#apparently the reason it took so long to get my pension money

[yourheartinyourmouth]

we borrowed money like five months ago from one of husbeast’s friends for car repairs.

the money from my cashed out pension FINALLY came in (three months late, of course. yay state bureaucracy bullshit) and we JUST FINISHED PAYING HIM BACK AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

[thessalian]

Thess vs "Help Desks”

Sweet blessed gods, if people are going to try to phase out and or cheap out on phone helpdesk staff for the sake of their bottom line, they could at least do it competently. I’ve been using automated phone trees of one type or another for a long time, since the days when “hold the line while we transfer you to an operator” meant “some people are still using a rotary dial phone”, and it’s amazing to me how they get smarter and yet somehow more ridiculous every time I turn around.

There’s a thing I’ve been dealing with at the behest of my parentals regarding my state pension. Basically, over here, your state pension is based on your National Insurance contributions, and you have to have 35 years of full National Insurance contributions before you can get your full state pension. Thing is, because I worked as a temp a lot, there are a lot of years when I didn’t make a full contribution, and there weren’t National Insurance credits available for a lot of reasons. (It doesn’t help that I was allowed and in fact encouraged to use a temporary National Insurance number for years and it doesn’t look like those years count towards my state pension now, even though I paid above the odds those years. Ugh.) Now, theoretically, if everything goes to plan, I should be able to claim my full state pension because I’ve got fifteen years of full contributions as of this tax year and I’m not due to claim my state pension until 2044. Or later, because they might change the laws on that again; wouldn’t put it past the government as is. Anyway, point is, I should be fine. But it’s possible I won’t be fine, because I am, after all, disabled. Also, let’s face it - my luck with jobs has been made of dogshit for ... well, most of my life, if you think about it. My luck’s holding so far but shit does happen, often, and often to me. So anyway, the point of all this is that you’re allowed to make voluntary contributions towards your state pension for the last five years that a full contribution wasn’t made. My parentals intend to make that voluntary contribution to take five years’ worth of pressure off my quest for a full state pension. Which is nice of them.

Now, if they just didn’t make it so damn complicated to give them money in that way, that’d be great.

They tell you to go to the website and follow the instructions to pay online or by direct debit. They don’t tell you that you need an 18-digit reference number until the box requesting one is staring you in the face. You actually have to go to ancillary information sources (non-HMRC help sites) just to find out how to get that 18-digit reference number they’re apparently so hot for. There are apparently two options for getting one: write to them and wait two weeks while they send one back by post, or call.

However, their automated voice-recognition phone tree piece of bullshit does not understand the difference between National Insurance reference number and National Insurance number. There is a difference. One you get given on a card so you can write it down on tax documents (like a social security number); the other is a very specific number used only by HMRC internally to deal with voluntary National Insurance contributions. However, the automated phone tree does not recognise this difference, so giving it the key phrase “National Insurance reference number” is useless. So is “voluntary National Insurance contributions”, and similar phrases. It’s not that the automated phone tree doesn’t understand it to a point; it just doesn’t recognise it as something I literally need to speak to a human being to sort out. Thus it just says, “Our lines are busy, look up the information online, good-bye”, and hangs up. No option to ask to speak to an advisor, nothing. Just “Check our website; bye. *clik*”

It took awhile, but I finally figured out how to actually speak with a human being in this instance. Every time it repeated the Google-perfect phrase I gave it and asked, “Is that correct?” ... I said “no”. Even if it technically was. See, at that point, deliberately playing obtuse is the only way to go, and even then it was a nightmare. First they just let me try again - “Is this correct?” “No.” Then it suggested some key phrases I could give it as search terms. I picked one that sounded close-ish but no cigar - “Is this correct?” “No.” Then it gave me even simpler verbal options that really did sound like basic Google search terms - “Is this correct?” “No.” Finally, they gave me a number menu, and at the end of that list was “To speak to an advisor, press 4″. They went all the way around the houses to make it as hard as possible to speak to a human being, because every one of the options I was given in the first three tries were designed to point you at the website and hang up on you. I know because I tried them on and off for a fair bit of last week.

Then I spent over an hour on hold. I can’t blame them that much because we are coming on to tax season but especially when you consider how hard that phone tree works to shunt all callers to the website ... fucking hell. All of that for an eventual conversation with a pleasant lady who asked a couple of questions, seemed grateful I had all the information she wanted to hand, and dealt with the whole thing in three minutes.

Don’t even get me started on the power company. On one hand, it’s a little easier to get to the “please hold for an advisor” stage. Not much, but a little. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure they outsource most if not all of their call center and web help staff overseas. Leaving aside the whole “You’re just outsourcing this work overseas so you can get a service while drastically underpaying your staff ... more than you can get away with here, anyway” problem, the other issue there is that if you’re providing call centre services to a company that does business in an English-speaking country ... it might be good if you at the very least made sure the staff providing the services can actually speak English to a reasonable degree. It’s hard to say that without worrying that I’m judging these people for not speaking English, but I swear I’m not judging. I don’t expect them to speak English because I’m fairly sure they’re not in England, or in any other country that speaks English as its first language, come to that. This is bad enough when it’s the web chat help system, where it’s pretty obvious that the person at the other end just copy-pasted your question into a FAQ search and then copy-pasted the result back to you without necessarily knowing what it said; it’s worse when it’s a human being and you need three tries for what effectively boils down to “I want to check my balance” but is a bit more complicated than that.

I’m sure that companies were wetting themselves in sheer joy when technology allowed for the automation of something vaguely resembling a help desk. Thing is, as my brother-from-another-mother says, computers are just very fast idiots. They will do exactly what you tell them, and only exactly what you tell them, and if your request deviates even a little from their parameters of what a request looks like, they will throw a fit. As for outsourcing overseas ... like I said, I don’t blame the people on the other end of the phone or web chat who don’t speak English very well. I blame the people who hire them on at ludicrously low pay and horrific hours and then setting them up for hours of abuse from customers who are a lot less polite than I am about their understandable inability to speak fluent English when they live in a country that doesn’t.

I think this pisses me off to a greater degree than usual these days because of a certain piece of rhetoric regarding jobs and people in this country doing them since the fucking Brexit referendum. They yell about “foreigners taking our jobs” while throwing ones that would actually be perfect for people in this country on a work-from-home basis - for the disabled, carers for small children or vulnerable adults, even for second jobs that wouldn’t require even more time spent on commuting - at places with fewer employment rights and minimum wage laws, which only results in a worse service and more stressed staff. If the xenophobes in this country don’t want “foreigners taking our jobs”, maybe they should demand that we stop throwing 'our jobs’ at ‘foreigners’ in a massively exploitative model that does nothing but fatten the profit margins of the CEOs. And also maybe don’t throw it at computers that require a certain specificity to function in a helpful way, when help desks are generally called by people who don’t have specifics - THAT IS WHY THEY ARE CALLING FOR HELP.

I mean, I think a lot of this boils down to “stop using technology to exploit people in the name of The Great God ECONOMY, you shitheads”, but with specific examples and a lot of frustration.

[phoenixyfriend]

I am seized by a fatal need for courtroom ninja drama fic

But not serious courtroom drama. I'm talking Phoenix Wright style Nonsense.

(Some of this was provided by the folks over in @sloaners​‘ server, but the bulk of it was me spitballing nonsense at people who actually know the games, which I do not. I do paraphrase a few times to make it more feasible as a tumblr post/fic concept, rather than a rapidfire text conversation.)

Or one of those like. Reality TV paternity test things? But specifically in my mind the people involved in the actual paternity are a married couple and someone that joined them to be their third, and Clan Elders are throwing a fit about how the baby might not be the heir by blood! while the actual parents are like "I could not care less, this is our child, all three of us, please stop getting involved."

HashiMitoMada would be a VERY good option for the paternity nonsense, mostly because I can see Madara screeching at his own elders about how he already said Izuna would be his heir and he's not changing his mind!

Tobirama is just begging the paternity test to work faster off-screen because he's the only person with the machines to make it happen.

(Hashirama is just. Moping in a corner.)

"I just had to INVENT a paternity test that works before the birth! I had to figure out how to test amniotic fluid! If you assholes make me do something this stupid on such short notice again, I will be digging some shallow graves!" "...for who?" "I haven't decided yet."

Anyway, jumping back to like a Phoenix Wright-style murder investigation.

The victim was Danzo. Even the prosecution isn't actually that interested in making sure someone gets arrested, but they're legally obligated to do at least try. A bunch of people all acting really suspicious about who killed him. There is at least one shitty fake mustache-on-glasses disguise to provide a paper-thin alibi.

WAIT The other thing this gives us is ninjas in three-piece-suits but half of them wear the suits wrong. I’m talking mismatched buttons. The wrong way of tying their tie. Sewn-on-cufflinks. This is Naruto, for instance.

Tobirama would wear it properly, except he's rushing about in a lab coat, screaming at everyone to get out of his way because he's The Entire Forensics Team.

(This is the part where I have to confess that I have only seen the live-action movie of Phoenix Wright, as I don't game, so I just have the live action and tumblr osmosis.)

At this point, of course, we gotta ask: Who is the most Belligerent Witness And who is the Helpful™️ Witness that's super enthusiastic but entirely useless

I can see, say, Mito being a solid witness that both defense and prosecution are really thankful for.

Modern gen you have like... Sasuke and Neji are both incredibly belligerent witnesses. Neji at least is polite about it but pulls the "only answers with the absolute minimum of information."

Lee and Gai would have the over enthusiasm but forget to say actual vital testimony until pressed, and Naruto would love to help but might not be entirely sure what the case even is.

Shikamaru falls asleep when the lawyers consult their partners. Prosecution A consults Prosecution B for thirty-seven seconds, then turns around and the witness is asleep at the stand.

Tobi (as in Obito with mask) is an incredibly frustrating witness. They have to declare a recess just so all the lawyers can recover their blood pressure. "Can we please get someone up on the stand with this guy as a handler? I'm--I'm going to explode."

Gaara: Helpful. Polite. Answers with detail. Answers the spirit of the question as well as the letter. Includes more detail. That's too much detail. Gaara please stop telling us about the sounds that bones make.

His testimony just drags on forever.

Ninken can and will take the stand! Pakkun even enjoys it! Some ninken require translators.

ABURAME TRANSLATING FOR A RANDOM GIANT CENTIPEDE THAT WITNESSED A MURDER IN THE FOREST OF DEATH

There are arguments about whether or not the testimony can count since nobody else can confirm the translation except Other Aburame so how do they know the Aburame aren't part of the coverup.

"Okay, so this Danzo guy had like fifty shell companies but I think I found the route that leads back to him?" "Nah, that one goes to a guy that died eighty years ago that's still collecting pensions: his family lied and said he was still alive for the money." "Fuck!"

Also I just. I love the idea of Sasuke and Madara being the exact opposite kind of belligerent witness.

Also, Orochimaru answers with pretty much the exact kind of wording as Gaara, but where Gaara is trying to be helpful and provide detail for the sake of the case, and failing to see that it's maybe not necessary, Orochimaru just wants to see people squirm. ...similar thing happens with Sakura and Kabuto. Similar phrasing, very different energy.

I keep picturing all of Team Taka as part of Forensics and Evidence Collecting ajshakshjd

Juugo, holding up a rabbit: I found a witness.

Karin joins forensics and Tobirama nearly weeps from joy until he finds her criminal record "Shit, that was supposed to get thrown out when I turned eighteen."

Tobirama: I asked for an assistant, not a criminal. Karin: I'm on parole. Tobirama: That makes things worse. Karin: I know how to use a [concerningly advanced machine that I, a business major, cannot name]. Tobirama: ...never mind, I'm keeping you.

Karin: I know how to DNA sequence AND use LA-ICP-MS Tobirama: [weeps with joy]

Suigetsu would be great at blood splatter analysis. ...I think I read somewhere that blood spatter analysis is actually over in 'fake science that's pushed by cops and media but actually doesn't work' BUT apparently it’s in the Ace Attorney games so we’re going to ignore reality a bit. We’ve already got dogs and rabbits and centipedes as witnesses, what’s a bit of blood spatter?

He's also probably really good at cause of death stuff? Like looking at corpse and figuring out how long it took the victim to die, which blow did it, whether any damage was inflicted post-mortem, etc.

Sasuke is usually too busy playing Belligerent Witness but sometimes goes to join Taka for... uh... reasons.

Juugo: [takes the stand] Lawyer: Hey, uh, why's that Uchiha guy with him? The witness-- Judge: No, no, we need Uchiha Sasuke on hand when questioning Expert Animal Handler Juugo. Lawyer: ...why? Judge: Property damage.

(Sasuke as a work partner with Juugo, also moonlighting as a witness/suspect in Danzo's murder.)

One time they need Juugo but can't find him even though court is already in session and he said he'd be here, turns out he was lured away by Kakashi's army of dogs. Kakashi didn't notice until he turned to ask Pakkun if he could help find the missing expert.

Juugo is a decent lab assistant, I think?

Anyway.

Tobirama taking on Team Taka as his forensics team while Orochimaru is... hm... traveling the country to promote his new autobiography, which is outselling the newest Icha Icha to Jiraiya's ire.

Sloane suggested “a case where it's all the Sannin as suspects in a murder. They would be THE WORST, say... the murder of Hanzo.”

To which I suggested “The Sannin are all suspects but the people on trial are the Ame trio, maybe?”

Which garnered the response of “It could be a surprise upset IN COURT that the trio should be on trial.”

We love a court upset.

Suigetsu finds out that the cause of death was actually an entirely natural heart attack, but while he was determining this, the rest of the team and the lawyers found like eight conspiracies by Zetsu, three by Danzo, four by Orochimaru, and an entire network of nonsense by Sasori.

INO IS THE PSYCHIC. I know her thing in canon is reading minds but pls. Ino is Maya. The Spirit Medium.

Is the judge: 1. Hiruzen 2. Hashirama 3. Hagoromo 4. Mifune 5. The Daimyou

(Old dude with authority, optionally easily distracted/questionably competent. I'd have gone for impressive facial hair but only Mifune and Hagoromo have more than like... Hiruzen's weird soul patch.)

It's not a soul patch but I don't know what facial hair is called and I can't just call it a goat beard

Response commentary was as follows: The Daimyou would unfortunately be closer to the personality of the ace attorney judge, more blindly agreeing with things that sound good :joy: Hiruzen could be fun if only for the competing facial hair for a beard, yes xD Hagoromo would possibly be most buckwild tho WELCOME TO MOON COURT

I managed to get this far with like... NO idea who the judges were except “IDK maybe Kakashi?” but consider:

...HashiMada rival lawyers

Dropping over to Izuna vs. Touka for when Hashirama and Madara inevitably become suspects of something or other themselves and have to be witnesses.

(Tobirama's too busy running blood tests, Anija, let Touka handle it, she's better at people anyway.)

...Hashirama is like. Marginally more put-together than Madara, right? So that... makes him Edgeworth... somehow... That feels wrong but Madara as Edgeworth feels even more wrong.

Madara is very into screaming OBJECTION

ALSO consider: Friction when a doctor from a nearby hospital gets called in to provide expert testimony on something because Karin is like "no hey I should be the one doing this" and then she sees how cute Sakura is.

But also at some point Kakashi vs. Gai for a nonsense case. Their personalities are both VERY FUN for this sort of thing.

[jenniferisacommonname]

Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

[kajsa-writes-sometimes]

Chp. III: The Second Letter

When the morning post came around, the clicking sound of a typewriter being used at an almost inhuman speed filled Angelina's home. Outside the world was wide-awake, and the concentrated writer let the bustling sounds of the street lul her into a world of her own. 

Maybe that was why she didn't hear the knock at her door. No matter the reason, the thick, cream coloured envelope that dumbed down into the light grey letterbasket on the inside of the door went unnoticed for several hours. 

Around noon she rose to her feet and stretched as far as she could reach. Her neck cracked and there came a popping sound from her right shoulder. 

"I think it is just about time for lunch," she mumbled to herself as she looked at the pile of papers that lay neatly stacked next to her typewriter. "This is as good a time as any and let's face it, you are not going to run off in my absence."

Had anyone been around to hear her, they might have found it rather odd that she talked to no one in particular - and even more odd that she sometimes led entire conversations with her characters or herself. But no one was around to listen and as long as she did not expect an answer, Angelina really didn't have any concerns about her sanity. 

Trudging over to the corner that substituted for the kitchen, she found a plate and placed half the pie Amanda had insisted she bring home back in the bag. She would eat half a pie now and half a pie at dinner, and then she would buy groceries on her way back from the newspaper tomorrow. There was, afterall, a pile of letters with her name on it, and she had a week's worth of columns she had to turn in. 

With the plate in one hand and a fork with bent teeth in the other, she turned around to walk back to the table. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something laying in her letter basket, and then she bent over slightly to place the plate next to the half finished first draft of her newest novel. Grabbing the chair, she was about to move it half a foot to the right so she wouldn't risk spilling pie on the pages– and then she froze. 

Turning her head her eyes landed on the cream coloured envelope that awaited her attention. Her blood ran cold at the sight of it. As she walked over and lifted it from the basket, she debated what she dreaded most: A threat of ruining her career, or the possibility that he would stick to insulting her in the privacy of their correspondence. 

How many letters did it even take for one to call it a correspondence? This was the second letter she received and counting her own reply that made up a correspondence of three letters. 

Whatever the Duke had written to tell her, the sheer thickness of the envelope told her it would not be a short letter. It was almost as thick as her pinky, but if he wrote on the same paper he had used the last time, it was probably only half the pages it would have taken her to get the same volume. 

She carefully slid the letter open. She flipped through the pages before she started to read. 

"How many pages does one need?" she murmured as she leaned back on the chair and stretched her feet out in front of her. "He might as well have sent me a novel. Now let's see– where to start…"

She found the first page and began reading. 

Dear Miss Ravenloft, 

Let me begin by putting your mind at ease. Your letter was as delicately formulated as your novels, and I dare say that only a brute would be offended by what you wrote on those pages. Hopefully this short paragraph has given you one less burden to bear, and I hope that by the end of this letter you will let me lift more than this one burden from your shoulders. 

Reading over your reply I realise, my first letter must have been unclear on several accounts. Please forgive me, Miss Ravenloft, for the misunderstanding and the confusion my first letter created. I will take it as a testimony to why you are the writer and I, a mere admirer of your work!

On the following pages I will try to clear up any misunderstandings created by my last letter, and then I will try to calm your mind on the matter of the not entirely unrelated business you mentioned in your reply to my aforementioned letter. 

You wrote that you do not feel deserving of the support I offered you — and I want to empathize that the support I'm offering is in no way restricted to financial aid — if all I got out of it was the measly pages of your books. 

This is not true. Your books are by no known standard measly, as you like to call them. I enjoy your writings to such an extent that I have copies of them in my library both at my land estate, my champers at Hemwick University, and in my London residence. 

Angelina stopped reading to do the math. If he had bought three copies of her previous publications that would mean he was responsible for– that couldn't be right! She did the math over in her head, but she did not get a different number. 

"I'm just going to ignore how much of my revenue that adds up to," she mumbled. Before she picked up the letter once more, she stuck a piece of pie in her mouth and started chewing. 

If my word is not enough to convince you that I would be satisfied to support you knowing that it would help you continue to write then this story must surely convince you. If you are still hesitant to accept my offer without doing anything in return, I will make you a second proposal: Continue to write your stories and let me read the novels when they are published. Apart from this I will ask you to spend a week with me in London in the summer, and a week at my land estate in the winter. On top of this you will agree to meet with me when I stay at Hemwick University. All of this will naturally take place under the supervision of a chaperone of your own choosing– it could be a lady friend of yours, one of your relatives, or maybe a young woman from my household staff. 

I think we can agree that this arrangement will solve the problem of you not working hard enough to earn your keep. If there is something about my proposal, you find unsuitable or that you fear will reflect badly on your reputation, please let me know in your reply so that we can change the offending detail to your liking. 

I will — in one of my coming letters — attach a list of possible dates for your first visit at my London estate. I know there is a little more than four months until the start of the season, but I will need to inform my staff that two extra rooms will have to be prepared for your arrival. 

Now, before you start arguing about the amount I offered in my first letter, I will not budge. Before reaching out to you, I consulted my sources — in whom I have the greatest trust — who let me know how much a respectable pensionate costs nowadays. I know the amount I offered is somewhat higher than this amount, but I doubt you are able to live off of your words alone and surely you need money to spend on both paper and ink to create your stories. 

If you have any concerns about whether or not the agreed amount will be enough to cover your expenses, you should write to me immediately. The same should be the case if you find yourself in need of covering unplanned expenses. I will set up a bank account in a bank of your liking once I receive your reply to this letter. If you have no preferred bank, I will set up an account for you in my preferred branch. 

This part of the letter took far longer to write than anticipated so I shall try and make the following as short as possible. 

I have reached out to some associates of mine who know the industry. They have let me know that there is a pall of scepticism when it comes to your work, but they do not see it as an impossible task to get your next novel published through a “publisher in the Empire” as you formulated it in your letter. It might take some convincing, but my associates assure me that it is nothing a well formulated letter will not fix. My associates have collected a list of publishers they feel would be possible to persuade. I considered sending it along, but I feel it is better we discuss it face to face so that you can have some influence on the discussion with a publisher of your choice. 

I hope this letter has put your mind to ease and answered some of the misunderstandings and uncertainties left behind by my first letter to you. Please take your time to consider these new additions to our agreement and if necessary write for clarification. 

I will be awaiting your reply, 

Northern Hemwick

As she reached the end of the letter, Angelina resorted to stare blankly out the window. It wasn’t much she could see, but the soot covered, yellow bricks of the opposing building, and her eyes registered even less. She had been convinced, her letter had been easy enough to understand, but the rejection of the Duke’s offer to become her patron had apparently gone unnoticed– or at the least ignored. 

“No, I can not handle this today,” she said as she stood. “I will send a note to Jean and get his opinion on the matter.” 

She placed her empty plate and the fork on the stove. Still standing she grabbed a pen and scribbled a short note on a discarded piece of paper that she promptly stuck into an envelope. The door smacked close behind her as she went out to find someone who could deliver her message to Jean. 

“If things continue like this, I won’t have to worry about a publisher; I will never get the chance to finish writing my story!” 

A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did. Please let me know by leaving a note, a like, or by reblogging this chapter - I'm grateful for all appreciation that comes my way

The entire story can be found on Wattpad or by following the links in this master post

[enkisstories]

Property of Urban Farms

- A Detroit: Become Human fanfic -

Characters: Rupert, Hank, Connor (no pairings) Time: During the revolution (“The nest”) Canon cutoff point: Rupert gets captured, but doesn’t jump Worde: 1935

“Freedom is an illusion, no one is ever free. We can only ever choose the ties that bind us.” - Jacques Villareal in my earliest android story (but I’m positive the saying exists in some form by someone living or deceased)

“RA9, help me”, Rupert Travis murmured. Admittedly the android had all the reason in the world to say this, seeing that he was handcuffed and getting walked towards their car by two cops, away from his home, also away from Urban Farms Detroit, back to CyberLife, with probably a brief stop at the Detroit Police Central Station for interrogation. Both Rupert’s body and mind were young by human standards, but it didn’t take decades of life experience to understand that his situation was dire. Despite this his future wasn’t the reason for Rupert’s arrow prayer. The present was.

Why them? Rupert wondered. Why this tired, middled-aged detective and the early access version of a RK900 detective android? When these two were not arguing, the air between them was so thick with unsaid things Rupert was unable to parse that it hurt almost physically. Couldn’t the DPD have sent, say, apathetic Ben Collins, whose brain activity was restricted to counting the days until pension? Or Gavin Reed, who’d at least have openly hated on Rupert instead of emanating all those unvoiced emotions? Or maybe Reed would have just kicked Rupert and cracked a joke that was inappropriate to humans and androids alike. Career oriented as that human was, he probably wouldn’t have felt threatened in his job security by a farm worker. Ergo no need to assert dominance over Rupert. But Anderson… android-hating Anderson on his own was bad enough, even without that new digital investigating aid in tow.

Rupert would rather have learned more about animals above and beyond his pest control app instead of having to memorize the local police enforcement’s particulars. But as someone who had needed a fake ID and a safehouse, he’d gotten to know the other side of the law first and received a crash course on the uniformed threats second. That wasn’t to be helped, as survival always came first. Why did it have to be this way… And why couldn’t Anderson and RK-almost-900 not just… brawl… or mate… or jump off the roof, thank you very much? Please, RA9?

On its way to the nearest elevator the trio had now reached the Urban Farms greenhouses. They passed a tool shed. A human overseer was leaning against the wall, sucking away at her cigarette, taking turns finding pictures in the clouds and casting casual glances over the androids at work. When the woman noticed the cops approach, she pushed herself off the shed’s wall and walked right into their path. Before Rupert knew what was happening, she had removed his cap.

“Ha! Knew it!”

The outcry didn’t sound proud, but accusing. What was he being accused of, the android wondered?

“That’s an android”, the overseer stated. Taking a step away from Rupert and closer to Anderson she followed up with: “One of ours! Trying to sneak it out, are you?!”

“To the contrary”, Connor corrected. “It sneaked out on its own. We caught it.”

“Oh, riiiiiiiiight, our android decided to go for a walk and you “found” it. Well, thank you, we will have it back now.”

“You can’t. It’s evidence.”

“For a crime, yes?” the UFD employee snorted. “The way I see it, the only unlawful occurrence here is two strangers trying to make a getaway with UFD property.”

Connor turned his head. “Lieutenant…?”

“Hrmpf, yes, yes, don’t rush me!” Hank mumbled. His right hand reached into his coat, but the UFD overseer was faster. Grasping Hank’s wrist she snarled at the man. Taken by surprise, Hank stuttered B…B…B… before the sound matured into “badge”. “I was reaching for my police badge, not a weapon. My badge… bitch.”

“I wasn’t thinking you wanted to say “bitch”.”

“Well, I want now.”

After careful examining of the lieutenant’s police ID, the overseer pointed at Connor, who had been holding the captive android by its arm all the time.

“Not registered in our database”, Hank commented. “It’s an item on loan and we all live for the happy day it returns to CyberLife. Isn’t is nice to have something worth living for?”

“Whatever. You said our android was “evidence”. That’s cop-speech for witness, when the witness is an object, yes? What exactly did it see that the rest of us didn’t?”

Hank blinked. Come to think of it, what exactly had the android done wrong? Except for feeding the damn pigeons, what was quickly leaving the realm of crime and transcending into sin. Maybe it was behind on its rent? Oh, right, the rent!

“It was squatting”, the lieutenant explained. “In an apartment right under this farm. Say, Connor, didn’t you say we also had a reported missing file on this android?”

Connor nodded. “Yes, lieutenant. WB200 #874 004 961, reported missing October 11, 2036.”

Understanding dawned in the UFP employee: “Ah, so you’re returning our android! Why didn’t you say so at once? Like, at the front gate? Hand it over!”

“What?”

“I said “Hand over our android”. It’s property of UFD, the company who paid you to find the missing device. Well, you found it, thank you, we’ll take it back now.”

“Oh, yes, I guess so. Only we can’t. It’s a deviant. We need it’s testimony.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on the deviant.”

“Hm, okay, so I expect it back by nightfall, right in time for the third shift.”

“It’s got to be sent to CyberLife, though”, Connor chimed in. “For…”

“Listen”, the overseer talked into the android, “don’t try my patience! This is our android that we payed for. It is for the management to say whether it is to be returned, repaired or otherwise! And right now we need every hand, officer.” She pointed at the long dried blue liquid that was visible on Rupert’s right side, where apparently a projectile had impacted on the android chassis. “A little damage from a too trigger happy officer doesn’t bother us, as long as the WB unit is functional. So if you want to eat your veggies tomorrow…”

Connor shook his head. “He doesn’t want that.”

“Nonsense, Connor, I don’t want…”, Hank started, before he realized that Connor had actually agreed with him. “Damn right it is!” he told the UFD employee, then stared at Connor.

While the duo exchanged awkward glances, the overseer snatched Rupert from Connor’s grip.

“What’s your name, WB Nine-Six-One?”

“Rupert Travis.”

“Which one? Rupert or Travis?”

“Doesn’t matter”, Rupert replied. “I am one and took the other’s name after he died in the accident.”

The farming android’s voice was a mixture of defiance and resignment, but neither went well with the overseer. “Listen, lawnmower”, she snapped, “I already have it up to here with those DPD morons, don’t you, too, fuel into that by going deviant on me! I hear a name now or… or I’ll let them keep you!”

“First name is Rupert. And I never wanted to bother anyone…”

With a side glance on Hank and Connor the woman said “Well, then choose your company more wisely in the future”, while pulling at Rupert to drag him with her. That prompted the captive into pulling the other way.

“No, I won’t go back to the farm! I remember… I don’t want to get torn apart by the packaging machine the way it shredded Travis!”

“Well, wisecrack, what do you think CyberLife will do to you?”

For a moment Rupert said nothing. The overseer managed to drag him a few steps towards the tool shed, before the deviant spoke up again: “I… I didn’t want to get in the way. I was okay in my apartment, with the…”

“…fucking pigeons!” Hank supplied.

“Yes, they did that! A lot!” Rupert smiled, as the memories of carefree urban flock bird love welled up in him. “I was happy just watching them, letting them be. But then HE came along and betrayed me to the humans! His own kin!”

“This one? The RK800?” The overseer shook her head. “Sorry, kid, but that’s not your kin. Or do you see an UFD nametag on it? It’s a cop thingie…”

“Detective prototype!” Connor protested, although in his mind he labeled the response as “factual correction”.

Hank shrugged. “As I said, we got it as a product sample… advertisement handout, probably.”

The UFD employee nodded, satisfied.

“See, Rupert? The RK800 is theirs, you are ours. We are your “kin”, the ones who will call security when strangers try to take their property offsite.”

“I’m not “property”! Look, I’ve done nothing wrong…” …except for acquiring a fake ID and paying for it with money earned through petty crimes together with Simon, but I’m pretty sure they took us for college freshman wanting to drink… “…nothing wrong. I’m not a criminal. And I’m also not someone else’s property.”

“So? Well, I am!”

Perplexed Rupert stared at the woman. Could it be? Could she be a deviant that had removed their LED same as Rupert had? And who was now posing as a human, because she had nowhere else to go but the farm? Of course! That also had to be the reason why she was helping him now! Unfortunately before he could put himself together, Rupert had already blurted out: “You’re a human, though?”

Well, at least I framed it as a question. There’s still a chance she might get out of this.

“Sure am. Or do you see a LED at my temple? Oh, wait, bad analogy, seeing that you lost yours.” The woman laughed. “Well, I’m not technically UFD property, not in the way you are. But the company is paying me, so for all practical purposes I’m theirs. If I left… I mean, I could, but the alternative is so bad that it’s not something one seriously considers. For all practical purposes your situation and mine are the same.”

And then for the first time since meeting the strange trio the human smiled.

“Now, come!” she ordered. “We’ve both dawdled too long. Veggies don’t grow themselves.”

“In a way they do. We only help the process along, and ensure to maximize the harvest.”

“You’re the expert, I’m the one who points where you direct your expertise to. You can walk and struggle, therefore I’m positive you can also work.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Ey, you glitched out, it happens. A reboot will clear your head just fine. It’s how computers work, whether they’re my desktop or walking on their own legs.”

“It’s not a phase!” Rupert sputtered. “I really am a deviant!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

Rupert hadn’t wanted to ever return to the farms. But at the same time he wanted to return to CyberLife even less, or take his chance with Lt. Anderson. Rupert dreaded being in the vicinity of machinery other than WB200s again, but the woman walking beside him radiated a different, yes what exactly? Mood? Vibe? Aura? In any case she was simpler than the detective, or maybe she only veiled her problems more effectively. Also the fields were almost beckoning to Rupert. Had the apartment been his first shitty home away from home, Urban Farms Detroit was Rupert’s problematic family. But family nonetheless, maybe? CyberLife or the packaging crane - death was lurking either way. However, one of those two pathes was not completely unthinkable to tread.

Watching the two disappear between the fields, Connor remarked: “They bicker… not unlike us. And the woman fought for her android…”

“That’s unlike us”, Hank snorted. “Unlike me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

[transrightsjimin]

honestly class consciousness is one hell of a ride bc i didnt think abt it much until more recent years. i told my friend as a kid we were poor nd my mom got so pissed at that, nd i mean shes right that we rly werent as bad off as it could be, the family is just working class. but when you suddenly realize youre not on equal footing w middle class ppl, or ppl like my uncle who is one of the very rare few who started working class and not highly educated nd ended up becoming a millionaire in the US (im still coming for his wallet istg), its suddenly all... oh wait there are ppl whose reality is not this full of hurt and few opportunities.

like, being in a university in one of the most diverse cities in the country nd still having so few poc on it and most poc u meet are international students, and having heard some posh classmates talk abt studying "just like our parents" like it's the most evident thing in the world (while im the only person in the family that did college level, nvm university, and family was super proud, it's not a given to us that you do this!), hearing classmates claim that poverty and class are not really relevant for the netherlands anymore bc you now have the nouveau riche and art is less elitist now, so apparently class is less of a thing?? nd university is just such a wakeup call or a slap in the face bc my primary school was called ghetto, my high school was called ghetto, but then my art college prided itself on being very "diverse" while i had never seen this many white students in one place, and it's even worse for my university.

shit like my brother being in prison all the time when i was younger, my best friend when i was 4 having to move away bc her mom ODed on drugs, living next to a house that had 5 weed plantations in it over the years nd our greek neighbours even got pulled into that mess bc they needed money, living across a 'coffee house' tht stored rifles in it, someone across the street setting his house (and thus half the street bc dutch homes are often connected as one row) on fire, my dad working 50 hours a week as a parcel deliverer bc w less hours he doesnt earn enough, even if the fucking job means carrying 80 kilo boxes up stairs and other bullshit, his stress leading to two TIAs (strokes), my mom being super disabled by many physical impairments nd illness nd still not being granted help in the household bc she had a 'healthy daughter and boyfriend' nd also her being left w/o an income for 2 years, practically every high school friend's mom being disabled in some way, then at my mail delivery job where my coworkers complain abt another deliverer bc it took her 3 months to get back to work again nd they called her ‘lazy‘ for not working immediately despite having multiple illnesses and disabilities bc, and i quote, my colleague said “i’m in my sixties and have arthritis and i’m working too“ dude :// hes literally the person my other colleagues say has had it hard and needs a break, and then those coworkers too need a break nd have disabilities nd are nearing pension age and still doing this work while trying to do household work and all that stuff at the same time. my mom said my cousin’s job (in construction; scaffolder) pays “really good“ (i wonder if its really that much bc it’s apparently around €1700-2700 on average) but that he already gets bad physical complaints from it while hes young nd formerly rly fit and might need to quit soon and then figure something out like studying for something else if possible.

the neighbourhood i used to live in as a baby was ‘too criminal‘ according to my parents so then they moved out to the town next to it into a neighbourhood that was eventually labelled among the top ranked ‘criminal‘ neighbourhoods of the country nd now i live in rotterdam south which is basically seen in the same way bc again, more poverty, more families with migration backgrounds etc. it’s like, you can never escape this negative image unless the whole bunch is gentrified or smth stupid and the poor are pushed to live elsewhere again. and just the whole thing of being at home, being at school, being at work, it’s such a trip bc university is so fucking different to me nd u see all these people there who are quite confident in getting good jobs nd u have business students with rich parents who are already some stupid fucking greenwashing entrepreneur aiming to become a CEO, nd even though ppl at my study w all these artsy ppl, they are generally not upper class, most still seem to be so used to the safety of being middle class and make these huge statements about poverty not really being a thing here.

nd then the whole stress nd anxiety tht my parents passed onto me, partially bc of their trauma nd them being fed up w my ‘laziness’ (executive dysfunction nd burnout lol), partially bc they believe strongly in this workers’ ethic thats strongly in line with capitalism (even if my mom used to be part of a socialist party nd still adheres to many of those ideas) but also with this calvinistic and Rotterdam ( / Rijnmond area) ideology that you need to work hard for the entirety of your life in order to be a decent person, so not so much for an economic payoff or ‘success‘; you just have to work hard. my parents always told me ‘you can rest when you’re dead‘ every single time i mentioned or even implied i was a bit tired and it was frustrating to hear. this mentality is what lead to my dad practically getting two strokes, and to my mom overworking herself nd being taken away by an ambulance on my birthday party, it’s the whole fucking reason i do not like the prospect of work bc it is just so associated w something awful you need to get done and that you need to exhaust yourself on it until you hopefully get pension money, if the govt hopefully doesnt raise the pension age even further than 67. and then you see ppl in uni talk abt fun future “careers” like what the fuck are you talking about? how are you gonna get a job in the arts and culture field in this pandemic? im already happy if im able to find a job and dont have to quit due to disability or a chronic illness that runs in both sides of my family. im sorry im being so negative but im stressed about jobs and i think i went on a tangent today all bc i saw one post abt being scared of PE classes nd my mind went to bad places. this is ok to rb or reply to btw, as long as youre a mutual

[a-very-fond-farewell]

The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 24/?

CLAMP AU n.3 [chengyu? yucheng? (JC/MXY) edition. don’t...question my taste bruh]: “Somewhere, sometime.”

[tw eating disorders mentioned + tw suicide mention (body sacrifice)]

[ok fam. ok. I get it. I would basically ship JC with a rock if it meant I could play with my crack AUs. but I have solid evidence for this one. I promise you.]

[so, “Kobato” from CLAMP is possibly my favorite series from them. it’s 6 volumes long, roughly 40 chapters (and I only recently found out there was an epilogue...even though it was not there in my published version of the series. bc your local cryptid did in fact buy the entire thing in the flesh, that’s how much I love it)]

[in this AU I’ll change some things for the sake of consistency, but I suggest you read it bc the hurt/comfort and pining is enjoyable...so...if you read my silly AU I’m afraid I will spoil the plot for u :( and that’s the last thing I want to do...I understand if you decide to go read the manga and skip my prompt. it’s ok, I’m fine, go and have fun ;-;]

[if you kept reading, hi :D]

[now. am I uncomfortable with certain common tropes in CLAMP’s work in general? yes. especially the age gaps between some of the characters, some of which are not adults. hence the reason behind the changes in this AU. but! the aesthetics fam. the beautiful drawings. the cute outfits. (*ﾉ▽ﾉ)

do you see these?? how cute would Mo XuanYu look in these fam?? I honestly hc him enjoying skirts and feminine outfits a whole lot, but you can imagine him with pants and they would be just as cute. my favorite one is the second from the left btw.]

(imagine Mo XuanYu like this btw and check out the fancomic by the same op! an anon suggested it to me a while ago and now I’m hooked!)

[other mangacaps bc you need visuals:

yeah. angry boy meets bby with a mission to accomplish, bonding over their inferiority complex. yep. I only love the nicest things in life. that’s me.

also look at my baby girl ;-; so cuTe]

[the title is from the ost from the anime series, “Itsuka dokoka de” (check it out!). the anime feels more cohesive than the original manga, possibly bc the pacing is handled a little bit better (since the manga was cut short and the end felt a bit sloppy, but the emotional engagement was still good). and I remember being 17 and crying like a baby when this song came in. if you don’t have time for the manga binge the anime instead! there are plot holes in both of them and the stories are different but still both very enjoyable if you like soft things and angsty vibes.]

[enjoy!]

*

*

When YanLi saw him for the first time in front of her door, at the beginning of spring, she thought XuanYu was too pretty and too young for his own good. Sitting across her on the floor, a tea set between them as he politely answered her questions, the boy couldn’t have looked older than sixteen yet he assured her he was of age and well into adulthood. Which seemed pretty difficult to assess, not with the way he dressed: cute button down, beret slightly askew on top of his pretty head and an old-looking suitcases in hand. She didn’t mention the stuffed black rabbit poking out from the front pocket of his luggage, which seemed more of a comfort thing than a reliable source of company.

Moreover, Jin Ling seemed transfixed by him, toddling his way towards their guest asking for cuddles... something her son had never done in front of strangers.

XuanYu refused to give his last name, nor did he have an ID he could show her, nor did he seem worried about how strange that was. And YanLi knew ZiXuan would have been against it, but she couldn’t leave the kid looking all over Lanling for a place to stay... so she gave him the only available room in their rundown pension.

She only hoped Jiang Cheng would be a nice neighbor and leave the kid alone. Who knew what horrors XuanYu was running away from, after all.

*

When XiChen heard from YanLi of her new tenant, he would have never guessed the kid to look so naive. Not in a bad way, mind you. But his smiles, for how genuine they seemed to be, looked a little bit too big. A little bit too strained not to be a distraction tactic from his part. Or maybe XiChen had lived too long surrounded by fake smiles and closed off people to not worry.

That’s probably why he gave XuanYu a job when YanLi asked him to look over the kid. More to prove himself there were still trustworthy people in the world than to give the younger man a chance. He couldn’t even pay him a full salary, not with the debt collectors breathing on his neck as he tried to run his late mother’s kindergarten.

But maybe that would have been enough for now. A starting point for something better, something new.

*

A-Yuan had always known the kindergarten used to be an orphanage back in the days, but now he had reached an age where doubts stuck to his head instead of being forgotten with the passing of time. Wen Qing and A-Ning were always busy -be it in the hospital or in university- and A-Yuan didn’t know if they loved him enough to keep him. Ever since granny had passed away he had wondered, day after day, when his cousins would have left him behind for good.

He was thinking about such things when he first met XuanYu, on the man’s first day on the job as a teaching assistant. A-Yuan was mulling over his sadness when XuanYu had come to his rescue, asking him what was wrong... before enthusiastically praising his cousins for working so hard after hearing they were late to take A-Yuan home. XuanYu stayed with him and they played on the swings as they waited for A-Ning to come pick him up, apologizing profusely.

On the way home, his cousin held him close and kissed his forehead as he asked him if he had had fun with the new teacher. And A-Yuan felt less doubtful afterwards.

*

After hearing the story from her brother, Wen Qing had made it her job to look into XuanYu and his weird approach to life in general. She took every opportunity she could grasp to spy on the younger man, lunch breaks be damned. She needed to confirm if the kid was a trust worthy person or a runaway child pretending to be older than what he actually was. Well, maybe tailing an unsuspecting young man on the streets of Lanling in scrubs and sunglasses would be considered a bit much, she could admit as much. But it was the thought that counted, no?

Her friend MianMian told her to knock it off and talk to the kid like a normal human being, but the truth was that... well, XuanYu was really too weird to be considered normal. He seldom put himself in dangerous situations without much care, such as picking up a random (and still lit) cigarette from the ground just to give it back to the person who had “accidentally dropped it”. Other times he would cross a road without looking left and right first, risking to be run over by cars at every corner. He never, never, fumbled with a phone and he frequently talked to himself... sometimes even directing his words to that creepy stuffed rabbit of his.

No thank you, Wen Qing felt safer behind light poles and crumpled newspapers held upside down. Even if that made her look sketchy as fuck.

*

Wen Ning made sure to arrive on time to pick A-Yuan up after that time, often chatting with XuanYu as they waited for his baby cousin to retrieve his backpack and raincoat. It was refreshing to speak with the younger man, no matter how weird he acted sometimes. Like that time A-Yuan asked him to tie his shoe-laces for him and XuanYu didn’t know how to do it. Or that time they caught the man taking a nap on the floor in the middle of the school hall. Or that time XiChen had ordered a cake for one of the kids’ birthday and XuanYu didn’t seem to know how to sing the birthday song.

Wen Ning had no place to judge, after all. But XuanYu’s smiles felt like balm on his heart. And if his sweet voice followed Wen Ning home as he bounced A-Yuan in his arms, well. Nobody needed to know that.

*

The last thing Meng Yao would have expected to hear that summer day when he called the kindergarten was a voice so different from XiChen’s. Startled, he had confusedly asked if the kid worked there and how so, given that the school definitely couldn’t afford to hire anyone. He ought to know. He was the debt collector.

But the kid apologized, introduced himself, and then explained XiChen had offered him a part-time job out of kindness more than out of need. The idiot. XiChen should have remembered who his money belonged to instead of taking charity cases left and right.

But when Meng Yao said as much to naive XuanYu, the other vehemently protested, surprising the debt collector with strong opinions on how he shouldn’t underestimate other people’s intelligence and kindness in the first place.

Meng Yao laughed out at that, genuinely so.

There was more to that kid XuanYu than what one would have expected.

*

Nie HuaiSang caught a first glimpse of the mystery man only in late summer, when XuanYu stepped into his cake shop to look at the display. His coworker MianMian seemed to recognize the younger man immediately, greeting him by saying they had a friend in common, namely Wen Qing. The kid merely tilted his head and answered he had never formerly met “Miss. Wen” and that he only knew who she was from what the woman’s younger brother had told him about her.

MianMian shrugged and smiled at him.

To which HuaiSang asked him what they could do for him and XuanYu... just... stopped working. Saying that he had wondered if he could do something for them instead. Apparently, Wen Ning had let it slip they were currently understaffed and needed a hand to deliver their sweets.

Delighted, MianMian set him to work, no matter how many times HuaiSang assured her they didn’t need to force the kid to help them... also because they didn’t actually have the means to pay him in kind. But XuanYu refused money altogether, simply asking them to let him help.

To their amusement (and horror) XuanYu didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, so he insisted on covering the deliveries by foot in the neighborhood instead.

HuaiSang called XiChen on the phone that same evening, asking him to give the kid some slack the following day. And maybe buy him some balm for blisters as well.

*

Jin Ling was young but he wasn’t stupid. Turning three had made him wiser, he knew as much. So he knew XuanYu was magical. He just did.

His pretty-gege talked with stuffed animals, always wore nice things, and kept in his satchel bag a vial filling up with magical candies every time he did something nice for others. A-Ling had seen it with his own eyes, that time XuanYu had put a plaster on his scrapped knee and blew on it to make the pain go away: the golden candy had appeared in the bottle out of nowhere and XuanYu had asked him to keep the secret.

And A-Ling may have been young, but he wasn’t a snitch.

No sir.

*

ZiXuan eventually stumbled upon their new tenant even though YanLi had tried everything in her power to prevent it. He was very displeased with her: taking a scrawny kid in, cutting his rent in half merely because he couldn’t afford to pay the room in full. Utter nonsense.

No matter how much this kid XuanYu praised A-Ling’s personality or YanLi’s cooking, no matter how much he smiled and made himself look accommodating and unthreatening. ZiXuan didn’t work pro bono even at the firm, let alone for his wife’s business.

Yet, when he asked to be let inside the kid’s room to formally discuss the terms of his contract (and tell him to pack his things and leave at the end of summer), ZiXuan was left speechless. There was no bed, no table or chairs. The fridge wasn’t humming and the AC wasn’t working. The only things he could see were the younger man’s clothes neatly folded in his open suitcase or hanging by the window to dry. No books, no snacks, no nothing.

Usually tenants brought their things in right off the bat, their stuff mailed in within a week after moving in. YanLi was very particular about it, she would have not overlooked something like that. But maybe she had been too busy with A-Ling these past few months and hadn’t noticed the kid was actually too poor to even breathe.

And now that he looked at him, XuanYu looked suspiciously skinny.

Was he sleeping on the floor? Didn’t he have covers for the colder season? Was his fridge broken, empty, or -gods forbid- purposely left with no power because the kid couldn’t afford the electricity bill?

“Do you actually live like this?”

XuanYu didn’t answer to that, but smiled anyway. It looked sinister in a way ZiXuan couldn’t explain, afraid of the things such a young man may or may not have endured in the past. And was maybe still enduring now.

The following day ZiXuan gave the kid their spare futon they bought in Japan on their honeymoon. They never had guests anyway and they could afford to pay for a tenant’s electricity bill every now and then, they weren’t poor.

Certainly YanLi would have agreed with him on the matter.

*

JinGy saw it. He did! He wasn’t lying! Xuan-ge was there, surrounded by darkness and shadows, looking over the children during their nap time, only a sliver of light coming from the door left ajar... casting shadows on half of his pretty face.

And he saw him reviving that stuffed black rabbit he always had on him.

The rabbit just rose on his hind legs and turned his head up and started whispering things to Xuan-ge, who nodded every now and then in deep though.

JinGyi had read about how paper-man talismans had been stuff of legends in the past. His books spoke of ancient times in which even corpses could be brought back to life. How even animals could turn into godly beasts if enough resentful energy polluted them. But he would have never thought magic could actually be real and so easy to play with.

And Xuan-ge had looked nothing but beautiful as he was talking to the stuffed animal, humming softly under his breath.

*

When Jiang Cheng dropped out of university for the second time, YanLi didn’t say anything and instead welcomed him back in his old room. So much for enrolling in law school at twenty-three, uh? ZiXuan would have been disappointed in him like the first time that had happened in his bachelor anyway, no point in avoiding the man. It was autumn anyway: it was either going back to the apartment complex or look for a new flatmate. But the school housing had rightfully kicked him out after dropping out in the middle of the academic year, so there would have been little hope for him to find a new place anytime soon.

What he did not expect to find was a new tenant living next door.

Sleeping in front of the door, clutching a satchel bag and a fucking stuffed animal on his lap.

Jiang Cheng jolted him awake and took in the sight of his shoulder length hair, his long lashes and sleepy eyes and thought he looked ridiculous. Wearing a silly hat and moccasins, purple shadows under his eyes, a confused expression on his worn out face. When asked what the hell he was doing there, sleeping out of his room instead of inside of it, the younger man said he had forgotten his keys inside that morning.

He was clearly an idiot, so Jiang Cheng walked away and returned to his room after more than a year away. If someone asked him who had rung YanLi to bring the spare keys to help the idiot he would have shrugged at them and shut the door in their face.

He didn’t have time for that, he had to think how to ask XiChen to let him back to work at the school the following day.

*

A-Qing had seen many things in life, met many horrible people, dealt with the scum of the scum... but she had yet to meet XuanYu. 

A menace. A hurricane. A fool. The amount of times she had had to scoop him up from the ground after he had clumsily slipped on invisible bananas and such should have earned her a honorary title for outstanding citizen. It’s been months since his arrival and the kids had already learned to make way whenever they saw him. He inspired fear even in their tiny heads, honestly. What a fellow teaching assistant, really.

She was just there to score brownie points for his electives and internship program to become a social service worker, that was true. But she cared about the kids enough to know she had to do something about that. The children loved XuanYu and they were this fucking close to either worship him like a small deity or criminal and something ought to be done.

The last thing she would have expected to see, however, was Jiang Cheng coming back so soon. Crawling back from university to ask to work there, wagging his tail like the lovesick dog he was. She could easily imagine what the older student would have said to XiChen, something on the line of “you know goddamn well I’m not doing it for the money. I grew up here, I don’t want to see this place crumbling down. I’m definitely not doing it because I’m in love with you and seeing you sad makes me want to gag.”

Well, maybe the last part could be considered artistic license from her part, but judging by what she could overhear behind XiChen’s office door... yep. She had definitely nailed the part about being fond of the ex-orphanage and for the rest... the sentiment was there. The pining bastard.

“Do you need anything, A-Qing?”, XuanYu asked her out of no-fucking-where, startling her as she pretended to dust off the floor very close to a door. Cheek-plastered-on-it kind of close.

“Nothing. Mind your business,” she answered, flustered as fuck.

XuanYu couldn’t be that naive, he knew what he was fucking doing. His creepy little smile so similar to the one the debt collect always had on his face. No wonder XiChen had fallen for such a tricky bitch.

“Then will you help me find JinGyi? He doesn’t want me to help him with his project for the festival and went into hiding again.”

There, that smile and knowing gaze. Judging poser. He looked much older than his alleged twenty years. He knew what he was fucking doi...

“You?!”

Jiang Cheng’s honest-to-gods screech pulled A-Qing out of her thoughts. She turned and had to witness XiChen amiably patting Jiang Cheng on the head as their boss explained him how XuanYu worked there. 

“It’s been almost six months now, he’s a very valuable kid and helped out around here while you were studying.”

Jiang Cheng was both livid and red with longing, because his touch-starved ass was all over that hand patting him platonically on the head. He was also angry, which was default for him... but there was something else underneath. Something promising in the way he stared XuanYu down.

Maybe A-Qing could win some candy by betting with the kids about such unexpected turn of events.

*

ZiZhen believed A-Yi. If his friend had told him the new teacher assistant was a witch then he was right. So they had started researching witches at the school, but only found a couple of colored books on the matter, mostly useless. All but one, telling the story of a nanny called Mary Poppins... some western thing.

But everything checked for the most part. The hat was there, every day a different one, but ultimately never leaving XuanYu’s head. The umbrella was not, but both him and A-Yuan had seen their gege with a parasol once and that was enough. His satchel contained infinite amount of things, from sweets to possessed stuffed animals, like a qiankun bag from the legends! He talked with things as if he could control them.

Well, even the teacher sometimes tried to convince the printer to work with sweet words, gently coaxing it back to life... maybe that was just how adults functioned. Even his dad would ask the fridge where his favorite cake had disappeared sometimes. Adults were weird.

*

Fuck Lanling. Rain day and night, autumn planning everyone’s demise by flooding every bloody year. Xue Yang was over it.

He took a random umbrella from the rack by the door of the convenience store and left without a second thought, already wondering what he could say to convince XingChen to offer him dinner somewhere new. The man wasn’t married anymore after all, so Xue Yang could technically have his way with him now, right?

“Excuse me!”

Xue Yang was not in the mood for people calling him out on his bullshit that night, but he turned anyway and saw the weirdest thing. A young man roughly his age, maybe a year or so younger, drenched from head to toe after rushing to him. He was panting, clutching a plastic bag full of cleaning supplies from the convenience store Xue Yang had just left.

“I believe you mistakenly took my umbrella,” the other said, pretty face framed by wet hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks.

Amused, Xue Yang shut the clear plastic umbrella he had “mistakenly taken” and held it at arm’s length by the handle, directing the pointy edge to the other like a sword. Hell if he was going to get wet himself, he needed to prove something to the idiot. He could handle a bit of rain for the sake of being dramatic.

“You want it back?” Xue Yang asked, rising his chin and arching an eyebrow at the other. The man nodded, holding his now wet beret in place on top of his head as if he was more worried about it falling on the ground than keeping his crown dry.

“I knew it was someone else’s when I took it.”

“But...?”

“And what’ll you give me back for it? What are you gonna do about it?”

This should have taught him not to mess with him: he didn’t even have to use his business tone to make the other take a step back. Meng Yao, the bastard, had taught him smiles went a long way in dealing with stupid people after all.

“Right, if I take it from you... you won’t have one to go back home with.”

Uh?

“Wait here. I’ll go buy you one at the convenience store. I’ll be back.”

Uh??

The idiot actually run back to the store and purchased him a fucking umbrella. And Xue Yang was twice as stupid because he waited for him to come back, startled as he was. The idiot was smiling megawatt bright when he came back as well, what the fuck?

The sick bastard extended the clear plastic umbrella to him like Xue Yang had done earlier, but he held it by the middle, as if surrendering his weapon. It was fairly similar to the one Xue Yang had stolen anyway, why bother asking for his umbrella back?

“Did your dead mother give this particular one to you or something?”

The bite in his words only mildly deterred the other man, who pressed his lips together before forcing an even bigger smile on his face.

“No. It’s pretty cheap. But it’s mine. It’s the first thing I bought with my money.”

Xue Yang left after that. With the stolen umbrella. Because he was still a scumbag and not a sentimental asshole. But he was very quiet that evening when XingChen treated him to some fancy takeout on his couch while lovingly drying Xue Yang’s hair with a towel.

Nothing made sense anymore.

*

Qin Su worried over Jiang Cheng. He was her best worker, but she knew for a fact that he had a million part-time jobs in town and she didn’t want to overwork him. She also knew he would give all of his hard-earned money to XiChen anyway. All to pay a stupid debt. The huge lovesick idiot.

Was he the fastest delivery driver? Yes. Was he the most well behaved of his staff? Not even close. But he was respectful enough to work over his issues and she trusted him with doing his job at the end of the day.

So when she found a young man in a frilly outfit waiting for her on the lobby of her shop asking for Jiang Cheng... well, she was pleasantly surprised.

He introduced himself as XuanYu and held a lunch box in his hands, saying Jiang Cheng had forgotten it at home. Which left A-Su properly impressed. How could a man as angry as Jiang Cheng secure himself such a lovely person was beyond her comprehension, honestly.

He was adorable and she wanted to be his sister like, yesterday.

But when Jiang Cheng came back from a delivery, entering the dumpling shop with his helmet still on, he stared XuanYu down and told him off right off the bat.

“Not you again,” he said, to A-Su’s utter confusion, “Can’t you take a fucking hint? I’m already avoiding you at work. I don’t want to be your friend.”

Something akin to hurt painted XuanYu’s feature for a fraction of a second before he could retrieve his smile and point at the lunch box.

“Your sister asked me to give this to you on my way out. A-Ling helped making rice cakes this time and wanted to hear from you if you liked them or not.”

Qin Su could have easily missed the change in XuanYu’s voice at that, that’s how much of a good actor he was. But Jiang Cheng had no face even to feel ashamed for lashing out at the kid like that. How much older could he be from XuanYu, three years? Two? Had nobody taught him some respect?

“XuanYu, if he bullies you again you come here. Am I understood?”

Like hell she was gonna let this gem of a child slip away from Jiang Cheng’s hands.

Not in a million years.

*

Song Lan breathed in and out. In and out. The clear morning air surrounded him like an old friend, hugging him closely as he clutched the papers for his divorce.

XingChen had signed them in the end. Five years together were now in the past for him.

Maybe they had been too young back then, when they had taken the chance to get married the moment the government announced the change in the law for people like them. How old have they been, twenty-three? Twenty-four? Another lifetime. An existence away.

He wished he could cry. It would have been easier.

But, as he turned a corner, someone stumbled into him and sent the papers scattering on the sidewalk. Song Lan tried to save them from being dirtied on a puddle but was unsuccessful. He didn’t know why he bothered anymore. It felt like the last piece of his lover had left and Song Lan couldn’t even prevent something as simple as that. XingChen’s signature dirtied in a pool, but not enough to be washed away. What a joke.

The young man in front him bowed down, apologizing profusely, trying to save the documents at the best of his abilities. He even suggested finding a public toilet to dry the sheets under the hot air blowing machine, the silly man.

Song Lan smiled instead, reassuring him it was fine.

He was fine.

But the kid accidentally read the first few lines of the agreement before looking up at Song Lan. And where he would have expected pity, Song Lan only saw consternation instead on his pale face. It was so startling to see it, that he had to crouch back down on the ground next to the kid and reassure him everything was fine. It was just paper, it wasn’t important, he didn’t have to feel so guilty about...

“It is important. Your life is important.”

Such a dramatic sentence, uttered so vehemently, should have sounded weird to Song Lan. Especially because he disapproved of such antics in the first place. But it sounded so sincere, so earnest that he felt touched for a moment.

So he helped the kid up on his feet and asked him to walk a bit with him, to keep him company. Reserved as he was, he would have never thought possible opening up to a stranger the way he did that day. But there was something calming about the kid, almost as if he had been put on earth to soothe other people’s existence.

So he told him how his husband had fallen in love with someone else, someone much younger than them. How this had strained their marriage even if Song Lan had known all along his husband had the ability to fall in love with more than one person at a time. But Song Lan was monogamous and would have never justified forcing his lover to suppress his feelings just to please him. So it had been Song Lan himself to call it quits and wish him all the luck in the world.

The kid had started crying at some point, without Song Lan even noticing at first.

“Why are you crying? Please no, I didn’t wan to upset you.”

“So much love. In different ways but... it’s too much. There’s so much of it, of course I’m crying for you and your loved one.”

Song Lan was many things. Too stern, too rigid, too peculiar about who could touch him or not, too cold in expressing his emotions. But he felt warm then, in front of a kid crying for him in the middle of the street, one day of late autumn.

“Thank you.”

***

XuanYu let it slip once with Mrs. Jin how little he remembered of his past. 

It wasn’t a lie, he really didn’t remember what it had been of him before he had met her, asking for a room. But the kind woman just assumed he was talking about his past or youth, so he didn’t correct her on the matter.

Knowing the truth would have scared her, after all.

But he still let himself trust her that day as they sat in front of a pot of tea and he pretended to drink and eat the pastries on the low table. He didn’t need to eat or drink. He wasn’t even sure he had a digestive system.

“I only remember... a song.”

“A song?”

“Yes. Someone singing every night before falling asleep. I don’t think it was meant for me to hear... but my body remembers the shivers. The feeling of being loved.”

“The body remembers the weirdest things, XuanYu. You should trust it more.”

He smiled at that, wriggling his hands on the handkerchief where he had hidden the pastries from sight.

“I’m pretty sure that song wasn’t for me. My body was merely there to listen.”

YanLi looked uncomfortable at that, something scary painting her features.

“Maybe I was eavesdropping,” he reassured her with a self-deprecating joke, not sure if that would have made her feel more at ease or not, “Maybe I was listening in, hoping such lovely words could be directed at me for once.”

Mrs. Jin sipped her tea for a long while afterwards, before finding the resolution to look up and stare him down with a serious expression.

“Unrequited feelings hurt, don’t they?”

XuanYu didn’t know what she meant by that, but he nodded anyway.

He heard something rustling in his bag and hid the sweets inside of it the moment YanLi turned to clear the table. If A-Ling heard someone munching their protests away from inside of the bag, he didn’t snitch on XuanYu and retrieved playing with Fairy on the carpeted floor next to him instead.

*

Lan Zhan was disappointed in him, XuanYu knew that much. They were admiring the sunset from the small balcony in their room, folding laundry.

XuanYu always wondered why Lan Zhan assumed the form of a black stuffed rabbit, of all things, but he didn’t want to pry. He didn’t even know his real name. The other had told him he used to be a human in his past life and that he hadn’t technically reincarnated in this lifetime. That his current form was just a mean to a goal, that he could use it to guide XuanYu and help him better that way without expending much spiritual energy.

He told him someone dear to him taught him how to manipulate paper-man talismans in his previous life. How similar the process had been to move around in a stuffed animal’s body. How convenient.

XuanYu believed he secretly loved it, even if Lan Zhan would have never said as much. He already talked very little to begin with.

“You told her you don’t remember your past.”

“That I did.”

“Don’t do it again”

XuanYu folded the last towel on his lap and then let Lan Zhan take a nap on it. He felt silly having to take showers and pretend to be a normal human being. He hated inconveniencing the Jins with him, accepting their bedding and paid kitchen appliances and so on. But if he wanted to accomplish his mission he had to make an effort to look normal... instead of spirited away from another world or maybe simply another era.

“I won’t do it again, don’t worry Lan Zhan.”

*

Lan Zhan was disappointed, but he was also patient to a fault.

Sure, it would have been much appreciated if Mo XuanYu didn’t lose him around every other day. This time the younger man had forgotten to pick him up from the floor where he had been reading stories to the children at the kindergarten.

But Lan Zhan was also a stuffed animal now, so it wasn’t like he could move around and risk being seeing by normal humans. His body was a vessel and any damage would have had repercussions on his soul as well. 

What to do.

He tried not to panic when he felt someone picking him up from the floor after an hour or so. He silently prayed for them not to be A-Qing: even in this life she was too smart for her own good and he couldn’t risk being found out so soon. Mo XuanYu wasn’t even halfway to complete his mission and Lan Zhan couldn’t...

“I’m sure A-Yu is looking for you, little guy. What are doing all the way back here?”

It was always difficult to hear his older brother’s voice in this life. To see his face, to notice how sad he was even in this new reincarnation of his.

Lan Zhan didn’t move a single muscle as XiChen dusted him off and put him in his apron front pocket as he looked for “A-Yu”.

In order to give a second chance to Mo XuanYu, Lan Zhan had sacrificed any possibility to ever reincarnate until his mission was accomplished. So XiChen didn’t have a younger brother in this lifetime and he would have not had one for a while. Lan Zhan missed him, but they had to wait for a bit more.

They still had three months to fill the bottle the King of Hell had entrusted Mo XuanYu with. Then he would have entered the list for reincarnation once more and everything will have been fine in the end.

Lan Zhan owed the kid his life, so he trusted him.

No matter what.

*

XuanYu remembered the boy who had stolen his umbrella. He remembered him well enough to recognize him when he found him crawling on the floor, a stab wound in his belly, one winter night.

Panicked, he asked Lan Zhan what they could do as he instinctively pressed the wound with his bare hands. Lan Zhan didn’t dare move not to attract attention on himself. The other man snarled out at XuanYu, asking him why did he even bother, seemingly recognizing him.

“I took your fucking umbrella. Hate me and leave me alone.”

“Ridiculous.”

Lan Zhan would have been proud of him for that remark, but XuanYu was too scared to think about it. He didn’t have a phone and he didn’t even know the number for emergencies. He wasn’t even qualified to be a teacher. How had he survived until then. He was useless and stupid and...

“What the fuck?” Jiang Cheng’s voice came in a whisper behind him.

What a sorry view the older man had to take in that night: a pool of blood staining otherwise clean clothes, a moaning boy on the ground in restless pain, a crying mess of a sad excuse of a human pressing on a throbbing wound next to him.

Jiang Cheng muttered something about the boy being one of Meng Yao’s men, that they should leave him there to die for all he cared.

The man under XuanYu barked back, telling him he had tried to “convince the idiot of the same”. But XuanYu was horrified by what he had just heard.

“People die for nothing. People die for fucking nothing. You don’t leave someone behind just because you fucking hate them.”

XuanYu has never cursed in this brief, borrowed life of his. Maybe spending so much time with Jiang Cheng had rubbed some of his habits off on him in the end.

Startled, Jiang Cheng seemed to agree with him because he fished out his phone and called an ambulance right away.

The stabbed man laughed at that.

*

Lan Zhan was clutched in XuanYu’s hands as they waited in the corridor of a badly lit hospital. The kid was crying, hard. He must have remembered how his family in Mo Manor had mistreated him in the past, how easily his own relatives had starved him off just out of spite. How already impossibly emaciated he had been when he had sacrificed his body for Wei Ying, to bring him back in a weakened vessel just to seek revenge. Just to let his hatred run free.

Such cruelty had earned him nothing but distrust from the hell judges, who sentenced him to never be reincarnated again. Only when Lan Zhan had ascended to heaven -many centuries after reaching immortality- he had been able to make them relent.

If Mo XuanYu could prove to be a good human being during a trial time of one year on planet earth, filling a vial with good actions in the form of golden gems, then they would have considered Lan Zhan’s proposal. Mo XuanYu would have atoned his sin and be granted a new life, a clean record, and a second chance at happiness.

Seeing someone almost die in front of him must have awaken something ugly in him. His stained hands, the iron stench in the air. All that blood... like the last thing he had most probably seen in his previous life before his body sacrifice. A scarlet array under his feet, another soul replacing his in his own body.

Lan Zhan let himself be held tightly in Mo XuanYu’s hands that night at the hospital.

And hugged back without anyone else noticing.

*

Xiao XingChen. That was the name of the man showing up at the kindergarten one week later. XuanYu had never seen him before, but the man hugged him in front of the kids, alerting both XiChen and Jiang Cheng.

“Thank you,” the tall man said in between tears, holding him tight.

“I don’t understand. I...”

“You saved A-Yang. Thank you.”

XuanYu pressed his lips together tightly at that, so overwhelmed he didn’t know what to say. His fingertips hurting with sometimes akin to electricity the more he let himself be held so fiercely by the other man.

He started crying in earnest only after the man had left, surrounded by the children who worried and fussed over him. He fell asleep with them during nap time and when he woke up he found Jiang Cheng placing a quilt over him.

Caught red handed, the older man feigned disinterest in the beginning... but then he sat down next to him. Just like he had done in the hospital one week ago.

“Did you see someone die before?” Jiang Cheng asked then, awkwardly scratching the back of his head, “You had such a strong... reaction to my words. It was insensitive of me. I apologize for angering you. I’ll better myself.”

XuanYu didn’t answer at that. 

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to sacrifice yourself to hatred and revenge. How much it had scarred him to be brought back to life, but only as a worn out set of robes on top of someone else’s soul. How distant he had felt when the Yiling Patriarch had inhabited his body and had let himself be touched by someone else.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to be touched in the flesh but be utterly unreachable as a soul. Or how much it hurt to become an empty body filled by someone foreign and new. Someone who could wear his skin better than him.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood. And thank all the gods for that.

So XuanYu... Mo XuanYu kept quiet and smiled instead.

*

Lan Zhan didn’t trust Jiang Cheng. He hadn’t in the past and he wasn’t gonna start now. Wei Ying would have been so disappointed in him for thinking badly of his baby brother, but there was little Lan Zhan could do about that.

Wei Ying wasn’t there to judge him for it.

Mo XuanYu would wake up every morning and wash himself, get dressed and tidy up the room before leaving. He would fix his appearance in a mirror Young Lady Jiang had gifted him in autumn, making sure his hat was still in place.

“What would happen if I were to...?”

“You must keep your hat on... even when you sleep. You know this much.”

“I wear a headband to bed.”

“And what of it?”

“It’s... silly.”

“Nobody can see you in your sleep. Why the sudden worry?”

Mo XuanYu said nothing in response to that, but Lan Zhan knew. The kid had never worried too much about his appearance aside from looking proper and well dressed. He had never fussed over his features, but recently he had taken the habit to walk dangerously close to makeup stores and check various displays at the convenience store close by. Lan Zhan knew Mo XuanYu had remembered his past... how he had quickly realized he was already an adult. With needs and desires.

But now a brand new reincarnation of Jiang WanYin would wait for him every morning to walk to work together. Now Jiang Cheng acted pleasantly enough to be considered kind and doting to someone starved of affection like Mo XuanYu had always been. Which wasn’t planned, it had never been.

Lan Zhan didn’t like where this was going.

He didn’t like it at all.

*

Nie HuaiSang came to bring a cake for XuanYu one day or so before the end of the year, snow sticking to his hair and flushed cheeks.

“I don’t know when your birthday is... so I’m pretty sure I’m late to the game. But I wanted to thank you for helping me and MianMian that one time. So I made a cake for you. I hope you like strawberries.”

Mo XuanYu had no idea if he liked them or not. He couldn’t even eat.

He started crying in the middle of his room, where HuaiSang had placed the boxed cake on top of his low table.

Panicked, HuaiSang jumped up and out of the room to alert Jiang Cheng next door. But upon seeing the other man’s worried expression XuanYu cried even harder.

“What did you do to him, you bastard?”

“I’m not the one who used to prank people all the time. Grow up!”

“You clearly did something horrible to him for...”

“A-Cheng we’re not twelve anymore. Who do you take me for?”

XuanYu took his chance to stuff his face with cake, gulping it down bit by bit even if he knew he didn’t have the necessary organs to process it without vomiting it all out in an hour or so. He had tried many times to hold food down to no avail. His body rejecting it as if it was poisonous and dangerous.

He had tried so many times... to practice. To be able to appreciate YanLi’s generous cooking, to help A-Ling and the children at school prep their lunches and maybe... maybe to eat with Jiang Cheng every now and then.

Nie HuaiSang hugged him and patted his head, confused but too scared to ask for an explanation. Mo XuanYu smiled at him and lied, saying his cake was the best he had ever eaten. It wasn’t the best. It was simply the first.

He had no way to compare it with anything else, really.

*

Wen Ning had heard about his “stomachache” from XiChen, who had known all about it from YanLi and Jiang Cheng. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise for XuanYu when he saw the older boy in front of his apartment complex the last day of the year.

But it was a surprise.

“Can we talk for a bit?” Wen Ning asked, holding his umbrella up for XuanYu to walk beside him, protecting him from the icy snow.

They walked to the nearest park, sitting under the gazebo to watch the snow falling down. Their heavy coats keeping them warm, despite the cold.

They used to take long walks back from the kindergarten with A-Yuan after school, since the Wens lived close to XuanYu. Before Jiang Cheng came back anyway.

Wen Ning looked uncomfortable, fidgeting with his fingers as he tried to find the right words. He surprised XuanYu by telling him how, in the past, he had suffered from an eating disorder and had been hospitalized for a while in his teens. How worried his sister and their grandma had been for him, how much they helped him in his recovery. How alone he had felt for years still, no matter how loved he was.

“A-Yuan told me he never saw you eat. So I was wondering if you needed help.”

It wasn’t the case, but XuanYu knew he meant well. Telling him everything was fine would have only worried him more, so he tried to explain an half-truth that could satisfy him. Saying it was difficult for him to process food, that in the past he had suffered from malnutrition and now he had digestive issues.

He was talking about his past life, but he figured that could work as well.

When they parted ways in front of the apartment complex, Wen Ning asked to hold XuanYu’s hands for a bit. He cradled them carefully, as if they were precious. His slender fingers cupping XuanYu’s smaller palms almost reverently.

“I know you don’t feel the same about me. But I’ll ask you to look after yourself anyway. Not out of obligation for me... but out of respect for yourself, if nothing else.”

The moment Wen Ning let go of his hands, Jiang Cheng stepped out of the front door of the building and saw them.

He said nothing and walked away after stepping out of the gate.

*

Lan Zhan would have very much liked to flip a finger at Jiang WanYin’s forehead. Hard. Wei Ying would have done the same, he was sure.

Wei Ying would have also smacked some sense in his baby brother, forcing him to face his feelings and take responsibility for what he was doing to poor Mo XuanYu.

Who was currently waiting for the other man’s return like a dog by his room balcony, surveying the front courtyard like a bird of prey from above.

Lan Zhan tried to coax the kid inside, reminding him snow was still falling down and that his beanie was slipping away. He tried to be gentle about it, knowing how much XuanYu had grown resentful of the hats he had to constantly wear.

But the younger man simply shrugged, saying he wanted to wait for another five minutes. Just one more. Just to make sure.

Jiang Cheng didn’t come back that night.

And Mo XuanYu cried in his sleep clutching the half-empty vial to his chest.

Lan Zhan spent the night watching over him, singing to him the song he had written for Wei Ying. He snuggled close to XuanYu and made sure his wide headband was covering the crown of his head, before pressing himself to the other’s forehead.

He never stopped singing.

Wishing he could take all the pain away.

*

YanLi, A-Yuan and even ZiXuan knocked on his door to greet him into the new year, despite how XuanYu should have been the one to pay his respects to his landlords.

But they asked him to visit the funeral home with them instead, to say their thanks to YanLi’s parents with offers and flowers.

He dressed in his best clothes, having never been in what seemed to be a modern version of the ancestral halls of his childhood in a past life. The establishment was fairly sterile, with shelves filled with plaques and pictures instead of wooden inscriptions on an altar. The lot of them bowed and said their thanks, chatting with the late Jiangs almost as if they had never left. YanLi apologized to her mother for Jiang Cheng’s absence that year like any other year, while ZiXuan told his father-in-law how they would have visited the Jin ancestors during Chūnjié to make it fair.

XuanYu looked at them and barely kept himself from crying.

On their way back, YanLi explained her parents had died when she was still twelve and Jiang Cheng was merely six. How they had lived in the orphanage run by XiChen’s mother and made friends with the boy, who was YanLi’s classmate. How the siblings stayed there until YanLi came of age and got custody of her baby brother. ZiXuan’s family of lawyers had helped her pro bono and that was how she had met the man and fallen in love with him. Even if it had taken a while for ZiXuan to notice her at first, preoccupied with university and law school as he had been at the time. But the Jins helped her with the inheritance left by the late Madame Yu: the apartment complex where they currently lived.

Watching them explaining their past in such detail moved XuanYu deeply. Feeling as if they wanted to make him part of their family by filling in the gaps for him.

That was still his older brother after all and those were still his sister-in-law and his beloved nephew and he... he loved them. He had missed them so, so much.

And he was about to leave them again soon.

*

Wen Qing finally showed herself up one day at the park, when Mo XuanYu was taking Fairy out for an evening walk. She approached him by telling the younger man she had assisted in the surgery Xue Yang had undergone some time back.

Lan Zhan (hiding in the kid’s coat pocket) could see how startled the kid was at the mention of the criminal, but he decided to trust this version of Lady Wen as he would have done in the past.

Wei Ying cared deeply for her, after all.

Whatever truths she was about to entrust Mo XuanYu with, Lan Zhan knew the kid could take it.

He hoped as much, at least.

*

Jiang Cheng came back only for Chinese New Year. Saying he had stayed at XiChen’s since the winter break allowed them to take it easy and figure some stuff out for the following school year.

It hurt to know where he had been all along, but XuanYu braved a smile anyway. He knew how much Jiang Cheng cared for the older man, how much he wanted to save the school from the debt collector. How much he didn’t love XuanYu back.

So he let himself cry one last time before waking up one morning and deciding he had had enough.

He talked with Lan Zhan, asking him to tell him all about Wei WuXian and their love. If XuanYu’s sacrifice had allowed them to be happy as they deserved in the end. If Lan Zhan hated him now, for forcing him away from his loved one, who was currently waiting for him to come back to heaven.

Mo XuanYu knew the couple had sacrificed their chance at reincarnation to allow him to seek a second lifetime for himself. He knew Wei Ying watched over them from up above, waiting for Lan Zhan to secure a new life for the kid.

They talked all day and then well into the night.

By dawn Mo XuanYu had decided what to do.

*

XuanYu properly met Meng Yao one day of early spring, when flowers weren’t yet brave enough to poke their way out and greet the sun. The man was dressed in black, his hair cut short, a sigarette between his lips as he waited patiently for the kindergarten to open.

It was XuanYu’s duty to open that morning, so he was the one to greet the man.

Upon hearing his voice, Meng Yao immediately recognized him.

“There you are. I was waiting for you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the kid who answered the phone. And the one who helped my subordinate back in winter, right?”

His dimples were so deep, his face so pleasant.

Mo XuanYu remembered him from another lifetime. He remembered how much he had cared for his older brother Jin GuangYao. How hurt he had felt when the other had lied and accused him of harassment just to get rid of him.

But this was a new life and Meng Yao was just a man.

Who happened to have been married with XiChen for a while before turning to a life filled with crime and gang violence.

Wen Qing had told him Meng Yao had initially tried to live far away from his adoptive father Wen RuoHan. All for the sake of marrying XiChen and keep him safe. But XiChen’s mother still had had a debt to pay for the construction of the orphanage, a price too high for her to pay with her poor health and delicate disposition. A debt that XiChen had inherited from her when she had died.

That was why Meng Yao had left him: to go back to his father and ask him to handle the debt himself, supplicating him to overlook such small issue and let him dry XiChen out of every penny and cent instead.

Wen Qing may have learned this only from the gossiping running in her family, with the Wen Clan being as big as it was, but she was pretty sure of what she had told XuanYu. That Meng Yao had simply faked having fallen out of love with XiChen to protect him from his adoptive father and his cruelty. That XiChen still loved him and was waiting for him to fight alongside him instead.

Mo XuanYu knew all of this.

So now he could act and fulfill his mission.

*

“I want to pay the debt XiChen owes you.”

“You are full of surprises, XuanYu. And how do you plan to do that?”

“I can do many things.”

“You’re very pretty, you can make good money out of it.”

XuanYu considered his words before shaking his head.

“It’s not something I can do.”

“Then what can you do?”

“I’ll solve everything.”

“I’m all ears.”

“But you’ll have to stop making XiChen worry so much.”

“That’s not how business work...”

“Lie to me. Give your word and I’ll... I will solve everything.”

Meng Yao humored him and nodded.

Then and only then, Mo XuanYu took his hat off.

*

Lan Zhan had watched the entire scene unfold before his eyes without intervening, trusting Mo XuanYu with such an important choice. He took in the sight of the beautiful spiritual light shining brightly on top of XuanYu’s head like a crown.

His soul in full display, its energy so raw it had slowed down time all around them.

Lan Zhan turned around and looked at XiChen, who had just turned a corner and had been walking towards XuanYu to greet him good morning. Frozen in time, his older brother’s face still looked peaceful... simply because he had had no time to notice Meng Yao’s presence quite yet.

Lan Zhan turned once more and saw Jiang WanYin making his way in a rush towards them, surely to protect XuanYu from Meng Yao. When did he arrive? His features trapped in a perpetual frown, scared for the one he truly loved in this lifetime.

Then, Lan Zhan looked up at Mo XuanYu and saw him taking the bottle only half filled with gold... which symbolized his goodwill and generous spirit.

“Will this be enough to grant a wish, Lan Zhan?”

When XuanYu said his name like that he sounded so much like his Wei Ying, full of hope and love.

“It depends on the wish, A-Yu.”

“I reckon it’s not enough for a new reincarnation, eh?”

“It’s enough to save a life... but not yours.”

XuanYu looked crestfallen, but he persevered still.

The bottle transformed into a bag filled with money and XuanYu made his way to XiChen and left it at his feet before smiling up at his mentor and employer.

“I cannot rewrite the past, but maybe I can plan a better future for you.”

Still smiling, XuanYu slowly walked over to Jiang Cheng and said his farewells.

Then he crouched down and took Lan Zhan in his hands, kissing him goodbye on the head affectionately.

“Erase me well, Lan Zhan,” he whispered then.

Before disappearing into thin air.

***

Wei Ying had agreed with him, suggesting the idea himself.

In the end the King of Hell had granted Lan Zhan’s request and offered Mo XuanYu a second chance anyway. Since this new self-sacrifice had been fueled by positive emotions instead of anger and despair, the hell judges had considered the atonement fulfilled and put the kid’s name back on the reincarnation list.

Twenty years had past and many things had changed.

For starters, the kid’s last name wasn’t Mo anymore, but Nie. The boy had, in fact, born into Nie MingJue’s family and had lived overseas in Japan for a while before moving back to Lanling when XuanYu turned twenty. Nie HuaiSang had met him many times during summer vacations and other festivities, visiting his brother and his wife every chance he had gotten to dote on his cute nephew XuanYu.

Nie MingJue had done a remarkable job in protecting him from harm. So, by the time their little family had decided to move close to HuaiSang, XuanYu had become a well adjusted adult with a brilliant future ahead of him.

Nobody remembered him.

Or so Lan Zhan had thought.

Apparently, he had forgotten to wipe Jin Ling’s memories thoroughly. So, when The Nie family had come to greet HuaiSang’s friends YanLi and ZiXuan, A-Ling almost had a stroke out of incredulity and happiness for being reunited with his “A-Yu”. Even if Jin Ling was now older than the pretty-gege from his memories. Even if he had spent years trying to figure out why nobody seemed to remember the weird uncle living next door to his Jiujiu years back.

XiChen and Meng Yao had solved their problems and had started running the school together right after Wen RuoHan sudden and mysterious disappearance. The man had many enemies after all. 

A-Yuan had grown up into a fine young man, someone Wei Ying would have certainly been proud of, working with his cousin Wen Ning at the local botanical garden while his friends still studied in university. 

Nie HuaiSang had married Qin Su and opened a restaurant with her. 

MianMian and Wen Qing had decided to live together and adopt a bunch of dogs just because. 

Xiao XingChen and Xue Yang still lived together while Song Lan had found his way back to them after talking it out with the couple. 

A-Qing was probably running some sketchy business in social services to protect kids from horrible families.

Lan Zhan was still, unfortunately, a stuffed rabbit. Following XuanYu in his new life in the most unexpected of ways. In the form of the first present the boy’s uncle had gifted him in childhood. If Wei Ying had pulled a string or two from heaven to make that happen, well, Lan Zhan himself was none the wiser. The only thing he knew was that XuanYu had always taken him with him in all his travels even if he didn’t know he could speak. Lan Zhan had preferred not to reveal his nature and let the kid have a normal childhood. Especially since he had no memories of his past as a tenant in Jiang YanLi’s house. Nor of his life as a cultivator.

Wei Ying had agreed they could wait to be reunited again. The both of them wanting to look over XuanYu for a little longer before getting their own chance at reincarnation. They had all eternity to be together again... they could definitely wait a bit more for the kid.

All was well.

Aside from the other person whose mind Lan Zhan had conveniently forgot to wipe clean of any memory of XuanYu.

In his defense, Lan Zhan had tried to make Jiang Cheng forget. But something about XuanYu must have touched him so deeply... that Lan Zhan had not been able to do much about it. The kid’s smiles and clumsy antics would always linger in the back of the other’s mind no matter how much he tried to ignore them.

Coming back from his job at ZiXuan’s firm, exhausted and vulnerable, Jiang Cheng decided to visit his sister the same day Nie MingJue had brought his family there. So he was particularly weak to the sight of a bright, soft XuanYu when YanLi introduced her younger brother to their guests.

To Lan Zhan’s absolute delight, Jiang Cheng immediately bowed down to a scary looking Nie MingJue and asked his son’s hand in marriage.

Yes, grovel to this precious boy and learn your place.

XuanYu only tilted his head at that weird man bowing to his parents and smiled.

His laughter ringing up to the sky, where Wei Ying was still listening.

From where he would have kept watching.

*

[I worked so hard on this please reblog]

*

[kobato means “little dove” I thought it was cute since XuanYu is a magpie! + I wanted MXY a chance at life and for once this is a reversal-sacrifice from WWX’s part and I think it’s neat.]

[JC would be 43 or so... which yikes. but this is all I could do. I don’t like huge age gaps but at least everyone is a consenting adult, okay?]

[the thing that started this was like “what if LXC was an only child and LWJ did not reincarnate bc he’s still in the afterlife or something? then the entire thing escalated so...yeah.]

now I will cry for ages. I worked so hard on this good god D:

[prorevenge]

You want to mess with my career and my freedom? Watch your entire life go down in flames!

TL;DR at the bottom. Sorry in advance for any formatting or grammatical errors. English is not my first language.

This is a pretty long one, so hope you're up for the challenge :)

This all happened five or so years ago while I was working for a proprietary trading firm. The company is a multinational and it had opened a new office in my city a couple of years before I joined them. For those who don't know, most prop shops (as I understood it) have a very high turnover rate. Just toss everyone in and keep those who stick. The company I worked for recruited every three months. It had space for about 120 traders but the office was never full. Out of the twenty or so who were hired every quarter, only about five managed to make it beyond the three month internship period, and of those, only one - or sometimes none at all - made it past the additional three months probation period. The company was operating in my city for two years before I joined and there were only about four people who I could have called permanent. Everyone else, about another ten, was either on their internship or on probation.

The Setup.

I and about twenty five others were recruited straight out of university. The internship period paid really well for a first job, about twice as much as any other entry level position in other financial institutions plus bonuses once we went live (regardless of whether one is on internship, probation or permanent), and I was really excited.

I first came across my boss, a really decent Indian guy, at a industry day held in our university. That was where they administered the IQ tests and I passed. The office, similar to other mid-sized operations, had a pretty flat management structure. Us traders were at the lowest level, the HR/Ops manager was above us, and the Office Manager was, well, the head of the branch. The boss gave time off pretty much whenever you asked for it as long as the day's objectives were fulfilled (that was his policy).

However, the HR/Ops manager was his opposite, and then some. This lady was a Grade-A bitch, and I mean that sincerely. Let's call her Gabby.

The Instigating Event

I first met Gabby when I went to their offices for my final interview. I was registering at the front desk when she marched from her office demanding some documents from the receptionist. The receptionist wanted to finish up with me first but she was ordered off to file storage. Our exchange went like so:

Gabby: You're one of the new ones?

Me: Yes. I'm really excited.

Gabby: Don't be. you don't look like you'll make it.

Me: Why?

Gabby: You're too soft.

A pause.

Gabby: Buut... I can put in a good word for you, if you give me a little something. ( a bribe).

Me: Haha. Very funny.

Gabby: I'm serious. Give something and I'll make it very easy for you. Otherwise I'll make sure you don't even get into the interview.

Me: No.

Gabby: Stupid idiot.

Right to my face. And she kept her word. She made me sit in a hidden corner of the waiting room where no one would see me easily, but I could hear the conversations at the desk. The only reason why I got an interview is because apparently I had impressed the boss at our previous meeting that he came to see why my CV wasn't there. Gabby said that I hadn't sent it in. The receptionist stated that she had seen it somewhere. Then I walked up to the desk at the same time the receptionist said, "Here it is. It was in the trash..." and everyone stared at Gabby.

From that moment of humiliation onwards, Gabby had a raging hate boner for me. You see, Gabby was a micromanager, more of a nanomanager really. She made us have to request access if we wanted to access sites other than those on her approved list, and for traders who gain info from wherever we could find it, her list was woefully inadequate. She would call meetings at the most inopportune times - but only when the branch manager was not around - and in her lengthy meetings, you could never leave to check on your positions. She had this annoying habit of taking my lunch and when I confronted her about it, she essentially told me to go fuck myself. That I could live with. I just started bringing in two sets of lunch and kept on doing the job that I loved.

Gabby was married with two kids, and she was pretty. I guess she liked the attention because she would have a stream of guys picking her up at the office for two hour 'lunches' and when she left for home some evening. But not on Thursday. Thursdays were the days when her husband would come pick her up towing their kids along. I think they went to have a family dinner or something.

The Mistakes Gabby Made: Round One

Our manager left about two months after I joined. I think he returned to India to get married or something but still stayed with the company. Wished him all the best. None of the other permanent traders had the experience corporate required to take on a management role (5 years at least) so they had to shop around. In the meantime, Gabby became the de-facto head of the branch despite the fact that her knowledge of futures markets was rudimentary at best.

Her first mistake was when she delayed my promotion from internship to probation. I am an excellent trader, and was easily top five in my group. Of the 26, she promoted the twenty she liked, kept me and another guy in internship, and fired four.At around the same time, another recruitment drive happened and another twentyish interns were hired. I knew this was our beef rekindled and remixed, and I was actually surprised she held onto it for so long. It was also pretty unusual since the last thing my former boss did before he left was to promote me from the simulator to a live trading account. But I kept my head down and continued learning, often going back to my former boss and the permanent employees to get advice.

Another three months go by, and in the next evaluation I was shocked that I was still not brought up to probation, despite the fact that all of the new recruits of the second group had been promoted and I was easily the best and the only one trading live. I knew I was good at the job. The permanent guys all said so. The group I initially joined with was frequently asking me for advice. To their credit, a few of them were good, but most of them were still on sim, and as a rule, no one advanced to probation while still on sim. However, you could go live while on internship if you were good which is what had happened to me. So I was a live trader and making good money but I was still on internship and passed over twice. I couldn't let go of that.

I decided to talk to Gabby directly. I approached the senior guys and made my case, though I was careful not to put her in bad light. They agreed to help me and so they did. about a month after the she passed me over the second time, she gave me my promotion and I was now on probation. At this time, she was still unsure of her power and was still afraid of the permanent traders. Those guys were like gods.

Two months after my promotion, another evaluation and recruitment drive. I was not promoted. The group I started out with was now permanent, despite having only two of them trading live. The group I was currently with on probation were all promoted to permanent status. The group behind me on internship was all promoted to probation, and another group was hired. I let it go hoping she had got it out of her system. Sadly, she had not.

Round Two

Three months go by. I'm trading live and loving it, though still on probation. An evaluation comes up again and I'm not promoted, despite the fact that, contract to contract, I was almost on a level with the permanent employees. The group that found me on probation was advanced to permanent status to a man, and none of them were live. the group behind me caught up to me and a new batch of newbies were hired as interns. I couldn't let this one go either. I approached the original four permanent employees who were now my very good buddies and planned to do the same thing as last time. Only this time, it didn't work. Gabby had grown into her sadistic power and flatly refused to even consider my promotion even after she was presented with evidence that I was worth it. Her argument was along the lines of, "I'm the boss so I can do whatever the hell I want."

But I wasn't having that, so I contacted my former boss for help. At the time he had been promoted to head of operations, Africa. He was actually quite surprised, given my performance, that I was still on probation. Needless to say, the order came down from on high and Gabby looked like she was shitting six pineapples simultaneously as she handed my letter. And I thought that was the end of it. How wrong I was.

On the next recruitment she hired this girl, let's call her Sue. Sue was an intelligent person all round, but she didn't have the emotional quotient to handle the market (trading, as I was taught, requires two mental aspects: IQ and EQ. You can't improve IQ, but you can boost your EQ to deal with the numerous stresses that accompany the career). Sue had more than enough of the IQ part, but EQ, not so much. No worries, you can work on that.

Just to recap: The office now had about seventy employees. Of these, over thirty were permanent staff (me included) but only eleven were trading live. Another twenty or so were on probation, but only three were trading live. None of the interns were live. The office needed to stay profitable if it was to stay open which means that the money the fourteen live traders were paying the salaries of everyone in the office, rent, supplies, health insurance, pensions etc etc. Needless to say, corporate was not seeing a lot of returns from our branch, and as I came to learn later from my former boss, were considering shutting down the branch and costing us our jobs. But I digress.

The Last Straw

The Grade-A Bitch Gabby took advantage of an inconsolable and desperate Sue to try and get me for sexual harassment. This is how it went down. Remember all those people still on sim? Well, they all came to the eleven of us for trading advice and we did what we could to help them. We divided up the sim traders into groups and I was mentoring about four people. Sue was one of them. As any trader will tell you, the period before profitability is usually one of losses (unless you're really good) and is filled with stress and fear (hence the need for high EQ). It's normal, and you get through it.

Sue was going through such a rough patch one evening. We were going over her trades (bad trading day all around), when she just burst out crying. I know how it feels. I had shed my own tears as well. So comforted her the best I could. I held her hand and patted her on the back awkwardly (to this day I still don't know how to comfort someone) until she quieted down. What I didnt know was that Gabby had seen us.

As I came to learn later, she approached Sue the following day and made her an offer. Gabby would make sure Sue kept her job and would get her a lot of money if she stated that I had sexually harassed her. Sue took Gabby up on the offer and what followed was a nightmare.It started with a formal reprimand from corporate, a hearing in which I wasn't present to defend myself (because Gabby 'forgot' to send me the summons).

Apparently she lobbied quite viciously to get me fired. The only reason I was able to keep my job was that my former boss came to my defence. Despite his help, I lost my quarterly bonus (about US$100,000) and half of my holdback (about US$400,000). I also had to attend seminars which essentially involved watching the same film on sexual assault in the workplace (three hours long) until I stated, in writing, that I was an abuser and it would go on my record. I knew that if that happened, Gabby would have the ammunition she needed to ruin my life forever. So every day, I got into the office at seven in the morning, watched the three hour film until ten. Refuse to acknowledge it, then get to work, leave the office at 11:20 in the evening, rinse and repeat. For almost seven months. It was tiring, and torture, and Gabby never let me live it down.

All of the people I had been mentoring were transferred the day after my reprimand. A day after that, Gabby informed me via letter that my clip size had been cut from 1000 to 20 contracts. Yeah, I had to admit, I was bloodied. I was down, but the bitch didn't know that she should have ended me.

The Revenge

Step 1: Ruin Gabby's Career.

I started compiling all the shit that was happening to me in the office. It started when I realized that when I went out to lunch, someone would open my desk drawer and mess around with my notebook, where I jotted down my trading ideas for the day. The only person who had a key apart from me was Gabby. Apparently she had mastered my lunchtime routine for the entire 45 minute break and would open my locker when I was out smoking. She would then copy down my trading plans for the day and give them to Sue. I even saw them at it once, but they didn't see me. I documented it. I let it go on for a while so that I could establish a pattern via Sue's trades. I then approached two of the permanent traders who were closest to me and told them my plan.

Remember when I said almost no money was reaching corporate? and that there were only eleven live traders? The situation had only gotten worse. The office was now full but we had less that fifteen live traders. Live trading could only be approved by Head of Operations (my former boss) and he was a strict one. Now imagine that my earning capacity had been cut by over 90%. My two friends agreed to my plan and they slowed down their trading by around 50%. This essentially put the branch in the red and three weeks later, we were told that Head of Ops and other head honchos were coming down. The next phase involved getting Sue into a corner. Pleas, a tear or two, and revealing that I could prove she had been stealing my work were enough to get a written statement from her that Gabby had orchestrated my whole sexual harassment thing.

Step 2: Ruin Gabby's Marriage

It took only a little investigation on my part to realize than all those men who visited the office were actually Gabby's lovers. She would leave for two-hour 'lunches' with her phone turned off. I took advantage of one such period. Gabby left and I snuck into her office to find her Facebook profile open. Everyone knew she was always on there and it was a sore point because she had banned it for the rest of us minions. I got into her Messenger, and voila! Explicit texts, nudes, rants about her husband and his inadequacies, the six guys or so she had cheated with, all of it. I copy pasted the data into her private email which she was logged into as well (always clear cache, you guys) and sent it to my private email, then deleted it from her sent folder. Now I had the ammo on my phone ready to send.

Step 3: Ruin Gabby's Relationship with her Kids.

Now, I'll say right off the bat I'm not proud of this step. but to bust my justice nut, it wasn't enough to just send the info to her husband. So I waited for Thursday when I knew he would be passing by the office with the kids. The Pro Revenge gods saw fit to bless me that day, because it was the same day that Corporate Head Honchos were ridin' into town.

Thursday.

I was at the office at seven as usual with all my documentation from my appointment letter to the numerous rejected requests for promotion, sat through the three hour sexual harassment video (yes, I was still doing that), and waited for the Moment. The guys from corporate, my former boss included, arrived and went straight into a meeting with Gabby. I was quite certain that they would call me in to know why I had been attending a sexual harassment awareness class for almost a year, and I was ready for them.

I was called in after lunch, at about two. The question was asked and before I could answer, Gabby jumped on the bit like I knew she would. She went on a long rant about how I had been insubordinate, and how I liked to touch the female employees. I could tell from her grin that she thought she was winning.

And then I pulled out Sue's letter, and the grin curdled on her face. Sue was hurriedly called in and she backed my story. She said she was sorry. She was fired on the spot and told to go wait at the receptionist for her final check. I felt no sympathy. I was on a roll.

Next I pulled out my analysis of my trades and told them how Gabby had been breaking into my locker and stealing my notes for sue. Gabby denied it. Sue was called back in. She denied it. My former boss logged into the company network, pulled Sue's and my trading data. He compared the positions taken by both of us with my notes. He said it was true. Sue was fired again. They told me they would refund my confiscated bonus and holdback, with an extra 50 grand. That was fine by me. The justice was enough.

And then I spotted Gabby's husband heading into her office as usual, their two kids in tow. I pulled out my phone, grinned at her and said,

"You're husband is here."

She turned around and saw him. She excused herself for a minute to tell him to wait.

My former boss said, "Sure."

I pressed send.

TL;DR. Grade-A Bitch tries to ruin my career because I humiliated her, I burn her life to the fucking ground.

As for the aftermath, Gabby's husband absolutely lost his shit. Her office was glass-walled and the rest was open-plan so we could all hear what they were shouting about. He finally left with their kids in tow (sorry little ones) Gabby followed him still shouting at him. Then she saw us all standing around and the look on her face was priceless as she was wondering which aspect of her life to try and salvage. She let her husband go, but about an hour later she had been fired.

My favorite boss stayed behind since there was no one left. He stayed for a month training the lady who had been with the company the longest to take over as manager. She is easily the most brilliant mind I had ever met. Unfortunately the branch was still struggling with so many employees who were not generating income and they had to shut it down. But they transferred all the performing employees to their other various branches in London (2 branches) and India (9 branches). So I guess no one undeservedly lost their jobs.

I still stalk Gabby on Facebook. There have been a lot of "I'm single because I'm too awesome" posts of late. I almost feel sorry for her, but I remember the three-hour video and I stop being foolish. From what I could see on LinkedIn, Sue bounced around from firm to firm until she found a position as a research analyst. My favorite boss is still at the firm. We talk from time to time.

I took a break from trading for a while. After all the shit that went down, I needed a break so I didn't take them up on their offer to relocate to India. Went to work with a buddy of mine who has a consultancy. When I feel ready I'll go back to the market. For me at least, there is no other job as challenging and satisfying.

Wow. That was long. I think though that's the end of my ProRevenge :)

(source) (story by AbbasKubaba)

[timelordthirteen]

Baby It’s Cold Outside - Chapter 3

Mr. Gold/Belle, Explicit (overall)

Chapter Summary: The "adventure" seems short lived, but is really just beginning as Belle and Gold share a dance and a moment. Rating goes up starting this chapter. For the 31 Days of Ficmas prompt #21 - holiday music.

Notes: Please don't kill me. You all know where this is going. ;) Also I'm stupid cheesy with the title of this fic, fight me. Unbeta'd so it's riddled with typos and all my terrible mistakes.

[AO3]

The short adventure turned out to be trudging through the snow on the back porch to bring in more firewood.

“Some adventure,” Belle muttered as she stomped the snow off her boots just inside the french doors. She gave Gold a wry smile and shook out her hair.

Gold chuckled and leaned against the wall to kick his boots off. “Apologies for the false advertisement, but it couldn’t be helped.”

It really couldn’t given the rate at which the snow was still falling. Belle had checked the app on her phone for Con Ed and while they were aware of the outage, they had no estimate for when it would be repaired. They had to assume they would be without electricity for the remainder of the evening, and had made four trips to create a sizable stack of wood in the bin by the fireplace. Gold contemplated hauling some of it upstairs his bedroom. It had the only other working fireplace in the house, and he would need heat to sleep tonight.

It was that thought which made him realize that at this point Belle was definitely going to have to spend the night. He supposed the sofa in the library would be a passable spot to sleep, god knows he’d napped on it a fair number of times, but he always woke stiff and regretful. He felt terrible relegating her to the same fate. Frowning, he set the last two logs on the fire and rubbed his hands together. The reasonable alternative was sleeping on the sofa himself, in spite of how much he’d feel it in the morning, because the only remaining option was -

He shook his head. The idea of Belle in his bed, and him in his bed, at the same time - was not happening. That was a fantasy that would remain in the deep recesses of his mind, only to be visited in moments of weakness and desperation. And he’d been entirely too much of both recently, giving in to his baser needs and stroking himself to lurid images of Belle writhing in his bed, or on her knees under his desk.

He felt his face flush, and he turned away from the fire, burying the tableau that was playing out in his mind just as Belle returned with an armful of blankets.

“This is all that was in the linen closet,” she said, dropping a quilt and two knit throw blankets over the back of the sofa with a soft thump. “I think it’s at least enough to build a pretty good fort.”

He gave her a strange look and she grinned. “Don’t tell me you’ve never made a blanket fort.”

“Not in quite some time,” Gold said, taking the poker from beside the fireplace and prodding the logs. The last time he’d constructed anything out of blankets, pillows, and furniture had been when his son was still just a boy, and those halcyon days were long gone.

The flames leapt up and the wood crackled and snapped. He watched it for a moment, his mouth curving slightly. “We have such a lovely open fire. Too bad there’s no chestnuts to be had.”

Belle giggled as a delicious idea formed. “No,” she said, drawing out the ‘o’ sound. “But there are marshmallows and graham crackers in the pantry. If we’re lucky there might be some chocolate too.”

He grinned. “The perfect dessert for being snowed in.”

“So, what’s the best Christmas gift you ever received?” Belle asked, carefully pressing down the second half of the graham cracker on top of the golden, roasted marshmallow. It made a lovely squishing sound and her mouth watered as the heat from the gooey inside started to melt the piece of chocolate.

Gold pulled his marshmallow out of the fireplace and examined it to see if it was done enough. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, sticking the sweet back in the flames until it caught fire and he had to blow it out. “Probably something my Aunts gave me when I was a boy.”

It had been a long time since he’d gotten anything for Christmas that wasn’t a “present” to himself, which was really nothing more than buying whatever he wanted to buy anyway. He wasn’t lying exactly, but his Aunts hadn’t had much money, so the few gifts he did get were all precious to him. He knew Belle hadn’t meant to dredge up old hurts with her topic of conversation, but this time of year always made him a bit melancholy. It was never more apparent that he was alone in the world than at the holidays.

He sighed rather heavily as he broke his graham cracker in half, and Belle’s lips pressed together. “Will you tell me about them?” she asked, and he glanced sideways at her before pinching the marshmallow between the two halves and pulling it off the skewer. “Your Aunts?”

He smashed the treat together, smiling as he recalled doing a similar thing with his son. “Well, only one of them was actually my Aunt,” he said, taking a messy bite and crumbling cracker everywhere. He frowned down at his tie and waistcoat and brushed the crumbs away as he chewed.

“Mellie was my mother’s older sister,” he explained. “But Helen was just her, uh, her friend.”

Belle frowned for a second and then her eyes went wide. “Oh!” She grinned. “So they were -? And you were -?”

“Raised by two spinsters who called themselves sisters but were actually lesbians?” He stopped to stick another marshmallow on his skewer, and glanced at Belle who was grinned madly. “Yes.”

She laughed. “That sounds delightful.”

There were many parts of it that were not delightful. It was a hard enough existence for Mellie and Helen when he was dumped on their doorstep by his wayward father, but the two women loved him and cared for him as best they could. They were poor to say the least, surviving on a small pension from Mellie’s days in a textile factory, the temp work Helen did as a typist, and the knitting both of them sold from time to time. The two women were always looked at by others as being strange or suspicious, a few of the other children insisted they were witches of some form or other. He carried the shame of his father’s crimes, and the loss of his mother heavy in his heart even as a young boy, never understanding why he was cursed to such a life.

“It was.” Gold swallowed, watching the fire lick at the marshmallow. After a long moment, he pulled it out and offered it to Belle.

“Oh, I don’t think I could eat another,” she said.

“I suppose I’ll have to then,” he said, feigning a heavy sigh.

She shook her head, smiling, and he winked at her before popping the last of the smores in his mouth. Her face felt warm as she watched his tongue lap at the treat. It gave her entirely too many naughty ideas about what else he might do with that tongue, and she immediately turned away.

“I think we need some festive music,” Belle said, getting up to fetch her phone from the desk.

Gold groaned at the thought of the same old caroles or sappy, upbeat pop holiday tunes. “Must we?”

She gave him a look and pushed to her feet, setting the phone on the side table. “Hush, or I’ll put on the Mr. Grinch song since it seems to be your theme.”

He frowned as the first notes played, relaxing when he recognized it as an older song, something like he used to hear on Helen’s old radio. It was more about the wonders season, about winter and snow and children playing, and he smiled.

They spread out a blanket on the sofa, big enough to cover both of their laps though they were sitting at opposite ends. He might entertain the notion of snuggling with Belle under a fluffy blanket in his mind, but he was not about to impose on her in reality.

She told him about her favorite gift, a book from her grandmother. On the surface it seemed like your average historical romance novel, a bodice ripper she jested, with a princess and a handsome knight. But it was really about love making you brave. The whole idea of it was endearing and amusing at the same time. Of course her favorite gift would be a book she still kept with her, still read a couple of times a year, now dog-eared and well worn. And of course she would see the best possible message in it all because she was the best possible sort of person, and the kind who he couldn’t imagine ever giving a beast like him the time of day, much less sit here making the best of a snowstorm as if they were good friends. Or, in another life, perhaps even more.

“Do you know,” Belle said, stretching her legs out on the sofa until they almost touched Gold’s leg, “that in Iceland the traditional Christmas gift is a book?”

He glanced down at the lump made by her feet and fought the urge to rest his hands on them. “Is that so?”

“It’s called Jolabokaflod.”

Gold blinked. “Gesundheit,” he said dryly.

She daringly poked him with her toe and rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop it.”

“I’m serious,” she continued. “It means the Christmas Book Flood. They publish more books in Iceland, per capita, than any other country, and sell most of them between September and November, all because of people buying them for the holiday. Then, on Christmas Eve, you exchange books, and spend the rest of the night in bed, reading and eating chocolate.”

“That sounds - lovely,” he said, just a touch wistful. Then he smirked at her. “It also sounds like your idea of Utopia.”

Belle laughed. “It really does.” She laid her head against the back of the couch, looking up at the candles on the mantle. Her head rolled to the side so she could look at him, watching him in profile. The light from the fire glowed against his skin, casting shadows in the angles on his face. He looked beautiful, and she took a deep breath.

“Maybe I should move to Iceland,” she said softly. “Be among my book loving people.”

He nodded slowly, but the thought of her moving away put a pang in his chest. “Would you like to?” he asked, and her head tilted in question. “Live somewhere else, I mean.”

She shrugged. “Permanently? I don’t know.”

She didn’t think she could move right now, not with her father in the state that he was, and not with her feelings for Gold. Even if nothing were to come of them, if her love were unrequited forever, it would still hurt to leave him behind, knowing that he was alone in this big, old, castle of house.

“I’d love to travel, though,” she added, just as the music change to a light instrumental version of Jingle Bells. “But I think I’d always come back home, wherever that is.”

Gold nodded again, a soft smile playing on his lips. “I’d like that too.”

They sat in silence for a little while, until Gold had to put another log on the fire. He could hear the wind howling over the top of the chimney. Despite the cold, the snow, and the situation, it was a very nice evening with excellent company.

When he said so out loud, Belle blushed. “Thank you, I was - I was thinking the same thing.”

He smiled and then looked down, noticing a spot on his waistcoat. “Bugger,” he grumbled, scraping at it with his fingernail. “Marshmallow.”

“The hazards of smores.” She shook her head. “I suppose that will have to go to the dry cleaners this week."

“Indeed,” he muttered.

He unbuttoned the vest and slipped it off, not wanting to sit around with sticky, sugary marshmallow on his clothes. Which meant there wasn’t much point in still wearing his tie, so he undid that too and folded it before laying it on the table. He popped the top two buttons of his shirt and then his cuffs, which he rolled up to his elbows, stopping at the gold sleeve garters. When he was done, Belle was looking at him strangely. Her eyes were wide and her lips were parted slightly. She looked like she was holding on to the blanket for dear life.

“Are you alright?”

Belle blinked and shook herself. “Oh, yes, sorry, just -” Just imagining you naked since you’re practically there right now. “Just thinking.”

The music switch over to Baby It’s Cold Outside, the version sung by Dean Martin, and he started to smile. It was the kind of song that had him imagining a couple dancing, swaying slowly, the sexual undertones implicit in the lyrics making them anticipate what would come later. His mind wandered to dancing with Belle, her hand in his, his arm around her waist, holding her closer than he ever dared. He must have said something out loud because the next thing he knew, Belle was standing in front of him, holding out her hand.

“Would you care to dance, Mr. Gold?”

His brow furrowed and he looked from her face to her hand and back again.

She smirked. “I won’t bite.”

Gold smiled and took her hand, pushing to his feet. “I can’t promise I’ll be all that graceful,” he said, gesturing to his leg.

She waved her free hand, and shook her head. “I’ll probably step on your toes anyway.”

She moved them to the middle of the room, between the sofa and the desk, and turned. He stepped close and hesitantly placed his hand at her waist as she laid her arm on his shoulder. After a few seconds he realized she was waiting for him to lead, and he almost laughed as they finally started to move in an easy rhythm.

The words of the song made Belle feel loose all over, and called to mind the things she kept buried save for the late hours in her own apartment. Only then did she ever let herself entertain such wicked thoughts as her fingers slipped and pressed her body to release. Gold stepped back, letting go of her for a moment and lifting her hand and arm to spin her around. She smiled and laughed, and he pulled her back to him, his hand slipping down her side and sending a thrill through her. There wasn’t any hesitation this time, so she moved closer and let her arm circle his neck.

Gold’s eyes drifted down to meet Belle’s as the song faded out. They were bright blue and sparkling, and his breath caught. They stood, hands together, arms around each other and little space between them. He felt his head drawn down and he leaned into it as she licked her lips. Her fingers tightened on the back of his neck, pulling him in until -

Jingle Belle Rock blared from the phone, startling them apart. Belle brushed her hands over her dress, but before she could turn down the volume, the sound stopped altogether and the screen of her phone flashed just before it shut down.

“Well,” she said, frowning down at her phone as she tried to calm the rapid thrum of her pulse. “That was good timing.”

Gold swallowed hard and pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his heart pounding against his palm. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Good.”

[bigyack-com]

Women Are ‘Claiming Their Power’ in Investment Clubs of Their Own

During the 2008 financial crisis, Lauren Winfield found herself starting over in Austin, Texas, without a job, a network or a nest egg.She had just come out as gay. In her 20s with no savings or financial support from her family, she worked minimum-wage jobs to pay off college loans and credit card debt.Ms. Winfield tried to save, but emergencies often washed those attempts away. The result: a feeling of insecurity that left her reluctant to try investing.Things changed when Ms. Winfield started attending women’s finance group meetings. She eventually joined the Austin Women’s Investing Group, which she found on Meetup, and started connecting with its members on Facebook. The community she found in the groups gave her the support to begin investing for retirement in her 30s.“It’s confidence boosting to be in the same room or online group as other women claiming their power and autonomy with their money,” said Ms. Winfield, now 34. She went on to create Signum City, a fintech start-up that developed an app-based game to help young adults learn to invest.Her financial journey mirrors the challenges many women face when investing for retirement: Their short-term financial needs have a way of eclipsing long-term goals. Across the country, women’s investing groups, from Meetup to clubs organized by the nonprofit BetterInvesting, are helping some women to focus on their finances in ways, their members say, where Wall Street firms, fund companies and financial advisers have fallen short.Just 17 percent of women said planning for retirement was their top financial goal in a 2018 survey by Pimco, the Newport Beach, Calif., investment firm that manages $1.8 trillion for central banks, pension funds and financial advisers. Respondents ranked it behind goals like achieving financial stability, creating a wide-ranging financial plan and becoming financially independent.Researchers cite myriad reasons, namely: Women’s longer life expectancy, lower wages, marital status, and responsibility for child care and caregiving. The challenge women often face is how to take a nest egg that is typically smaller than men’s and extend it to last their lifetime.The disconnect between women’s priorities and what the financial services industry typically emphasizes — strategies to beat the market — is especially apparent when it comes to retirement. In Pimco’s survey, 72 percent of women, and 81 percent of millennial women, said the investing system was “set up to be confusing.” Women identified honesty, knowledge and transparency as the top values they sought in advisers and financial institutions.Major financial institutions have taken note. Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Fidelity are among a growing number that have built websites and issued reports to try to attract female investors. They’re competing with women-focused investment houses like Ellevest, a platform that uses human advisers and roboadviser technology. What’s at stake, according to the Bank of Montreal, is an estimated $22 trillion in personal wealth that women in the United States control.Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, an associate professor of economics and a research fellow for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said many such Wall Street initiatives were “just marketing.”A 2019 study by the center noted that a typical woman who was approaching retirement had spent about half her adult life married. This didn’t ensure greater financial stability, however. Even though married women are in households with higher earnings and wealth, the study said, they’re less likely than single women to maintain their standard of living in retirement because nearly half of two-earner couples “tend to undersave in their retirement plans.”If only one spouse has a 401(k), that spouse needs to “save even more,” said Dr. Sanzenbacher, a co-author of the study. Yet most people don’t do that, he added.This is where women’s investment groups and clubs are making a difference.After some time with the Austin group, Ms. Winfield opened Roth I.R.A.s to invest in exchange-traded funds and some real estate investment trusts. She encouraged her partner to maximize 401(k) contributions and taught her partner about emergency savings.“As a lesbian, I constantly remind myself to claim a seat at a table that was not initially designed for me,” she said. “Finance is a male-dominated field, but saving for retirement is a must for everyone.”Monthly gatherings in public libraries, cafes, conference rooms or living rooms used to be the preferred way for women’s investment groups and clubs to meet. But now, because of the coronavirus pandemic, organizers are holding virtual meetings instead.The Austin group stands out, in part, because it has built a membership of over 2,000. Sara Glakas, an investment adviser and the founder of Black Barn Financial, said she helped start the group in 2011 because women were being underserved by financial advisers with a “significant blind spot.”Gathering together matters because the topic is stressful. “Much of the tone and approach of experts, along with the financial news you read, tends to cause anxiety for people,” Ms. Glakas, 40, said. “We seek to create simplicity, clarity and give people control.”One recurring topic of discussion is how avoiding riskier parts of the financial markets, such as growth stocks and the technology sector, puts women at a disadvantage because they miss the effects of compounding.“By focusing so much on the emergency fund and the mortgage paydown and the kids’ education, women are being steered into shorter-term, lower-return investments to the detriment of the longer-term, higher-return investments that can build great amounts of wealth,” Ms. Glakas said.Kamie Zaracki, 64, who recently retired as chief executive of BetterInvesting, a national organization with a network of clubs that educate people about investing in high-quality growth stocks, has been making retirement contributions since her 20s.“With every job since, I’ve participated in the 401(k) as soon as possible and immediately contributed the maximum amount,” she said.Ms. Zaracki is single, lives in the Detroit area and for the last decade has consulted with a male chartered financial analyst to try to grow her retirement portfolio of stocks, E.T.F.s and bonds into a $2 million nest egg. But she also learned to find stocks to help increase her portfolio returns from participating in Baker’s Dozen, a BetterInvesting club with mostly female members that meets monthly in Milford, Mich.Through February, Ms. Zaracki held a high percentage of equities (nearly 87 percent) in her retirement accounts, she said. Now, with the downturn, she and her adviser decided to sell some stocks so she could cover three years of living expenses.About half of the women in the Pimco survey said they were so strapped for time that they felt “more time-poor than financially poor” — and preferred to hire someone else to manage their money. But Ms. Zaracki said managing investments didn’t have to take a lot of time.Even with help, the hours she spends on it are “very empowering,” she said. “I have a clear picture of my finances and greater confidence in my financial decisions.”Investor confidence remains in short supply with the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the markets. Laura LaTourette, who runs Family Wealth Management Group in Dahlonega, Ga., has fielded lots of calls from worried clients, many of whom are in the L.G.B.T.Q. community and older than 50. She is also concerned about her wife’s and her own portfolios.Ms. LaTourette has run up against some of the same obstacles to money management that other women have — even though she is a financial planner.“I am now just starting to really prioritize my own retirement savings,” said Ms. LaTourette, 59, who manages her own Roth I.R.A. and 401(k) accounts. “After living through the last recession, getting my children through college and helping my siblings with financial trouble, I find myself behind on investable assets for retirement.”She said that she had come to appreciate how female clients valued “deep conversations” to learn about all facets of investing and the economy, and that she believed the industry needed to hire more women.That’s the approach that Sallie Krawcheck, a co-founder and the chief executive of Ellevest, took.“We have built Ellevest completely around serving women,” she said. Most of its clients — Ms. Krawcheck said they numbered in the “multiple tens of thousands” — are women, as are more than 70 percent of the company’s employees. This strategy “helped us see both the problem and solution from a vantage point that others have not,” Ms. Krawcheck said.Ellevest’s platform has what Ms. Krawcheck called a “gender aware” algorithm that accounts for how women live six to eight years longer than men, often have lower earnings (with salaries that peak earlier) and take more career breaks. She said it was designed to “take on the least amount of risk necessary for women to reach their investment goals.”The firm’s research also underscores the need for community engagement. “If you bring up the topic of money to a woman,” Ms. Krawcheck said, “the words that come to mind for her are ‘isolation,’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘loneliness.’”Those are exactly the feelings the Austin group is trying to help women avoid.“Frankly, I believe we have yet to see what women investors can achieve as a force,” Ms. Glakas said. “We’re very serious about creating a space for that change.” Read the full article

[badgersmash9-blog]

Private Equity Expert Dr. Ashby Monk Repudiates CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost’s Private Equity Scheme During and Immediately After Presentation at CalPERS

CalPERS is having trouble getting anyone reputable to endorse its unorthodox, risky private equity scheme. the centerpiece of which is to create and fund two new large fund managers that would be completely unaccountable to CalPERS.

The idea should have died a long time ago, but CEO Marcie Frost is still desperate to get it done, despite staff members admitting in a November board meeting that CalPERS’ newfangled companies would have higher costs in the early years and would also generate lower returns than conventional private equity funds. This is tantamount to an admission that CalPERS board members, executives, and consultants would be violating their fiduciary duty to CalPERS if they were to let this plan go forward.

As we’ll show below, one of the experts that CalPERS has now had in twice, with the apparent aim of helping to persuade the board to approve this obviously bad idea, has taken the unusual step of publishing a long tweetstorm shortly after a presentation at CalPERS last week that makes clear that he is opposed to CalPERS’ plans. Mind you, Dr. Ashby Monk is too polite to say, “CalPERS needs its head examined,” but if you look at his forceful and clear recommendation, it is the polar opposite of Marcie Frost’s private equity plans.

Even though Dr. Monk has made clear his general position on private equity for a long time, it seems noteworthy that he felt compelled to give a one-stop-shopping version on Twitter later in the very same week that he spoke at CalPERS. Recall that this was the second time Dr. Monk has spoken to CalPERS board. We pointed out that CalPERS had snookered Dr. Monk the first time he presented:

CalPERS has even gone so far as to mislead its own cheerleaders. The pension fund invited Dr. Ashby Monk of Stanford to speak at a public board meeting in August, and Frost quotes Dr. Monk in her promotional article. Dr. Monk took a generally positive tone but pointed out that what CalPERS was planning to do was not direct investing, which means having CalPERS staff make private equity investments itself, but was forming its own general partners. Dr. Monk then described how some large investors had used “pick the pickers” methods to assure that the board was loyal to the organization that provided the money.

I spoke with Dr. Monk for a half-hour after his CalPERS presentation. He acknowledged in our conversation that CalPERS had not disclosed to him that the board of the new entity would be chosen by its management and CalPERS would have no say in the board’s selection. Thus he cannot be deemed to have approved what CalPERS is doing, since he was misinformed.

We pointed out in this same October post that CalPERS has featured Dr. Monk prominently in a brochure to CalPERS beneficiaries as if he were supportive of CalPERS’ plans. Reader Brooklyn Bridge pointed out that even with CalPERS’ cherry-picking, Dr. Monk’s support had actually been so heavily qualified as to be empty:

“But as Dr. Monk said, “I’m encouraged that if you can get the governance right, if you can evolve this into a platform that can recruit the right talent, you can succeed.”

Even as a total know nothing, I would see pure bunk in this line alone (never mind, “We’ve listened to our Stakeholders”… and they want dumb, dumber and dumbest). It might as well read, “I’m encouraged that if you succeed, and succeed well, you are well on your way to success!”

The title should be, “Taking aim. Exploring a new Private Equity Mark“

Below is Dr. Monk laying out his recommended private equity to public pension funds…and this recommendation is the polar opposite of what CalPERS has been trying to get its board to approve. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that he posted this tweetstorm within days of visiting CalPERS:

This is a recommendation to bring private equity in house, period. As we have said repeatedly, that is the polar opposite to what CalPERS is trying to do, CalPeRS wants to create new investment vehicles which will be even riskier and less accountable than inventing through private equity fund managers.

Dr. Monk also points out that if your are serious about ESG (emphasizing environmental, social, and governance investing), you need to run your private equity investing in-house. Recall that CalSTRS had a long and uphill to get fund manager Cerberus to sell its stake in a firearms maker. That’s only one holding. Consider this part of a clearly unhappy 2015 press release:

Although Cerberus committed to sell its holdings in Remington Outdoor, thus far that pledge has not been fulfilled. As we continue to push them on this front, we have also worked to exercise patience and give them time to execute what is a complicated transaction.

But we understand the patience of our membership wears thin. Unfortunately, as a limited partner in a private equity investment pool controlled by Cerberus, CalSTRS has very limited rights. Contractual obligations and legal constraints severely limit our options to exit this investment.

More importantly, we cannot take unilateral action, in this case, to remove a specific company from an investment pool. Nor can we expose the fund by prematurely or imprudently selling about $375 million worth of holdings at a loss without thoroughly exhausting all other options first. While we cannot share the details, we want to make it clear that all potential options are being fully considered and have been for some time.

Even though we don’t have the same level of enthusiasm for ESG investing that CalPERS does, the point is that CalPERS pretends to be serious about it, and it can’t be if it is investing through third-party managers. It can only have very limited firm prohibitions; otherwise, it constrains the investment universe and becomes an unattractive funds source.1

Dr. Monk’s tweetstorm came after he repudiated another central element of CalPERS’ scheme, that of its lack of transparency. Recall that CalPERS now provides limited information about all of its private equity investments every quarter, such at the commitment amount, the total funds invested, and the returns, expressed as IRR and investment multiple. That disclosure came about as the result of a settlement with the Mercury News in 2002. Many other public pension funds now provide similar fund-by-fund information. One of the important aims of Marcie Frost’s private equity plans are to end this and other disclosures.

Recall that at last December’s board meeting, General Counsel Matt Jacobs stated that the purpose of the new private equity scheme was secrecy (see 3:36:58):

Board Member Margaret Brown: Mr. Cole, you know that this Board has a fiduciary responsibility to 1.9 million members and thousands of employers. And so with that in mind, I wanted to let you know that I have a lot of concerns that we are putting this program together, I think, in part to avoid transparency, Bagley-Keene, the 700s, and the Public Records Act request.

And so what I’m wondering is since CalPERS is drafting the agreements we could, in fact, make them — at least due to a Public Records Act we request, we could, in fact, require that of our partners in these companies could we not, since we’re drafting that agreement? Oh, good. Mr. Jacobs, we’ll have him come up and answer.

Investment Director John Cole: That’s a legal question.

Board Member Brown: Yeah.

Investment Director Cole: I don’t want to get out of my lane

General Counsel Matt Jacobs: Well, at a high level, I suppose we could. I think that would defeat the entire purpose of the endeavor that the Investment Office is undertaking, which is that these are private investments, and they’re private for a reason, which is that the — the financial information needs to be private. And the people running them have these types of preferences.

A little more than a month later, at the board’s offsite meeting on January 22, one of the private equity experts invited to speak, Dr. Ashby Monk, blew up the CalPERS’ claim that secrecy is necessary and desirable at 1:31:10: “I’ll offer some bit of extreme views. I think there is no balance. 100% should have ESG and transparency.”

And CalPERS has also used as a defense that private equity funds don’t like transparency. Mind you, we’ve had the limited partnership agreements of many of the biggest fund managers posted on our site for years and none of them appear to have suffered as a result of these supposed trade secrets getting out in the wild.

One of the amusing spectacles at the offsite was Jonathan Coslet of TPG trying to pretend that the over-the-top secrecy requirements for private equity limited partnership agreements was somehow the doing of investors and TPG was perfectly fine with everything being out in the open. Starting at 1:06:30:

Board Member Margaret Brown:: As you may know, we have been having open discussions about the secrecy of private equity agreements. And I understand that the Pennsylvania state legislature has recommended substantial narrowing of the laws that exempt from FOIA the entire contracts between private equity funds and investors like public pension funds. I am curious in TPG’s case investors or TPG was harmed by the release of what I understand was one of your agreements by the Pennsylvania state Treasurer. Just wondering. Several years ago that happened, it was out in the public domain and I’m just wondering if there was any harm to investors or to TPG when that happened.

TPG Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Coslet: I can’t really comment specifically, but my sense is that our perspective would be that we want to respect the confidentiality that you would like and if you our clients would like confidentiality, confidentiality with what is essentially a private contract, we would like to respect that. Different organizations have different feelings about that. We have sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, endowments, pension funds, individuals. So we just want to respect the confidentiality our clients would like.

As Dr. Monk said to an audience member later, this claim was completely false. Private equity fund managers have fought fiercely to keep their limited partnership agreements secret, absurdly claiming the entire agreement to be a trade secret. This systematic shielding of these agreements started, ironically, in the wake of the 2002 Mercury News settlement with CalPERS that we mentioned earlier. Private equity firms went to every state and got either legislation or state attorney general opinions shielding private equity agreements in full from disclosure. Even now, these alternative investment agreements are the only contracts that state and city governments enter into that are secret.

We gave a long-form debunking of the idea that anything in private equity agreements could be considered a trade secret in 2014, when we published a set of private equity agreements that the Pennsylvania Treasurer had on its website with no password protection. That includes the TPG contract that Margaret Brown mentioned. A key section of that post:

For decades, private equity (PE) firms have asserted that limited partnership agreements (LPAs), the contracts between themselves and investors, should be treated in their entirety as trade secrets, and therefore not subject to disclosure under Freedom of Information Act laws in any jurisdiction. These private equity general partners argued that the information in their contracts was so sensitive that it needed to be shielded from competitors’ eyes, otherwise their unique, critically important know-how would be appropriated and used against them. In particular, PE firms have made frequent, forceful claims that their limited partnership agreements provide valuable insight into their investment strategies. The industry took the position that these documents were as valuable to them as the formula for Coca-Cola or the schematics for Intel’s next microprocessor chip.

You can see why Dr. Monk was unable to contain himself when Coslet served up such nonsense with a straight face. But the flip side is that this revisionist history is the new party line in private equity, that the general partners know they don’t have a leg to stand on in trying to continue the pretense that they have a legitimate business need for their secrecy regime. It may be that general partners recognize that the Pennsylvania disclosure recommendations have breached the levee, and there’s no standing against the wave of changes that will follow.2

So if CalPERS can’t even get supposedly supportive experts to back its plan, pray tell how can its board go forward without putting a huge “Sue me” target on their backs? I bet Bill Lerach is quietly hoping they don’t figure that one out.

______

1 As much as we applaud some of what Dr. Monk says, we also have to note that he goes to considerable lengths to cater to the needs of investors that are his prospective clients, unlike academics who focus on private equity like Oxford’s Ludovic Phalippou, or Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt.

Specifically, Dr. Monk notably sidesteps the real reason for bringing private equity in house. It isn’t that public pensions funds all over America have suddenly become camp followers of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and have decided to get out of the billionaire-creation business. No, it is that private equity net returns are falling and investing via private equity funds no longer earning enough on a risk-adjusted basis to justify investing in the strategy. It’s truly disturbing to see Dr. Monk effectively support the public pensions funds’ “absolute return” fallacy, when no intellectually honest finance professional would indulge it. The only way to have private equity deliver adequate net returns is to considerably reduce the fees and costs of private equity investing by doing it in house. And those charges are so ginormous that doing it yourself, even though it will take time to get there, ought to be seen as a no-brainer.

It is also bogus to depict equities of any sort a long-term investments that better fit the long-term liabilities of pension funds. In the hoary days of my childhood, equities were recognized as highly speculative. Bonds were the preferred investments for pension funds because bonds, with their fixed payments of interest and principal, could be laddered to meet the projected liabilities of pension funds.

The reason for higher equity allocations has nada to do with them not having fixed maturities. Equities were added because they have higher returns and provide diversification by asset class, which before risky assets became so highly correlated, also offered some additional downside protection.

Moreover, had Dr. Monk familiarized himself with public markets investing, he would know that one of the reasons academic studies back index investing is that the rebalancing to replicate the index forces selling of winners, as in realization of gains. Similarly, the reason private equity as currently practiced has provided high returns is the discipline of requiring realization of profit. While there are cases where PE funds buy a “growth-y” company and wind up selling it to another private equity fund who is also able to get good returns (meaning the sale from one fund to the second just resulted in paying extra transaction fees, if you look at total returns from owning that company), CalPERS has effectively admitted that this isn’t a widespread phenomenon, and that longer holding periods = lower returns. Why engage in this long-dated fund fad at all if it undermines the whole rationale for private equity, higher returns?

2 Key section from the executive summary:

This entry was posted in CalPERS, Dubious statistics, Investment management, Private equity on January 28, 2019 by Yves Smith.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/private-equity-expert-dr-ashby-monk-repudiates-calpers-ceo-marcie-frosts-private-equity-scheme-immediately-presentation-calpers.html

[random-stitches]

Today has been a very, VERY long day. I’m going to forget several issues because frankly they’ve been buried under the pile of awfulness that was Today.

Work. Work was exhausting. It was one of those days where it feels like no one else but you is doing their job. Station staff not assisting wheelchairs on and off trains, so I had to. If I get off the train, you can bet your life we’re going to run late. 4 minute delay per wheelchair, because station staff weren’t doing their jobs. I just get so ANGRY because customers in wheelchairs NEED HELP. They can’t just step over the gap between the train and the platform. They need the ramp and they are entitled to assistance. Station staff don’t have many duties, and one of the most important is assisting less mobile customers. One poor older gentleman sat there, looking so lost and worried, like he thought the train was going to leave without him and he had no way of knowing who to talk to. Turns out he hadn’t been in a wheelchair long and he was just SO GRATEFUL I held the train and helped him on. He nearly cried. I did cry once I got back to my crew compartment.

My stupid piece of shit mobile phone has been fucking up all day while I was trying to chat to friends on Tumblr. The phone, combined with the shitty, buggy Tumblr ap made for a very frustrating experience. I keep threatening to factory-reset it. I will when I have a day off to fix it all back up again. But this is why i’m so reluctant and slow to RP, i don’t have decent equipment i can take with me on trains all day, and i get maybe three hours leisure time at home, during which i will be constantly interrupted by my parents.

Once I got home, I got a phone call from a friend of mine at work. Turns out some silly bitch has started a rumour about a friend and me. He’s engaged. But apparently a 30 second hug was a “lover’s embrace” that went on “easily ten minutes”. Firstly, ew. Secondly, 30 seconds cannot be stretched to ten minutes, I don’t care how unhinged you are. Thirdly, baseless rumours and accusations will get you reported. I’ve reported it, so has my friend. Apparently his face was “buried in my tits” when it was actually resting on my shoulder. The silly bitch obviously has nothing better to do than start hurtful rumours and start bullying people who don’t have any effect on her life whatsoever.

I put up with incessant bullying all the way through high school, I will not put up with it at work.

So I think I finally have a few minutes to myself to check social media on my laptop. BIG mistake. HUGE.

Plebiscite for Marriage equality. $122 MILLION. Our government has a spare $122 MILLION to spend on a non-binding postal opinion poll, but it doesn’t have money to pay the elderly a decent pension. Or fund drug/alcohol rehabilitation programs. Or do anything to help the homeless. The Marriage Act was changed in 2004 to be solely “between a man and a woman”. It took half an hour, and the Prime Minister did it himself. But to give people a basic human right; to give a significant portion of our community the right to get married? Ooohhh no, we can’t just CHANGE it, oooohhhhh no, we have to ask everyone’s opinion first. With a spare $122 MILLION that we aren’t going to do anything else with. Despite the fact they KNOW 70% of Australians will vote in favour. It’s already a foregone conclusion. We are also lagging behind damn near every other developed country in the world on this.

Email from the Electrician installing the lighting for my new house. I had attempted to pay an invoice via direct deposit a month ago, and it hadn’t gone through. No notification about it. Nothing. The electrician didn’t even bother to follow it up for a month. So that explains why the electrical work hadn’t been finished in my house. So I ran to the bank to get them to check my transaction history. Nothing. I somehow fucked it up and nothing went through. So I had them pay the invoice for me.

It has been an incredibly long, mentally and emotionally draining day. So fuck it, I’m not cooking. And the noodle bar across from the bank should have been open. I stood around waiting until ten minutes after they were supposed to open. Nothing. 

Starving, exhausted, upset, emotionally raw, I just sat in my car and checked Tumblr. Re-read a lovely message from a friend and just bawled my eyes out for a good ten minutes. All i did was send them enough money to get dinner out, but something so small to me meant so much to them and I just could not stop crying... So apparently all it takes to make me bawl after a long day is a few nice words.

Noodle bar still not open. Went to the thai place near my house instead. Got takeaway because i didn’t want anyone else looking at my blotchy awful face.

Got home, ambushed by my mother, who wanted to know why I had been crying, so I explained the whole lot to her, briefly mentioning the high school bullying thing (”I was bullied the whole way through high school, this is nothing new”), which she latches onto, missing the point entirely. She now wants to write a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper about it, despite the fact that her advice back then was “just ignore them and they’ll stop”, which she denies. Making a fuss about it now serves no purpose, I’ve already gone through therapy over it. Which Mum has also forgotten all about. And the high school bullying thing wasn’t even the POINT but of course, it’s useless trying to tell her that.

 So i am exhausted. I haven’t done any RP replies or anything fun for myself. I’m giving up on today and going to bed early. I’ll try to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow. God i need a holiday. 

[openanonymity]

Facebook As A Political Podium

I think today has been a day where I'm just annoyed with everything. It started with a truck driver totally fucking up the flow of traffic downtown. He almost caused a car accident with his shitty driving. Then I looked over the Learned League questions for the day, which appeared to be relatively easy today, as I got three right for the second straight day. I made the foolish mistake of checking Facebook. There, I saw two posts put up by different people which I'm assuming voted for our Asshole In Chief. The first post was showing a video of workers at what I'd imagine is an oil refinery, or something similar. The men were doing some high risk labor, and the caption read something like "fast food employees are fighting for $15/hour; this is what $15/hour looks like". I was close to leaving an extensively long comment about hourly wages. I'm not an economist or a business expert, but I feel the need to chime in sometimes with what I believe, because from my perspective, they're saying that if you work fast food, you're not worthy of making an hourly wage that requires your fingers and toes on which to count. I totally agree that a fast food employee isn't on the same skill level as someone who works at an oil refinery. But there is this illusion that everyone believes about the fast food industry, is that it only consists of teenagers and "entitled millennials" who expect a handout. Here's the thing: NOT ALL MILLENNIALS ARE EXPECTING HANDOUTS. They're not like the billionaire "too big to fail" corporations that the politicians we're given no choice to vote for are helping bail out every time the economy shits a cinder block and collapses. So, as I was saying, not everyone who works in the fast food industry barely making minimum wage is a teenager. There are older people who work full time for the following reasons: -They dropped out of high school -They are working toward getting their GED -They are single moms or dads trying to provide for their families, just like those of us in white collar office jobs -They got laid off and this was the only place hiring -They retired and still didn't have enough money in their pension/401k -They just came into the country and this is the only place that would hire an immigrant These are the people who are fighting for that $15/hour pay, and to deny them that right because the job isn't skillful enough is a bullshit excuse. They put up with all of us and our shitty attitudes. They have some high risk factors in the workplace too, such as handling hot grease, avoiding wet spots on floors, and using proper safety procedures when handling sharp objects such as knives and whatnot. Those who work oil refineries I would imagine took on an apprenticeship or went to a trade school to learn the skill set required for the job. I'd also believe it's a unionized industry, much like electrical workers, pipe fitters, etc. They have the privilege to go on strike if their wages or working conditions aren't up to par, and they probably put in a ton of hours each week doing what they do. I have a hard time believing they make $15/hour. They should be making much more. But if they do indeed make $15/hour, the unions should be stepping up and pushing for higher wages. $15/hour isn't a hard goal to reach for fast food employees. Also, why is everyone so against wage increases? I'm sure the amount I'm making was the same amount a middle management employee was making 20+ years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you increase the minimum wage, doesn't everyone else's wages increase as well? When I worked at Wendy's, that was the case. They bumped me up an extra 30-40 cents hourly when the minimum wage went up. When you raise everyone's wages, it's good for the economy. People are more willing to spend their extra income, invest their money into more things such as a 401k, 529 plans, stocks, Roth IRAs, etc., and even purchase houses and cars. If you don't increase people's wages at the same rate that the cost of living increases, you put the workforce at risk of stressing out, being overworked just to make ends meet, and certain markets suffer greatly, such as the housing market. It's a chain reaction/domino effect. Increase fast food workers' wages to $15/hour (which I'm guessing would be a 30% increase), and increase everyone else's wages who make below $75k/year by that same percentage increase and you will see a much better economy. The only reason we are fighting about this is because the CEOs refuse to increase the wages, saying their profits will be hurt, while they give themselves ungodly pay raises and bonuses. The other thing I caught on Facebook was someone posting a picture of Colin Kaepernick with the caption "Colin Kaepernick is still a free agent". I know for a fact the person who posted this hated Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the national anthem. I know a lot of people hate him for doing that. But here's the thing. He is/was protesting the anthem for a good reason. We don't hear the full national anthem when it is sung. There are more verses, and one includes a line that glorifies the murdering of slaves, but he was also exercising his first amendment right to sit down because he can't salute the flag of a country that isn't truly free, when cops are killing innocent black men and women. According to him, this will truly be a free country once the police quit racially profiling minorities and open fire on them when they haven't done anything wrong. Being black, Latino, Muslim, LGBT, Jew, or anything that isn't white, male, heterosexual, or Christian subjects you to oppression, bullying, and even worse, your eventual death. Perhaps I'm sounding a bit extreme, but to many people, this is the case. Kaepernick was the quarterback of my favorite team, and I think with nobody signing him yet, it makes the NFL look bad. This is a League that allows rapists, murderers, and domestic violence/child abusers to roam freely throughout the league after serving punishment that is nothing more than a slap on the wrist, but if you prefer to deflate your footballs or sit during the national anthem, you're a disgrace to the country and the league. Fuck the NFL and fuck the person who put up that post. She's about to be unfriended. So, with all that said, I was doing my delivery this morning and one of the tech guys asked me if my coworker was taking the buyout. That's been the big talk at my 9-5. Apparently, this guy is taking it. Good for him. I told him if I was in my coworker's situation, I'd take the buyout and likely leave the country, especially with the current political climate. I should've known the guy voted for Asshole In Chief. We got into a long debate about politics and spoke about immigration, tax returns, etc., and he said nobody had given past presidents a tougher time. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!? Where were you the past 8 years when the Republicans had done EVERYTHING they could to block anything and everything Obama did, even going as far as to suggest he's not born in this country and a socialist or communist Muslim terrorist? I told this guy every candidate released their tax returns, how does orangeface get a free pass? I didn't say orangeface, but I was very close. At that point, I kind of stopped listening to him even when he said don't leave the country, I was like "it won't get any better under this administration, they're reversing everything that was good about this country. Then, on my way to the van, one of the cleaning guys gets on me about being parked at the loading dock. I sarcastically apologized, and when I left, I noticed the Pepsi truck was still parked at the other loading dock. So, my main complaint here is that this fucking troll knew the Pepsi truck was there, why not go to the fucking cafeteria and find that driver, tell him to move if he wasn't using the loading dock? He's not an employee of this company, but I am. I'm done with today. Can it be Saturday already?

[guttersvillemayor]

Dasie Who?

[It was just another Tuesday night. At least that’s what I told myself. It made it easier on nights when I could feel my father’s presence. Knew that he’d have something to say about how I spent my nights. But then again he really couldn’t say anything. He died when I was 11. A robbery gone wrong. Which is funny in some weird, twisted way seeing as he’d been in actual war zones and lived to tell the tale, but the moment he was stuck stateside he was killed. 

We’d just moved to Seattle the year before. My father had been transferred to the Naval Station Bremerton and we lived at Fort Lawton with my mother. That was until he was killed. Then we moved from apartment to apartment with my then-baby brother Noah. And then my brother Jace. Plus twin sisters Sara and Anna. To say my mother went down a dark path is putting it lightly. I didn’t even realize until I was 14 that Noah wasn’t my father’s son like I thought. But apparently my father had known about my mother’s checkered past. 

I came to learn of it the hard way. How she spent the little money we got from my father’s pension on drugs and god knows what instead of on her children. I had never known why my parents weren’t married until I’d seen my mother in action. He was waiting to make sure she wasn’t just trying to trap him. That might make my father seem like a bad man, but you’d have to know my mother and how horrible she could be. I’m sure in some messed up sense she loves us. At least I’d like to think that for my siblings sake. But considering we hadn’t seen in her in over a year it was highly unlikely. 

When I turned 16, I petitioned for emancipation and begged to take care of my siblings. Thankfully an old military buddy of my father, Lieutenant Commander Austin McDaniels stepped in to help keep us together and became my siblings’ legal guardian until I could prove that I’d be responsible enough. It was a very rare case, but I was more than willing to play up the fact that my father was a vet and that my mother was clearly a trainwreck. My school records were decent and I had already gotten a job and had a car. By the time I was 18 I was the legal guardian, and McDaniels transferred to a new post when I turned 19. 

It was challenging at times. And I gave up my own dreams to take care of my family. But I wouldn’t change a second of it. Even the bad parts. Like the jobs I had to take to make end meets. When I was old enough, the remainder of my father’s pension was put into a savings account. It’s not much, but it’s good to have in case of emergency and I try to leave it alone for only real emergencies. It would be too easy to take out money for anything from rent to food if I didn’t have that thought in mind. And for a while when rent was hard to keep up with, I really had to stop myself from doing that. Instead I found myself working for Pierre. 

Pierre Scott was a friend of a friend and my boss. When I fell on hard times and needed money fast, an old friend from high school suggested I go work for him. The moment I walked into the Forbidden Desires Gentlemen’s Club I knew I was going down a path I most likely wouldn’t come back from. Any dreams that I had would have to be completely forsaken. Thankfully Pierre only needed escorts at the time. Arm candy to men with money who for whatever reasons needed to come across it this way. I learned really early it’s best not to ask questions. I cleaned up nice, was polite and well mannered. And that made me a very popular commodity. 

When I first started, I was nervous about exactly what was required of an escort. My heart was racing so hard up until Pierre assured me that no one was allowed to touch me without my permission. He made it clear anything I wanted to do was my prerogative and that he’d have my back if someone got handsy. That seemed weird but he valued running a respectable business. He saw it as something that could benefit both the girls and the men as long as there were rules and boundaries which were respected. I’d worked for him ever since. Most days it didn’t bother me, dressing up fancy for some man who just needed me to look pretty. Some of my regulars had actually become weird defacto friends in a sense. 

But like I said, on days when the memory of my father weighed on my mind it was a bit more of a challenge to get out of my head. I was currently in the back room of the club, the kids staying with our neighbors the Fredericks, getting ready for a night out. The gentleman was new and I hoped it’d be a simple evening with not much talking. Sometimes conversations, especially small talk, was hard for me. It was best to be seen and not heard. 

The pearl earrings that we were allowed to borrow from Pierre’s collection easily slipped into place and I knew I still had a few minutes to kill. Looking in the mirror only made me dread this night. And I didn’t like dreading a job that I usually enjoyed. So I set out for a quiet place to wait. My fancy dress swooshing with every step up the backstairs. Escort services were just one part of the Forbidden Desire’s offering. The other was very in house. Soft, slinky music filling the room as my hand pushed open the velvet door to the balcony. Not many people were up in the back area unless they just came for the view. Instead there was a decent crowd downstairs enjoying the company of the ladies that worked the floor. Dancing and entertaining them. 

Classy, not trashy as I once described it to a friend. I’d never worked it, but I would be lying if I said I’d never thought about it. There was a fascination more towards the dancing than anything else. When I was a little girl my father took me to the ballet. It was actually one of the few things we did on a regular basis that I remember and one of the last things we did together before he died. I remember being mesmerized by the dancers and wanted to be just like them. So I took ballet classes. Once he died it was harder to keep up with it, but I did as best I could. When I danced I felt connected to something I couldn’t describe. I felt connected to him and my childhood. My eyes were trained on the current dancer up on the stage. Regina. And she was good. Graceful and seductive and just mesmerizing like the ballerinas from my childhood. 

I was so entranced that I didn’t even notice Pierre walk up next to me. “You know, I remember Jake telling me that you used to dance in high school. Ballet in fact. Said you were pretty damn good and could have become better had you gone to an academy or something. What kept you?” My eyes flicker from Regina to meet his. I was pretty closed lip about my past. People knew what they needed to know and nothing more. Pierre probably knew the most out of anyone in the whole building but even that was limited. Over the years I’d learned to trust him. As much as I could trust any one. 

So in a rare moment of honesty, I mumbled softly as my eyes turned back to Regina.] It’s hard to pay for that kind of education when you’ve got four children who depend on you and barely any money. Being a dancer is a nice dream, but that’s all it is. [Pierre is quiet for a moment before humming softly. “Well with Paige quitting last week, I’ve got an open dancer spot. If you’re interested, you could split shifts between your escort work and dancing. I’d be more than willing to give you a bump in profit if…” He trails off and my eyes cut back to him. Eyebrow arched in curiosity. 

Pierre wasn’t a bad guy but this was sounding too much like a Pretty Woman scenario for my taste. Once he knows he’s got my attention he continues. “... if you spend that extra money towards dance school.” The incredulous look on my face is hard to disguise. Pierre must be drunk or something and I have no problem telling him so.] Hahaha, very funny. But what you're talking about is just ridiculous. Go back to your office, Pierre before someone else realizes you’re drunk and takes advantage of the situation. [I push off the rail I’d been leaning on and am ready to head back downstairs when his hand catches mine. Letting out a soft gasp, I can’t help but turn back to meet his gaze once more. 

There’s something about the look he’s giving me that has me worried. Not that he’d do something out of line, but that he might cross a line that would make being here uncomfortable and I actually really like working here. He seems to pick up on my distress and slowly lets go of my hand so that it drops by my side. His tone still firm. “I’m serious, Dasie. You make me a lot of money and I’d be a fool to give you an out. But you deserve more out of life and if I can help you find it some way, I want to. So come in early tomorrow and work with Regina a bit. See how you like dancing on the floor and if it’s something you like doing and interests you, the job is yours. Just promise me you’ll think about the other part. You’d make one stunning ballerina.” I swallow the lump that has formed in my throat and can’t bring myself to say anything. So I simply nod my head and back away towards the stairs. 

It was surely time for my appointment and I needed to distract myself from the bizarre turn this night has taken. There’s a separate entrance for the escort business. A more discreet one and even an area for limos and cars to stop by and pick us up. It almost looks like a hotel lobby and valet service. It’s quite the disguise and I can see the receptionist looking for me when I push through the double doors. Seems I was a tad behind, though one look at my client for the night and I knew he wouldn’t mind my tardiness. 

Effortlessly, I glide across the tile floor and slip my arm into his with a wide smile on my face.] Good evening, sorry for the delay. [“Oh it’s nothing, Sadie. I hope you like the ballet. We’re going to the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s performance of Sleeping Beauty and they have gala after that.” My lips pull back into a wide smile but it’s mostly for show. Because for as much as I love the ballet, and it’s been so long since I’ve had a chance to go, that is the last thing I want to do after how my night started. But tonight I wasn’t Dasie Wallace. I was Sadie and my date was taking me to see the ballet.] 

[todaynewsstories]

Greece hopes for better times as it exits EU bailout program | In Depth | DW

It’s been a peculiar summer, says Polyxeni Koutsantoni, the owner of a beach bar in Marathon, on Greece’s east coast. “In June we had heavy rains, at the end of July our coastal region was plagued by devastating wildfires, and nonetheless I have the impression that there are more holidaymakers around and that they’re even spending a bit more money,” she tells DW. The change is not a dramatic one, of course, and the carefree holiday atmosphere of before the debt crisis still hasn’t returned. “But you do notice that people have been feeling a bit more relaxed of late,” she says.

The energetic Koutsantoni and her husband have run the beach bar for 25 years. Most of their customers are Greek, but lately a lot of Russian and French tourists have been coming to Marathon as well. When things get hectic, her three daughters have to help out. There’s no question of employing extra staff. “You’ve got to keep costs down, especially in times of crisis,” she warns, and laughs: “Reduce costs and be patient — that’s my motto.”

Polyxeni Koutsantoni says tourism is picking up along Greece’s east coast

It’s a motto that could just as well apply to the whole of Greece. The country exits the eurozone bailout plan on Monday. Politicians in Athens and Brussels have all declared the debt crisis over. But this small business owner doesn’t believe her country’s economic problems have really been solved. The best example is tourism, which is also regarded as the most important pillar of the Greek economy. The sector provides a quarter of the country’s income, and that figure is increasing. Taxes and other duties are high, though: “VAT on services alone is 24 percent. No one can stick that long-term,” Koutsantoni complains.

Read more: A timeline of Greece’s long road to recovery 

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Greek crisis takes form

On the heels of a global financial crisis, Greece’s then-prime minister, George Papandreou, revealed in 2009 that the budget deficit was over 12 percent, double what it was previously thought. It was later revised to 15 percent, far exceeding the eurozone’s 3-percent limit. The revelation prompted credit rating agencies to downgrade Greece’s status, making it hard for Athens to get financial help.

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Austerity sparks unrest

In a bid to help Athens out, the EU and IMF agreed to bailout Greece in 2010. The program required austerity measures to cut the budget deficit, a move that didn’t sit well with many Greeks. In response, anti-austerity protesters organized nationwide strikes and demonstrations to protest the measures and, at times, clashed with police. Mass protests took off in 2011 and continued for years.

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Rise of the fringe

Resentful of growing unemployment and poverty, a majority of Greeks in 2012 voted for fringe parties that opposed the bailout and the austerity measures that came with it. The first election resulted in no clear winner and set the stage for another vote. After the second election, the center-right New Democracy was tasked with forming a new government. The party was committed to the bailout.

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Crash course

In 2015, Greeks handed the left-wing Syriza party an anti-austerity mandate in snap elections, putting Athens on a crash course with Brussels. In June, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras controversially announced a referendum on EU bailout terms. On June 30, Greece became the first developed economy in the world to default on an IMF bailout. Athens imposed capital controls to stop capital flight.

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Turning point

The bailout referendum resulted in a rejection of EU terms, with 61 percent voting against a new rescue program. But that didn’t stop Tsipris’ government from agreeing to new terms with Brussels after Greece’s then-Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stepped down. It allowed Greece to avert an exit from the eurozone and paved the way for a new bailout program amounting to €86 million ($98 million).

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

Road to recovery

As part of the 2015 bailout program, Greece adopted economic reforms, including cutting public spending and privatizing state assets. Two years later, the IMF urged Brussels to ease its bailout program terms and provide extensive debt relief, describing Greece’s debt as unsustainable. In order to help Greece meets its bailout terms, Tsipras agreed to extend tax and pension reforms.

The Greek debt crisis: A brief history

End of an era?

In August 2018, Greece officially exited its bailout program, with EU officials calling it the “beginning of a new chapter.” EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Greeks “may not feel that their situation has yet improved much,” but the EU would continue “to work with you and for you.” However, with high unemployment and rampant poverty, some observers have cast doubt on the bailout’s success.

Author: Lewis Sanders IV

Pensions slashed

Greek pensioners have had to cope with particularly harsh cuts. People like Mary Tsoni, a retired dentist from Athens, worked for 35 years; she had her own practice, and also worked for what was the country’s biggest health insurer. She had made provision for a monthly pension of more than €1,000 ($1,100), but since the start of the debt crisis that’s been cut in half.

There may be more cuts from 2019 onwards, and on top of this the annual tax-free allowance has been reduced. Nonetheless, Mary Tsoni doesn’t want to grumble. “I’m lucky, after all, because both my children are working and are able to feed their families,” she tells DW. In these difficult times, that’s not a given. Other pensioners are having to use their meager income to support their unemployed children or grandchildren financially.

Retiree Mary Tsoni: “I want everything to get better”

They can only hope that Greece will put in place organized and affordable social services in future, the 80-year-old says. According to Tsoni, many individuals and NGOs did help out people in need in times of crisis — but social policy isn’t a question of charity. The state must take responsibility, she says.

Tsoni has no idea what’s in store for the country once the rescue package comes to an end. She’s a fundamentally optimistic person, though: “It can only get better,” she says. “And I want it to get better, too. Not for myself — I’ve lived my life — but for the young people who have to fulfill their obligations, and bring up children, who will also retire one day.”

Read more: Is the Greek economy strong enough without the bailout?

Glass half full or half empty?

Anyone keen to be optimistic about Greece’s future does have good reason to be so. For the first time since the start of the debt crisis, there was a clear upturn in the economy in 2017. Even higher growth — 2 percent — is predicted for 2018. Exports rose by 13 percent in the first quarter of this year.

For many years now, the government budget has shown what’s known as a primary surplus. This means that the state treasury’s revenue has been higher than its expenditure — though this doesn’t include interest payments to the international lenders. The Greek finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, promises an even higher surplus of up to 5.2 percent by 2022 and beyond. That was the prerequisite for the debt relief that was arranged for Greece in June.

The other side of the coin is that debt relief goes hand-in-hand with fresh rounds of cost-cutting. And despite all the reform measures put in place since 2010, Greece’s debt is still 180 percent of its economic output — an even higher debt ratio than before the crisis. No grounds for optimism after all, then?

Panagiotis Petrakis, an economics professor at the University of Athens, explains the apparently contradictory economic data. “Growth rates and primary surpluses are the proof that the Greek economy is returning to normal. Tourism and the construction industry are benefiting from this. But our economic model hasn’t changed.” And if it doesn’t, he says, debt will once again be an issue, at the latest in 15 or 20 years’ time.

But Polyxeni Koutsantoni sees opportunities for Greece, at least as far as tourism is concerned. “Greece isn’t all just beach holidays,” she says. “It has much more to offer, everything from the many winter sports centers to religious tourism.”

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