably Important — we wind up here, with an orange reality-TV troll as the democratically elected leader of the most powerful nation in history.

It’s tempting to say that Donald Trump rose to his current position by way of a massive historical accident, despite the fact that he knows nothing and understands nothing. But I think that’s almost entirely upside down, and is another way of insisting that the current situation in the United States isn’t as bad as it looks, and can be remedied with a few replacement parts. Trump was elected president precisely because he is an arrogant ignoramus who spews out “politically incorrect” bigotry unsupported by any evidence. Furthermore, he has an unparalleled understanding of our culture’s most central elements: the marketing and branding of fame, the power of mass media, and the extent to which image and rhetoric can reshape or even replace reality.

I am reminded again of historian Joachim Fest’s famous discussion of whether it was acceptable to describe Adolf Hitler as a great figure in world history, despite all the obvious reasons one might not want to. Fest argued, in effect, that those in postwar Germany who sought to minimize Hitler’s importance were also trying to deny the extent to which Hitler had outwitted, manipulated and dominated them.

Hitler’s peculiar greatness is essentially linked to the quality of excess. It was a tremendous eruption of energy that shattered all existing standards. Granted, gigantic scale is not necessarily equivalent to historic greatness; there is power in triviality also. But he was not only gigantic and not only trivial. The eruption he unleashed was stamped throughout almost every one of its stages, down to its final collapse, by his guiding will. …

He also had an amazing instinct for what forces could be mobilized at all and did not allow prevailing trends to deceive him. The period of his entry into politics was wholly dominated by the liberal bourgeois system. But he grasped the latent oppositions to it and by bold and wayward combinations seized upon these factors and incorporated them into his program. His conduct seemed foolish to political minds, and for years the arrogant Zeitgeist did not take him seriously. The mockery he earned was justified by his appearance, his rhetorical flights, and the theatrical atmosphere he deliberately created. Yet in a manner difficult to describe he always stood above his banal and dull-witted aspects.

As I have previously observed, if you update the terminology here and there, Fest’s description appears to describe our current president with uncanny accuracy. (Although the “final collapse” of the Trump phenomenon remains in the unknown future, and further away than many wish-casting Democrats hope.)

Trump has never sounded more like Hitler than he did the other day in Warsaw, where the historical irony fell from the sky like a fluke summer snowstorm. Poland was of course the first nation invaded by Hitler’s troops in the opening chapter of World War II, and the home of the worst of Hitler’s death camps devoted to exterminating the Jewish people. Trump was supposedly there to celebrate the Poles’ resistance to Hitler, and the only fair thing to say about that is that some did and some definitely didn’t. Every moment of that peculiar spectacle had at least a double meaning, none of them salutary.

To be clear, drawing the rhetorical and ideological parallels is not to say that Trump is Hitler, or that he is like Hitler in the most important ways. At worst, Trump is a third-generation photocopy with the background washed out, or a bad actor playing a character he has glimpsed on TV but does not understand.

Hitler presented himself as the defender of Western civilization too, although the alien invaders who were said to be destroying it from within were of course not Muslims but members of another religious and cultural minority. As Frankfurt School cultural critics like Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued, Hitler could be understood to embody certain insidious tendencies that ran just below the surface of European civilization and were especially strong in Germany, which viewed itself (with some justification) as home to the finest poets, philosophers and musicians of the modern age.

In their landmark work “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” Horkheimer and Adorno suggested that the mythology of the Dark Ages had never been conquered by the supposed Enlightenment, only repressed, and that it had reappeared in spectacular fashion, circa 1932, in the personage of the little Austrian corporal with the ridiculous mustache. Our situation in America circa 2017 is not quite like that: We have no dialectic and no enlightenment, only myth.

Hitler and the Nazis claimed to be huge fans and defenders of Western high art and high culture, in a middlebrow, anti-modernist vein, as exemplified by their embrace of composer Richard Wagner. (Who was a vicious anti-Semite and a generally terrible person, but also died six years before Hitler was born and cannot be held responsible for the latter’s crimes.) No such branding maneuver is necessary today.

It is inconceivable that Donald Trump has ever willingly sat through a Wagner opera or any other taxing work of old-school high culture. For that matter, if he ingests anything from the cultural sphere at all except endless amounts of cable news and hilarious right-wing internet memes, we don’t hear about it. Even Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush felt obliged to express enthusiasm for various bland and deracinated forms of art, literature and music. (You know: The Gershwin songbook at the Kennedy Center; concerts by some old guys in Hawaiian shirts with a halfway plausible claim to be the Beach Boys.) Trump, perhaps to his credit, doesn’t even fake it.

So what exactly the president means when he praises the strength and resilience of Western civilization is deliberately left unclear. Since he self-evidently doesn’t give a crap about any of that tradition’s cultural, philosophical and artistic accomplishments — and would no doubt deem most of them to be fake news and/or pretentious bullshit — we are left with other possibilities. It’s all about consumer capitalism and white rage, pretty much. The president of the United States sending angry tweets from his gold-plated toilet seat, with an empty tub of Häagen-Dazs beside him. There’s Western civilization for you.

Trump offers nothing remotely close to the elaborate pseudo-scientific racism of the Nazis, under which the so-called Aryans would rule the world but various lesser grades of white folks with northern European backgrounds would also get a sweet deal. Maybe some of his alt-right nerd followers still obsess about that stuff — but who needs it? Trumpian racism is simply rooted in a dumbass, anti-historical vision of the past, a vaguely articulated fiction that until some relatively recent point (probably the 1960s) “our” countries were a certain way — i.e., overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Christian, culturally homogeneous and dominated by men — and had been that way forever.

It probably does no good to observe that while the fantasy of a lost “golden age” recurs throughout history, this dad-shorts, #MAGA iteration is beyond any serious doubt the dumbest version ever constructed. It is quintessentially American, in the sense that it is too naive and weak-minded to acknowledge its innate cruelty. The Nazis, who if they had nothing else had a theory of history, would have found it hilarious and childish.

To start with, there is no country in Europe or the Americas or anywhere else in the world that has not been shaped and reshaped by waves of migration and immigration, or by conflict, conquest, turmoil and change. The island nation where my grandparents were born provides a valuable case in point. Although Ireland is often presented, in the most simplistic variety of nationalism, as the home of an ancient, homogeneous and ethnically unitary civilization, that is more myth than history. (If the myth often seems like harmless tribal romance, it has also had darker consequences.) In reality, the people of modern Ireland largely resulted from centuries of violent collision between Celtic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and Norman cultures, and the full story is considerably more complicated than that.

Traces of Iberian and North African DNA can be found to this day among people on the southwestern coast of Ireland. (Folk wisdom has long held that such influences accounted for the “black Irish” combination of dark hair and olive skin.) As for Celtic culture, the source of so many bad American tattoos, it isn’t as ancient as all that and did not originate in Ireland. The Celts first appear in the archaeological record around 3,000 years ago in central Europe, roughly in present-day Austria or Slovakia. Of course they had come from someplace else before that, and when they were driven west into France, Spain and the British Isles they conquered or displaced the people who lived in those places, about whom not much is known. Recent genetic research suggests there may in fact have been multiple waves of pre-Celtic people, some with roots in the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, others who came from the steppes of Russia or Ukraine.

So if I describe myself as a white person of largely Irish ancestry, it’s a statement of fact with an extremely limited horizon of information. It does not connect me to some essential, pure and unchanging culture but to a little green island that has seen lots of turbulent history. Go back more than a few generations, and like everyone alive today I could have ancestors almost anywhere: Sardinia? Lebanon? Some village of mud huts on the Danube? If linguistics is any guide, everyone of European ancestry ultimately has roots on the Indian subcontinent — and, of course, you and I and everyone else on this planet evidently share an African foremother.

As Gandhi apparently did not say (but probably believed), Western civilization is something of a mixed bag. But if the term can be said to describe anything, it describes a process of constant change, of conflict, ferment, fusion, cross-pollination and evolution. It has never prospered by erecting barriers between itself and the rest of the world. Indeed, the fundamental nature of Western civilization — it is curious, acquisitive, voracious, questioning — means it can never really do that.

Donald Trump may pay lip service to Western civilization as a pallid, steady-state realm of Great Men writing Great Books he has not read and making Important Speeches he does not understand. But that’s no more than a thin veneer pasted on top of the version his followers really want, a racial fantasyland of full employment for white men and zero immigration. Neither of those things has ever existed in the past or will ever exist in the future. They have nothing to do with civilization, except insofar as they misinterpret it as a fortress rather than a process. They have nothing to do with history, except as an attempt to stop it from happening. That won’t work, of course. But this moment is likely to shape our history and our civilization, and not in a good way.

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