#enablers

[bellwethers]

Boo hoo did someone use spirit magic to blow up your factory?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth

It's a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," published in last month's European Journal of International Relations:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

The authors document how a collection of institutions – some coercive, others organized around good works – allow kleptocrats to take power, keep power, and use power. This includes "wealth managers, company providers, accounting firms, and international bankers" who create the complex financial structures that obscure the klept's wealth. It also includes "second citizenship managers and lawyers" that facilitate the klept's transnational nature, both to provide access to un-looted, prosperous places to visit, and boltholes to escape to in the face of coup or reform. It includes the real-estate brokers and other asset facilitators, who turn whole precincts of the world's greatest cities into empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, while ensuring that footlose criminal elites always have a penthouse to perch in when they take a break from the desiccated husks they've drained dry back home.

Of course, it also includes the PR managers and philanthropic ventures that allow the klept to launder their reputation, to make themselves synonymous with good deeds rather than mass murder. Think here of how the Sacklers used charity to turn their family name into a synonym for culture and fine art, rather than death by opioid overdose:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Beyond providing comfort to "Politically Exposed Persons" and "High Net-Worth Individuals," TUSNs are concerned with neutralizing TANs. Activists in these transnational networks play an inside-outside game: in-country activists will recruit peers abroad to bring attention to the crimes of their local kleptocrats. These overseas partners target the klept in the places they go to play and spend, spoiling their fun – and if they succeed in getting corrupt leaders censured abroad, then in-country activists can leverage that bad press to fight the klept at home.

To fight this "Boomerang Effect," TUSNs seek to burnish corrupt officials' reputations abroad, getting their names on humanitarian prizes, beloved sports teams, cultural institutions and great universities. They seek to capture international governance institutions that might wrong-foot kleptocrats, co-opting them to enable and even celebrate looters.

When it comes to elite philanthropy, TUSNs are necessarily selective. Kleptocrats' foundations don't fund anti-kleptocratic groups – they stick to "education, public health, the environment and the arts." These domains steer clear of human rights questions that might implicate their benefactors. Russian oligarchs love children's charities and disability rights – provided they don't target the Russian state.

If charitable giving is reputation laundering's carrot, then "reputation management" is the laundry's stick. Think of organized copyfraudsters who clone websites that have criticized their clients, then backdate the articles, then accuse the originals of infringing copyright in order to get them de-listed from Google or taken offline altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Reputation managers also spend a lot of time in court. In the UK – the world's leader in libel tourism, thanks to a legal system designed to let posh monsters sue muckraking journalists into silence – Russian oligarchs have perfected the art of forcing their critics to shut up and go away:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/04/londongrad/#enablers

Indeed, London is a one-stop shop for the global klept, a place were forelock-tugging Renfields will buy you a Mayfair mansion under cover of a numbered company, sue your critics into silence, funnel your money into an anonymous Channel Islands account:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

They'll sell you whole galleriesworth of "fine art" that you can have relocated to a climate-controlled container in a Swiss or Irish freeport:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#moneylab

They'll give your thick-as-pigshit progeny a PhD and never check to see whether he wrote his thesis himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

Then they'll hook you up with a cyber-arms dealer to hunt your enemies by capturing their devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

But don't let Brexit stop you from shopping for bargains on the continent. The Golden Passports of the EU – available in a variety of flavors, from Maltese to Cypriot to Portuguese – offer the discerning failson access to the luxury good shops and fleshpots of 27 advanced economies, making it a favorite of the Khmer Riche – the junior klept of Cambodia's ruling faction:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

But golden passports are for amateurs. Skilled klepts travel on diplomatic passports, which offer the twin benefits of free movement and consequence-free criminality, thanks to diplomatic immunity. The former Kazakh dictator's son-in-law enjoyed a freewheeling diplomatic life in Vienna; one daughters of the dictator of Tajikistan had a jolly time as an envoy to DC; another, to London (where else?).

All this globetrotting serves a second purpose: when rival elites seize power back home and force the old guard into exile, those ex-monsters can show up in the lands they called their second homes and apply for asylum. It turns out that even bomb-the-boats UK will welcome any asylum seeker who enters via the private jet terminal at City Airport (to be fair, these "refugees" have extensive properties in Zone 1 and country places in the Home Counties, so they won't need housing).

This stuff works. After Kazakh state goons murdered at least 14 protesters at a Zhanaozen oil facility in 2011, human rights groups around the world took up the cause. But they were effectively neutralized by TUSNs, with former UK PM Tony Blair writing on behalf of the Kazakh government to the EU condemning any kind of international investigation into the mass killings (add "former Prime Ministers" to the list of commodities for sale in the UK to sufficiently well-resourced murderer).

The authors close their paper with two case-studies. The first is of the daughters of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, Gulnara and Lola. And President Karimov was indeed a dictator: he trapped his population within his borders, forced them to use unconvertible scrip in place of money, and ordered the murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.

But while Uzbeks were sealed within their borders, Gulnara Karimov became an international player, running a complex network of businesses that mixed the products of the nation's oilfields with her family's fortune. She solicited – and received – bribes from Teliasonera, MTS and Vimpelcom, who were all vying for the contract to provide service in Uzbekistan. All told, she extracted more than $1b in bribes, laundering them through Latvia, Hong Kong and New York. She acquired real-estate in France and Switzerland, and her spree continued until her father collaborated with Uzbek security to seize her assets and place her under house-arrest.

Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva was Gulnara's estranged younger sister. She and her husband Timur Tillyaev ran the Dubai-based SecureTrade, which did extensive business with "opaque Scottish Limited Partnerships," laundering more than $127m in a single year to offshore accounts in the UAE and Switzerland. They acquired many luxe assets – a jet, a Californian villa, and an LA perfumier.

Lola styled herself as the face of the Karimovas abroad, a "philanthropist and cultural ambassador." She was a UNESCO ambassador and commissioned works of monumental art – and also sued the shit out of news outlets that reported factual matters about her family repressive activity at home. She organized AIDS charities in the name of Uzbekistan – even as her father was imprisoning a writer for publishing a book explaining how to have safer sex.

The second case-study is on Isabel dos Santos, "Africa's richest woman," daughter of Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Isabel's vast fortune stemmed from her personal capture of vast swathes of the third-largest economy in Africa: "telecommunications, banking, diamonds, real estate and cement, among many others." Isabel enjoyed seemingly limitless access to state credit and co-investment, and was given first crack at newly deregulated industries. Foreign firms that invested in Angola were required to "partner" with Isabel's businesses.

Isabel claimed to be a "self-made woman" – a claim credulously parroted by the western press, including the FT. She used her homegrown fortune to become a major player abroad, especially in Portugal, where she was represented by the leading Portuguese law-firm PLMJ. Her enablers are who's who of corruption-loving lickspittles: McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Boston Consulting Group, and the Spanish BigLaw firm Uri Menendez.

Isabel cultivated a public facade of philanthropic giving and public spirited activism, serving as head of the Angolan Red Cross. She attended Davos and spoke at the LSE (she was also invited to Oxford, but her invitation was subsequently rescinded). On social media, she dismissed critics of her wealth and corruption as "colonialists," decrying their "racism" and "prejudice."

Isabel dos Santos's corrupt sources of wealth were finally, irrefutably exposed through the Luanda Leaks, in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mapped the network of "top banks, management consultants and legal firms that were central to dos Santos’s operations."

Both case studies shed light on the network of brilliant, driven enablers and procurers without whom the world's greatest monsters would falter. It's a rare window on a secretive world, one that is poorly understood even by its inhabitants. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Jackpot, his 2021 book on vast, intergenerational fortunes, the winners of the lucky orifice lottery often lack any real understanding of how The Money is structured, grown and protected:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

This point was reiterated by Abigail Disney, in a brave piece on what it's like to grow up subject to the oversight of these millionaires who babysit the children of billionaires:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

This is an important contribution to the literature. We naturally focus on the ultrawealthy individuals whose reputations and fortunes are the subject of so much attention, but without the TUSNs, they would be largely helpless.

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/24/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Colin (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_from_the_dome_on_Methodist_Central_Hall_(cropped).jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[gomzdrawfr]

Alejandro "FUCK IT WE BALL" Vargas

and

Rodolfo "IM TIRED OF THIS CHILD" Parra

I think they deserve to be silly, and im bringing that energy to the table

[furiousgoldfish]

When you're a kid and people do bad stuff to you or you witness bad things being done, you're encouraged to 'tell someone' and 'not keep it secret' and it's almost like we're responsible for making it known and making it stop, you know, if we don't do it nobody will.

But then when we do talk to the person we think is going to believe it + who has the means to stop it, and we get shut down and silenced, this person,, is not responsible for anything at all? They've just been given this valuable information that took us so much courage to open up about and the responsibility, at this point, should be 100% off of our shoulders because we did it, we Told Someone, it should get resolved now, but no? We get victim blamed and told we're making it up or even worse, that we need to shut up about it to keep the 'peace', and the person who does this to us is somehow clear of all responsibility, despite aiding the abusers blatantly??

I don't care anymore, if we told someone we did our part, and the rest is now on that person's shoulders, or maybe, MAYBE on the abuser's shoulders, because they're the ones committing crimes in the first place and it's literally 0% our fault this monster is out there. We are not responsible for protecting the world from the abusers, especially when we tell on them and you all shut us up and punish us for exposing their crimes.

[mycptsdstory]

I HATE when people tell me "just forget about your trauma" or "just get over it" or even "just be happy".

Like, how?? I get flashbacks everyday and sometimes multiple times a day.

How can someone "forget trauma"?

How can someone "get over trauma"?

How can someone "just be happy" over trauma"?

LIKE, FUCKING HOW???

It really annoys me and VERY triggering too.

Does anyone else get annoyed and triggered by that statement?

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth Mandel

The global complicity in Hamas’s brutal reign is quite a thing to behold. Egypt won’t accept even the temporary residency of Palestinian civilians, but it knows that under its nose Hamas leaders mosey in and out of the Sinai. The Qataris only possess leverage in the hostage talks because they are Hamas’s checking account, funding their wayward buddy’s murder habit. Turkey is, for crying out loud, in NATO. And yet Ankara hosts Hamas offices, aids the group financially, gives it diplomatic backing whenever conflict flares up (always at Hamas’s instigation), and even temporarily hosted one of the key planners of the October 7 rampage, Saleh al-Arouri. (Israel eliminated Arouri in Lebanon right around the new year.)

None of this even gets into the support Hamas gets through the various agencies of the United Nations, or from naïve-seeming Western nations, or even the fundraisers on America’s college campuses.

All of which is to say: On this issue, there isn’t much credibility to go around. Israel deserves full support from a chastened community of nations—especially those that will benefit from a Hamas defeat. That includes Egypt, which will sit on its hands while Israel dismantles terror tunnels underneath Egyptian sands. In fact, defeating Hamas will benefit everyone in the region who is threatened by Iranian expansionism. And this certainly includes the Biden administration. Washington’s sudden obsession with taking “irreversible” steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state cannot even be contemplated so long as Hamas rules a single square foot of land on which such a state would stand.

All these countries’ opinions on Gaza deserved consideration up until the moment October 7 revealed a dearth of clean hands among them. And if the IDF’s operation in Rafah further embarrasses Hamas’s enablers, so be it.

[shyjusticewarrior]

Good time for a reminder that hbomberguy is an abuse apologist and enabler

[yenforfairytales]

Sure sure, Daniel has a bratty, sassy, flirty ‘Jersey’ side—but folks seem to forget just how sweet, earnest, naive, and innocent he was in the KK trilogy. One of my favourite scenes is in the first film at the start, when Daniel sees a dog in his flat complex and moments later fetches water for it—without being asked! What an angel. Anyway, this sweet innocence is probably why Terry had him totally blindsided for a while in KK3, and did it with such ease. And because Silverusso has always had my heart, let’s not forget this clueless, adorable Danny is exactly the one that piqued Terry’s demented, decades long obsession. That sweet and spicy combination is just so winning—along with the looks. I don’t blame Terry for being totally overwhelmed by the boy, it was inevitable. Terry Silver is the very definition of whipped. Lol.

Yes! Completely agree. Daniel is a perfect mix of tough but sweet. Slutty but innocent. It's a maddening blend.

He stands out. Unforgettable to everyone he's ever met even 35yrs later.

Oh, anon, are you me? Daniel giving the dog some water is one of my all time favorite scenes too!!

It's so subtle. Miyagi saw that in him. When he gifted Daniel the bonsai embroidery and Daniel said he'd understand if Miyagi ever wanted it back. And Miyagi smiled, "I know you understand." HUUUUU 😭 brb crying

There's other sweet examples, but Daniel is so thoughtful!! The most thoughtful and considerate.

Sure, his temper can override that sometimes, but even though he has attitude, he remains observant and so empathetic that he feels guilty about everything and can't sleep unless he apologizes.

That's a sensitive soul who never wanted to fight anyone and ended up constantly under attack. But look how much everyone loves him and will do anything for him. HIS LOVE SAVES PEOPLE. His forgiveness. He's truly a light.

Not to get off track but, another favorite innocent moment of mine is in kk2 when they're getting on the airplane and Daniel goes, "Airsick? What's airsick?!" :U

Just super loud and confused. Lmao

Again speaks to his innocence at that time. Maybe more Jersey street smarts than book smarts but the poor baby went through like a lifetime of maturity in one year because of the events of all three movies.

A little heartbreaking that CK Daniel is so... world weary. He's quieter. He's more observant. Meaning, he's more calculated in every interaction. Ten times smarter than when he was a kid.

I definitely blame Terry for that. He broke Daniel's heart. And according to Jessica, it took him some time to recover. (Although we know it was not completely)

Luckily for everyone, Daniel is such an angel that he never lost his sweetness or his instinct to help others even if he is cautious. He's willing to forgive but he tried his damndest to become people and business savvy as to never get hurt again.

He's intelligent. He's refined. He's a leader.

The irony that the parts of Daniel that Terry liked best he helped destroy. That trust and innocence. The irony that Terry was denied the forgiving nature of Daniel he knows is there because of his own actions.

Terry remembered that sweet, naive boy and imagined being forgiven right away and was legit shocked at Daniel's anger. Not necessarily at the rejection, but at Daniel's angerrr.

Daniel's comment about Terry being in a padded cell really struck a nerve.

I will say this - both men would not have such hurt and anger after 35 YEARS if there was no love involved at all.

The reason Daniel could forgive everyone else was because he never loved them. They were never friends.

He loved Terry. He mourned someone who never existed. And Terry wouldn't care so much about being forgiven if he felt nothing either.

THIS IS GETTING TOO ANGSTY I'M SORRY

One day someone will have to do a gifset of all the times Terry and Daniel eye-fucked each other in CK. There were so many secret smiles y'all.

I think they missed each other as much as they're mad at each other.

Anyway

This sweet innocence is probably why Terry had him totally blindsided for a while in KK3, and did it with such ease. And because Silverusso has always had my heart, let’s not forget this clueless, adorable Danny is exactly the one that piqued Terry’s demented, decades long obsession.

Let's think for a moment the picture that Kreese painted to Terry about this "punk kid" and his sensei.

Some prissy troublemaker that unfairly beat up the Cobra Kai students and made a fool of Kreese.

Then Terry meets Daniel and he's tiny and sweet and can barely meet Terry's eyes.

They spent months together. Terry's not stupid, he quickly learned the truth. He just desperately wanted to make Kreese happy.

And then years later, we see that Terry doesn't believe Kreese about the past anymore. He scoffs and rolls his eyes!

And if Terry was being honest with himself, he'd admit that he wanted to be a sensei(but couldn't because of his father's business) and loved having his own student. I and others think he was a little hurt when Daniel didn't want to be in Cobra Kai anymore and quit.

(Terry was like Bill in Kill Bill. "I... overreacted.")

That sweet and spicy combination is just so winning—along with the looks. I don’t blame Terry for being totally overwhelmed by the boy, it was inevitable.

Who wouldn't love having Daniel's full attention? Daniel was like... enamoured with everything about Terry. He did everything he said.

That's intoxicating.

Terry already thought of himself as godlike. Wealthy. Handsome. Powerful. Getting away with crimes and tricking this sweet young thing.

And then said sweet young thing looks up to you and hangs on your every word? AND he's actually a pretty good student, a fast learner?

BUT Daniel has enough attitude that he does give Terry a bit of a challenge. All the more sweeter for when Daniel eventually gives in. What fun!

Terry Silver is the very definition of whipped. Lol.

What is this?! Terry, explain!!!

Where were you going with this??

"That was beautiful!"

35 years later...

"You were powerful, free..."

Legit Terry would have done anything Daniel asked if he had been greeted with a warm reception in CK.

Lest you all forget! Terry was happy to see Daniel again. He was not happy to see Kreese.

Terry called Kreese his weakness because he was a weight around his neck and had to be removed. But Terry refused to get rid of Daniel, who all but jumped on Terry's back like a spider monkey and caused more trouble for Terry than Kreese ever did! Amazing!

I was going to say more about that and lost my train of thought.

Still waiting for the au where Daniel reigns in the righteous anger a bit and manipulates Terry to be on his side over Kreese's.

[qqueenofhades]

With full acknowledgement that you're not actively looking for prompts from the spoopy season list, I do want to do my part as a self-confessed enabler and say that assorted pairings from the Bartimaeus series would lend themselves very well to Fall Semester, Dim Cobbled Street, Chilly Evening, Stargazing, or anything Beyond the Veil related :)

By now, it's Kitty's third year teaching at the University of London, but the first day of term is always extremely strange. She's almost (almost, but not quite) stopped feeling like an interloper, surrounded by chattering commoner students who are just young enough to not fully grasp what a miracle it is that they are here, able to actually study their own country's past in something approaching honest detail. That's Kitty's job, as it's been since she came on as a fixed-term lecturer and has only just, budgetary approval pending, been made the formal offer to convert it into a permanent appointment. However, she isn't sure if she's going to take it. Teaching The History of the Magicians' Empire, 20th-21st Centuries is beyond any doubt important work. She just doesn't know if it's the rest of her life's work.

She ducks into the ladies' loo, checking her makeup. She doesn't usually wear it, but it helps her feel more confident at the front of a lecture theater, and smooths out some of the disunity between her face and her actual age. The silver threads in her dark hair and the lines around her eyes, lasting legacies of the Other Place, make her look an attractive forty, forty-plus. She's barely twenty-five. She doesn't tell the students; it's easier to command their respect if they think she is considerably their senior, instead of barely. They call her Dr. Jones, which is -- well, technically, whenever she gets around to submitting her final revisions on the long-reworked PhD thesis, also a comprehensive and deeply unflattering history of the magicians' empire -- true. She hasn't entirely let go of the fear that a black car will speed up, throw a bag over her head or an imp in an orb, and make her suffer for the things she says, but she says them anyway.

Kitty decides that she looks presentable, clicks up the marble stairs of Senate House in her high heels (another unfortunate concession to women's fashion, definitely not good for climbing fences or staging illegal break-ins -- not that she does that anymore, or at least not very often) and steps into her classroom. It goes well, as much as the first day does. She dashes down to the canteen for lunch, has another class in the afternoon, and by the time she steps out in a chilly rain around four PM, fumbling for her brolly, she wonders if this will be the year she finally stops feeling so damn disconnected from everything and everyone. Maybe she should try again to meet someone, but it's so hard. She doesn't even know who an age-appropriate partner would be. Men in their twenties are rancid; men in their forties are either freaked out when they discover her actual age, or creepily, perversely intrigued. She's not opposed to dating women; maybe she should give that a try. But it's still just a giant --

"Hello, Kitty."

She looks up with a jolt, almost spilling the contents of her purse across the wet cobblestones of the courtyard. She hasn't seen the slight dark-skinned boy, wearing a too-large hooded sweatshirt and floppy trainers, until just now, and she opens her mouth to ask if he's one of her students, though he looks barely old enough for sixth form. But then she catches sight of his eyes, she sees his face, and she knows beyond any doubt. It's been a long time since she's seen him, four or five years at least. She assumes he's been enjoying a well-earned rest in the Other Place, or at least she hopes. But this --

"Bartimaeus." Her voice sounds croaky. She swallows. Of course he looks the same; Ptolemy never ages, and neither do djinn. "I... hello."

He smiles thinly, an eclipsed fingernail, acknowledging that he's startled her. "I see you've gone legitimate these days."

"More or less." Kitty is still thrown from the shock of his appearance, like something from an old life she's almost forgotten, and she can feel her heart racing in her throat. "Coming to check up on me? Make sure I'm not throwing smoke bombs in the classroom?"

"Entirely your own business how you decide to teach the nippers." Bartimaeus tips a cheeky wink -- almost, if not quite, as sardonically uncaring as his old ones. "Suspect a few bombs of any variety could only liven the place up."

Kitty can't really argue with that. It's a miracle that they're letting a former Resistance member in the building at all, and she is always braced for someone calling her to the Head of School's office like a misbehaving child. She looks at him, and he looks at her. Neither of them seems to know what to do. Then casually, as if it's nothing to him either way, Bartimaeus says, "D'you fancy a drink?"

"I -- " Kitty thinks about that. She can't see why not. And she's missed him, more than she can articulate or even admit. Him, and --

Well, never mind. It's no good dwelling on what can never come back. At least she can talk to this one. At least while she still has time.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I think I would."

Bartimaeus, of course, doesn't actually drink. He pays for hers and a plate of supper (no use asking where he got the wallet or the quid), and sits in the booth across from her, watching with those unblinking dark eyes. When she's gotten enough food down her to be moderately more sociable, she says, "I didn't -- I hope you're not back here because you've been enslaved again, are you?"

"No." Bartimaeus shrugs. "Not really anyone who dares to do that any more, not that I miss it. But the gate works both ways, you know. You went to the Other Place, so I can come to your world when I please, without a summoning or a master. Normally I pop down in spring, closer to when -- well." He pauses, as if about to wag an admonitory finger. "Don't get me wrong, now. I don't miss it."

"Course you do." Kitty wipes her mouth. "How else would you add new glorious deeds to your many names?"

Bartimaeus blinks, as if unsure whether she's actually daring to tease him. Then he chuckles wryly, though those eyes still remain dark and liquid and deep as the abyss. "I suppose there's that. Though it does feel as if I've had my fill of bloody glorious deeds for a bit. Any other idiots taken over the world while I've been gone?"

"Not yet. Not as far as I know." Kitty fingers the half-empty beer glass. She wonders if she should ask about that pause earlier, that quickly skipped-over moment. Normally I pop down in spring, closer to when the Glass Palace came down. It is probably just her imagination that that is how that sentence would have ended. Does Bartimaeus, despite all the fraught history between himself and his final master, return to Earth to pay his quiet respects on the anniversary of Nathaniel's death? Or is that Kitty's lonely pilgrimage alone?

"I'm sure there will be some eventually," she says belatedly, to Bartimaeus's expectant expression. "Just not now."

Bartimaeus snorts, a remarkably eloquent and wordless remark that when it comes to the fucking British, an idiot who will attempt to take over the world is never far away. He clears his throat. "You doing anything besides teaching a bunch of commoners how awful the last lot were? Seeing anyone?"

"No." Kitty had briefly thought about moving to Prague and reconnecting with Jakob Hyrnek, but it was only a stillborn fantasy, then and gone. "Why? You're not about to ask me out, are you?"

"What? Me?!" Bartimaeus's outrage is a little too instant and piquant to be, perhaps, entirely real. "A human? Even you?! Never. I'd rather hang myself upside down from silver meathooks and let Faquarl play Little Drummer Boy on my backside. No offense."

"Of course not. No." And yet for an unnerving moment, Kitty finds herself actually considering it. He can take on any shape, he can be anyone, he's the only person (or person-like creature) who understands everything about her, and it would spare her the drudgery of finding any kind of human mate. But no, of course not. It's silly, absurd, unthinkable. Especially if she was so cruel as to ask him to, perhaps, take on the shape and soul of --

Kitty seizes her glass and drinks harder, just to get that image out of her mind. She finishes her meal, and when they step out into a chilly dim evening, London fog twining through the busy streets as it has done in any age of the world and effacing the faint stars, Bartimaeus clears his throat awkwardly. "Actually, I thought -- well. Stupid, really, but speaking of the magicians and studying the things they used to be. I, er. I have something I could show you. If you're interested."

"Something to show me?" Kitty blinks. She supposes that she could pop in, take a look at it, make a note for academic purposes. See if it's something she can talk to her students about, the struggle to make them actually visualize what it was like. Most of the time, she's firmly convinced that it's good that they can't imagine it, that it's not an everyday part of their lived experience. Other times, it is so profoundly alienating that she can hardly breathe.

"Sure." Yet again, Bartimaeus sounds as if he's trying a little too hard to be casual, unaffected, gliding through his endless life with a theatrical twirl, a well-timed Detonation, and a sparkling witticism -- as much a hollow shell as Kitty Jones is, something essential hollowed out and the soul not quite what it used to be, permanently put just to one side. "If you want to, of course. This way."

******

The djinn leads her to some small side-street of the kind that exist by the dozens in London: narrow, cobbled, dim and twisted, flower boxes overhanging from seventeenth-century townhouses that lean together unsteadily like drunken revelers at the pub. There's an art gallery at the end, the kind that looks legitimate but is notorious for fencing old magical artifacts by the bushel, and Kitty opens her mouth to ask if Bartimaeus has brought her here for old times' sake, to break the window and clean the place out. She's not opposed, but she'll at least need to cover her tracks. She doesn't customarily keep that stuff around anymore, either. Maybe she should?

Bartimaeus, however, doesn't appear to have larceny in mind (at least not tonight). He unlocks the door and deftly disables the alarm, which these days is more likely to be a commoner device than a lurking foliot, and they step inside. The place is quiet, dusty, and Kitty has no idea what they're doing here. "Are we supposed to -- "

"Shh." Bartimaeus comes to a halt at the far wall, which is hung with several age-darkened oil portraits of magicians; they are all sporting old-fashioned ruffs and constipated expressions. Since that can't possibly be what he's brought her to see, Kitty frowns, until she notices what's hanging next to it. A full-length mirror filled with oddly nebulous smoke, something that even she -- with her very limited talent, never like the others -- can sense is real magic. She looks at Bartimaeus, utterly lost, and he beckons her. "Here."

Kitty hesitates, decides that he probably wouldn't push her through a portal to some nefarious underworld without at least some warning, and steps up, as he backs away. For a long moment, nothing. All she can see in the mirror is her own pale, tired, too-old face, matching more the full century that she feels than the mere quarter of it that she is. Then she catches sight of something moving in its depths. Walking steadily, coming closer, until it takes shape and form. Until the mirror has become clear and insubstantial as air, as a fluttering veil, and she can feel the chill on her face, breathed from somewhere that is neither the Other Place nor London. A different world altogether, a different gate. It's not --

It can't be --

But then he's standing right in front of her, almost close enough to touch if she reached out and risked her own hand turning to bare and skeletal bone, and it is.

"Hello, Kitty," Nathaniel says, in almost the exact same tone Bartimaeus used. "Long time no see."

Kitty's tongue is locked to the roof of her mouth. She can't speak or move. She thinks wildly that this is a trick -- this isn't Nathaniel, just some strange shade inexplicably summoned out of the mirror's depths, or at most his long-dead fetch -- but just then, it almost seems possible that it is. He looks older than he was when he died: still pinched, thin, dark-haired and pasty-pale, but a man, not a boy. She doesn't know if that's another illusion conjured by her own perception, her own mind trying to picture how he would look now, if he had lived. Just like her, he looks too old for his body, but... handsome. Wise. Serene. All the things he never was in life, as if the ever after has bestowed the learning he drove himself crazy attempting to acquire. They stand there gaping in mutually and excruciatingly awkward silence, like two old friends who ran into each other in the street and aren't sure what to say. Are they friends? It seems like the wrong word, as if they speed-ran right past that and became much more and much less. Possibilities only. Nothing else.

"Nathaniel," Kitty manages at last. "You look... dead. Well. I mean well. For being dead. If you are."

"I am." Something flickers in his eyes, half wry humor and half unbearable grief. "You can have my word on that. Honestly, I'm not sure how we're managing to speak -- wait, you're not -- ?"

"No." His flash of sudden concern is slightly searing, and Kitty doesn't let herself think about it. "I'm in London. There's a mirror. I don't know how he found it, but that's probably beside the -- "

Nathaniel's unearthly eyes flick sideways and spot the dark figure lounging just out of frame. He smiles, shakes his head. "I should have guessed. Hello, Bartimaeus."

"Boss." Bartimaeus snaps off a louche salute, but his eyes are still on Nathaniel in the mirror. "Wasn't actually sure it was going to work this time. It didn't for me -- can you imagine it? It's as if it didn't even know who I am -- but I thought Kitty might have a crack at it."

"You were actually trying to see me again?" Nathaniel raises a skeptical, elegant eyebrow. "That must be a first."

"Yeah, yeah. Shut up. Don't read too much into it." Bartimaeus huffs, hands jammed into his too-tight dungaree pockets. "Look. Here you are. You've seen us. We've seen you. Lots of seeing going on, Natty boy. Now you can faff off and be defunct again."

"It's interesting on this side," Nathaniel informs the djinn. "Very interesting. Plenty to study, to learn, to look at. Not really defunct."

"Well." Bartimaeus seems nonplussed -- and though this too is surely Kitty's imagination, slightly choked up. "I'm, er. Glad you're enjoying it. The benefits of your heroic sacrifice, and all."

A pause, weighted between three worlds, three creatures, three planes of existence. The three of them glance at each other, unsure whether to fall back into their old barbed banter or whether this moment is entirely something else, far past all ordinary divisions or decisions. Then Kitty steps closer, raising her hand as if to reach through the veil, though she knows that she can't. Nathaniel does the same, mirroring her gesture like her own reflection -- which technically, she supposes numbly, he is. "You look good," he says, simply and without pretension. "Beautiful, actually."

"I... thanks." At one point she would have loudly scoffed that off, but it slips the lock into her raw, hunkered-down heart and softly turns the key. "Nathaniel, I -- "

"Yes?"

She wants to say so much that she can't, that she can't get her tongue around, even when he's miraculously standing right in front of her, even or perhaps especially because she knows that he has to go. His eyes are as deep and patient as the sea, as the starless shores of the world after death, a place where he still can surface from, but not very often, and not for long. Their fingers ghost as close as they can without touching, they raise their other hands to do the same, and for once, Bartimaeus offers no sardonic comment or other inopportune interruption to break the moment. Kitty almost thinks she can feel Nathaniel's breath on her cheek, but she can't. He has no breath, and it is only the cold chill of death. Their eyes, their noses, their lips are just a few inches apart. If she took the plunge, if she kissed him, if she leapt through the veil right now --

It's an unsettling, alluring feeling, like walking too near the edge of the cliff and being possessed with the urge to jump, and she can't. Not now, not for a while. She swallows, struggles to clear her throat. "It's good to see you, Nathaniel," she says, and steps back, as if to divorce herself from the temptation that still pulls at her hand, that tells her to go through, to learn even more than him, to solve the one mystery that she or her students alike will never know without being so themselves. "We won't... we won't keep you long here. On this side."

Something flashes over his face that she can't read, something that is only the secrets of the dead, that perhaps he could not tell her even if he tried. He smiles. "No," he says gently. "No, you won't."

[benschwartzcinematicuniverse]

Thought about Ben’s arms and hands in a leading dance formation. Bad brain!

Sorry, my brain only seem to register a few words before I went on google autopilot

Brain good. Brain good 🧠 💭

[theocddiaries]

Eda and her curse

When I watched "Keeping up A- Fear- Ances" for the first time, I cried so much when Eda's mother apologised to her about how she treated her condition, that she understood why she pushed her away and she loved all of her daughter's parts... Also, she acknowledged she should've paid more attention to Lilith because she is also her daughter.

I've read and heard so many arguments about parents with personality (or plain) disorders. As someone who is raised by someone who is undiagnosed but clearly suffering from the same disorder I have (I think it is genetic from one parent's side of the family, as more members struggled to some degree), I have to say that it is very difficult, but no because of the disorder, but because the actions, the gaslighting and the unfairness. If I had X compulsion, I was 'fucking crazy'; if my parent had it, it was excused, justified by 'they're unwell, leave them alone, be a good daughter'.

I was told I'd never been able to have a normal life because of my OCD, because I was 'letting it' boss me around and controlled me because 'I wanted to (?)'.

Now, The Owl House did so many things right, especially this subject.

Edalyn was cursed, had to learn not to let things get to her or she'd turn into a literal monster she could barely control because she ran from it instead of confronting it, because that's what their parents and everyone else taught her, by being afraid of her 'monster form'. STILL, she never used this as an excuse to be a shitty person. She took in King, Luz, forgave Lilith and helped her when the curse was shared, always tried to be good and strong for those around her and never let her curse define her entire personality, just learnt to live with it and accept it as part of her.

And then... there's this scene in the finale, when Belos, who would deserve several posts because I love him so much as a villain... When he is defeated, 'back to his human form' and tries to play the victim saying he was doing unspeakable things because he was cursed and couldn't help himself. He even tried to play with Luz's kind-hearted nature by comparing himself to Eda. "I was cursed, like your mentor".

Luz isn't moved in the slightest, and I think that silent, cold glare she dedicated Belos/Philip said so much more than an hour-lenght monologue. Even if he was cursed, he is responsible for his actions, and he didn't show remorse, just try to excuse everything, never admitting blame. So, she knew he was buffling once again.

You can't choose to live with a disorder or a personality disorder. However, abuse is a choice. I know I can be difficult when I get in spiral mode (I've got pure OCD, so it's more obsessive and mental), but I don't abuse people, I don't mistreat them, I try to be kind, I try to spread awareness, be understanding. Just being a decent human being, which is difficult, but totally worth it.

I am sick of enablers more than abusers. Especially with double standards. Being compassionate, understanding and good-natured will NEVER mean you have to tolerate abuse 'because the poor person is sick'.

When someone tries to pull that crap, I remember Luz's cold, inexpressive glare. And you should, too. Being good does not equal being trampled over countless times. Have compassion with yourself first, and then you'll know when and how to be it with others without hurting yourself in the process.

[radarchives]

[furiousgoldfish]

This might sound awful, but do you think I have to be sympathetic to abusive parents who are mentally ill because they were "trying their best"? My mom and dad both have several mental health conditions and my therapist keeps insisting we need to see things from their perspective and I feel really frustrated because I don't think i can be angry and I want to be angry. I have really bad ptsd but I don't think see that as an excuse to abuse children.

Absolutely not. Your parents can find sympathy elsewhere. They do not need sympathy from the child they abused. To you, they are dangerous people who hurt you, took parts of your childhood away and probably done irreparable damage. This is not someone you need to feel sorry for! It's shocking and offensive anyone would even ask you to, they should be making up your childhood to you, and making it up to you that you never had healthy caretakers or were able to grow up normally.

If someone hurts you to the point where you have ptsd, that person is nothing else but a danger to you. You wouldn't expect someone who's been tortured to feel sympathy for their torturer's mental illness, it doesn't matter. All it matters is that you're safe from them, that they can't hurt or trigger you anymore. If they want sympathy they can ask the whole world out there to feel sorry for them. But not you. And honestly the world should prioritize you even then. You did nothing to deserve this, nothing to cause yourself to be raised by two abusive sick people, and now you have to live with ptsd. It shows that the world doesn't care how badly you're hurting, but your parent's hurts are so intensely prioritized that even you, who's been hurt by them, should feel sorry. I'm disgusted at them for expecting this from you. You keep yourself safe and you have every right to be angry. If those people were raised by your parents they'd be singing a different tune.

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for February 26, 2023; #345.

Enablers: “Year Of The Dog”

Sun Voyager: “God Is Dead”

Haunted Horses: “Cold Medicine”

Kal Marks: “Everybody Hertz”

Ladder Devils: “Get OK”

Multicult: “Countdown”

Porcelain: “Resume Restart”

Rong: “Gray Pull”

Wipes: “Always”

Borzoi: “Passing”

Deaf Club: “Ride With Cops, Shoot With Robbers”

Penance Stare: “Seven Vials”

Cocaine Piss: “Lalala Fuck Me”

Chat Pile: “Pamela”

Pink Frost: “Until The Summer Comes”

USA Nails: “Horror Show”

VV Torso: “Body / Corset”

Servo: “III”

Oozing Wound: “Minus Tree”

Pollute: “Stoned Rider”

Child Bite: “Erect For Dystopia”

Cloud Rat: “Inner Controller (Lucid Running Home)”

Felon Class: “Cruel Moment / Birthday”

Off!: “Kill To Be Heard”

All noise rock.

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]