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iloveitwhen · 4 years

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Detective/Rival au

Ok so this is based off of this post by @mysnis but like, detectives. Also robin and ladybug are their codenames. Daminette.

first fic hope the few people who read this enjoy(:

“Al Ghul!”

The police officers and detectives in the breakroom all turned to see Detective Dupain-Cheng in her iconic deep red biker jacket storm in with a file clutched in her hand.

Although she was relatively new she quickly proved herself and was an exceptional detective and surprisingly very kind. The only one that didn’t get along with her was, well, the one that got along with no one, save Jon, the beat cop. Detective Damian al Ghul was definitely not well liked, it was no secret he was easily the best but his title was being threatened by none other than Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the current furious french woman glaring at the man sitting at the table. She had gained the respect of the whole precinct and everyone was well aware of the chaos her anger could bring, so the only logical thing everyone could do was take a step back and clear a path to the one she was staring daggers at.

The room had gone silent upon her arrival and everyone stared between al Ghul and Dupain-Cheng.

“Yes?” he replied from the table, not bothering to look up from his book.

“I’m going to kill you.”

He merely hummed as if considering a business proposal which only furthered her anger.

“So. What’d you do this time?” Rosa, this isn’t a brooklyn 99 au i just need her in here cause i love her back off the only one other than Damian not afraid of the sunshine-turned-hellspawn, asked. She reveled in the chaos those two brought.

Damian stood up and placed his book down, only for the purpose to look down at Marinette he refused to be looked down on. With a malicious glint in his eye and a smirk he said, “I didn’t do anything-”

“Yeah right, you, di-argghh-”

The man scoffs. “Still won’t curse? Pity.”

“Shut up!” she snapped back. “I wouldn’t have the need to if you MINDED YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”

This had Jon raise an eyebrow, he did not take angering sweet Marinette lightly, it was dangerous business to do so.

“Damian,” he began at the man who still wouldn’t tear his eyes away from the woman in front of him, “what did you do?”

“He invaded my stakeout, got what he came for then left so I had to deal with the FBI and post operations. If you had the decency of a normal human being then you could have at LEAST helped me! But no! You got in my way then left it a bigger mess than when you came! And made me deal with the aftermath! And guess what Birdbrain? Now I have another month at least to tie up the loose ends because of your interference!” al Ghul didn’t step down, instead his smirk grew wider.

“Well if I hadn’t you would’ve missed your opportunity, they were about to initiate their plan and that would have been an even bigger headache for both of us. So,” he crossed his arms, “you're welcome.”

The only one to not take a step back from the red clad woman’s anger after that was Damian, which in hindsight was very foolish as he was the only one in danger. Her hand twitch, eager to wring his neck.

“Detective Dupain-Cheng,” the captain warned after stepping into the breakroom from all the commotion, “stand down.” She growled in response and stormed off while Damian’s smirk only grew.

Rosa only rolled her eyes and muttered, “wow, not even a single punch. Losers.”

---

Marinette sat at her desk with several people gathered around, laughing at something on her screen when Damian stormed into the precinct. No one took notice of him until he barked out a “HEY!” and everyone's laughter died out. Everyone’s smiles left their faces at the sight of Detective al Ghul, well, everyone except for Marinette who ignored him and started typing something else up on the computer. The group of eyes flickered between the two as Damian’s clear target was Marinette and he was practically burning holes in her head.

She merely glanced at him and said, “hey Damian,” as if nothing was wrong. The only tell giving her away was the devilish smirk growing on her face.

He stomped over to her and spun the chair to face him, placing his hands on the armrests and leaning inches away from her face, but she didn’t budge.

“Don’t "hey Damian" me,” he seethed.

“Ok, bye Damian.”

A deep growl escaped him. “Stay out of my way, Bug. You might get squashed.” With that he stood up, looked down at her with a snarl, and left, leaving his threat hanging in the air.

As he left Marinette caught everyone’s attention again with a “hey look what I made everyone,” and clicked on something she had pulled up during the man’s entrance. The group once again howled in laughter at the compilation video labeled: “Our “Greatest” Detective Being a Brat for 5 Minutes”

---

Marinette and Damian were currently sparring in the underground workout room, it was mostly empty except for Detective Diaz who liked to follow them around and add to their chaos or just watch for her amusement and the thorn in her side, Jon Kent, the beat cop.

“Damn,” Jon commented, munching on popcorn he brought from the breakroom. They had been going for ten minutes trading hits and kicks without a breather.

“Yeah. They’re crazy.” Rosa cackled, throwing popcorn in her mouth.

Marinette’s eyes shone with determination as well as Damian’s, both refusing to back down and admit defeat but they were also running out of stamina. They had taken their work clothes off and wore simple shorts and tank tops, running shorts for Marinette and basketball shorts for Damian. They had fought each other so much that they knew each other too well, each unable to surprise the other.

“When do you think they’ll just go for it and have like, a really aggressive make-out sesh?” Jon asked, glancing at the woman beside him before turning his eyes back on the fight. Rosa grinned maliciously, eyes sparkling at the thought of the chaos that could bring.

“Two weeks. Tops.”

“Nah, no more than five days.”

The captain appeared next to Jon who flinched and flung the half the bowl of popcorn on himself and Diaz. “I think within the month but after two weeks, they have no idea what they’re feeling.”

Jon and Rosa looked at each other, then at their captain with growing grins.

“Deal.”

---

Marinette was fuming in her anger.

How? How did this happen? She asked herself, screaming in her mind since she wasn’t in her bed and couldn’t do it into her pillow. She unintentionally let out a growl and felt Damian al Ghul��s chuckle through his chest.

They had been compromised, Ladybug’s informant had been bugged, pun not intended and they weren’t aware until their informant arrived at the pickup and was immediately taken hostage, they were forced to hide in the rafters and there were more thugs than expected as they had come prepared for the two detectives.

Which led to Robin covering her under his stupid long cape in the rafters of the warehouse and waiting for her to come up with a plan as they hid in the shadows.

“See, this is why I bring this ‘dumb black cape’ with me.” Robin whispered in her ear to which she growled again in response. She hated when he was right about anything, especially about something so dumb. And it definitely wasn’t helping that she could his breath on her neck or his arm wrapped around her waist. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t think of a plan to escape.

She internally cursed herself for letting her thoughts carry away and focused solely on her breathing for a few moments then to the commotion below them.

---

“I am never working with him again.” Marinette complained to the captain, both her and Detective al Ghul had been brought into the Captain’s office to discuss their distracting relationship.

“Why not? You two are better together, your strengths weigh out the other’s weaknesses.”

“He’s a brat!”

Damian scoffed, “At least I’m not naive, you imbecile.”

“Detectives!” the Captain dragged his hand across his face in despair. “You two will get over your differences, one way or another, and do it quickly if you want to work another case.”

“WHAT?” they both shouted in unison.

“You will not work another case until you figure out how to be civil with each other.”

Immediately they both started yelling over each other at their captain, protesting the terrible idea and gesturing to each other as proof of the terrible idea.

“Enough!” He shouted over them and just as quickly as they started, they stopped and glared. “I know you two love your jobs and are unhealthy in your obsession with them so I can and will hold this over your head until you get over your differences. No cases. You are dismissed.”

The two detectives glared at their captain, no doubt thinking of petty ways to get back at him for doing this to them and they stormed out.

---

One week later, Jon lost the bet Detectives al Ghul and Dupain-Cheng were sitting in the captain's office again.

“How was your time off?”

“Fun.”

“Lier.”

“Shut up, Robin.”

The captain sighed. “So I see that you two are not civil.”

“What? No we are, right Damian?”

“... yes me and miss Dupain-Cheng get along rather well. We had a discussion earlier this week and have agreed to be civil with one another.”

“It’s just banter.” Marinette chuckled, waving the notion away.

The captain looked between the two, his two best detectives, one sat in stoic, perfect posture with an unreadable, emotionless face and the other was beaming at him with a blinding smile.

“Ok perfect. Here’s your next case,” he slid a thin file over to them, “I went over it already and you will have to begin with a stake-out to gather more information.” With that Damian’s ever present scowl deepened and Marinette’s smile became strained and her eye twitched.

That’s what they get for lying to me, thought the captain. Hopefully they won’t mess up this investigation.

As they left he heard Damian mutter “way to go imbecile,” to Marinette who growled back a “you started it,” before the door clicked shut behind them.

---

There was a knock on Damian’s door. He sighed in annoyance, he was stuck with Dupain-Cheng so the person on the other side of the door could only be her.

“What do you want?”

“I’m bored Damian, let’s spar.”

“No, go away.”

“Please?”

Ugh, stupid cute voi- what? No. No no no. Stupid annoying voice. “We sparred yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.”

“Well you won’t do anything else with me.” her muffled voice complained. It was true, he didn’t want to be in her presence because for some reason he enjoyed it because she was a nuisance.

“Fine!” he got off of his uncomfortable mat and swung the door open to find a hopeful expression on Marinette’s face and twinkle in her beautiful blue eyes. “What is it you want to do?”

---

This investigation was not fun nor was it enjoyable. They had a measly little refrigerator and constantly ordered take out to not be seen by the goons across the street. Marinette, however, snuck out in broad daylight to go grocery shopping because “it’s more obvious to go at night than during the day, besides, do you really want them to see a pretty girl in the middle of the night and kidnap me?” Damian had to agree with her and let her treat her childish needs while he stayed and kept watch. He was thinking about these things, rereading the same sentence of his book without grasping what it actually said when his partner burst open his door.

“DAMIAN!” Marinette glared at him from his most likely broken door with focused fury.

“What?” he asked without looking up from his book.

“What is wrong with you? I've tried so hard to be civil, to be friends with you, but no! You want to be a brat. You're not better than anyone and you’re a fool to think so!”

“Well too bad I guess.”

“Damian look at me.” he glanced up for a moment then back down to his book which only heightened Marinette’s anger. “How could you eat the ice cream from the bottom up just to trick me into thinking there was more! You piece of sh--monster! You monster! You are coming with me right now. I need to take my anger out on you, I want to punch you in the face so bad right now.”

“No, I'm good.”

Marinette smirked. “So you’d rather admit defeat now? Knowing you can’t beat an angry Marinette?”

“No, I know I can beat you, I don't need to test out my abilities.”

Marinette barked out a laugh. “You’ve never beaten angry Marinette and you know it,” she snapped.

Damian closed his book with a snap and replied “fine” before following her to the mat.

“You’re going down.”

“I beg to differ, Dupain-Cheng.”

They took opposite sides of the mat and took their stances. Circling one another Marinette sized up her opponent, she knew that he was a little more reckless and aggressive when he was angry and of course she wanted an excuse to pummel him so she needed to rile him up. She took a jab which he easily grabbed her wrist instead of swatting it away and pulled her to him. She ran at him gaining extra momentum and twisting her wrist to grab his, she jumped on top of him and the imbalance toppled them to the floor. With his right wrist trapped in her grip she got one good punch in his face before his left hand pulled her off him. She released his right wrist only to trap it again under her leg as she shot her left hand out and grabbed his other before falling to the mat, quickly maneuvering her legs to pin him. As he tried to wiggle out she tightened her grip till he relaxed and he tapped her cheek with his fingers in defeat. She let him go and they restarted.

Each time only lasting for a few minutes, every time Marinette won Damian’s anger rose and every time Damian won Marinette’s determination grew. Soon both were breathing hard and glaring at each other, circling the mat like two alphas in a battle for dominance.

Damian attacked, throwing a punch which she easily ducked under and tried to counter with an uppercut but he backed away only to attack again just as quickly. She dodged and weaved around his advances barely having time to think until she swatted one punch only to be little too slow to dodge his second punch. Pain struck her cheekbone and he faltered, not expecting to actually land a punch, even if it only skimmed her face. She took his surprise to her advantage and took a step back and kicked into his stomach, sending him to stumble backwards. Before he could recover she gave him a flurry of punches until he threw on of his own, forcing her to step back. As she did he quickly swiped his foot under her, catching one heel, forcing her off balance. Before she could save herself he was on her, pushing her back onto the mat with a heavy thump.

He straddled her with the weight of his body trapping her and his hands clamped around her wrists. She squirmed under his weight but she knew she was stuck so she gave up the struggle.

She glared up at him, both breathing heavily and completely exhausted, not that either would admit it of course.

“Looks like I pinned a bug.” he said to her, smirking, only inches away from her face

Marinette glared at him, pushing the thought out that he was so attractive with that smirk.

She couldn’t help her eyes flicker to his lips, he was so close.

“Fine you win this round, just get off.”

His grin slipped away and licked his lips but didn’t move, only loosening his hold on her, she watched his own eyes flicker to her lips then back again, only to find her eyes on his lips. She didn’t know what she was doing, he was so close. He was slowly moving his head down until she lifted her head off the ground to meet his, finally crashed their lips together.

Marinette slipped her hands out of his grip wrapping her fingers through his hair and around his neck, pulling down. Damian let himself fall on his elbow using his other hand to snake around her waist to pull her up into him. He lifted his leg and slid it between her thighs before doing the same with his other to comfortably press their bodies together.

Damian could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, he didn’t know how badly he wanted to kiss her, to touch her, until now, and he didn’t want to stop.

Marinette heard a groan escape Damian, or was it her? She didn’t know, he tasted so good....

Damian pulled away, both were breathing heavier than before and they locked eyes.

“Holy shit.” Marinette said, not believing what was happening was real and lifted her head again, capturing Damian's lips, each giving each other softer, more gentle kisses than before.

“You cursed,” he said, pulling back again.

“Yeah well you taste like my fuckin ice-cream.”

---

BONUS:

I’m a Wayne.

*gasp* oh wow.

You knew?

Wow you must really think i’m dumb.

Wha-no i do not!

I found out the second day I was here.

… wow I guess that makes me the dumb one

It’s ok i still love you

You love me?

Shit. Rosa! Save me!

Hell no get away from me, how dare you break my trust like that.

Hope y’all enjoyed, please let me know if i misspelled or have bad grammar or anything like that or if you like it. or not thats fine too.

Thank you for reading!!!😁

#daminette #maribat #damimari #maridami #marinette x damian

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rebuiltbionicle · 4 years

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Metru Nui, History

[This has been stricken from the rebuilt canon. I need to make a better version of it but don’t hold your breath.]

Metru Nui was the first island (or set of islands technically) to have its foundations laid by the Great Beings. The islands were built up, although work on the city the Matoran would inhabit was postponed (apart from a single giant worker’s barracks) to prioritise the construction of the Core Processor beneath the city, where Mata Nui’s spirit would eventually reside. As Mata Nui’s programming was late in the construction, Tren Krom was installed to test the functions of the Great Spirit Robot as it was built.

Artakha would be the first island to receive a city, and the specifics of its architecture used to build up Metru Nui. The various islands of the dome were hauled together, and each was made to be a city itself for one of the six main elements of Matoran. Each of these cities would contribute to Metru Nui’s overall economy: a transport district, a parts manufactory, an assembling manufactory, two difference resource extraction districts, and a sector for reading Mata Nui’s thoughts and dictates. Lesser cities for the other 12 elements would be created on islands in domes to the south, called the Kofo Metru. Metru Nui mostly considered them separate lands, though the rest of the universe saw them as parts of Metru Nui.

The city was finished shortly before the GSR took off from Spherus Magna. Tren Krom discreetly left the Core Processor for Karda Nui for last minute checks, with the Matoran barely aware he was ever present. The Matoran and all important figures of the universe were gathered in the Coliseum to witness the implementation of Mata Nui and to experience the Awakening. This event had Metru Nui christened the City of Legends, due to the importance of the event and the foggy pre-Awakening memories the population had of the Great Beings walking amongst them.

Metru Nui, as a Matoran community, was mostly run as an autonomous collective. However, like many Matoran communities they had a Turaga to act as a mediator, public figurehead and ambassador; to intervene when there was miscommunication and to provide a direction for the city. The first was Turaga Uadu, a Po-Turaga who was in fact the very first Turaga made. In years to come Uadu became a legend themselves, famous for being the most fair and open of all the Turaga until the Post-Cataclysm Turaga heptapartite. Of minor day-to-day note they pushed for heavy incorporation with the Kofo Metru despite their distance, established strong relations with the islands of Artakha and Karzahni, and was the first to begin questioning Karzahni when Matoran failed to return. They took issue with the arbitrary rough justice of the Hand of Artakha, though opposed its disbanding; they wanted it to be a universal cooperative of Toa Teams.

The first major catastrophe Metru Nui faced was the Kanohi Dragon attack. The beast’s origins remain unknown to this day, but it was discovered underground in the undeveloped Ta-Metru wilderness. After being disturbed it began to attack the city, destroying buildings and creating a nest in the Great Furnace. Matoran defence failed and there seemed no capacity to coexist with the dragon, so Turaga Uadu called for Toa aid. A fairly extensive team of eighteen Toa arrived in the city to battle the creature. They expected a quick job with their Me-Toa, but the Dragon proved resistant to Rahi Control powers. They had to fight it in a full week’s worth of combat, with several Toa needing to be rebuilt afterwards. The Kanohi Dragon made several false retreats before returning to attack the city again, which played on the Toa’s mercy every time. Eventually they grew savvy, and as it retreated their Fa and Ba-Toa plunged it into the ocean, where their Ga and Ko-Toa pulled it into an undersea cave and froze it. The Toa were invited to stay in the city, and they became the first Toa Metru.

Turaga Uadu was also well noted for handling the rise of the League of Six Kingdoms. It was Ko-Metru’s divination that declared that six rulers would rise according to Mata Nui’s will, and despite the spiritual pressure to acknowledge them as the ordained rulers of the universe, Uadu could plainly see that the Barraki were nothing but a pack of thugs attempting a decadent land grab. Metru Nui was an extremely valuable prize that each Barraki coveted, so an invasion was not a possibility so much as an inevitability. What Turaga Uadu did was to open talks with each of the Barraki individually and continually remind them of the other talks and how important Metru Nui was. This made them fearful of the destruction that would happen if they had to fight for it, and Uadu finally pulled their trump card in telling them a portion was better than nothing. They accepted a precarious deal in which all the Barraki were guaranteeing Metru Nui’s independence from the others in exchange for trade deals. This kept Metru Nui and the Kofo Metru independent from the League of Six Kingdoms, something they shared only with Artakha and several obscure and hidden islands. Metru Nui emerged from the collapse of the League completely unscathed, as the squabbling lesser barraki were either in no position to harm Metru Nui, or chose to honour their predecessor’s trade deals.

A century after the fall of the League, Turaga Uadu announced that they would retire to help spread wisdom to lands less fortunate than Metru Nui. Their successor was a Le-Turaga who had volunteered much of his time to work in the Great Temple, a strongly religious Turaga by the name of Dihin. If there was one drawback to Turaga Uada’s tenure, it was their failure to properly vet their successor. Turaga Dihin had a fanatical attitude towards devotion to the Great Spirit that directly led to the Matoran Civil War. The history of that war is documented on its page. Before this happened, Turaga Dihin did have one positive influence that would effect Metru Nui for the rest of its history: the reorganisation of Onu-Metru from a mere mining district into the site of the Archives. Their replacement was an Onu-Turaga named Vhuru, who was handpicked by the Makuta.

The city’s first order of business was to reorganise the mess that the Civil War, and more broadly Dihin’s reign, had left. Turaga Vhuru largely let the Matoran organise themselves, and returned her office back to a diplomatic role. Work hours were shortened dramatically, and many destroyed segments of the city rebuilt into recreational areas to keep the Matoran in good spirits. The unrestrained expansion of the city ordered by Dihin was also reorganised and the first official nature preserves set up to protect the Rahi of Metru Nui. Trade with other islands was disrupted by a lessened industrial output, to which Turaga Vhuru quite vocally accused complaining islands of exploiting poor working conditions and threatened to cut trade with them completely. This set the tone for Turaga Vhuru on the international stage. She had no patience for those that saw Matoran as naive lessers.

Fear of sea pirates, the last splinters of the League, had Metru Nui attempt to gather together a force of Toa to protect shipments. However, most Toa were preoccupied with trying to become Toa Hagah with the Brotherhood of Makuta, so the city was only able to grab a few Toa Stones for a mere six new Toa Metru. Enough to protect the city, though they weren’t satisfied it would protect their shipments. Turaga Vhuru suggested a deal with the Brotherhood of Makuta’s Navy to protect shipping, though the Matoran were uncomfortable with this idea. What happened instead was that Satorni fighters from the Northern Continent were hired to do the job, with the promise of permanent residence on Metru Nui in return. Turaga Vhuru was uncomfortable with this, but the Matoran insisted. The deal turned out beneficial, and Turaga Vhuru began considering the possibilities.

Until then, Metru Nui had been solely inhabited by the Matoran. Other species were only ever on diplomatic or trade visits. However, since the successful integration of Satorni guards, the doors were opened for further peoples to live in Metru Nui. This was a slow process; there wasn’t a great deal of people banging on a closed door, but there were some across the universe uprooted and needed somewhere secure, or had skills they felt Metru Nui benefited from. Over several centuries Metru Nui became a far more cosmopolitan city, with nearly every species and element of Matoran represented.

Metru Nui prospered, but there were isolationist elements that rejected the new openness of Metru Nui. Ehui, Toa Metru of Water, believed that Metru Nui was given to the Matoran alone, and accused Turaga Vhuru of destroying Metru Nui’s sovereignty. Toa Ehui was unable to bring the other Toa around to their way of thinking, so they split off to found The Circle of Mata Nui: an organisation of Metru Nui Matoran dedicated to returning Metru Nui to its perceived perfect form where there were only the six prime elements of Matoran rigidly kept in their own Metru. For the first century of their existence they were more offensive than actually harmful, as they were nothing but a fringe cult hiding in Le-Metru. Their activities included spreading inflammatory posters, staging small protests outside the Coliseum until they got bored, and disrupting meditation sessions in the Great Temple. Turaga Vhuru did her best to address the Circle’s concerns with reason, but Ehui and his followers were beyond reason. There were not considered anything but irritating trivia about Metru Nui at this time, however.

A little over 700 years into her tenure, Turaga Vhuru chose to retire. Her reasoning was that she came into office after (somewhat over) 800 years of previous Turaga and she was approaching 800 years in office as well, and felt it was time to hand over the mantle. Her successor was a Ko-Turaga, formerly one of the Toa that retrieved the Ignika during the Great Disruption, by the name of Amohon. Amohon remained nothing but a diplomat and storyteller, the latter of which he really enjoyed doing.

During this time the city invented Kanoka disk technology. They rapidly became ubiquitous tools and a major export. They had been reverse engineered from the technology behind Kanohi, and it was found it was actually easier to craft Kanoka and then mould them into Kanohi. Disk-assisted mask making overtook Metru Nui, though it narrowed the range of Kanohi they could create. Artakha, long since become a recluse, took note of the disks and developed six of his own with improved technology that allowed far greater power. Within them he included the power to create the Kanohi Vahi. The disks were unceremoniously teleported into the Great Temple as a gift for the Toa Metru (unfortunately including Ehui), which they would wield with pride until they slowly lost them over the centuries.

Some centuries after this, the city came under attack by Protocairns. Battle raged between the beasts and the city’s Toa and other protectors for a month. The Protocairns proved enormously resilient and ruined the coastline across the entire island, including the Great Temple. They weren’t even defeated, but just died as part of their lifecycle. Rebuilding began, but was interrupted by the arrival of the Parakrekks, arrived to devour minerals left in the rubble. A second battle for Metru Nui raged across its coastlines against the amphibious Rahi, which saw them successfully driven off. It was during this general chaos that the legendary beast Keetongu smuggled themselves into the city.

Ehui and the Circle attempted to blame the bestial invasion on the influx of non-Matoran. This initial propaganda session won the loyalty of barely anybody, but those few that were swayed into the Circle included Ko-Matoran scholars and Ga-Matoran teachers that had significantly more charisma and reach with the population. The Circle’s numbers began to grow steadily higher, to the point where they could do much more damage. It’s important to note that they never numbered more than 5% of the Matoran population. Still, this was thousands of Matoran and enough to hurl a great deal of weight around. Homes and workplaces were smashed up, prophecies from the knowledge towers destroyed and replaced with forgeries. Ga-Metru schools were shut down from vandalism and destruction. Slowly but surely, the assaults of non-Matoran citizens began and gradually became worse.

Some historians refer to these events as the Second Metru Nui Civil War, though due to the vast difference in scale, most don’t consider it a war so much as a brief period of unrest. As things deteriorated, talks failed, and the Circle began setting up Matoran-only zones (which they had long falsely accused the non-Matoran of creating), Turaga Amohon lost his patience with them and told the Toa to haul Ehui in. A brief siege occurred over Ehui’s stronghold beneath Ga-Wahi, but he was brought in to face trial. Ehui was imprisoned and made to pass on his Toa power, and the Matoran-only zones forcibly disbanded by the Toa. Victory was declared and Metru Nui remained an open society. The Toa Metru all passed on their Toa Power and became Turaga.

Turaga Amohon retired after a thousand years in office. There were two contenders for the office which the prophecies from Ko-Metru ordained would share the office. These two were Baidrau and Ledum, a Ta-Turaga and Ga-Turaga respectively. Given the city was now at peace, they remained little more than figureheads as the Matoran shaped their own destinies.

Given inspiration by the trade pact created by Nynrah and its neighbours (the East Matoran Trade Guild), the Matoran of Metru Nui began negotiating similar trade pacts with its more prominent trade partners. The Turaga advised caution as to not be caught into the trap of nationalism and rivalry with Nynrah, though the Matoran negotiating the deals assured them that was purely to coordinate a more efficient distribution of resources, and was more likely to merge with the East Matoran Trade Guilt rather than fight it. Metru Nui’s pacts were referred to as the North Matoran Trade Guild as a direct reference to Nynrah’s league. The Northern Guild encompassed Metru Nui, the Kofo-Metru, a series of Matoran settlements on the two continents, and a few islands south of the central dome.

Unlike Nynrah, there were no provisions within the Northern Pact to keep Metru Nui from becoming the dominant member of the Guild. Its trade partners began to decline trade deals with other lands for the redundancy of it. That the Guild was kept from being the Metru Nui Empire was solely because of the goodwill and diplomacy of Baidrau and Ledum. Though they saw the negativity of Metru Nui’s economic dominion, the peace and steady flow of resources the pact was supplying kept the Turaga from changing the arrangement. They kept it stable and benign, but did not scale it back.

Like Turaga Amohon, Baidrau and Ledum chose to step down after a thousand years of office. Their replacement was Turaga Mevoka, a Po-Turaga. Their first few years were dedicated primarily to preaching the word of the Great Spirit and the Three Virtues. They focused less on Metru Nui’s foreign relations, allowing the merchants to expand the Northern Guild even further, reaching the western island chain and encroaching on East Guild territory without the promised merger.

Turaga Mevoka was asked to mediate disputes between Metru Nui and the East Trade Guild. Their primary goal was to try and make the promised merging of trade guilds happen, emphasising the first of the virtues: Unity. They failed to get the merger through, but Metru Nui traders agreed not to encroach on Nynrah’s turf. Mevoka’s mind remained on Matoran unity, and began considering the potential of Metru Nui’s trade guild. Its expansion into the south and west was allowed to continue unrestrained, and urges continually sent to the east to reconsider.

The guild became about more than trade. Turaga Mevoka began to influence the policy of their associated islands, and while preaching Unity opted to merge them all into a single polity. The North Matoran Trade Guild evolved into the Federation of the Great Spirit. International reaction was mixed. A few Matoran villages saw a great opportunity for Matoran to become part of something greater than disparate villages, or to protect themselves from piracy and the rogue powers. The Brotherhood of Makuta objected to the project on the grounds that Metru Nui should not interfere with the destiny of other lands and should respect their sovereignty (although their true motive was to keep the universe divided). Turaga Mevoka took this objection under consideration. Islands like Xia and Stelt made objections overtly based on more selfish motives, which just motivated Mevoka to continue the project more.

The Federation did not start on the best grounds. It was at this time Energised Protodermis was highly sought after for economic reasons. Turaga Mevoka ordered Metru Nui and its possessions to acquire as much as possible. The Ko-Matoran scholars realised that Mata Nui’s health was going into decline and would require the Kanohi Ignika to revive him. It was further gleamed that overmining Energised Protodermis was the cause of what would be called “the Great Draining”. While by no means solely responsible, the vocality of Turaga Mevoka in building the Federation’s wealth did result in his humiliation on the global stage.

Nevertheless, the expansion of the Federation continued for another two centuries, though somewhat slower. Turaga Mevoka’s rhetoric shifted somewhat, away from Matoran unity towards a unity of the entire universe. Mevoka called to attention the League of Six Kingdoms; that Mata Nui always had intended for the universe to be united under a single dominion. The League was simply corrupted by poorly chosen kings. As Turaga of Metru Nui, he was a far better choice. Such a comparison was not popular. Economic blockades were set up to pressure islands to join the Federation. Within the Federation, while islands were nominally independent, trade was regulated to keep all islands dependent on Metru Nui and prevented them from trading with each other.

Two predominant economic powers on the two continents found themselves under the pressure from the expanding Federation, and began competing with each other over what resources remained independent. Secretly edged on by the Federation and by Xian arms dealers, the continent’s rivalry began to flare into violent conflict, until finally the Continental War broke out. This event would spell the downfall of Mevoka’s Federation. The Makuta saw through Mevoka and knew he intended to have the two blocs destroy each other so he could clean up the pieces. Makuta Teridax forced Mevoka to acknowledge this publicly, in the hopes that knowing they were being manipulated would stop the Continental Powers. This did lead to an armistice, but the two powers had been eyeing each other off long before the Federation became involved, and there were tensions that needed to be resolved. Continental territories of the Federation began to break off and join their respective Continent’s power bloc after being reminded of perceived historical injustices.

The Makuta still insisted that the war was Metru Nui’s responsibility, and ordered that the Federation end the war. Turaga Mevoka saw this as a possible way to cement the Federation as a power, through a show of force similar to what ended the Metru Nui Civil War so long ago. This was not to be. The relatively minor force of Toa and other volunteer fighters mustered was meaningless compared to the Continental Armies. The Makuta pushed Mevoka aside and resolved to end the conflict their own way. The Federation’s capacity to be a universal power was proved minimal and its expansion ceased. The other major powers began to pay it no mind. Mevoka, broken, retreated into the coliseum and made frequently less public appearances, until eventually he refused to preform his duties and had to be removed from office only a little over three hundred years as Turaga.

Mevoka’s replacement was a recently turned Ta-Turaga by the name of Dume. Turaga Dume took a far more insular approach to running Metru Nui; he ran the island alone and took no notice of the greater Federation of which it was a part. Slowly but surely without a charismatic figure holding it together the Federation broke up and disbanded. Ultimately the ideas behind it were heavier than the organisation itself. Dume’s insularity was more than that, and he neglected even the Kofo-Metru, which were considered politically part of Metru Nui since long before Mevoka’s time. The Kofo-Metru formally split from Metru Nui to seek their own trade relations.

The people of Metru Nui were unsure what to make of Dume. The collapse of Metru Nui’s sphere of influence came with a mixed reception, partially outrage to loss of prestige, partially celebration to a return to simpler times. The apathy to the Kofo-Metru was an unpopular move, though Dume’s leadership on internal matters was impeccable.

Towards this time several guildsmatoran were complaining of the current lack of protection and a growing crime rate given the lack of Toa team. Dume attempted to gather a new Toa team, but an Onu-Matoran by the name of Nuparu offered to create a new robotic taskforce that would maintain order. The first batch, the Krahli, were an abysmal failure, and it took quite a bit of persuasion for Dume to accept the Vahki. Soon enough, there were robotic enforcers patrolling the streets of Metru Nui. The justice was rough, though the city began running somewhat more efficiently. The implementation of the Vahki was unpopular, and many residence began to leave for other lands. During this exodus the Rahaga secretly arrived and took residence in the city.

The Dark Hunters began to covet the city, in the hopes of seizing it as their formal throne. A polite request to set up a base was sent to Dume, who mailed a blank sheet of paper in return. While maintaining an air of formality, the Dark Hunters continued to push for a base while making it more and more apparent they intended violence if denied. The tensions frightened many more Metru Nui inhabitants away from the island. The Dark Hunters opted to release the ancient Kanohi Dragon upon the city and offered to remove it in exchange for a permanent base. Fortunately, Turaga Dume had managed to rustle up a Toa team, the Toa Mangai, to defeat the dragon and defend the city from the Hunters.

The people of Metru Nui were happy to have the Toa Mangai and it stopped the exodus of citizens. The Dark Hunters continued their pressure, but now had an ulterior motive. One of the Toa, Tuyet, held an artefact of some importance to them: the Nui Stone. A taskforce was sent in to retrieve it, but was demolished by the Toa. Infuriated, the Shadowed One ordered the Toa exterminated and for the Dark Hunters to mobilise and occupy the city. The Toa, and Turaga Dume, were held captive in the Coliseum as the Dark Hunters made the city their own. Fortunately Toa Naho was able to escape and rally an army of Toa, which after several months fighting were able to expel the Dark Hunters.

The war had severe social implications for the city. Firstly, its perceived peace and untouchability was shattered, causing another exodus of panicked citizens. However, the fact that Metru Nui could rally such an army of Toa showed that it was still a political power of some sway, and that the former Federation could have been something far more, for better or worse. The fact that the Makuta had chosen not to intervene in that conflict was harshly criticised across the universe. Metru Nui was able to exist in peace, undisturbed by nefarious powers, for a century and a half beyond that.

As part of his schemes, Makuta Teridax came to the city and abducted and impersonated Turaga Dume. He took a far more active role in running the city, increasing the length of work shifts and shutting down amenities, and having the Vahki crack down brutally on any dissent. This caused even more citizens to evacuate the city. Three Dark Hunters were hired to slowly pick the Toa Mangai off, causing even more panic and unrest amongst the populace. “Dume” announced a policy of isolation, apparently due to Dark Hunter threats, that entailed the closing of the sea gates. This triggered the final exodus of citizenry from Metru Nui, fleecing off the remaining non-Matoran and most Matoran not of the six prime elements. The population resembled what it did in the earliest days of the city, but was a mere shadow of what the city once was.

The sea gates were sealed and the last Toa Mangai except their leader, Lhikan, were eliminated. At this point Makuta planted a botanical monstrosity of his own design, the Morbuzakh, inside the Great Furnace. It quickly grew to enormous sizes and spread its tendrils across the city. It would slowly capture Matoran to be placed within special capsules that Teridax had been constructing. Lhikan and the Vahki were powerless to stop it (though the Vahki didn’t try unless they were being publically scrutinised). Lhikan, since the death of his fellow Toa, was firmly convinced something far greater was going on, but couldn’t handle it on his own. He broke into the Great Temple and stole six Toa Stones to create a new Toa team. During this event he discovered and fought Dark Hunters Nidhiki and Krekka.

The Toa Stones were distributed to a Matoran from each Metru, but Lhikan was captured by the Dark Hunters. There was some telepathic power play over which Matoran would become Toa. The chosen six reported to the Great Temple and were transformed into a new generation of Toa. One of them, the Ta-Toa Vakama began receiving visions with vague instructions on how to save the city. The long lost and semi-mythical Great Disks were necessary to destroy the Morbuzakh. Six Matoran, which by a staggering coincidence were all associates of theirs, would help them find the disks. The Dark Hunters, pressuring the Po-Matoran Ahkmou, were learning of their identities as well and luring them into traps.

The new Toa were able to rescue the Matoran and recover the Great Disks despite the Dark Hunters and Morbuzakh. Teridax had become aware of them, and had ordered the Vahki to apprehend them (the official reasoning being the Ga-Toa, Nokama, was supposedly suspected of being an alias for Toa Tuyet.) Nevertheless, the Toa were able to use the Great Disks to destroy the Morbuzakh. They took the disks to the Coliseum, to be recognised as the Toa Metru by “Turaga Dume.” Instead, the disguised Makuta accused them of killing Lhikan and was able to apprehend three of them. The Dark Hunters and Vahki were sent hunting the other three.

As the remaining Toa tracked their brethren to rescue them, the Makuta dropped the subtlety and ordered the Matoran assemble at the Coliseum and had the Vahki force them into the capsules. The Toa, after rescuing their companions, sought to confront Teridax. Teridax met them, and announced that he had plunged Mata Nui into slumber. The suns went out and the enormous bioquake thereafter called the Great Cataclysm struck the city, causing immense structural damage. The Toa discovered what Makuta had done to the Matoran and opted to take as many capsules as they could and find a safe haven to revive them. As they approached the Great Barrier, Makuta confronted them and fought. The Toa sealed him away and were able to escape.

While the Toa were absent, Makuta sent a telepathic distress signal to the Brotherhood. The Visorak Horde were summoned to occupy the abandoned city. The Toa returned to find the city enveloped in webbing. They were quickly captured and mutated into the Toa Hordika, but before they could be forced to release the Makuta they were rescued by the Rahaga. The Rahaga explained the situation to them, and the team summarised their three goals: find Keetongu and their alleged cure, secure the Matoran capsules from the Visorak, and find the parts to construct airships to ship them out. The Rahaga also dumped a “find the Kanohi Avohkii” quest on them in the middle of it. Over a painful months-long guerilla war against the Horde, filled with inner-struggle, betrayal, and giant monsters, the Toa were able not only fulfill these goals but also completely disband the Visorak Horde and expell them from the city. It came at a cost, however; Makuta Teridax were freed from his prison.

Given the Makuta on the loose and the destruction wrought by the city, the Toa continued with their plan to evacuate the Matoran to the island they discovered beyond the Great Barrier. The Rahaga and Keetongu remained behind in the city and revived Turaga Dume, and began a quiet study in the ruins of the city on the exact nature of the Great Cataclysm. The universe at large was caught up in their own repairs, but as they brought themselves back into working order noticed Metru Nui’s absence, forcing them to rebuild their economies without Metru Nui’s past generosity of resources. The Dark Hunters did not exploit the opportunity to seize the city, as it had lost its value by this time.

Eventually, after several decades away, the Matoran were brought back to rebuild and repopulate the city. With them came the former Toa Metru, now Turaga, who joined with Dume to lead the city. The city still had Toa in the form of the Toa Nuva, but the bulk of their number was sent to Voya Nui to recover the Kanohi Ignika. The Matoran were given no explanation, prompting a citywide halt to repair efforts until the Turaga explained the situation. A small group of Matoran and Toa Takanuva left to render them assistance, although Toa Takanuva was forced to return. Takanuva was the sole Toa protecting the city, although he had the backing of several Matoran militia. In his brief tenure in this role he fought off a Frostelus invasion and confronted a small Dark Hunter flotilla passing through the Great Barrier. Shortly the Toa Nuva returned with the same flotilla, with the imprisoned Piraka in tow.

The Toa Nuva would not stay long, as the Order of Mata Nui revealed itself to them and gave them a series of tasks in preparing for the awakening of the Great Spirit. Of these tasks, one included finding and activating the Staff of Artakha, completely repairing the ruined city and removing the need to make repairs. The Turaga devoted their time to reteaching the memory-wiped Matoran how to operate the city and have Metru Nui become a formal power again. There were efforts, hindered by a lack of scientific knowledge, in trying to restore the lost Matoran memories. This had mixed results. Occupying Turaga Dume’s concerns was a series of cracks in the ground beneath the Coliseum, though getting Metru Nui working was a higher priority.

Mata Nui’s life was saved, and the people of the universe breathed a sigh of relief. The Matoran who had joined the Toa Nuva, now themselves the Toa Mahri, returned to the city. The Order of Mata Nui sent them on their own quests, and had Takanuva (newly infected by a Shadow Leech) taken away as well. This disturbed the Matoran, but several Order agents and contractors entered the city and began fortifying it. The Matoran had mixed feelings; they appreciated the enhanced defences but neither knew nor fully trusted the Order. Makuta Teridax secretly entered the city and descended beneath the Coliseum into the long forgotten Core Processor.

The Order’s fortifications of the city came to a head during the war with the Brotherhood of Makuta. As part of (what they assumed to be) their plans, the Brotherhood Army lay siege to Metru Nui in an attempt to occupy it. The Order’s forces, the Matoran Militia, and the Toa Mahri were able to hold them off. The invasion attempt was finally broken when the Toa Nuva and a population of Av-Matoran arrived from Karda Nui. The immensely powerful Toa and battle-harden Matoran tipped the battle against the Brotherhood, whose fleet was destroyed.

The Toa Nuva brought news that their quest to awaken Mata Nui was a success. The effects weren’t readily apparent, which the Order stated was just a delayed reaction. The Turaga announced a day long celebration, culminating in a speech by Dume. During this victory speech, Makuta Teridax revealed himself to be in control of the universe, having supplanted his spirit for Mata Nui’s during the revival. A legion of Brotherhood forces, dwarfing the previous invasion fleet, soon entered the city. Bioquakes and freak storms harassed the Toa as they attempted to fight the legion off. The Matoran tried to hide in the Archives, but Makuta threatened to cave the entire structure in on them and they fled back to work.

The Toa were able to escape, and nearly managed to bring the Turaga with them. The Turaga were however captured and put to work in the city. Ahkmou, a long time associate of the Makuta, was made “Turaga” of the city in their stead, whether he liked it or not. Metru Nui was made into an industrial powerhouse and showcase of the Makuta-run universe. Statues of the Makuta replaced all Toa and Turaga statues, workshifts took up every hour that wasn’t spent sleeping, and the Great Temple transformed into a miniature Destral fortress. While islands like Xia and Nynrah failed to cooperate, Makuta was able to rely on Metru Nui and its fearful Matoran to supply all of his manufacturing needs.

The Order’s fortifications were made to work for Makuta, though many beings were able to sneak back into the city. The Core Processor beneath the Coliseum was a key target for a dozen of the oldest and most powerful beings in the universe. Unfortunately, this just meant that they were all in one place for Makuta to expel.

The end of Metru Nui came with the end of the entire universe. Word came that the universe needed to be abandoned. Makuta would not permit any of the Matoran to leave. The resurgent Barraki, under the persuasion of the Toa and the surviving Order, lay siege to Metru Nui long enough to evacuate the Matoran and leave the city deserted. As Makuta tried and failed to corral the Matoran back, his Rahkshi could only supply subpar replacement for their labour. The lack of maintenance cost him his edge against Mata Nui and the Great Spirit Robot was irreparably damaged.

Once again the City of Legends was brought to ruin, and for the last time. With the GSR uninhabitable, and having run its purpose anyway, the city is slowly being dismantled by its former inhabitants to build greater cities on the surface of Spherus Magna.

#bionicle #bionicle rebuilt #locations

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Minnesota: Lebanese National Pleads Guilty To Illegally Exporting Drone Parts And Technology (to Hezbollah)

Missing from this latest DOJ press release, but included in a prior DOJ press release:

Prosecutors say that from 2009 to 2013, the Lebanese brothers repeatedly acquired sophisticated technology for drones then illegally exported them to Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Also seen here, Minnesota: Muslim brothers charged with trying to export drone tech to terror group Hizbollah.

United States Attorney Erica H. MacDonald today announced the guilty plea of USAMA DARWICH HAMADE, 55, for conspiring to illegally export goods and technology in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”), the Export Administration Regulations, the Arms Export Control Act, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

According to the defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed in court, from 2009 through 2011, HAMADE conspired with others to export goods and technology without obtaining the required export licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of State, in violation of IEEPA, the Export Administration Regulations, the Arms Export Control Act, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. HAMADE caused the purchase and export of inertial measurement units (“IMUs”) suitable for use in unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”), a jet engine, piston engines, and recording binoculars.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Export Enforcement, and Homeland Security Investigations.

Assistant United States Attorneys John Docherty and David MacLaughlin are prosecuting the case.

Defendant Information: USAMA DARWICH HAMADE, 55

Citizen of Lebanon and South Africa

Convicted: Illegal export conspiracy, 1 count

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More on the Hezbollah brothers: Feds: Brothers with alleged Hezbollah ties are 'dangerous'

Prosecutors wrote that Hezbollah has used drones for many years and that the brothers "present a danger to the United States, and to other communities around the world."

Prosecutors painted Usama Hamade as a "violent, drunken, gun-toting thug" who threatened to kill a government witness and his family by cutting him "to pieces" and once bragged that he cut off his gardener's arms and bashed his gardener's skull after an apparent theft.

The witness told authorities that he had regular contact with Usama Hamade from 2009 to 2011, and that he and his wife went to Lebanon with Usama Hamade in 2010. When they arrived in Beirut, the witness said, a group of armed men in darkened limos separated him from his wife and drove them with lights and sirens to a flat that Usama called his Beirut home.

The witness said Usama told him the Hamade brothers were both members of Hezbollah, and both brothers had pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in their homes. Usama Hamade also had firearms around the flat and fired shots into the sky. Usama Hamade also filmed the inside of his apartment and posted the video to Facebook. A Hezbollah flag is visible, as well as an assault rifle propped against the nightstand, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that as he was fighting extradition to the U.S., Usama Hamade said Nasrallah is a spiritual leader and there is nothing nefarious about the photograph. Hamade also said Hezbollah is a political party, not a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors called that "preposterous," saying one of the drone parts acquired is only useful in military applications. They say Skype calls between Usama Hamade and an undercover agent show Hamade said he would be proud to be placed on the U.S. terror list.

Issam Hamade's attorney, Bruce Nestor, wrote in his court filings that a Shiite Muslim would have to show public allegiance to Hezbollah or another group to avoid physical harm or retribution.

But prosecutors said Issam Hamade posted pictures of the 9/11 attacks on Facebook and suggested the attacks wouldn't have happened if the World Trade Center had been built in reverence to Allah.

#Islam #Muslim #Jihad #Sharia #Finance #Legal #Travel #News #Politics #Media #Technology

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littleeyesofpallas · 5 years

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Bleach - Name Games

Here’s a handful of tangential side characters I said I’d tackle...

First off, the sisters Kotetsu[虎徹], Isane[勇音] and Kiyone[清音]. Their surname is written as a nice unambiguous “Tiger Pierce.” It functions in part to denote a hunter/slayer of tigers, and also a possibly reference to the assumed name of historical swordsmith, Nagasone Kotetsu[長曾禰虎徹], although to what specific end, I couldn’t guess at. The given names of the two sisters both utilize the kanji -ne[音] meaning “sound,” which is a very common suffix in girls’ names in Japanese.

In full Isane[勇音] reads as “Brave Sound” and Kiyone[清音] as “Clear/Pure Sound.“ They don’t actually seem to reflect the characters’ personalities too directly; Kiyone could be said to be pure and earnest in her devotion to Ukitake [浮竹十四郎], but Isane is actually quite meek and timid in spite of her name.

It is possible that Kubo intended something different at first, considering Isane is actually first seen in the background of a panel, with her head fully obscured by a voice bubble, and what appears to be a man’s body. (she is identifiable only by her lieutenant’s badge visible on her shoulder in chapter 109, during the inspection of Aizen’s “corpse,” (while Ichigo[一護] is still fighting Zaraki) and she doesn’t appear again until chapter 147, at the start of Rukia’s[ルキア] execution.) So, it’s entirely probable that in changing his generically masculine looking placeholder design into a female character, Kubo meant to give her a more tomboyish personality at first, but for whatever reason changed his mind.

Partnered with Kiyone as Ukitake’s 3rd seat in the 13th division is Kotsubaki[小椿] Sentarou[仙太郎]. The family name Kotsubaki[小椿] reads pretty directly as “Small Camellia,” as in the flower.

I think we’re all aware of Kubo’s preoccupation with flowers, as the Gotei 13′s flower insignia’s clearly display. In the Hanakotoba[花言葉] “Flower Language,” much like parallel European concepts, flowers based on species and color can denote particular meanings and themes.

Broadly speaking camellia have long been associated with the Japanese nobility, including the samurai class seen as a sign of love and devotion, but in the case of a red Camellia, and due to their tendency to “behead” themselves (that is to say, they don’t wilt on the stem, instead the fully bloomed flower simply drops off once it begins to die) they are seen as a symbol of a noble or dignified death: to die with its good appearance intact.

The given name Sentarou[仙太郎] is a little odd; -tarou[太郎] at least is fairly common, “big(thick) son” is a pretty common name even on its own, but also a common component of other names. The “Thick” here is used as a sign of health, like “robust,” “broad,” or “hearty,” not obese. The Sen[仙] here is a little more vague...

Most literally it would read like “sage”/”hermit”/”wizard” all harkening back to a specific kind of archetypal old wizened/enlightened man living in isolation. By that same character association however it can also reference “prodigious skill/talent,” that a wizened old sage might possess and cultivate in their isolation, as well as “immortality” as a seemingly inhumanly old and enlightened person might well be. So, in this context, although we actually know quite little about Sentarou as a character, I think the intended reading here (as goofy as this sounds) is actually “Immortal Thick Son” basically just being an overstatement of his good physical health.

But Sentarou actually has a dad in canon! Aikawa Love’s old lieutenant in the Turn Back the Pendulum era, ~100 years in the past, Kotsubaki Jin’emon[刃右衛門]. For one, it’s worth noting that he has a very distinctly Yakuza sounding name, but also he is later succeeded in his rank as 7th Division lieutenant by Iba[射場] Tetsuzaemon[鉄左衛門], whom you’ll notice has the similar given name.

They both share the suffix form, -emon[衛門] which is written as “Defense Gate,” which is a kind of trade name (like Smith, or Taylor, in English) that denotes a person whose job it is to open and close the gate to a castle, palace, or fortress. In addition the kanji [右] and [左] denote “right” and “left,” respectively in relation to the either literal or metaphorical fortress gates. From this meaning the naming convention comes to be a common name of what amount to bodyguard characters with distinctly traditionally Japanese flair; be they samurai or yakuza or even shinobi archetypes.

So, the complementary names Jin’emon[刃右衛門] and Tetsuzaemon[鉄左衛門] actually read as “Blade Right Defense Gate” and “Iron Left Defense Gate,“ evoking image of an offensive right and defensive left combination. Also, Tetsuzaemon’s character is very distinctly based on a Yakuza thug; from his belly warmer, to the single sleeve style he wears his kimono, and his zanpakutou being a tanto, to his shades, mustache and punch perm hairstyle. He also treats his captain, Komamura the way a Yakuza treats a family head.

And this also brings up Tetsuzaemon’s mother, Iba[射場] Chikane[千鉄]. The family name, Iba[射場] just mans “Archery Place,” which is fairly straight forward. Generally it would denote an actual archery range, but it can also specify an archer’s position, like a designated station atop a wall in a defensive formation. (In the case of Tetsuzaemon, it compliments the image of a strongly fortified and defended gate.) His mother’s given name Chikane[千鉄] reads as “Thousand Iron” which evokes the iron heads of many arrows. She is also designed like a very traditional Japanese matron, an image associated with strong willed women in positions of social and financial power, often as heads of a household, of a business like a tavern or a brothel, or as I assume here, as the wife of a Yakuza boss.

A small note on the dynamics of a samurai household: Although classical Japan is an infamously rigid social structure that places great restraints on women, there are a few unique loopholes that defy what I think are Western assumptions of what misogyny and patriarchal oppression look like. While households were expressly the domain of a family patriarch, and abuses of that power were extremely common, we tend to compare those to the Western image of an American 1950s household, or a Victorian era drama of marriages and inheritances. But in fact, despite the very rigid dynamic between a man and his wife, the mother of a noble household actually held a great deal of power relative to the rest of society.

Due to formalities in place to prevent samurai from overshadowing or overpowering their lords, technically samurai were not allowed to handle money or own much of their property; they did of course functionally amass wealth none the less, but their wives controlled their finances. In the case of an abusive or controlling husband this might well mean a wife was little more than a middleman in the process of him controlling his own wealth, but very often either out of benevolence, negligence, or ineptitude, the wives of samurai would effectively run not only the internal household but the entire family business. Even upon a son’s inheritance, if the son was not up to the task, a more competent or even just power hungry mother might retain her power over the household well into the son’s adulthood.

Similarly women were known to run, both formally and informally, many successful Japanese businesses across several class lines, including down into the untouchable classes like the early Yakuza. A common subject of Yakuza fiction is the powerful and commanding boss’s wife; a woman with a kind of old fashioned, regal demeanor, a back covered in tattoos, a dagger in her kimono, and a spitfire, take-no-shit attitude with a legion of loyal and subservient thugs at her command.

Themes as they are in play here, it’s entirely possible that Jin’emon is actually Iba’s father and that he either never married or separated from Chikane at some point, (Or they were married and had Iba only after the events of Turn Back the Pendulum, but given the apparent relative ages of Iba and other lieutenant characters like Hisagi and Nanao[七緒], that feels unlikely) making Iba and Sentarou (half) brothers.

#bleach #kiyone kotetsu #isane kotetsu #sentarou kotsubaki #jinemon kotsubaki #tetsuzaemon iba #chikane iba

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magicalgirlfumiko · 5 years

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📜

Sword of Embera: Medus Tenpenny

GENERAL CHARACTER STATISTICS

“Everyone says they love a thief, until they meet a professional one.”

“Pirates are the only ones that understand freedom, unlike those that live in the coastal kingdoms.”

“Freedom? Hahaha. There is no freedom in the seas, only lashings and death. I fight for my men, so they will be free by retiring alive.”

Character Name:

Medus Tenpenny

Name Meaning: “The Cunning One"

Alias: Pirate King

Gender: Male

Species/Race: Water Tribe, Human

Age: 24

B-Day: 9/22

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Place of Birth: Chenoa City, The Kingdom of Chenoa

Current Residence: Destruction Reef, Azar

Occupation: Head of the Yellow Brothers Syndicate

School/Grade: Finished college.Family: He considers the Gailsons to be the closest thing he has to a family.Gemstone: Sardonyx

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Height: 6’1”

Hair: Like most of his ocean dwelling tribe; Medus’ hair tone is very dark grey blue color. It is generally kept messy though the bangs rarely go past the base of his neck.

Eyes: Blue

Distinguishing Marks: Only thing that truly stands out about him is that his uniform is tailored differently from the rest of the deck officers.

General Appearance: Medus looks professional and uniformed. Medus is tall with a straight, upright posture. He has a straight, wedge-shaped nose and an extremely large forehead with a high hairline. He displays a lot of emotion in his face and doesn’t attempt hide it when he’s upset or mad.

General Clothing: He wears a red tunic and slacks when off duty. This tunic has gold trim in the center and on the cuffs. When he is on ship and for formal wear, Medus wears a fireman’s style red cap with a brass skull on the brim, a deep red frock that reaches his knees, and a waistcoat that is trimmed in gold. He wears a large ammo belt that allows for him to carry many 120 rounds of ammunition and a place to keep his whip. Medus almost always wears tall boots as a part of his outfits.

Strengths: Medus is capable of breathing underwater since he’s a water faye. He can also turn into a water form for several minutes which means that he can escape many tight jams. Medus is fast, as well. Most of his powers focused on his skills over magic.

Weaknesses: His worrisome nature makes his inclined to worry and this makes Medus is vulnerable to stomach and bowel troubles. He has an esoteric cuisine and as his delicate stomach requires him to be careful about his diet. It is essential that he treat his fascination with exotic food with extreme care. He also likes to smoke to deal with stress.

MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

Allies: Medus prefers his own personal freedom than he cares about the overall balance between good and evil. This is not to say that he doesn’t care about the Category, but he feels that it is too rigid in laws. His closest ally is named Naomi Gailson whom is a no-nonsense female first mate and swordsmen. They’re comrades and close friends. Naomi is the person he trusts the most. And one of the few, if not the only one, he’d give his life for. Medus’ First Mate is named Joel Gailson.

Enemies: Anyone that dares to oppose his freedom of the seas.

Current Goal/Purpose: He is currently trying to seek out the remains of Rane’s Sword of Embera in order to help Rose Gailson create more state of the art airships for his fleet. While he has little love for the Category, they are currently trying to sway them to fight against the invasion of Chenoa by providing him with much needed money.

Aspirations: Stay hidden and be left alone from the outside world. He has no interest in becoming a member of Unit Zero or the Category.

Hobbies: Reading, writing, flower gardening, planning out his meals (though he’s not a very good cook).

Likes: Health foods, Lists, Hygiene, Order, Wholesomeness

Dislikes: Medus dislikes anything that can be hazardous to his health, such as certain foods or being unclean. He also highly dislikes anything he considers sordid; this includes sloppy workers and squalor. The least obvious dislike of his is being uncertain about himself.

Talents: Medus is good with accounting and controlling revenues. This is how he became the overall leader of the Syndicate powers. He worked his way through the system and out moved his rivals. Medus is a skill tactician as well, making his a very dangerous foe when it comes to dealing with battles. In terms of leadership he is an arch perfectionist and conservative. However, all this responsibility irks him. Medus is essentially a tactician, admirable in the attainment of limited objectives.

Inabilities: Medus is extremely fussy and is a worrier. He conceals too much of his emotions, to which he is afraid of giving way because he does not trust others, nor does he have confidence in himself and his judgments when it comes to his personal life. This is because he is conscious of certain shortcomings in himself of worldliness, of practicality, of sophistication and of outgoingness. Medus is overcritical and harsh when it comes to dealing with people he dislikes.

Fears: Facing the reality of his imperfections, being useless and unneeded.

General Personality: Can be viewed as an old maid at times. He is intellectually enquiring, methodical and logical, studious and teachable. He is often defensive about his overall personality and is only open when he chooses to be. Medus has a love for the fine arts and is known to be a member of the University crowds in Chenoa City.

Inner Personality: Medus can be sensible, discreet, well spoken, wise and witty, with a good understanding of other people’s problems which he can tackle with a practicality not always evident in his own personal relationships. He is intellectually enquiring, methodical and logical, studious and teachable. He combines mental ingenuity with the ability to produce a clear analysis of the most complicated problems. He has an excellent eye for detail.

Fondest Memory: Taking Naomi out for dinner.

Biggest Regret: None.

Secret: Medus likes to read trashy novels.

SPECIALTY CHARACTERISTICS

Special Items: Medus is armed with the fastest airship called the Calypso’s Fall in the Category’s entire zone of influence. It is a destroyer-class naval ship that features a solid, smooth, boat-like hull. Its prow is dominated by a large ramming horn. Resting beneath this is the secondary hull, which contains the lift Embera Unit. Extending behind the primary hull is a single thrust vector Embera Unit, looking exactly like an enormous version of Rose’s speed ship main engine. Unlike most of the Category’s engines on their airships, the Embera Units onboard the Calypso-class are powered by exclusively by Embera thrust and not a combination of steam and aether magic. This can be seen with the large “aether ball” towards the front of the ship.

The destroyer’s primary weapons consist of two anti-ship torpedo launches. The short-range weaponry is two trios of small turrets machine guns.

Length: 321ft’ Height: 150’ Maximum Speed: 151.1kt (171 mph) Maximum Armor: 356mm (on broadsides).

Weapons: Medus always carries a short naval cutlass and several pistols in normal pirate fashion. Like the rest of his crew, they rarely rely on using their elemental magic and instead use hybrid technologies in order to overwhelm their foes.

Magic: Ice Blast: Medus can convert the water in the air into ice, therefore allowing his to freeze opponents with blasts of cold air.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

General History: Medus originally lived like a thug in the capital. He was eventually captured by the police force in the city. He was spared by veteran of the Rothnan War. His name was Joel Gailson. Joel saw much potential in the young Medus and was gave him the offer to stay a minor thief or learn a trade. Medus chose to learn a trade, knowing that the veteran was offering him a chance to escape the slums.

After graduating from the Chenoan Engineering School, Medus decided to get into the world of port trading. Medus spent some time living with Joel and his adopted daughters, Naomi and Rose. This trio became close as family and have been associated ever since. He got bored with port trade and decided to join Joel in the world of piracy. Since then he has gained a vast underworld paramilitary force. This was done through rather obscure means and mostly because of the fact that he’s good at striking fear into the hearts of even the bravest sailors…

Since running the Yellow Brothers, Medus is considered a high ranking member of the Syndicate; which is an international underground mafia. With these two factors, Medus can rest assured that there are very few that can mess with his and his empire. However, Unit Zero has been trying to get his attention of fighting against the invasion of Chenoa. He ponders if this will help him find the remains of the wreck of the Sword of Embera. Whoever controls that machine would be able to retain total control over the heavens.

#old character meme #fxtelism

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carnistcervine · 5 years

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Invader Zim self-insert?

Invader Zim self-insert.

I call her Astra “WingDings” Umbra, she’s a tired and sad bean who is madly in love with Membrane(and he has no idea lol), and I want her hair IRL. Side note-I’ve been experimenting with just coloring over my sketches instead of properly cleaning them up with smooth lines, and I like how this looks a lot better than my cleaned up art. _(:D」∠)_ Full bio under the cut~!

Name: [REDACTED] Pseudonym: Astra "WingDings" Umbra Title/Honors: PhD in (IHAVENTDECIDEDYETRIP), Bachelors in Game Design Species: Human(Technically) Ethnicity: Irish/Native American/African American(mixed) Age(depicted): 30 Gender/Pronouns: Female-She/Her Sexuality: Asexual Family: Thug Life*TM*(Her cat), Zephyr Umbra(her sibling) Residence: Earth Allies: Thug Life*TM*, Zephyr, Dib, Membrane Alignment: Earth(It's where she keeps her stuff) Moral Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Personality: Highly intelligent but has a propensity for being silly, lonely, a romantic coward, a little bit mad, loyal, can come across as cold and uncaring but is deeply loving, highly existential, very empathetic, doesn't anger easily(with the exception of her berserk buttons), seems calm but is actually tired and anxious Strengths: Highly perceptive of others, is good at knowing when to be serious Weaknesses: Not emotionally open, tends to come off as cold or unfeeling, easily flustered by romantic interests, highly empathetic but doesn't know how to help/reach out to others Fears: MANNEQUINS(seriously, fuck them), trypanophobia, bathophobia, Dolls(particularly porcelain ones), well preserved dead bodies, automotonophobia, agoraphobia

Personality In Depth: Astra is extremely smart and quick witted, but is easily underestimated due to how silly she tends to act. She's rather lonely, but also tends to isolate herself. She is easily flustered by her romantic interests or crushes, and cannot for the life of her just say she loves them to their face. She's rather "eccentric" and strange, this is exacerbated by the trauma of being flung through a wormhole and nearly working herself to death. Astra is very loyal to the few who earn her trust. But if you betray her, she'll not only hate you forever, she'll make it her mission to destroy you. She's about as emotionally open as a brick and tends to come off as cold and uncaring, but deep inside she's actually highly empathetic and loving. Of course, she also doesn't know how to reach out to others emotionally and is generally kind of an awkward bean. Like she genuinely cares very much for those around her, but doesn't know how to express it well. Astra usually comes across as calm and cool, but she's actually just shrieking constantly on the inside and is generally an anxious mess. She usually doesn't anger easily, but she's pretty scary when she's angry. She gets pretty murdery when she's angry to be honest. Astra has endless amounts of existential angst. You'd think this is the result of her jumping realities, but she's been that way since she was a teen. She's just naturally existential.

Theme Song: "A Complete History of the Soviet Union, Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker" by Pig with the Face of a Boy Song Quote: "Pointless work, for pointless pay... This is one game, I will not play!" General Quote: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long..." - Tyrell from Blade Runner Character Quotes: -"Finish that sentence. Go on, give me a reason to re-arrange your face." (To someone who was about talk shit about her cat) -"I want to say that I'm hangry, but honestly? I'm not even angry. Just hungry and tired." -"God? If you can hear me, please strike me down right now."

General Notes: -Unusually sturdy. -Has the strength of ten men. -Can speak fluent french. -Familiar enough with the wingdings font to write in it. This is where she got the nickname "WingDings" from. -Suffers from PTSD as well as multiple phobias. -Considers her cat to be her baby. -Don't talk shit about her cat, it's her berserk button. -Science deniers are her other berserk button.

Backstory: Pre-Wormhole- Born to a very poor family, raised by her single mother along with her sibling. Applied herself 110% to her schooling and got straight "A"s. She finished High School at 16 and went straight to college, right around this time, her mom died and instead of grieving, she dedicated herself to full time schooling. She adopted a kitten named Socks to fill the hole in her heart. She made herself content with life by pushing her sadness down into a dark corner of her psyche where she would confront it later. She managed to get plenty of merit scholarships and went through college getting straight "A"s. On her second to last quarter of schooling, a strange object crashed into the Earth. The object is called the Space Machine and it ends up in the hands of very dangerous criminals. The object has the power to distort the very fabric of reality itself. As reality becomes warped by the object, Socks turn into a cat-girl. Astra, Zephyr and Socks all work together to stop the criminals from destabilizing the universe in the name of becoming all powerful. However things come to a head two weeks before Astra's graduation, and the Space Machine destabilizes, threatening to collapse the whole universe. The trio fight there way through to where the machine is hidden and manage to find it minutes before it begins to implode. Astra tries her best to stop it, but she doesn't understand enough about the mechanics of the universe to do anything. So they all hold each other and prepare for the end. When Socks gets an idea, she tearfully tells Astra that she's the best friend she ever had and sacrifices herself to safely de-construct the Space Machine. This opens a wormhole that sucks in everyone in the immediate area.

Post-Wormhole- Astra awoke cradling the broken Space Machine to her chest. It didn't take too long before she and Zephyr realized they had been dragged into another reality entirely. In a world not her own, Astra swallowed the grief of losing her only friend and being so far from her true home. Feeling that her friends death and near collapse of her home were her fault, Astra dedicates herself to science and the study of the universe. She manages to make it into a university, earns a full-ride scholarship, and even ends up with an internship at MembraneLabs. She earns straight "A"s and continues to shove her grief down into the depths of her psyche to confront later. Astra ends up spending her every waking hour, either on classwork, intern work or trying to fix the Space Machine. However, she only becomes progressively more and more run down. Astra gets good grades, and her boss is proud of her, but she is unable to fix the Space Machine and her relationship with Zephyr takes a nosedive. Zephyr feels like they are being ignored and cast aside by their sister and does their best to try and convince her to just take a break and smell the roses for once. It doesn't work and Astra continues to dedicate herself full time to her work, neglecting her sibling. Of course, Astra's grief comes right back to haunt her as she continues to fail at fixing the Space Machine. Astra slowly and quietly spirals into hopelessness and madness. She adopts a cat that she names Thug Life*TM* in a poor attempt to fill the growing hole in her heart. Shortly after finally getting her PhD, Astra gives one final attempt at solving the mystery that is the Space Machine. Unable to fix the machine to take her home and save her lost friend, Astra violently throws the machine aside and locks it in a box. She's given up. Astra gives up on going home and saving her friend. She figures that it simply isn't worth the effort when she's only trading one crapsack world for another. And besides, she actually has a good job and friends here, there's nothing left for her at home. After all that trauma, she went and got her bachelor's for Game Design.

Because staring at the unfinished game prototypes sitting on her laptop makes her sad.

#Invader Zim #self insert #OC #CarnistCervineArt #I do seriously want her hair tho #pony-hawk for the win

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lilyswritings · 6 years

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Kiss Me

anonymous requested: could you please do 20, 27, and 40 for eggsy unwin?

20. “You look amazing tonight.” 27. “Kiss me.” 40. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I loved you.”

author’s note: okay so this got a little out of hand, I’ve been working on this for a few months now - I just really wanted it to be good. And I think it is! Anywho, warnings for fight scenes, blood, and injury mentions. Oh, and all the angst (I mean, what did you expect from me??) Enjoy!

word count: 2,191 (told you it got out of hand)

Eggsy Unwin x Reader

The woman staring back at you in the mirror looks harmless. Breathtaking, but harmless. Elegant, decked out in the finest jewels, no one would ever guess that you’re packed to the brim with weapons - guns and knives tucked in your garters, rings that become electrified at a simple push of a button, a hairpin with a poison dart loaded into it - basically, you’re lethal.

You apply a final coat of red lipstick, adjusting your certified Kingsman glasses, and you’re all set. When you step out of the bathroom and into the entrance hall of the venue, Eggsy is standing with his back to you, looking dapper in his finely cut suit and his hair combed back. When you clear your throat unsubtly, he turns around, a smirk stretching his lips when he sees you.

“Guinevere… You look amazing tonight.” He compliments, and you raise an eyebrow.

“Right back at you, Galahad.”

He offers his arm out to you, and you take it, gracefully looping your arm through and holding him closely. The large ballroom looks stunning, with diamond chandeliers and finely dressed couples milling about, waiters weaving through the crowds holding silver platters of food high above their heads.

When you spot the face that had been on the assignment file given to you, you lean into Eggsy, faking a delicate chuckle, and whisper in his ear. “10 o’clock, red suit jacket.”

He turns subtly, catching sight of the target as well, and you squeeze his arm gently. The plan is for you to approach the target, slip him a sedative, help him leave when he inevitably feels unwell, and steal the USB drive in his suit pocket. Agent Galahad is to be on the lookout, making sure no one grows suspicious, and to cause a distraction if need be.

You and Eggsy are posing as a soon-to-be married couple. The target, the illustrious ‘Monsieur Alphonse Renard’, is an international arms dealer with plans to sell British government weapon plans to terrorists. Oh, and he has an extensive history of relationships with married or engaged women.

“What a tosser.” Eggsy had said during the briefing, and you can’t help but agree as you look at his overly-slicked hair and outrageous red suit jacket.

An unsettling feeling settles over you, and you realize that Renard is staring right at you. You turn to your fake fiancé. “Kiss me.” You say, and Eggsy does, leaning in and briefly sealing his lips to yours. You push away the warmth that spreads through your body at the brief intimacy - this is a mission, you remind yourself, and you can’t let feelings distract you.

“Love you.” He offers, and you smile, turning and heading towards the bar. You are hyper aware of the feeling of the tiny pill in a metal case sewn into a fold of your dress, touching your thigh as you walk towards him.

When you slide into your barstool, Renard smiles slyly at you, and you feign a flirty smile in response as he sidles up to you. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing alone at the bar?”

“Getting away from my fiancé.” You smile, and he raises an eyebrow. “I’m Eloise. And you are?” You ask him, and when he smiles and replies with his first name, your fingers fumble into the fold of your dress and extract the pill container, deftly dumping the pill into your hand. As Renard remains focused on your face, you can’t help but think this is going to be easy.

Unfortunately, things never quite turn out the way you want them to.

Renard glances over your shoulder, a smirk on his lips, and you seize your chance, dropping the pill into his drink. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to notice, and you let yourself breathe out in relief. Until he speaks again.

“You know, it’s not polite to roofie a gentleman’s drink, Guinevere.” Your heart stops, hand flying down to wrap around the pistol hidden in your thigh garter, but before you even get the chance to pull it out of the holster the distinct feeling of the barrel of a gun presses into your back, right into your spine.

“Let’s go join your partner, shall we?” He says into your neck, You grit your teeth, fury alighting in your veins as Renard’s henchman pushes the gun harder into your back, making you slip off the stool and start walking. Your eyes dart around the ballroom, but no one seems to have noticed the woman being held at gunpoint. Well, at least Merlin won’t scold you for disrupting the peace again.

You’re shoved, indelicately, into a darkened office room, and when your eyes adjust you find Eggsy stood by the wall, in between two guards with pistols aimed at him.

You face a similar treatment as more men enter the room, holding your arms firmly and aiming their guns at you. Eggsy catches your eye and you nod subtly, to tell him you’re alright, but when one of the goons tugs roughly on your bare arm you can see the anger brewing in his expression.

“Isn’t this just a pleasant surprise? Here I was thinking I’d have to spend weeks, or even months infiltrating the infamous Kingsman service, but no! You two practically throw yourselves at my feet.” Renard speaks, and gestures to the men behind you, who roughly push you into the chairs facing the desk and begin to tie your hands behind your back.

Just as they loop the knot you jolt upwards, tugging the ropes off your hands, pressing your rings into the man’s neck and electrocuting him, before whirling around and aiming your fist at the other henchmen. But before the rings can make contact, a searing pain alights in your side, and you faintly register Eggsy shouting as you crumple back into the seat and Renard removes the electric cattle prod from your side.

“I’m gonna rip your fucking face off-” Eggsy spits, but is cut off as Renard connects the baton to your side again and you yelp, spasming.

“No more of that foulness, please.” Renard says calmly, a single eyebrow raised, and you register the men finally tying your hands behind your back.

You can feel Eggsy’s eyes on you and you sigh, blowing a strand of hair out of your face as you straighten, panting from the physical exertion. “‘M fine, Galahad.”

You know he doesn’t believe you, but seems to relax (only slightly) into the chair upon seeing that you’re still somewhat okay.

“As much as I hate to break up this… Adorable moment, I do have some questions for the two of you.” Renard drawls, calmly setting the cattle prod on the desk with a dull tap. “First of all, how much do you know about my trades?”

You meet his gaze bemusedly, managing a small smirk as he watches you. “You’re kidding, right?” You say, glancing between him and his henchmen.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what’s so funny.” Renard grits out, settling his gaze on Eggsy instead.

“Mate, you’re not gonna get anything from us.” Eggsy retorts, leaning forwards in his suit. “We’re Kingsmen, not common thugs.”

“Speaking of...” You draw the arms dealer’s attention away from Eggsy, and smirk as you twist your bracelet on your wrist. “Kingsmen always come prepared.”

Suddenly, the lights go out, plunging the room into darkness and eliciting shouts from the many henchmen stationed around the room. Your glasses kick in, turning on the night vision mode, and you smirk, locking eyes with Eggsy. You shove yourself backwards, colliding with the wall and splintering your wooden chair into pieces.

Once out of the chair, you tug a knife out of your garter and slice through the rope around your wrists, before lunging for the closest man and shoving your knife in his neck.

You can hear the common across the room as Eggsy wards off the other guards, and when the three men who were around you are down, you turn your attention back to the arms dealer.

The lights go back on as Merlin’s Scottish accent floods your ear. “Sorry, Guinevere- they’ve pushed me back out of the system. I’m out of control, now. You two are on your own.”

Renard meets your eyes as you slip your gun out of its holster, a smirk plastered on his lips. “Well well well...” He drawls, glancing between you and Eggsy who also has his pistol aimed at Renard’s head. “I guess your orders aren’t to kill me, are they?”

The cockiness in his voice makes you clench your jaw as you glance over at your partner. You’re not sure how to play this; you need the hard drive, but you also need Renard alive. He has information that Kingsman desperately needs. If you kill him, his secrets and invaluable information follow him to the grave.

Eggsy meets your gaze and shrugs, raising an eyebrow as he mouths the words, “Hair pin.”

Your moment of hesitation gives him a head start, though, as he dives behind his desk before shooting a spray of bullets into the wall behind you. “A fucking machine gun?” You curse, ducking down and pulling your hairpin out, letting the hair fall over your face.

You spot his leg under the desk, and aim the pin, blowing on one end and sending the dart into the exposed skin below the pant leg and above the shoe. You hear him cry out, and watch Eggsy go behind the desk and drag an unconscious Alphonse Renard into the open.

He pulls out the hard drive from his pocket, throwing it to you, before tying his hands and feet together. Then, he takes a small red vial from his jacket and tips it into the unconscious man’s mouth - the antidote.

You hold the hard drive out in front of you, eyes narrowing as you take in the blurry object. Suddenly, you feel a dull ache settle over you, and you glance down at your dark red dress to notice a small hole in the torso.

When you brush your fingers over it, it sends a jolt of pain through your body, and your fingers come away red. “Eggsy?” You mutter, slumping into the wall.

“Hey, what’s-” You look up to see his pale face, his green eyes fixated on your fingertips and the crimson liquid dripping off of them. “No, no, no.” He says, crouching next to you and pressing a hand over your stomach.

The pain burns through you, and you feebly try to push his arm off of you as he pushes down on the wound. “Ow, stop it.” You murmur, and he reaches up with one hand and taps your face.

“Hey, I’m saving your life.” He tries, a barely-there smile on his lips that disappears as you try to close your eyelids again. “Stay with me, Y/N.” He says, pressing down more insistently.

“Merlin, Guinevere’s down - I repeat, she’s been shot.” His voice sounds kind of muffled, but you can still recognize the badly masked panic that laces his words.

“I don’t want to die.” You realize suddenly, and your eyes roll up and meet Eggsy’s. You realize with a start that there are tears rolling down his cheeks.

“You’re not going to die. I won’t let you.” He reaffirms, shrugging off his suit jacket and putting it over the wound before pressing down again.

“Merlin, we need medical now!” Eggsy shouts, and you reach up and grab his forearm gently.

“It’s okay.” You say, and he shakes his head, setting loose a few hairs from his slicked back hairstyle.

“No, it’s not,” He chokes out. “Y/N- I wasn’t lying when I said that I loved you.” He admits, and you let out a watery laugh.

“I love you too.” You admit, your vision darkening at the edges. Eggsy begins to cry, now, pulling your head onto his lap as he leans down and presses a shaky kiss to your forehead.

“Hold on, for me. Please.” His pleas are the last things you hear as your vision goes dark and the world fades around you.

This isn’t the first time you’ve woken up in the Kingsman infirmary, nor will it be your last, you think. As your eyes open slowly, blinded by the white ceiling of the sterile room, you suck in a deep breath as pain tears through your stomach.

Your intake of breath must have woken him up, because as soon as you try to sit up Eggsy is there, pushing you back down. “Hey, love, you need to lie back.”

You laugh slightly, elated by the sound of his voice as you seek out his face with the palm your hand, sliding your hand to the back of his head and pulling him in for a kiss.

When he pulls back, he grins. “Guess that means you meant what you said?” He asks, and you nod.

“I love you.” You reaffirm.

“I love you,” He echoes. “But if you ever scare me like that again I’ll kill you myself.” He jokes, and you laugh.

“Deal.”

#eggsy unwin imagine #eggsy unwin x reader #eggsy x reader #eggsy imagine #eggsy unwin #kingsman x reader #kingsman imagine #kingsman the golden circle imagine

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dontunderestimatemypoison · 6 years

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梅花

//A bit of angst revolving around F.A.N.G, @hadesrebelofadaughter, and the rest of Shadaloo.

Shadaloo was nearly overrun by a rival Russian cartel. They almost out did Shadaloo in regards to man power and weapon power. F.A.N.G had sent Jess and Ning away to a safe house. Bison sent Bai and the other comfort women with them. Bai, for once, is being civil. She is too scared to be her usual snarky self.

For once, F.A.N.G, Vega, and Balrog are working together without fighting. The three move quietly and stealthily down a corridor. They learned that the more high ranked members of the opposition are in the dining hall. Bison is dealing with the leader.

Vega has his clawed glove and a knife for backup. Balrog has a machine gun. F.A.N.G naturally opts to forgo weapons. His hands are dangerous enough. The trio pauses when a gun sounds and a bullet whizzes past them. Naturally someone would hide in the damn supply closet that’s a few inches in front of them to their right. Four men exit and try to ambush the trio. Balrog is able to take two down as Vega takes down one and F.A.N.G takes down the fourth. The fourth one winds up as a puddle of goo.

“Really... that’s just overkill,” Vega states wiping his set of claws off.

“But it’s a necessity... it’s one less to worry about... four if you count him and his cohorts,” F.A.N.G smirks.

“Well played,” Vega responds.

“Can we go? We got others to help take down,” Balrog quips.

“Ok, ok,” F.A.N.G says as he starts walking towards the dining hall. The other two follow.

“Well, well, I see we’re late,” F.A.N.G quips when they enter the dining hall. The high ranked members of the other cartel turn their weapons on the trio.

“You damn snake! We’ve heard not to trust you!” One snaps.

“You can call me whatever you like just don’t call me late for dinner,” F.A.N.G says with a sickly, sweet smile.

Knives are thrown and guns are fired. F.A.N.G manages to get to the last one standing, the one that called him a snake. He stalks forward slowly. The man is now knowing what true fear is. He watched F.A.N.G kill several men in a short time span just by touching them. He knows why F.A.N.G is Bison’s second-in-command. The title and power granted to this too tall, thin man has been well earned. The man also knows if he’s going down, try to take as many down with him. F.A.N.G is now six inches away. He grips the man’s neck with a silk sleeve covered hand. Despite his lean build, he neck lifts the man.

“I have something I want to ask you,” F.A.N.G purrs.

The man struggles.

“Did you honestly think you and your band of thugs could overthrow Shadaloo? Be a hero at a thousand places? I should tell you, there’s man’s law and Lord Bison’s law and I think you know who’s side I’m on,” F.A.N.G states before moving to go in for the kill.

The man shifts and draws a hidden knife and stabs F.A.N.G. There is rasping gasp from F.A.N.G. Balrog manages to squeeze in two shots and hits the man twice. F.A.N.G and the man both go down. F.A.N.G is able to uncover one of his hands and touch the man. Between the shots and the poison, he is dead within seconds. F.A.N.G is trying to stay calm. He hears Balrog talking in the walk-in talkie.

“We got a King down! Poison King down!”

Vega is trying to tend to F.A.N.G. F.A.N.G sees panic in Vega’s eyes. F.A.N.G’s breathing is abnormal and ragged. His chest feels tight. He feels tired. By now, the other cartel only has a hand full of survivors and has been put in cells. F.A.N.G hears clamoring as medics come in. He groans as he is moved. It comes out as more of a wheeze.

He is in and out of consciousness as he is moved quickly and carefully to the medical area. The entire medical staff is on duty and is doing triage. A doctor and five nurses are quick to work on stabilizing F.A.N.G.

They get a chest tube and it is placed through the ribs into the area surrounding the lungs to help drain the air. They tell Bison that the chest tube can be left in place both for air drainage and also to help inflate the lung and in severe cases, the chest tube may need to be left in place for several days before the chest begins to expand. They also start on surgery. They are surprised at how much anesthesia has been needed to put F.A.N.G under.

The staff tending to F.A.N.G work on repairing the injury by going through tubes placed down the throat into the bronchial airways. Additionally, the select staff place a tube to remove excess air, and they have to suction out any blood cells or other fluids in the pleural space.

While F.A.N.G’s surgery is going on, the other casualties are being tended to and the few dead are properly buried, Bison makes sure that everything is secured and everyone is safe. Once done, he has Jess, Ning, Bai and the others brought back home. He then delivers the news.

Jess and Ning both panic. Ning makes no effort to keep a calm composure. Jess makes an effort to stay calm for Ning’s state. Bai is exceptionally calm but she is panicking internally. She knows how important F.A.N.G is to Bison, Ning and Jess. She knows he protects them and cares about them. She might not admit this but she would miss F.A.N.G if things take a turn for the worst. She wouldn’t have anyone to truly trade barbs with. Once F.A.N.G is out of surgery and resting. The doctor talks to Bison, Jess, Ning and Bai.

“He’s done well. I’m 99 percent certain he’ll pull through. I’ll make sure an eye is kept on him.”

Bison nods and the three women thank the doctor. They let Jess go in first. F.A.N.G is unconscious and pale. His hair undone and looks unkempt. His breathing is stable. The nurse has made sure he is comfortably propped up. They’ve avoided putting his shirt back on and some of the bandages are visible. The sheet is folded down just below his chest, showing an inch or two of the bandages. Jess brushes a few strands of his silky onyx hair back gently. She sniffles and kisses his forehead softly.

“I love you, you dork... you better get well soon, I’m not done picking at you yet,” she chides softly even though she knows he can’t hear her.

She stays by his side for thirty minutes or so before leaving to let a nurse come in and check on him. Then Bison comes in. It’s odd for him to see his second-in-command in this state.

I’ll be on the side that kills, not the side that is killed... those words F.A.N.G said years ago rings in Bison’s head. He tells the doctor that whatever F.A.N.G needs medically, get it and Bison will gladly pay for it. The doctor nods.

Then it is Bai’s turn. She studies the sedated second-in-command. She settles down by his bedside.

“If you die and leave Bison and those two women and you leave me with no one to trade smart remarks with, I’ll never forgive you, you snake,” Bai says softly. There is a crack in her composure and there’s a quiet sniff. She sits by his side for a bit before she gently pats his thin cheek and leaves quietly.

Then it’s Ning’s turn. She has cried for nearly an hour and a half. Bison, Jess, and Bai have all taken turns comforting her. By now, she has been calmed down enough to keep reasonably composed.

“宠儿, you get better soon. Jess needs you,” she sniffles. “Bison and I need you.”

She kisses his forehead and quietly leaves. Even Greta comes by after her kitchen duties and making sure everyone has been fed. She settles down beside Jess.

“He’s going to get through this, Jess... Death might scare him but death is not in his vocabulary either,” Greta assures Jess quietly as she gently pats the younger woman’s hand.

“I know but he is so damned accident prone sometimes,” Jess admits. “I know he’ll fight for Shadaloo and to protect those he cares about but I... I just wish he’d be more careful.”

“So do I,” Greta says. “But my boy didn’t get where he is now by always being overly safe.”

Jess chuckles. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who knows how pig headed he can be at times.”

There’s a hint of a smile on Greta’s lips. “I know all to well.”

In time, F.A.N.G is awake. He manages to get up and walk around some but he knows not to overdo the physical exertion. While he’s resting and recovering, he does some paperwork so at least he won’t go crazy from boredom and won’t get behind with work. He lets his second-in-command take over with the major stuff for the time being. He makes sure he does his breathing exercises and takes his medicine. Greta and Jess both make sure he eats enough to get his strength up. He goes through with the regular doctor checkups.

#mobile #hadesrebelofadaughter #tw violence #tw stabbing #tw guns #tw knives #tw surgery #street fighter #sreet fighter solo #writing #solo #solos #street fighter solo #street fighter solos #about #F.A.N.G

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rekkingcrew · 6 years

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Rek DMs: Space Bastards Ep 0 (pt 2)

continued from https://rekkingcrew.tumblr.com/post/179064273187/rek-dms-space-bastards-episode-zero-pt-1

Let’s talk about the ship!

I always figured the custom ship was going to be a big focal point for the group and a big part of the initial buy in. It’s home. It’s home base. Both the players and the characters have made modifications to make it their own.

My plan had been to ask the group what insane star wars alien species their ship was designed for, and what modifications they had all made to be able to use it. I was thinking something like an aquatic species where the inside required joisting to hold it’s shape absent the presence of liquid, or it had belonged to something that was naturally much smaller or much larger than a human.

Instead, the players gave me something magical.

TK’s player said his idea for how he came to join the crew was that he had been in a crate in an evidence locker.

Or maybe an evidence ship.

“Oh my god,” said another player. “We’re driving around in a stolen cop car.”

And so they are.

And I’m not kidding, that’s the thing that set the tone for everything that came after and clicked everything into place. The Black Star is who the group is.

What the players came up with was that they and their NPCs had been disparate petty criminals who had, individually and with other groups, been part of a fifteen gang pile up when a wealthy criminal individual died and everyone tried to be the first to loot his space station, and had ended up in a guns pointed every direction space Mexican standoff (minus TK, who was in the evidence locker, and Eshi, who had already hopped aboard from one stow away situation to another), before they made the collective decision to work together to escape the collapsing station rather than fight. The main architect of this truce was an older twi’lek called Ort Fine, who was wounded during the escape. The group grabbed the last available ship, a slow but heavily gunned and armored police vehicle that was a brand new prototype model, and jetted off together into space. They peeled off the police logo and painted a black star over it. It’s not even a particularly good cover job. Ort was initially the primary force in getting them all to stay together and work as a crew, speaking to each of them about their strengths and convincing them to work a job together he arranged. He died on the job, but the crew stayed together, and out of respect Ort is still listed as the captain on all the manifests.

Mechanically, I’d told the players to pick one of the freighters or transports from the books. They would be allowed to up two stats or put in upgrades, and then I would require them to drop one stat. There would also be whatever narrative consequences I thought fit their choice of ship- in this case, they look like a cop ship, plus in stealing their ship, they’ve made personal enemies of the police forces. The ship also has a lot of internal locks and seals that have been slightly on the fritz since they stole it. I’ve also told them I’m keeping track of fuel and they’re going to have to keep refilling if they want to make long jumps. They have six units in the tank. A small hyperspace jump uses one, a medium two, a long three. The players picked an ILH-KK Citadel Class light freighter, which is a perfect police or pirate ship. They improved the handling and added smuggling compartments as their upgrades. For their disadvantage, rather than dropping a stat, they suggested the following: this ship is exclusively sold for police and military use and parts are proprietary and restricted. All mechanics checks have at least two disadvantage dice unless correct parts are obtained first. Some repairs will not be possible at all without them.

The players seemed to really enjoy making the ship. Most of them also do Warhammer, and one of them found a ship design from there they shared with everyone. “Yes! That’s perfect!”

The NPCs

I’d told the gang they got two NPCs to help cover any gaps in competencies. They were also meant to get the players invested in the world right away. Since TK was capable of covering multiple roles, they had a little freedom.

The first thing they wanted was a criminal face man. I’d been talking to Nyla’s player about some of the things I’d been kicking around about Devaronian gender politics, and so that was the species suggestion from that player. We went for some obvious Satan jokes, and everyone in the group took a turn giving the character one trait. Which is how we got:

Beelz Feck: devaronian con artist and walking catastrophe.

Beelz is a compulsive gambler and up to his eyeballs in debt. He’s also alienated a lot of people in his past and has more bounties on him than the rest of the crew combined, largely because when things get dangerous, Beelz has a bad habit of cashing out. Even so, more than anyone else on the crew, Beelz has a very good ear for what’s going on, and while he always comes back to the ship poorer than when he left it, he also comes back with loads of useful information about rumors, gang wars, and possible leads for the PCs to follow. Beelz’s uncle (who variously goes by “Old Harry”, “Old Scratch”, and “Old Nick”) runs an off-the-grid ship hangar and trading port, and out of gratitude for looking after his sister’s kid, he’s sheltered the crew even when it was a big personal risk for him (that NPC was always planned but not populated, and the group decided it made sense to tie him to Beelz). We also worked out that he is terrified of Brick, but Brick, being Brick, has never actually noticed, and just thinks Beelz is being accommodating. They’re room mates now.

The players couldn’t think of any role they desperately needed after that, so they went for something fun: an assassin. They decided the character should definitely be female, because it was a bit of a sausage fest otherwise. They also decided she was a Bothan. We followed the same format: one trait from each player, then a free brainstorming session. This gave us:

“Thirteen”

None of the crew know what Thirteen’s real name or actual story are. Every now and again she claims she needs to visit her husband, but each time it’s a different man. They have never seen her without knives or a holdout blaster. Sometimes she’ll just disappear for days. Sometimes, even when they think a mission was their idea, she’ll coincidentally have someone she needs to kill at just that place. Thirteen mostly stays out of the rest of the crew’s business, and she keeps them well out of hers. She’s icy, aloof, and professional. Only the killbot personality in TK has ever gotten a laugh out of her. After Ort died, she took over the captain’s quarters and changed the locks, and no one has been able to get in since. Twice since she’s been with the crew, small groups of well trained killers have tried to hit the ship, which hasn’t made the rest of the crew happy, but Thirteen has not explained anything. She appears to know and will occasionally allude to other character’s secrets, but she hasn’t betrayed any confidences and does not appear likely to. Thirteen is exceptionally capable, and when it suits her, she brings in hard to find jobs that make problems like the APB on their ship just... disappear. She seems content with her situation for now, and as far as anyone can tell, she mostly likes the crew, especially Eshi.

I also gave each NPC four starting opinions, one for each character: very positive, positive, neutral, and negative. I let the players pick who got which and what that meant. I like players having asymmetric access to resources, and I like interesting social dynamics.

Beelz considers Nyla his good luck charm and goes out of his way to do nice little things for her. He’s also predisposed to think of her as competent and in charge because he grew up in a matriarchy and doesn’t examine his own thought process much. For all that Brick terrifies him, he’s a really comprehensible sort, and a useful guy to have at your back. TK is a droid, and kind of a weird one, but meh, what can you do? He doesn’t like having Eshi on the ship, though. He’s just a kid, and that feels irresponsible even for Beelz.

Eshi is Thirteen’s favorite. He’s a smart kid with so much potential. Of all of them, he’s going to be the most useful. She’s amused by TK, especially his violent program. Her relationship to Nyla is cool and professional, and that feels comfortable for both of them. Nyla is more crisp and military around her. But they don’t know each other well personally, and neither seems inclined to. And Brick? What about him? He doesn’t even merit contempt, really. He’s a dime a dozen. We could replace him with any one of a thousand thugs off the street and who could even tell the difference?

More later. Jesus this is long, but I did want to talk about the process, because I think it all went very well.

#Rek DMs #i dmed #Space Bastards

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Did Republicans Riot When Obama Won

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-republicans-riot-when-obama-won/

Did Republicans Riot When Obama Won

Dow Opens Up 133 Points As Markets Look Beyond Us Capitol Siege

Protesters Today vs the Racist Republican Anti-Obama Protesters – #OccupyDemocratsReport

The major US stock indexes opened higher on Thursday, as investors continued to look beyond the storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday by supporters of President Donald Trump.

While Wednesdays chaos in Washington, DC saw US stocks move off of session highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average still managed to finish in record territory.

The 30-share index continued its advance on Thursday, jumping more than 133 points at the open of trading on Wall Street to 30,962.95.

The S&P 500 edged up 0.70 percent at the open, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.02 percent.

Speculation abounds as to why the stock market continues to move higher in the face of Wednesdays events.

Read the analysis of Al Jazeeras managing business editor Patricia Sabga here.

7 Jan 2021 – 15:08 GMT

The State Department Labels Cuba A State Sponsor Of Terrorism In A Last

The State Department has designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a last-minute foreign policy stroke that will complicate the incoming Biden administrations plans for dealing with Havana.

With this action, we will once again hold Cubas government accountable and send a clear message: The Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S. justice, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Pompeo was weighing the move and had a plan to do so on his desk. The action, announced with just over a week left in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, calling its decades of isolation an archaic relic of the Cold War.

Once in office, President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Mr. Obamas policy of openness, which Republicans said Havana forfeited by failing to implement promised reforms and continuing to crack down on political dissent. The designation requires a finding that a country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, according to the State Department. The move automatically triggers U.S. sanctions against Cuba, including limits on U.S. foreign assistance, export controls and financial restrictions.

Congressman Who Was Inside Capitol During Riot Says Extremism In The Us Is The True Problem

From CNN’s Josiah Ryan

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith said he quickly realized that extremism in the US is the true threat, as he learned the US Capitol building, which he was in, was being stormed by a violent pro-Trump mob.

“What was going through my mind is extremism is an enormous problem in this country, and Donald Trump is just throwing matches all over the powder kegs,” he said, speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett this evening.;

“The rest of the country that enabled him is what we really need to work to fix,” continued Smith,;who is the the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “You need to understand the dangers of extremism. We have gotten to the point we don’t understand rule of law matters.”

“It isn’t that you get your way all the time and if you don’t get your way you have to fight until you do.” he continued. “You play by the rules and when it’s over, you accept the outcome and you govern this country.”

“We need to push back on the extremism,” he concluded.

But Smith also reserved harsh words for President Trump.

“Donald Trump, is a narcissistic psychopath, let’s just be clear about that,” said the congressman. “He stumbled his way into the presidency. What he believes from a policy standpoint is irrelevant. He is an egotist, cares about himself, period.”

Don’t Miss: Donald Trump Republicans Stupid

Army Officer Who Led Group To Washington Rally Now Under Investigation

The Army is investigating one of its officers after she led a group from North Carolina to the pro-Trump rally in Washington.

Commanders at Fort Bragg are reviewing psychological operations officer Capt. Emily Rainey‘s involvement in last week’s events that led to the;deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Rainey said she led 100 members of Moore County Citizens for Freedom, which describes itself online as a nonpartisan network promoting conservative values, to Washington to “stand against election fraud” and support Trump.;

She said she acted within military regulations and that no one in her group broke the law. Valerie Block

Shadowy Conservative Pac Pushed Supporters To Go To Rally March That Led To Riot

A political action committee once funded by conservative millionaire Robert Mercer promoted both the rally featuring President;Donald Trump;and the ensuing march on Capitol Hill that led to a deadly riot last week.

The PAC, called the Black Conservatives Fund, promotes itself as “committed to turning out the black vote and elect black conservatives at every level of government.” The PAC didn’t raise or spend any money in 2020, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. It has shifted primarily to encourage its followers to attend pro-Trump rallies, and it’s not clear who runs the group.

Through social media posts, the committee pushed tens of thousands of its followers to attend the rally in front of the White House on Wednesday and then to participate in the march on Capitol Hill that led to a riot, leaving at least five people dead, including a police officer.

The Black Conservatives Fund’s biggest previous donation came from Mercer in 2014. He gave;more than $150,000 to the committee;at the time. Brian Schwartz

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans Free The Slaves

Republican Voters Want To Impeach The President Good Luck With That

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other Republicans calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama might want to take a look at the history books and the U.S. Constitution before getting too excited about the idea.

Congress rarely uses its power to impeach, and when it has, impeachment has only infrequently and in the case of a president, never resulted in removal from office. Congress has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times in the history of the United States. Just 19 of those cases have been tried by the Senate, and only eight federal judges have ever been convicted and removed from office.

Although House Speaker John Boehner has maintained he is not interested in pursuing impeachment, a top White House aide said Friday that he expected House Republicans to do just that. And a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that one-third of Americans and two-thirds of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached. These numbers reflect an increasingly popular view in conservative circles, which Palin gave voice to earlier this month when she claimed the recent surge of undocumented immigrants at the border was an example of the presidents rewarding of lawlessness.

So, why do some conservatives appear to think this would be more of a Nixon than a Clinton situation?

Rep. Bob Goodlatte , chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, earlier this month offered perhaps the most sober rebuke to the calls for impeachment.

Biden Harris Certified As Winners Of 2020 Election: A Timeline

Trump promises an orderly transition after the Congress certifies the Electoral College win of Biden and Harris officially making them the next president and vice president.

Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol as Congress gathers to certify President-elect Joe Bidens presidential win.

Four people are dead, 52 arrested as protesters entered US Capitol building as legislators meet.

Chaos comes after Trump encouraged the crowd to march to Capitol.

The US House and Senate rejected the Republican objection to Pennsylvanias vote results.

Heres Al Jazeeras coverage of the US elections. This is Tamila Varshalomidze taking over from Creede Newton.

We are closing this blog now. These were the updates up to 16:00 GMT on Thursday, January 7. For the latest news look here.

7 Jan 2021 – 16:10 GMT

Don’t Miss: How Many Senate Republicans Are There

Mcconnell: We Will Certify The Winner Of The Election

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered up a defiant tone when the Senate returned after rioters stormed the US Capitol, saying the Senate will not be intimidated.

We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats, McConnell said. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation.

The US and US Congress has faced down much greater threats than the unhinged crowd we saw today. They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed. They failed.

Now we are going to finish what we started, said McConnell. And we will certify the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Members Of Congress Inside House Chamber Told By Police To Put On Gas Masks

âThe GOP Is Now The Riot Adjacent Party,â Says Obama Campaign Vet | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Members of Congress inside House chamber told by police to put on gas masks after tear gas dispersed in Capitol Rotunda.

The tear gas had been used after protesters entered the Capitol building.

Protesters broke windows looking into the House chamber, with images from inside the chamber showing security with guns drawn.

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Names

Trump Warns Of Riots Pulls Plug On Republican Presidential Debate

By Steve Holland

7 Min Read

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the partys presidential nomination and pulled the plug on a scheduled debate among candidates, raising the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

The outspoken New York businessman scored big wins in primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday, bringing him closer to the 1,237 convention delegates he needs to win the nomination.

Trump also claimed victory in Missouri but lost the crucial state of Ohio, and left the door open for those in the party trying to stop him from becoming the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump might fall short of the majority of delegates required, enabling the partys establishment to put forward another name at the July convention in Cleveland to formally pick its candidate.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Trump said the party could not deny him the nomination should he fail to win enough delegates.

I dont think you can say that we dont get it automatically. I think youd have riots. I think youd have riots. Im representing many, many millions of people.

While the Republicans were mired deeper in turmoil, Hillary Clinton won victories in at least four states on Tuesday that put her in good shape to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and win the Democratic Partys nomination.

Related Coverage

Video Shows Trump Supporters Heckling Mitt Romney On Flight

A viral video shows Republican Senator Mitt Romney, one of the few vocal critics of the president in the party, heckled by a group of Trump supporters on a flight.

The group of Trump supporters, who reportedly on their way to the protest in Washington, DC, chanted Traitor! Traitor! Traitor at Romney on the flight from Salt Lake City, Nevada to the US capital.

Romney, who has criticised a Republican plot to object the certification of the Electoral College vote on Wednesday, was also approached by Trump supporters in the airport before the flight took off, video shows.

heres a clip purportedly of Trump patriots harassing Sen. Mitt Romney *ON A FLIGHT* on way to DC.

our Republic had a decent run.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans Running Against Donald Trump

Green Light For Bidens Nominees

While the filibuster will be a continued thorn in Democratic sides when it comes to legislation, it no longer applies to presidential nominations. That means Bidens selection for his administration, from the Cabinet on down, can be confirmed solely with Democratic votes . Thats good news for nominees who might have been controversial, like Neera Tanden, Bidens budget office pick.

Since several centrist Republicans have already said they will usually defer to the new presidents appointments, it should be smooth sailing for most of his nominees.

The same goes for Bidens judicial appointments, including any Supreme Court vacancies that open up in the near future. Donald Trump in his four years placed 234 judges on the federal bench, including three to the Supreme Court. That has given him a political legacy that will long outlast his one term in office. Biden, thanks to Georgia, should have the opportunity to start rolling back some of those gains.

The Nobel Peace Prize And Partisanship

In an effort to improve the image of the United States abroadwhich many believed had been much damaged during the Bush administrationObama took a number of steps that indicated a significant shift in tone. He signed an executive order that banned excessive interrogation techniques; ordered the closing of the controversial military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year ; proposed a fresh start to strained relations with Russia; and traveled to Cairo in June 2009 to deliver a historic speech in which he reached out to the Muslim world. Largely as a result of these efforts, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Yet some left-wing critics complained that he actually had adopted and even escalated most of the war and national security policies of his predecessor. Indeed, when Obama accepted the Nobel Prize in December, he said, Evil does exist in the world and there will be times when nationsacting individually or in concertwill find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. Notwithstanding that tough talk, there were others who criticized Obama for issuing only a mild condemnation of the Iranian governments crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents following a disputed election in June 2009. Moreover, the Obama administrations handling of national security was questioned by some when a Nigerian terrorist trained in Yemen was thwarted in an attempt to bomb an airliner headed for Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

Read Also: Who Are The Moderate Republicans In The Senate

Pence: Lets Get Back To Work

Vice President Pence resumed the session of Congress, calling Wednesday a dark day in the history of the US Capitol.

The Capitol is secured and the peoples work continues, Pence said. We condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms.

We grieve the loss of life in these hallowed halls, Pence said. To those who wreaked havoc in the US Capitol, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the peoples house. Lets get back to work.

Trump Warns Of ‘riots’ If He Isn’t Gop Nominee

A contested convention could ‘disenfranchise’ millions of voters, he says.

03/16/2016 10:16 AM EDT

Donald Trump on Wednesday sounded like a man ready to take the stage as the Republican Party’s nominee by acclamation at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland come mid-July, delegate math and a debate scheduled for next Monday be damned.

Denying him the GOP nomination as part of a contested convention, he declared, would “disenfranchise” the millions of people he is bringing into the party and could spark riots. The only problem: Delegate math.

Trump, who flooded the morning television shows with a deluge of off-camera telephone calls after a night of big wins that knocked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio out of the race, said that even if he doesnt amass a majority of delegates by July, the party should unite behind him anyway. But Trump has a ways to go when it comes to getting to the magic number of 1,237.

At this point in the 2012 race, which began a month earlier than this year’s, Mitt Romney was already on his way to securing a simple majority of total delegate votes, though even he did not get there until a resounding victory in Texas on May 29.

Trump said he’s bringing in all kinds of new people to the party, and those voices must be heard or else.

Read Also: Did The Republicans Win The Senate Last Night

Trump Issues Dc Emergency Order To Support Inauguration Security

President Donald Trump approved a Washington, D.C. emergency declaration ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration from Jan. 11 to Jan. 24 to bolster security.

The order comes after violent rioters attacked the U.S Capitol last Wednesday, using online platforms to organize.

Trump’s declaration says an “emergency exists in the District of Columbia” and orders federal assistance to supplement Washington, D.C’s response efforts due to the emergency conditions.

Trump’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster relief efforts if required. Riya Bhattacharjee

Taryvon Martin And The Acquittal Of George Zimmerman

Republicans react to Obama’s success

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was an African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who, at 17 years old, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida. On the evening of February 26, 2012, Martin had gone to a convenience store and purchased candy and a canned drink. As Martin returned from the store, he walked through a neighborhood that had been victimized by robberies several times that year. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, spotted him and called the Sanford Police to report him for suspicious behavior. Moments later, Martin was shot in the chest. Zimmerman was not charged at the time of the shooting by the Sanford Police, who said that there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense and that Floridas stand your ground law prohibited law-enforcement officials from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the tragedy, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried in Martins death. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and of manslaughter in July 2013.

Don’t Miss: How Many Seats Did The Republicans Lose In The House

Obama’s Reaction To The Dc Riots Is Turning Heads

On Jan. 6, 2021, riots broke out at the U.S. Capitol building as supporters of President Donald Trump gathered around and within the building, creating a scene of chaos that left four people dead, according to CNN. The day was a symbolic one in the changing of hands between Trump and President-elect Joe Biden;because;Vice President Mike Pence was to count the votes from the electoral college, confirming Biden’s win.

The riots in Washington D.C. caused mayhem and havoc, and Pence was evacuated from the scene, reported;USA Today. The crowd broke through police lines and entered the building, leaving behind broken glass and battered doors. By 6 p.m. EST, the National Guard was called in to offer support to the U.S. Capitol police, who “used tear gas and percussion grenades” to stop the riots, per USA Today.

The situation was so intense that several political leaders, including Biden, spoke out against Trump and his followers, but it was former President Barack Obama’s comments that turned heads. Here’s what he said.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

I Care a Lot: Peter Dinklage is the Scariest Gangster We’ve Seen in Years

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This article contains I Care a Lot spoilers.

J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot is one of very few films where everyone in it is a villain. In the lead role, Rosamund Pike ushers in a new amoral high mark as conservator con artist Marla Grayson. Peter Dinklage meanwhile mines the standard Hollywood heavy role for an unexpected haul of gangster gravitas. And with his turn as Roman Lunyov, the former black sheep of the Lannister family in Game of Thrones joins the likes of Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Wesley Snipes, and Humphrey Bogart as memorable cinema crime bosses.

However, this isn’t Dinklage’s first turn in a mob movie. He got his button in Find Me Guilty (2006). The film was based on the true story of Lucchese crime family soldier Jackie DiNorscio, played by Vin Diesel, and the longest mafia trial in American history. The movie was co-written and directed by Sidney Lumet, who not only helmed such crime classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Q&A, but was one of the original Dead End kids when the proto-gangster social drama was still on Broadway. Dinklage didn’t play a mobster in Find Me Guilty. He played a lawyer.

Dinklage’s Lunyov Family isn’t strictly going up against law enforcement in I Care a Lot. Rather Pike’s Marla Grayson and her partner in crime (and life), Fran (Eiza González), are court-appointed guardians from hell, and they represent a rival outfit. They are also operating a lucrative racket.

This guardianship gang war could be seen as similar to the scenarios which happened when Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs moved in on the Harlem and Chicago numbers games in the 1920s and ’30s. Or how Michael Corleone’s first order of business as head of family in The Godfather was to take over the casinos in Las Vegas. Like Don Vito Corleone before her, Marla’s also got judges, such as the sympathetic Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), in her pocket. Eldercare racketeering dominance is also comparable to the prohibition fights of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the body count is just as high. The take is just as sweet.

Edward G. Robinson set the standard for cinematic mob rule as “Rico” Bandello in Little Caesar (1931). Dinklage’s Roman Lunyov, by contrast, is more of a Czar. He heads a family in the Russian mafia and purports himself like a descendant of the Romanov dynasty. But he’s got Cossack in him. It’s in his DNA and cascading down his chin like the tail of a cavalry horse.

On Game of Thrones, Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister was part of an insidious dynasty whose roots intertwined with every twig of the ruling class. The modern Russian mob, on screen and off, can boast even more branches.

Netflix’s World’s Most Wanted dedicated an episode to Semion Mogilevich, the reputed head of the Russian mob (aka Bratva). While Moglievich is allegedly tied to arms dealing, international trading scams, and countless murders, the cops in the documentary series compare him to the Keyser Söze character from The Usual Suspects. He’s a respected, low-key businessman who likes to smoke. He lives in a mansion next to the head of the Communist Party in Russia. His activities aren’t merely state-sanctioned, they are apparently encouraged.

Dinklage’s Roman is all these things, even as his identity is actually more elaborately guarded than Söze’s, and his tastes run toward elitist’s treats.

But then Russian mobsters are always ruthless on screen. These are the guys who killed Denzel Washington’s seemingly indestructible narco cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (2001). You never prepare for that. When the “Three Wise Men” who always have your back tell you to skip town, you know you’re dealing with folks in a rough trade. On Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, Galina “Red” Reznikova (Kate Mulgrew) would rather go to jail for keeping bodies on ice than say she was keeping them fresh for the Russian mafia in Queens.

Dinklage’s big bad leans into this mythic image of Russian mobsters, with Roman appearing cut from the same cloth as the New Jersey-based operators who could make even Tony Soprano take pause in The Sopranos. Albeit if Dinklage’s character ever actually visited the tough guys in the Garden State, he would probably need to rethink his man-bun. After all, Tony Soprano couldn’t even get away with shorts.

When James Cagney had fist fights in his early films, he was always matched with a bruiser twice his size because the studios thought no one in the audience would accept him being remotely challenged otherwise. Dinklage also doesn’t display a traditionally imposing physical presence. But he is no lightweight. His own thugs cower at the very thought of a cross word. In the Lunyov family, it’s best to bring a gun to a food fight.

Roman’s personal attorney almost wets his briefs when he screws up. That’s because Roman is as unpredictable as Cagney’s Cody Jarrett, the gang leader in White Heat, Cagney’s most psychopathic role. Dinklage’s introduction as Roman shows him asking how many mules died on the last drug run. He calculates them coldly, as part of business, with the sociopathology of a Chief Executive Officer. But his biggest similarity can be found in oedipal complexities. Like Cody Jarrett, Roman Lunyov loves his mother.

We don’t know much about Jennifer Peterson, the nice old lady played by Dianne Wiest. She’s got money, a nice house, no living relatives, and a doctor who will exaggerate dementia symptoms in court for a stock payoff. On the surface Peterson seems to be a competent business woman who retired after a successful career. Now under the less than sensitive care at the Berkshire Oaks Senior Living facility, we realize her chosen field was career criminal. After all, any of these sweet old ladies could have had criminally scandalous youths.

When Marla finally asks her ward who she is, all Jennifer has to say is “I’m the worst mistake you’ll ever make.” We learn she has more than one son in the Russian mob. She could be a post-Glasnostic Ma Barker from the Prohibition era. Barker’s fictional approximation in White Heat, Ma Jarrett (Margaret De Wolfe Wycherly) tells her son she can take care of herself. And while Jennifer may have been declared legally unable to do just that in I Care a Lot, she is quite adept at a choke hold, eschewing the standard garrote assassination for her own elbow.

Marla doesn’t romanticize her mother, calling her a psychopath and offering her up as the collateral damage of closing costs. Her single-minded opportunism is more sociopathic than Pike’s Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gone Girl. She employs a cutthroat logic that’s in the same territories as bad-mannered comedies, but with the ruthlessness of the shark in Jaws.

Roman’s black-on-black dress code ensembles, by contrast, broadcast a desire for stylish power games. Marla is not interested in gangster chic; she prefers classy monochromatic suits so brightly focused they attract moths like flames. Her crew is all business as usual. Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) is the fixer. She picks the “cherries,” elderly cash cows who can be milked in the retirement home. Sam Rice (Damian Young) is the monster at the center of the center. Everyone’s got a soulless nature except Eiza González’s Fran, who is also the only one to see the wisdom of getting the fuck out of there.

Dinklage is fearsome in one of the scariest screen gangsters in recent years. This guy can dispatch troublesome community angels easier than a creamy éclair pastry–and he loves those treats. He even takes a last loving bite of a chocolate-covered, custard-filled house specialty before he tosses it onto the cold concrete of an underground parking garage.

When he ends negotiations with Marla, his only caveat is to make it look “organic.” Georgia Lyman, who is only credited as “the Assassin,” is I Care a Lot’s Luca Brasi, sharing duties with a few “heavies.” The film’s Fredo is Alexi Ignatyev, played by Nicholas Logan as if he’s always waiting for another shoe to drop. Even Ms. Peterson laughs and calls him an idiot. She laughs a lot, and it’s not just the steady drugs she’s being forcibly and legally dosed with, it’s the glee of power.

Roman’s power lies in his legal team, and the Lunyov family’s Tom Hagen is Dean Ericson (Chris Messina). One thing you have to admit with the Russian mob is they do appreciate innovation and sophistication. Ericson can’t help but be impressed by Marla’s scam. His lowball offer of $150,000 is an insult, but an understandable one. His veiled threats are as subtle as his suits are ostentatious.

Marla doesn’t seem to appreciate the power the Lunyov family wields, but she does appreciate the irony.

“If you can’t convince a woman to do what you want,” she says, appraising the fine print under the mouthpiece’s exploratory offer, “then you call her a bitch and threaten to kill her.” Marla pays it forward by calling the Lunyov matriarch far worse and threatening extreme discomfort, which she promises will last until the day she dies. As restrained as her venom may be, Marla is a proud femme fatale. Though also a stereotypical “ice queen” villainess, and heartless materialist. We’re almost sorry to feel bad for Marla when she is tied to a chair during last minute negotiations.

Director Blakeson, who made the science fiction action movie The 5th Wave and the noir thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed, sets up I Care a Lot like a horror movie.

“There’s no such thing as good people,” Marla Grayson says at the start of the film. The opening is exquisitely unsettling as Jennifer is guided through a process of enforced institutionalization, followed by her house being emptied, painted, placed on the market, and sold. The plot thickens as keys are traced to a safety deposit box containing millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds, which officially don’t exist. Most gangster films aren’t driven by this kind of mystery, but Roman is a new kind of gangster. Though cheap, dead drug-mules are an unnecessary expense, the Lunyov family want to make a difference in the world.

Blakeson wanted to highlight all-too true stories of elder abuse and the perils of court-appointed conservators which could even bring The #FreeBritney movement calling. But he captures the allure of the anti-hero and the all-American dream of a corner on the market. Roman Lunyov has one final thing in common with Michael Corleone, and many of the traditional gangsters: He wants to earn money legitimately. This is not to be confused with wanting to go legit.

Those of us who root for the “bad guys” will find a wealth of insidious characters, and a very original caper, at the heart of I Care a Lot. Peter Dinklage’s Roman Lunyev may go against type, with his eastern bloc nobility stunted by the limits of black comedy. But as a movie mob boss, he is Street Regal.

I Care a Lot can be streamed on Netflix.

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Minnesota: Lebanese immigrant gets 42 months for sending drone tech to Hizbollah

Under Monday's sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, Hamade will be immediately deported after serving his federal prison term in the U.S.

Lebanese National Sentenced to 42 Months in Prison for Illegally Exporting Drone Parts and Technology

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers and U.S. Attorney Erica H. MacDonald for the District of Minnesota today announced the sentencing of Usama Darwich Hamade, 55, to 42 months in prison, for conspiring to illegally export goods and technology in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Export Administration Regulations, the Arms Export Control Act, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The sentence was handed down by Chief Judge John R. Tunheim in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minn.

According to the defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed in court, from 2009 through 2011, Hamade conspired with others to export U.S. origin goods and technology including inertial measurement units suitable for use in uncrewed aerial vehicles, or “UAVs,” digital compasses suitable for UAV use, a jet engine, piston engines, and recording binoculars, without obtaining the required export licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of State, in violation of IEEPA, the Export Administration Regulations, the Arms Export Control Act, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. According to evidence presented by the government, the ultimate beneficiary of Hamade’s actions was the designated foreign terrorist organization Hizballah.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Export Enforcement, and Homeland Security Investigations.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys John Docherty and David MacLaughlin and Trial Attorney David Recker of the National Security Division.

-------------------------------

As noted in prior Creeping Sharia posts, aiding Hizbollah was a family affair for the Hamade’s.

More on the Hezbollah brothers: Feds: Brothers with alleged Hezbollah ties are ‘dangerous’

Prosecutors wrote that Hezbollah has used drones for many years and that the brothers “present a danger to the United States, and to other communities around the world.”

Prosecutors painted Usama Hamade as a “violent, drunken, gun-toting thug” who threatened to kill a government witness and his family by cutting him “to pieces” and once bragged that he cut off his gardener’s arms and bashed his gardener’s skull after an apparent theft.

Prosecutors called that “preposterous,” saying one of the drone parts acquired is only useful in military applications. They say Skype calls between Usama Hamade and an undercover agent show Hamade said he would be proud to be placed on the U.S. terror list.

Issam Hamade’s attorney, Bruce Nestor, wrote in his court filings that a Shiite Muslim would have to show public allegiance to Hezbollah or another group to avoid physical harm or retribution.

But prosecutors said Issam Hamade posted pictures of the 9/11 attacks on Facebook and suggested the attacks wouldn’t have happened if the World Trade Center had been built in reverence to Allah.

#Islam #Muslim #Jihad #Sharia #Legal #News #Politics #Immigration #Travel #Media

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e-vo-lu-ti-on · 5 years

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Part 2

In the recent sequels, the semi-feudal futurism of Star Wars has been updated for an audience perhaps even less credulous of monarchies than it was in 1977, with Princess Leia converted into a general of a more or less republican anti-imperialist resistance. Black Panther is monarchist without apology. Its semi-feudal futurism is combined with the cultural nationalism historically associated not with the nominally connected Black Panther Party, but its adversary Ron Karenga’s US Organization – with which the Panthers had a violent shootout at UCLA leading to the deaths of Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins.

In Black Panther, we are presented with a mythology that makes anti-imperialist resistance unnecessary. In the Marvel myth of the African nation of Wakanda, initially created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and brought to the big screen by Disney, Third World poverty is not a result of the ravages of colonialism and the uneven exploitation of global capitalism. Rather, this poverty simply does not exist – it is an illusion intended to hide the wealth cultivated and protected by an African monarchy from time immemorial. Development exceeding that of advanced capitalism has already been achieved within a semi-feudal mode of production protected in the boundaries of a nation-state.

Our hero is the monarch T’Challa, whose drug-induced physical strength allows him to function as an isolationist superhero, keeping Wakanda’s wealth hidden from the outside world. In this mission he relies equally on a dizzying array of advanced technological gadgetry, reminiscent of imperialist agent James Bond.

But the Wakandan monarchy has a dirty secret. T’Challa’s father T’Chaka murdered his brother N’Jobu, who while undercover in Oakland – the city where Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 – had come to the conclusion that Wakanda’s advanced technology should be used to liberate black people around the world from poverty and oppression. Because this posed a threat to Wakanda’s national sovereignty, N’Jobu was eliminated and his son abandoned to grow up without his father.

N’Jobu’s son, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, rises up with the goal not only of avenging his father’s murder, but also of claiming the Wakandan monarchy and using it to realize his father’s dream of international revolution. “Two billion people all over the world who look like us whose lives are much harder, and Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all,” he says to a skeptical Wakandan nobility. “Where was Wakanda?” These two political visions – of a global insurrection against oppression and the defense of the nation-state – are played out in the contest for the throne between the African monarch T’Challa and the urban African-American Killmonger, who the Wakandan nobility scorn as an “outsider.” As Christopher Lebron writes in Boston Review:

Rather than the enlightened radical, [Killmonger] comes across as the black thug from Oakland hell bent on killing for killing’s sake—indeed, his body is marked with a scar for every kill he has made. The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.

T’Challa’s eventual victory against Killmonger is not achieved by African initiative alone, as the core figure of critical race theory Kimberlé Crenshaw has written. The visual spectacle of the film, Crenshaw reflects, “sucked me in like a narcotic and had me accepting things that made my heart ache upon reflection.” Its exuberant celebration of a purportedly timeless African essence represses its complicity with the history of racist violence. In Crenshaw’s words:

A civil war between Black families was unfolding over aiding other Black people, and… the CIA’s shooting down of vessels carrying technology into the fight against an anti-black world order was hailed as a heroic moment… I kept wondering how I’d come to dance on the table for the CIA? The ones that helped destroy the dream of African liberation, that had a hand in the assassination of Lumumba, staged a coup against Nkrumah, tipped off the arrest that imprisoned Mandela, installed the vicious, nation-destroying Mobutu? Why not throw in the FBI and COINTELPRO as kindly white characters? Was this meant to be ironic? What meaning do we assign the fact that the possibility of a real life Wakanda in the resource-rich Congo and Ghana, and the promise of a Pan African quest for collective self-determination were precisely the threats that the CIA worked to suppress?

After Killmonger is murdered by T’Challa, he says, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, ‘cause they knew death was better than bondage.” But it is the lie told by Disney’s Black Panther that this is a binary choice. Killmonger’s last words are the closest the film gets to the actual historical contribution of Afrofuturism, in the negative form of a disavowal. The Afrofuturist Detroit techno group Drexciya proposed, in the liner notes to its 1997 The Quest:

During the greatest Holocaust the world has ever known, pregnant America-bound African slaves were thrown overboard by the thousands during labour for being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible that they could have given birth at sea to babies that never needed air? Are Drexciyans water-breathing aquatically mutated descendants of those unfortunate victims of human greed? Recent experiments have shown a premature human infant saved from certain death by breathing liquid oxygen through its underdeveloped lungs.

Drexciya’s Afrofuturist utopia builds on a concept introduced in Parliament’s follow-up to Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, 1978’s Motor Booty Affair. On that album, George Clinton’s mythos moved from outer space to underwater, turning the myth of Atlantis into an alternative trajectory that begins with the North Atlantic slave trade. “We need to raise Atlantis from the bottom of the sea,” says the concluding track, “Deep.”

Achille Mbembe speaks of Black Panther as a futuristic fable, a “techno-narrative” whose power derives from its “reversal of the African sign,” recalling the diasporic “reflection on the possibility of a new world, of a black community which would be neither debased nor stamped with the seal of defilement.” The Afrofuturism of Black Panther, for Mbembe, is the overcoming of Western humanism from the vantage point of those who Western modernity assigned the space of the non-human. The future beyond Western humanism is prefigured by the coupling of the human body and the “quasi-infinite plasticity” of technology, and the concomitant transformation of the violated Earth of Africa into “astral material.”

However, from the vantage point of post-humanist Detroit, where the plasticity of technology subjected the diasporic black population to the tyranny of the automobile factory, Drexciya proposes an entirely different politics of Afrofuturism. Drexciyans do not belong to a counterfactual history insulated from the slave trade which lies at the foundation of capitalist modernity. Rather, they passed through it, and survived it, animating what Paul Gilroy called the “Black Atlantic.” Kodwo Eshun has described this diasporic continuüm, in a powerful review of The Quest, as “the ‘webbed network’ between the US and Africa, Latin America and Europe, the UK and the Caribbean along which information, people, records, and enforced dematerialisation systems have been routing, rerouting and criss-crossing since slavery.”

The Drexciyan Afrofuturist myth is a myth not of the nation-state, but of liberation. As Eshun puts it: “By inventing another outcome for the Middle Passage, this sonic fiction opens a bifurcation in time which alters the present by feeding back through its audience – you, the landlocked mutant descendent of the Slave Trade.” It is a myth which, as Nettrice R. Gaskins writes, “draws on modern African cultural ethos, technology, and artistic actuation by creating self-determined, representational worlds. In discourse of dissent, this is a place where the oppressed plot their liberation, where stolen or abandoned migrants survive adverse conditions.”

The film is aware of the greater power of the myth of this revolutionary Black Atlantis – and it recognizes that Killmonger, for so many viewers, will be its most sympathetic character. Thus T’Challa must somehow absorb Killmonger’s spirit of resistance and justice to bring the film to a palatable conclusion. He does so by reproducing the political placebo syndrome that came about in the late 20th century. Under his rule, Wakanda begins practicing the black capitalism that came to displace black power as the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s were crushed by the state and ran up against their own strategic and organizational deadlocks. He buys the condemned building where his uncle was murdered and establishes a center for STEM education – an investment of the Wakandan monarchy in urban development.

The character of the Black Panther was introduced in the Fantastic Four comic series three months before the founding of the Black Panther Party, but the name-recognition and credibility of the film in a political landscape marked by Black Lives Matter surely draws on the history of black liberation for which the BPP is such a powerful synecdoche. In her review of the film at The Baffler, Kaila Philo has noted precedents to its appropriations of BPP history and aesthetics, by cultural icons like Jay-Z and Beyoncé:

Black artists revere the Black Panthers because they have given us our most indelible images of Black radicalism and, more importantly, power; the Party’s staunch socialist and anti-imperialist ideology often falls to the wayside, however, because the power they seek is economic and not merely a function of the white capitalist credo, which leaves the poor behind. It’s this credo that quietly informs our best and brightest Black entertainers to this day.

In a 1970 letter to the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, founder of the Black Panther Party Huey P. Newton wrote, “we are interested in the people of any territory where the crack of the oppressor’s whip may be heard. We have the historical obligation to take the concept of internationalism to its final conclusion – the destruction of statehood itself.” With this revolutionary agenda suppressed and dismissed by today’s multicultural liberalism, Killmonger’s mission can only be, as Adam Serwer writes disingenuously in The Atlantic, the production of a new historical trauma, on the model of X-Men’s Magneto:

Killmonger’s plan for “black liberation,” arming insurgencies all over the world, is an American policy that has backfired and led to unforeseen disasters perhaps every single time it has been deployed; it is somewhat bizarre to see people endorse a comic-book version of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and sign up for the Project for the New Wakandan Century as long as the words “black liberation” are used instead of “democracy promotion.”

Arming insurgencies all over the world, however, was a project of internationalist revolutionaries long before George W. Bush, as Newton’s letter attests, and it is diametrically opposed to the violent entrenchment of nation-states in the existing imperial hierarchy represented by American neoconservatism. Revolutionary internationalism presents an alternative to the placebo syndrome of capitalist philanthropy, to which the liberal multicultural élite claims there is no alternative. Disney asks us which figure is worthy of the title of Black Panther: is it the poor African-American child from Oakland who dreams of international revolution, or the monarch who aims at defending the glory of his nation? History has already given us the answer.

#Mood

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fapangel · 7 years

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A couple of my friends recently went on vacation to Greece (Santorini, specifically) and discovered that Greeks were actually some of the hardest-working people they've ever met. In your experience, how true is this? Is the whole "lazy Greeks" thing completely unjustified? Based on a kernel of truth? Or actually true and the folks in Santorini are unusually hard working?

First, I’d like to point out that Santorini is interesting because it’s almost certainly the location of the city known as “Atlantis,” as this fascinating and very well done BBC documentary establishes. As the documentary describes, the destruction of Atlantis - by a massive volcanic event much like the devastating Krakatoa explosion - didn’t just destroy a single prosperous trade city, but brought on a devastating “nuclear winter” effect recorded by other contemporary sources, including Egyptian hieroglyphic records, and plenty of archaeological evidence of the actual eruption and following tsunamis. The eruption did terrible damage to the ancient Minoan civilization, quite likely leading to their downfall.

The island of Santorini is a volcanic island, created by a still-active killer of civilizations. They are still unearthing the remains of more outlying settlements on the island that were not utterly vaporized like the city that was built pretty much on top of the volcano’s central cone (in what is now the central bay, after the volcano collapsed into its own magma chamber and the sea rushed in,) so the echoes of the victims of this island are still all around it.

Now check out this picture of lovely traditional Greek-style houses built along the rim of the god-damned crater. GREEKS STILL LIVE ON THIS FUCKING BASTION OF HADES. Consider what that says about Greeks.

With that reflexive horror out of the way, about Greeks - the most important thing to understand about Greeks is that Greeks are fucking poor. They have always been pretty damn poor. Even in antiquity, if you weren’t Athens? You were fuckin poor. And you need only look at the terrain to tell why - they joke that Greece is the only country where farmers can literally fall out of their own fields, because so much agriculture has to be done on terraces cut into mountainsides. And though Greece’s mineral wealth isn’t terrible, it never really had the domestic industry needed to capitalize on it. Greece could’ve overcome this with time, but 300 years of domination and exploitation by the Ottoman Empire, followed by invasion and occupation in WWII (the German army stripped Greece of almost every machine tool and working factory it had), followed by a civil war with Communists, meant that the nation’s been kicked in the head so many times it never really had a chance to find its feet. My own grandfather sailed sail-powered clipper ships around the Greek islands as a boy in the 1930s (a lot cheaper to operate than a modern steel ship with a proper engine, you see,) and the island my father’s side of the family came from, Kalamos, didn’t get electrical service run to it until 2005. For most of history - and still, today - Greeks have had to be hardworking just to survive.

Researching the novel I’m writing set in 1930s Greece gave me some rude shocks - it was Greek-Americans who raised the money to send Greece’s athletes to the Olympics in 1932, and in the run-up to WWII, the Greek government actually raised funds from the people directly to repair and upgrade their decaying WWI-era airbases. One of the tales of the war itself, heard from a friend of my grandfather’s, concerned how the Greek soldiers in the mountains, fighting the invading Italians, fed themselves - they waited till the Italians put their spaghetti pots on the fire, then they’d charge in, fire a few rounds, throw a few grenades, and while the Italians were still tripping over themselves they’d steal the spaghetti pots right off the goddamned fire.

Yeah. Greece was - and is - fucking poor.

The BBC actually has an article about the Lazy Greeks stereotype, and it shows that Greeks work more than most of the EU - Greece’s real problem is that, just like the EU, it embraced socialism, and that’s not working out too goddamned well for them. Greeks are of the opinion that the EU is fucking them over, destroying their economy to make them a source of cheap labor. Maybe it’s bullshit, but you have to remember that this isn’t the first time Greece has been under international financial controls - their economy was so fucked that they were put under international economic control in 1897. This is how far back the debt crisis goes.

It’s not just “oh noes socialism” that fucked up Greece, however - it’s well known that Greece’s civil government is a fucking trainwreck and that tax evasion and tax fraud is rampant. My family still owns our small plot on Kalamos, and when we looked into selling it, or building on it, we found out quickly that you pretty much need to hire a lawyer full-time to navigate the un-ending clusterfuck of their civil government - to say nothing of the bribes you might have to pass around. This, unfortunately, is what you get from a nation who had a strong tradition of being Turk-killing hill bandits for 300 years, had to fight a series of wars just to survive against their Balkan neighbors immediately thereafter, was brutally sacked by Germany and then had to dive head-long into the international Communists Versus Anti-Communists battle along with everyone else. Despite defeating the Communists - narrowly - victory in the civil war never really resolved the tensions in the populace (any more than our own did,) and even worse, the alternative to Communists, in Greece, was pretty much always nationalists - they remained popular enough that Greece was taken over and ruled by a fucking military junta from 1967-74. The current Golden Dawn fascist party in Greece are big fans of these fucks, naturally. I call them nationalists because Metaxism was always fascism-lite at best; they were literal royalists (both in Metaxas’s time and in 1967, Greece had a King who had actual political and legal power,) so the emphasis on nationalism and political loyalty were simply to maintain control over a restive and divided populace, rather than underpinned by any really hardcore radical fascist shit. It was even rumored that Metaxas was moving towards restoration of democratic government in the late 30s before he was Overtaken By Events.

Unfortunately that’s left Metaxasim with just enough respectability that the Junta - and their current admirers - were able to gloss over the dictator part of “benevolent dictator” and all the police state, jackbooted-thug oppression that implies. So today Greece still has unironic anarcho-communist fuckheads running loose, and a bunch of unironic nationalists just itching to go full jackboots on their ass.

Now I’ll be the first to say I’m not intimately acquainted with modern Greek politics, but you can clearly see the modern cracks line up pretty well with the historical tensions. Any way you dice it, modern Greece just isn’t a very unified state or people. It’s not full Balkans mode mind you, but it’s not hard to see how graft and corruption are still rampant in their civil government; they never really had the long period of stability required to hammer out that kind of society.

And there’s a second problem, too - the long history of Greece being used by a pawn against outside powers. The Greek War of Independence was backed by Europe, first by wealthy individuals and groups, and then by direct national governments deploying their fleets and soldiers. It was primarily a way to fuck with the Ottoman Empire, which’d been Europe’s enemy since before corned powder. This would continue through the Balkan Wars and into WWI, where Greece’s northern half actually revolted to give the British a casus belli to open a new front against the Central Powers, and of course WWII, and after that, the Greek Civil War would become the first foray of the CIA in anti-Communist dickery. The CIA was also balls-deep in the 1967 Junta, in fact, for the same reason - hold off the Commies. And all of this, of course, included Money. There was always more money from the US or Europe or NATO or England or whoeverthefuck, and it always had strings attached. Greece is very strategically located - if Turkey (and the Bosporus Strait) ever left NATO, than the Greek islands in the Dardanelles could control access to the Black Sea. So there’s almost always been outside flows of money to exploit, which lessened the dire necessity of actually unfucking their own civil society, and thus economy.

Greeks work very hard - it’s just that their entire government is kind of fucked up.

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coruscantholonet · 5 years

Text

Corellian News Briefs (6-20-19)

Corvette crashes off the coast of Vreni Island!

Sphyrna-class corvette 'hijacked' CorSec intervention prevents tragedy. The corvette now resides along the beautiful Vreni Island beach (that has reportedly lowered property values).

Originally en route to Corellia carrying a diplomatic Envoy the Resolute broadcasted a distress signal late yesterday evening. CorSec has informed us they had dispatched a team to investigate, lead by Blue Sector Lieutenant Kora Starhunter.

Much of the report detailing the events on-board have not yet been declassified, however an internal source inside the blue sector department has alleged that it was a small group of Imperial Remnants, supposedly one of them having survived the ordeal.

Later that evening many of the townsfolk of Vrenii Island reported sighting the incoming atmospheric disturbance, windows were smashed from the loud sounds of the crashing cruiser we asked a local who said "I was just sitting on my balcony, cracked a cold beer and realized I may just die, thankfully the Jedi handled the situation perfectly and escorted us out of the projected crash area before doing that space magic they're known for and what looked like redirecting the crash"

Another citizen from one of the beach front properties who did not receive notice of the evacuation said "I was enjoying my time at the beach, you know Vreni has the best beach in this system.. when we suddenly saw the ship landing.. it was loud, and it splashed water all over the place.. then we saw those coming out of it.. we thought they were filming a holomovie or something.. it was amazing

Upon contacting the Jedi Temple, we met with Taaj Ousan, one of the masters on the council who said "We received a request to aid, as the ship was coming fast towards the city. With the aid of the force, we manage to direct the ship towards the beach.. and prevent it from crashing in the middle of the city"

Corsec Lieutenant Starhunter who lead the operation had this to say when contacted by our media department "The Investigation is currently ongoing, as such we cannot disclose much information apart from the fact clean up crews are working in partnership with the Republic, let's all just be thankful there was no further loss of life in this ordeal, and let's hope that the lasting environmental impact on the coastline is low"

The Republic has dispatched a small team along with equipment to aide in the salvage operations, as they feel partly responsible.

________________________________

Confederation declares the fuel crisis to be over.

Today, in a historic act of government action, Corfed Councilor, Victoria Scatter, signs grants to end the fuel crisis. Victoria Scatter, also running in the Prime Minister Election, decides to not await the outcome of the votes, but instead, takes action and ends the fuel crisis by signing grants offered to the Corellian Government by the Vasch Foundation. Her words to the people : "On this day, this grant will help our planet finally take steps to end this fuel crisis." - Victoria Scatter - Corfed

The documents, written up by the Corellian Government, were signed by Victoria Scatter, and the newly appointed Minister of Trade, Azaria Hex. A promise to the people was made that the effects of these grants would be noticed Immediately upon it taking effect. As well, in the words of Miss Scatter, ""I would like to remind the citizens of the five planets that this is a grant, so this doesn't take money away from the government. There will be no rise in taxes on our citizens." How the grant will end the crisis remains to be seen, but if the promises are kept, we can expect great things.

What does this mean to the people, business, and outside trade? Lower fuel costs and no new taxes! It doesn't matter what language you speak, those words are like song to the ears.

________________________________

Sith complex assaulted by unknown attackers!

CorSec is investigating reports that the Sith compound in the Blue Sector was attacked by an unknown party. All they would tell us at this time is that the unknown party was well funded and that they believe they are not native to Corellia.

Some concerns have spread that this unknown party could launch attacks against other organizations in the area.

________________________________

CorSec and the Jedi deal a major blow to the Scourge..

[JuJu : Red Circle Gang Leader]

Jedi and CorSec forces managed to engage the Red Circle Gang on Rhen Var and capture their leader “JuJu”. The Red Circle Gang was one of several who make up the Scourge. It is said that the Gang has disbanded as result.

[ Nenthus Rordul : Bofa Treat Gang Leader ]

CorSec could not disclose anything they may have learned from JuJu but did inform us he was killed in prison when Bofa Treat Gang Boss Nenthus Rordul snapped his neck. The Bofa Treat Gang is also a member of the Scourge so perhaps there was some fallout.. Rordul is expected to be sentenced soon, this latest action adding to a long list of offenses.

________________________________

Propaganda spreading in the Blue Sector..

Someone has been circulating a pamphlet which takes shots at many including CorSec, the Mandalorians and others.. it reads..

___

CORSEC ROADBLOCKS ARE SCAM BLOCKS!?

CorSec have been placing checkpoints up throughout Blue Sector without so much as a word! Holding citizens and individuals at ransom for these supposed "safe checks". Since when has marshal law come to Blue Sector? Reports claim they are just 'doing there job' but a recent attack against the Hyperdrive suggests otherwise. As a group of armed individuals terrorized the much loved bar. Could marshal law be brought to blue sector. Are Corsec truly corrupt? Are rights being thrown?

MANDALORIAN THUGS!

It has been widely reported Mandalorian Thugs have been attacking businesses and individuals throughout blue sector! Attacking and abusing civilians. Everywhere from Treasure Row to the Shipping Yards. Mandalorians have been bringing dishonesty and disrespect to their own culture. When a man hides behind a mask, is he a friend or foe? Who knows! But the Government are doing very little to tackle these lowlifes and it is rumored Corsec is supporting the barbarians.

CRIME ON THE RISE!

Blue Sector has been hit hard with crime over the past months. Businesses have been extorted and driven out of the sector. Yet this is nothing new, what is new is that several election candidates have apparent links to these groups. Yes! the same candidates of the election whom want to then run for further power! Trust none of them.

THE HUTT MONSTER!

Why is nobody talking about this savage!? Since the article a few months ago, missing persons have increased by thirty percent in blue sector in particular working girls. Yet this story was quietly swept under the rug! Why? Rumors have speculated of a monster dwelling in the sewers but again the government chose to deny it. Another Hutt is cruel intentions!

VRENI BEACH

And who are we to judge! Us! Petty civilians far from the glorious beach and luxury of Vreni where the high and mighty dwell in riches. Where the Jedi stay away from the real issues that we suffer. Cuddled up in their temples and sparkling streets as we suffer! Where are the Jedi in these times? Where is the justice we deserve?

WHEN WILL IT END? CORRUPTION? VIOLENCE? SAVAGERY? AUSTERITY? SOON BLUE SECTOR WILL BE RED SECTOR! TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE REAL ENEMY JOIN THE RESISTANCE BROTHERS!

#FREECORELLIA

________________________________

Points of Interest this weekend!

On Saturday Shaka the Hutt is hosting a gathering, they stated "I, Shaka the Hutt of the Jiramma and Dlugacz, will host a gathering of Hutts and others on Corellia this week.. I welcome all who wish to share the speak or enjoy wine and business, and hope that if the travel is too far that a representative may attend and conduct business with your permissions."

[June 22nd, at Noon SLT]

Also on Saturday the Hyperdrive in the Blue Sector will be holding an election party.

[June 22nd, at sometime post 5PM SLT, exact time tbd]

(( Both of those events will count as public appearances for candidates! ))

#SWRP #StarWars #Corellia #SecondLife #Roleplay #SWL

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