#enumerated powers

[thewordenreport]

Bloc????

Journalists in the E.U., followed by their colleagues in the U.S., incessantly though as though purblind, mislabel the E.U. as a bloc, as if that union were an informal network of still-sovereign states on one policy-area. This enervates the E.U. itself. Hardly smart, given Russia's incursion to the east. https://thewordenreport-governmentandmarkets.blogspot.com/2025/03/rearm-europe-whats-in-name.html

[oldblogger]

States of the United States vs. the Federal Government

States of the United States vs. the Federal Government: http://wp.me/prazu-12S

  From before the adoption of the US Constitution in 1787, there has been strenuous argument, sometimes bordering on the violent, between those who wanted a strong central government and those who saw the individual states as the primary locus of governmental power—except for those 18 specific powers granted to the two houses of the federal government, as enumerated in the Constitution. (Former…

[savcir-faire]

In times of absolute horror and destruction I wish for you all the transformational creativity of an utterly beautiful madness, and I offer you the blessing of a holy human freak.

she was such a queen for this

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End-stage capitalism

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BLOOMINGTON TODAY (Apr 4), and in PITTSBURGH on May 15. More tour dates here.

Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail, torn apart by its own contradictions. He called the bourgeoisie, who epitomized these contradictions, capitalism's "grave diggers":

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels marvel at capitalism's adaptability, its ability to reinvent itself in the face of seemingly terminal crises and emerge in a new form. For nearly two centuries, Marxists have treated capitalism as an intermediate stage between feudalism and socialism – a lengthy, but still impermanent, regime whose purpose was to produce the systems of plenty that socialism would deliver to democratic control.

But as capitalism lurched from crisis to crisis, some Marxists speculated that capitalism would give way to something even worse. In 2023, Yanis Varoufakis proposed that capitalism might end up being a transitional phase between feudalism and another kind of feudalism – technofeudalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

But Trump's disastrous policies – tariffs, suspension of the rule of law, pointless military expansionism – doesn't serve Varoufakis's technofeudalism or any other kind of feudalism. As Hamilton Nolan writes, Trump represents a rupture of the customarily unshakable class solidarity of the wealthy. Trump's policies are not good for business. Trump is going to make America much, much poorer – and since the vast majority of American wealth is held by a tiny minority of very rich people, any program that vaporizes an appreciable fraction of American wealth will make a lot of rich people a lot poorer.

Hamilton Nolan wrote about this a couple days ago, enumerating all the ways that Trump – who LARPed a TV businessman – is extremely bad for business:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/divergence-from-the-interests-of

Gutting state capacity

As Nolan writes, there are plenty on the right who don't care about the idea that public education produces the skilled workers needed to run and expand the economy, and who believe that paving half the national parks and putting a $500/day admission price on the remainder will suit them just fine. But even the most hardcore plutocrat needs a functional immigration system so they can source workers who can do the jobs Americans won't – or can't – do. You can't be a finance guy in a country with a collapsed, corrupt Treasury Department that periodically reaches into institutional bank accounts and drains them of millions in pursuit of "obscure witch-hunts":

“stupidly breaking the parts of the government that allow our financial markets to function smoothly with no apparent plan" is not “populism” any more than a bite from an alligator is a kiss

Ending the rule of law

Anyone who claims to love "free markets" loves the rule of law. The predictability of a laws-based society is a necessary precondition for capital formation, long-term investing, and the use of contracts to coordinate business within a transparent, known set of rules.

Trump's lavish corruption – his crypto companies (which someone called "a tipjar for the Oval Office"), his sale of commutations and pardons to flagrant criminals, and his purging of Democrats within the DoJ to create space for "buffoons" who run his witch hunts – all offer good reason for investors to stay the hell out of America, and for businesses to get the hell out of the country:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5182515-senate-democrats-complaint-ed-martin/

The spectacle of the top executives of world's most powerful multinationals openly paying bribes to Trump, while seated at Trump's own members' club, makes an eloquent case for seeking your business opportunities in another country – practically any other country:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/05/trump-dinner-mar-a-lago

Then there's Trump's interference in the Fed, "endangering financial markets for short term political gain":

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-bid-to-control-fed-puts-us-economy-at-risk-by-kenneth-rogoff-2025-01

And finally, there's his defiance of federal court orders, and his attacks on law firms that employ lawyers who had the temerity to sue him. As Nolan writes, "This is not good for business." Sure, it's grimly satisfying to think about all those rich fools who howled because Biden had the temerity to suggest modest tax hikes and improvements to labor law now having to watch as "the world’s most sophisticated corporate legal regime [is replaced] with a system in which you must grovel at his toes in a ridiculous red hat in order to get anything done."

Military adventures

Trump is apparently going to go to war with Iran, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and several other countries to be determined at a later date. Sure, America's military spending is higher than all the rest of the world's combined, but getting involved in several wars at once is – once again – not good for business. For one thing, he's going to kill Boeing, Lockheed, and all the other US-based arms dealers that rely on a friendly relationship with America's erstwhile allies for billions of dollars per year in business. Things are no better for the companies that do other kinds of business with the countries America is apparently on the brink of war with. This kind of "Hitlerian" program of economic growth was a failure in the previous century, and it will fail again:

Did Hitler’s wild invasions ultimate make Germany richer? No. They started a world war. And, no matter what anyone tells you, world war is not good for business.

Tariffs

Finally, there's Trump's deranged tariff plan. As David Dayen writes for The American Propsect, these aren't really tariffs at all – they're sanctions, punishments visited upon every country in the world (even uninhabited islands!) for a bunch of imaginary crimes:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/

Trump's tariffs make no sense as an economic policy, but they are familiar to anyone who's spent time around organized crime (like, say, Trump):

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910/

Dayen likens Trump's approach to "a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business." Trump's demands – such as they are – include forcing America's trading partners to do away with their privacy, food safety and antitrust laws:

https://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/TACD-Statement-Tariffs-3-April.pdf

Even if it was worth it for other countries to dismantle their laws to enjoy continued access to US markets (it isn't), no one trusts that giving in to Trump means that he'll carry out his end of the bargain. As Brad DeLong reminds us, Trump personally negotiated the USMCA terms that Canada and Mexico have been living under since he last left office, and those are the two countries he's most pissed off at:

https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-mar-a-lago-discord

This isn't capitalism – it's gangsterism. It's a system that will annihilate trillions of dollars in value to put billions of dollars in the pockets of Trump and a few of his cronies – at the expense of all the other rich people.

Nolan concludes that Trump is "insane" – that his actions are irrational, disconnected from reality, impossible to understand. For Nolan, the question isn't "What is Trump trying to accomplish?" It's "how has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation?"

He's got a hell of an answer, too:

That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth.

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/2025/04/04/anything-that-cant-go-on/#forever-eventually-stops

[commodorez]

Why Firefox?

Firefox isn't trying to take away my ad blocking software, forcing me to wade through advertisements to traverse the web. I rarely have to stop and put up with ads in my day to day browsing experience. Google has made it very clear that they don't want you to have that power.

I'm very used to a specific UI in my browser, and I'm able to tweak Firefox to my needs. I don't use tabs when I'm at home, and being able to eliminate the tab bar can totally be done with Firefox (I won't elaborate on that here). However, there are many other things I can add to Firefox to improve my experience!

You know how sometimes you want to download an image on a webpage, but you can't right click on it, or it's hidden behind another element? I've got a Firefox tool for that called Right-click boroscope.

Don't want scripts to load in on a page, and cause havoc? Firefox has me covered again with NoScript.

I want to immediately reverse image search something I find regurgitated here on tumblr, in search of the original? There's a TinEye extension for Firefox to do that and save time.

For using tumblr more efficiently, there's XKit Rewritten. In Firefox.

Sick of Youtube's shitty search suggestions, and shorts being pushed? There's a Youtube Search Fixer add-on for Firefox for that.

I've also got the Wayback Machine integrated into Firefox.

The thing is, whatever reasons I enumerate to use Firefox, there are another hundred good reasons that other folks can add to this list no problem.

In some ways, it sucks that I should have to make so many modifications to my web browser to make it suitable for taking control within the modern webscape, but it also says alot that I have the freedom to make those modifications to my browser should I so choose. At work I'm forced to use chrome, and even though I'm only browsing ad-free internal corporate pages to get my job done, I still can't stand that experience.

We should be free to control our web browsing experiences. If a company finds a mantra like "don't be evil" too restrictive, maybe I don't want to help perpetuate their advertising machine (and don't think for a second that chrome isn't part of said machine). The web is supposed to be this free and open place, and it sure as hell isn't helped by browser monoculture. I really don't like the idea of supporting a monopolistic browsing experience that is the sea of chrome clones. Everything else seems to have turned into another chrome.

Fuck that noise.

So I will continue to use Firefox.

[artbyblastweave]

Did you ever read WW historia?

I have now!

In terms of pure visuals, easily the prettiest thing I've read this year (in the February-to-February sense of the term, I'm not pulling a 30-rock cutesy non-statement here.) It definitely feels constructed as a negotiation with some of the tensions I've been waving at, but it's a deft one- handily resolving the overarching "what's the exact nature of the project here" energy through its aggressive commitment to a specific direction- an epic in the idiom of the Illiad or the Oddessy- it's status as the narrative of the founding of a nation, with enumerated mythological lineages for the Amazons, godly politics-of-personality jerking around the protagonists even at their best-intentioned, slaughters predicated on myopic cries for "justice" that are couched in a fundamentally misogynistic moral ordering of the universe (Getting Oresteia flashbacks with Apollo.) Zeus is a particularly compelling villain in the piece, with that cheerful, condescending, paternalistic adherence to a bronze age morality that's not nearly as alien to the present day as one might like it to be. From within his own moral system, he does nothing wrong, which is as good a condemnation of that system as any.

What I really like about it is how it in particular addresses the longstanding tension- not unique to Wonder Woman as a franchise, but always present to some extent- of an impossibly-advanced sequestered utopia trying to provide guidance to a population under so many more material constraints than them that they might as well be space aliens. The book expresses that there's a level on which the initial group of 30 goddess-crafted Amazons- the divine, born-as-adult utopian agents- can look like women, intervene on the behalf of, fundamentally align with women, but, before they meet Hippolyta, there are important ways in which they only fleetingly interact with women as a human social category. They strike from the shadows, kill some oppressors, and fuck right back off- which is cathartic, but none of the mortal women they "rescue" are left in a significantly better position by this alone. That's not an arbitrary strategy; In suitable Greek tragedy fashion, everyone in this narrative is beholden to something, and the original Amazons are beholden to the system in the sense that they have to hide what they're doing so they don't get turbofucked by Zeus and company. But they are very pointedly not beholden in the sense of having to make soul-destroying choices as a result of the gendered boot that they're under. They don't have to, say, live with the guilt of being made to leave an extraneous newborn girl to die of exposure.

Moreover, even in isolation, even with a headcount of 30, the book gestures at the idea that the first wave of Amazons are developing their own systems of norms, orderings of power and hierarchy, valorization of specific traits and rigid systems of categorization based on aligning with different goddesses:

Hippolyta bounces off these requests for categorization hard even as she petitions to join- she sees value in the category, but not the expectations. What DeConnick has done here is engineer a situation where the Amazonian founding narrative is a story about how the identity category of "Amazon" was forcibly expanded until it could accommodate everyone to whom it would be useful- do the work it was intended to do as a positive force in the world. Strict ontology subordinated to questions of practical harm. I think the intended applicability to other issues is obvious.

This brings me to the tail end of the narrative, another of many things I like- As I mentioned before, this whole thing is constructed as a national founding myth, right? The Aeneid, but for Themyscira. But it's not a triumphant story. It's not a tale of glorious conquest, it's not a narrative about how the Amazons turned their backs on a fallen world and carved out their utopian little enclave. They don't live on Themyscira because they're nationalists, or female separatists, or whatever other dunk Azzarello wants to advance. They live on Themyscira because they aren't allowed to leave. Themyscira is an act of suppression. Partly a "cruel mercy" punishment from Zeus and company, loss of freedom constructed as worse than death for the Amazons; implicitly, also a containment tactic, to keep their ideas from spreading.

Much of this was engineered through the machinations of Hera, who presents this National-founding-as-tragedy as the best that could be done under the existing constraints; a setback, a compromise, a launch pad for future endeavors, but still a meaningful defeat, something that Diana, the first and only child actually born on the island, is going to have to work to rectify.

[syndrossi]

Winter Prompt #2: Knight of Stars AU (pt2)

And here is the second part of Knight of Stars. Part one and a description of the premise can be found here.

x~x~x

That the Knight of Stars was but a boy of sixteen caught Daemon by surprise, given how freely the knight had laid hands upon him during the melee. Few other knights, despite having been informed by Viserys that they were welcome to “handle” him as necessary for his “protection,” had dared.

He is bold, I will grant him that.

The knight stood to calm attention within the small council chamber, beneath the curious stares of some of the most powerful men in the realm, unruffled by their study. Some of those stares strayed toward Daemon occasionally, and he returned them with a glare of his own.

The knight’s hair was dark like Jon’s, and slightly shorter, loosely brushing his shoulders, but his eyes were a purple akin to Daemon’s own. And my brother’s, he thought with irritation. And yet he is not subject to speculation that he fathered a bastard at—what, seventeen? Eighteen?

It was not beyond all possibility, but they had little other than eye color in common. Even the young knight’s build differed from his: broad of shoulder and of middling height, though time would tell whether he eventually topped that.

Ser Harrold himself had escorted the knight to the inn on the Street of Kings where he had taken up lodging—not a cheap accommodation, suggesting a house of some means—to retrieve his belongings, which had been gathered into his saddlebag and lugged to the castle, along with a greatsword wrapped in thick cloth that was currently in the care of Ser Arryk, well out of the Knight of Stars’ reach.

“You exhibited both skill and vigilance in protecting my brother,” Viserys said, gesturing the knight closer. Daemon stifled a scowl. His brother had informed him of his intentions beforehand, once the assassin had been found to be of Triarchy origin. “His life is precious to me, so if there is a boon that you would ask in return, I would hear it.” He smiled at the boy. “If you have not yet been knighted, that can be arranged.”

“I spoke no falsehoods, Your Grace, when I joined the Princesguard Tourney,” the boy replied. “I am a true knight. I have spoken my vows and stood my vigil.” He paused, stealing a glance at Daemon before returning his gaze to Viserys. “As to the prince’s safety, that is no less my charge simply because I have not yet been chosen for the Princesguard. The boon that I ask is only that I be considered for the honor.”

Viserys’s eyebrows crept up. “And why should you not be considered?”

“Because I hail from Starfall, Your Grace. I am Ser Arthur of House Dayne,” the knight said with a bow.

Most of the heads in the room turned to Viserys, but Daemon’s stare remained fixed on the knight, who gazed calmly back, as though he had not just professed to being an enemy of the Crown. One allied with the Triarchy, no less, whose assassination the Dornish knight had conveniently “saved” Daemon from.

It was a moment before his brother spoke. “Ser Arthur, doubtless you are aware that your kingdom wars with mine.”

“I am, Your Grace.”

“And that the man who tried to kill Prince Daemon was of the Triarchy, an ally of your kingdom’s and an enemy of ours.”

The Dornish knight’s lips parted in apparent surprise, before turning downward in a frown. “I was not, Your Grace. But I would say that I proved myself no ally of his.”

“Because you are no ally to them?” Daemon interjected. “Or because appearing so affords a chance to place yourself as close to my sons as possible?”

“Or the king’s sons,” Hightower said pointedly.

“Or my daughters, or my brother,” Viserys said with an impatient wave of his hand. “Shall we enumerate all of the charges that will belong to the Princesguard?”

Hightower inclined his head. “My apologies, Your Grace.” He then turned a frown upon the Dornish knight. “As to the matter at hand, perhaps the young ser’s reward could be a gentle escort home?”

Daemon swallowed his own words, which had been of a similar sentiment, misliking that he found himself in agreement with the man.

“Your Grace,” Ser Arthur said, bowing once more. “I will gladly swear my service to you, and forswear my home, if you but allow me the chance to prove myself. I shall fight any man you set before me as more worthy of the Princesguard, all seven if I must.”

“First I would know your purpose in seeking to join the Princesguard, Ser Arthur. Our realms have ever been in conflict, and it has not yet been a century since your own forebears set the fields of Oldtown to the torch.”

Daemon had forgotten. By the pinched twist to Hightower’s lips, he had not, which did nothing to allay his suspicions, but House Dayne did grow ever so slightly in his esteem.

“I—” The knight’s demeanor had been one of steely confidence thus far, but for the first time, it seemed to waver. “Six moons ago, I had a dream so vivid that it felt as though I had lived it. There was a young prince of your house, fair of hair and with eyes like my own, whose song was like the sweetest of spells, and I was his protector. His name was Rhaegar.”

Daemon straightened, hand straying to the hilt of Dark Sister on instinct, and the knight’s gaze shifted to him—though his was not the only to do so.

“There was no such prince of your house, however,” the knight continued. “And the name was not one of any forebears of your house. I thought—” The knight frowned. “I thought that perhaps it had been naught but a dream, until word reached Starfell of your stolen princes who had been found in the Vale.”

The Dornish knight had not been subtle with his interest during the tourney. Daemon’s lip curled. Does he seek to claim dragon dreams in supposedly knowing of my son before he was found? The pillow houses of Lys abound with pretty whores with purple eyes, and they are no more the heirs to Valyria than he.

“I did not know what to do,” the knight admitted, to Viserys’s rapt attention. “As you say, my realm wars with yours, and before, I could tell myself that it was but a strange flight of fancy. When I heard of the tourney, however, and that you sought knights to swear themselves to their protection, I knew what I must do.”

“Your father gave you leave?” Viserys asked.

The knight shook his head. “I knew that he would not understand, and would seek to prevent me. I slipped away on a Braavosi vessel and made haste here.”

Viserys’s thumb tapped the top of his cane, and Daemon suspected the same thought had occurred to him. Starfall will think that we stole him away. And Prince Qoren will believe that we seek to undermine his war effort by taking hostages.

“My king,” Hightower said with a glint in his eye. “Dorne’s support in the Stepstones has been largely restricted to ships, grain, and coin. Should the next phase of Prince Daemon’s efforts there prove fruitful, they may be eager to exit the war. An offer to return a knight of one of their noble houses could speed along such a decision.”

“That assumes this is not a Dornish plot in the first place,” Daemon said sourly. “Perhaps they seek a swift end to the war by kidnapping a royal child.”

My son, as it happens. But why Rhaegar? That was what troubled Daemon. Any of his brother’s sons, or one of Rhaenyra’s, would be a far more valuable hostage for their place in the succession. Unless he is allied to another power entirely—such as Volantis and its warlocks—with all that drivel about a dream intended to lower our guard and afford an opportunity to strike.

“I would not dishonor my vows, Prince Daemon,” the knight said, fixing him with a stern look. “Nor the oaths of the Princesguard.”

“The matter of your participation in the tourney merits further deliberation, Ser Arthur,” Viserys said quickly, doubtless seeking to prevent Daemon from offending him further. “However, your swift action saved my brother from harm, and I shall remember that.”

The knight was bold enough to meet his brother’s gaze in challenge. “But you will not grant me your promised boon.”

“Mind your place,” Daemon said sharply. “You speak to a king.”

He pointedly ignored the incredulous stares the remark garnered from both his brother and Hightower, who opened his mouth to chime in once more, until a sudden rap at the door spared them whatever self-serving remark he had been preparing.

“Your Grace?” It was Ser Erryk’s voice that emerged from the other side of the door, and Daemon’s heart leapt into his throat. He is meant to be guarding my sons. He was halfway to the door before the Kingsguard continued. “I have Prince Rhaegar and Prince Jon with me, they are most insistent on speaking with you on the matter of the Knight of Stars.”

Daemon shouldered Ser Harrold out of the way to pull the chamber door open and find his sons staring up at him with twin looks of determination. Relief narrowly edged out anger, which he directed at Ser Erryk instead in the form of a glare.

“My prince,” the Kingsguard said, meeting it without apology. “They threatened to seek…other means of reaching the council chamber if I refused them. I thought it prudent to escort them instead.”

By “other means” Daemon assumed they had meant the secret passages they had been expressly forbidden from using.

“This is a matter of grave import,” Rhaegar said, refusing to wither as he transferred his glare to his sons. “I must speak to the king.”

His son ducked beneath his arm, while Jon merely shrugged and moved to follow. Daemon scowled. He had expected his cooperation at least in the matter, but Rhaegar had shown himself to be uniquely capable of convincing his brother, given enough time, and he dreaded to see how quickly Viserys would crumble in the coming minutes.

“Your Grace,” Rhaegar said, halting a few steps into the room to offer Viserys a bow, appearing to trust that Daemon would not scruff him from behind. “A persistent dream has visited me over the past week.”

His brother gestured for him to approach, and Daemon followed at his side, positioning himself between his son and the Dornish knight as they passed him, hand resting lightly on Dark Sister’s hilt in warning.

Hightower was frowning, as though he too was painfully aware of how persuasive Rhaegar could be. “My king, I do not see what merit a child’s dr—”

“I will hear it,” Viserys said with a rare note of censure in his voice. “Continue, nephew.”

“I dreamt of a knight cloaked in white and silver, dark of hair and with eyes like kin. He stood at my side in a courtyard bathed in darkness so cold and vast that it choked the breath from me. There was no light save for the stars above us, not even the moon, and all was silent—as though a curtain had been drawn over the world.”

His son’s words had the intonation of prophecy, and they seemed to steal the very warmth of the room. All eyes were upon Rhaegar, the sudden stillness of those present mimicking that which he described. Daemon felt that he could not move—should not move.

“A star streaked across the sky, bright against the pitch of night, and when the knight drew his blade in answer, it shone like that star, forcing the darkness back, and I knew that I was safe.”

Starfall. No one seemed to dare speak once Rhaegar finished, the hush persisting. Hightower shifted, clearly ill at ease, and Viserys seemed locked in a spell.

“Your Grace, if I may?”

It was the Dornish knight who had spoken, and Viserys shook himself, tearing his gaze from Rhaegar to the knight. “What is it?”

“My sword,” the knight said, nodding toward the cloth-wrapped bundle. “May I?”

His brother gave a distracted nod, eyes shifting between the knight and Rhaegar, and straying occasionally to Jon and even Daemon, as though trying to make sense of something. Ser Harrold stepped in, taking the knight by the arm to draw him a few paces further from Viserys and Rhaegar, out of sword reach, and Daemon gave him a nod of gratitude.

The wrapped greatsword was handed to the Dornish knight, who unwrapped it with a strange reverence, revealing a split sheath that he then drew it from, raising it high to bare it for all present to see. This time, all eyes went to the blade, which was the color of pale milkglass and seemed to glow wherever the light hit it. This was no Valyrian steel blade, nor any common steel, and more than a few of the eyes on it widened in recognition.

“I am the Sword of Morning, Your Grace,” the knight said with a bow. “And with your leave, I will offer my oath in service to the Crown—and Prince Rhaegar.”

His brother’s shoulders relaxed, the wonder in his eyes near a gleam, and Daemon knew what he was about to do: accept the knight at his word, as though dreams were the sole province of dragons, and not well within the capabilities of a warlock to induce. It would be far from the first time they have targeted my sons thus.

Daemon stepped before the knight and drew his own blade. “If you wish to go anywhere near my son, you shall first face me.”

“What are your terms, my prince?” the knight asked.

“Duel to first submission,” Daemon said, knowing that his brother would not allow one to the death, and unwilling to trust one to first blood. “Should you prevail, I shall withdraw my objections to you being considered for the Princesguard. Should I prevail, you will return to Starfall and never step foot in my brother’s realm again.”

A hand tugged his sleeve. “Father!”

A flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye found Hightower frantically seeking his brother’s attention, but the Dornish knight did not even hesitate, his arrogance unwavering. “I accept, Prince Daemon.”

x~x~x

(It's not technically a trial by combat, as Daemon isn't outright accusing him of anything, but it's...halfway there.)

[gauntletgirlie]

Reparations: A Silverscars One Shot

Picture provided by @greenleaf4stuff.

I’ve written my first completed fanfiction piece! It’s a silverscars one shot, inspired by a conversation I had with the wonderful @greenleaf4stuff (see this post).

Now on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63361555

Pairings: Adar x Celebrimbor.

Other characters: Gil-galad, Elrond and Galadriel.

Setting: AU Rings of Power in which Sauron does not kill Celebrimbor.

Warnings: Mention of blood and injuries. Mildly spicy with allusions to smut, nothing explicit. Gauntlet kink (shocking, I know).

Premise: Adar has rescued Celebrimbor from Sauron and is in the process of negotiating a truce with the elves. However, Lord Celebrimbor is proving most distracting.

Word count: 2100

Snippet following, the full piece is under the cut. I hope you enjoy!

Adar growled in frustration. The armour was coming off he decided, figuratively and literally. 

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

He was stood too close. Adar could feel the air beside him move with even the slightest shift in Lord Celebrimbor’s stance. He refused to look at the elf beside him, staring resolutely at the High King instead as he addressed the room. 

Gil-galad had called this meeting to discuss the terms of truce between elf and uruk, and so it was that Adar found himself in the ruins of Eregion’s forges with the elven leaders: Gil-galad, Galadriel, Elrond, and Celebrimbor. It was hastily done, but terms needed to be set, at least until a more formal arrangement could be made. The siege had been called off the moment Nenya had cleared Adar’s mind of the influence of Sauron, and Sauron himself had fled once he had seen he was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. 

Adar was trying his hardest to focus on what the High King was saying, but whilst his eyes remained fixed upon Gil-galad’s face, every other sense was drawn to Celebrimbor. He could hear the soft susurration of the elf’s gown as he repositioned slightly and could smell the blood that oozed from his bandaged hand. Adar could even feel the exhaustion that emanated from him. 

The elf lord should be resting, not forced to stand here and discuss politics. Then again, Adar mused, Elrond and Gil-galad were sporting their own wounds, weariness also yoking their shoulders. Perhaps they should all have sought respite before attempting to negotiate treaties. He himself felt energised, the power of Nenya had stripped away much to reveal more of his old self and he was impatient to get back to being the father his children deserved once more. 

Celebrimbor kept sneaking surreptitious glances at him, Adar could see in his peripheral vision. The Lord of Eregion had been most gracious with him, not least because Adar had rescued him from the clutches of Sauron. He owed Adar his life, but Adar owed him reparations for a besieged and destroyed city. A fact Gil-galad was not letting him forget. 

In fact, Adar was pretty certain it was that very topic the High King was so emphatically enumerating right now, if only Adar could stop listening to Celebrimbor’s unsteady breaths next to him. No, it had become too much, he could take it no longer, the Lord of Eregion needed a break and he needed to not be stood so close.

“If I may be so bold, your majesty.” Adar interrupted Gil-galad and was rewarded by a look of surprised indignation. “Lord Celebrimbor clearly requires rest, his injuries are many and talk such as this requires minds unclouded by pain and fatigue. I think he may not be the only one who would benefit from a chance to heal somewhat.”

Adar looked at Elrond, then Galadriel, before settling back on the High King. Gil-galad gave him a calculating look, his deep brown eyes boring into his own pale blue ones, no doubt attempting to determine if there was an ulterior motive behind his words. He might suspect Adar of seeking to stall negotiations, which was entirely untrue. Adar wished to get back to Mordor with his children as soon as possible, he just needed a reason to lessen the proximity between Celebrimbor and himself and this was the politest way he could think of achieving it. 

It was Galadriel that broke the tense silence that had fallen after Adar’s words. 

“I agree with Adar.” His name did not fit comfortably in her mouth still, it haltingly dropped from her tongue. “Lord Celebrimbor has suffered greatly and both yourself and Elrond have also sustained injuries-“

“Thanks to this orc and his children.” Cut in Elrond, though Adar noticed that his voice was more tired than it was harsh. 

“Uruk”.

Adar nearly broke his rule of not looking at Celebrimbor, for he and the elf had spoken the word in unison. He felt a smile creep unbidden to his lips and bit down on the inside of his cheek to prevent it spreading. He could do nothing to prevent the warmth that was simultaneously spreading in his chest, however. 

“I have already apologised on behalf of myself and my children.” Adar addressed Elrond. “I wish for no more flames and no more darkness. I wish to heal the rift between elf and uruk. Sauron poisons my mind no longer, as he no longer poisons Lady Galadriel’s or Lord Celebrimbor’s.”

At the reminder that not one, but two of their own had succumbed to Sauron’s deceit, Elrond and Gil-galad both appeared uncomfortable and, dare he say it, abashed. Gil-galad exchanged a glance with his commander before sighing and straightening himself. 

“We shall break until the morrow then. But we meet back here an hour after first light.” The High King’s tone brooked no argument as he fixed Adar with a hard stare. 

Adar inclined his head in assenting acknowledgment. With one last look at those gathered, Galadriel took Elrond’s arm and the two made their way out of the huge oak doors of the forge without another word. Gil-galad looked at Celebrimbor expectantly, but the smith made no move to leave. The High King raised an eyebrow but chose not to comment, instead bestowing Adar with a final appraising contemplation before following his companions out. 

“Lord Celebrimbor.” Adar acknowledged the other in farewell but as he was about to leave, Celebrimbor spoke. 

“I wanted to thank you again, for saving my life.” Celebrimbor’s voice was brimming with sincerity. 

“You have already thanked me. There is no need to continue to do so.“ Adar spoke kindly, not wishing to insult the other, but in truth Celebrimbor’s indebtedness made him feel discomfited. He was a great elf lord of noble lineage, an artist of the highest degree, a mind of genius and compassion; to see him reduced to such vulnerability was grievous to witness.  

“Still, I mean it. You were my knight in rusting armour.” Celebrimbor laughed softly at his own joke then placed a hand on Adar’s own, which was resting on the edge of the table they had all been gathered around. Adar stared at the contact. 

“Can you not even look at me?” Exasperation laced with pleading in the smith’s voice. 

Adar found he could not reply, his mind was whirling, and just as words were beginning to form, he felt Celebrimbor remove his hand and Adar’s heart sank, even as his mind relaxed. He was already on shaky ground with the elves, especially their High King. He could not afford to get entangled with one such as the Lord of Eregion. Better to not even entertain such thoughts as a warm, gentle hand placed upon his own threatened to give. 

To his astonishment, Adar felt that same warm hand cup his scarred cheek and gently but firmly turn his head so he was forced to look sideways at the elf beside him. Celebrimbor was already facing him and the space between them was so diminutive it would only take one of them to lean forwards to eradicate it entirely. 

Adar kept his face impassive, but he knew his eyes would betray him. He was not one to break eye contact, but he feared that Celebrimbor would see the hopeful longing he had no right to possess harboured in his gaze. He was about to look away when he saw a change in the other’s eyes; where there had been uncertainty now there was resolve. 

“Oh for goodness’s sake.” Celebrimbor whispered before sliding his hand down to the top of Adar’s breastplate and tugging him so that his mouth was brought to press firmly against the elf’s before he could even think to react. 

Celebrimbor’s lips were surprisingly soft and moved tentatively, despite his sudden determination. Adar was frozen in place, his hands involuntarily rising up in shock with his shoulders tensed up. Celebrimbor broke away to meet Adar with questioning expectancy. His fingers still gripped the top of his breastplate, refusing to relinquish their grip. 

Adar was now faced with a choice. Risk incurring the disdainful wrath of Gil-galad, Elrond, and probably Galadriel by giving in to his desires or risk offending and losing forever the elf before him whom he could no longer deny he respected, admired, and wanted so very badly. 

Adar smiled. There was no choice. He slid round so they faced one another properly, tilting his head forward so their noses almost touched. He heard Celebrimbor’s breath catch at the sudden movement. 

“Are you certain this is what you want?” He asked in a low voice, his eyes never leaving the other’s.

“Yes.” Celebrimbor spoke without hesitation. 

Adar moved immediately, that one word releasing the fire within him he had been so desperately trying to keep from consuming him. He grasped Celebrimbor round the waist with his gauntlet and drew him in, sealing the gap between them as he kissed the elf with an urgency that earned him a gasp of delighted surprise. His other hand brushed up the velvety fabric of the elf lord’s tunic to rest in the hollow of his back. 

Celebrimbor matched him in pace, their lips moving together in a dance of fervidity, but Adar was leaning in hard so that the smith was forced to wrap his arms about the uruk’s neck, uninjured hand entangling in his hair. In one swift motion, Adar grabbed the elf’s hips in both hands and hoisted him up to place him on the edge of the table next to them. He could kiss Celebrimbor more vigorously now and press their bodies closer without fear of either of them losing their footing. He cursed his breastplate, for what had been instrumental in bringing them together moments ago was now preventing him from feeling the other’s well-muscled form against his own. 

Adar growled in frustration. The armour was coming off he decided, figuratively and literally. Celebrimbor attempted to help him undo the buckles but he only had the one hand to work with, the other being too maimed to use so intricately. Adar’s desperation for closeness saw he was freed quickly, however, and the two embraced in a zealous collision. 

Celebrimbor was drawing him down so that Adar had to brace his gauntlet-clad hand against the table. The elf brought his legs up to wrap around Adar’s waist, ankles crossed at his back, his robe slipping up his calves to tease a glimpse of his thighs. The sight incensed Adar, he wanted to trail kisses up those thighs from knee to pelvis, meeting with what was housed in the middle. 

Celebrimbor had brushed Adar’s hair aside and was trailing light nips and sucks along his neck to end behind his ear. Adar’s gauntlet scraped against the wood of the table, gouging deep lines into the surface and his legs threatened to buckle when Celebrimbor began softly biting his ear, teasing his way from lobe to tip, but the smith merely tightened those supple legs against him to keep him steady. Adar slid his bare hand to grip the top of Celebrimbor’s thigh, feeling the smooth muscle tighten under his touch. The elf moaned in response causing the uruk to stop and pull back.

“Am I hurting you?” Concern flooded him, he had gotten lost in his lust, forgetting the elf lord was already battle-worn and fatigued. “We can stop here, we need not go any further. You do need to rest.”

Celebrimbor looked deep into his eyes with a longing that scorched Adar’s soul. By Eru, if he did not possess the most handsome face Adar had ever had pleasure to witness.

“Stop now and you will truly hurt me. As for resting, we have all night.” His brow quirked up suggestively. 

“As my Lord wishes.” Adar smirked. “But I will ensure you get the rest you require. Your High King will have my head if not.”

Celebrimbor laughed at that before pulling Adar to him again so their bodies were flush once more. The elf lord’s toned chest crushed into his own and the arms made strong through years of smithing now enclosing him in tight embrace were a reward Adar did not deserve. Celebrimbor was truly a master of his craft, for Adar was certain he would forge him anew before the night was done. 

“Promise me… promise me I may rest in your arms and I feel as though my wounds will all be healed.” Celebrimbor murmured breathlessly in his ear. 

In answer, Adar caught his mouth in a tender kiss and the two let their eager bodies carry on the conversation for the rest of the night. 

[golden-reverie]

Dewey Decimated

Chapter Two

Author’s note: Chapter two of my first series. You can read chapter one here. Still in the midst of setting the scene, but the next chapters will have more substance so stay tuned! And again, thank you all for the support!!

Summary: Mabel, a part-time librarian, finds solace in her carefully constructed routine—that is until Harry, an atypical library patron, unsettles the order she’s worked hard to maintain.

Word count: 4.9k

Warnings: Still nothing quite yet, toxic boss, hints of past dom/sub relationships if you squint, brief mentions of complicated family dynamics (alcoholism and abandonment), and hints at a future dom/sub realtionship (if you really truly squint)

By 10:07 AM, Mabel had already swallowed her frustration twice, forced a polite smile four times, and reminded herself at least a dozen that storming out in a blaze of righteous fury was not, unfortunately, a financially responsible decision.

Rick Alderman, her boss, thrived on power for power’s sake. As a senior executive at Northwind Publishing, he projected an image of authority, but in reality, he was little more than a glorified bottleneck—too obsessed with control to delegate effectively, yet too lazy to do the work himself. His office was a shrine to his own ego, cluttered with awards from decades past and framed photos of handshakes with people who had likely forgotten his name the second they walked away.

For the past week, Mabel had been waiting for a response from him. She’d sent an email requesting a meeting to discuss her future at the company. No response. Three follow-up emails. Nothing. Two polite in-person reminders. More silence.

It wasn’t surprising. Disappointing, yes. Infuriating, absolutely. But surprising? Not even a little.

In the two years she had slogged under Rick’s reign, he had never given her a straight answer about anything that didn’t serve his own interests. Every discussion about her career aspirations vanished into thin air, yet somehow, he always found the time to ask her to book his personal appointments or send her cryptic, one-line emails titled “Fix this”—never accompanied by context, or God forbid, an explanation.

She knew she was wasting away in this role, like a plant starved of sunlight, but quitting wasn’t an option. Not yet. The paycheck was just good enough to keep her tethered—to keep her brothers in school, to keep the rent paid, to make the soul-sucking monotony just bearable.

“Mabel, a word.”

Her shoulders stiffened at the sound of his voice.

She looked up to see Rick standing in his doorway, summoning her inside. She followed, forcing herself into the kind of neutral professionalism she had nearly perfected. He shut the door behind her and leaned against his desk, arms crossed.

“How long have you worked here?”

Her pulse kicked up a notch.

Was this it? Was it finally happening? Was he actually going to acknowledge her work? To offer her the promotion she deserved? The faintest ember of hope flickered in her chest despite her better judgment.

She straightened her posture. “About two years now, Mr. Alderman.”

She was ready. She had rehearsed this moment a hundred times in her head, ready to enumerate her achievements, her innovative ideas, and the ways she could help propel the company forward. She would make a case so strong he couldn’t possibly—

“I see.” He nodded, then sighed. “Two years, and you still can’t remember that I prefer my documents single-sided, not double.”

It was like the air had been sucked from the room.

Of course. How could she have been so stupid as to think, even for a second, that this was going to be different? That he would ever change?

Mabel swallowed down the sting of disappointment and forced a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll make a note of that.”

Rick gave her a menacing smile, as if he relished the power he wielded over her. “That’ll be all,” he said.

She turned to leave, jaw clenched, but before she reached the door, his voice cut through the silence again. “Oh and while you reprint these, you can entertain yourself by thinking of a spot to pick up my lunch. I’m in the mood for French.”

She clenched her fists and forced a fake smile. “Will do, Mr. Alderman.”

***

That evening, the familiar hush of the library was a balm to her frayed nerves. Mabel exhaled slowly, willing herself to forget about eco-unfriendly documents, insufferable bosses, and overpriced French cuisine. But as she approached the front desk, something caught her eye.

Her book—the one she had been reading the night before—sat exactly where she had left it. But something was off.

The spine was slightly shifted, the pages bent in a way they hadn’t been when she last held it.

She frowned, picking it up, flipping through until—

A small slip of paper fluttered onto the desk.

Mabel stared at it for a moment before unfolding it, her pulse quickening.

Not practical enough for me, huh? Figured I’d see for myself. Can we discuss over coffee tomorrow? —H

She swallowed.

The elegant script taunted her with its casual confidence. The way he signed it “H,” as if he knew he didn’t need to clarify.

Her fingers traced the edge of the note, her emotions a tangled mix of curiosity and caution.

It was just coffee, she told herself. A simple, harmless meeting over caffeine. Nothing more.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that agreeing to this might unravel the tightly woven threads of her life. Coffee could lead to conversation. Conversation could lead to…

She shook her head, willing herself to focus on the present.

Slipping the note back into the book, she returned to her tasks. But throughout the evening, her thoughts kept drifting back to the note, the words circling in her mind like a melody she couldn’t shake.

As closing time approached, Mabel found herself drawn back to the front desk, the book now a silent testament to her inner turmoil. She traced the spine with her fingers, contemplating.

Her sensible side screamed for her to retreat, clinging to the safety of routine. Yet a quieter, more daring inner voice urged her to seize the chance—a chance to see the man behind the enigmatic “H,” to let the idealized image she’d built up crumble, and then she could go back to enjoying her library shifts in peace.

With a resolute breath, Mabel made her decision. She reached for the stamp on the desk—the one reserved for marking returns—and, with a small, defiant smile, stamped “APPROVED” in bold green letters across the note.

Then, with quick, decisive strokes, she scribbled a reply beneath it, proposing a time and place.

Her heart thudded as she slid the note back into the book and tucked it onto the hold shelf under his name.

As she tidied up the desk, Mabel couldn't help but wonder what she'd just set in motion. She hoped she wasn't making a mistake, but as she locked up for the night, she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that something had shifted—like the first ripple on an otherwise still surface.

***

The next day, as she went about her routine at Northwind, Mabel found herself glancing at the clock more often than usual, her focus slipping despite her best efforts. The hours crawled at a torturous pace, each tick of the second hand stretching longer than it should. She had promised herself she wouldn’t overthink it—it’s just coffee, a casual meeting—but the thought clung stubbornly to her mind.

Rick, as predictable as ever, was too absorbed in his self-importance to notice her distracted state. He spent most of the afternoon micromanaging a project he had only half-understood, making sweeping declarations and then leaving her and the rest of the team to clean up the inconsistencies. It was just another day trapped in corporate purgatory, though today her impatience to escape was palpable.

As the workday waned, she practically counted down the minutes, willing the hands of the clock to move faster. But, in true Rick fashion, just as she was slipping her coat over her shoulders, he called out from his office.

“Mabel, hold on a second.”

She froze, mentally cursing every higher power in existence. With measured calm, she turned back, schooling her expression into polite indifference. “Yes, Mr. Alderman?”

Without lifting his gaze from the screen, he intoned, “I need you to fix the formatting on the Johnson proposal. The alignment is off.”

She blinked, incredulous. “The one I sent this morning? I followed the—”

“I need 1.27 margins,” he interjected with a dismissive wave, “not whatever this is.”

It had 2.54 margins, the company standard—a detail Rick always managed to forget, despite endless reminders from compliance that his revisions were “not in brand.” Mabel had explained it to him more times than she cared to count, but today she lacked the energy for another lesson. Instead, she bit her cheek to stifle a retort and nodded stiffly. “Of course.”

By the time she reworked the document, painstakingly scrutinizing every possible nitpick and resending it, she was already fifteen minutes behind schedule. A hasty email later, she shut down her computer, and practically sprinted out of the office, weaving through the rush-hour crowd like a fugitive on the run.

***

She reached the café breathless, running a hand through her hair in a futile attempt to compose herself before stepping inside. The scent of roasted espresso and warm vanilla curled around her as she scanned the room.

Almost instantly, her eyes fell on him.

In the far corner, Harry sat with one leg casually crossed over the other, his fingers loosely curled around a coffee cup. There was no sign of impatience—no furtive glances at his watch, no restless shifting in his seat. Instead, he seemed content to wait, his calm focus unbroken as he typed away on his phone. Then, as if in response to her presence, he looked up. His gaze wandered over the room for a heartbeat before settling on her.

Mabel’s heart quickened as she forced herself forward.

“Sorry I’m late,” she murmured with a tentative smile, drawing closer. “Work… my boss… well, he’s—”

“A prick?” Harry finished smoothly, a flicker of amusement passing through his green eyes.

A startled laugh bubbled up before she could stop it. “That’s putting it mildly.”

For a brief second, something unreadable passed over his face—something that almost looked like protectiveness, but before she could overanalyze it, he gestured toward the seat across from him.

“Sit,” he said, his voice low, effortless. “I ordered for you. Hope I guessed right.”

Mabel hesitated briefly before easing into the chair, her eyes drawn to the cup that awaited her. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” she said as she took a cautious sip, warmth settling over her tongue.

A vanilla cappuccino. How did he—

“I’ve seen it written on your cup at the library,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “And don’t worry about it—I’m well acquainted with difficult bosses.”

She set the cup down, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Is that because you have one or because you are one?”

The words left her mouth before she could stop them. She instantly regretted it.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Probably because I am one,” he said, cutting off her backtrack with a smirk that made something flicker low in her stomach. “What gave me away?”

Mabel exhaled, forcing herself to relax, to match his ease.

“Well,” she said, leaning back slightly, “the suits for one. Successful businessmen aren’t exactly the library’s core demographic—more of an order-it-off-Amazon crowd.”

She let the words hang for a beat before tilting her head. “That, and your reading material. Pretty sure you’re single-handedly keeping our Business & Economics section in circulation.”

Harry smirked, raising his cup in a half-toast. “Knowledge is power.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow. “Spoken like a true man in charge.”

His gaze flickered over hers—sharp, assessing, intrigued. Something heavy settled in the air between them, like he had caught onto something she hadn’t meant to reveal. The corner of his mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “And what about you?” He asked, breaking the moment just before it lingered too long. “What do you do when you’re not critiquing your library patrons’ choice of books?”

Mabel let out a quiet laugh. “Plot their literary redemption arcs.”

Harry chuckled. “That sounds serious.”

“Oh, it is,” she said, lifting her cup to her lips. “One tragic book choice at a time.” She set it down. “And I work in publishing. Northwind Publishing.”

He let out a low hum. “Publishing. That tracks.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Tracks how?”

“You have the precision of someone who deals with words all day,” he responded casually. “The way you correct yourself, structure your thoughts before you speak.”

Mabel frowned, “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or concerned by how much you notice.”

Harry chuckled, his green eyes glinting. “I’m just observant.”

She didn’t quite believe that was all it was, but she let it go.

“And you?” she asked. “What kind of boss are you?”

His lips twitched. “I run a firm. Investments, acquisitions—things most people find dull.”

She let out a small laugh. “So you’re admitting you have a boring job?”

“I’m admitting most people think it’s boring,” he corrected. “I happen to enjoy it.”

There was something in the way he spoke—an assured, measured cadence—that made her want to trust every word he said.

Before she could press, he leaned back and fixed her with a thoughtful look. “So, what did the prick do this time?”

Mabel blinked. She hadn’t expected that.

In her experience, most men loved to talk about themselves. She had been on enough coffee dates where she barely had to speak, yet somehow still endured the inevitable, clueless "This was fun, we should do it again sometime."

Even with Matt—the only one who had lasted long enough to earn the title of boyfriend—conversations about work had always been unwelcome. He’d roll his eyes whenever she vented, chastising her for complaining about a paying job, as if having an income absolved her of any legitimate frustration.

But Harry wasn’t waiting for his turn to dominate the conversation. He’d deftly steered it back to her, expecting an answer.

Mabel hesitated, her grip tightening around her cup before she exhaled. “Oh, the usual. Death by a thousand pointless tasks. My boss has this uncanny ability to make a simple request sound like the fate of the company depends on it.”

Harry tilted his head, watching her. “And yet, you’re still there.” His tone wasn’t judgmental—just curious.

She shrugged, lifting her cup again and muttering the only response she had been conditioned to believe was acceptable. “It pays the bills.”

“That’s not an answer,” he replied, his tone smooth and insistent.

Her fingers tightened slightly around the ceramic, her instinct telling her to deflect. Change the subject. Redirect the focus back onto him like she always did.

But for some reason, she didn’t. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was the way Harry was looking at her—really looking at her—like he saw more than she was saying. Like he wasn’t just filling space with conversation, but memorizing every syllable.

She lowered her cup, and along with it, the defenses she’d so carefully constructed—just slightly. “I have two younger brothers in college,” she said finally. “Charlie and Peter. They’re twins. I help cover their tuition. It’s not exactly my dream to work as an executive assistant, but… it’s necessary for now.”

Harry didn’t look surprised. If anything, something in his expression shifted—something quiet and contemplative.

“That’s a lot to carry,” he said after a beat, his voice steady.

Mabel shrugged, “I have strong shoulders.”

His gaze didn’t waver, sharp yet unreadable, like he was cataloging her words and filing them away. She opened her mouth to redirect the conversation—turn it back to him, to his work, to anything that didn’t feel quite so exposed—but he was quicker.

“So, you have Charlie and Peter. What about the rest of your family? Did you grow up in Seattle?”

She hesitated for half a second.

Mabel hadn’t been asked about her childhood in a long time. Not by someone who actually seemed to care about the answer. The words tasted unfamiliar, rusty from disuse—“I grew up in Lake Stevens. About 35 miles north of here. But we moved to Ellensburg when I was in middle school.”

She left it at that, deliberately sidestepping the real question, hoping he wouldn’t press.

Her hopes were short-lived.

A thoughtful hum escaped him as he trailed a thumb along the rim of his cup. “Why did you move?”

Judging by his accent, she had assumed he had little knowledge of Washington’s geography—certainly not enough to question why a family would leave safe, suburban Lake Stevens for somewhere like Ellensburg. But something about the way he asked made her think otherwise.

Well, here goes nothing.

“Cliché story, really,” she said, trying to shrug the weight of it off. “My father left when I was fourteen. My mother lost her job shortly after. We couldn’t afford to stay in Lake Stevens, so we moved somewhere more… manageable.”

She kept her tone even, casual. Like it was just another fact about her life, no different from saying she worked at a library or that vanilla cappuccinos were her drink of choice.

But Harry wasn’t fooled.

His expression didn’t change, but his posture did—just a fraction, like he was absorbing the weight of her words. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower, softer.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mabel.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like at that age. Not young enough to be oblivious, but old enough to shoulder more than you should’ve had to.”

She saw genuine empathy in his gaze.

This was a first.

Most people either pitied her or tried to reframe it into some kind of inspiring resilience story. Poor girl. You’re so strong. Everything happens for a reason. But Harry… he simply acknowledged it.

She hadn’t realized how much she needed that. How much she had needed someone to recognize that there was no silver lining, no moral takeaway. That some things just… were.

Harry watched her patiently, like he could sense her thoughts tumbling over one another and was giving her space to process.

She gave him a small smile. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “It definitely wasn’t easy. My mother, she’s...” pausing, she let her words drop off. “Well, I did what I could to to make a future for myself. For my brothers.”

Granting her some reprieve, Harry didn’t pry any further. But she could tell— by the way his gaze sharpened—that his interest was genuine.

He exhaled slowly, then leaned forward, resting his forearms against the table. His voice was more deliberate now, like he was at the helm of some metaphorical ship, steering their conversation into uncharted waters.

“So, you’re putting your brothers through college, you’re at the beck and call of the prick Monday through Friday...” His gaze flickered over her, like he was fitting puzzle pieces together. “And I’m guessing there’s more to the story with your mother, which we’ll get to eventually.”

The certainty in his voice caught her off guard. Like he knew she wouldn’t tell him everything tonight, but he was willing to wait.

Then, he leaned in slightly, his voice low.

“Is there anyone who takes care of you, Mabel?”

The words hit like her like a thunderclap, low and resounding.

Mabel’s expression faltered. It was a simple question.

Everyone had someone who took care of them—a parent, a partner, a person who made life feel a little lighter. Didn’t they?

She had her brothers, and in some ways, they took care of her. They gave her purpose, made her laugh when she needed it most. She had Mrs. Whitmore to offer her reassuring words every now and then. But she knew that wasn’t what Harry meant.

She let out a small, slow breath. “I—” She stopped, realizing she didn’t actually know what to say.

Her first instinct was to brush it off with some quip about being perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that capability and need were two different things—and something told her Harry knew that too. All her usual excuses suddenly felt thin under the weight of his gaze.

She managed a wry smile, “I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”

Harry’s lips pressed together slightly. “That’s not a yes,” he noted.

Her throat tightened. “It’s not a no, either.”

His fingers tapped against the table, slow and deliberate. The space between them felt charged, both physically small and emotionally expansive.

“No one should have to deal with that all alone,” he said gently.

She let out a shaky laugh, half-mocking, half-sincere. “That’s what people say right before they remind you that, at the end of the day, you do, actually.”

As the words left her mouth, she suddenly felt like crying, but she held it in.

For an instant, his expression shifted—a fleeting tightening around his eyes betrayed his concern at her reaction.

For a moment, the cafe seemed to hold its breath.

“Maybe most people,” he allowed. “That doesn’t mean everyone.”

That quiet confidence again. Like a promise, one she wasn’t sure what to do with.

Mabel felt her pulse quicken, but she wasn’t sure if it was from his words or the way he looked at her when he said them. Like he wasn’t just making an observation, but an offer.

No no no. This is exactly the territory she didn’t want to breach. She needed to break the moment before she slipped too far into it.

“Well,” she said lightly, “I’ll be sure to let you know if I ever need a businessman-slash-library-patron to step in.”

Sensing her walls starting to climb around her again, Harry didn’t press the issue further. Instead, he offered her a knowing expression and nodded.

“Please do.”

Mabel let the words settle between them, rolling them over in her mind as she studied the man across from her. When she agreed to coffee, she had framed it in her mind as a professional courtesy—her civic duty as a librarian, a steward of knowledge, a public servant of sorts. She was simply being accessible to discuss literature, facilitating intellectual curiosity like any librarian should.

That had been the plan, at least.

And yet, here she was—sitting across from Harry, a man she had known for barely more than a handful of library visits—letting him see the parts of her she usually kept tucked away, behind polished smiles and convenient deflections.

In an attempt to hold onto some semblance of her original intentions—she nodded towards the copy of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet laying on the table between them.

“So, what did you think?” She asked.

Harry’s lips twitched, as if he knew exactly what she was doing but was willing to play along. “Certainly not a business book,” he said through an exhale.

“Very astute observation,” she replied with a playful glint in her eye.

“But I can see why you like it,” he added softly.

“Oh? And why’s that?” she queried, curiosity mingling with caution.

“It’s a character study—about relationships, about finding where you belong. About knowing when to lead, when to follow... when to let people in,” he said, his voice a hushed murmur that made her heart flutter.

She drew a breath, swallowing the sudden dryness in her throat. “That’s a very emotionally insightful response for someone who checked out a book on strategic acquisitions last week.”

Harry’s eyes gleamed with mirth. “I contain multitudes.”

Mabel let out a breathy laugh, shaking her head. “That might be the first time I’ve heard a finance guy quote Walt Whitman.”

“I doubt it’ll be the last,” he murmured, and there it was again—the expectation that this wouldn’t be the last time they sat across from each other like this.

Mabel was dumbfounded as to how something could feel so safe and so dangerous at the same time.

But here that something was—sitting across from her, making her stomach tighten in ways she wasn’t sure she wanted to analyze.

And for the first time in a long time, she let herself stay in it, let the conversation stretch and unfold in a way that felt natural—like slipping into a current instead of fighting against it. They drifted back to books—her recommending novels with actual plots, him trying to argue that business books had their own kind of narrative. He told her about his mother and sister, who still lived back in England. She learned that he studied finance at Imperial College in London, an education that set him up to launch his own firm in America by the age of twenty-six.

“Did you always know you wanted to do that?” she asked, grasping her drink, long forgotten.

“I knew I wanted control over my own success,” he answered, voice calm, resolute. “I don’t do well with other people dictating my decisions.”

A faint blush warmed her cheeks—a reaction he noted with a small, amused smile. “Yeah,” she cleared her throat, “I can see how that might be the case.”

Their conversation flowed on—shifting from hobbies they enjoyed to anecdotes from their college days to their favorite foods and go-to spots in Seattle. They debated the merits of slow-burn character dramas versus high-stakes action films. Mabel learned he had a fondness for old thrillers, and Harry learned she had a deep love for Pride and Prejudice adaptations—especially the Colin Firth version.

It was... comfortable. Terrifying, yes, but easy in a way she couldn’t explain.

Eventually, the evening wound down. Harry pulled out his phone and slid it across the table. “If I’m going to be expanding my literary horizons, I’ll need a direct source for recommendations.”

Mabel smirked, picking it up, she entered her number and texted herself an “H.”

When they stepped outside, the air was cool and crisp against her skin.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said, easy, assured—like it wasn’t a question.

Harry had a way of doing that—saying things that made them feel like natural conclusions rather than mere suggestions. If it were anyone else, Mabel probably would have rolled her eyes. Yet, there was something about Harry's approach that she found settling and... safe.

Still, she shook her head gently. “Thank you, but I have my car.”

Harry nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Text me when you get home then, yeah?”

It wasn’t a request.

Mabel huffed out a quiet laugh and conceded, “Okay.”

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Goodnight, Mabel.”

She turned, walking toward her car, feeling his eyes on her until she was out of sight.

By the time she stepped into her apartment, she was exhausted. She shut the door behind her and reached for her phone.

Made it home. Thanks again for the coffee. -Mabel

She barely had time to set her bag down before her screen lit up.

Good. I had a wonderful time with you, Mabel.

And then another.

Get some sleep. H.

Mabel stared at the messages for a moment longer than necessary, her fingers hovering over the keyboard before she finally locked her phone and set it aside.

She got ready for bed—washing her face, changing into an oversized T-shirt, brushing her hair into a loose knot—but her mind was still at that coffee shop, replaying the evening in fragments.

His voice. His eyes. The way he listened.

The way he spoke.

There was quiet dominance woven into every part of him—his presence filled the space without ever suffocating it. His words didn’t demand but still expected. Sitting across from him, she felt both exposed yet safe, like he was peeling back her layers with gentle precision.

Men who carried themselves the way Harry did—men with power, with control—they were usually the ones who took. Who assumed. Who wore authority and entitlement like a badge—one they never actually earned.

But Harry was different.

Yes, he had an undeniable presence—the kind that made people instinctively take him seriously. But it was also the kind that didn’t require raised voices or unnecessary force to yield.

And he listened. Really listened. He had taken in her words and held them like they mattered. Like she mattered.

She never talked about her past—not with people she knew and certainly not with people she barely knew.

And the worst part? She felt something when those parts of him surfaced—when he told her to text him, when he told her to get some sleep, when he ordered water for them both without asking, as if it was all second nature to him. To anyone else, they might have seemed like nothing, just small inconsequential gestures.

But each time she replayed them in her mind, something stirred deep in her core—a pull, a recognition of a need she had had told herself she had long since buried.

She exhaled, flopping onto her bed, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes.

Enough, Mabel. She pleaded with herself. You don’t even know what this is.

And yet—

Lying there in the dim glow of her bedroom, staring at the ceiling, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they both knew exactly what it was—an unspoken understanding woven into every glance, every carefully placed word.

And that they were both standing at the edge of it.

Something that, once crossed, would never be undone.

***

More to come very soon! Thank you for reading :)

Read chapter one here.

[stillness-in-green]

On Child Abuse and Todoroki Touya

Being a response to this ask:

First, anon, I'd like to thank you for coming at the question of Touya's victimhood in such an honest, open spirit of curiosity. I've seen no shortage of people who, in not understanding why people call Touya a child abuse victim, flip over into belligerence and scorn, which is just no kind of tack to take about such a sensitive topic!

That said, child abuse is a broad, broad, broad topic, and not one I’m exceptionally well-read on, but I’ll try to hit the highlights as to why people—myself included—say Touya was a such a victim.  Forgive me if anything I say sounds too basic and therefore condescending; that’s not my intention, I just don’t want to assume your knowledge on anything, as you say you haven’t personally encountered abuse before.  If you’re very curious to learn more, there’s no shortage of resources out there, including just starting on Wikipedia’s articles on Child Abuse and Emotional Abuse and going from there.

(Sincerely, and speaking from my own experience, I would recommend everyone do at least some cursory reading on non-physical forms of abuse; it’s much better to know what the red flags are when you first start seeing them than have to enumerate them all only in retrospect.  Like, if absolutely nothing else, take five minutes to do an image search for the Power and Control Wheel and look it over.[1])

1: Do note that the P&E wheel was developed in the 1980s, based off of a series of focus group discussions about the shared experiences between women being abused by their male partners.  Because of that origin, in the original and still widely replicated version, there’s a segment about “abusing privilege” that doesn’t—because it was never designed to—take into account intersectionality, abuse between same-gendered partners, or women abusing men.  More modern versions have attempted to modify the wheel for more general purpose, gender-neutral education about abuse. I find it to be a valuable introductory tool, but it's not a universal authority and shouldn't be treated as such.

Obviously, trigger warnings for discussion of child abuse generally and Touya and the rest of the kids’ situations specifically below the jump.

Introduction

So, the big big thing to keep in mind here is that abuse is not limited to physical violence or sexual abuse.  Abuse can take all sorts of forms, even outside of intimate partner relationships: abuse of power, medical or professional abuse, spiritual abuse, financial abuse, and so on.  Any list you care to look up of “types of abuse” can be quite long, depending on how granular the list-writers feel like being or who their target audience is.  There’s also a great deal of overlap in types and terminology, so some sources will only include a few umbrella terms, whereas others will be much more extensive.

For example, a list identifying forms of abuse aimed at women is going to focus on different things than one about abuse aimed at the elderly, or children, or forms of institutionalized abuse (not to be confused with abuse taking place in institutional settings!).  No one much talks about financial abuse when detailing different forms of child abuse, but it would be a major point of discussion for domestic or elder abuse.  Comparatively, an exploration of domestic partner abuse may include neglect as a subtype of psychological/emotional abuse, whereas a similar explanation of child abuse will likely include it as a category unto itself.

Looking specifically at child abuse, Wikipedia explains that, depending on your sources, the term “child abuse” may or may not be used synonymously with “child maltreatment.”  If they’re considered separate terms, then “child abuse” is considered one subtype, with the other subtype being “child neglect.”  If abuse and maltreatment are used interchangeably, then neglect is a subtype of abuse.

More specific definitions and legislation about them vary hugely from place to place based on cultural standards, leeway given based on intentionality,[2] and how provable any given act might be based on clear evidence of harm.

2: As an example, a single parent whose child is suffering malnutrition because they’re living below the poverty line and can’t afford regular, nutritious meals is going to be regarded differently than a financially stable married couple who are actively choosing to spend their money on other things while letting their child go hungry.

Here are some definitions Wikipedia gives, as offered by various relevant organizations and laws:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines child abuse and child maltreatment as "all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child's health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power."  In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses the term child maltreatment to refer to both acts of commission (abuse), which include "words or overt actions that cause harm, potential harm, or threat of harm to a child", and acts of omission (neglect), meaning "the failure to provide for a child's basic physical, emotional, or educational needs or to protect a child from harm or potential harm".  The United States federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act defines child abuse and neglect as, at minimum, "any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation" or "an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm".

                                    (From Wikipedia's article on child abuse)

Note how many references there are in that chonky paragraph to neglect and emotional harm.  That view of abuse is why pretty much everyone who calls Touya a victim of child abuse is using abuse as the umbrella term that includes neglect, so that’s the tack I’ll be taking here as well.  Even if I were considering abuse and neglect separately, though, there are several things Touya is subjected to that should be considered abuse in that more active sense!

There are two big category terms that I’d say are relevant to Touya's experience, both of which are recognized forms of child maltreatment: child neglect and emotional/psychological abuse.  You can make an argument for physical abuse as well, though it’s clearly not as extensive as what Shouto or Rei endured.  I’ll touch on each of those, as well as point to some of the damage experts predict in victims of those forms of abuse that—intentionally or not on Horikoshi’s part—we do see in Touya/Dabi.      

Child Neglect

The physical markers of child neglect are things like inadequate nutrition or shelter, but there are a number of other dimensions as well—some quite severe psychological damage can be done by e.g. a parent who regularly ignores their infant child crying.  The same World Health Organization report Wikipedia quoted above noted that emotional neglect can be characterized by “a lack of nurturance, encouragement, and support.”  A UK report from the same year included in its definition of neglect, “neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.”

The Wikipedia article itself includes a table listing types of child neglect with various (I assume hypothetical) example cases, among which is “emotional neglect,” described thusly: Guardian or parent give inadequate nurturing or affection. The parent or guardian fails to create an environment where the child feels secure, loved, wanted, worthy, etc.

So how does that all relate to Touya?

Touya seems at first glance to have been getting love and support aplenty in his youth—Enji supported him, was training him, raising him to be a Hero.  The family was doing okay at that point. Rei had Fuyumi because she wanted another child,[3] and while Enji, too, still “yearned” for a child with his ideal quirk combination—which he already knew neither Touya nor Fuyumi possessed!—the two of them nonetheless stopped, for a time, with Fuyumi and Touya.

3: Because multiple children could encourage each other, per Endeavor’s characterization of Rei’s stated desires.  I note that this is pretty much the same reasoning AFO gave Shimura Kotarou about having another child, just absent the calculated Hero bashing—children should have siblings so they can help each other out.  With the way the endgame went, I confess myself shocked that neither Rei nor her parents turned out to be on AFO’s payroll.

The specifics of the timeline are illustrative here.  Touya and Fuyumi are only eleven months apart in age, meaning Fuyumi was conceived only two months after Touya’s birth.  Comparatively, Fuyumi was closing in on three years old by the time Natsuo was conceived!  So, whatever his private desires, at that point in time, Enji was willing to abide, to trust his ambitions to Touya without continuing to try for a child closer to his ideal.

Crucially, at this juncture, Touya wanted exactly the situation he was in!  He was thrilled to have this commonality with his father, whom he clearly adored, and unlike Shouto later on, didn’t find Enji’s expectations to be any sort of burden or source of stress.  So while you could (and I will) still criticize the dynamic based on Enji’s ulterior motives, Touya’s lived experience was very happy.

Sidebar: Would that happiness have lasted?  I don’t know.  Enji’s support of Touya was so plainly conditional; there are so many things that could have disrupted it even if Touya’s health problems had never surfaced and Natsuo and Shouto were never born at all.  What if Touya decided he wanted to pursue a different path when he got older?  What if his youthful enthusiasm curdled into pridefulness and conceit in ways that made him fare poorly in the Hero Billboard charts?  What if he struggled in school and couldn’t get into UA?  Assuming that he couldn't surpass All Might within just a few short years of his debut, what would happen when All Might retired after Kamino with neither Endeavor nor [whatever Touya would have chosen for his Hero name] ever surpassing him? Myself, I tend to think that it’s unlikely that Enji and Rei would have stopped at two kids long-term anyway.  Even if things had continued going well, Enji’s hope for his idealized quirk combined with Rei’s willingness to have more children in the hopes of having a happy, mutually supportive household would probably have led them to having more children eventually.  Perhaps Touya wouldn’t have taken it so badly, if he weren’t already reeling from Enji’s rejection, but Shouto's existence would always have created complications in the dynamic because I don’t think Enji could have resisted starting to focus on what he would have seen as Shouto’s greater potential, and Touya surely would have noticed. In any case, something would always have happened because Enji’s ambitions, not any of his individual children’s responses to those ambitions, were the rot at the heart of the Todoroki family.

That happiness was based on a bad foundation, so it was always likely to crack.  Touya’s health issues just revealed what was already there: that Enji saw his children as vessels for his ambition, and when they couldn’t fill that role, he functionally discarded them.

This was emotionally catastrophic for Touya because, again, he adored his father and desperately wanted a relationship with him, but Enji did not provide him with any kind of alternative framework for a relationship outside of “be a Hero that can fulfill my ambition.”

Now, did Enji just casually toss him aside without a second glance?  No, of course not.  He didn’t even immediately start trying to have kids again!  He had enough invested in Touya that he did spend a while getting medical opinions and seeking out advice in hopes of “salvaging” Touya’s prospects; we see as much on the page.

(Honestly, the doc says this is unusual, but given the increasing diversity of quirks, how “unusual” could it possibly be?  I would think issues like this would be quite common!  What were the odds of Bakugou inheriting his father’s combustive sweat without also getting his father’s immunity to those combustions, for example?)

For Touya, though, the shift was obvious.  Enji stopped spending time with him; they didn’t have anything to do together if it wasn’t training.  Instead, his father started being harsher, raising his voice when he spoke to Touya, telling him that this was for his own good.  All that affection and support, gone overnight.

(Note the jaggedness of Enji’s first talk bubble, and the lingering sharp corners to his second one, and compare them both to the smooth, rounded talk bubbles in the dojo scene or the doctor's analysis above.)

There did seem to be a period in which Enji tried to convince Touya to give up on the Hero goal, but Touya didn't care about being a Hero for its own sake; he cared about it because it was the only source of pride or connection Enji provided.  He was asking Touya to give up the one thing Touya knew Enji valued, and that also meant giving up the thing that represented their bond.  Touya loved him and didn’t want to give that bond up, so he kept stubbornly trying to push his way through, insisting he could handle it.

We have no evidence that Enji ever managed to get into words that he’d love Touya regardless of whether or not Touya could surpass All Might, but even if he did, Touya clearly didn’t believe him—and why would he, given that it’s obvious that was still Enji’s priority?  If Touya was still loved either way, why did his bonding time with his dad dry up overnight?  Why was his dad still obsessing over news reports about All Might?  And, most importantly, why would his parents start trying to have children again?

Enji’s most important goal at the time was surpassing All Might; he consciously chose to keep pursuing that goal even though doing so made it crystal clear that anything he might have told Touya about how it was okay if Touya couldn’t is just a platitude.

Note how Rei explicitly said in the scene above that Touya knew very well what Enji was hoping for from his children, and them continuing to have more in light of that knowledge would be a horrible cruelty.  Again, that’s apparent in the ages of the kids: as long as Touya’s fire was holding up, it was just him and Fuyumi, but practically as soon as his fire started hurting him, suddenly more siblings were being attempted?

That’s all to say, I don’t for a second believe that Enji only proposed having more kids in order to make Touya give up.  The page above is Enji making a textually cruel decision which he justified using the well-being of his son but which in actuality revolved around letting him get back to pursuing his ambition, which having a relationship with his son no longer furthered.

Let me copy back in those definitions of emotional neglect:

A lack of nurturance, encouragement, and support; neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs; inadequate nurturing or affection.  The parent or guardian fails to create an environment where the child feels secure, loved, wanted, worthy, etc.

Enji’s support was conditional.  His nurturing revolved 100% around nurturing the growth of a future Hero, and that nurturing itself was pretty flawed, given Endeavor’s ideas about what being a Hero means.  When Touya tried to demand support, wanting to get back what he had before, Enji just shut him down.  It’s patently obvious that, at the age of three and a half years old, Touya did not feel secure, loved, wanted, or worthy in that home environment.  Over the next ten years, it would get progressively worse.

Before I move on to the more active abuse that Enji would come to perpetuate, I want to move away from definitions and briefly talk about some other recognized acts and consequences of child neglect.  All per Wikipedia:

• Act: Allowing the child to witness violence or severe abuse between parents or adults.

We don’t see Touya here directly, but this happened immediately after Touya invited Enji to come up to Sekoto Peak, so he presumably did at least see his father storming off bellowing Rei’s name at the top of his lungs.  Also, absolutely nothing about this scene suggests to me that it was the first time something like this had happened—Shoto calling it “bullying” suggests it’s a regular occurrence and Fuyumi hiding and covering both her own and Natsuo’s ears also reads as something she learned how to do, not something she was doing for the very first time in this scene.  I don’t feel it’s a stretch, then, to chalk it up as part of the form “child neglect” took for Touya as well.

• Act: Not getting the child adequate medical care.

Too many panels to choose from here!  From the evidence of the flashbacks, Touya’s fire started burning him when he was three and a half; he was then intentionally and regularly doing training that resulted him getting burned for ten more years.  Even if you argue that he started hiding that training after his attack on Shouto led to Endeavor getting more distant from him than ever, he would still have been doing that training more openly for something like four solid years.  In their argument just before that attack, Enji even described him as “covered in burns.”

So, if he was covered in burns, was consistently burning himself for years, was he getting professional medical treatment?  (God knows he wasn’t getting psychological help.)  Or would that have raised too many uncomfortable questions that could have led to Social Services showing up at the Number 2 Hero’s house in broad daylight right when the neighbors could see it?

That question doesn’t just indict Enji, by the way; it goes for Rei, too.  It’s telling that Rei’s response to having a traumatic break and burning Shouto was to embrace him, weeping and apologizing, and try to apply ice to the burn, while the only response we ever see to Touya’s burns, following that early medical consultation, is him getting manhandled and shouted at.

• Consequences: Children from neglectful homes are unlikely to view alternative caregivers as being a source of safety, and instead typically show an increase in aggressive and hyperactive behaviors which may disrupt healthy or secure attachment; they’re often described as glib, manipulative and disingenuous in their interactions with others as they move through childhood.

        o Don’t regard other caretakers as being a source of safety:

(I’m aware I’m cheating a little here in that Rei was not an alternative caretaker, she was his literal mother, while AFO and the Evil Orphanage staff were transparently Sus As Hell.  Still, I think the shoe fits.)

        o Aggressive behavior:

(See also him burning down the Evil Orphanage on his way out.  Also see Wikipedia’s list of symptoms for “Psychomotor agitation” and marvel at how many of those behaviors you could connect to Touya and/or Dabi if you wanted to evaluate him on “hyperactive behaviors” as well.)

        o Manipulative and disingenuous:

(I don’t necessarily think Touya was consciously being an emotionally manipulative shithead here, but this is emotionally manipulative shithead behavior all the same.)

Moving on now to the other major relevant topic...         

Emotional/Psychological Abuse

In the context of discussions of abuse, these two terms are generally used interchangeably.  Due to that, and the fuzziness of terminology that I mentioned at the outset, there’s a lot of overlap between definitions/examples of this sort of abuse and child neglect—sometimes neglect is considered a subtype, for example.  The Wikipedia articles here are a bit vague and all over the place, so for this section I sought out sites more specifically tailored to the topic of child emotional abuse.  (Here, here and here.)

Consistent patterns are immediately visible in what sort of treatment is generally considered to constitute emotional abuse in the context of a parent/child relationship.  Several would apply to all the Todoroki children, some exclusively to Shouto, but I’ll go through the ones that seem relevant to Touya.

Rejection/Ignoring: Communicating to a child through words and conduct that he or she is unwanted and/or worthless.  Being consistently absent or emotionally unavailable.  Continually ignoring or rejecting them.  Never expressing positive emotions, showing kindness or congratulating the child on their successes.

A lot of overlap with neglect here that I’ve already covered, but note how, once Touya’s health problems kicked in, we only ever see Touya and Enji interactions come in the form of Touya begging for his father’s attention; Rei likewise said that all Touya wanted was for his father to look at him, which Enji refused to do.

This refusal is most literal in the volume version of Chapter 302, where the added pages really amp up that watching/seeing theme of Enji’s I talked about in my reply to your previous ask.  After Touya attacked Shouto, Enji ordered Rei to keep her eyes on Touya; in their later confrontation in the lead-up to Sekoto Peak, Enji brought this up again, demanding to know why she didn’t stop him when watching him was all he asked her to do.  When she tearfully said that she couldn’t stop Touya, Enji defensively, furiously shouted that she had to, because he (Enji) wouldn’t “watch.”

(With thanks to @codenamesazanka, here's the Viz digital release version, rather more colloquial than the Japanese, as is often the case with Caleb Cook's localizations for Enji.)

Contextually, I’m sure he was saying he wasn’t going to be the one to look after the kid, but the words also play off his arc theme by showing what Enji not only neglected but explicitly refused to look at/see/watch/pay attention to.

Verbal Abuse: Threatening, cursing, or yelling at children.  Consistently humiliating or criticizing them, especially in front of others.  Blaming or scapegoating them for the parent’s own abuse.

At the same time that Touya was now having to beg for any attention, the only attention he did get became negative.  I don’t think Enji literally cursed at him in any of the scenes we see, but his language became noticeably rougher and sharper in ways that the Viz official release localizes as including cursing, even though he wasn’t e.g. directly calling Touya swears.  (That is, the English translation has Enji saying, “Dammit!” in amidst his rants, but no directly addressed profanity like “bastard” or “asshole.”)

I leave an extended discussion of that localization choice to those with a greater understanding of the Japanese context, but Enji did unequivocally yell, both at Touya and at everyone else, in front of other family members and at volumes other family members couldn’t help but overhear.

He also consistently treated Touya as if Touya’s pleas for attention or secret training were the problem when the problem was very obviously Enji’s own neglect.  “Why won’t you stop?”  “Why don’t you get it?”  It’s not as direct as, say, beating Touya and then saying the beating was his own fault, but he blamed Touya for hurting himself, blamed Rei for not intervening, when Touya’s injuries were a direct result of Enji refusing to acknowledge that his responsibility for his child’s emotional well-being should take precedence over his desperately shallow desire to stand on top of an awards podium.

As to threats, intimidation in all forms is another one of those things that crops up all over abuse lists.  While Enji didn’t overtly threaten Touya, lord knows his body language was scary as hell—all that looming and glaring and grimacing!  We know he would destroy things when he got angry enough—as seen in his trashed dojo after All Might announced his retirement—and destruction of property[4] is a frequent example of psychological abuse via intimidation.

4: As of e.g. throwing household items during fights, slamming doors or on walls, or especially breaking the victim’s personal belongings.

We do also see one instance of him manhandling Touya in a way that would quite clearly qualify as outright physically abusive in a domestic partner relationship.

In the context of urgently checking one’s child for injuries, this is slightly more forgivable, but the urgency here wasn’t really about Touya’s health; it was about how he was continuing to disobey Enji’s wishes, and the indication that Rei wasn’t doing what Enji wanted her to, either.  Note Touya’s wide-eyed, rigid expression at the rough handling. 

I don’t think there’s enough of an established pattern to conclusively ding Enji as physically abusive towards Touya, but on the other hand, the general consensus of experts (as I understand it) is that labeling a relationship emotionally abusive requires a consistent, persistent pattern of abusive behavior (because it’s easy to handwave off individual uses of ugly language as just the unintended result of speaking in anger or a making a joke that didn’t land), whereas a physically abusive relationship can be judged as such based on a single violent incident (because it’s harder to make convincing excuses for hitting someone).

In that sense, and based on how he treated Rei and Shouto, I would not be hard-pressed to believe that Enji was all too ready to use physical force dragging Touya around against his will (out of the dojo, back to his room, to Rei so she could administer first aid for his burns, etc.).  That would, again, easily qualify as abuse in the sense of domestic partner violence; while I can see the argument that it’s different with kids, even the one instance of it we see already raises my eyebrows, and my likelihood of calling it child abuse would increase the more frequently it was happening.

Manipulation/Exploitation: Manipulating a child, forcing a responsibility on them without regard to their development, not recognizing their individuality, having unreasonable expectations/unreasonable demands, comparing them to others/their siblings.

This is all most applicable to Shouto, obviously, but it’s also where you can clearly see Enji’s treatment of Touya as abusive even when he and Touya were both very happy.  Remember, Touya wasn’t even four yet when his ice nature started asserting itself, so all that stuff about surpassing All Might was a responsibility/expectation Enji was pushing on a three-year old—a literal toddler!—absolutely without regard to anything Touya might have wanted or chosen if left to his own devices.  He didn’t keep pushing once it became clear Touya wouldn’t be able to meet those expectations, of course, but he also didn’t demonstrate for Touya any other ways to be close to him/earn his approval.

Also, while I still think him wanting to push ahead with having more children is more about fulfilling his own ambitions than genuinely helping Touya, he did still frame the decision as being about Touya.  Specifically, he wanted to do it to “make” Touya give up; it was a manipulative tactic chosen specifically in hopes of breaking Touya’s stubbornness because Enji couldn’t find a more appropriate method of convincing Touya to give up on pursuing Heroism.

Closing out this section, here are some Dabi-relevant consequences I found noted for emotional/psychological abuse, per Wikipedia:

    • Poor self-esteem:

(I know this is from a scene where he was proclaiming his own capability, but what strikes me as indicative is the way he unironically referred to himself as Endeavor’s “creation.”  Not the wording of someone with a good strong sense of independent self! Refer back also to his calling himself and Natsuo “failed creations.”)

    • Destructive behavior, angry acts such as fire setting: (Waves at all of Dabi)

    • Withdrawal, difficulty forming relationships, isolated from their parents, have few (if any) friends:

(If you don’t think this qualifies, see also Dabi’s stand-offish relationship with the League.  I think he did have a measure of care for them, but it was pretty stunted, as well as filtered through several layers of variably plausible belief that they only mattered to him insomuch as they were relevant to his goals.)

    • Difficulty controlling strong emotions:

(See also Dabi’s swings into grinning, off-balance mania.)

    • Suicide.

(To my eyes, this desire to commit a murder-suicide with his father goes back at least at far as the first war—because I’m not confident in Dabi’s ability or desire to survive that blue-flame Prominence Burn Best Jeanist interrupted—and maybe even all the way back to Dabi’s “birth” praying at his own memorial photo at the family shrine, what with Dabi’s very name meaning “cremation” and all.)         

Child Abuse in Japanese Resources

One of the things I made sure to do over the course of writing this piece was look up resources actually from Japan on the topic of child abuse, just to be sure that their conception of what constitutes abuse didn’t diverge in some unexpected way from my English-language resources.  They did not—everything I covered above can also be found on Japanese web resources on child abuse—but they did, interestingly, include some things not covered by my English resources, things I take to be more specific to Japanese law and/or culture.  I want to touch on those briefly before I wrap this up.

(The specific phrasing I use below is taken from the English-language version of the website Lights On Children, a Tokyo-based NPO focused on raising awareness and resources for children living in alternative care situations like children’s homes or foster families, but similar points were found on other websites as well.)

Inflicting burns as a form of physical abuse.

I didn’t discuss it specifically above because most of what I was working from was specific lists/infographics about signs of non-physical abuse, but I noticed on this site—and it’s true for English sites as well!—that burns on a child are a well-recognized sign of child abuse, ubiquitous on any list of tells for physical abuse.  I wouldn’t suspect Horikoshi had that in mind specifically when brainstorming Shouto and the rest of his family situation, but it is notable that Shouto's most obvious injury, the one that gets his mother institutionalized, is a facial burn.

Touya hid his injuries, nominally so Enji didn’t realize he was still training and shout at him all the time or take more drastic measures to make him stop, but I gotta say, a school nurse doing a routine health check-up would not know the difference between burns Touya got from self-taught training and burns Touya got from his famous flame-wielding Hero father.  The fact that they were hidden, and especially that they were on his torso rather than his limbs, should be screamingly suspicious to any semi-trained professional, and I truly wonder what the in-universe explanation is for how Touya got through 7+ years of regular school health screenings without Endeavor getting into serious trouble.

Not taking the child to a medical institution/hospital if they are in serious need of care.

This is another one that was ubiquitous under acts that constitute neglect.  Japan has universal health care, you see, so there’s even less excuse for not getting your kids medical help if they need it than there would be in the U.S.[5]  This goes back to my questions about whether Touya was ever taken to see a doctor/the emergency room to address his burns.  Small ones I could see Enji and Rei plausibly justifying taking care of at the house, which, given the nature of Enji’s job and training regimen, was presumably well-stocked to handle such first aid. That huge band across Touya’s entire abdomen in Chapter 302, not so much.

5: My research suggests that all children under a certain age are eligible for Medicaid in the U.S. regardless of whether or not their parents qualify, so denying your child needed care is still heckin’ illegal here, too!  However, health insurance in the U.S. is such a horrible morass that it wouldn’t surprise me if plenty of parents don’t know—or at least could plausibly claim that they don’t—about hospital requirements to provide care for kids regardless of their parents’ ability to pay.

Discriminatory treatment among siblings.

This one barely came up at all in English-language resources but was super common on the Japanese sites, I assume because the country’s deeply engrained problems with patriarchal attitudes is more likely to result in that kind of disparity between the treatment given to sons and daughters, or the oldest son compared to basically everyone else.  I’ve also seen enough examples in anime of wildly differing treatment of adopted children—or step-children!—versus blood-related children that I assume it’s a reflection of some real-life precedent!

The relevance for the Todoroki children is, I trust, obvious.

Abusive actions to siblings.

I discussed above how allowing children to witness domestic partner violence is itself an act of child abuse, even if the abuser never lays a finger on the child themselves, and the same goes here.  If anything, it’s even more stringent: the stuff about partner violence tends to specify letting a child witness it, while that qualifier of a child's perception is not present for sibling abuse.  Abusing one child in any way—physically, sexually, psychologically, or via neglect—constitutes psychological abuse for all children in the home.

For the Todorokis, then, what Enji (or Rei!) did to any individual one of the children—be it the isolation and abusive training Shouto underwent, the rejection and verbal abuse Touya endured, or even the disregard and parentification Fuyumi and Natsuo had to deal with[6]—qualifies as abuse of all of them.

6: More prominent for Fuyumi, but Natsuo talked about the meals he cooked as well.  I don’t think we know what-all the housekeeper did, how much she was around, or how old the kids were when she retired (at least old enough that Enji didn’t bother replacing her) but Fuyumi’d been trying to protect Natsuo from their family’s damage since she was seven years old.

Wrap-Up

So, I hope this has all clarified for you, anon, why people so readily call Touya an abuse victim.  He was—they all were!  I should also note, before I let readers go, that there’s not really a question of severity here, either: numerous studies have shown that the impact of psychological abuse and/or child neglect is no less damaging—and may even be more damaging—than the harm done by physical or sexual abuse in isolation.  So it’s not like Touya’s just wildly overreacting or some kind of Bad Egg—while obviously not all abuse victims grow up into violent criminals, a certain percentage of them do, and Touya falls into that category.

It’s one of the things I always liked about the Todoroki plot, really.  Four children, all of whom had wildly different responses to the abuse they suffered, allows room for one of them to be completely (and entertainingly!) unhinged about it without consequently implying that abuse will inevitably turn victims into violent monsters.

Thanks for the ask!

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jaroslav Cermak (Czech, 1831-1878) Montenegrin Women in a Harem, 1877 National Gallery Prague Slavery gave rise to the figure of the Odalisque, that is the beautiful, white slave girl, a figure of quintessential beauty. In the late 18th century Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the father of physical anthropology, the father of scientific anthropology, an 18th century German scholar, assigned the name Caucasian to the people living in western Europe, to the River Ob in Russia to northern Africa, and to India. He called the people in Europe, over to India, well into Russia and North Africa, Caucasians because they were the most beautiful in the world. Blumenbach enjoyed a scholarly reputation that gave his designation enormous heft and it got picked up very quickly. Immanuel Kant stated that the Caucasians, the Georgians, the Circassians, sell their children, particularly their girls to the Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians, for reasons of eugenics, that is, to beautify the race. Before the Atlantic slave trade to the western hemisphere shaped our ideas about what slave trades are all about, there was slave trade from this part of the world, that goes back to before the reaches of time. Herodotus writing in the fifth century BC, writing about the enumeration of taxes and tributes paid to the Persian kingdom, collected from the lands it had controlled and the lands even far away in the distance. He said that the voluntary contribution was taken from the Colchians, that is the Georgians, and the neighboring tribes between them and the Caucasus, and it consisted of and still consists of (that is in the 5th century BC) every fourth year 100 boys and 100 girls. This was before Herodotus could even see the beginnings of it. Herodotus also mentioned the tribute from the southern most part of the edges of the Persian world and that was for the people called Ethiopians, what they owed was gold and ivory, people were not mentioned. So, the Black Sea Slave trade was the slave trade in the western world until the 15th century when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and cut the Black Sea off from western Europe. At that point, 15th century, the Atlantic slave trade becomes the western slave trade. Daniel Edward Clarke, our Cambridge don, also located Circassian beauty, in the enslaved. “The Cicassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to Persians and Turkish Seraglios.” He speaks of one particular Circassian female who was 14, who was conscious of her great beauty, who feared her parents would sell her according to the custom of the country. The beautiful young slave girl became a figure, and she had a name; Odalisque. She combines the powerful notions of beauty, sex, and slavery. Ingres, Jerome, Powers and Matisse specialized in Odalisque paintings. The figure of the Odalisque faded from memory as the Black Sea slave trade ended in the late 19th century, and the Atlantic slave trade overshadowed that from the Black Sea. Today, the word slavery invariably leads to people of African descent. Americans seldom associate the word Odalisque with with slavery in the Americas. Today many American painters use Odalisque figures, Michalene Thomas for instance who has done a series of what she calls American Odalisque. But the phrase and the figure of the Odalisque has lost its association with slavery. And now in American art history and in contemporary American art, Odalisque simply refers to a beautiful woman, usually unclothed. If you want to learn more, listen to professor Nell Painter of Princeton University in the YT lecture “Why White People are Called Caucasian.”

[thewertsearch]

@manorinthewoods asked: Vriska and Eridan have now killed one person each. Tavros and Feferi's respective moons have been destroyed; as such, they cannot be revived via dream selves or the moon-crypt slabs. What do you think will happen now? ~LOSS (18/5/24) @manorinthewoods asked: Welcome to Murderstuck, aka Homestuck's version of Canaan House. Who do you think's going to survive this? ~LOSS (22/5/24) Anonymous asked: tavros and feferi are D----EAD! do you think they'll stay dead? you've already stated your opinion that there are death flags like crazy all over vriska, so do you think anyone else will die? if so, who? Anonymous asked: Now that the bodies have started to hit the floor, what's your prediction for who's gonna survive to meet the humans?

I'm actually doing to do something a little different this time, and analyze the situation primarily from an author's perspective, rather than an in-universe one. I had a lot of fun doing that with yesterday's Kanaya post, so I want to try it again.

Let's enumerate the remaining trolls, in ascending order of how likely I think they are to kick the bucket (😳) during Murderstuck.

There's no chance whatsoever that Sollux will die. His Doom prophecy is fulfilled, and if he were to die a third time, it would break his long-established duality theme. Plus, he'd have predicted it, and would have been complaining about it since Hivebent. He's fine.

Death flag score: 0/10.

We just got Aradia back. She's not even involved in Murderstuck, seemingly travelling to the Furthest Ring after being resurrected, so none of the murderers can touch her anyway.

Aradia is a powerful time manipulator who can freeze even the most dangerous enemies. It would take a lot more than Eridan and Gamzee to defeat someone who can stalemate Perfect Jack, and I predict that she'll survive the rest of the Act with ease.

Plus, killing her again so soon would feel really cheap. Been there, done that.

Death flag score = 0.5/10

Karkat and Terezi are too important to die.

This doesn't always guarantee a character's survival - A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind - but ASOIAF kind of proves my point, doesn't it? Martin can throw all the Red Weddings he likes at us, but everyone still kind of knows that the really important characters aren't going to die until their arcs are complete. If A Dream of Spring ever actually comes out, Daenerys will still be around, and you can take that to the bank.

So no, I don't think Karkat and Terezi will be going anywhere. Now that Kanaya appears to be dead, they're undeniably the most important trolls remaining, alongside Vriska. And we'll get to Vriska.

Death flag score: 1/10.

I know it's weird to predict that an already deceased character won't die, but I wrote an entire post last night about why I believe this to be the case.

tl;dr: it doesn't make narrative sense for Kanaya to stay dead.

Death flag score: 2/10.

Now, we're onto the characters who I think might actually die.

Gamzee's still alive at the end of the countdown, so he'll at least survive the next couple of hours.

Certainly, his position seems rather precarious. His stated intent to wipe out the entire Veil will make him a lot of enemies very quickly - and based on the image above, he clearly gets into some sort of trouble. That scratch almost looks like it could be the work of Jack's sword.

However, I have a hard time believing the Most Important Character In Homestuck is going to die less than halfway through Homestuck. He's been saying all sorts of cryptic nonsense lately, and he strikes me as someone whose role in the story will expand even more than it already has. Gamzee is the one character on this list we know will stay relevant for the entire comic.

I don't think he's going to achieve his murder mission, of course. I think he'll probably be 'defeated' somehow, and expelled from the Veil by the surviving trolls, only to pop up again sometime later. There's still a chance that he'll be killed - but if he is, I'm 100% sure that he'll return in some form. Gamzeesprite would be even worse than Calsprite, in my opinion.

Death flag score: 3/10.

Yes, I still believe Vriska will die - but I don't know if she'll die in Murderstuck.

Scratch positioned her as someone who will perpetuate a monumental, large-scale mistake, and I don't think there's anything she could do on the Veil that fits the bill.

However, Vriska is more imaginative than I am. She could easily pull a trick out from up her sleeve that I didn't see coming - some terrible, horrible idea that earns all of Scratch's foreshadowing in one fell swoop. Vriska is known for her Incidents, and you never know when the next one is on the horizon.

Death flag score: 4/10.

There's not a lot tying Equius and Nepeta to the Veil, is there?

They don't have strong relationships any of the remaining trolls, and even among the B-team, they've barely had any prominence since we've left Alternia. Killing one or both of them would up the stakes of Murderstuck without introducing the narrative issues that, say, a dead Karkat would cause.

Plus, if one of them dies, then the other would immediately gain an incredibly strong motivation, and become a more prominent character overnight. I already like Nepeta - but a heartbroken, vengeful Nepeta hunting Eridan down across time and space? That's a fucking arc.

They could also both die, and return to the story from another direction. It hasn't escaped my notice that almost all the 'important' trolls are Prospit Dreamers, and the two Furthest Ring explorers are Derse girls. I've been wondering for a while now if the solution to the Veil's bloated cast is to split the trolls back into the Red and Blue Teams, with the Red Team joining the kids outside the session, and the Blue Team joining Aradia in the Ring for some secondary mission. I guess that implies Tavros will be resurrected, but there do seem to be hints that that might happen.

I don't want either of these two to die, but... well, killing them would raise a lot of interesting possibilities.

Death flag score (both of them together): 6/10

Death flag score (one of them) : 7.5/10.

Eridan is screwed.

Neither the story nor the trolls can allow him to ally with Jack and lead him to the Veil, and they'll do anything they can to stop him. I don't think anyone's inclined to show him mercy, either - Kanaya and Feferi were very popular.

I don't really see any way out for him. He has no allies, he can't Hopesplode everyone at once, and he's never shown himself to be particularly resourceful. I think if there's one troll practically guaranteed to be Murderstucked, it's him.

Death flag score: 9/10.

[mariacallous]

Individuals associated with the federal government have, in defiance of a court order and without a trial or any form of due process, deported hundreds of people from the territory of the United States to El Salvador, where they will be held indefinitely in a concentration camp.

1. This violated fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution. Everyone in the United States has the right to a fair trial with due process of law. People who say things along the lines of "enemy combatants don't have the right to due process" are wrong. And it is important to understand the implications of that position. Anyone can be named an "enemy combatant." More fundamentally, once you accept any exception to the general rule, you are just inviting executive power to always use that exception, or make up another one. If you are a citizen and you are casting doubt on the importance of due process, remember this: you need due process in order to prove that you are a citizen.

2. The deportation was done in violation of a court order, according to a plan to undo the rule of law. This means that the action was not only specifically illegal, but designed as a challenge to the rule of law as such. Naturally, the individuals who chose to ignore a court order carefully selected the moment when they would do so. They chose a situation that they could characterize as us against them, the Americans against the foreigners, the regular people against the criminals. They are deliberately associating the law itself with people, the deportees, who they expect to be unpopular. This is a tactic, and historically speaking a very familiar one. In this way they hope to get popular opinion on their side as they ignore a court order. But if they succeed in making an exception once, it becomes the rule.

3. You do not know who was on those two planes to El Salvador. The individuals who arranged the deportation claim that the deportees were "foreign alien terrorists," but we have no way of knowing whether this is true. They also claim that they were “monsters,” which is not true. We do not know the names of the human beings who were deported. We cannot therefore know whether they were foreigners or American citizens. As to whether they were terrorists: they were not convicted of any crimes, and so it is hard to know whether or how this would be true. There is no doubt that their rights were violated. But your rights have been violated as well. If you do not know the details about operations that forcibly remove human beings from the territory of the United States, you do not have a responsive government. And you are therefore at risk.

4. Immigration and emigration are matters of legislation, the responsibility for which is delegated by the Constitution to Congress. In organizing a deportation outside the bounds of any particular law, and indeed outside the bounds of law in general, the executive is not only challenging Congress but disputing its purpose. The deportation action, in other words, is a direct blow not only to the judiciary but to the legislative branch of the federal government. It is an assertion of total executive authority that has no basis in law or tradition.

5. The individuals involved are declaring their power to define reality, independently not only of judicial but of all verification. There is no basis for this deportation beyond speech acts and keyboard acts. The words ("foreign alien terrorists," "monsters") are doing the work. There are no procedures between the movement of mouths and the movement of bodies. If members of the executive branch are allowed to issue truth claims that have the consequence that human beings leave the United States, we are in a dictatorship. If we accept that the executive branch can simply deport anyone they call a "foreign alien terrorist," then none of us has any rights.

6. The language that is being used has a specific resonance, which, historically, has been used to change regime type. It is important that the rights of human beings were violated. It is important that the rule of law was ignored. It is important that the executive is trying to define reality. But beyond even the issues of right and wrong and reality and unreality is the issue of language and behavior. We must consider just how the words are selected and what they are meant to do to us. "Foreign" means that they are not us. "Alien" means that we should hate them. "Terrorist" means that we should hate them enough to allow a state of exception, a suspension of normal practices, a change of regime. There is a long history of this, all around the world, including Hitler in 1933 and Stalin in 1934.

7. In an Orwellian reversal, defenders of the law are being associated with crime. The whole point of the rule of law is that everyone has a certain human dignity, which requires that they get their day in court, consistent with certain procedures. We do not know who is a criminal and who is not without these acknowledgements and these processes. The executive is claiming that it can simply name people "criminals" or “terrorists” or "monsters"-- and then contend that the defenders of law associates of criminals or monsters. In this way, the individuals who are carrying out this dictatorial action smear those who defend the Constitution by associating them with crimes, and of course with the most corporeal and unpleasant crimes. This is a logic entirely foreign to freedom, and destructive of it.

8. The smear campaign extends to political opponents. The executive branch is claiming that the people they call "terrorists" were in the United States thanks to the deliberate actions of the Biden administration, Democrats, and so on. "These are the monsters," says the chief executive, "sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats. How dare they!" Again, we do not know whether the deportees have committed any crimes, or indeed who they are. We are meant to accept the mouth and keyboard movements of individuals associated with the federal government as generative of dispositive truth on this matter. Pushing the blame for the existence of "foreign alien terrorists" onto political opponents is meant to delegitimate them, and to undermine their place in the political order. It is a strike, in other words, against democracy and basic political freedom.

9. Anyone can be dehumanized, portrayed as a "monster," and the dehumanization proceeds from the humiliation of the body. If you took one of these deportees, gave him a certain haircut, and put him in a suit, he would look like a cabinet member. If you take a cabinet member, shave off his hair, put him in a prison jumpsuit, chain his hands, and then put him between two masked men who frogwalk him to a deportation plane, he would like like a criminal. The photos and videos of humans beings to whom this is done are dehumanizing, and deliberately so. We are meant to conclude from the images that these men must be "monsters" or "foreign alien terrorists." The only thing we should be concluding is that individuals associated with the foreign government are behaving in a way that is totally inconsistent with liberty under law.

10. This deportation was planned as a political spectacle. The deportees were carefully chosen, as was the language used to describe them. The messaging was obviously coordinated in advance. And the entire humiliating procedure was carried out before cameras that were already in place. The videos that are being distributed are not some assemblage of footage caught haphazardly by cell phones. They are the result of fixed cameras, set in place in advance, with camera operators awaiting the action. The result is propaganda film worthy of the 1930s, in which the Leader determines what is true and what is false and who is human and who is not ("monsters") through a procedure of charismatic violence. If you watch these films, please consider that they are meant to draw you in to a politics of us and them, to a world of lying and hatred beyond law, to a new regime that can come to replace our republic -- but only with your assent.

[dragonagecompanions]

hello, this is my first request :) unsure if your still taking requests but I was wondering how the companions (maybe romanced maybe not) would react to finding out the Inquisitor has a dead kid? I think the only way the party would find out is in the fade via the fear demon, and then maybe the advisors find out on their own ┐⁠(⁠ ⁠∵⁠ ⁠)⁠┌

idk but I would be truly honored to see you answer this request, and even if not than thank you for reading over it <33

- 🍡

WARNINGS For CHILD LOSS YOI HAVE BEEN WARNED

Cassandra: When the fear demon, gleeful in it’s telling of their leader’s loss, reveals the truth the Seeker is…well, there are no words. Forcibly she is reminded of how they swayed, pale and weeping, when she had said there were no other survivors. Guilt churns low and deep at her own words, a year and more gone now, throwing that fact in their face as accusation. Throwing such a loss in their face and then demanding answers.

Throwing a calling at their feet and demanding leadership, never knowing what a loss they struggled through.

She fights all the harder for them, as if every enemy batted away from them is attempted absolution. Cassandra Pentaghast thought she understood grief in all its facets, but what does the loss of older brother and parents- expected losses if come too soon- stand before the loss of a child? Maker, how do they still breathe through it?

When they are free of the fade, she approaches only to offer apology. If they wish to speak of their loss she will listen, but only then. She has forced enough from them.

Varric: Shit. Just…shit. Here he is, going on for months about how this story is bad for heroes and how the Inquisitor is the main character and blathering on, and never saw it. Never saw the aching grief, because it was never shown. The only example he has, or is at least intimately familiar with, is Leandra Hawk and his own mother.

And as the Inquisitor had never fallen into drink or taken to blaming whoever was closest to them for things outside of anyone’s control there had been no sign for Varric to catch on to. And it makes him feel…almost dirty. Stained with his own intentions, blithely going on while their leader had lost their kid.

He doesn’t bring it up to them, doesn’t know how, but Skyhold’s resident author is absolutely the own who tells Josephine as soon as they tumble out of the fade. That raven missive is a short and brutal telling, far from his normal goings on, and his guilt is manifold in it.

Solas: The Dread Wolf is not so unattached from the world as to not consider the losses suffered at the conclave, but for the most part -when he did turn his mind to them- they were mostly academic. A balance of power, and the loss of so many leaders among both chantry and mages a destabilizing force for his future efforts. Numbers laid cooly on a chart, beads on an abacus. The fortunes of war laid bare.

But more than one parent lost a child in that terrible moment, and siblings mourned. Children bereft, friends torn asunder, lovers left to weep alone for their loves. Listening to the fear demon enumerate the inquisitor’s loss magnifies the enormity of what happened, and though he will undoubtedly be the source of much worse for a moment the Dread Wolf cannot breathe.

It passes, of course, and when they leave the fade the rift mage dies his best not to carry those emotions out with him. This world is not to blame for his actions, for the destruction of his world, but he must restore it and so they must bear the cost. It is not fair to them, and it will be long months until he can be east about his plans.

In the interim, he dares to approach the inquisitor only once about their loss. He is there as a listening ear in the silence of his rotunda if they wish to speak of their sorrow. Or if they wish only a silent companion, he will direct the kindest spirits he can find to guard their dreams and remain at their side as long as he can.

Blackwall: Maker forbid. For a moment Skyhold’s would be warden is swamped by the images of Callier’s children, dead under tiny shrouds beside the ruined carriage at his command. Too many children fall victim to the machinations of their elders and with none to protect them from the fall out, but for all that most of Blackwall’s experience has been from the other side.

Being confronted with the parent who had lost a child, confronted with the knowledge that they had told none of them and had suffered under the burden alone was staggering. Damn it, they had all laid burdens at the Inquisitor’s feet and expected answers, demanded decisions and leadership in a word gone mad— and none had known what they had lost.

He doesn’t know what to say or how to act and instead channels everything into the fight to flee the fade. Rainier would be too much the coward to speak to their leader in the aftermath, but Blackwall- older and hopefully wiser from his own griefs- will offer quiet condolences and whatever aid he can. If they need to speak of it be will listen. And if not there is soft wood and chisel enough to grind out any feelings if that is what they need.

Vivienne: Children had never been in her destiny. As a mage, even one so elevated as to be all but free of the constraints of the circle, motherhood was forbidden to her. Any child of her womb would be sacrificed to the Chantry, given to a family deemed ‘more worthy’ to raise it.

And as a mistress, no matter how deeply the love between them bloomed, Bastian could never have given her such a blessing. He had children— an illegitimate child, and a mage child at that, would have been too great a weapon against him.

And so she had put it out of her mind, never allowed herself to consider or imagine what a son might look like, how a daughter might smile. To think of it would be a loss too great to contemplate—or so she had thought. Met with the active loss and overwhelming grief that their leader must feel, Madame de Fer is suddenly glad not to know how such a burden might rest on her soul.

Could she be so calm a leader as the Inquisitor, while bleeding out inside? Vivienne does not know, and that…well, terrifies her in a way little has. But she is not called iron for nothing, and so when all is calm again she will go the Herald and ask simply and plainly what she might do for them. If the answer is nothing she will abide by it. And if there is something that might in any way assuage their grief then she will ensure they have it.

Dorian: Well, that at least explains the Inquisitor’s uncharacteristically violent outburst, when Halward Pavus had made his way to Ferelden. Upon hearing the possible consequences of the blood magic ritual the Inquisitor had laid into the Magister, flaying with words when they could not use violence. Even the Pavus paterfamilias had seemed shaken by the diatribe, and Dorian had felt championed.

He is not so shallow as to feel betrayed by the knowledge of what terrible grief must have driven such an impassioned defamation of character, but can instead only ache for his friend’s loss. They must have been a wonderful parent, and in a quiet time later will gather his courage to tell them so.

Sera: It doesn’t really register in the moment, so great is her own fear of the Fade and it’s denizens, but later it will simply break the Red Jenny’s heart. Their leader lost a true little one, and still managed to bring themselves to protect the rest of the little people no matter their age.

Like Blackwall she will either offer distraction or uncharacteristic silence in comfort, baked goods an offering that feels too…personal for such a gaping loss. But her admiration for them grows exponentially.

The Iron Bull: Public, corporate grief is rare among the Qun. Not forbidden, exactly, but when everyone is given a role it also implies that every person is inherently replaceable in that role. As Koslun said, the tide rises and falls and things must work forward toward peace.

But the death of a child is different. Whether disease or violence or simple accident, losing an imereki is a tragedy. The Tamassran mourns, the others in their care mourn, and all those in the sphere of the lost one are permitted some little allowance for the loss. Things cannot grind to a halt- this is why parents are separated from children, to ensure the deep emotional bonds that are anathema to the Qun- but there is not simple acceptance without acknowledgement of the loss.

Not even that was given to the Inquisitor. It’s east to see the shock of the others even through his own fear, and the knowledge infuriates Bull enough to get him through the Fade. Their leader lost a child, and no one was there for them. Instead piled on the whole world and its imminent loss on their shoulders. It’s disgraceful.

Later, when Adamant is pacified and they return to Skyhold, he will pull them aside. It will be painful and it will be slow, and whether they need alcohol or pain or even the clinical breakdown that bondage and sex can only give-with their explicit consent- he will help them bleed the pain and begin the grieving process.

Cole: The pain was too big for him to help, the threads caught up in pain and joy and guilt and anger and terrible despair. He didn’t even have the words to describe it to others, and so had kept silent.

If they need him later he will help, but this loss is too big for a spirit unsure of how to act.

Cullen: Maker’s breathe. How could they…why did they not…Damn it, how could he not realize?! He had all but thrust the entire inquisition on a parent who had been robbed the chance to even bury their child, let alone mourn them.

Varric’s report rocks him to the core, and the commander in truth does not know what to do. If the rest of the inner circle has it well in hand he will simply work to make sure their leader has less in their plate. If they wish to discuss it with them, he is there and if not…

He hardly has the words anyway.

Josephine: She weeps over the missive, when it arrives. Their inquisitor has been hiding the worst of loses from them, putting on such a brave face to do so much. Like Cullen she works to make sure they have less to do when they return, but does pull them aside briefly to awkwardly hug them and ask if they want a memorial somewhere private in Skyhold.

Leliana: She knew. She knew from only a few days after, when her spies brought her everything there was on the Herald. And even The Nightingales Heart could ache for such a loss, but Leliana took her queues from the Herald and simply never discussed it. That does not change now— she will follow their lead.

Mod Fereldone

[perlen-gold]

A MelkorxMairon story

An Angbang fic!

inspired by saintstars

(link to AO3)

“Come.”

They call me Great Death, the Constrainer. Black Foe of the World, Master of Lies. They say I am merciless and proud, atrocious, barbarous, brutal and ruthless, abominable and terrible to behold, wicked and vicious. They are not wrong.

 “Come,” I whispered, my voice a phantom of its earth-cracking thunder tracing across his heated stone-skin.

I imagined him adorned lightly. Onyx-black, ink-soft lace balming his skin. A hue of jewelry, the rings he so liked, fragrant with flawless gold.

Lose, the scarlet-crimsoned whisper of his hair, embroidering the tickling shadows about him, breathing with a faint, warm glow, lose, unbound, free.

Instead, iron and steel. Rather, I felt it was the blunt taste of metal humming beneath my fingertips., winter-gray and silver-cool.

Never had I hissed at the melody of cutting cold as he, freezing snow and whirling ice. Now, as I envisioned him in soft-light fiber and warmth-glowing fabric, I nearly did.

Instead, I touched upon the spiral shell of Mairon’s armor, inch by inch.

Enough work.

I almost say it.

I feel Mairon tense the moment the words soar upon my tongue. I think his bruises, sprains and scars, so carefully withheld beneath his armor, coil.

My own injuries are throbbing as the mountain’s heart pulsates.

On the tip of my tongue I finger two different syllables, then. I taste them, long and probing. They are not familiar between my lips.

Instead, I murmur, “Come.”

Then try, taste, whisper.

“Please.”

As I stroke the sounds, I feel the remnant scars of my wounds squirm and stretch.

Enough work. I had said those words before quite differently.

He had been absorbed in a long list of parchment, winding and dry, just like now, after an endless day of meetings and councils.

War is an ever-hungry machine that constantly must be fed and patted and attended to. Not I but Mairon is its master who keeps it ever roiling and toiling. Its needs are both endless and unending.

There are weaponries to be forged, armor to be hammered. Hosts of Orcs to be commanded, captains to be instructed, recruits to be trained.

Expedient though they are, Orcs make poor comrades in arms. Constantly squabbling, perpetually fighting each other for position or food or simply the lack of distraction or wit, they are ill-made for cooperation and it takes more than a whip to tame them. Fear might control them but it takes more to make them efficient, Mairon often says.

And efficient he makes them. Orcs and goblins have a natural aptitude for battle, their fighting is simple and crude nonetheless, Mairon often also sighed, and the imbeciles end up killing each other before they even learn how to swing an axe in an accurate arch.

Then there is food and rations to be retrieved and organized, routs to scout and news from spies and traitors to be collected and molded into benefits and advantages.

I knew all of this because Mairon had told me, complained to me of these things more often than I wished and, what was worse by far, even made me listen till I was fed up and bored beyond even my unyielding power. Oh, there was relentlessness in him that heeded neither my ostentatious disregard nor my sour mood whenever he pestered me with these trifles. I might have escaped, oh yes, but he would serve me thrice the tales of battlements in need of improvement, insufficient food resources and incompetent Orc armorers designing poorer battering rams when I hungered for the naked sheen of his skin.

I have always thought Mairon mercilessly vindictive beyond even my desire for revenge.

“Your army, my lord, needs attention”, he would say lilting as skittering pearls and with a tone so quizzacious I might seize his throat eventually which would make him laugh and brush the sweetest gasp against my ear.

Once, I sank my teeth into the tender rose-petal softness of his beautiful neck and he moaned softly into me while he enumerated all the little repairs needed for some dispensable outpost in such a shuddering, smile-curving little voice that I, smeared with his gold-liquor blood, considered biting off his tongue. It made his heedless smile curve even wickeder.

There had been always only one way to silence the brazen little creature.

And for a while he writhed and arched beneath me, trembling, mouth and body sealed, only to continue his speech in the fire-gilded afterglow of our bodies, his throbbing flame-heat and shivering legs still around me.

Oh, even my fell cruelty, which I thrust into him, could not match his own.

This time, however, it was different.

I say war is a machine but, in truth, Mairon is the machine that is war.

Like the rings he so loves for their boundless, immaculate symmetry, none of his designs or schemes knew either end or beginning and it was these endless, tedious things in his fingers around which they always snaked like wild adders eternally, perpetually.

And Mairon is just as endless and snaking.

There is no detail to escape his lidless mind’s gaze. No mosaic stone unset, no jigsaw piece uncontemplated. Every piece my and his spies gathered glides between his sizzling fingertips.

Not a single piece of floating ash is unknown to him. No trifling squabble crumbled under his high boots unseen, no minor sentiment of unrest skittered across his path without his notice. He weaves a single-minded Orc’s gripe into his hair when he rises in the crisp morning, he holds an outpost’s trivial failings in his grasp when setting the chisel in his forge and he slides a letter intercepted over his skin when he undresses in the evening.

I call him my little flame, and it delights his curving dagger smile, for he is neither little nor single-tipped flame.

My troops, on the other hand, my Balrocs and generals and captains and Orcs call him the lidless, sleepless, all-seeing eye. I might be the god they serve but one single gush of wind loosening a lone scarlet-gilded, fire-whipping strand of Mairon’s hair sends them scudding and scurrying as ants.

I did not, or barely, notice at first.

So consumed was I that it was only an irksomeness in the beginning before it grated at my attention, more and more.

Always there had been a piece of something on Mairon’s mind, a roll of parchment in his long-fingered hands, a whispered request in his well-shaped ear, another meticulously drawn map, another scouting route worked out, another keen-eyes report at his sharp-angled elbow.

It was as though catching an industrious spider weaving double the nets or spotting the arctic fox growing twice the pristine fur.

And yet.

I say I heeded not the change, at first. Yet, in truth there was something vexing me outside the range of my vision, like a buzzing fly my dragons cannot see yet not quite bait either.

When then, at long last, it woke me out of my razor-riven raptness, it was like a silent shiver running through the earth meeting a mountain, a cresting wave crashing against a sheer cliff of rock after building for weeks.

Ah, I had not known it had been there.

Suddenly, however, my ire raged clear and raw.

“Enough!”

Ah.

My skin prickling as the stagnant air before a storm.

My voice, having sundered heavens and cleaved continents, a lightning bolt lit.

Plans and maps, plans and schemes, schemes, schemes and plans! I had been surge-swelling with them like a river breaking its bed.

My captains and leaders, Orcs and goblins, their heads snapped around to my seat as if I had broken their necks. However, I was no longer seated. Why had I come to this counsel at all, dark creatures in my service startling and groveling? Mairon had stopped dragging me there long ago and I rarely obliged him when he did.

I did not take notice whether it was letter parchment or outline scroll I tore from Mairon’s hands. A shattering on the onyx black floor, I felt myself towering, looming with my mounting rage.

In the breathing space between us, him and me, my body was sparking at the edges.

Never had I, quite unlike Mairon, endeavored to control my wrath, unlike him who could mask the brightest blaze of anger like ash covers the still-glowing embers within.

Instead, I felt my shape rise and my all-seeing vision expand, fraying at the edges, burn with it.

Whatever it was that I tore from him crumbled into smoke and electric sparks under my hands.

And still he would not look at me.

Ah, there it was, the hilt and pike of my sudden temper which I was fingering like my warhammer, Mairon’s steady gaze still, still, still fastened on what he had been reading an instant before, parchment and scrolls and lesser creatures and, oh, everything without even once in weeks upon weeks and months uncounted looking up at me who was his master.

The fortress around us, the raven-black stone floor beneath our feet shivered with a ringing tremor.

I thought ages to pass but, in sooth, Mairon stared at the quivering remnants of what I had just ripped from his hands much longer while my rage sloshed and billowed into vastness.

Then, his gaze flared into mine.

It was as though a ray of morning light hit me, clear and spear-piercing.

His gold-crystal eyes were aflame as a crisp winter’s dawn. This was the only warning I was given.

I saw his transformation only in shreds ere Mairon lashed himself upon me, flame-gleaming fur and blaze-white teeth.

My wrath was sharp enough to wrap us both and Mairon’s teeth even sharper.

Fire cannot consume the mountain but it can sweep across, melt, mold and scar it beyond recognition.

Ah, and scar each other we did in our conflagration.

If any dark creature, Balrog or maggot Orc had been present, they must have fled for no insect lingers to watch whether slashing rains or whipping winds may triumph over the storm.

Had we been lesser beings, we might have easily slain each other.

Instead, the stone-blind walls around us gasped as we fought and parts of Utumno well-nigh collapsed under our rage.

When at last we both sank against opposite walls, the torches shook under our breaths as grass before the scythe.

My anger, however, fled as swiftly as it had come and his surely must have to.

The air tasted of stale smoke and departing thunder.

As we huffed, I expected him to limp toward me. Even lean against me, his inferno fury and my cosmic wilderness abated and washed away by the great tide of our fighting, leaving as brine-raw and satisfied enough to huff and touch each other’s wounds with well-practiced fingers softly and tender lips. I would have licked his wounds, and more, and his lips could have kissed mine till we shook from a different kind of fury and another quake came upon Utumno ere an unsimilar fatigue settled between us, and then we would have finally tended to each other’s injuries in a more lasting way.

What rags of his fine-woven garment had withstood his skin-changing were torn to shreds by me and fell from his bare skin.

Yes. I expected his sly smile dripping mockingly from his slyer lips.

Though rare, it had no been our first fight, after all.

As our breaths pooled in the empty counsel room, I saw Mairon rise to his staggering legs.

Instead, however, he left as abruptly as he had flared, limping.

He strode from my hall, naked, gold licking beneath the glowing soles of his feet, the hue of fire-lit blood in his whipping hair and gleaming skin the only cover to veil his lithe shape.

A single Orc stumbled from behind an onyx-carved column.

It stared.

And stared.

And stared.

And stared.

“Please”

The sounds touch queerly between my lips.

I feel my eyes, one of crystal-frozen ice and one of molten-moving magma, close against the silence of his shadow-hewn chambers.

There has been neither council nor meeting.

We have not talked since.

Mairon moves not.

My vision is obscured by the dusk of my own eyes.

The dancing darkness within me notwithstanding, I know his eyes, perusing the endless lines on the rustling scroll in his slender hands tenaciously, to have stopped, poised, on one spot alone.

Slowly.

Slowly my scarred hands begin to move.

Gradually, I touch upon what has been shaped unerringly by him. Layer by layer. Piece by piece.

I remember not undoing his or any other armor ever before. Haltingly, my fingers find few gold clasps sleeping beneath.

Iron plate and greave slither ceaselessly against each other, harness and chestplate.

I have never tasted, brushed my tongue against this creation among so many of his, immaculate in its deadly beauty as everything he invents.

But what my scorched hands find is not beauty alone.

Inch for inch, I let my scabbed finger pads slide over smooth plates of metal, one after another. Perfectly round circles of twisting iron, dark as night, black as a midnight’s dream. Slender-long gauntlets gliding sleekly against each other without the slightest hitch.

Polished, my charred fingertips find the glossy plates against his stomach.  

Not a nook or cranny on the metal stretching across the small of his back; neither scratch nor scrape beneath my quiet palms straying along his waist, down his iron-veiled flanks.

No plate hugging his legs, no piece of armor whispering, pressing against his thighs ever requires a drop of slick oil. I can feel it underneath my tingling hands. Not one part of metal will ever rub against its brothers nor bear mark or squeak. Like snake scales rising against each other’s fall.

As I wander him, a thought strikes me like a smiling fish in the presence of the diving king-fisher. That even Aulë himself would envy this. It is coiling perfection lured to making. It is usage spelled into fascination.

Another thought strikes my pricking skin, then. It is not what he has worn before.

My realization is another spell woven by the king fisher. When has Mairon created this new armor? It must have taken him an age of life to master it into being.

When did he do it? Where had I been?

But, of course, no beauty for Mairon without purpose.

I think, even Aulë will envy this.

It may be a day, it may be an age eternal till I draw his body against mine. Bare skin to skin.

Under my hands his armor is coming undone like a mountain peak, year by year, age by age.

I allow my gaze to fall on the graceful line of his neck then, note the lustrous strand of fire-lit hair that coiles around it. The smooth heel of his hand, aligned to the scroll, the tips hidden behind the faded yellow. The sharp angle of his left elbow, the serpentine line of his muscled back. The svelte shape of his ear, the cutting line of his jaw. All this, I merely graze with my gaze, light as raven feathers before I let the knuckles on the back of my fingers follow my eyes’ hushed trail.

Beneath, slashes and lacerations like gouges half-knitted, purple bruises and blood-cusped strains, half-healed.

Wroth and savage had been my violence, vicious and cruel his own.

I expect his skin, his body to be fire scolding, a blaze like a hurricane. My touch, however, evanesces upon contact with it as though one wraith reaches for another.

Somethings tugs at me then, strange-shaped and eternally coined.

He does not stir, does not move.

Still, his fire has not blazed my scarred skin. And still, Mairon’s voice of melting steel has not spoken to me.

I might pry into his mind, of course. What futility. Mairon has never given anything he did not offer first.

Last is his hair, bound tightly, wrought infinitely to the lovely shape of his neck. It is not in my nature to hesitate, not once, and like softest silk each flaming strand loosens between my stroking, combing fingers.

At last, my time is come to speak.

My eyes still veiled by the endless darkness of my own lashes, against the warm fall of his hair I lay my lips.

“Precious.” Murmurs. “It is enough.” Whispers, straight and firm. “Even you have an end to your flames. Even you must rest.” Murmers and whispers from my lips.

My darkness, a fortress. ”Even you must not be consumed by one thing alone in this world.”

Mairon stirs not. And yet, I feel it in the jolt of rigid muscles against my naked skin like a bow-string springing back.

I catch the thought he aims albeit he aims it not at me. It is the first time I hear his golden voice ever since I returned.

It is like laughter, only viler.

You are one to talk.

Around his naked waist and chest my hold tightens. In anticipation, perhaps, of another attack, wondering idly what other beastly form he might use, I look forward to whatever claws and teeth he will sink into me this time with a kind of grim satisfaction.

I palpate that almost-thought  of his idly, turn it around in my silent-grown mind seeking out its facets and angles.

His skin is cool silver light upon the parched flesh of my fingers despite the honed flames it shields within.

No beauty for Mairon without a purpose.

There.

Ah.

Here, at last. A morsel of truth.

Slowly. Gradually, I begin to comprehend. And yet, still, I understand not.

Long is the silence stretching between us, infinite as the darkened night sky, dull as the lessened moon shredded in wispy mists.

Slowly. Slowly, my arms’ force increases. Slowly, the hold of my embrace tightens.

Slowly, I force Mairon’s body around. Force him to turn. This is what I do and this is what I try.

Ah. Many are the minds and brains fooled by his appearance. He might shroud his viper shape in a robe of splendid cloth but I have seen the bare stretch of his arms and shoulders bent over the forge, his back straight and straining. The ones he seduces think him fair and beautiful alone, yet I have heard Orc sword masters threaten their fosterlings with Lord Mairon’s lust for challenge. His legs apart, sinews and muscles aglow in the sheen of the furnace. He would not even have to lift the hilt of his sword. Among the recruits, his physical strength is a legend told at night fire watches.

And with all his strength he is fighting me now, ah, what resistance against the strain of my arms around his back and sides, against my will to bind him to me, force his body around to face mine.

Vaguely, I am wondering once more if he will transform again, now, in this instant, to raise the amount of bristle and teeth and claws he can punish me with or if he will simply sink and dig his gilded nails and incandescent teeth into my flesh as he is.

Neither of us is speaking.

But this. This is more a fight of wills rather than a battle of physical force, and this once, this once in our eons of time, my will prevails over his.

I can feel him straining as his ember-honed cheek comes to rest upon my beating pulse. It is like holding a candle to my chest.

I feel the touch of his breath as warm as sun-lit honey on my chest, flecks of gold in it.

All at once, I am unable to remember. This. The wisp of his fiery hair. The width of his smooth brow. The length of his body, flush against mine. Unable. Unable to remember the last time I felt his gold-leaping warmth seep into my storm-cloud skin.

My injuries matter not. Their circling pain is forgotten like morning mists fracturing at the break of dawn. We move not and do not speak. However, this once, I will not let him escape.

Puzzled yet I am. Pondering. Wondering. I, Melkor, confess I fail to grasp his ire fully.

Would he envy another craftsman thus? Ah, I think not. Too proud Mairon is of his own prowess, too confident, too brilliant in his own skill.

Would he resent thus what he deems utter folly? He has stood and endured far greater whims of mine.

I know the fight to have seeped out of him, now. There is only the pooling of warmth, small huffs against my skin.

I am closing my eyes to darkness and stillness again.

Long is the silence stretching between us.

“Do with them as you please.”

At first, Mairon does not move.

Then, against the total blackness of my eyelids, I can see him stir. Rise. His head tilting back. His fire-honed gaze, at last, upon my face.

My hand opens for him.

They cannot burn me any more than their luminous light already has.

As I open my eyes, despite myself, my gaze falls upon them as splashing water from the sky.

Even before my eyelids lift, I know their lovely glow shedding light over my maimed, scorch-darkened hands. I know not whether Mairon’s eyes follow the lust of my eyes, become drawn and ensnared as mine. If not, I can neither examine it nor him.

Even now I cannot part my gaze with them.

If the moon had been carved into thirds in the bejeweled night, none of it, though born from that same radiance, would have glistered like any of them!

One sun-lit and citrine-hued, bright as sun-filled water. Vivid as the very heart of the earth the other, a thousand rubies aflame. The last, a brilliant, ever-shining, ever-pure, dazzling white.

Even now I am mesmerized at the luminosity of the first light, percolated through the incinerated cage of my fingeres.

Even Mairon’s light of fire-drunk gold almost dulled beside them. Almost.

This, maybe, is what makes me realize the flash of Mairon’s hand toward the blinding light.

All of a sudden, through the luminous splendor and breath-taking, sky-rendering incandescence, fear jolts through me like a thunder-spear.

No, I am no stranger to pain, not even to dread, the loathsome spider be cursed and all her descendants, but never has terror such as this seized at my hammering pulse.

The yell, the roar aimed at Mairon ignites in my throat as volcanoes erupt with spilling fire.

Almost as soon as it builds, I huff out a breath of absurd emptiness. Mairon’s supple fingers have gripped the resplendent silmarils long before my anger rushes in. Beneath his skin, like strands of his own hair, silk shimmers between him and the precious jewels.

Of course.

My chest almost tears with swallowed, frayed laughter.

Whatever rules Mairon’s black-sooted heart, greed is not a part of it.

His fiery gaze is thrumming into mine, the long-lashed gold of his eyes never once wavering to the wonders aglow between our hands. I imagine his wrist flick and a burst of radiant light clattering across the onyx floor.

Mairon’s voice is quenched iron, spitting with cooling water, “I shall cast them into the darkest sea, the deepest pit and highest sky.”

The fury of this world grows between us, gathers in the thunder lightning and earth-shading clouds, a fell music of drums and clangs.

It is arduous at first, cruelly laborious, to wretch my craving stare from them.

I can see Mairon’s eyes follow the length of my glance, the direction of my lusting breath.

They are magnificent in their effulgence, entrancing in their beauty, enrapturing in their unfathomable luster.

Long has the silence stretched between us.

Silently, I speak.

So you shall.

Mairon does blink. Now. Once. An eternity. Twice.

Finally, ultimately, I can see his gold-glittering eyes flicker toward the luminescent jewels in his hand, his gaze falling, cast down.

“I shall forge a crown fit for them and you, my lord,” he murmurs, lowly.

No love for the sea, the earth, the skies?, I think

“They are to be set in a crown by my hands already.” I speak aloud.

There it is, the sneer.

“It is like calling the elven child hoarding heaps of sand an architect.” Mairon returns, slyly as a minx.

Insolent creature, I think, letting the words flutter soft as lashes against his smile-honing lips.

“Not tonight,” I hum, drawing him closer still, pressing against his curving lips, “Tonight you are mine.”

I think, tonight I am yours alone.

Mairon’s limber shoulders rise as he lifts his hands to lay them along my face, his willowy fingers astir, roaming through my hair where there are caught the colors of the night and the light of fading stars. The light in his eyes is enough to blind and scar the whole world and everything that comes after.

They say I am merciless and proud, cruel and pitiless, tyrannical and spiteful, enviously, greedily, recklessly selfish beyond imagination. They call me Master of Lies, Great Death, Black Foe of the World. I feel giddy with delight when I think of it. It is all true.

Let them not see what else I am.

He, whom they call Sauron, whispers into my ear, his arched fingers woven into my shadow hair, his graceful limbs, the length of his pressing body pouring sun-lit heat into mine of melting ice and frozen stone, the smiling cheek of his lips thawing against my ear.

“You have yet to say ‘please’, my lord.”

[yamayuandadu]

The answer to this is probably clear, but I'm baffled on where the Teen Wolf series got its lore on Kitsune from and why the fan communities think that they are in Japanese myths? One time I tried finding the sources for these "13 types" of Kitsune from the show, but nothing really aside from like one or two of them was out there in English atleast.

Is there any specific reason behind the increased amount of questions which appear to depend on random works of fiction I don't even post about as the sole point of reference? Did someone share my blog in some non-standard location? I know nothing about Teen Wolf but the "13 kitsune types" lists you can find in such illustrious sources as AI generated tiktoks and yt shorts and whatever this is:

are made up. Basically worthless as a source. Attempting to track their origin down lead me to a neocities version of an rp resource for the mmo Furcadia compiled between 2003 and 2007 which in turn depended on this archived page of highly dubious quality ("To be honest, I have no idea how many provinces are in Japan") going back to 1997, where the idea of 13 types was, as far as I can tell, invented based on, to put it diplomatically, rather creative exegesis of the 1961 book Kitsune. Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance & Humor by Kiyoshi Nozaki, which is largely just a compilation of quotes from classical literature (which at the time would be something relatively novel in English) - free of 13 types of elemental foxes. Note that while the article mentions "researchers" the only sources other than this single book listed are random people active on the same websites as the author in the 1990s, as seen on the archived list of credits here. To date I haven't seen these lists of "kitsune types" actually being posted in Japanese, they exclusively propagate on the English-speaking web and on particularly low quality sites at that; they are absent from both credible and less than credible sources over on the Japanese side, as far as I am aware. A number of medieval sources contain an enumeration of three types of foxes - heavenly, earthly, and human, following the heaven-earth-man philosophical principle imported from China, but what that exactly entailed varies between said sources (Bernard Faure, Protectors and Predators, p. 138-139). Needless to say, this is completely unrelated to the discussed tomfoolery. Jp wikipedia claims there are a few Edo period attempts at arranging various terms for foxes like nogitsune, tenko etc. into some sort of hierarchy but I didn't independently verify that. In any case, nobody ever believed foxes have offbrand Pokemon types which determine their power level. The list of alleged fox types is the result of a game of telephone.